"People Are Lining Up At Food Banks As Early As 2:30 In The Morning As The Food Stamp Crisis Forces Millions Of Americans To “Starve”

"People Are Lining Up At Food Banks As Early As 2:30 In The Morning

 As The Food Stamp Crisis Forces Millions Of Americans To 'Starve'”

by Michael Snyder

"We are less than two weeks into the month of November, and the mainstream media is telling us that millions of Americans are “starving”. If our society is this vulnerable to a temporary disruption in food stamp benefits, what is it going to be like when global events really start hitting the fan and there is no food in our grocery stores at all? Much of the population is just a few missed meals away from going completely haywire. For now, at least those that have not received their food stamp benefits this month can rely on local food banks. But would you be willing to line up at 2:30 in the morning just to get some free food? That is precisely what just happened in the Bronx…

"In the Bronx, throngs of desperate locals lined up as early as 2:30 a.m. at food banks because of disruptions in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance benefits caused by the shutdown. Carmen Verona told The Post she was there for the time ever because her mom and brother had their benefits cut. Her own $459 monthly SNAP benefits aren’t enough. “Without the food stamps, it’s a lot … and that’s not even enough because I always got to put out of pocket like $200, $300 because it’s too expensive,” said Verona, 58, as she picked up fruit, vegetables, and apple juice."

The reason why people line up so early is because there might not be enough food for everyone. In Indianapolis, one elderly woman that thought that she had gotten in line at her local food bank early enough ended up leaving empty-handed…"On Saturday morning, bundled in a coat, hat and gloves, Alicia Engel waited in a line outside Fountain Square Church of Christ for a cart of free groceries. An hour before the city-sponsored event was scheduled to end, volunteers ran out of food - and Engel left empty-handed."

This is how badly our economy has deteriorated. If the food stamp program permanently disappeared, millions upon millions of desperate Americans would suddenly be absolutely destitute. At one food bank in Cleveland, hordes of hungry people lined up in the rain to get some free food. When Fox News posted footage of the line on X, it got hundreds of thousands of views…"A video of a large line outside a food bank in Cleveland has gone viral amid the ongoing freezing of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the government shutdown. Fox News posted footage showing long lines of people queuing outside a food bank on its X account. At the time of writing, the video had accrued 599,000 views."

You have to be really committed to stand in the rain for hours. In other parts of the country, people are able to wait in their vehicles. For example, on one recent morning in Tallahassee “hundreds of cars lined up outside a shopping mall for emergency food assistance”…"On a cold Saturday morning in Tallahassee, hundreds of cars lined up outside a shopping mall for emergency food assistance. Among them was Joe Elliott, a newly retired man with liver disease, whose rising medical costs and lapsed SNAP benefits left him in need, per Chronicle Online. The food distribution, organized by Second Harvest and supported by United Way of the Big Bend and WTXL, aimed to serve 1,500 families. CEO Monique Ellsworth said calls for help have surged as nearly 100,000 residents in the region face uncertainty over food aid."

We are seeing similar scenes all over the nation. In northern California, demand at local food banks has absolutely exploded…"Within its service area of Santa Clara and San Mateo counties, more than 168,000 people rely on CalFresh, the state of California’s version of SNAP, Bacho says. On Monday alone, over 1,500 unique users visited the bank’s online food locator tool, which connects people to nearby food distribution sites, according to Bacho. That’s nearly double the usual volume. Their hotline has also experienced a 200% increase in requests for referrals, she says."

I was surprised to learn that California is not even among the top 10 states that are most heavily dependent on the food stamp program. It turns out that New Mexico, Oregon and Louisiana lead that list…

• New Mexico -21.5 percent

• Oregon – 18.1 percent

• Louisiana – 17.5 percent

• Oklahoma – 16.9 percent

• W. Virginia – 15.5 percent

• Nevada – 15.2 percent

• Massachusetts – 15.1 percent

• Pennsylvania – 15.0 percent

• New York – 14.9 percent

• Illinois – 14.8 percent

There were a few states that began paying out full food stamp benefits last week, but the Trump administration is ordering those states to “immediately undo” what they have done…"The Trump administration has instructed states that they must “immediately undo any steps” that were taken to provide full SNAP benefits to low-income Americans, saying states were “unauthorized.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture, in a late-night Saturday memo obtained by CBS News, also threatened to impose financial penalties on states that did not comply with the government’s new orders.

