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So, we rise from the rubble...
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Tuesday, August 18, 2026
"Russians Pull Billions From Banks, You Need Physical Cash; What Happens When America Goes Dark"
Jeremiah Babe, 8/18/26
"Russians Pull Billions From Banks, You Need Physical Cash;
What Happens When America Goes Dark"
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"The All-Seeing Eye"
"The All-Seeing Eye"
by Todd Hayen
"In an era where our every word, step, and glance can be archived, summarized, and replayed by sleek little discs pinned to our chests, the ancient archetype of the all-seeing eye has found its modern silicon incarnation. What was once the paranoid whisper of conspiracy has become the marketed convenience of ‘life logging’ - yet beneath the promise of perfect memory lies the total erasure of privacy, turning every shrew into a unwitting performer on the surveillance stage. (If you haven’t read enough of my work to know what a “shrew” is, read this: "Sheep and Shrew")
During a recent three-hour ramble with my sister - one of those wide-ranging, idea-sparking talkathons we’ve shared for years - the little recording device I had just bought, attached to my phone, quietly drank it all in. Every tangent on culture, politics, family, and the state of the world was captured, summarized, and later served back as a tidy slideshow of “highlights.” It auto-suggested calendar entries, pulled up past chats on demand, and generally made itself indispensable.
For a moment, I felt the rush: This is the future. No more forgotten details, no more scrambling for notes. Pure magic. I will disclose immediately that I have purchased several of these odd devices mostly out of curiosity, but also out of an attempt to record various “having fun moments” of my life (like a recent dog adventure to a local pond, and our three-day trip to New York City to see Swan Lake). I won’t go into my personal experience (with the intentions just stated) out of fear it will bore you; ask in the comments if you would like to know.
Here I will make my general comments on what I feel the impact such devices will have on our human culture. What masquerades as personal empowerment is a profound archetypal shift toward total surveillance, eroding privacy, authenticity, and human freedom - normalizing the sheeple’s willing submission while shrews must stay vigilant. Woo-hoo, what else is new?
During my conversation with my sister, the shrew in me stirred almost immediately. That ancient archetype of the All-Seeing Eye - once reserved for gods, tyrants, or paranoid fantasies - had slipped into the room wearing the friendly face of convenience. What felt like an innocent companion was, in truth, a silent recorder turning private exchange into permanent data. And I had invited it in.
This is how the trap springs. Not with jackboots and cameras in every corner (though those exist too), but with sleek little devices marketed as extensions of ourselves. Wearable AI pins, smart glasses, neck discs - they promise perfect memory while quietly building the most intimate profile imaginable: where we go, what we say, who we say it to, and how we feel about it all. Street cameras and smartphone sensors already blanket the public square; these wearables drag the surveillance indoors, into our conversations, our homes, our unguarded moments with loved ones. The panopticon goes portable.
We’ve seen this pattern before. Remember when “just a phone” became a pocket tracker? Or how contact-tracing apps during the scamdemic morphed from “temporary emergency tools” into permanent fixtures in the biosecurity state? The same sleight of hand is at work here. Tech companies dangle the carrot - Never forget a name! Relive every precious moment! Let AI organize your chaos! - and the sheeple flock to it, bleating about how “empowering” it all feels. The sheep, yes, and at least one sheep-like shrew. Me.
Meanwhile, the other shrews (you) feel the water getting warmer. You are more aware than me that every logged conversation is fodder for training models, targeted ads, behavioural predictions, or worse - subpoenas, hacks, or authoritarian overreach. Deepfakes already erode trust in video evidence; add always-on personal recording, and alibis become meaningless, private truths become contestable, and authentic human connection withers under the gaze of the machine.
My sister and I laughed about it at first. Then the unease settled in. What if one of those “helpful” summaries gets shared without consent? What if the data shapes how others (or algorithms) perceive us? The archetype of the all-seeing eye doesn’t just watch—it consumes. It flattens the rich, contradictory mess of human life into clean, marketable data points.
From a Jungian perspective, this is no mere gadget problem. It is the externalization of the Self’s shadow—the watcher within projected onto silicon. Privacy is not just a legal right; it is the sacred space where the psyche breathes, where shadow integrates, where anima and animus dance unseen. Strip that away, and we become performers, constantly curating our words for an invisible audience. The sheepsters may not notice - they’ve grown accustomed to the slowly boiling pot. But the shrew feels the contraction of soul.
This is the latest chapter in the long war on autonomy waged primarily by the advocates of transhumanism and technoculture. Digital passports, social credit systems, vaccine mandates - each promised safety or convenience while tightening the noose. AI wearables complete the circle: they don’t just monitor the body or the public square; they ingest the mind itself, turning inner dialogue into training data for the next generation of control.
