Canadian Prepper, 7/12/26
"Alert! Russian Doomsday Planes Head to Iran,
Hormuz Closed, Lindsay Grahams Death Conspiracy!"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Monday, July 13, 2026
Sunday, July 12, 2026
"Can We Really Trust Our Feelings?"
"Can We Really Trust Our Feelings?"
by Todd Hayen
"Sure, as long as we are conscious of their true origins. And even if not, sometimes we can trust, other times no. Feelings are odd things. They can come out of nowhere, or they can be highly circumstantial - like the rush of extreme fear when a bear jumps aggressively from behind a tree. They can also be mysterious “gut feelings.”
Usually, we have some awareness of their unconscious underpinnings. We sense whether a feeling is a solid “gut” instinct, something “creepy,” or simply “good” - as in, “I just liked that guy; there was something about him that made me feel comfortable and trusting.”
But…and it’s a big “but,” we know we have to be careful. The guy or gal who sweeps us off our feet on a first date needs further scrutiny. We have all fallen into that pit, haven’t we? It is a deep, dark chasm, and usually very difficult to climb out of. Did you ever wonder why, back in the day, marriage engagements often lasted what seemed an eternity? There were many social and cultural underpinnings, but one major reason was simply to get past the “swept off your feet” syndrome - to make what was largely unconscious, conscious.
So, what’s the big deal? If our impressions of things and people rely too heavily on feelings - especially when we are not conscious of their origins - we can end up in serious trouble. Most of the time, it doesn’t really matter what our feelings are about other people. We see an actor we like or meet someone in the grocery store we immediately dislike. Actors don’t matter much in our daily lives; their entire craft is built on creating impressions based on unsubstantiated feelings.
Most strangers we encounter don’t matter much either. But people like our lawyer, our doctor, or our lover, do. With the exception of the latter, we usually have some objective basis for our assessments - what are their credentials? What is their reputation? Has the state licensed them? (As I clear my throat on that one.) We may still have a gut feeling, which remains important given their role in our lives, but we temper the emotional response with at least some objective evaluation.
We run into an odd situation with politicians. They are (or most people think they are) important, yet their persona and presentation are wholly geared toward generating a “feeling” with voters choosing among options. More often than not, they want that feeling to outweigh any objective facts. A lot of effort goes into this charade. Intellectually, many people may agree it’s a game, but most still fall for the ruse.
I see this often with celebrities, too. People worship movie stars or sports figures regardless of whether they are decent human beings. They reach worship status quickly. Sports stars at least have to have a exceptional physical skill. And oddly enough, most totally untalented actors seldom become celebrities. Hating these types (actors and athletes) is less common, but when someone is set up for hate for whatever reason, it flows effortlessly.
Guess who I am going to use as an example of this sort of hate? Donald J. Trump, of course. He is probably the most hated man in modern times next to Adolf Hitler (we could cite others like Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, or Saddam Hussein, but Trump is the most current). Was he set up for hate? Absolutely, although not entirely. He can be rather despicable at times, making it easy to dislike him. Add a little media salt to his own formula, and you have one of the juiciest targets for hate projection imaginable.
To start with, Trump does not have a conventionally likable personality. He comes across as arrogant, impulsive, boastful, and low on agreeableness and emotional stability - traits like rudeness, grandiosity, and a lack of empathy that many find off-putting. He is blunt, disruptive, and often vulgar in a way that violates traditional political norms. Not much there for broad appeal.
Yet some of these brazen attributes are exactly what his supporters adore. His maverick, no-nonsense approach - telling it like he sees it with little filter, rejecting political correctness, and fighting the establishment - resonates deeply. Supporters value his authenticity, pragmatism, and willingness to shake up the system rather than play the polished insider game. What critics call arrogance or bullying, fans see as strength, decisiveness, and refreshing honesty. Which set of attributes do you think make a better leader? Sadly, the ugly ones probably do.
What about the “real” good and bad things? Haters rarely focus on substantive presidential shortcomings. Instead, they attack his personality: he’s mean, ugly, makes fun of people, has weird hair, is fat, and has an ugly mouth.
They label him a misogynist, a racist, and a felon. Defenders note that many accusations stem from selective outrage, legal warfare perceived as political persecution, or misrepresentations of his record on issues like criminal justice reform (First Step Act), opportunity zones for minority communities, and strong support from diverse groups in elections.
Supporters argue his blunt style gets twisted into “-isms” while ignoring policy outcomes or context. Of course, as of this writing, Trump haters probably have more substantive reasons to hate him, but at the beginning of the hate campaign, not as much. The point I am making about “feelings” is not confined to the Trump phenomenon.
Many of the Trump haters adore figures like Biden, Harris, Obama, or (for Canadians) Carney. Why? For mostly the same superficial reasons - personality, looks, media framing - rather than deep substance. They were told to love these figures and hate Trump (and his team). Although personality and appearance play a role, the press drives most of it. Most people don’t look beyond that.
