Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/23/26
"Shocking Prices At Aldi"
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So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Friday, January 23, 2026
Jim Kunstler, "Up in Smoke"
"Up in Smoke"
by Jim Kunstler
“This is how tyranny looks in the modern world. It arrives dressed
as dialogue, consensus, and expertise. It is imposed by
people who sincerely believe they are doing nothing at all.”
- DataRepublican
"Davos - The World Economic Forum (WEF) - is toast. Trump, Bessant, and Luttnick exposed the wretched org of overcompensated squishes to too much light and heat and it flared into such a pathetic little smoldering cinder that its spoxpersons said the meeting might get moved out of Davos altogether next year to Dublin or Detroit. Closer to the people, you understand (except there are hardly any people left in Detroit, thanks to the fifty years of WEF influence on manufacturing policy and the people of Dublin are now Nigerians, Somalis, and Congolese, thanks to the WEF’s retarded migration doctrine.)
All of which means that its trademark, WEF Globalism, is dead, too. No more aspirations of One World Government (as if Earth was the Planet Krypton)... no more You will have nothing, be happy, and eat bugs. . . no more green energy gaslight. . . no more all women are women, including men pretending to be women... no more wide-open borders... no more of their preposterous elitist armchair totalitarianism. In fact, if anything, the WEF had terminal boundary problems, much like the Cluster-B personalities that infest the upper echelons of the NGO alternative universe that carried out the WEF’s dastardly programming for them. They didn’t know when to stop.
Before he got washed-up in a slop of sexual accusation and embezzlement, WEF-Fuhrer Klaus Schwab used to brag about plugging his Young Global Leaders into top government jobs all over the place (e.g., the disastrous Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland in Canada.) That’s over. Western Civ has suffered enough. One by one, the Big Dawgs of the EU are quietly backing-off of their insane migrant importation policies. Border control is nature’s way of fixing boundary problems of-the-mind.
No one personifies the problem more than Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, the archetypal Cluster-B “devouring mother” costumed as a harmless finishing school headmistress. She is the unelected (appointed by committee) President of the European Commission who has been telling the elected squish leaders of France, Germany and elsewhere what to do — and, remarkably, they did exactly what they were told! Invite the Third World for an overnight and see what happens. . . ditch your nuclear power plants. . . ruin your farmers. . . laugh and clap when the Nord Stream pipeline blows up and your citizens must freeze in the dark.
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission
“Europe stood firm and united in full solidarity with Greenland & the Kingdom of Denmark,” Ursula tweeted the other day. That’s rich. (And fake.) What really happened at Davos this week is uproariously simple. Mr. Trump just notified the parties involved that an agreement dating from 1951 gives the USA “unrestricted access” to Greenland, for the excellent reason that the US military prevented the Nazis from seizing it during World War Two, with all that implies. Fait accompli. The USA will now do what it requires in Greenland - with all that implies about updated geo-realpolitik of 2026.
The dirty secret about political reality in Europe now is that the masterplan to bankrupt, ruin, and break up Russia has completely backfired. Europe is now ruined. Voila! Ironically, it has been the UK (a.k.a. Great Britain) that led the way in this quixotic fiasco - you might recall that they actually quit the EU in 2016. And yet, the UK has managed to engineer NATO’s idiotic program to keep the War in Ukraine going as long as possible. Recall, also, PM Boris Johnson’s 2022 mission to scuttle the Istanbul Communiqué involving Ukrainian neutrality that might have prevented the war from getting out-of-hand.
The payoff for Great Britain: Keir Starmer becomes the actual Big Brother depicted by George Orwell with all the trappings of despotism and economic decline that goes with that. Britain is left destitute, cultureless, and raped at will by its own houseguests. Meanwhile, France is dissolving in an acid bath of Islamic turbo-birthrates, and Germany under the feckless Olaf Scholz and now Friedrich Merz gets a one-way ticket to the Palookaville of neo-medievalism. Good show, boys!
And meanwhile, as I have informed you previously, Mr. Putin is methodically rolling up the unfortunate business in Ukraine as Mr. Zelenskyy’s long-running NATO-subsidized misadventure dwindles to its ignominious close. Yes, you are seeing boundaries reestablished. Mr. Putin is not one of your junior high school mean-girls or a deluded finishing school headmistress. He’s an able, masculine manager of his own sovereign polity and he is reestablishing Russia’s age-old sphere of influence in the ambiguous frontier region of Ukraine. The world will be better off when this is settled.
