Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/6/26
"Worldwide Famine Is Being Engineered,
Mass Starvation and WW3"
Comments here:
So, we rise from the rubble...
StatCounter
Saturday, June 6, 2026
"US - Israel, Iran War, 6/6/26""
Professor Jiang Xueqin, 6/6/26
"Middle East Crisis Escalates Again -
What Comes Next Will Shock You"
"Just when it seemed the Middle East was gradually stabilizing, a fresh surge of tensions has re-emerged across the region, sparking renewed concerns over security, energy stability, and the shifting global balance of power. In this lecture, Professor Jiang Xueqin explores the deeper geopolitical drivers behind the latest escalation, showing how events that appear isolated are often connected to broader structural changes unfolding across the region. This analysis goes beyond partisan narratives - focusing instead on strategic incentives, regional power dynamics, and the long-term competition shaping the future of the Middle East."
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o
Scott Ritter, 6/6/26
"The Final Shock" - Iran Halts World Oil
as Israel's Fatal Blunder Breaks Middle East"
"The global energy architecture and the final remnants of Western military dominance have officially collapsed into total chaos as a synchronized multi-front escalation completely paralyzes allied command nodes across the Middle East. Today in our emergency broadcast with legendary military analyst and former United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter, we analyze the devastating structural shockwaves caused by Iran’s unprecedented maritime bombshell over the Strait of Hormuz and the simultaneous violent destruction of the Lebanon ceasefire framework. Scott Ritter links the heavily classified troop movement logs and corporate media-censored naval tracking data to reveal how Donald Trump’s administration has been backed into an inescapable strategic corner, while unilateral frontline actions have triggered a catastrophic chain reaction that allied air defense shields are fundamentally unequipped to contain.
Alongside host Mario, we look directly behind the desperately filtered stability propaganda of transatlantic media conglomerates to dissect the raw physical limitations of Western interceptor frameworks when challenged by an integrated saturation matrix. We dive deep into Scott Ritter’s brutal and uncompromising defense realism, demonstrating with raw industrial numbers why the attempt to enforce a unilateral dictate has completely backfired, leaving thousands of forward-deployed Western personnel and critical maritime logistics networks totally defenseless against an incoming asymmetric response. Watch this urgent and unfiltered intelligence briefing until the very single second to understand why the traditional framework of unipolar global enforcement has reached its definitive military expiration date, how this unprecedented multi-theater panic operates in real time across broken decision-making sectors, and why this historic crisis marks the permanent and violent destruction of Western hegemony."
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o
Larry Johnson, 6/6/26
"They Think Iran Has It, And That Changes Everything"
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Jeremiah Babe, "The FED Won't Be Able To Save You This Time"
Jeremiah Babe, 6/6/26
"The FED Won't Be Able To Save You This Time"
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o
"Something Happened With The Food in America And You Can Feel It Every Day"
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist. 6/6/26
"Something Happened With The Food in
America And You Can Feel It Every Day"
"Something happened to the food in America, and your body knew before you did. Come home from a trip and your stomach turns on you in three days. Food coloring strong enough to dye human hair. Chocolate that's barely chocolate anymore. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. In this video we break down what's really happening to the American food supply, from lab-grown cocoa replacing real cacao, to gene-edited produce hitting shelves without a label, to glyphosate and skincare ingredients nobody ever voted on. The pattern underneath is always the same. A handful of corporations control what's on the shelf, and the only choice left is to read every label or pay double. It's why more Americans are walking away from the grocery store and starting to grow their own food. Have you noticed it where you shop? The strange bread, the fake-looking chicken, the prices that won't stop climbing? Drop it in the comments. And if this opened your eyes, subscribe for more."
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"These cosmic clouds have blossomed 1,300 light-years away, in the fertile starfields of the constellation Cepheus. Called the Iris Nebula, NGC 7023 is not the only nebula to evoke the imagery of flowers. Still, this deep telescopic image shows off the Iris Nebula's range of colors and symmetries, embedded in surrounding fields of interstellar dust.
Within the Iris itself, dusty nebular material surrounds a hot, young star. The dominant color of the brighter reflection nebula is blue, characteristic of dust grains reflecting starlight. Central filaments of the reflection nebula glow with a faint reddish photoluminesence as some dust grains effectively convert the star's invisible ultraviolet radiation to visible red light. Infrared observations indicate that this nebula contains complex carbon molecules known as PAHs. The dusty blue petals of the Iris Nebula span about six light-years."
"I'm Sure..."
"I'm sure the universe is full of intelligent life.
It's just been too intelligent to come here."
"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the
Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying."
- Arthur C. Clarke
Chet Raymo, “Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”
“Very, Very, Very, Very, Very...”
by Chet Raymo
"In a short story that was published posthumously in the New Yorker, the inestimable Primo Levi meditated on the limits of language. The story was called “The Tranquil Star.” He writes "The star was very big and very hot, and its weight was enormous," and realizes immediately that the adjectives have failed him: “For a discussion of stars our language is inadequate and seems laughable, as if someone were trying to plow with a feather. It's a language that was born with us, suitable for describing objects more or less as large and long-lasting as we are; it has our dimensions, it's human. It doesn't go beyond what our senses tell us.