So, they treat politicians like movie stars or sports figures. Their gut tells them one thing, looks and personality another, and the press fills in the rest. Then they retreat into echo chambers where their bias is confirmed endlessly by social media, friends, family, the dog - and maybe a cat or two (cats are primarily liberal).
Feelings have their place. A strong gut instinct can protect us or guide us toward what feels right. But when it comes to high-stakes decisions - especially about leaders who shape laws, economies, and societies - we owe it to ourselves to dig deeper. Scrutinize records, policies, and results alongside the vibe. Conscious awareness of where our feelings come from turns raw emotion into informed judgment. Without that, we’re just another audience member swept up in the performance.
As I revisit this concept in our modern time, the divide feels even starker. The “feeling-based” politics hasn’t faded; if anything, it has intensified. Trump remains a lightning rod - loved or loathed largely on emotional and media-primed grounds rather than calm analysis (although that has changed a bit since the Iran conflict). The lesson holds: question the origins of your feelings, especially when the stakes are this high. Let’s all continue to stay sharp by balancing heart and head."
"US Food Supply Enters Crisis, Millions Aren't Ready"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 7/12/26
"US Food Supply Enters Crisis,
Millions Aren't Ready"
Comments here:
Jeremiah Babe, "RIP Warhawk Lindsey Graham; Los Angeles Vendors Selling Food On Sidewalks"
Jeremiah Babe, 7/12/26
"RIP Warhawk Lindsey Graham;
Los Angeles Vendors Selling Food On Sidewalks"
Comments here:
Joel Bowman, "A Mountain of Debt"
"A Mountain of Debt"
by Joel Bowman
“An exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future...”
~ Thucydides, from his "History of the Peloponnesian War"
Buenos Aires, Argentina - "A time for peace, a time for war… a time of plenty, a time of few… a time for courage, a time for patience… What a time to be alive, dear reader! Standing on the brink of history, we are daily amazed as the world turns beneath our very feet.
In the newspapers we read reports of breathtaking technological marvels… alongside tales of war and waste. We see an age of unparalleled material abundance… on top of profound spiritual and philosophical emptiness. We learn of a future unfolding that is beyond our comprehension… even as we discover how little we know of our own past.
Take the recent story around the Herculaneum scrolls, for example, the only intact library to survive from the ancient Greco-Roman world. From The Smithsonian Magazine: "Scientists Have Deciphered the Surviving Fragments of a 2,000-Year-Old Philosophical Treatise Frozen in Time by Mount Vesuvius’ Eruption. The papyrus manuscript was part of a vast library preserved by volcanic ash. Now, the remaining passages - which examine ethics, knowledge and human nature - are accessible for the first time since 79 C.E.
Researchers working on the so-called Vesuvius Challenge used a combination of high-resolution scanning, sophisticated “virtual unwrapping” algorithms, and AI trained to detect tiny surface changes caused by ancient ink to access these texts, previously lost to time.
The library contains over 600 scrolls, potentially including missing works of stoic philosopher Chrysippus, lost dialogues by Aristotle, plus histories, plays and countless other treasures. It is not lost on us that the further we reach into the future – through technologies unimaginable barely a generation ago – the further we are able to gaze into the past. And yet, even as mankind labors meticulously to uncover lessons from ancient times… he is quick to forget those read to him just yesterday.
An Eruption of Debt: Witness the malignant creep of socialism in New York City, formerly the “capitalism capital” of the world. Notice the growing appetite for the State to “manage” whole industries – from grocery stores to A.I. to air conditioners and plenty besides – because, if nothing else, governments have proven themselves spectacularly competent at driving innovation, generating value and stewarding capital. (Ahem…)
Why, just take a look at the balance sheets of those very same nation states. Today, the ten most indebted nations on the planet account for 43% of the worlds entire GDP. Every single one of them – Japan, Greece, Italy, the USA, France, Canada Belgium, the UK, Spain and Portugal – carry debt-to-GDP ratios above 90%, the level economists used to consider the “danger zone.”
Click image for larger size.
One wonders, when future generations return to this corner of the universe, fresh and recharged from their interstellar vacations, what they will uncover from our primitive texts and primeval communications. Will they look at our collective store of knowledge with awe and wonder… or pity and shame? Have your say in the comments, below…"
Musical Interlude: Mario Frangoulis and Justin Hayward, "Nights in White Satin"
Full screen recommended.
Mario Frangoulis and Justin Hayward,
"Nights in White Satin"
"A Look to the Heavens"
“Far beyond the local group of galaxies lies NGC 3621, some 22 million light-years away. Found in the multi-headed southern constellation Hydra, the winding spiral arms of this gorgeous island universe are loaded with luminous young star clusters and dark dust lanes. Still, for earthbound astronomers NGC 3621 is not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy. Some of its brighter stars have been used as standard candles to establish important estimates of extragalactic distances and the scale of the Universe.