And Mr. Trump emerges from the Davos miasma with geopolitical plan to defend Western Civ and to re-prioritize business in the USA so that Americans can once again make a living and lead purposeful lives. The Cluster-B mean-girls hate this. They want the men of America to fail better, as they had been failing until Mr. Trump came back on the scene. Anyway, it was minus-20 degrees in Minneapolis this morning - not very good weather for blowing your whistle at US immigration agents —-so don’t expect a whole lot of excitement out of that place for at least another week. Do keep an eye on Virginia, where new Governor Abigail Spanberger, meanest of all mean-girls, is fixing to wreck the state. Prediction: Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division will shortly be all over that deranged bitch like white on rice. Wait for it."
Bill Bonner, "Bubble Dollar Danger"
A 100 million Hungarian Pengo note from 1946. The final months of
Hungary’s hyperinflation from May to July were so chaotic that the Hungarian
National Bank no longer bothered putting serial numbers on new notes.
"Bubble Dollar Danger"
by Bill Bonner
Rancho Santana, Nicaragua - "All that sturm and drang...the roar of the greasepaint...the smell of the crowd - for nothing! No military takeover of Greenland. No extra tariffs on Europe. Greenland stays where it was, as it was...where, thanks to a 1951 treaty, the US can build bases as necessary. The US gets nothing new out of it. Bloomberg: "Rutte says Trump Greenland plan involved no sovereignty talk."
But that was the point, wasn’t it? Sturm and drang for its own sake - to show the US as a bellicose, unreliable partner and drive away allies. America is ‘fastened to a dying animal’...or maybe to a whole herd of them. A president who will be 82 years old when he leaves office (and may be a little off his rocker already)...a constitution that is 239 years old...and a bubble dollar that is 55 years old; that’s already twice as long as the typical ‘fiat’ money system. The ‘paper’ German mark, for example, only lasted two years. The Hungarian Pengo lasted only one year. And the Zimbabwe dollar held on for three years, with an inflation rate of 230 million percent.
Each time, savers - especially foreigners —-begin to worry about their money as a ‘store of value.’ They dump the currency, prices soar, and the money becomes useless. Dead. Mort. Tot. With its toes up. The trick for investors and savers is to avoid the rush. The doors welcoming you into the bubble country may be wide. But the door out the back squeezes tight as soon as you try to get out.
And it looks like the smart money is already headed for the exits. Reuters reports on the ‘Sell America’ trade: "Just hours before President Donald Trump was set to speak in Davos, Switzerland, one of Sweden’s top pension funds, Alecta, cut its investments in U.S. Treasuries. “Since the beginning of 2025, we have reduced our holdings in U.S. government bonds in several rounds, and together the reductions account for the majority of our holdings,” Alecta’s Chief Investment Officer Pablo Bernengo told Reuters."
For the international stock market, too, last year saw a reversal of the trend of the last 22 years. Year after year, US stocks outperformed. But not last year. US stocks rose 17%. But European stocks went up twice as much - at 36%. Emerging market stocks did almost as well, at 34%. And that trend continues. So far this year, America’s bubbly Mag 7 are down 4.6%. Emerging market stocks, meanwhile, are up 4.6%.
Back in America, the all-time champion for buying solid US companies is Warren Buffett. A single dollar invested in Berkshire in 1964 is now worth more than $60,000. “Never sell America,” he said. But over the last year, he’s had trouble finding US stocks he wanted to own. The ‘values’ just aren’t there, he explained. In effect, he ‘sold’ America’s premier capital industries...and his investment firm, Berkshire, was left with the biggest cash hoard ever seen - at $382 billion.
Another feature of the Sell America trade is that the most bubbly assets, like a glass of champagne left on the table overnight, are now going flat. Nvidia lost 17% of its value last year. MicroStrategy lost 71%. Fartcoin lost a lot of gas too - down 89%. The only things to lose more than Fartcoin were the Trump Coin and the Melania Coin, down 94% and 99% respectively.
Probably the most telling form of the Sell America trade, though, comes from China. It began ‘de-dollarizing’ back in 2013. Now, it has about half the dollar assets it used to have. Barron’s: "Others have followed suit. The share of U.S. Treasury debt held by non-U.S. investors has fallen from around 50% during the global financial crisis of 2008-09 to around 30% today, according to J.P. Morgan."