Until fairly recently in human history, there was nothing smaller than a scabies mite, writes Levi, and therefore no adjective to describe it. Nothing bigger than the sea or sky. Nothing hotter than fire. We can add modifiers: very big, very small, very hot. Or use adjectives of dubious superlativeness: enormous, colossal, extraordinary. But, really, these feeble stretchings of language don't take us very far in grasping the very, very, very extraordinarily diminutive or spectacularly colossal dimensions of atomic matter or cosmic space and time. We can overcome the limitations of language, Levi say, "only with a violent effort of the imagination."
I spent more than forty years trying to find ways to violently stretch the imaginations of my students (and myself) to accommodate the dimensions of the universe revealed by science. I would project onto a huge screen a photograph of a firestorm on the Sun, then superimpose a scale-sized Earth, which fit comfortably inside a loop of solar fire. I would take the class into the College Quad here near Boston, where I had set up a basketball to represent the Sun, then gathered 100 feet away with a pinhead Earth; we walked together with our pin in the great annual journey of the Earth, and looked through a telescope at the marble-sized Jupiter than I had previously installed at the other end of the long Quad (the next closest star system would have been a couple of basketballs in Hawaii). We walked geologic timelines that took us from one end of the campus to the other.
In one of my Globe essays I used this analogy: “Imagine the human DNA as a strand of sewing thread. On this scale, the DNA in the 23 pairs of chromosomes in a typical human cell would be about 150 miles long, with about 600 nucleotide pairs per inch. That is, the DNA in a single cell is equivalent to 1000 spools of sewing thread, representing two copies of the genetic code. Take all that thread - the 1000 spools worth - and crumple it into 46 wads (the chromosomes). Stuff the wads into a shoe box (the cell nucleus) along with - oh, say enough chicken soup to fill the box. Toss the shoe box into a steamer trunk (the cell), and fill the rest of the trunk with more soup. Take the steamer trunk with its contents and shrink it down to an invisibly small object, smaller than the point of a pin. Multiply that tiny object by a trillion and you have the trillion cells of the human body, each with its full complement of DNA.”
Or this description from 'Waking Zero': “The track of the Prime Meridian across England from Peace Haven in the south to the mouth of the River Humber in the north is nearly 200 miles. If that distance is taken to represent the 13.7 billion year history of the universe, as we understand it today, then all of recorded human history is less than a single step. The entire story I have told in this book, from the Alexandrian astronomers and geographers to the present-day astronomers who launch telescopes into space, would fit neatly into a single footprint. If the 200 miles of the meridian track is taken to represent the distance to the most distant objects we observe with our telescopes, then a couple of steps would take us across the Milky Way Galaxy. A mote of dust from my shoe is large enough to contain not only our own solar system but many neighboring stars.”
But as hard as one tries, the scale of these things escape us. If one could truly comprehend what we are seeing when we look, say, at the Hubble Ultra Deep Field Photo above, which I have done my best to convey to myself and others in a dozen ways, it would surely shake to the core some of our most cherished beliefs. Just as our language is contrived on a human scale, so too are our gods.”
"A Reasonable End"
"A Reasonable End"
by The ZMan
"Did cavemen feel guilt? Shame? It may sound like a stupid and pointless question, but it is a place to start when trying to understand the current crisis. While we cannot know if primitive man felt things like shame, we can guess. In fact, that is the point of the Genesis story of Adam and Eve. Shame and guilt were not natural to men until introduced by devilish forces. At least that is what the authors of the Adam and Eve story surmised when trying to answer those questions.
To feel guilt one must have a guilty mind when committing some act, which means you knew the act was wrong when you did it. You can also feel guilt for having unknowingly broken a rule but learning after the fact that you broke the rule and should have known you were breaking the rule. Shame works the same way. It is impossible to feel guilt for having broken a rule if you never know about the rule or you reject the legitimacy of the rule or the authority that made the rule.
Our cavemen therefore could only feel guilt or shame if in their group there existed a set of normative rules from a recognized authority. Given the simplicity of their life and the demands of it, they probably had few rules on individual conduct. Those that did exist were most likely related to the preservation of the group. Males had to be good hunters and not avoid pulling their weight in the hunt. Members had to sacrifice themselves for the good of the group. That was about it for their morality.
To answer the question at the start, the sense of guilt and shame was probably as primitive as the moral code that existed within the group. Given that early bands of humans were surely based on blood, as in they were extended families, not propositional collections of strangers, things like guilt and shame arose from the biological loyal that lies at the heart of man. We abide by the rules of our kind because they are our family, and we have a natural loyalty to them.
This works fine in small groups, but once small groups started to band together to defend hunting grounds and defensible shelters, something more was needed to extend that natural sense of loyalty to the whole group. The trading of women, which we know was a part of early man’s existence, was one solution. This binds the groups by blood and therefore tapped into biological loyalty. The human sciences tell us that the formation of larger human groups was biological.
This works with a federation of kin groups, but once human settlements reached a large enough size, this was no longer practical, so something else arrived. The solution to the limits of blood was religion, specifically gods. Distantly related people may not feel a great loyalty to one another, but those protected by the same god can feel loyalty to one another in service to that god. Guilt and shame over breaking god’s rules works just as well as guilt and shame over harming the family.