“To the extent States sent full SNAP payment files for November 2025, this was unauthorized,” Patrick Penn, deputy undersecretary of Agriculture, wrote to state SNAP directors. “Accordingly, States must immediately undo any steps taken to issue full SNAP benefits for November 2025.”

What a colossal mess. And the fact that this crisis has erupted just before Thanksgiving is making a lot of recipients even more upset… “Nothing, I didn’t get nothing this month,” Anthony Miller said. Miller said he was supposed to see nearly $300 on his link card on November 1. “It’s confusing and Trump don’t want to release it, and that’s why he’s taking it to court, and it don’t make no sense at all that we got to starve out here, and he did it at the time of Thanksgiving,” he said."

Did you notice that he used the word “starve”. We are suddenly hearing that word at lot. In fact, one female EBT recipient that claims that she is “starving” has been getting a tremendous amount of attention online…

A brutally truthful must-view!

Needless to say, that woman is not starving. If you go without food for a few days, that is not going to hurt you. In fact, for most of the population going without food for a few days would actually be quite beneficial for their health. If you have a chronic disease, fasting is one of the best things that you could possibly do for your body.

The reason why we are hearing the word “starve” so much is because the mainstream media is constantly using it and many top Democrats are constantly using it… “Donald Trump and his administration have made the decision to weaponize hunger, to withhold SNAP benefits from millions of people, notwithstanding the fact that two lower courts, both the district court and the court of appeals, made clear that those SNAP benefits needed to be paid immediately,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said on CNN Saturday, calling the actions “shameful.”

“Donald Trump is literally fighting in court to ensure Americans starve. HE DOES NOT CARE ABOUT YOU,” echoed California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a potential 2028 presidential contender, on X."

Nobody in the United States is starving. If you want to see real starvation, just look at what is happening in Africa right now. People are literally dropping dead from a lack of food, but that hardly gets any attention from the western media. So let’s put all of this into perspective.

This food stamp crisis is just temporary, and the good news is that it looks like a deal to end the government shutdown may be within reach. We shall see. But even if this government shutdown ends, there are a couple of things that we all need to remember.

Number one, demand at U.S. food banks was at record levels even before the government shutdown started.

Number two, if there is some sort of a major emergency someday and the federal government is no longer able to feed tens of millions of Americans, things will get very bad in this country very rapidly."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Rock Port, Missouri, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

The Poet: Barbara Crooker, "In the Middle..."

"In the Middle..."

"In the middle

of a life that's as complicated as everyone else's,

struggling for balance, juggling time.

The mantle clock that was my grandfather's

has stopped at 9:20; we haven't had time

to get it repaired. The brass pendulum is still,

the chimes don't ring. One day you look out the window,

green summer, the next, and the leaves have already fallen,

and a grey sky lowers the horizon. Our children almost grown,

our parents gone, it happened so fast. Each day, we must learn

again how to love, between morning's quick coffee

and evening's slow return. Steam from a pot of soup rises,

mixing with the yeasty smell of baking bread. Our bodies

twine, and the big black dog pushes his great head between;

his tail is a metronome, 3/4 time. We'll never get there,

Time is always ahead of us, running down the beach, urging

us on faster, faster, but sometimes we take off our watches,

sometimes we lie in the hammock, caught between the mesh

of rope and the net of stars, suspended, tangled up

in love, running out of time."

~ Barbara Crooker

“Of Time, Turnings, Stars & Wars”

“Of Time, Turnings, Stars & Wars”

by Doug "Uncola" Lynn

"Like nature, history is full of processes that cannot happen in reverse. Just as the laws of entropy do not allow a bird to fly backward, or droplets to regroup at the top of a waterfall, history has no rewind button. Like the seasons of nature, it moves only forward."

- Strauss and Howe: “The Fourth Turning”

"Contemplating the concept of time can be quite confounding, to say the least. In the extreme, considering the paradoxical nature of time’s passage will stretch the mind causing thoughts to invert like taffy in a rolling machine or light yielding to the gravity of an Event Horizon before the edge of a Black Hole in deep space.