We are not far from the logical endpoint - stylish glasses with always-on cameras, or worse, neural implants that record thoughts before they become words. The marketers will call it “seamless augmentation.” The shrew calls it the end of anything resembling private life. But here we go. Woo-hoo again, what fun!
Obviously, we have known about all this techno-joy for quite some time: science fiction novels, 50’s SciFi movies, superhero comic books, Star Trek, Outer Limits and Battlestar Galactica TV series, among many other media enticements. All techno gadgets presented in these resources have been emblazoned into our feeble brains (not you, of course!), always looking for the next exciting and fun thing to engage with.
Why do we have to move back into the techno-less past in our effort to survive? Why can’t we take this fun ride into a more convenient, more joyous, more exciting future with interesting “things” to fiddle with? Primarily because there is likely an evil intention behind it all. We can never forget the agenda, and one of the prime tools of manipulation the agenda thrives on is private information.
So, what do we do? Do we stop participating in this new science-fiction-turned-reality world? Do we just get the hell off the grid, and live in some backward fourth-world country drinking milk out of a coconut? That’s one way to do it; another is to simply become more aware and conscious. Awareness itself is resistance. Turn the All-Seeing Eye inward. Use these tools sparingly, consciously, and never without remembering what they truly cost. Talk with your pack. Document the unease. Keep the conversations that matter offline when you can.
The water is heating, my dear shrew. But we still have legs to jump - and voices to warn the others before the lid clamps shut for good."
Todd Hayen PhD is a registered psychotherapist practicing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He holds a PhD in depth psychotherapy and an MA in Consciousness Studies. He specializes in Jungian, archetypal, psychology. Todd also writes for his own substack, which you can read here.
"The 50% Canada Tariff Hits Tomorrow: What It Costs You"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 8/18/26
"The 50% Canada Tariff Hits Tomorrow:
What It Costs You"
"Tomorrow, a 50% tariff on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods goes into effect - and it's about to show up in your grocery bill, your next car, and even your homeowners insurance. Here's what's getting more expensive, why it hits you even if you never buy Canadian, and the hidden $1,200–$1,300 annual cost per household most people won't see coming. The U.S. and Canada are holding last-minute talks to stop President Trump's new 50% tariff, set to take effect August 19th. The tariff covers everything from lumber and cars to dairy, alcohol, furniture, and even hockey sticks."
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"Americans Film Their Breaking Point - Nothing Is Affordable Anymore"
Full screen recommended.
Strong language alert!
Full screen recommended.
Epic Economist, 8/18/26
"Americans Film Their Breaking Point -
Nothing Is Affordable Anymore"
"Americans are filming their own breaking point, and nothing is affordable anymore. A thirty-dollar roast at Aldi. One bag of groceries that rings up at $91. Fifteen people turned their cameras on and did the math out loud, a man working 41 hours at his first job who still DoorDashes at night, a woman who stopped eating dinner so her partner could take lunch to work, a mother cooking on a mini griddle in a hotel room. In this video we look at what the cost of living crisis actually looks like from the inside, why working Americans can no longer cover rent, groceries and gas, and what it means when the paycheck arrives and still does not reach. Comment your thoughts below."
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Adventures With Danno, "Massive Changes To Dollar Tree!"
Full screen recommended.
Adventures With Danno, 8/18/26
"Massive Changes To Dollar Tree!"
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Dan, I Allegedly, "The Middle Is Gone - Here's What's Happening"
Full screen recommended.
Dan, I Allegedly, 8/18/26
"The Middle Is Gone - Here's What's Happening"
"The Middle Class is getting wiped out! Retail is changing right before our eyes. Stores are closing, businesses are struggling, consumers are running out of savings and credit, yet discount retailers like Ross and other off-price stores are expanding. In this video, Dan from iAllegedly breaks down why consumers are trading down, hunting for bargains and demanding more value for every dollar they spend. The retail economy is not simply disappearing - the middle is disappearing. From Ross and Marshalls to McDonald's, Kraft Heinz, Whirlpool and Wendy's, major companies are responding to a consumer who is under enormous financial pressure. We look at changing shopping habits, declining purchasing power, rising costs, disappearing savings, credit problems, private equity, retail closures and why discount stores may be positioned to win as Americans become more price-conscious. The consumer is still spending, but they're spending differently - and that could tell us a lot about where the economy is headed."
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"Iran Just Abandoned Its Defense Strategy – US Discussed Nuclear Option on Iran"
Full screen recommended.