This beautiful image of NGC 3621 traces the loose spiral arms far from the galaxy's brighter central regions that span some 100,000 light-years. Spiky foreground stars in our own Milky Way Galaxy and even more distant background galaxies are scattered across the colorful skyscape.”
"The Earth"
"What can I tell her over breakfast when she says
her son suffers from madness, and because there
is no mental health, he has ended up in jail,
and she is relieved, because at least he might
be safe there or he might get to see the doctor.
We are eating egg-white omelets; we are counting
carbs. We are buttoning ourselves in our clean dresses
and high-heeled shoes in order to bring home the bacon,
doing what we need to do and “It is what it is.”
Her granddaughter and daughter are living with her
in the one bedroom. Nights, the daughter lounges by
the pool, looking at her phone, while she teaches the child
to plant seeds in a flower bed she feels bad she does not own.
She tells she cried in the car coming here; she did not know
me then. She thought we would be talking to each other
the whole time about what we are selling, what
the other might buy, but somehow we left that behind
over the toast with the tiny pots of strawberry jam.
Who can explain all this luxury, all this despair?
Or how we all hold our secret shames so close
and gloss our lips with “Cinnamon Fire” as if that were
some legitimate form of protection. Cinnamon Fire!
She just turned fifty. I tell her wait ten years - you
won’t know more, but you will get closer to forgiving,
because it is all happening on a wheel that spin
so fast. Why not stop to look at the pink flowers
you’ve planted with your granddaughter? Why not feel
your bare toes in the good wet earth? We play with the crusts
on our plates. The waitress takes the coffee away. We
are strangers again, each carrying our lonely fear
our children won’t find their way, wishing for them
some inner logic - sacred trust of earth and self, that exists
for each of us so far within, so far under the skin, we
can’t even begin to say what it is made of; it merely is,
poised between love and grief: the blue space we call wonder,
which is merely the dew on the grass, the shadow the sun
makes as it rolls over the vast skin of the Earth."
- Sheila Black
"The Gentle Rhythm of Today"; "A Very Old Town"
Full screen recommended.
Gengu AI, "The Gentle Rhythm of Today,"
"A Very Old Town"
"AI was the tool. The story came from human feeling. If this film gave you
a quiet breath, a memory, or a moment of peace, thank you for being here."
Native Elder, "Why Happiness Was Easier 40 Years Ago"
Full screen recommended.
Native Elder,
"Why Happiness Was Easier 40 Years Ago"
"I Can’t Afford Gas Anymore, So I’m Running on Guinness"
Full screen recommended.
Delta King's Blues,
"I Can’t Afford Gas Anymore,
So I’m Running on Guinness"
"Gas tank’s empty… but the spirit’s still got fuel. “I Can’t Afford Gas Anymore, So I’m Running on Guinness” is a cheeky, hard-times Delta King’s Blues tune about rising costs, broke pockets, and finding humor in whatever keeps you moving. A bouncy, rough-edged acoustic guitar kicks up a back-porch groove like a man laughing through bad luck. The harmonica staggers and smiles, half buzzed, half brilliant. The rhythm rolls loose and easy, built for folks who ain’t got much - but still got attitude. This is blues that laughs at being broke. For anyone who’s ever made it through tough times with a grin and a cheap drink. If I can’t fill the tank… I’ll fill the glass."
Free Download: Olaf Stapledon, "Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord"
"But what a universe, anyhow! No use blaming human-beings for what they were. Everything was made so that it had to torture something else. Sirius himself was no exception, of course. Made that way! Nothing was responsible for being by nature predatory on other things, dog on rabbit and Argentine beef, man on nearly everything, bugs and microbes on man, and of course man himself on man. (Nothing but man was really cruel, vindictive, except perhaps the loathly cat). Everything desperately struggling to keep its nose above water for a few breaths before its strength inevitably failed and down it went, pressed under by something else. And beyond, those brainless, handless idiotic stars, lazing away so importantly for nothing.
Here and there some speck of a planet dominated by some half-awake intelligence like humanity. And here and there on such planets, one or two poor little spirits waking up and wondering what in the hell everything was for, what it was all about, what they could make of themselves; and glimpsing in a muddled way what their potentiality was, and feebly trying to express it, but always failing, always missing fire, and very often feeling themselves breaking up as he himself was doing. Just now and then they might feel the real thing, in some creative work, or in sweet community with another little spirit, or with others. Just now and then they seemed somehow to create or to be gathered up into something lovelier than their individual selves, something which demanded their selves sacrifice and yet have their selves new life. But how precariously, torturingly; and only just for a flicker of time! Their whole life-time would only be a flicker in the whole of titanic time. Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold therewill still be time. Oh God, what for?"