Knowing Einstein was right means time stops at the speed of light. Surely then, waves of thought must generate their own specific gravity to capture both light and sound, together. Our eyes and ears record each moment and translate events into high definition digital memories which we can recall upon demand and view as celluloid film stock in a dark room.

However, in this dimension, there is another aspect at play that comes attached to time. Space: The final frontier. These conflagrate together and then separate at any given moment never to coalesce again in quite the same way. Time can be recalled like a ghost, or a spectral hologram, on the mind’s screen, but the space will have changed and dissipated entropically like dust digested in the amorphous bellies of Stephen King’s "Langoliers."

To put it another way, time changes everything. A couple of years ago one of my offspring had a milestone birthday so we went to a morning movie matinee followed by an expensive late lunch at a fine dining venue. It was there where I chewed my food and contemplated the confounding conceptual continuations of space and time.

The movie was the Star Wars flick, "Rogue One" and the state-of-the-art theater featured stadium seating and a massive UltraScreen Deluxe® with Dolby® Atmospheric Surround-sound which, according to the advertisements, offered the “ultimate moviegoing experience”. As I watched the story unfold in REAL D 3D® with my 3D glasses in place while eating my popcorn and nestled comfortably in the red leather DreamLoungerTM recliner, I thought to myself how I really am in the future. In the lobby after the movie, I checked Drudge on my smartphone and learned Carrie Fisher had died in Los Angeles.

This made me remember way back to my past when I was a preteen and first saw the original Star Wars. I watched it with several friends in an ornately vintage, and solitary, theater in my small town. Through the patina of time and the opaque looking glass of my mind’s eye, I remember hoping no one would tell my parents, or my orthodontist, that I was eating popcorn and lemon drops with new braces on my teeth. Although I was an avid reader back then with a keen appreciation for science fiction, I had not seen a film before that captivated me like the first Star Wars. The excellent storyline, superior special effects, and the characters in the film really made an impression on me.

If my current self could go back to that day, I would meet the geeky, metal-mouthed kid after the movie and tell him some things. I would also mention how, in 43 years, he will celebrate his progeny’s birthday who, at that time, will be several years older than he is now and how he will be seeing another Star Wars movie on the very same day that Princess Leia died in real life.

The ironic confluence of time and space, indeed.

I am sure the mini-me at that time would have pegged me as a brain-damaged old fool and, in turn, would have attempted to persuade me into buying him and his friends a six-pack of beer, a fifth of peppermint Schnapps, a Playboy and a can of chew. After all, according to "The Fourth Turning," by Strauss and Howe, the year 1977 was two and a half “Turnings” ago. Back then, the future wasn’t set. Or was it?

“We perceive our civic challenge as some vast, insoluble Rubik’s Cube. Behind each problem lies another problem that must be solved first, and behind that lies yet another, and another, ad infinitum. To fix crime we have to fix the family, but before we do that we have to fix welfare, and that means fixing our budget, and that means fixing our civic spirit, but we can’t do that without fixing moral standards, and that means fixing schools and churches, and that means fixing the inner cities, and that’s impossible unless we fix crime. There’s no fulcrum on which to rest a policy lever. People of all ages sense that something huge will have to sweep across America before the gloom can be lifted – but that’s an awareness we suppress. As a nation, we’re in deep denial.”

- Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”

Written by the historians William Strauss and Neil Howe, “The Fourth Turning” was published in 1997 and was, at that time, boldly proclaimed by the authors to be an “American Prophecy”. The book is fascinating in that it very thoroughly documents recorded cycles of history across multiple cultures and eras in order to predict the timing of “America’s next rendezvous with destiny”.

Processing almost like a Cliff’s Notes summary, the book identifies the timelines of historical events and matches them to specific life cycles of people in the form of generational archetypes. What is also interesting is how Strauss and Howe quantify and compare the recordings of history of multiple authors throughout the millennia to find uncanny comparisons in both historical and generational cycles.  Ironically, the comparisons stand up not only to the test of time regarding recorded events in history, but the generational turnings and archetypes also translate to ancient literature and other writings as well, ranging from Homer’s Iliad to the Holy Bible.