That’s a massive shift, particularly when you consider that overall U.S. Treasury issuance has increased by more than $20 trillion since China began its de-dollarization strategy. That is the trap that Mr. Saravelos sees coming. And we, way ahead of our time, wrote about it in our now-forgotten ‘Empire of Debt,’ book. The unique thing about the rich US empire, we wrote, was that it was financed by borrowing money from poorer countries. And now, the US needs to borrow even more - to pay for a huge increase in the ‘war’ budget, warrior dividends, tariff dividends, ICE...not to mention sending a whole team of jackasses over to Davos, where they seem to have made a big fuss over nothing.
But while the US needs to borrow more, the world seems to want to lend less. Serious people all over the world are working out their own de-dollarization’ strategies. More to come..."
Thursday, January 22, 2026
"People Are Burning Out While Nothing Feels Real Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 1/22/26
"People Are Burning Out
While Nothing Feels Real Anymore"
"Everyone's burnt out. Nothing feels real anymore. Something's broken. People aren't just tired, they're trapped, burned out, and starting to question if any of this is even worth it anymore. In this video, I'm sharing raw, unfiltered moments from real people going through what so many of us are feeling right now. From corporate burnout that keeps you stuck in a job you can't leave… to nurses who went from "healthcare heroes" to the bottom of the barrel… to the 55-year-old who's too old to start over but too young to retire, this is the reality millions are facing. When health insurance costs MORE than having no insurance. When you did everything right, got the degree, showed up every day and it still wasn't enough. When people are choosing between medication and their energy bill. This is the America no one's talking about. If you're struggling, you're not alone. I'd love to hear from you, what's helping you get through? Drop your thoughts in the comments below."
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Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Black Velvet Flirt"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“The southern Milky Way appears spectacular in this composite image taken from Mangaia, the most southerly of the Cook Islands. Few sources of light pollution exist here, home to only 500 people.
The two bright stars at the Milky Way’s center are Alpha (left) and Beta Centauri. They point to Crux the Southern Cross. Near the horizon, two of the satellite galaxies of our Milky Way, the Small (left) and Large Magellanic Clouds are easy to spot.”
"Live: Major Winter Storm Pre-Coverage, Forecast Model Breakdown"
Full screen recommended.
Ryan Hall, 1/22/26
"Live: Major Winter Storm Pre-Coverage,
Forecast Model Breakdown"
Comments here:
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Free WeatherWise App:
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Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports 1/22/26
"30 Million People Could Lose Power For Days,
Widespread Outages"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Storm Panic: I Can't Believe This Is Happening"
Adventures With Danno, 1/22/26
"Storm Panic: I Can't Believe This Is Happening"
Comments here:
"Americans Are Furious As Food Prices Keep Climbing"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 1/22/26
"Americans Are Furious
As Food Prices Keep Climbing"
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Jay Reed, 1/22/26
"Grocery Store Shelves Are Empty
After People Panic About Winter Storm"
Comments here:
“A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation”
“A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus on Our Search for
Meaning and Why Happiness Is Our Moral Obligation”
by Maria Popova
“To decide whether life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question of philosophy,” Albert Camus (November 7, 1913–January 4, 1960) wrote in his 119-page philosophical essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” in 1942. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest – whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories – comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect. Everything else… is child’s play; we must first of all answer the question.”
One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity’s most enduring philosophical challenges – the impulse at the heart of Seneca’s meditations on life and Montaigne’s timeless essays and Maya Angelou’s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.
One of the most famous opening lines of the twentieth century captures one of humanity’s most enduring philosophical challenges – the impulse at the heart of Seneca’s meditations on life and Montaigne’s timeless essays and Maya Angelou’s reflections, and a wealth of human inquiry in between. But Camus, the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature after Rudyard Kipling, addressed it with unparalleled courage of conviction and insight into the irreconcilable longings of the human spirit.
In the beautifully titled and beautifully written “A Life Worth Living: Albert Camus and the Quest for Meaning” (public library), historian Robert Zaretsky considers Camus’s lifelong quest to shed light on the absurd condition, his “yearning for a meaning or a unity to our lives,” and its timeless yet increasingly timely legacy: If the question abides, it is because it is more than a matter of historical or biographical interest. Our pursuit of meaning, and the consequences should we come up empty-handed, are matters of eternal immediacy.
Camus pursues the perennial prey of philosophy – the questions of who we are, where and whether we can find meaning, and what we can truly know about ourselves and the world – less with the intention of capturing them than continuing the chase.”
Reflecting on the parallels between Camus and Montaigne, Zaretsky finds in this ongoing chase one crucial difference of dispositions: “Camus achieves with the Myth what the philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty claimed for Montaigne’s Essays: it places “a consciousness astonished at itself at the core of human existence.”