A crude way of summarizing this is we went from, “We are the sons of Grog and this is how the sons of Grog live” to “We are the people who live by this portion of the river, and this is how we live.” The next logical step was, “We are the followers of sky god, and this is how we live.” This allows for the group to expand, as new members merely must accept sky god and be accepted by sky god. It harnesses guilt and shame in the service of a group whose size extends beyond blood.
While the mental state of early man is a bit of a guess for us, we do know that humans organized around their gods. This was the state of the ancient world, about which we know a great deal. While what led to this stage of human development is a bit of guesswork, we know that mankind arrived at this point. By the time there are fully formed gods, there are fully formed moral codes attached to them that define large groups of people with a sense of identity.
That does not solve the puzzle of this age. We know that folk religions eventually gave way to universal religions. About ninety percent of humans belong to a universal religion, which means their religion is open to everyone. You do not have to be born into Hinduism to be a Hindu. Only a tiny portion of humanity sticks with folk religions like Judaism which have a biological component. Everyone else is open to people outside the blood, as long as they accept the moral claims of the faith.
Of course, universalist religion did not end human conflict. In fact, they probably made it worse as the base assumption of universalist religion is that there is only one way to live because there is only one moral authority. Once you accept that your god is the only god, it means the other gods are false. Worse yet, those gods are an afront to your god and they must be eliminated. The way to do that is to conquer the people who are offering up the false god as a challenge to the true god.
The modern West has complicated this further by removing God entirely from the Christian moral framework and replacing him with a mirror called reason. It is reason that tells us that there must be one way of organizing society. It is reason that tells us there must be one moral code. Therefore, it is reason that tells us that alternative ways of organizing society must be false. The same is true for alternative morality, which like a false god, is an afront to reason.
If you think about it, this iteration of the Great Awakening has been little more than the believers of one god attacking those who either reject their god or worship another God, like the God of the Bible. Not only do they hate your lack of guilt over violating their codes, but they also feel guilty for not imposing those codes on you. The followers of the god of reason ended up at witch burning as the solution to heresy. They seek salvation through the spilling of blood.
The crisis in the West is a crisis of reason. We have reasoned ourselves to a dead end where shame and guilt are tied to the assertion that there must be only one moral authority, and it emits only one moral code. Those who must have the warm embrace of faith now target their sense of guilt and shame toward their own kind, for the sin of not embracing what they believe is the only moral code. The rest are left to defend themselves and civilization from the true believers.
The question at the heart of the crisis is can the fury of these zealots be reoriented toward a folk religion or even a passive universalism? If the answer is no, then how can society defend against them? Another way of stating it is, can the cancer be put into remission or must it be removed? It is a terrible question that no one wants to face, but the West must face it. The god of reason is either reformed or removed along with her followers as that is the only reasonable thing to do."
The Poet: Iris Tree, "The Complex Life"
"The Complex Life"
"I know it to be true that those who live
As do the grasses and the lilies of the field
Receiving joy from Heaven, sweetly yield
Their joy to Earth, and taking Beauty, give.
But we are gathered for the looms of Fate
That Time with ever-turning multiplying wheels
Spins into complex patterns and conceals
His huge invention with forms intricate.
Each generation blindly fills the plan,
A sorry muddle or an inspiration of God
With many processes from out the sod,
The Earth and Heaven are mingled and made man.
We must be tired and sleepless, gaily sad,
Frothing like waves in clamorous confusion,
A chemistry of subtle interfusion,
Experiments of genius that the ignorant call mad.
We spell the crimes of our unruly days,
We see a fabled Arcady in our mind,
We crave perfection that we may not find.
Time laughs within the clock and Destiny plays.
You peasants and you hermits simple livers!
So picturesquely pure all unconcerned
While we give up our bodies to be burned,
And dredge for treasure in the muddy rivers.
We drink and die and sell ourselves for power,
We hunt with treacherous steps and stealthy knife,
We make a gaudy havoc of our life
And live a thousand ages in an hour.
Our loves are spoilt by introspective guile,
We vivisect our souls with elaborate tools,
We dance in couples to the tune of fools,
And dream of harassed continents the while.
Subconscious visions hold us and we fashion
Delirious verses tortured statues spasms of paint,
Make cryptic perorations of complaint,
Inverted religion and perverted passion.
But since we are children of this age,
In curious ways discovering salvation,
I will not quit my muddled generation,
But ever plead for Beauty in this rage.
Although I know that Nature’s bounty yields
Unto simplicity a beautiful content,
Only when battle breaks me and my strength is spent
Will I give back my body to the fields."
- Iris Tree
o
"These 12 Biggest Chains In America That Will Disappear In The Months Ahead"
Full screen recommended.