Col. Larry Wilkerson,
"Iran Just Abandoned Its Defense Strategy –
US Discussed Nuclear Option on Iran"
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"Trump Just Approved the Nuclear Option — And There's No Going Back Now"
Col. Douglas Macgregor:
"Trump Just Approved the Nuclear Option -
And There's No Going Back Now"
"Colonel Douglas Macgregor addresses what he calls the most serious development of this entire conflict: credible reports that President Trump has approved the nuclear option for operational consideration. Col. Macgregor breaks down what "approved for consideration" actually means inside the national security decision-making process - and why the distance between that threshold and actual use is far smaller than most people believe. He examines the specific weapons being discussed, the ideological actors driving the conversation, the failure of institutional checks, and the escalation modeling that the people pushing this option are ignoring. Three historical parallels - Korea 1950, Cuba 1962, Vietnam 1968 - illuminate exactly how this kind of decision gets made and what stops it. His most urgent analysis to date. The threshold has not been crossed. But time is running out."
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"Are We Closer To Nuclear War Than Ever Before?"
by Michael Snyder
"It appears that most of the population has become way too apathetic about the threat of nuclear war. There are people on social media that cheer as both sides continue to escalate the conflict in Ukraine, and there are people on social media that are openly advocating for nuclear weapons to be used in the Middle East. I don’t think that such people actually understand the immense destructive power of modern nuclear weapons. Even a limited nuclear exchange would kill millions, and an all-out nuclear war would cause a nuclear winter that could kill billions. Unfortunately, it appears that we are now closer to nuclear war than ever before.
In recent months, Russia and Ukraine have been absolutely pummeling each other with long-range strikes. The escalations that we have been witnessing have been absolutely shocking, but the mainstream media in the western world hasn’t been giving these escalations the attention that they deserve. On Saturday, hundreds of long-range Ukrainian drones hit targets in the Moscow region…
Hundreds of drones have targeted the Moscow region in a sustained overnight assault that wounded killed at least six people, according to the Russian capital’s mayor, as Ukraine steps up long-range attacks deep inside Russia. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said 600 drones had been flying toward the Moscow region between Saturday evening and 6:30 a.m. local time (0330 UTC) on Sunday, adding that 201 were destroyed over the region.
If someone was hitting Washington D.C. or New York City with long-range drones every night, what would we do to them? Just think about that for a moment. We should be very thankful that the Russians have been showing a great deal of restraint so far. But they are clearly running out of patience.
In a desperate attempt to provoke the Russians into doing something really stupid so that NATO will be forced to enter the war, the Ukrainians have been striking “four key categories of targets”…Many of its strikes have focused on four key categories of targets, according to an Associated Press analysis of hundreds of Ukrainian attacks this year - compiled from statements by Russian officials and state media and the Ukrainian military.
As the Iran war pushed up energy prices, leading the U.S. to ease sanctions on Russian oil, Kyiv ramped up strikes on oil infrastructure to deny the Kremlin revenue from fuel exports and force shortages on ordinary Russians. It is also striking defense manufacturing to damage Russia’s long-term ability to produce weapons, targeting air defenses to clear a path for its own arms, and hitting retail warehouses to bring the effects to ordinary Russians.
Hitting retail warehouses is a recent development. Just within the past few months, Ukraine has striking one Wildberries warehouse after another. Last night, it was a warehouse in the Moscow area that got hit…New footage shows the moment an apocalyptic fire engulfed a ‘Russian Amazon’ warehouse near Moscow after a Ukrainian drone attack. The huge inferno blew up the Wildberries online marketplace complex at Koledino, just 25 miles south of the Kremlin, in the early hours of this morning.
Wildberries, the largest Russian online retailer, stores and houses military equipment for Putin, according to Ukraine. Can you imagine how angry the American people would be if Amazon warehouses were getting destroyed by drones? This is a really big deal, and the Russian people are furious. At this point, well over a dozen Wildberries warehouses have been destroyed…
Click image for larger size.
That graphic totally floored me when I first saw it. In addition, the Ukrainians just used long-range missiles to hit a number of other very sensitive targets that are located hundreds of kilometers inside Russian territory. The following comes from a social media post by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy…
"Today, there are new significant results from our deep strikes. In Russia’s Samara region, one of the key enterprises within Roscosmos – the Progress Center, which was involved, among other things, in electronics production – was hit. Flamingo missiles were used. A good achievement. The distance from our border is about 900 kilometers. Our long-range sanctions also reached the Savasleyka airbase, where the carriers of Russian missiles that strike our cities and villages are based – about 700 kilometers from Ukraine. We also have confirmation of the damage we were aiming to inflict at an oil facility in Ust-Luga – more than 800 kilometers from our border."