For Camus, however, this astonishment results from our confrontation with a world that refuses to surrender meaning. It occurs when our need for meaning shatters against the indifference, immovable and absolute, of the world. As a result, absurdity is not an autonomous state; it does not exist in the world, but is instead exhaled from the abyss that divides us from a mute world.”
Camus himself captured this with extraordinary elegance when he wrote in “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together.”
To discern these echoes amid the silence of the world, Zaretsky suggests, was at the heart of Camus’s tussle with the absurd: “We must not cease in our exploration, Camus affirms, if only to hear more sharply the silence of the world. In effect, silence sounds out when human beings enter the equation. If “silences must make themselves heard,” it is because those who can hear inevitably demand it. And if the silence persists, where are we to find meaning?”
This search for meaning was not only the lens through which Camus examined every dimension of life, from the existential to the immediate, but also what he saw as our greatest source of agency. In one particularly prescient diary entry from November of 1940, as WWII was gathering momentum, he writes: “Understand this: we can despair of the meaning of life in general, but not of the particular forms that it takes; we can despair of existence, for we have no power over it, but not of history, where the individual can do everything. It is individuals who are killing us today. Why should not individuals manage to give the world peace? We must simply begin without thinking of such grandiose aims.”
For Camus, the question of meaning was closely related to that of happiness - something he explored with great insight in his notebooks. Zaretsky writes: “Camus observed that absurdity might ambush us on a street corner or a sun-blasted beach. But so, too, do beauty and the happiness that attends it. All too often, we know we are happy only when we no longer are.”
Perhaps most importantly, Camus issued a clarion call of dissent in a culture that often conflates happiness with laziness and championed the idea that happiness is nothing less than a moral obligation. A few months before his death, Camus appeared on the TV show Gros Plan. Dressed in a trench coat, he flashed his mischievous boyish smile and proclaimed into the camera: “Today, happiness has become an eccentric activity. The proof is that we tend to hide from others when we practice it. As far as I’m concerned, I tend to think that one needs to be strong and happy in order to help those who are unfortunate.”
This wasn’t a case of Camus arriving at some mythic epiphany in his old age – the cultivation of happiness and the eradication of its obstacles was his most persistent lens on meaning. More than two decades earlier, he had contemplated “the demand for happiness and the patient quest for it” in his journal, capturing with elegant simplicity the essence of the meaningful life – an ability to live with presence despite the knowledge that we are impermanent: ”We must” be happy with our friends, in harmony with the world, and earn our happiness by following a path which nevertheless leads to death.”
But his most piercing point integrates the questions of happiness and meaning into the eternal quest to find ourselves and live our truth: ”It is not so easy to become what one is, to rediscover one’s deepest measure.”
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Freely download “The Myth of Sisyphus,” by Albert Camus, here:
“The Inevitability of Snollygosters”
“The Inevitability of Snollygosters”
by Jeff Thomas
“Snollygoster is an archaic term for, “A fellow who wants office, regardless of party, platform or principles, and who, whenever he wins, gets there by the sheer force monumental talknophical assumnancy.” All right, that’s a rather antiquated definition, but then, “snollygoster” is a very antiquated term. It hasn’t been in use since the mid-1800’s. Another definition is, “A shrewd, unprincipled person, especially a politician.”
So, of what interest is this bygone nomenclature to us today? Well, the definitions are exactly in keeping with our present-day politicians. When we look at our senators, parliamentarians, presidents and prime ministers, we see that, even with the passage of considerable time, the term snollygoster is applicable today.
And, we, the constituents, could be referred to as “grumbletonians,” a word common in England in the 1600’s for those who are angry or unhappy with their government. And we’re just as likely to be so exasperated with our political leaders that we resort to a “whipmegmorum” – a Scottish word from the 1700’s for a noisy quarrel about politics.
These ancient and forgotten terms may be entertaining, but they may additionally raise a question in modern minds. We may ask ourselves, “Do you mean that it isn’t just that our present leaders are virtual cartoons – and destructive ones at that? Do you mean that (gulp) it’s always been this way?
’Fraid so. But, how is this possible? How is it that, regardless of the times we’re in, and regardless of whether we have literally hundreds of millions of citizens to choose from (in the larger countries), we end up with literal cartoon characters as leaders? Is it that we’re so bad at making a selection that we always choose the worst person?
Well, actually, there, the answer would be, “No.” Voters don’t actively seek out the worst. The problem is that they’re presented with the worst. In the US, Americans cannot help but laugh at their president as being an arrogant and petulant buffoon. (For the record, those of us outside the US also regard him as a source of perverse entertainment).