Behind The States, 6/6/26
"These 12 Biggest Chains In America
That Will Disappear In The Months Ahead"
"Many of America's most recognizable retail and restaurant chains are facing growing challenges as consumer habits, economic conditions, and industry trends continue to evolve. In this video, we take a closer look at 12 major chains that are closing locations, scaling back operations, or facing uncertain futures in the months ahead. From changing shopping behaviors and rising operating costs to increased competition and financial pressures, we break down the factors affecting these well-known brands. Some of these names have been part of American life for decades, making their struggles especially surprising. Watch until the end to see which chains made the list and learn why so many businesses are being forced to adapt in today's rapidly changing marketplace. Some of these closures and downsizing efforts may be far more significant than most people realize."
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"Americans Are Running Out Of Money, CEOs Sound The Alarm"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports
"Americans Are Running Out Of Money,
CEOs Sound The Alarm"
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o
Full screen recommended.
Smart Stockpile Pantry, 6/6/26
"Walmart Manager Just Told Me These
7 Foods Will Cost 3x More by June"
"Grocery prices aren’t just rising - they may be entering a new phase that many shoppers haven’t noticed yet. From eggs and coffee to ground beef, olive oil, rice, and seafood, several everyday essentials are facing pressure from supply shortages, disease outbreaks, import costs, weather disruptions, and long-term production challenges. Here’s the thing… most people react after prices jump. But by then, supplier contracts, import costs, and wholesale pricing decisions have already been made.
This video breaks down 9 food categories that could see some of the biggest price increases in the coming months and explains the real factors driving those changes. What most people don’t realize is that food inflation isn’t affecting every product equally. Some items face temporary disruptions, while others are dealing with structural problems that may take years to resolve. We’ll also cover practical ways families can prepare without panic buying or overspending. The reality is simple: informed shoppers make better decisions. Understanding these trends today could help you save money tomorrow."
Comments here:
"Russian Trams Just Got Better"
Amazing what a sane, civilized society can achieve.
Not that we'd know anything about that...
Full screen recommended.
Travelling With Russell, 6/6/
"Russian Trams Just Got Better"
"What is it like to travel on Trams in Russia? Join me on an adventure to travel on the world's longest diametrical tram route. The Moscow Tram Diameter Line T2 holds the world record. Stretching 33km through the centre of Moscow to the outer suburbs."
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"10 US Fast Food Restaurants You Must Avoid... And 3 That Are Family Safe"
Full screen recommended.
The Unfolded States, 6/6/26
"10 US Fast Food Restaurants You Must Avoid...
And 3 That Are Family Safe"
"There's an ingredient used by one of America's biggest fast food chains that most customers would never expect to see on a menu. And that's only the beginning.Most people assume fast food chains are basically the same. Familiar logos. Familiar prices. Millions of customers return year after year. But once you start looking at ingredient lists, health inspection records, food safety incidents, and the corporations behind some of these brands, the differences become much harder to ignore. And in many cases, what customers believe they're getting isn't always the full story.
Some of these chains serve millions of people every single day. But when you look closer at how ingredients are sourced, how restaurants are operated, and how corporate priorities influence decision making, a pattern begins to emerge that many longtime customers never expected to see. A few of the findings on this list may genuinely surprise you.The most surprising part? One of the chains most commonly associated with being a healthier choice ended up ranking near the very top of our countdown once we looked beyond the marketing and focused on the facts. Let's get started."
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Dan, I Allegedly, "When Good News Is Bad News"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 6/6/26
"When Good News Is Bad News"
"Why did a strong jobs report send the stock market tumbling? In today's i Allegedly, Dan breaks down the strange reality of today's economy where positive economic news can trigger fears of higher interest rates, fewer Federal Reserve rate cuts, and increased pressure on housing, borrowing, and personal finances. We'll discuss the latest jobs numbers, stock market volatility, mortgage rates, real estate trends, inflation concerns, and why many investors are questioning the true health of the economy. We also cover rising housing inventory cancellations, business closures, airline bankruptcies, consumer spending concerns, layoffs, and what these economic signals mean for everyday Americans. If you're concerned about the economy, the stock market, inflation, real estate, retirement accounts, or protecting your finances during uncertain times, this episode of i Allegedly is packed with insights and discussion about what's really happening behind the headlines."
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"Life..."
"Life is painful and messed up. It gets complicated at the worst of times, and sometimes you have no idea where to go or what to do. Lots of times people just let themselves get lost, dropping into a wide open, huge abyss. But that's why we have to keep trying. We have to push through all that hurts us, work past all our memories that are haunting us. Sometimes the things that hurt us are the things that make us strongest. A life without experience, in my opinion, is no life at all. And that's why I tell everyone that, even when it hurts, never stop yourself from living."
- Alysha Speer
"The joke was thinking you were ever really in charge of your life. You pressed your oar down into the water to direct the canoe, but it was the current that shot you through the rapids. You just hung on and hoped not to hit a rock or a whirlpool."
- Scott Turow
"Life's funny, chucklehead. You only get one and you don't want to throw it away. But you can't really live it at all unless you're willing to give it up for the things you love. If you're not at least willing to die for something - something that really matters - in the end you die for nothing."
- Andrew Klavan
Native Elder, "Why You Shouldn't Be Afraid of Your Final Years"
Full screen recommended.
Native Elder,
"Why You Shouldn't Be Afraid of Your Final Years"
"My Little Wish, The Smallest Wish That Meant Everything... A Lifetime Together"
Full screen recommended.