He is so thrilled about these strikes. But pundits on Russian television are regularly talking about the need to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine. If the Russians actually did this, the joint chiefs would likely recommend using tactical nuclear weapons against Russian forces in the Donbas. It is hard to say what President Trump would do in such a scenario.
There is also a risk that the conflict in Ukraine could spark an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is publicly accusing the United States of being deeply involved in Ukraine’s long-range strikes deep inside Russian territory… Russia believes that US is playing a far deeper role in Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory than Washington has publicly acknowledged, including by providing intelligence to Kyiv, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday. Lavrov said Moscow had formally raised the issue with US officials and was awaiting an explanation over Washington’s alleged involvement in strikes carried out deep inside Russia.
“We have submitted a series of questions to the State Department requesting comment, including on the matter of intelligence data and the fact that the US is far more deeply involved in organizing and executing strikes deep within Russian territory against civilian targets. We await a response,” Reuters quoted Lavrov as telling Russian state television.
Unfortunately, Lavrov is not wrong about this. We are helping the Ukrainians conduct these strikes, and that has been well documented. We desperately need the conflict in Ukraine to end, because the longer it goes on the more likely it will be that nuclear weapons will get used.
According to one report, the Chinese are highly concerned about the possibility that the Russians might lose patience and decide to use nukes against Ukraine…China has again told Russia not to even consider using a nuclear weapon against Ukraine, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Russian nuclear saber rattling has accelerated in 2026, with officials and major Russian outlets making the case for tactical nukes more forcefully and unambiguously than any time since Vladimir Putin ordered the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In response, China, a vital enabler of Moscow’s assault, has told Russia it must avoid any atomic attacks, Zelenskyy said - reiterating Beijing’s long-stated opposition to nuclear strikes.
Reading that should deeply alarm all of us. Meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene is claiming that she knows with 100 percent certainty that the potential use of nuclear weapons against Iran is being discussed in high-level strategy meetings in Washington… Former US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed Sunday that high-level strategy meetings are underway to discuss the potential use of nuclear weapons against Iran. “I’m not speculating, I know. And it’s pure evil,” Greene wrote on US social media platform X. She did not provide evidence to substantiate the claim.
Greene alleged that the US government was considering lowering the threshold for nuclear weapons use despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims of victory in the war and assertions that Washington has control over the Strait of Hormuz. That is quite a claim.
Hopefully President Trump would not ever consider doing such a thing. But the U.S. wouldn’t even have to be involved for nuclear weapons to be used in the Middle East. A senior IRGC official is warning that the Iranians may soon go on the “offensive” and that they have some “strategic surprises” up their sleeves… A senior Revolutionary Guards official said Iran’s military actions, which he described as defensive so far, could become “offensive” in the future and warned adversaries to expect “strategic surprises.” “The enemy should know that it cannot carry out surprise actions against us and should expect strategic surprises,” Yadollah Javani, the IRGC’s political deputy, told state broadcaster IRIB. Javani said Iran’s armed forces would take whatever measures they deemed necessary to defend the country, ensure security and counter threats at what they considered the appropriate time.
If the Iranians were to launch even a single unconventional warhead at Israel, it is likely that Israel would respond with nuclear weapons. Israel has more than enough nuclear warheads to destroy all of Iran’s largest cities, and all it would take is a single wrong move to unleash such a scenario.
And let us not forget about China. The Chinese have been building up their strategic nuclear arsenal faster than anyone else in the world, and they have also been making preparations for a military move against Taiwan. Last week, Taiwan began a series of military exercises that were intended to simulate what a Chinese invasion would look like… China on Friday condemned Taiwan’s annual Han Kuang military exercises as a “wasteful charade”, accusing Taipei of stoking fears of war as the island conducts 10 days of drills simulating a potential Chinese attack. The comments were China’s first official response since the exercises began last week. Taiwan, a democratically governed island that rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, launched the drills as Chinese military activity around the island continues to increase.
The moment that China attempts to take control of Taiwan, we will be at war with China. Most Americans do not realize this. And once we are at war with China, things could go nuclear very rapidly. Of course using nuclear weapons should be absolutely unthinkable. In a full-blown nuclear war between the United States and Russia, tens of millions would die within the first few hours…
34.1 million people could die, and another 57.4 million could be injured, within the first few hours of the start of a nuclear war between Russia and the United States triggered by one low-yield nuclear weapon, according to a new simulation by researcher’s at Princeton‘s Science and Global Security program. Tens of millions more would quickly die from radiation exposure, but the real killer would be the nuclear winter that would follow.
It has been estimated that the nuclear winter that we would experience would kill over 5 billion people… More than 5 billion people would die of hunger following a full-scale nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, according to a global study led by Rutgers climate scientists that estimates post-conflict crop production.