So, the problem is not that the voters “get the leader they deserve.” The problem is that the game is rigged – that there are no good choices. In a small country, it’s easy to introduce a candidate whom the electorate actually believe in, then to push him forward to victory. But, the larger the country, the more impossible it is for anyone who deserves a leadership position, to actually achieve it. (The system promotes its own kind.) But, this notion presupposes that the majority of people within the political structure are already “contaminated,” that they, too are, for all practical purposes, undesirable. Can this actually be the case?
Again…‘fraid so…But how is this possible? Well, as long as we’re discussing definitions, there are two more that we might want to investigate. Let’s look at this one: “A long-term pattern of abnormal behavior characterized by exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive need for admiration, and a lack of understanding of others’ feelings. People affected by it often spend a lot of time thinking about achieving power or success.”
Well, that certainly fits virtually all political leaders and political hopefuls. This definition is used to describe “narcissistic personality disorder.” A fuller description is: “Persistent grandiosity, excessive need for admiration, and a personal disdain for, and lack of empathy for other people; Arrogance, a sense of superiority; actively seeks to establish abusive power and control over other people; openly disregards the feelings and wishes of others, and expects to be treated as superior, regardless of their actual status or achievements; usually exhibits a fragile ego, an inability to tolerate criticism, and a tendency to belittle others in order to validate their own superiority.” Take a moment and ask yourself whether the above describes a leader near you.
And, here’s another interesting definition: “A pervasive and persistent disregard for morals, social norms, and the rights and feelings of others. Individuals with this personality disorder will typically have no compunction in exploiting others in harmful ways for their own gain or pleasure and frequently manipulate and deceive other people, achieving this through wit and a facade of superficial charm.”
This is a definition for sociopathy, or “antisocial personality disorder.” To expand, sociopaths demonstrate a “Disregard for right and wrong, persistent lying or deceit to exploit others, callous, cynical and disrespectful of others, using charm or wit to manipulate others for personal gain or personal pleasure, arrogance, a sense of superiority and being extremely opinionated… repeatedly violating the rights of others through intimidation and dishonesty, impulsiveness or failure to plan ahead, hostility, significant irritability, agitation…lack of empathy for others and lack of remorse about harming others, unnecessary risk-taking or dangerous behavior with no regard for the safety of self or others… failure to consider the negative consequences of behavior or learn from them.”
Initially, we may be tempted to say to ourselves, “Surely, it’s not as bad as all that.” But, if we really want to get an accurate picture, a useful exercise might be to picture a specific leader whose behavior we’ve witnessed repeatedly and then read the above descriptions once again, whilst picturing his face. The surprising truth is that many political leaders and political hopefuls display these characteristics exactly. Many are clearly narcissists, sociopaths, or both.
But, why should this be? Well, the easy answer is “obsessive behavior.” Those who have the above disorders will literally do anything to achieve superiority over others and will have no remorse or regret whatever. Therefore, it’s perfectly predictable that, over time, any government will become populated by pathological individuals.
This is not a new occurrence. ‘Twas ever thus. The snollygosters have been a chronic dominant presence in governments for millennia. And they’ll continue to be dominant. However, there is a positive takeaway here. If we recognize that this syndrome is in fact the norm, in any age, in any country, we can stop hoping for a hero to arise and save us from the parasitical dominance of governments. We can accept that, if we’re to thrive, this may only be accomplished through our own independence of mind and action, not through the empty promises of pathological leaders.”
- https://www.theburningplatform.com/
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“The barbarian hopes, and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles. “
- Hilaire Belloco
"Lift Up Your Eyes"
"Lift Up Your Eyes"
by Paul Rosenberg
"When was the last time you tasted the sublime? When did you last feel wonder? Can you remember feeling awed by something? These are things we need, if we are to thrive. They are fuel for the higher human abilities. If we lack them, as is currently endemic throughout the West, our higher abilities will lag. For lack of better terms we can call these feelings “upward movements of the heart,” and we are diminished when there is a lack of them. Without them we fail to develop our higher capacities and insights. We slide more and more toward becoming, in one critic’s words, “mere trousered apes.”
I am certainly not the first person to notice this. Here, for example, is something Albert Einstein wrote on the subject: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."
Here’s a comment from Mozart: "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence, nor imagination, nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." And here’s a poem from Richard Feynman:
"Out of the cradle
onto the dry land
here it is
standing:
atoms with consciousness;
matter with curiosity.