- Olaf Stapledon, "Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord"
○
Freely download "Sirius: A Fantasy of Love and Discord",
by Olaf Stapledon, here:
The Poet: John O’Donohue, “In These Times”
“In These Times”
“In these times when anger
Is turned into anxiety,
And someone has stolen
The horizons and mountains,
Our small emperors on parade
Never expect our indifference
To disturb their nakedness.
They keep their heads down,
And their eyes gleam with reflection
From aluminum economic ground,
The media wraps everything
In a cellophane of sound,
And the ghost surface of the virtual
Overlays the breathing earth.
The industry of distraction
Makes us forget
That we live in a universe.
We have become converts
To the religion of stress
And its deity of progress;
That we may have courage
To turn aside from it all
And come to kneel down before the poor,
To discover what we must do,
How to turn anxiety
Back into anger,
How to find our way home.”
~ John O’Donohue,
from “To Bless the Space Between Us”
○
“Do not lose heart. We were made for these times.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes
"Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have"
"Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have"
by John Wilder
"Time. Of things that have long fascinated me, time is at the top of the list. Even when I was a little kid, time fascinated me. The idea that time, of all of the physical parameters of the world there was the one that we couldn’t control. Humanity has mastered the power of the atom, at least partially. We haven’t tamed fusion, but we can create it, and have several fewer islands in the Pacific because of it.
Humanity has dammed the largest of rivers, giving us power. We have used technology to shrink the world. The first recorded circumnavigation of the world took 1082 days. Magellan didn’t quite make the whole trip, but he still gets the credit on a technicality. Now? The International Space Station does an orbit in 90 minutes or so at 17,150 miles per hour, which is nearly as fast as Haitians are entering Texas.
Humanity has conquered the riddle of steel – we’ve made steel buildings that reach upwards into the sky to please Crom. We have conquered climate – people live at the South Pole in perfect comfort, as well as managing to live in Houston without melting into puddles of sweat.
We can see at night. We can talk, nearly instantly, with people a continent away. My phone buzzes every time there is motion outside my front door – it’s like having a superpower of sensing where and when there is activity at a distance. Another superpower is being able to access obscure facts anywhere on the planet that can reach a cell signal.
But time remains fixed. It flows only one way. And it is the most subjective of our senses. Even Pugsley notices it: “This summer was so short!” He’s in high school. That’s when the transition from the endless summers of childhood begin to transform into the fleeting, never-ending carousel of years that is adulthood. I’ve long felt that I understood why this was. Let me give it a shot.
For a newborn, the second day it’s outside and breathing is 50% of its entire life. For a six-year-old, half of their life is three years – much more. It’s not a big percentage, but it’s much smaller than 50%. For a sixteen-year-old, half their life is eight years. If you’re forty – half your life is twenty years. 1/8 versus 1/20? It’s amazingly different. We don’t perceive life as a line. We’re living inside of it – we compare our lives to the only thing we have . . . our lives. Each day you live is smaller than the last.
But that’s not everything. As we age, novelty decreases. When we’re young, experiences and knowledge are coming at us so quickly that we are presented with novel (new and unique) information daily. New words. New thoughts. New ideas. That’s why babies keep falling for that stupid “got your nose” thing. They don’t realize that I can reattach it. Over time, though, novelty decreases, as does the percentage of your life that each day represents. Ever drive a new route somewhere? When I do it, I have to focus my attention. It seems like it takes longer because I’m having to deal with novelty.
I’ve had my “new” laptop nearly seven years. I had my old laptop for longer than that, yet my “new” laptop still seems like it’s temporary.
There are only so many routes I can drive to work, so much novelty that I can find in a daily drive. Even a commute of an hour begins to fade into a brief moment in time if it’s the same commute, day after day.
Work is similar. Over time, we gain experience. Experience shows us how to fix problems (and sometimes how not to fix them). But that experience of taking a solution and modifying it to fix the next problem isn’t as hard as fixing the first problem.
The fact that each day is a smaller portion of my life, combined with the fact that as I get older, the possibility that I see something new dims. I’ve solved a bunch of problems in my life. Finding a new one is... difficult. Life goes faster, day by day for me. Every endless summer day of youth is in my rearview mirror.
And yet... Each day is still 24 hours. I can still use each day and live it with all of the gusto of a 10-year-old fishing for trout after building a tree fort, playing with his dog, and building a model of a Phantom F-4 to dogfight with the MiG 21-PF already hanging from the ceiling. Even though those 24 hours seem shorter now than at any time in my life, they are relentless in their exact sameness. I get to choose how I spend those moments in my life. I get to choose what I want to produce, and how hard I work to make it happen.
Humanity may never have the ability to crack time – it appears that even today, outside of sands falling from an hourglass, we can only describe time as a fundamental entity, something we measure against. Does the flow of time vary? Certainly. But only if we’re moving at large fractions of the speed of light or are caught in a huge gravity well, but let’s leave your mother out of this.