“The data tell us one thing: We must prevent a nuclear war from ever happening,” said Alan Robock, a Distinguished Professor of Climate Science in the Department of Environmental Sciences at Rutgers-New Brunswick and co-author of the study. Lili Xia, an assistant research professor in the School of Environmental and Biological Sciences, is lead author of the study published in the journal Nature Food.
This is not a game. Engaging in brinksmanship with the Russians or the Iranians or the Chinese is a really, really bad idea. We should seek to end the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine as soon as possible. But that isn’t going to happen, is it? We are playing with fire, and if we aren’t very careful our entire society is going to get burned."
Bill Bonner, "Whee!"
Click image for larger size.
"Whee!"
by Bill Bonner
‘If Watergate were to happen now,
it would be like a 12-hour news story.’
- JD Vance
Poitou, France - "The vice president is talking about the shrug...about the way grift is ‘normalized.’ It becomes another part of what Steve Bannon called the ‘flood the zone’ strategy. You keep so much stuff coming at the voters that they don’t have time to think...or react. It seems to be working. Surveys report that Americans are not outraged; they are tuning out.
Trump is president. He’s the Big Man, the most powerful man in the world. But surveys show that people are less and less inclined to pay any attention to him. He’s the one who should’ve...could’ve...and didn’t. They will label him a ‘conservative,’ and blame him when even nuttier Mamdani-style socialists are elected.
Every POTUS this century has been a disaster. Each of them has put more grease on the skids...helping to speed America’s toboggan-like decline. They all overspent. They all committed war crimes. They all bowed down before the big lobbies and did as the Deep State elite commanded. And, generally, with the support of the public. But no US leader, present or past tense, has done it with the bravado...the chutzpah...and the sheer gall of DJT.
The Donald took the White House in 2017. Since then, US debt has approximately doubled. About $8 trillion of it came on during Joe Biden’s spendathon. But $12 trillion, so far, is the bill for Trump – more than any president ever...so much new debt that now the debt bomb has been dropped. It cannot be recalled or disarmed. It will hit the ground in an explosion of chicanery, bankruptcy, and inflation.
In matters of war, Trump cannot be said to be worse than, say, George W. Bush. But Bush kept within the boundaries of broadly acceptable fraud – assembling an international coalition to attack Iraq with the blessing of the West’s most self-righteous institutions and the stamp of approval from the great and the good. At least the man who wears a mask when he robs a bank admits that there is something low-down about it.
Trump is more brutally honest...attacking Iran with only the rogue state, Israel, by his side...in defiance of world opinion, the Geneva convention, good taste and good judgement.
But where Trump really stands head and shoulders above his predecessors - going all the way back to Warren Harding - is that he is by far the most corrupt president the US has ever seen. Harding presided over the Teapot Dome scandal. And people went to jail for it...showing how much standards have slipped. But Harding was not where the buck stopped; there is no record of him gaining anything personally. Bush and Obama, too, were disasters, but neither took much personal profit from their White House sojourn. A book contract here...speaking fees there...a few million perhaps; hardly worth mentioning.
Corruption moved into a higher gear with Joe Biden. Recall the theory. As an empire becomes more costly...less productive...and more top-heavy, growth slows and corruption speeds up. It is as if the rascals see the ship sinking...and loot it before it goes down. This does not mean that the Biden crew were especially evil or avaricious. A baby hyena is a cute little thing; it is not his fault he grows up to be an ugly killer.
Corruption is a symptom, not a cause. It’s what happens when win-win is no longer a winning strategy. Ambitious people turn to win-lose. First, they increase the general level of flimflam - focusing most of their efforts, like Willie Sutton, on where the money is. They set up heads-I-win, tails-you-lose hedge funds, for example. Or, they change the rules so that they take profits from rising stock prices, but get a ‘bailout’ from the feds when they go down.
The Biden ‘crime family’ got its crooked money in several different ways. Hunter, the President’s son, collected $4 million for helping to run a Ukrainian energy company. He knew not a word of Ukrainian...and not a thing about energy. He got another $2.6 million from Chinese businesses in return for unknown services. He spoke no Chinese either. But he was fluent in flimflam. He sold $1.5 million worth of his paintings. And his uncle, Jim Biden, received $500,000 from Hunter’s Chinese business pals...again, for no identifiable reason.
Corrupt practices? Most people will say so. But farm league stuff. When it comes to grift, Trump is in the Super Bowl. Trump’s crypto business has brought in about $1.4 billion. The plane from Qatar was worth $1.1 billion. Jared Kushner’s hedge fund drew in $5.4 billion. Selling advance notice of his Truth Social posts is estimated to be worth $1.2 billion. Trump collected $10 million from selling pardons. Reuters said “nearly all the clemency decisions” were linked to payments. Melania got $28 million for her documentary; it grossed only $16 million.