Stands at the sea
wonders at wondering: I
a universe of atoms
an atom in the universe."
We need these things.
Currents to the Contrary: Sadly, the modern West has become a mad scramble to distract as many sets of eyes as possible, and to keep them – to own them – for as long as possible. And so long as professional distractors own your imagination, you won't experience much in the way of awe.
Think of Google and Facebook; these outfits bring in billions of dollars per month, based almost entirely on how much human attention they can capture. Likewise the many news networks; they get paid according to how many people watch their images for how many minutes. These people are serious about owning your brain cycles; they employ armies of employees to count, gather, plan, and improve their ownership of your eyes. Please understand the content they deliver serves only to grasp your attention.
Certainly websites like Freeman’s Perspective also want your attention but not for its own sake. I want your attention because I think we have something worthwhile to communicate, not to own your brain. Facebook and Google want to own you… the inner you.
Likewise the lords of academia; they want your mind to bear their impress... permanently. Consider, for example, the many academics who espouse cold, rationalist, materialistic philosophies: that we are no more than preprogrammed machines, that words can never really communicate anything, that humanity is ignorant and dangerous. Have you noticed that they reek of “smarter than thou”? Then if you have the opportunity, examine their lives for beautiful acts, for loving passions, for kindness and deep benevolence. If your experience is anything like mine, you’ll notice a striking lack of those things.
The Contrasts: Among the greatest of all contrasts to the upward movements of the heart are those pertaining to dominance, status, and rulership. They are natural antagonists.
Think of drinking in the wonders of the universe, the beauty of nature, the glorious love between a good parent and their child… and then contrast those things with the blight of the dominator “protecting” you at the point of a sword… of the politician cultivating your fears like a gardener cultivates a garden… of the lover of status who feels pleasure when seeing you beneath her.
Dominance, status, and rulership are the drives of the people who abuse us. And they are primary causes for our elevated experiences being diminished.
Moving Past the Blockage: We need to get away from these people and beyond these foul concepts. And once we do, life will expand. Here to make that point is a final quote, this one from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: "The loss of awe is the avoidance of insight. A return to reverence is the first prerequisite for a revival of wisdom…"
The things that contribute to our higher nature have been driven away from the Western world, and often systematically. Humans who are denuded of the higher things are far less trouble to rule, and they are far easier to manipulate… to own without their noticing. But don’t let yourself by driven away from the higher and better things:
Lay under the stars and wonder.
Look into the face of a child and experience his or her awe of the world.
Sit in the wilderness and imagine benevolence and beauty and goodness unchained.
Lie in bed and imagine yourself with a conscious sense of righteousness.
Imagine yourself with no embedded fear.
Ruminate over good things you could do in the future, over beautiful things you’d do in the right circumstances.
Politics poisons this, dominators wish to subdue it, sociopaths cannot experience it. Get as much of it as you can. Go out of your way to cultivate it.”
"How It Really Is"
“When the pain of leaving behind what we know outweighs the pain of embracing it, or when the power we face is overwhelming and neither flight nor fight will save us, there may be salvation in sitting still. And if salvation is impossible, then at least before perishing we may gain a clearer vision of where we are. By sitting still I do not mean the paralysis of dread, like that of a rabbit frozen beneath the dive of a hawk. I mean something like reverence, a respectful waiting, a deep attentiveness to forces much greater than our own.”
- Scott Russell Sanders
Folks, I fear the time for such reverence has come.
God help us, God help us all...
o
"Massive Winter Storm Will Cause Nearly Total Grid Collapse!"
Full screen recommended.
Redacted, 1/22/26
"Massive Winter Storm Will
Cause Nearly Total Grid Collapse!"
Comments here:
"This Massive Winter Storm Just Changed Course - 72 Hour Forecast"
Full screen recommended.
USA Weather Pulse, 1/22/26
"This Massive Winter Storm Just Changed Course -
72 Hour Forecast"
"Breaking news folks, the models just came back with a MAJOR track shift that's completely changing who gets hammered by this massive winter storm! In the last 6 hours, this beast has dramatically changed course and the new 72 hour forecast is a total game changer for millions of people. Cities that thought they were safe are now directly in the bullseye, while areas that were preparing for a direct hit might dodge the worst of it. This course change is being driven by a sudden shift in the jet stream pattern and upper-level steering currents that meteorologists did NOT see coming until the latest high-resolution model runs dropped. We're talking about a 100-200 mile track shift which in the winter weather game is absolutely MASSIVE - that's the difference between 2 inches and 2 FEET of snow! The GFS, Euro, and Canadian models are now all converging on this new track showing the storm taking a completely different path than yesterday's forecast. This is why you NEVER stop watching the forecast during a major winter storm setup - these track shifts can flip the script overnight!"