The concept of time is discussed in the context of both circular and linear perspectives as Strauss and Howe describe what is called the “saeculum”. The saeculum represents a “long human life”, or approximately 80 to 90 years comprising of four turnings each lasting about 20 to 22 years.

Just as there are four seasons consisting of spring, summer, fall and winter, there are also four phases of a human life represented in childhood, young adulthood, middle age and old age, or elderhood. As each phase of human life represents approximately 20 years, so is each generational archetype identified within historical cycles, or turnings, as follows:

Click image for larger size.

The generational archetypes experience the historical turnings according their life stage, or age. Amazingly, history shows a consistent pattern in how the generations both cause and affect historical events.  The patterns develop based upon how each generation interacts with the other and this also has documented consistencies that are delineated by the authors.

At any given “turning” during the saeculum, the set order of the generations on the age ladder is called a “constellation”. For example, during the Fourth Turning Crisis of 1929 through 1945, America experienced a financial crash, a great depression and a world war. During this period, the Prophet generation was entering Elderhood, the Nomad generation were middle-aged and the Hero generation fought WW II as young adults while the Artist generation were children during that time.

When the Crisis (Winter) era of financial hardship and war was over, the Spring of another First Turning began as the Hero generation led America into a season of unparalleled prosperity from 1946 through President John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963. It was then the baby boomer, Prophet, generation began. As young adults, the boomers began to rock the nation with new age flower-power, feminism, guitars and free love. Thus began the Awakening that lasted through Ronald Reagan’s first term that ended in 1984. It was then the Third Turning of the Unraveling began.

In 1997, when the Fourth Turning was published, Strauss and Howe used their generational model to predict with remarkable accuracy, the start of the next Crisis in 2005: “By the middle Oh-Ohs, institutions will reach a point of maximum weakness, individualism of maximum strength, and even the simplest public task will feel beyond the ability of government. As niche walls rise ever higher, people will complain endlessly how bad all of the niches are. Wide chasms will separate rich from poor, whites from blacks, immigrants from native borns, seculars from born agains, technophiles from technophobes. America will feel more tribal. Indeed, many will be asking whether fifty states and so many dozens of ethic cultures make sense any more as a nation – and, if they do, whether that nation has a future.”

- Strauss and Howe:  “The Fourth Turning”

In 1997 there was no way to foresee the sequencing of 911, the Patriot Act, Edward Snowden, government incompetence after Hurricane Katrina, the financial crisis of 2007 – 2008, the subsequent TARP bailouts or the election of a mysterious, biracial pied piper to the presidency of the United States.

There is no way anyone could have predicted the ensuing eight years of Obama, the nationalization of healthcare, the orgy of greed hosted by Wall Street at the expense of Main Street, endless wars, unchecked immigration, the TSA, NSA, Homeland Security, the CIA versus the FBI, smart phones, drones, religious discriminations, Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, the Alt-right, Black Lives Matter and fake news.

Given the accuracy and timing of Strauss and Howe’s predictions, perhaps there is real validity behind their generational theory after all. And, given this, then we are now within the Winter of a Fourth Turning Crisis.

Can you feel it in the air? High powers in dark places are gathering and sides are being chosen as potential treachery and intrigue lurk around every corner. A global empire stands prepared to battle with populist movements and sovereign nations across the globe while rumors of a neo American civil war abound here at home.

Captured corporate media propaganda outlets and deep state government agencies relentlessly shill for a global empire and stoke the fires of war against a free alternative media while simultaneously provoking a nuclear armed Russia.

Half of the nation’s electorate, on the brink of a financial abyss, would rather kneel before an evil empire than to support the outcome of a free election. Of course, there is no unity in America today. Those days are long gone.

“People young and old will puzzle over what it felt like for their parents and grandparents, in a distantly remembered era, to have lived in a society that felt like one national community. They will yearn to recreate this, to put America back together again. But no one will know how.”

- Strauss and Howe, “The Fourth Turning”

Winter is here.  War is coming. Battles will be waged and conflicts will rage. There will be no escape for what is coming and no guarantee as to any outcome, save one: After this Fourth Turning, there will remain only liberty or tyranny. One, but not the other. For this will be a fight unto the death.

Even so, do many Nomads now entering middle-age, and their Hero generation progeniture, actually understand what is about to befall them? Do they even care? And, for those who do understand and do care; do they know how to fight?