Sons Donald Jr. and Eric have made sweet deals with weapons contractors...though neither knows anything about weaponry. The Financial Times: "A Florida-based drone manufacturer with financial ties to Donald Trump Jr. has landed its largest Pentagon contract to date as the US military steps up efforts to boost domestic drone acquisition. The company, Unusual Machines, in which Trump Jr. holds a stake worth about $4 million, announced it will supply the Army with 3,500 drone motors."
These are merely different forms of influence peddling. But there is also some $13 billion worth of Venezuelan oil, taken by the US. No one seems to know where it is, but it is rumored to be under Trump’s control.
As POTUS, Trump earns about $200 per hour on the job. But Ralph Nader estimates that Trump’s side hustles earned him $1.1 million per hour in the first 12 months of his second term: That’s right, $1.1 million an hour based on a 40-hour work week over one year. (And remember, Trump spends a lot of his time on his vengeance missions, his golf game, and napping - so a 40-hour work week is a generous estimate.) Good work if you can get it. And it takes corruption to a whole different level...in comparison, Joe Biden was nothing more than a shoplifter, running from a mid-town mall with a pair of Nikes.
The ‘Corruption Perceptions Index’ ranks the world’s countries. As might be expected, it ranks South Sudan, Somalia and Venezuela as the most corrupt. Denmark, Singapore and New Zealand are on the other end of the scale. And where’s the US? The United States (64) continues on a downward trend, recording its lowest ever score in the CPI index. Is anyone outraged? No, we’re beyond that. Watergate took two years to unfold. Today, the nation can’t sit still for an afternoon. Whee!"
Monday, August 17, 2026
Jeremiah Babe, "This Can Get Bad Real Fast
Jeremiah Babe, 8/17/26
"This Can Get Bad Real Fast -
Japan's $620 Billion Selloff Of US Equities Would Be Catastrophic"
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"Alert! This Will Get Ugly Fast! Stockpile as Much Food as You Can Now!"
Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 8/17/26
"Alert! This Will Get Ugly Fast!
Stockpile as Much Food as You Can Now!"
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Musical Interlude: Yanni & Samvel Yervinyan, "Until The Last Moment"
Full screen recommended.
Yanni & Samvel Yervinyan, "Until The Last Moment"
"From Stardust to Sapiens: A Stunning Serenade to Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation"
Our Cosmic Origins and Our Ongoing Self-Creation"
By Maria Popova
"We were never promised any of it - this world of cottonwoods and clouds - when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into what we are - creatures who can see a universe of beauty in the feather of a bird and can turn a blind eye to each other’s suffering, creatures capable of the Benedictus and the bomb. Creatures who hope.
A generation after Maya Angelou held up a cosmic mirror to humanity with “A Brave and Startling Truth,” Pattiann Rogers - who writes with uncommon virtuosity about the intersection of the cosmic and the human, and whose poems have therefore been a frequent presence in "The Universe in Verse" - offers a poignant cosmogony of our self-creation in the stunning final poem of her book "Flickering" (public library).
Full screen recommended.
"Homo Sapiens: Creating Themselves"
by Pattiann Rogers, Read by Maria Popova
I.
"Formed in the black-light center of a star-circling
galaxy; formed in whirlpool images of froth
and flume and fulcrum; in the center image of herring
circling like pieces of silver swirling fast, a shoaling
circle of deception; in the whirlpool perfume of sex
in the deepest curve of a lily’s soft corolla. Created
within the images of the creator’s creation.
Born with the same grimacing wrench of a tree-covered
cliff split wide suddenly by lightning and opened
to thundering clouds of hail and rain.
Cured in the summer sun as if in a potter’s oven,
polished like a stone rolled by a river, emboldened
by the image of the expanse beyond earth’s horizon,
inside and outside a circumference in the image
of freedom.
Given the image of starlight clusters steadily silent
above a hillside-silence of fallen snow… let there be sleep.
II.
Inheriting from the earth’s scrambling minions,
images of thorn and bur, fang and claw, stealth,
deceit, poison, camouflage, blade, and blood…
let there be suffering, let there be survival.
Shaped by the image of the onset and unstoppable
devouring eclipse of the sun, the tempestuous, ecliptic
eating of the moon, the volcanic explosions of burning
rocks and fiery hail of ashes to death… let there be
terror and tears. Let there be pity.
Created in the image of fear inside a crawfish
skittering backward through a freshwater stream
with all eight appendages in perfect coordination,
both pincers held high, backing into safety beneath
a fallen leaf refuge… let there be home.
III.
