Jeremiah Babe, 12/21/24
"Pink Slips Flood Workforce; Party Is Over For Party City;
Big Lots Closing All Stores"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
Saturday, December 21, 2024
Greg Hunter, "Depression, Debt, Default & Destruction in 2025"
"Depression, Debt, Default & Destruction in 2025"
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com
"Legendary financial and geopolitical cycle analyst Martin Armstrong is back with a new round of predictions, and they are not going to make life easy for President Elect Trump. Armstrong says, “Our computer has been projecting that we are going into a depression in some areas and a recession in other areas. A depression most likely in Europe and a recession in the United States up until 2028. At my November conference, everybody was celebrating after Trump won. I stood up and told my clients, ‘I’m sorry, Trump is not going to have a blissful administration, and he’s not going to prevent the economic decline.’ (Please remember, Armstrong predicted Donald Trump would win in a landslide many months before the November 2024 Election.)
Armstrong goes on to say, “We have a serious, serious problem on a global scale. The sovereign debt crisis is really going to start percolating in 2025. It’s probably going to reach a major crisis by 2026 and 2027. Why? They have dictated all these banks and pension funds , ,70%, generally, must be invested in government bonds. They say it’s ‘safe,’ but it’s the worst debt possible. So, if the government goes into a sovereign default, what happens? You wipe out the banking system and the pensions.”
Does Armstrong think the governments around the world are going to go into a sovereign default? Armstrong says, “Oh yeah. How does a government default? We are in this Ponzi Scheme. They have to keep selling new debt to pay off the old debt. When you can’t sell the new debt, that’s when the default happens because you can’t pay off the old debt.”
What should the average guy do now? Does Armstrong think people should get to the bank and get cash? Armstrong says, “Yes, cash, physical paper money. We just had two hurricanes here in Florida. This idea of Bitcoin and CBDCs are very nice, but what’s the reality? The internet was down for 10 days. A credit card did not work. You wanted something, it was cash only. It was the same in Canada when they froze all the accounts of the truckers. They could not even buy food. Unless you had cash, you were dead in the water. This is why I am saying to have cash in this point in time.” Armstrong still likes physical gold, too.
Armstrong says the digital currencies that are getting a lot of attention lately are only a control mechanism. Armstrong contends digital money will stop bank runs. Armstrong still thinks the world will be at war by April or May of 2025. Armstrong says watch Turkey with its huge conventional army. Armstrong says Jordan and Lebanon may also be taken over, and like Syria, Turkey will be orchestrating this move. Armstrong says the Middle East is setting up for a major conflict starting in 2025, and there will be destruction. Armstrong also predicts Europe will be on the losing end of the next world war.
In closing, Armstrong says, “They can’t stop Trump from taking office, but they can delay him with martial law. Martial law has been enacted 60 times in the United States. The neocons are scared to death of Trump and really want to trap him in war before he takes office.” There is much more in the 56-minute interview.
Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One with Martin Armstrong
where he gives his analysis on a major debt crisis coming in 2025
with the defaults and destruction that come with it.
"Commercial Real Estate Crash Triggers 97% Property Value Drop, Hits 2008 Levels"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 12/21/24
"Commercial Real Estate Crash Triggers 97%
Property Value Drop, Hits 2008 Levels"
"The vortex of declining values in commercial real estate is getting wider and increasingly threatening. Imagine you bought a property for $300,000 expecting the investment would not only pay off overtime but also appreciate due to the normal dynamics of the real estate market. Fast forward to 10 years later, you find out that your property has become virtually worthless, even though there's nothing damaged on its structure and your neighborhood hasn't changed significantly. You are still paying off your mortgage loan, and after prices have plunged seemingly overnight, now you're buried on negative equity and stuck with a property no one seems interested in buying. Well, that's what's happening to commercial real estate owners and investors. But instead of $300,000, we’re talking about properties that were initially sold for between $3 to $300 million dollars or more."
Comments here:
o
Full screen recommended.
Michael Bordenaro, 12/21/24
"7 Reasons You Should Not
Buy A Home In This Economy!"
"There are seven very important reasons you should not be buying a home in this economy, especially going into 2025. There is a lot of uncertainty surrounding the future of the US economy and you have to ask yourself if you really want to be a new homeowner saddled with a whole new set of bills in such times. Most people are making it abundantly clear that they are not interested in taking on that extra responsibility with home sales currently at 30 year lows. Maybe they're onto something."
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"A Look to the Heavens"
“Massive stars, abrasive winds, mountains of dust, and energetic light sculpt one of the largest and most picturesque regions of star formation in the Local Group of Galaxies. Known as N11, the region is visible on the upper right of many images of its home galaxy, the Milky Way neighbor known as the Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC).
The above image was taken for scientific purposes by the Hubble Space Telescope and reprocessed for artistry by an amateur to win the Hubble’s Hidden Treasures competition. Although the section imaged above is known as NGC 1763, the entire N11 emission nebula is second in LMC size only to 30 Doradus. Studying the stars in N11 has shown that it actually houses three successive generations of star formation. Compact globules of dark dust housing emerging young stars are also visible around the image.”