Wonder Spirits,
"My Little Wish, The Smallest Wish
That Meant Everything... A Lifetime Together"
"I Didn’t Get Weak, I Got Tired"
Full screen recommended.
Delta King's Blues,
"I Didn’t Get Weak, I Got Tired"
"Don’t mistake worn out for worn down. “I Didn’t Get Weak, I Got Tired” is a proud, slow-burning Delta King’s Blues tune about carrying weight for years and still standing - even if the shoulders ache, for the ones who kept pushing long after it got heavy. A deep, steady acoustic guitar lays it out plain and honest. The harmonica blows low and resolute, like a man drawing breath before he keeps going. The groove moves patient and strong, built for endurance instead of applause. This is strength without shouting. For folks who worked hard, loved hard, and simply need a moment - not sympathy. Tired don’t mean finished."
"Not Such An Easy Business..."
“Over the years you get to see what a struggle life is for most people, how tough it is, how easy it is to be judgmental and criticize and stand outside of situations and impart your wisdom and judgment. But over the decades I've got more tolerant of people's flaws and mistakes. Everybody makes a lot of them. When you're younger you feel: "Hey, this person is evil" or "This person is a jerk" or stupid or "What's wrong with them?" Then you go through life and you think: "Well, it's not so easy." There's a lot of mystery and suffering and complication. Everybody's out there trying to do the best they can. And it's not such an easy business.”
- Woody Allen
Friday, June 5, 2026
"The Crash Has Begun! Iran War Reckoning and Nuclear Escalation"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 6/5/26
"The Crash Has Begun!
Iran War Reckoning and Nuclear Escalation"
Comments here:
"Past the Point of No Return: The Economic Collapse Is Happening!"
"Past the Point of No Return:
The Economic Collapse Is Happening!"
by David Haggith
"While the Dow soared a huge 900 points to another all-time high today, it didn’t do it for the usual reason. Money actually fled tech and moved into bank stocks and other more mundane or maybe safer investments. This looks like the start of a rotation, which happened orderly today, but rotations sometimes indicate people fleeing the longtime market leaders, and that can quickly go disorderly once momentum builds.
To give you a sense of today’s rockslide, one chipmaker - Broadcom - caved in more than 12% on a revenue miss today. Micron Technology tumbled more than 8%. Semiconductor names slid broadly. These were big moves.
“After an astonishing earnings season, the AI trade is still alive and well, but this rally is getting tired after an incredible more than two-month surge,” said Dennis Follmer, chief investment officer at Montis Financial….Thursday’s moves “suggest the early innings of a rotation and it’s also a reminder that not all AI stocks are the same and there are different expectations built into each stock,” he added.
And that was exactly how the dot-com bust began. First, people thought tech couldn’t fall, but then the many companies that had bad earnings reports took some big dives. Eventually many of those got wiped out entirely. Then everything started to slide over the course of more than a year - almost two years. Even those that survived took years to recover from the massive rotation that picked up steam as investors woke up to realize they could not keep rewarding earnings non-performance forever.
Even though not all tech stocks were equal in that some companies really did have what it took back then to become the new business paradigm that would dominate industry for decades, those that had what it took to become the new species of business after the major extinction event, took almost a decade just to recover to where they had been before the fall.
As an example or troubles on this tremulous June day, Kevin O’Leary, heading up one of the biggest AI projects on Earth, announced he’s going to significantly scale back his massive Utah data center, reported on in this past weekend’s Deeper Dive, to try to ease the potentially disorderly public backlash over these monstrosities. So, there were several signs of major collapse today, ranging from merely shifting ground, to roaring rockslides, all among the crème de la crème of Big Tech.
The big catalyst for today’s tech slide was the Iran War, which as I reported yesterday has spent this week slowly building up renewed momentum: This comes after a losing day on Wall Street, with stocks pressured by rising tensions in the Middle East. Attacks escalated between the U.S. and Iran. Iran struck Kuwait International Airport early Wednesday, while a day earlier U.S. Central Command said it had defeated multiple Iranian ballistic missiles and drones, and carried out “self-defense strikes” on Qeshm Island in the Persian Gulf. It said that this was in response to “attempted attacks” by Tehran.
So, we went from a large losing day for stocks yesterday, to a major rotation day with some tech stocks taking big losses today, even though the market overall shot up. Yet, there were some even bigger losers outside of tech where poor earnings were not forgiven. Calvin Klein’s owner, PVY, experienced its biggest plunge since the flash crash of 1987. The company got decapitated today, losing almost a third of its value in one day. Again, the Iran war was tagged as being a significant contributor to that company’s stock crash: "Analysts were spooked by sustained pressure across the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region, where the prolonged U.S.-Iran conflict and softer consumer demand are now weighing on its revenue outlook….
PVH reaffirmed its full-year adjusted EPS guidance, which fell short of the Bloomberg Consensus estimate, and cut its revenue outlook amid a deteriorating macroeconomic environment…Guggenheim analyst Simeon Siegel wrote in a note that while PVH reiterated full-year earnings, it “suggested that pressures from the prolonged conflict in the Middle East and related macroeconomic pressures were negatively impacting the full-year revenue outlook.” Some of those other “macroeconomic pressures” might likely be the Trump Tariffs.