I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never understand what, exactly, time is, outside of this: Time is all we have – it is what makes up life. We measure our lives in it, because no man can buy an extra hour of life. We have the hours we have. The only difference is what we do with that time.
I mentioned in a previous post that I often get by on scant hours of sleep. That’s because I have more things that I want to do in my life than I can fit in a day that’s less than 20 or 22 hours some days. I choose to try to do more, to try to make use of this time, because each moment is a gift.
Maybe I can settle for that definition of time: a gift. Each moment is a gift. Don’t beg for more, or live in fear of losing them. Just make each moment count. Perhaps that’s the secret and precious nature of time. It is the one thing we should never waste, and never wish away."
The Alan Parsons Project, "Time"
"You Can’t Have It All"
Emily Levine, January 2019.
"You Can’t Have It All"
by Maria Popova
“Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” Rilke wrote in contemplating the most difficult and rewarding existential art: befriending our own finitude. I have been sitting with Rilke, awash in the tidal waves of sorrow and love, in the wake of losing my beloved friend Emily Levine (October 23, 1944 - February 3, 2019) - philosopher, comedian, universe-builder, beautiful soul - who made me fall in love with poetry long ago and without whom there would be no "Universe in Verse" and no "Figuring." (Emily rightfully occupies the first line of the book’s acknowledgements.)
Ever since her terminal diagnosis in 2016, and up until just three weeks before her death, I had been taking Emily for what we came to call our “poetry retreats” - brief periodic respites by the ocean, where we would spend unhurried time in the company of a few other beloved women, reading poetry, cooking, conversing, and just being - with our joys, with our sorrows, with one another. Emily - the most erudite and intellectually voracious person I have ever known, introduced us to classics, many of which she knew by heart: Whitman, Eliot, Yeats, Plath, Rilke. But there was one contemporary poem she especially loved and read for us often: “You Can’t Have It All” by Barbara Ras, from her exquisite and exquisitely titled 1998 poetry collection "Bite Every Sorrow" (public library).
Now that Emily has returned her stardust to the universe she so cherished, and all the words seem too small to fill the void, poetry stands as the only mode of remembrance that can give shape and space to the amorphous largeness of feeling that is grief. In this sweetly lo-fi recording from one of our gatherings, punctuated by the sound of the ocean and the rustle of page-turning, Emily reads the poem that she, in the deepest sense, lived out and modeled for the rest of us with her largehearted life.
"You Can't Have It All"
"But you can have the fig tree and its fat leaves like clown hands
gloved with green. You can have the touch of a single eleven-year-old finger
on your cheek, waking you at one a.m. to say the hamster is back.
You can have the purr of the cat and the soulful look
of the black dog, the look that says, If I could I would bite
every sorrow until it fled, and when it is August,
you can have August and abundantly so. You can have love,
though often it will be mysterious, like the white foam
that bubbles up at the top of the bean pot over the red kidneys
until you realize foam’s twin is blood.
You can have the skin at the center between a man’s legs,
so solid, so doll-like. You can have the life of the mind,
glowing occasionally in priestly vestments, never admitting pettiness,
never stooping to bribe the sullen guard who’ll tell you
all roads narrow at the border.
You can speak a foreign language, sometimes,
and it can mean something. You can visit the marker on the grave
where your father wept openly. You can’t bring back the dead,
but you can have the words forgive and forget hold hands
as if they meant to spend a lifetime together. And you can be grateful
for makeup, the way it kisses your face, half spice, half amnesia, grateful
for Mozart, his many notes racing one another towards joy, for towels
sucking up the drops on your clean skin, and for deeper thirsts,
for passion fruit, for saliva. You can have the dream,
the dream of Egypt, the horses of Egypt and you riding in the hot sand.
You can have your grandfather sitting on the side of your bed,
at least for a while, you can have clouds and letters, the leaping
of distances, and Indian food with yellow sauce like sunrise.
You can’t count on grace to pick you out of a crowd
but here is your friend to teach you how to high jump,
how to throw yourself over the bar, backwards,
until you learn about love, about sweet surrender,
and here are periwinkles, buses that kneel, farms in the mind
as real as Africa. And when adulthood fails you,
you can still summon the memory of the black swan on the pond
of your childhood, the rye bread with peanut butter and bananas
your grandmother gave you while the rest of the family slept.
There is the voice you can still summon at will, like your mother’s,
it will always whisper, you can’t have it all,
but there is this."
Complement with Emily’s splendid reading of “On the Fifth Day” by Jane Hirshfield, who often graced our poetry retreats with her Buddhist benediction of a presence, then revisit Mary Oliver - one of Emily’s favorite poets, whom she outlived by seventeen days - on the measure of a life well lived and how to live with maximal aliveness."
Adventures With Danno, "We Buy Stuff At Walmart"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 7/12/26
"We Buy Stuff At Walmart"
Comments here:
"We Tested Ground Beef From Walmart, Costco, Kroger & 8 Stores, These Failed"
Full screen recommended.