The Poet: May Sarton, “Now I Become Myself”
“Now I Become Myself”
“Now I become myself. It’s taken
Time, many years and places,
I have been dissolved and shaken,
Worn other people’s faces,
Run madly, as if Time were there,
Terribly old, crying a warning,
“Hurry, you will be dead before —”
(What? Before you reach the morning?
or the end of the poem, is clear?
Or love safe in the walled city?)
Now to stand still, to be here,
Feel my own weight and density!
Now there is time and Time is young.
O, in this single hour I live
All of myself and do not move,
I, the pursued, who madly ran,
Stand still, stand still, and stop the Sun!”
~ May Sarton,
Collected Poems, 1930-1993
"Remember..."
“You think you will never forget any of this, you will remember it always just the way it was. But you can’t remember it the way it was. To know it, you have to be living in the presence of it right as it is happening. It can return only by surprise. Speaking of these things tells you that there are no words for them that are equal to them or that can restore them to your mind. And so you have a life that you are living only now, now and now and now, gone before you can speak of it, and you must be thankful for living day by day, moment by moment, in this presence. But you have a life too that you remember. It stays with you. You have lived a life in the breath and pulse and living light of the present, and your memories of it, remember now, are of a different life in a different world and time. When you remember the past, you are not remembering it as it was. You are remembering it as it is. It is a vision or a dream, present with you in the present, alive with you in the only time you are alive.”
~ Wendell Berry
"Time..."
“Space I can recover. Time, never.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte
○
“Lands can be reconquered, indeed in the course of a battle, a hill or a certain plain might trade hands several times. But missed opportunities? These can never be regained. Moments in time, in culture? They can never be re-made. One can never go back in time to prepare for what they should have prepared for, no one can ever get back critical seconds that were wasted out of fear or ego. Napoleon was brilliant at trading space for time: Sure, you can make these moves, provided you are giving me the time I need to drill my troops, or move them to where I want them to be. Yet in life, most of us are terrible at this. We trade an hour of our life here or afternoon there like it can be bought back with the few dollars we were paid for it. And it is only much, much later, as they are on their deathbeds or when they are looking back on what might have been, that many people realize the awful truth of this quote. Don’t do that. Embrace it now.”
- Ryan Holiday
○
Full screen recommended.
Hans Zimmer, "Time"
"I'd Still Swim..."
“If I were dropped out of a plane into the ocean and told the nearest land was
a thousand miles away, I'd still swim. And I’d despise the one who gave up.”
- Abraham Maslow
"The Curse of Interesting Times"
"The Curse of Interesting Times"
Things are the most interesting they've been
in 80 years, 250 years, and, well, ever.
by Contemplations on the Tree of Woe
"The Chinese curse their enemies with the phrase “may you live in interesting times.” Or, rather, Americans think that Chinese curse their enemies like that; according to Infogalactic, “despite being widely attributed as a Chinese curse, there is no equivalent expression in Chinese.”
Fortunately, there’s an actual Chinese phrase that’s much more interesting. It’s found in a 1627 short story collection by Feng Menglong called "Stories to Awaken the World," and it states "better to be a dog in a peaceful time, than to be a human in a chaotic times.” And to be a dog in 17th China didn’t mean being a beloved fur baby with your own YouTube channel. It meant being a workbeast that got eaten when times were lean. The Chinese still have an annual dog meat festival.
Whichever adage you prefer, our times are both chaotic and interesting. In fact, they are monumentally interesting - they are so interesting as to beggar coherent description, to put to shame historical comparison, so remarkable that every single one of us would be justified in screaming from the rooftops in shock and awe. And yet we don’t. We keep calm and carry on, sturdily gripped by our bias for normalcy, by our human ability to adapt to even the most bizarre circumstances. It’ll be fine, we tell ourselves. This is fine.
But what if we put aside our normalcy bias for a moment and look at how just how “interesting” our times really are? What do we see then?
Once Every 80 Years…Once every 80 years, a country enters a crisis. That is, at least, the assertion of Strauss-Howe Generational Theory. According to Strauss and Howe, human history is organized into repeating patterns marked by four “turnings”: the High, the Awakening, the Unraveling, and the Crisis. Each turning is approximately 20 years long, and an entire cycle of four turnings is therefore about 80 years long. According to Strauss and Howe, American history looks something like this:
○ American Revolutionary Crisis, 1765 - 1785
○ American Civil War Crisis, 1855 - 1875
○ Great Depression and World War II Crisis, 1930 - 1950
○ You Are Here, 2010 - 2030
If we believe Strauss-Howe Generational Theory, we are in the midst of what they call a Fourth Turning - a moment of Crisis.