Loosening labor: So far this year, the labor market has been incredibly resilient against any kind of turnover; however, jobless claims also took a nasty leap today. Again, the damage concentrated intensely in tech companies, which announced the most cuts in two years, as they ramped up spending on AI.
In May, Artificial Intelligence (AI) led all reasons for job cuts for the third month in a row, with 38,579 announced cuts. It is the highest monthly total ever recorded for the reason since Challenger began tracking it in 2023, and it accounted for 40% of all cuts announced in May - up from just 7% in January, 25% in March, and 26% in April.
For the year, AI has been cited in 87,714 cuts, or 22% of all 2026 layoffs, already far surpassing the 54,836 attributed to the reason in all of 2025. “The labor market is being reshaped by technology in real time,” said Andy Challenger, the company’s chief revenue officer. “AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs.”
Longterm unemployment is also surging. It has reached the highest level it has seen since the massive Covid layoffs when multitudes failed to ever return to work. On a macro level, the growing number of Americans in this boat raises red flags about the strength of the labor market and overall economy…. “It tells us a lot about economic health,” said Cory Stahle, an economist at job site Indeed.
Credit collapse: As stocks and labor roll over while corporate earnings fade, another crisis has been building in the private credit market, which broke off another large section today with major player Blackstone restricting withdrawals from its flagship fund in an effort to slow the outflow of investors fleeing the fund. It comes a day after private markets giants sold off after Switzerland’s Partners Group said it was curbing redemption requests in one of its European private equity vehicles….
Partners Group said on Thursday it was prepared to restrict withdrawals in more of its funds, warning that the spike in client withdrawals is now spreading from private credit into private equity. Breakout emergency measures and rotations like this in stocks are how major crashes often get started. A big piece starts to slip here, then another over there, and then the whole mountainside starts to move.
Big Oil makes the slope slippery: The down pressure on major sectors of the economy is going to grow more quickly now because economic collapse is being lubricated by oil. It’s no longer just tariff troubles. While Trump keeps pretending a deal is imminent with Iran, the war keeps heating up. Oil companies are telling the president that major fireworks in fuel prices will hit later this month, putting that major impact right at the start of summer when I said the inflation from the war would go critical.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration and other sources began showing that fuel makers were increasingly relying on oil and fuel from their storage tanks to replace products no longer arriving from the Middle East. “We’re at dangerously low levels already,” said one industry executive who was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations with the administration. “We have shared those concerns at the highest levels of government about what’s coming in mid-to-late June. I hope they are paying attention to inventories right now. You’re hitting tank bottom.” Just as I said for the above situation with major stock avalanches, big companies can absorb things for so long, then they start to go critical, and suddenly major slabs of the mountain start to move.
A White House official denied that any senior members of staff have been warned privately by the industry about inventories. “Politico’s anonymous sources are wrong,” the official said. Denial as a strategy only works for so long to delay a collapse, too. More than one source is saying the same thing: Exxon Mobil warned Thursday that oil inventories will fall to record low levels in coming weeks, forcing prices to spike and curbing demand. “We’re approaching unheard of inventory levels,” said Exxon Senior Vice President Neil Chapman at a conference hosted by Bernstein in New York. “I mean really, really low levels,” Chapman warned. “You can debate whether that’s going to hit, those really low levels, in two weeks or three weeks. Once you get to that point, then you’ll see price shoot up.” The price of physical Brent oil cargoes will spike to $150 to $160 per barrel when inventories hit all-time lows in coming weeks, the executive said.
Even if the Trump-Israel-Iran War were to end today, which it won’t, that wouldn’t improve the tank levels at all in time to stop the late-June arrival at critical levels that shoot prices up. “I don’t know, whether it’s two to three weeks or three to four weeks,” Chapman said. “What I’m really saying is, once you get to the minimum inventory levels and all-time low inventory levels, there’s only one way to go. That would be UP in price.
If oil started shipping out of Iran today, it wouldn’t arrive here in time to stop oil supply from going critical later this month. That level of shortage is already a fait accompli. If the wars stopped today, it would take months, not weeks, to clear out mines and convince ships it’s safe to travel and then to ship across multiple oceans to arrive at their destinations. So, we are past the point of no return for this economic collapse."
"We Are Past The Point Of No Return, Economy Is Collapsing Daily"
Jeremiah Babe, 6/5/26
"We Are Past The Point Of No Return,
Economy Is Collapsing Daily"
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"A Look to the Heavens"
"This pretty field of view spans over 2 degrees or 4 full moons on the sky, filled with stars toward the constellation Taurus, the Bull. Above and right of center in the frame you can spot the faint fuzzy reddish appearance of Messier 1 (M1), also known as the Crab Nebula. M1 is the first object in 18th century comet hunter Charles Messier's famous catalog of things which are definitely not comets.
Click image for larger size.
Made from image data captured this last October 11, there is a comet in the picture though. Below center and left lies the faint greenish coma and dusty tail of periodic comet 67P Churyumov-Gerasimenko, also known as Rosetta's comet. In the 21st century, it became the final resting place of robots from planet Earth. Rosetta's comet is now returning to the inner solar system, sweeping toward its next perihelion or closest approach to the Sun, on November 2. Too faint to be seen by eye alone, the comet's next perigee or closest approach to Earth will be November 12."