In Plain Bite, 7/12/26
"We Tested Ground Beef From
Walmart, Costco, Kroger & 8 Stores, These Failed"
"For years, food companies have used misleading labels, shrinking portions, fake health claims, and pricing tricks to quietly take more of your money. Most people never notice. We tested ground beef from 11 grocery chains… and eight of them failed a test that just became federal law. Most people assume grocery stores are basically the same when it comes to something as simple as ground beef. Familiar packaging, familiar prices, and millions of families cooking the exact same tray every week. But when you start comparing the label, the sourcing, and how each store actually handles the meat before it reaches the case, some very surprising differences begin to appear. And in more than a few cases, what customers believe they're buying… isn't exactly what's in the package. Some of these grocery chains are trusted by millions of families every single week. But once you start looking at how the beef is ground, where it actually comes from, and what a brand-new federal labeling rule requires them to prove, the differences become impossible to ignore.
A few of the results may surprise even longtime shoppers. In this video, you'll discover: Which grocery chains are actually delivering honest, traceable ground beef, which ones are quietly failing a brand-new federal labeling standard, the surprising three-question test you can run on any package tonight, and what to watch for before your next trip to the meat case. The most surprising part? One of the biggest names in American retail proved it can trace beef almost to the ranch gate - and then chose exactly who gets that honesty and who doesn't."
Comments here:
"People Are Noticing Something at Grocery Stores… And It Confirms Everything"
Full screen recommended.
Across The States, 7/12/26
"People Are Noticing Something at Grocery Stores…
And It Confirms Everything"
"Your grocery store isn't just changing - it's quietly transforming right in front of you. Rising food prices are only one piece of a much bigger story. From AI-powered surveillance and self-checkout to smart shopping carts, shrinkflation, and customer data collection, today's supermarkets operate very differently than they did just a few years ago. Here's the thing… many shoppers notice higher prices but miss the technology working behind the scenes. This video explores how retailers are using artificial intelligence, behavioral analytics, loyalty programs, and automation to reduce costs, prevent theft, and reshape the shopping experience. What most people don't realize is that every trip through the aisles can generate valuable insights that help stores predict demand, optimize inventory, and personalize promotions. We also discuss why stores feel less personal, why products are being locked behind glass, and what these changes could mean for the future of grocery shopping. Watch until the end for a complete breakdown of one of the biggest transformations happening in modern retail today."
Comments here:
"Everyone's About To Run Out Of Fuel In 1-2 Weeks"
Bob Moriarity, 7/12/26
"Everyone's About To Run Out Of Fuel In 1-2 Weeks"
Comments here:
Dan, I Allegedly, "America's Biggest Brands Are Selling for Pennies"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 7/12/26
"America's Biggest Brands Are Selling for Pennies"
"For decades, these companies were household names, but today many of America's most recognizable brands are being sold for a fraction of what they were once worth. In this video, I break down the shocking sale of Hot Dog on a Stick for just $8 million and explain why bankruptcy sales, distressed assets, and corporate restructurings are creating opportunities that few people are talking about. We'll also look at brands like Stein Mart, RadioShack, Pier 1 Imports, Dressbarn, Linens 'n Things, and more to see why investors are buying struggling companies instead of starting from scratch. Is this a warning sign for the economy, or the opportunity of a lifetime? Let me know in the comments what business you would buy if the price was right. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this video with someone who loves business, investing, and economic news."
Comments here:
Saturday, July 11, 2026
"U.S. Attacks Iran; IRGC Closes Strait"
Full screen recommended.
Lt. Col. Daniel Davis, 7/11/26
"U.S. Attacks Iran; IRGC Closes Strait"
"'Life Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Damn Thing'; or 'Handle Hard Better'"
"'Life Doesn’t Owe Anyone a Damn Thing';
or 'Handle Hard Better'"
by Justin Smith
“We all wait in life for things to get easier. It will never get easier. What happens is you handle hard better. That’s what happens. Most people think that it’s going to get easier. Life is going to get easier. Basketball is going to get easier. School is going to get easier. It never gets easier. What happens is you become someone who handles hard stuff better. And if you think life when you leave college is going to all of a sudden get easier because you graduated, and you got a Duke degree, it’s not going to get easier. It’s going to get harder. So make yourself a person that handles hard well.” ~ Kara Lawson, Head Coach for Duke University Women’s Basketball Team and Graduate of the University of Tennessee [July 5th 2022]
"An incredible number of Americans today have been coddled, pampered and fed a sense of entitlement from birth that continued into their early adulthood, making them always look to others or the government for help in acquiring their needs and wants. They have been raised without a backbone, weak-willed and dependent; and so, whenever they find themselves to be in a minority, they more often than not petition the federal and state governments, protest and riot, in order that their particular concerns are proactively pursued and implemented as favored, privileged and superior, no matter how insane, from destroying humanity by way of transgenderism or energy and job-killing fallacious “climate change” policies.