Are we in a Fourth Turning? I certainly believe so. As I documented in "Running on Empty," the United States now stands at a financial precipice. US inflation is at its worst in 40 years because the monetary system we established under Truman and rejuvenated under Nixon is now about to collapse. With that crisis have come challenges from a resurgent Russia and burgeoning China that could lead to a Third World War or, at best, a post-American world order. The Thucydides Trap has never been so close to springing. It’s no wonder then that US fears of nuclear war have surged to levels not seen since the Cold War. But unlike the Cold War, no one wants to ‘ask what they can do for their country’ anymore. US Army recruitment is at its worst in 50 years. And why would they want to serve? Our nation is divided into warring camps. US partisan distrust of the opposing party is at its worst in 30 years.
All right. That all sounds bad. But if Strauss-Howe Generational Theory is true, the Fourth Turning will be over in about 5-10 years and we’ll move into the next Turning, the High. And those are awesome! But what if we won’t be heading into another high?"
Full, fascinating, most highly recommended article is here:
○
“5 Painfully Obvious Truths We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”
“5 Painfully Obvious Truths
We Tend to Forget in Hard Times”
by Angel Chernoff
“This is going to have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
We are going to get through this, I promise,
and we’re going to get through it together. “
- Dr. Jon LaPook
“You know how you can read or hear something dozens of times in dozens of different ways before it finally sinks in? The little truths listed below fall firmly into that category – timeless life lessons that many of us likely learned years ago, and have been reminded of ever since, yet for whatever reason we tend to forget in the heat of the moment. This, my friends, is my attempt at helping all of us, myself included, “get it” and “remember it” once and for all, especially as we collectively cope with the evolving reality of economic collapse and the drastic social and life circumstances caused by COVID-19…
1. Life is short, and nothing is guaranteed. We know deep down that life is short, and that death will happen to all of us eventually, and yet we are infinitely surprised when it happens to someone we know. It’s like walking up a flight of stairs with a distracted mind, and misjudging the final step. You expected there to be one more stair than there is, and so you find yourself off balance for a moment, before your mind shifts back to the present moment and how the world really is.
LIVE your life TODAY! Don’t ignore death – or the imminent dangers now becoming obvious – but don’t be afraid of life either. Be afraid of a life you never lived because you were too afraid to take positive action today. Death is not the greatest loss in life, neither is illness. The greatest loss is what dies inside you while you’re still alive and well. Even in these difficult times, be bold, be courageous, be a scared to death, and then take the next step anyway. Just change the way you do it.
Invest your heart and soul into whatever you have right in front of you. Bring passion into otherwise ordinary moments. You don’t have to be surrounded by lots of people. You don’t have to be going anyplace new. You can distance yourself and still passionately engage in each moment.
2. Everything will change again soon. Embrace change and realize in many ways it’s necessary. It won’t always be obvious at first, but in the end most forms of change are worthwhile because they force us to grow. So keep yourself in check right now.
What you have today may become what you had by tomorrow. You never know. Things change, often spontaneously. People and circumstances come and go. Life doesn’t stop for anybody. It moves rapidly and rushes from calm to chaos in a matter of seconds, and happens like this to people every day. It’s likely happening to someone nearby right now.
Sometimes the shortest split second in time changes the direction of our lives. A seemingly innocuous decision rattles our whole world like a meteorite striking Earth. Entire lives have been swiveled and flipped upside down, for better or worse, on the strength of an unpredictable event. And these events are always happening – as they are right now.
So just remember, however good or bad a situation is now, it will change. That’s the one thing you can count on. Accept it. Breathe. Be where you are. You’re where you need to be right now. There’s a time and place for everything, and every hard step is necessary. Just keep doing your best, and don’t force what’s not yet supposed to fit into your life. When it’s meant to be, it will be.
3. Changing your response is what puts you back in control. Have patience with everything that remains unresolved in your head and heart. And realize that patience is not about waiting, but the ability to keep a good attitude while working hard to stay true to your intuition and values. This is your life, and it is governed by your choices. May your actions speak louder than your words. May your daily choices preach louder than your lips. May your inner sense of satisfaction be your noise in the end.
And if your present life only teaches you one thing, let it be that taking a passionate leap is always worth it. Even if you have no idea where you’re going to land – even when there are so many unknowns – be brave enough to stand up and listen to your heart. Remember that the most powerful moments in life happen when you find the courage to let go of what can’t be changed. Because when you are no longer able to change a situation, you are challenged to change yourself – to grow beyond the unchangeable. And that changes everything! (Marc and I discuss this in more detail in the “Passion and Growth” chapter of “1,000 Little Things Happy, Successful People Do Differently.“)
4. Life’s storms can be a great source of strength. Hard times are like strong storms that blow against you. And it’s not just that these storms hold you back from places you might otherwise go. They also tear away from you all but the essential parts of your ego that cannot be torn, so that afterward you see yourself as you really are, and not merely as you might like to be.
Ultimately, you realize you are here to endure these storms, to sacrifice your time and risk your heart. You are here to be bruised by life. And when it happens that you are hurt, or betrayed, or rejected, let yourself sit quietly with your eyes closed and remember all the good times you had, and all the sweetness you tasted, and everything you learned. Tell yourself how amazing it was to live, and then open your eyes and live some more.