Chet Raymo, “The Sea Grows Old In It”
“The Sea Grows Old In It”
by Chet Raymo
“The poet, like the electric [lightning] rod, must reach from a point nearer to the sky than all surrounding objects down to the earth, and down to the dark wet soil, or neither is of use. The poet must not only converse with pure thought, but he must demonstrate it almost to the senses. His words must be pictures, his verses must be spheres and cubes, to be seen, and smelled and handled.”
– Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Ah, Mr. Emerson. This seems about as good a description of poetry as one is likely to find. I love the image. Not a hand reaching up to grasp the hand of Zeus, the hurler of bolts, but merely a pointed rod that reaches higher than any surrounding objects. A pen-point, scratching the firmament. Not a conductor reaching down to the earth, but deeper, into the wet inkpot of the soul.
Not lofty thoughts, airy philosophies, gnostic arcana. Rather, ideas that come wrapped in the stuff of the senses. Ideas that must be unwrapped the way you’d peel an orange, or pry open an oyster, or stir up from the bottom of a bowl of soup. The electric fire of the heavens captured and stored in the Leyden jar of physical self.
Take, for example, Marianne Moore’s “The Fish”, a poem that has been endlessly analyzed without ever giving up its secrets. Anyone who stands on that rocky shore with the poet, looking into the wave-washed chasm - the sea as fluid as breath, as hard as a chisel- takes away a lesson as profound as any one might learn in school, perhaps without being able to articulate exactly what the lesson is. The experience is simply there, to be seen, smelled, handled, in the weave and wave of animal bodies, in the intricate rhyme and syllabication of the poem. Truth- crow-blue, ink-bespattered, hatcheted, defiant.
I’d go further. I’d say that Emerson’s description of poetry can be equally applied to science, or to any human attempt to attract the spark of Zeus. One must lift one’s rod beyond the scratch and tumble of the everyday, while keeping its foot buried in the dark wet soil of lived experience.”
•
“The Fish”
“Wade through black jade.
Of the crow-blue mussel-shells, one keeps
adjusting the ash-heaps;
opening and shutting itself like an injured fan.
The barnacles which encrust the side of the wave,
cannot hide there for the submerged shafts of the sun,
split like spun glass,
move themselves with spotlight swiftness into the crevices -
in and out, illuminating
The turquoise sea of bodies.
The water drives a wedge of iron through the iron edge of the cliff;
whereupon the stars, pink rice-grains, ink-
bespattered jelly fish, crabs like green lilies,
and submarine toadstools, slide each on the other.
All external marks of abuse are present on this defiant edifice -
all the physical features of accident -
lack of cornice, dynamite grooves, burns, and hatchet strokes,
these things stand out on it;
the chasm-side is dead.
Repeated evidence has proved that it can live
on what can not revive its youth.
The sea grows old in it."
- Marianne Moore
"Russian Grocery Shopping: Is It Different From Yours?"
Full screen recommended.
Travelling With Russell, 6/5/26
"Russian Grocery Shopping:
Is It Different From Yours?"
"What does Russia's most typical supermarket look like inside? Join on a walkaround of a Pyaterochka Supermarket in Moscow, Russia. With more than 25,000 locations across Russia, this is by far the most common supermarket chain in the country."
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Judge Napolitano, "INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern: Weekly Wrap 5-June"
Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/5/26
"INTEL Roundtable w/Johnson & McGovern:
Weekly Wrap 5-June"
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Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/5/26
"Prof. Jeffrey Sachs:
Will Israeli Officials Blow Up any US/Iran Peace?"
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"When Spring Came to Three Quarter Town"
Full screen recommended.
Three-Quarter Town,
"When Spring Came to Three Quarter Town"
"After a long winter, spring returns to Three-Quarter Town. The last snow melts. Tiny green shoots push through the soil. Birds come back to the branches, flowers open in the gardens, lambs graze in the fields, and the old villagers step outside to feel the first warm sunlight on their faces. Nothing happens all at once. The town simply begins to breathe again. A gentle spring story."
"5 Things You Must Never Share No Matter Who Asks"
Native Elder,
"5 Things You Must Never
Share No Matter Who Asks"
Delta Blues Brother, "Not My Life Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Delta Blues Brother, "Not My Life Anymore"
"One of the hardest lessons in life is realizing how many years we spend living for other people's expectations. Trying to fit in. Trying to be approved. Trying to become the version of ourselves that makes everybody else comfortable. And somewhere along the way... we forget to ask what we actually want. "Not My Life Anymore" is a reflective Delta blues meditation about freedom, identity, boundaries, self-respect, and the quiet courage it takes to stop performing for the world. The resonator guitar moves with calm confidence, like someone finally walking their own road without asking permission. The harmonica answers with the kind of wisdom that only arrives after decades of trying to please people who were never satisfied anyway. The groove stays grounded, liberating, deeply human... like a soul finally setting down a weight it was never meant to carry. This is the blues of freedom. Not rebellion. Freedom."