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A MUST VIEW! "200 Million Americans Under Winter Storm Warning"
Full screen recommended
Snyder Reports, 1/22/26
"200 Million Americans Under Winter Storm Warning"
Winter Storm Will Be Catastrophic!
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"Grocery Prices Keep Going Up, Now Americans Are Furious"
Full screen recommended.
Jay Reed, 1/22/26
"Grocery Prices Keep Going Up,
Now Americans Are Furious"
"Grocery prices keep going up, and Americans are getting furious. In this video, we break down why food prices won’t stop rising, what’s driving these increases, and why everyday shoppers are finally reaching their breaking point. From shrinkflation to higher supply costs, groceries are eating up more of people’s paychecks - and there’s no relief in sight. This isn’t just frustration. It’s real anger over affordability, wages, and how hard it’s becoming to afford basic necessities."
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Adventures With Danno, "Shocking Prices at Kroger"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/22/26
"Shocking Prices at Kroger"
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Bill Bonner, "Gold Rules"
"Gold Rules"
by Bill Bonner
Rancho Santana, Nicaragua - "Yesterday, we watched as the news and commentaries came in. ‘Trump said this... Trump said that...Macron...Lutnick...Lagarde...’ We listened to some of Trump’s speech. After the plane was fixed, and he arrived in Davos, Mr. Trump lumbered up to the podium...and rambled on, making a number of provocative points, including the most dangerous mistake in modern economics, He confused the source of wealth with the consumption of it. Some economists (and many politicians) do so intentionally. They promise to make us richer by printing money and thus increasing ‘demand.’
Thus, did Trump claim that the US was the real source of Swiss wealth. Rolex may make the watches in Switzerland, but Americans buy them! Deep in this confusion, he thought it was unfair that the Swiss did not pay for the privilege of selling their watches in America...and that this injustice could be righted by imposing a 39% tariff (a tax on American watch buyers!) Let’s see, with the average price of a fine Rolex at about $10,000, that would mean a tariff surcharge of $3,900 - per watch! Then came the most amazing part. He said he raised the tariff on Swiss exports not for any economic or ‘America first’ reason...but because then-Swiss President Karin Keller-Sutter, “just rubbed me the wrong way…”
Yes, there is madness to the method. Despite such strange policy-making, Trump nevertheless undermined the empire. Associated Press: President Donald Trump insisted he wants to “get Greenland, including right, title and ownership,” but said “we probably won’t get anything unless I decide to use excessive strength and force where we would be frankly unstoppable. But, I won’t do that. OK?” No, he won’t use force. Instead, before changing his mind, he proposed to use his tariff duct tape to tax US consumers! He said the tariffs would start at 10% next month and climb to 25% in June.
Later in the day came news that the proposals were mostly just bluff and bluster. Trump backed off from both military action and tariffs. But the damage was done. The threats further alienated America’s allies. And they only make sense from our out-of-favor ‘historical fatalism’ point of view.
‘Civilization is restraint’ said Freud, practically quoting us long before we were born. In other words, civilization is a ‘rules-based order.’ You may feel that you would be happier...and the world would be a better place...if you shot the man next door, took his parking place and moved in with his fetching wife. But you don’t know for sure. And over the centuries, humans learned to deal with uncertainty by following rules. They follow the rules of Moses, the Constitution, habeas corpus, the First Amendment, due process and so forth. They say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’ They don’t cut in line. And they don’t murder people.
Yes, it might be convenient for you to drive on the wrong side of the road and steal the cash from the church’s poor box. But it is rarely a good idea.
Civilization is also the foundation for trade and modern prosperity. People follow rules - thou shalt not steal, thou shalt pay thy bills, thou shalt respect each other’s property rights - thus allowing the formation of capital which can be invested to increase more and better products. That is how the Trump administration policies are so effective; they set back civilization...and speed the decline of the dollar and the bubble empire. Gold - the anti-dollar - hit $4,831 yesterday. Stay tuned."
"Alert! Trump Shocker! Nukes In Greenland and Iran War Insanity"
Full screen recommended.
Prepper News, 1/21/26
"Alert! Trump Shocker!