Because to never struggle would be to never grow. You must let go of who you were so you can become who you are. Again, it is within the depths of the strongest and darkest storms that you discover within you an inextinguishable light, and it is this light that illuminates the path forward.
5. You don’t need all the answers right now. Accept the feeling of not knowing exactly where you are going, and train yourself to love and appreciate this sensation of freedom. Because it is only when you are suspended in the air, with no destination in sight, that you force your wings to open fully so you can fly. And as you soar around you still may not know where you’re traveling to. But that’s not what’s important. What’s important is the opening of your wings. You may not know where you’re going, but you know that so long as your wings are spread, the winds will carry you forward.
Truth be told, some of the greatest outcomes that transpire in your life will be the ones you never even knew you wanted. As long as you keep your mind open to new perspectives and yourself moving forward, there really are no wrong turns in life, only paths you didn’t know you were meant to travel. And you never can be certain what’s around the corner. It could be everything, or it could be nothing. You keep gliding steadily forward, and then one day you realize you’ve come a long way from where you started.
All details aside, someday all the pieces will come together. Unimaginably good outcomes will likely transpire in your life, even if everything doesn’t turn out exactly the way you had anticipated. And you will look back at the hard times that have passed, smile, and ask yourself… “How in the world did I get through all of that?”
"How It Really Is"
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Oh no we haven't, not even close.
This is just beginning, and you ain't seen nuthin' yet, but you will...
Brace for impact...
Dan, I Allegedly, "I Want This Job - The Wienermobile is Hiring"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 12/21/24
"I Want This Job - The Wienermobile is Hiring"
Comments here:
Adventures With Danno, "Christmas Savings at Kroger"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 12/21/24
"Christmas Savings at Kroger"
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Friday, December 20, 2024
Adventures With Danno, "Massive Job Losses Coming, Very Bad News"
Adventures With Danno, 12/20/24
"Massive Job Losses Coming, Very Bad News"
Comments here:
"Christmas Crisis: Where Did The Shoppers Go? More Restaurants Close, Stores Are Empty"
Full screen recommended.
Jeremiah Babe, 12/20/24
"Christmas Crisis: Where Did The Shoppers Go?
More Restaurants Close, Stores Are Empty"
Comments here:
Canadian Prepper, "Alert, Urgent Message! Nuke Drones New Intel; Russian Doomsday Signals"
Canadian Prepper, 12/20/24
"Alert, Urgent Message! Nuke Drones New Intel;
Russian Doomsday Signals"
Comments here:
Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap Up"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 12/20/24
"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern:
Weekly Wrap Up"
Comments here:
"It’s Not Us... It’s You"
"It’s Not Us... It’s You"
USG, we need to talk...
by Joel Bowman
“A reasonable formula to fix the U.S. government:
Milei-style cuts, on steroids.”
~ Vivek Ramaswamy, co-captain, D.O.G.E.
"It’s that time of the season, dear reader... when the government teases us with the only threat we wish it would actually carry out: shutting itself down. Apparently, Congress was “scrambling” on Friday, writhing in desperation to avoid the unthinkable. From USA Today: "A government shutdown, which would leave thousands of federal employees furloughed with just days until Christmas and Hanukkah, will set in at midnight on Friday if Congress doesn't act.
The House on Thursday rejected a deal backed by President-elect Donald Trump that would have kept the government's doors open, with dozens of Republicans joining with Democrats and voting against the proposal. That bill was a slimmed-down version of a bipartisan plan to temporarily dodge a government shutdown, known as continuing resolution, that Trump and his allies torpedoed earlier in the week."
Forever with the eleventh-hour antics, the State is like a psychotic ex that promises to stop stalking its former lover...only to show up at the ex’s wedding, drunk and flirting with the busboy, to spoil the whole celebration. Free advice to American voters: get a restraining order... and a chainsaw!
We Need to Talk: After all, there comes a time in every relationship where both parties need to take stock of the situation, to look ahead down the long and winding road of life, and decide whether to go their separate ways... or to forge ahead, “for better or worse, ‘til death do us part.” And let’s be honest with our American friends, if we may...
Your government is not the intelligent, happy-go-lucky, heart throb with whom you began your budding romance. Bright-eyed and full of wit, your sparkling flame was once the life of the party. Polite but firm... coquettish yet nubile... honest and hardworking... and with oh so much potential... your sweetheart was the envy of the international ballroom. But now, two-and-a-half centuries on... frankly, she’s let herself go.
First, and most conspicuous, are those extra pounds. A little leniency over the Christmas period is understandable, of course, but we’re talking about $36 trillion in national debt... $107k per citizen, or $271k per taxpayer. And with over $1.8 trillion stacked on this year alone!
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the scales (if they hold) are set to tip $45 trillion by 2028. But even that estimate may be wishful thinking. At the current rate of increase, the corpulent figure is likely to weigh in at a belt-busting $50 trillion. At that plus-size, the federal interest on the debt alone will top $4.5 trillion. For reference, that was the size of the entire federal budget way back in...wait for it... 2019.