Truly, there are many variables to this historical cycle that were absent in the all of the previous Fourth Turnings throughout history. A few examples would include pervasive and devastating technology with the capabilities of either enslaving, or killing, entire generations of people; a global corporatocracy in control of government agencies, mass flows of information, food and resources; entirely misinformed and apathetic populations with no moral bearing, belief system, or willingness to accept truth in order to stand strong against the dark powers now encroaching; and, finally, there are so many who have been trained to embrace the utopian lie of one world under tyranny. Sadly, many of these may be the new Stormtroopers in waiting.

In the end, we must choose. And not choosing, by default, is a choice. Can a rag tag federation of freedom fighters with truth, liberty and history on their side under a flag of 13 stripes and 50 stars, with idea-fueled keyboards, a compromised internet, and semi-automatic weapons prevail against a galactic empire in control of a technocracy more powerful than any fictional Death Star?

We’re about to find out. Everything that has ever happened before has delivered us to where we are now. Hold on to that. Even more importantly, don’t forget to fasten your seatbelts and place your trays in the upright and locked position.The warp drive is about to be engaged. A new journey has begun."

"May the Force be with you."

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

“Just Sit Down And Think?”

“Just Sit Down And Think?”

by Oliver Burkeman

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

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

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

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

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

- http://www.theguardian.com/

"Oh, How It Really Is"

 

"It is common to assume that human progress affects everyone - that even the dullest man, in these bright days, knows more than any man of, say, the Eighteenth Century, and is far more civilized. This assumption is quite erroneous. The great masses of men, even in this inspired republic, are precisely where the mob was at the dawn of history. They are ignorant, they are dishonest, they are cowardly, they are ignoble. They know little if anything that is worth knowing, and there is not the slightest sign of a natural desire among them to increase their knowledge."

- H. L. Mencken, 1929

"Warning! US Air Travel Will Get Worse This Week"

Full screen recommended.

Snyder Reports, 11/9/25

"Warning! US Air Travel Will Get Worse This Week"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Adventures With Danno, "We Need To Discuss This"

Adventures With Danno, 11/9/25

"We Need To Discuss This"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"America’s Confidence Is Gone - The Consumer Collapse is Here!"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, 11/9/25

"America’s Confidence Is Gone - 

The Consumer Collapse is Here!"

"Economic sentiment has officially hit a record low, and the numbers are shocking. At just 50.3, consumer confidence is lower than ever, reflecting the struggles we’re all feeling with rising costs, economic slowdown, and uncertainty. From skyrocketing food prices to expensive home repairs and even a government shutdown, nothing seems easy right now. In today’s video, I’m sharing my insights on what’s really happening in the economy and how it’s impacting everyday life. Plus, I’ve got some interesting stories about car culture, business innovation, and even a quick take on Bill Ackman’s recent antics. Join me for this eye-opening conversation about the state of the economy and the challenges people are facing. Let's vent, share ideas, and find ways to move forward together!"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

"When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they’ll figure it out. They don’t always do that.” – Michael Lewis, “Boomerang”

"I Went To Russia's Newest Discount Supermarket: Chizhik"

Meanwhile, in a sane, civilzed society...

Full screen recommended.

Travelling with Russell ,11/8/25

"I Went To Russia's Newest 

Discount Supermarket: Chizhik"

"What does the newest supermarket in Russia look like in 2025? Join me as I visit a brand new supermarket in Moscow, Russia. Chizhik Supermarket is a new chain store that has just opened its 3,000th store in only 5 years of trading."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"The Great Taking: How Your Assets Will Be Seized Without You Knowing"

Full screen recommended.

Michael Bordenaro,11/8/25

"The Great Taking: How Your Assets 

Will Be Seized Without You Knowing"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "What Is The Future Of America? Selling Fear to Make Money"

Full screen recommended.

Jeremiah Babe,11/8/25

"What Is The Future Of America? 

Selling Fear to Make Money"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Insane People Robbing Grocery Stores And Homes As America’s Food Crisis Begins"

A brutally honest must-view!

Strong language alert!