Made in the image of the moon, where else
would the name of ivory rock craters shine
except in our eyes… let there be language.
Displayed in the image of the rotting seed
on the same stem with the swelling blossom…
let there be hope.
Homo sapiens creating themselves after the manner
and image of the creator’s ongoing creation — slowly,
eventual, alert and imagined, composing, dissembling,
until the right chord sounds from one brave strum
of the right strings reverberating, fading away
like evening… let there be pathos, let there be
compassion, forbearance, forgiveness. Let there be
weightless beauty.
Of earth and sky, Homo sapiens creating themselves,
following the mode and model of the creator’s creation,
particle by particle, quest by quest, witness by witness,
even though the unknown far away and the unknown
nearby be seen and not seen… let there be goodwill
and accounting, let there be praise resounding."
Complement with astronomer-poet Rebecca Elson’s ode to dark matter and the mystery of being, “Let There Always Be Light,” non-speaking autistic poet Hannah Emerson’s astonishing “Center of the Universe,” and Jane Hirshfield’s “To Be a Person,” then revisit Pattiann Rogers’s harmonic of the human and cosmic perspectives, read by David Byrne and illustrated by Maira Kalman."
"A Look to the Heavens"
"Slide your telescope just east of the Lagoon Nebula to find this alluring field of view in the rich starfields of the constellation Sagittarius toward the central Milky Way. Of course the Lagoon nebula is also known as M8, the eighth object listed in Charles Messier's famous catalog of bright nebulae and star clusters.
Click image for larger size.
Close on the sky but slightly fainter than M8, this complex of nebulae was left out of Messier's list though. It contains obscuring dust, striking red emission and blue reflection nebulae of star-forming region NGC 6559 at right. Like M8, NGC 6559 is located about 5,000 light-years away along the edge of a large molecular cloud. At that distance, this telescopic frame nearly 3 full moons wide would span about 130 light-years."
"Still Walking Beside You"
Full screen recommended.
"Still Walking Beside You"
"There's something nobody tells you about a long love. It doesn't live in the moments you planned for. Not the anniversaries, not the milestones. It lives in the walk you took without thinking about it. The hand reached for in the dark. The silence on a long drive that needed no words at all. A whole life together can look quiet from the outside. That's usually when it's everything. I hope this finds you on a day when you can still reach over. And I hope you do."
"Your Shadow Knows the Truth "
Full screen recommended.
Delta King's Blues,
"Your Shadow Knows the Truth "
"A reputation is what people think about you. Character is what follows you home. "Your Shadow Knows the Truth" is an original Delta blues song about integrity, quiet character, and the simple truth that no amount of praise can silence your own conscience. Led by warm resonator guitar, soulful harmonica, and the seasoned voice of Delta Blues Brother, this song reminds us that the hardest person to deceive is ourselves. This is the blues of character. "You can fool the whole wide world... not the man you meet each day."
"How to Stop Collecting Regrets Before It Is Too Late"
Full screen recommended.
Native Elder,
"How to Stop Collecting Regrets Before It Is Too Late"
The Daily "Near You?"
Kuala Lumpur, Wilayah Persekutuan Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Thanks for stopping by!
"The World Is Running A Huge Oil Deficit, The SPR Hits A 4 Decade Low, And Diesel Shortages Are Looming"
by Michael Snyder
"The world is barreling toward a historic energy crunch that will be unlike anything that we have ever seen before. When fighting with Iran erupted earlier this year, the global economy was absolutely swimming in oil. We literally had far more oil than we needed, but now commercial inventories have gotten extremely tight and national reserves are alarmingly low. If the Strait of Hormuz does not get reopened soon, we will quickly enter an immensely painful chapter of the global energy crisis. Energy prices will shoot way up and shortages will start to become a major issue. In fact, a global scramble for supplies of diesel fuel has already begun.
Right now the world is consuming far more oil than it is producing. We have been running an enormous oil deficit for months, and the amount of oil that is coming out of the Persian Gulf is running at about half of pre-war levels… Wall Street analysts – who use ship tracking services like Kpler and Windward Intelligence, among many other data points, to provide estimates about oil flows – have said oil tankers have been getting roughly 4 million barrels of oil out of the Persian Gulf each day.
In addition to the roughly 7 million barrels per day that Middle Eastern countries have rerouted around the strait through pipelines and other methods, about 11 or 12 million barrels have been flowing out, according to the tracking services. That’s significantly lower than the 20 million barrels per day that the region had exported before the Iran war started.
We have been able to operate normally all this time because there was a tremendous amount of excess oil sitting around. But now somewhere between 1.5 and 1.9 billion barrels of excess oil have disappeared…Global inventories are between 1.5 billion and 1.9 billion barrels lower now than they were at the start of the war, depending on who’s estimating. Massive crude stockpiles before the war helped prevent catastrophe when supply dried up.