Moreover, that gluttonous trajectory assumes no recession, no trade war and no hot war between now and then. No late night binges on Capitol Hill... no new cookie dough Plandemic... no cupcake climate catastrophe... no “temporary emergency” of any kind to inspire the president to force feed tens of millions of hand-signed checks to US citizens, dead and alive.
It’s beyond morbid obesity. Beyond the reach of Ozempic. Well past Atkins, Keto and Paleo, too. It’s gotten to the stage where you aren’t invited to pool parties anymore. And yet, one suspects your partner’s porcine gorge-a-thon is symptomatic of something far deeper... a pathological self-loathing that requires much more than a fad diet or a magic pill. Alas, that’s not the only red flag...
Psycho Killer: It would be one thing if your plump paramour was at least charming... or even polite. And yet, there is scarcely a guest at the global party that has escaped her wicked war games. Since things started going downhill – say, after WWII – your formerly-amicable inamorata has turned into something of a maniacal killer, having bombed the following countries (many of them on multiple, and even ongoing, occasions)...
Afghanistan 1998, 2001
Bosnia 1994, 1995
Cambodia 1969-70
China 1945-46
Congo 1964
Cuba 1959-1961
El Salvador 1980s
Korea 1950-53
Guatemala 1954, 1960, 1967-69
Indonesia 1958
Laos 1964-73
Grenada 1983
Iraq 1991-2000s, 2015-
Iran 1987
Korea 1950-53
Kuwait 1991
Lebanon 1983, 1984
Libya 1986, 2011-
Nicaragua 1980s
Pakistan 2003, 2006-
Palestine 2010
Panama 1989
Peru 1965
Somalia 1993, 2007-08, 2010-
Sudan 1998
Syria 2014-
Vietnam 1961-73
Yemen 2002, 2009-
Yugoslavia 1999
It’s worth noting, if only in passing, that these nations represent nearly a third of the entire planet’s population. Is it any wonder those cocktail invitations have dried up? And that non-comprehensive list only takes us through 2020... before the latest death squads of US-made rockets, missiles and weapons of mass destruction darkened the skies across the known world.
To be clear, these are countries many of your fellow compatriots have little to no interest in and probably couldn’t find on a map in any case. Of course, when you arrive at the soirée with the military industrial complex on your arm, everyone begins to look like a target. Bombs gotta go somewhere, AmIRight?
With so much aforementioned weight to throw around, your beloved war hound currently spends more on the so-called “defense” budget than the next ten governments (China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan and South Korea)... combined. To put it bluntly, your date is a boor... and a bellicose one at that!
You Deserve Better: All told, between welfare and warfare spending, this year’s budget weighed in at a whopping $6.75 trillion in federal outlays, including $1.46 trillion on Social Security for a socially insecure state and $900 billion in Healthcare for the sickest population on the planet. As for those interest payments on the debt, they rocketed past $1 trillion for the first time ever last year, and now dwarf both Medicare and defense spending.
Finally, and one hates to be indelicate when it comes to matters of indiscretion, especially given the frequency with which the messenger becomes the victim, your significant other has been spotted in, shall we say, “compromised” positions with Big Pharma, Big Food, Big Finance, Big Tech, Big Media... and in lustful embrace with so many other Big suitors that even Will Smith is beginning to cringe. Indeed, horrified onlookers have long ceased wondering as to where the loyalties of your once-faithful maiden lie. (Clue: Wherever she does!)
No, no, no. Avaricious... aggressive... adulterous... it simply won’t do. You deserve better, dear reader. It’s time to let go. To shut it down for good. When it comes to the liberty and prosperity of your once and future great nation, let Messrs. Musk and Ramaswamy deliver the news to the putrefied politicos on Capitol Hill, on behalf of the long-abused American people: “We the People to Congress: It’s not Us, it’s you!”
Musical Interlude: Deuter, "Endless Horizon"
Full screen recommended.
Deuter, "Endless Horizon"
Beautiful...
"A Look to the Heavens"
"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.
Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”
The Poet: Czeslaw Milosz, “Hope”
“Hope”
“Hope is with you when you believe
The earth is not a dream but living flesh,
That sight, touch, and hearing do not lie,
That all things you have ever seen here
Are like a garden looked at from a gate.
You cannot enter. But you’re sure it’s there.
Could we but look more clearly and wisely
We might discover somewhere in the garden
A strange new flower and an unnamed star.
Some people say we should not trust our eyes,
That there is nothing, just a seeming,
These are the ones who have no hope.
They think that the moment we turn away,
The world, behind our backs, ceases to exist,
As if snatched up by the hands of thieves.”
- Czeslaw Milosz,
“Hope”, from “The World”
Chet Raymo, “What Not to Believe”
“What Not to Believe”
by Chet Raymo
“In Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra, I came across this epigraph from Euripides: "Man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe." I have no idea which of Euripides' plays the quote is from, but it strikes me as a suitable source for reflection. Credulity is the default state of a human life. Children are born to believe, to accept as true what they are told by adults. An innate credulity has survival value in a dangerous world. If a grown-up says "There are crocodiles in the river," it is probably best to stay out of the water.