From my earliest memories, I saw hard men, laughing, loving, fighting hard and playing just as hard, as they’d rise each day to head out to work, in the mines, the forests, office buildings and on the nation’s lines of defense, and in particular I recall learning something of worth from each of them, much as I did from my Granddad Spurge, who was a coal miner and a stone mason. They were a hardy bunch of industrious scrappers, who pulled up their sleeves and worked hard to make a better life for themselves and their children, to build better communities, a better America.
But what passes for young “men” today is but a mere shadow of men of worth from better days gone by, what with their feminine appearances and their aversion to doing anything to break a sweat. And aside from weak bodies, too much coddling has made their minds work in a new, cunning devious manner, in which they waste enormous amounts of effort sidestepping real work and figuring out how to get something for nothing rather than perform an honest day’s work to pay for bills they make, without any intention of ever repaying, such as student loans.
Half of America seems content to allow Uncle Sam to make life better for them and their children via the welfare system and the government cheese, even tho’ it means a life of subsistence, just scraping by. Although today, many have developed gaming the system into a real art, whereby they live just about as good as anyone working a full-time job, complete with HUD homes, EBT cards, late model cars, color T.V.s and government purchased cellphones.
Life doesn’t owe any of us a thing, regardless of the circumstances and station of our birth. The miracle of your birth alone doesn’t mean you are automatically owed a job, a house, a bed or a single meal after you are a grown adult and supposedly capable of doing for yourself. You’re not owed recognition and understanding for simply existing, and neither are you owed success and comfort, abundance and happiness or immunity from the problems, pain and suffering that is simply a part of the human condition, and you certainly aren’t due any money you haven’t earned through your own sweat and effort, not from me, the American taxpayers or the U.S. government.
The only thing anyone should expect from The Government, if we are to accept the Contract found in our Constitution, are those things enumerated in its original form, and in that sense, we are owed a strong, affirmative and fierce defense of our Inalienable God-given Rights, as expressed and defined in the Bill of Rights, to be left alone to our own devices to live and thrive as free born Americans, without interference from The Government and its agents where no real harm is being done.
People aren’t created equal in the very real definition of the word and life has never been fair to anyone, and yet, the constant refrain heard all across all levels of American society today, from the ranks of the Mau Mau Marxist-Maoist totalitarians, those lovers of “democracy”, is “the world is so unfair”. They were evidently raised to believe “all men are created equal” in the context of the Declaration of Independence meant they are somehow guaranteed equal outcomes in everyday life, instead of the simple “equality under the law” as intended. And their voices are now amplified by an out-of-control regime that seeks to use their envy to complete the fundamental transformation of America, by any means necessary, no matter how unconstitutional or illegal they might be and are currently proving to be.
Standing on one’s own two feet and making your way through the merit of your own knowledge and work are now a thing of the past, as the poorest results in school and on the job are given the same weight and worth as the best and everybody gets a participation trophy. And in its place, envy, greed, sloth, gluttony, lies, sex and murder, the destroyer of worlds, are the rule, for a generation indoctrinated through Marxist-Maoist multiculturalist doctrine and propaganda, taught from kindergarten through university, who are now driven by an unhinged hate and anger directed at white society and capitalism.
This, in part, is the reason we see whole cities, controlled by the Marxist-Maoists and the totalitarian minded, enacting new “laws” that make the theft of anything $900 or less a misdemeanor, giving way to thousands of groups of poorly taught, undisciplined, predominantly black “youths” rampaging, rioting and looting numerous times a day, taking $900 dollars worth of merchandise nine times a day, if not more, taught racism and hatred and driven by envy and greed. It’s the reason cities across America are folding up, shriveling like a crop attacked by locusts and dying on the vine where once they thrived, back when our people, indeed our youth, had more pure hearts and moral directions and had not strayed far and away from America’s Christian roots.
Over the past thirty years, the nutcases of the Democrat Party have advocated a pathologically negative agenda for America that is based on destroying the Founding and revising history to portray early America as evil and worth casting on the ash-heap of history. Accelerating their plans through the public education system, an entire generation of America’s youth have been brainwashed to believe our planet is dying due to manmade CO2 and “climate change”, in defiance of actual science, and as if that isn’t enough, we are all constantly inundated with one alarm after another raised over racism - even as reverse racism against whites is now advocated, capitalism - which hasn’t really existed in America for over 100 years, homophobia / gender bigotry, capitalist oppression - even tho’ our system is economic fascism, and the fallacious assertion that White Supremacist Nazis are ascending in every community in America.
The real problem found within the ranks of the Takers? They just can’t face the fact that life isn’t easy for anyone, especially the Makers; and it never has been, although exceptions can be found in those born into wealth. But even the wealthy are weighted with life’s problems, if of a different variety, much as the old adage says that “money can’t buy you love or happiness”, even if it does buy you a line of coke and hookers, in a sad sort of dystopian world of a different immoral construct.