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist,11/8/25

"Insane People Robbing Grocery Stores

 And Homes As America’s Food Crisis Begins"

"America's food crisis is here, and what I'm seeing across the country should worry every working person. Grocery store theft is exploding to levels we've never seen before. People are openly threatening to rob their neighbors, not just in parking lots, but breaking into homes for food. And the worst part? While you're working 60, 80-hour weeks and can barely afford groceries, your tax dollars are funding $113 billion in food stamps for people who refuse to work.

In this video, I'm sharing real footage from across America showing what's really happening. From shoplifting at stores to people bragging online about taking your food, this isn't coming, it's here now. If you're working hard and struggling while watching others live off your taxes and steal with no consequences, you need to see this. The system is punishing people who work and rewarding people who don't. Hardworking families are getting squeezed from both sides, and it's time you understand what's really going on."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Musical Interlude: Josh Groban, "Remember When It Rained"

Full screen recommended.

Josh Groban, "Remember When It Rained"

"A Look to the Heavens: The Pale Blue Dot"

"The following excerpt from Carl Sagan's book "Pale Blue Dot" was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by Voyager 1 on 14 February 1990. As the spacecraft was departing our planetary neighborhood for the fringes of the solar system, it turned it around for one last look at its home planet.

Voyager 1 was about 6.4 billion kilometers (4 billion miles) away, and approximately 32 degrees above the ecliptic plane, when it captured this portrait of our world. Caught in the center of scattered light rays (a result of taking the picture so close to the Sun), Earth appears as a tiny point of light, a crescent only 0.12 pixel in size."

"The Pale Blue Dot"

"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."

- Carl Sagan

Free Download: Aldous Huxley, "Brave New World"

“O, wonder! How many goodly creatures are there here!

How beauteous mankind is!

O, brave new world, That has such people in't!”

- William Shakespeare, “The Tempest” (V, 1)

○

“Till at last the child's mind is these suggestions, and the sum of the suggestions is the child's mind. And not the child's mind only. The adult's mind too - all his life long. The mind that judges and desires and decides - made up of these suggestions. But all these suggestions are our suggestions...”

- “Brave New World: Suggestions from the State”

○

 Freely download "Brave New World," by Aldous Huxley, here:

- https://dn790000.ca.archive.org/

"Truth..."

"Truth: the most deadly weapon ever discovered by humanity.

Capable of destroying entire perceptual sets, cultures, and realities.

Outlawed by all governments everywhere.

Possession is normally punishable by death."

- John Gilmore

A comment: According to statistics compiled by the UN, by the time the sun rises tomorrow morning 30,000 children world wide will have died overnight from starvation and malnutrition, disease, lack of potable water, and lack of basic medical care. That's every night, all year long, 30,000 children dying because no one cared. Trillions of dollars wasted on insane wars, economies destroyed by psychopathic greed, the environment dying in front of our eyes, and no one cares. No wonder Sir Arthur Conan Doyle described humanity as, "Poor silly half-brained things peering out at the infinite, with the aspirations of angels and the instincts of beasts." The "instincts of beasts" is evident for all to see... sometimes all this wears us down, and we look around, hoping to see the "aspirations of angels," hoping desperately that we can somehow awaken from the madness crushing us all, that together we can still rise above the despair and hopelessness and make a better world, where no child dies from hunger, where wars are a distant memory, where everyone can live full, dignified and honorable lives in peace. An impossible, hopeless struggle? Perhaps, but how dare we call ourselves "Human" if we don't try to make that vision real, in any way we can, no matter the price? A dream, you say? Yes, that's all it is... but without those dreams, those aspirations, all that's left is the "instincts of beasts", and we all see very clearly what those have brought this world to...

- CP

“Life, Explained To You”

“Life, Explained To You”

Author Unknown

“On the first day God created the dog. God said, “Sit all day by the door of your house and bark at anyone who comes in or walks past. I will give you a life span of twenty years.” The dog said, “That’s too long to be barking. Give me ten years and I’ll give you back the other ten.” So God agreed. 

On the second day God created the monkey. God said, “Entertain people, do monkey tricks and make them laugh. I’ll give you a twenty-year life span.” The monkey said, “Monkey tricks for twenty years? I don’t think so. Dog gave you back ten, so that’s what I’ll do too, okay?” And God agreed. 