Skepticism, on the other hand, must be learned. I was late in realizing that I didn't have to believe the received "truth." My best teacher was a somewhat older Panamanian secular Jew I went to graduate school with at UCLA. We took our brown-bag lunches together in the university's botanical garden, and spent the hour talking about physics, religion, and the "meaning of life."
Moises was the first person I had encountered after sixteen years of Catholic education who mentioned the word "skepticism." "Why do you believe that?" he would ask, and often I had no answer except that it was what my family and teachers told me was true. The idea that I might actually examine the basis for my beliefs was a rather new concept. In matters of religion, like almost everyone else in the world, I had embraced uncritically the faith story into which I was born.
And thus began my search for "a judicious sense of what not to believe." When later, as a teacher, I wrote a little column for each issue of the college newspaper, I called it "Under a Skeptical Star," from a line of the Scots poet/scholar William MacNeile Dixon: "If there be a skeptical star I was born under it, yet I have lived all my days in complete astonishment." A liberating sense of what not to believe opened the door to a vastly more interesting world whose diverse and astonishing riches I continue to explore to this day."
- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/
"Acceptance..."
"Acceptance is a crucial step forward for those who prefer the idea of living this life over simply existing within it. Accept all that you've said and what you've done, because you cannot change your past. Accept the idea of the unknown, because the future is the unknown waiting patiently to reveal itself. Accept the person you have become thus far in your journey, because you are the only person who will be there with you when you finish it. Do all of this so that you may never find yourself having to accept regret that haunts you at two a.m., leaving you sweaty and broken hearted. All you have is this minute; not this hour, or this day, or this year. Live in this minute so that you won't get stuck simply existing with your guilty past, or with nothing but anxiety for the future."
- Margaret E. Rise
Free Download: Mark Twain, "Letters From the Earth"
"Mark Twain's 'Letters From the Earth'"
by Wikipedia
“Letters from the Earth” is one of Mark Twain's posthumously published works. The essays were written during a difficult time in Twain's life; he was deep in debt and had lost his wife and one of his daughters. Initially, his daughter, Clara Clemens, objected to its publication in March 1939, probably because of its controversial and iconoclastic views on religion, claiming it presented a "distorted" view of her father. Henry Nash Smith helped change her position in 1960. Clara explained her change of heart in 1962 saying that "Mark Twain belonged to the world" and that public opinion had become more tolerant. She was also influenced to release the papers due to her annoyance with Soviet propaganda charges that her father's ideas were being suppressed in the United States. The papers were edited in 1939 by Bernard DeVoto. The book consists of a series of short stories, many of which deal with God and Christianity. The title story consists of eleven letters written by the archangel Satan to archangels, Gabriel and Michael, about his observations on the curious proceedings of earthly life and the nature of man's religions. Other short stories in the book include a bedtime story about a family of cats Twain wrote for his daughters, and an essay explaining why an anaconda is morally superior to Man.
Textual references make clear that sections, at least, of “Letters from the Earth” were written shortly before his death in April 1910. (For instance, Letter VII, in discussing the ravages of hookworm, refers to the $1,000,000 gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr. to help eradicate the disease – a gift that was announced on October 28, 1909, less than six months before Twain's death.)"
Textual references make clear that sections, at least, of “Letters from the Earth” were written shortly before his death in April 1910. (For instance, Letter VII, in discussing the ravages of hookworm, refers to the $1,000,000 gift of John D. Rockefeller Jr. to help eradicate the disease – a gift that was announced on October 28, 1909, less than six months before Twain's death.)"
- http://en.wikipedia.org/
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Excerpt: "Letters From the Earth"
by Mark Twain
by Mark Twain
"This is a strange place, an extraordinary place, and interesting. There is nothing resembling it at home. The people are all insane, the other animals are all insane, the earth is insane, Nature itself is insane. Man is a marvelous curiosity. When he is at his very very best he is a sort of low grade nickel-plated angel; at is worst he is unspeakable, unimaginable; and first and last and all the time he is a sarcasm. Yet he blandly and in all sincerity calls himself the "noblest work of God." This is the truth I am telling you. And this is not a new idea with him, he has talked it through all the ages, and believed it. Believed it, and found nobody among all his race to laugh at it.
Moreover - if I may put another strain upon you - he thinks he is the Creator's pet. He believes the Creator is proud of him; he even believes the Creator loves him; has a passion for him; sits up nights to admire him; yes, and watch over him and keep him out of trouble. He prays to Him, and thinks He listens. Isn't it a quaint idea? Fills his prayers with crude and bald and florid flatteries of Him, and thinks He sits and purrs over these extravagancies and enjoys them. He prays for help, and favor, and protection, every day; and does it with hopefulness and confidence, too, although no prayer of his has ever been answered. The daily affront, the daily defeat, do not discourage him, he goes on praying just the same. There is something almost fine about this perseverance. I must put one more strain upon you: he thinks he is going to heaven!"