"How It Really Is"
Aware and fully informed of current crises by their never-lying
Government and media, alarmed Americans react accordingly...
"We're so freakin' doomed!"
- The Mogambo Guru
"Knowing..."
“Knowing can be a curse on a person’s life. I’d traded in a pack of lies for a pack of truth, and I didn’t know which one was heavier. Which one took the most strength to carry around? It was a ridiculous question, though, because once you know the truth, you can’t ever go back and pick up your suitcase of lies. Heavier or not, the truth is yours now.”
- Sue Monk Kidd
"I Can't Convince Myself..."
“I can’t convince myself that it does much good to try to challenge the everyday political delusions and dementias of Americans at large. Their contained and confined mentalities by far prefer the petty and parochial prisons of the kind of sense they have been trained and rewarded for making out of their lives (and are punished for deviating from them). What it costs them ultimately to be such slaves and infants and ideological zombies is a thought too monstrous and rending and spiky for them even to want to glance at.”
- Kenneth Smith
“If you want to tell people the truth,
make them laugh, otherwise they’ll kill you.”
- Oscar Wilde
John Wilder, "What Do You Value?"
"What Do You Value?"
by John Wilder
“I have been in the service of the Vorlons for centuries, looking for you. Diogenes, with his lamp, looking for an honest man, willing to die for all the wrong reasons. At last, my job is finished. Yours is just beginning. When the darkness comes, know this; you are the right people, in the right place, at the right time.” – "Babylon 5"
"What is the most common question asked by philosophers nowadays? “Do you want fries with that?” Diogenes is dead. When he was up and kicking around, he lived in a wine barrel at the end of town, and often was caught on the streets stark naked. Sometimes he was, um, enjoying himself. Oddly, he was also thought of as a respected philosopher. When I try to emulate him, though, all I get is a restraining order and some embarrassing YouTube® videos.
The reason we remember Diogenes is for two reasons: First, he invented the chicken nugget, but sadly was unable to invent any tasty dipping sauces. Second, he walked around making pithy little statements like this: “We sell things of great value for things of very little, and vice versa." It’s a very short, and very wickedly to the point piece of advice. Frankly, it points out many of the problems we are facing as a society today.
Let’s take consooming for today’s topic. Billions of dollars are spent attempting to convince people to purchase one product or another. These advertisements are hard to avoid – and they have one thing in common – a desire to get the consoomer to spend money. In some cases, the ads provide the ability to match a need with a product. If I’m cutting down trees using axes and handsaws, knowing that a thing called a chainsaw exists is providing me a real value. So, ads inform.
But ads also are used to create desire in customers, playing on emotions to drive purchase decisions for things that aren’t needs, but frivolities. I have plenty of those! I’m a sucker for some things in particular. In the sitting room (where I’m typing this now) I look around and see a map I bought as artwork a few years ago. It shows all the undersea telegraph cables in around 1871. So very cool! I walked into the store, saw it, and bought it. I consoomed. I can’t cut down a tree with it. I can’t drive it to work. It’s just... there, stuck to my wall.
Is the map of great value? No. It’s a print. It doesn’t make me better, more complete, important, or accomplished. We can look in terms of multiple ways to value things. Dollars are only one. In this case, the picture cost about what I made in about an hour or two. Was it worth an hour of my life to own that map? Yeah, I guess so. But when I start to value objects that I own, and look at how much of my life I traded for them, my equation starts to change.
If I didn’t spend that hour at work, what could I have spent that hour on? How could I have changed my life? Could I have spent more time brushing my teeth, so they were 2.3% brighter? Should I have spent that time waxing my dog? What did I overlook or not spend time on? And which of those things might have been more valuable?
I understand that money is important – those who say that money isn’t important haven’t gone without it. But money isn’t the goal, it’s what can be done with it that’s important. The true currency of our lives isn’t gold, silver, or even PEZ™. It’s time. Each of us on this planet have a finite number of hours left on this rock, and that number goes down by one each hour that we spend. It goes down by one if I spend it at a job I don’t like. It goes down if I spend it writing the best post I’ve ever written. It goes down by one if I’m sleeping. It goes down by one every hour.
Yes, I know, exercising and other positive things might extend that life, but I’m still going to die. In the endless summer of a life when I was, say, 12, I didn’t think much about time and how I spent it. Even then, though, I didn’t try to just “pass the time” since there was so much to do and see and learn in the world. Now as I’m on the back side of life, I can see that those hours I have left cannot be wasted.
They’re all I have. And learning is great, but now it has to have purpose. Will it help me write? Will it help me crack a puzzle that I can share? Will it help me with some project I’m working on? Can it help me change the world?
Again, as I get older, it ceases to be about me. It’s now about what I can do to help others, how I can help make the world a better place. Thankfully, during my career I’ve been able to do work on things that matter, and have made the world a slightly better place. If I’m trading my life for my work, I’m glad that it’s work that matters.
Diogenes? He’s still dead, but he changed the world, just a little bit. And I can, too. And so can you. Time is still all we have, but it’s up to us to make the most of it, each and every day, just like Diogenes showed us. But, I don’t recommend you do it naked. Now, I wonder how Diogenes dealt with the restraining orders?"
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