On the third day God created the cow. “You must go to the field with the farmer all day long and suffer under the sun, have calves, and give milk to support the farmer. I will give you a life span of sixty years.” The cow said, “That’s kind of a tough life you want me to live for sixty years. Let me have twenty and I’ll give back the other forty.” And God agreed again. 

On the fourth day God created man. God said, “Eat, sleep, play, marry and enjoy your life. I’ll give you twenty years.” Man said, “What? Only twenty years? Tell you what, I’ll take my twenty, and the forty the cow gave back, and the ten the monkey gave back, and the ten the dog gave back, that makes eighty, okay?” “Okay,” said God, “You’ve got a deal.” 

So that is why the first twenty years we eat, sleep, play, and enjoy ourselves; the next forty years we slave in the sun to support our family; the next ten years we do monkey tricks to entertain the grandchildren; and the last ten years we sit on the front porch and bark at everyone.”

“Life has now been explained to you.”

The Daily "Near You?"

Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Thanks for stopping by!

"Just Look At Us..."

"Just look at us. Everything is backwards; everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, the major media destroy information and religions destroy spirituality"

- Michael Ellner

"As Robert Oppenheimer said a short while before he died, 'It is perfectly obvious that the whole world is going to hell. The only possible chance that it might not is that we do not attempt to prevent it from doing so.' You see, many of the troubles going on in the world right now are being supervised by people with very good intentions whose attempts are to keep things in order, to clean things up, to forbid this, and to prevent that. The more we try to put everything to rights, the more we make fantastic messes. Maybe that is the way it has got to be. Maybe I should not say anything at all about the folly of trying to put things to right but simply, on the principle of Blake, let the fool persist in his folly so that he will become wise."

- Alan Watts

"Job Cuts Explode – Up 65 Percent Compared To Last Year"

"Job Cuts Explode – Up 65 Percent Compared To Last Year – 

The Employment Market Has Become A Twisted Game Of Musical Chairs"

by Michael Snyder

"It is starting to look a lot like the Great Recession again. I thought that the pace of layoffs in 2024 was bad, but it has just exploded here in 2025. Vast numbers of good paying jobs are being ruthlessly eliminated, and competition for any decent jobs that are still available has become extremely fierce. In some cases, workers that have many years of experience are applying for hundreds of jobs but are not even able to get a single interview. I have said this before, and I will say it again. If you currently have a job that you highly value, hold on to it as tightly as you can. You don’t want to be left without a chair when the music stops playing.

On Thursday, we got the latest employment numbers from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, and they are extremely sobering…"U.S.-based employers announced 153,074 job cuts in October, up 175% from the 55,597 cuts announced in October 2024. It is up 183% from the 54,064 job cuts announced one month prior, according to a report released Thursday from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

“October’s pace of job cutting was much higher than average for the month. Some industries are correcting after the hiring boom of the pandemic, but this comes as AI adoption, softening consumer and corporate spending, and rising costs drive belt-tightening and hiring freezes. Those laid off now are finding it harder to quickly secure new roles, which could further loosen the labor market,” said Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer for Challenger, Gray & Christmas."

I specifically warned that the pace of job cuts was accelerating. But these numbers are so bad that they even surprised me. 183 percent higher than last month and 175 percent higher than last October? Are you kidding me? The number of job cuts in the U.S. hasn’t been this high during the month of October since 2003. That was 22 years ago. Just think about that.

Overall, during the first 10 months of 2025 the number of job cuts was 65 percent higher than during the first 10 months of 2024…"Through October, employers have announced 1,099,500 job cuts, an increase of 65% from the 664,839 announced in the first ten months of last year. It is up 44% from the 761,358 cuts announced in all of 2024." When the number of job cuts increases by 65 percent in just one year, you have got a major crisis on your hands. And this is just the beginning.

We were warned that AI would be taking a lot of our jobs, and that is precisely what is starting to happen…"Challenger reports the highest level of layoffs coming from the technology sector amid a time of restructuring due to AI integration. Companies in the sector announced 33,281 cuts, nearly six times the level in September." How many times have I written about this over the past few years? A lot of people thought that this would be a threat that we would be facing “someday”, but the truth is that it is a threat that we are facing now. Eventually, AI and robots will be able to do almost everything less expensively and more efficiently than humans can. What will we be needed for then?