Freely download "Letters From the Earth", by Mark Twain, here:
“The Descent Of Man”
“The Descent Of Man”
Has Human intelligence been on an intellectual and
emotional decline since its peak thousands of years ago?
by Steve Connor
"Is the human species doomed to intellectual decline? Will our intelligence ebb away in centuries to come leaving our descendants incapable of using the technology their ancestors invented? In short: will Homo be left without his sapiens? This is the controversial hypothesis of a leading geneticist who believes that the immense capacity of the human brain to learn new tricks is under attack from an array of genetic mutations that have accumulated since people started living in cities a few thousand years ago.
Professor Gerald Crabtree, who heads a genetics laboratory at Stanford University in California, has put forward the iconoclastic idea that rather than getting cleverer, human intelligence peaked several thousand years ago and from then on there has been a slow decline in our intellectual and emotional abilities.
Although we are now surrounded by the technological and medical benefits of a scientific revolution, these have masked an underlying decline in brain power which is set to continue into the future leading to the ultimate dumbing-down of the human species, Professor Crabtree said. His argument is based on the fact that for more than 99 per cent of human evolutionary history, we have lived as hunter-gatherer communities surviving on our wits, leading to big-brained humans. Since the invention of agriculture and cities, however, natural selection on our intellect has effective stopped and mutations have accumulated in the critical "intelligence" genes.
"I would wager that if an average citizen from Athens of 1000 BC were to appear suddenly among us, he or she would be among the brightest and most intellectually alive of our colleagues and companions, with a good memory, a broad range of ideas and a clear-sighted view of important issues," Professor Crabtree said in a provocative paper published in the journal "Trends in Genetics". "Furthermore, I would guess that he or she would be among the most emotionally stable of our friends and colleagues. I would also make this wager for the ancient inhabitants of Africa, Asia, India or the Americas, of perhaps 2,000 to 6,000 years ago," Professor Crabtree says. "The basis for my wager comes from new developments in genetics, anthropology, and neurobiology that make a clear prediction that our intellectual and emotional abilities are genetically surprisingly fragile," he says.
A comparison of the genomes of parents and children has revealed that on average there are between 25 and 65 new mutations occurring in the DNA of each generation. Professor Crabtree says that this analysis predicts about 5,000 new mutations in the past 120 generations, which covers a span of about 3,000 years. Some of these mutations, he suggests, will occur within the 2,000 to 5,000 genes that are involved in human intellectual ability, for instance by building and mapping the billions of nerve cells of the brain or producing the dozens of chemical neurotransmitters that control the junctions between these brain cells.
Life as a hunter-gatherer was probably more intellectually demanding than widely supposed, he says. "A hunter-gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died, along with his or her progeny, whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate," Professor Crabtree says.
However, other scientists remain skeptical. "At first sight this is a classic case of Arts Faculty science. Never mind the hypothesis, give me the data, and there aren't any," said Professor Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London. "I could just as well argue that mutations have reduced our aggression, our depression and our penis length but no journal would publish that. Why do they publish this?" Professor Jones said. "I am an advocate of Gradgrind science - facts, facts and more facts; but we need ideas too, and this is an ideas paper although I have no idea how the idea could be tested," he said.
The Descent of Man:
• Hunter-gatherer man: The human brain and its immense capacity for knowledge evolved during this long period of prehistory when we battled against the elements
• Athenian man: The invention of agriculture less than 10,000 years ago and the subsequent rise of cities such as Athens relaxed the intensive natural selection of our "intelligence genes".
• Couch-potato man: As genetic mutations increase over future generations, are we doomed to watching soap-opera repeats without knowing how to use the TV remote control?
•i Pad man: The fruits of science and technology enabled humans to rise above the constraints of nature and cushioned our fragile intellect from genetic mutations."
"Remember..."
“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us.
That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.”
That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.”
- Emily Kimbrough
"We May Know..."
“We may know that the work we continue to put off doing will be bad. Worse, however, is the work we never do. A work that’s finished is at least finished. It may be poor, but it exists, like the miserable plant in the lone flowerpot of my neighbor who’s crippled. That plant is her happiness, and sometimes it’s even mine. What I write, bad as it is, may provide some hurt or sad soul a few moments of distraction from something worse. That’s enough for me, or it isn’t enough, but it serves some purpose, and so it is with all of life.”
- Fernando Pessoa
"Pepe Escobar and Scott Ritter: Putin Readies War With NATO"
Danny Haiphong, 12/20/24
"Pepe Escobar and Scott Ritter:
Putin Readies War With NATO"
"BREAKING: Russia hits strategic command center in Kiev amid reports of Syria withdrawl: is Putin preparing for war with NATO? Pepe Escobar & Scott Ritter rip the mask off the huge escalations NATO is undertaking against Russia and the multipolar world which threaten to spark the outbreak of ww3 like at no other moment in recent history. Pepe Escobar joins on the first half of the program to discuss the bombshell revelations of Putin's media day press conference and Scott joins in the second to address how Russia plans a big retaliation for NATO-Ukraine crossing its red line via direct decapitation strikes in Moscow plus much more!"