The routines many of us indulge in daily have made the largest percentage of Americans, a fairly large majority, complacent and apathetic, caring next to nothing on matters of government and whether or not they are actually living free.
Americans rise each morning, check their emails and cellphones, shower, shave and maybe brush their teeth, to rush off to their same, everyday, boring regular job that may or may not quite pay the bills, grabbing their $7 dollar cup of Starbucks special latte of the day, to do a job they find meaningless. At day’s end, they may grab some overpriced fast-food on the way home, to relax and maybe drink a cheap beer or glass of whiskey, while they watch The Voice - or is it porn [?] - call some friends to complain over how bad things are, and then simply watch some news, ’til they call it a night, sleeping fitfully and rising the next morning to do it all over again, and everyday afterward, year after year, until one day someone hands them their walking papers or a copper watch upon their “retirement”.
Too many live under the delusion that they should be able to drive brand new $60k cars, own $400k homes complete with the most exquisite adornments and furniture on their $15 per hour paycheck at McDonald’s, having never put forth the effort to gain useful knowledge demanded by skilled and professional career positions, in order to make themselves more valuable to society on the whole, and thus able to demand a salary that would allow them to buy all the trappings of such success. Instead, they cast an envious eye in the direction of the Makers and scheme on how to take what they want, by any scheme, any illegal act, any means necessary. They believe their mere existence entitles them to other people’s property, just because deep down in their black little souls, they really, really want it - just not enough to go after it the right way.
Our youth have lost all sense of shame and seem fine with getting anything they want, right when they want it, no matter how they come to acquire it. They never learned that something worth having is worth the work it takes to purchase, as if stuff is just supposed to fall from the heavens and land in their lap. Things of real worth don’t come easy.
Sure. Not everyone has the intelligence and capability to become a surgeon, but if that’s your dream, you will never know if you could have been one, until you try - same for anything else that any of you are dreaming of being, no matter if you dream of being a content farmer or a successful writer. Whatever you want in life, put forth the effort to achieve competency in that field and then go do it.
If you want something of worth in life, stop depending on others. Venture out on your own in some business or capacity you love, rather than settling to work for someone else your entire life. And for your own sake, quit wallowing in self-pity over bad circumstances created by your own bad choices.
As Ms Lawson notes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDzfZOfNki4) at one point: "Any pursuit in life, if you want to be successful, it goes to the people that handle hard well. Those are the people that get the stuff they want. People that wait around for easy, you probably see them at the bus stop. They’re waiting on the easy bus to come around. Easy bus never comes around. Go handle hard.”
Too many parents, too many schools, too many churches have failed America by failing to teach them that hard times won’t break you if only you have the right state of mind on life - that there is a loving God - and no one will ever find a fulfilling or positive way of life by looking to The Government for answers and solutions. Our society stopped teaching the youth how to be strong and independent somewhere along the way, as the tyrant-wannabes persisted in teaching “everyone is a victim”; but the fact remains today, anyone can be a proud survivor of hard times, if only they persevere and never give-up and never give-in to defeat, choosing to ultimately succeed and live good, prosperous and happy lives."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Some spiral galaxies are seen nearly sideways. Most bright stars in spiral galaxies swirl around the center in a disk, and seen from the side, this disk can appear quite thin. Some spiral galaxies appear even thinner than NGC 3717, which is actually seen tilted just a bit. Spiral galaxies form disks because the original gas collided with itself and cooled as it fell inward. Planets may orbit in disks for similar reasons.
The featured image by the Hubble Space Telescope shows a light-colored central bulge composed of older stars beyond filaments of orbiting dark brown dust. NGC 3717 spans about 100,000 light years and lies about 60 million light years away toward the constellation of the Water Snake (Hydra)."
"Getting Old Ain’t for Sissies"
Full screen recommended.
Delta King's Blues,
"Getting Old Ain’t for Sissies"
"Growing old ain’t gentle… it’s a test of grit. “Getting Old Ain’t for Sissies” is a raw, straight-talkin’ Delta King’s Blues tune about stiff mornings, long memories, and the stubborn strength it takes to keep going. A gravel-toned acoustic guitar grinds out a slow back-porch groove, steady as boots on worn wood. The harmonica wails low and weathered, like it’s felt every mile of the road itself. The rhythm stays slow and tough, built for folks who learned life doesn’t hand out easy years. This is blues about surviving the long haul. For people who may creak when they stand up - but never back down from another day. Getting old ain’t for the soft… it’s for the strong who kept showing up."
Native Elder, "What the Old Ones Knew About Regret That No One Makes Peace With"
Full screen recommended.
Native Elder,
"What the Old Ones Knew About Regret
That No One Makes Peace With"
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)