Nukes In Greenland and Iran War Insanity"
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o
Larry Johnson, 1/21/26
"Davos Disaster:
Trump Shows Mental Decline For The World To See"
"Larry Johnson, the former CIA analyst, talks to The Trends Journal about President Donald Trump’s rambling speeches at Davos and how the White House can no longer hide the fact that the president’s mental health is quickly declining. Trump spoke about his desire for Greenland and insulted European allies."
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Wednesday, January 21, 2026
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Storm Coming... Prepare For The Worst"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 1/21/26
"Massive Storm Coming... Prepare For The Worst"
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"Schools Closed And Flights Cancelled As Heavy Snowstorms Spread Across The US"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 1/21/26
"Schools Closed And Flights Cancelled
As Heavy Snowstorms Spread Across The US"
"Winter chaos is hitting the United States harder than ever, and millions of Americans are dealing with the fallout right now. Across the country, hundreds of schools have been forced to close their doors due to a perfect storm of extreme weather conditions and widespread illness outbreaks. The superflu and stomach viruses are spreading like wildfire through classrooms, with some schools reporting absence rates as high as 14% in a single day. Teachers are getting sick too, leaving schools with no choice but to shut down completely.
Parents are caught in an impossible situation, trying to juggle work responsibilities while caring for sick children at home. Many are being forced to choose between their job and their family's health, with no good options available. The reality is that when schools close, parents still have to work, but childcare options disappear overnight.
The aviation industry is experiencing widespread disruptions as winter storms slam airports across the nation.Major airlines are cancelling entire flight schedules, leaving travelers stranded in terminals for hours or even days. Business travelers who rely on air transport are finding themselves stuck with no way to get home, and many companies aren't offering refunds because weather-related cancellations fall outside their control.
Road conditions have become increasingly treacherous, with massive multi-car pileups becoming a regular occurrence. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, over 100 vehicles were involved in a single crash due to whiteout conditions caused by lake effect snow. Visibility dropped to less than half a mile, creating deadly driving conditions that caught many people off guard.
Grocery stores are seeing their shelves emptied as people rush to stock up on essentials before the next storm hits.The panic buying phenomenon is becoming more common, with bread, milk, eggs, and other basic necessities disappearing within hours of a weather warning. Supply chains are struggling to keep up with the sudden demand spikes.
What's particularly concerning is how extreme these weather swings have become. Places like Kentucky are experiencing 75-degree temperatures one day followed by freezing conditions the next. These dramatic temperature changes are shocking to the human body and contributing to the widespread illness we're seeing.
The bigger picture here is that our infrastructure and systems weren't designed to handle this level of weather unpredictability. Schools don't have adequate backup plans, airlines can't manage the volume of cancellations, and families are left to figure it out on their own. This appears to be the new reality we're facing, with extreme weather events becoming more frequent and more severe each year. This winter chaos is affecting every aspect of daily life, from education to transportation to basic shopping. It's forcing us to question whether we're truly prepared for what's coming next."
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"Historic Winter Storm About To Slam the U.S. - 180 Million in Danger"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 1/21/26
"Historic Winter Storm About To Slam the U.S. -
180 Million in Danger"
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"A Look to the Heavens"
“Why isn't this ant a big sphere? Planetary nebula Mz3 is being cast off by a star similar to our Sun that is, surely, round. Why then would the gas that is streaming away create an ant-shaped nebula that is distinctly not round?
Clues might include the high 1000-kilometer per second speed of the expelled gas, the light-year long length of the structure, and the magnetism of the star visible above at the nebula's center. One possible answer is that Mz3 is hiding a second, dimmer star that orbits close in to the bright star. A competing hypothesis holds that the central star's own spin and magnetic field are channeling the gas. Since the central star appears to be so similar to our own Sun, astronomers hope that increased understanding of the history of this giant space ant can provide useful insight into the likely future of our own Sun and Earth.”
The Poet: W. H. Auden, “The More Loving One”
“The More Loving One”
“Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.
How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.
Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.
Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.”
- W. H. Auden
"We All Do What We Can..."
“All sins, of course, deserve to be treated with mercy: we all do what we can, and life is too hard and too cruel for us to condemn anyone for failing in this area. Does anyone know what he himself would do if faced with the worst and how much truth could he bear under such circumstances?” - Andre Comte-Sponville
Joe South, “Walk A Mile In My Shoes”
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"A Parade Of Fools..."
"Humanity is a parade of fools,
and I am at the front of it, twirling a baton. "
- Dean Koontz
"When the world goes mad, one must accept madness as sanity;
since sanity is, in the last analysis, nothing but the
madness on which the whole world happens to agree."
- George Bernard Shaw
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