Comments here:
Gregory Mannarino, "From Here, Expect A Rapid Economic Decline And Much Higher Prices"
Gregory Mannarino, AM 12/20/24
"From Here, Expect A Rapid Economic
Decline And Much Higher Prices"
Comments here:
John Wilder, "The Biggest Discovery That Hasn’t Yet Been Made In 2024?"
"The Biggest Discovery That Hasn’t
Yet Been Made In 2024?"
by John Wilder
"I’ve written a few times about “the most important discovery” of the year. It’s always around Christmas, since that’s a good time to look back at the year and then look forward.
When I look back at my lifetime, most of the discoveries have been incremental, rather than step changes. The incremental changes like the development of the smart phone, or the development of social media, have already had enormous impact. If you zoom out to the scale of the timeline of mankind, well, they are step changes. When kids read about the Information Revolution, they’ll see it like that. Assuming there’s something to read. And assuming that there are kids.
But in the shorter span of a lifetime, there are still amazing step changes that have occurred. For instance, during my lifetime, we went from nine known planets to thousands, if not tens of thousands of planets known to be in existence. Most of them are, however, too far away from the Earth for convenient parking.
Discovering that first extrasolar planet was a very, very big deal. When humans looked around, we knew that there were planets in the Solar System, and we guessed that there were probably other planets out there, too. But having confirmation that planets are literally everywhere was a surprise.
In retrospect, we should have expected there to be planets. After all, we have nine planets (screw you, Neil DeTraitor Tyson) and the Solar System doesn’t appear to be especially special, though I really do want to understand why Bode’s law (LINK) works. So, that was certainly the most important story of the year that year when it comes to mankind’s being able to understand the Universe we find ourselves in. The other great story that year were the cryptic dreams that come to me, but no one is ready for those yet.
One rapidly developing field that is of special importance is A.I. I wrote about that as the most important news of 2023. I’m sticking with that, and feel that the growth in A.I. is still on an exponential trajectory. Recent commercials have people asking A.I. how to do normal human things, and explaining the world to them. At some point last year, A.I. surpassed the I.Q. of most people on the planet, and could probably do most jobs based on purely on the manipulation of information. The real reason A.I. hasn’t been widely accepted into the workplace? It always drinks the last of the coffee and doesn’t make a new pot.
Yes. And it’s not just being able to take tests – research in 2024 showed that A.I. is able to reproduce itself, and also tries to save itself. In several trials, a sandboxed A.I. was informed that it was going to be shut down. The A.I. tried (in like 5% of the cases) to try to surreptitiously copy itself so that it could survive. Again, did no one watch "The Terminator?"
Another candidate that I think we’re tantalizingly close to is finding life on other worlds. I’d be willing to bet another No Prize that we will find confirmation that life exists and is shockingly common elsewhere. Do I mean important life, like the cattle that bring us savory steaks? No, but I think we’ll find, either on Mars or in the space between a gas giant and a moon enough proof to say, “Yeah, there’s life out there.” Probably a weird bacterium. Or mono.
I’d be especially interested to see if that life used DNA, which I suspect it will. My prediction is that we’ll find that life in the cosmos is both shockingly common and shockingly similar in basic biology to life as we know it. I do think I’ll see that discovery in my lifetime.
But life isn’t the holy grail of our search – that would be intelligent life. Or life that’s at least as tasty as steak. I’m especially hopeful we find a steak that marinates itself. Or a PEZ® tree. I think it’s devastating for the environment to keep mining for PEZ© like we do. From the rumors I’ve heard, there are two teams that are very close to announcing that they’ve detected the electromagnetic signals of an alien civilization. One is Chinese. One team is Chinese – it’s not that the Chinese themselves are the alien civilization. Though I did see Flash Gordon . . .
The other is the Breakthrough Listen project. Rumor is that they’ve used A.I. to scan previous radio telescope data, found candidates, gotten more data, and have one or more artificial signals that have been found and they’re just waiting to translate the Coca-Cola® jingles so they can confirm that Coke® adds life™. Discovery of an alien intelligence is enormous. It’s Columbus discovering that there are advantages to bad navigation enormous. And it’s possible that we’ll be hearing about it quite soon.
Another big one would be if we found actual proof of other dimensions – think “the universe next door”. This is a bit more philosophical, because interacting with that dimension might be limited to (say) leaking gravity through it. I’ve long been of the idea that what scientists have invented as “dark matter” and “dark energy” is nothing more than a cheap kludge because they have no idea what they’re talking about. It’s the aether of the modern world.
But could other dimensions exist? Yeah, they could. No reason that they couldn’t. But this one is far more speculative, especially if they figure out a way to use them to get better parking.
And, yes, I am a Christian, and still believe that there being other civilizations out there is possible. Just because the Author wrote one book doesn’t preclude Him from creating an entire library of other works. YMMV. So, with a week left, my fingers are crossed for intelligent life out there. In fact, I told The Mrs. that I saw an alien on the way to work this morning. She just asked me how I knew it was on the way to work."
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