With each passing day, we get more bad news. For example, we just learned that Outback Steakhouse “abruptly closed 21 restaurants in October”…"Outback Steakhouse abruptly closed 21 restaurants in October as it begins a “comprehensive turnaround strategy” to keep up with its trendier competitors. Bloomin’ Brands, Outback’s parent company, disclosed in its earnings report Thursday that in addition to those closures, an additional 22 locations will not have their leases renewed and will shutter over the next four years."

More restaurants are being closed every single day. More stores are being closed every single day. And more mass layoffs are occurring every single day. It is time to wake up.

Meanwhile, household debt in the United States just set another brand new record high as families wrestle with our seemingly endless cost of living crisis…"Total household debt climbed to a record $18.6 trillion last quarter, and while most borrowers remain on track with payments, young Americans are feeling the pressure. During the third quarter, 3 percent of outstanding balances became seriously delinquent - 90 days or more past due - the largest quarterly increase since 2014, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Among those ages 18 to 29, the rate was about 5 percent - more than double a year earlier and the highest of any age group."

Much of that strain reflects missed student loan payments, with total outstanding debt climbing to a record $1.65 trillion last quarter. Delinquency rates are really starting to spike just like we witnessed in 2008 and 2009. As I mentioned yesterday, the credit card delinquency rate just hit the highest level that we have seen since 2011.

For a long time, people have been piling up enormous amounts of debt in a desperate attempt to maintain their former lifestyles, but now vast numbers of U.S. consumers are simply tapped out. The top 20 percent of the population still has plenty of money to spend, but most of the rest of us are deeply struggling…"While the top fifth of earners now account for almost two thirds of spending - a record - the bottom 80%, which made up nearly 42% of spending before the pandemic, now accounts for just 37% of it, according to Moody’s Analytics. Low- and middle-income shoppers are spending less on all sorts of merchandise like apparel and toys, especially since tariffs were announced earlier this year, data from research firm Circana show."

Student loan payments have resumed and the ranks of subprime borrowers are on the rise, according to credit reporting firm TransUnion. Concerns about inflation - particularly for necessities like rent and groceries - persist, alongside slower pay gains, tepid hiring and more layoffs. And the shutdown has made matters worse for millions, with disruptions to food aid benefits and child care as well as spiking health insurance premiums.

Hopefully this government shutdown will be resolved soon. But right now there is no end in sight.

One official that works for the the Rhode Island Department of Human Services is claiming that one impoverished woman is concerned that if food stamp benefits are completely cut off “she’d have to go back to eating cat food”…"Since then, family recipients have clogged phone lines and seniors and disabled recipients have lined up outside the Rhode Island Department of Human Services building where Stacy Smith, president of AFSCME local 2882 works in hopes of getting more information about where they can go for food or help."

Smith spoke to USA TODAY in her role as a union representative. “We had a client that came in and was afraid she’d have to go back to eating cat food,” Smith said. “It’s so frustrating and disheartening. We’re talking about humans, these are people, these aren’t statistics, these aren’t numbers on a paper, these are human lives. Children, elderly, veterans, working moms, working dads. That is who we serve.”

I have heard from so many people out there that are facing nightmare scenarios because of the shutdown. If you have never been in a situation where you don’t know where your next meal is going to come from, it may be difficult to identify with what these people are going through right now.

The level of emotional stress in this country is moving into uncharted territory, and this is particularly true for our young people…

• 63% of young adults (ages 18-34) and 53% of parents have considered leaving the U.S. due to the state of the nation.

• Half of all adults report signs of loneliness, while 69% say they needed more emotional support this year than they received.

• AI anxiety nearly doubled among students (78%, up from 45%) and surged across all age groups in just one year.

• 75% of Americans are more stressed about the country’s future than before, with political division tied to isolation, physical symptoms, and daily struggles.

If people are this stressed out now, what is going to happen when things really start hitting the fan? A lot of these stressed out people are simply not going to make it. It is time to toughen up, because it is going to take an extraordinary amount of toughness to make it through what is ahead. The system is beginning to fail all around us, and a lot more economic pain is on the horizon."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

"How It Really Is"

“We'll know our disinformation program is complete 

when everything the American public believes is false.”

- William Casey, former director of the CIA