Commercial oil inventories are exceedingly tight at this stage. The good news is that there is still some extra oil remaining in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The bad news is that the amount of oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is now so low that we risk doing permanent damage if we continue to drain the salt caverns where the oil is stored…
The caverns that hold the U.S. strategic oil reserve could get damaged by the rapid release of stockpiles in response to the Iran war, experts warned this week as inventories hit a four-decade low. Damage to the caverns would make it more difficult to respond to future energy emergencies, the experts said. The oil in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, or SPR, is stored at 60 salt caverns thousands of feet underground at four major sites along the Gulf Coast in Louisiana and Texas.
300 million barrels is considered to be a danger point by many industry insiders. We have now gone beyond that level…The SPR has tumbled below 300 million barrels for the first time since it was filled in the early 1980s, according to Department of Energy data released Monday. Inventories are depleting as the U.S. releases 172 million barrels in response to the supply disruption caused by the Iran war. The SPR will sit at around 243 million barrels after the drawdown is finished.
To extract oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, operators pump water into the bottom of the underground caverns. This pushes the crude oil to the surface and into the pipelines. However, the caverns must always maintain a strict minimum of 70 million barrels. This cushion keeps the extraction pipes safely submerged in oil instead of drawing up water.
Officials in Washington are insisting that we can safely keep removing oil out of the SPR until we reach the 70 million barrel mark. But one expert is warning that such a claim is “nonsense”…“Don’t believe the people out of the government that are saying the SPR can go to 70 million barrels. It’s nonsense,” Hochstein told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. At that level, the reserve would be depleted to “the point of never resurrecting it,” he said.
Depleting the reserve below 300 million barrels risks damage to the caverns, the former Biden administration official warned in June. “I don’t know anyone who believes we can go below 300,” Hochstein told CNBC’s Brian Sullivan at an Atlantic Council event. “I know plenty of people who think we can’t get near 300 because physically you will damage the caverns where the oil is stored.”
We have now gone under the 300 million barrel mark. And I think that we will continue to draw down the SPR because there is no much pressure to do so. But the clock is ticking. Eventually we won’t be able to get any more oil out of the SPR. What will we do then?
Will we start seeing lines at gasoline stations? That is precisely what we are witnessing in Russia right now. In fact, another wave of fuel shortages has just hit that nation…Fuel shortages have returned to some regions of Russia in August, prompting local authorities in at least 10 regions to again tighten controls on sales of motor fuel at petrol stations, according to authorities and regional media. Reuters witnesses reported on Monday that gasoline was once again unavailable at some fuel stations in the Moscow region, although diesel fuel was available at almost all stations. The fuel crisis, which began gaining momentum in May and by July had spread to almost all regions of Russia, follows the shutdown of several refineries hit in drone attacks and a seasonal rise in demand.
Russia is normally the second largest exporter of diesel fuel in the world. But now they are being forced to hoard what they have. So this is starting to make things very difficult in Europe and Asia. In fact, European countries are now scrambling to find sufficient supplies of diesel fuel…Diesel cargoes are costing more than jet fuel in Europe for the first time in more than a year, LSEG data showed, as the continent replaces lower Middle East air fuel shipments with other sources of supply, but struggles to secure more diesel for industry and agriculture.
Europe has been able to pull in jet cargoes from the U.S. and other countries like Nigeria as prices surged after the start of the Iran war, which disrupted crude and fuel supply. Global diesel supply tightened even further when Russia banned exports amid Ukrainian attacks on its refineries. “We see a higher risk of persistent scarcity pricing in diesel than in crude heading into winter,” analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a note.
We were warned that this would happen, and now it is happening. Here in the United States, diesel prices are really starting to spike… In the United States, the report said, diesel futures booked their sharpest rise since July on Monday, adding 7.4% to $4.19 per gallon. The average retail price for a gallon of diesel was $5.32 on Tuesday, according to AAA data. That was up from $4.88 per gallon a month ago and $3.71 per gallon a year ago. To put it mildly, this is problematic.
Diesel is often referred to as the workhorse of any economy. Indeed, economies run on diesel, which is used for everything from freight transportation to farming, to heating during the winter. If diesel prices are consistently higher for an extended period of time, they will inevitably be passed on to consumers, fueling a more generalized inflation trend. We produce more diesel than anyone, and so for the moment we are okay. But higher diesel prices will directly affect the cost of living for every single one of us. And if the Strait of Hormuz does not get reopened, things will get a lot worse.
For now, the Iranians are insisting that the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until President Trump agrees to every single one of their outrageous demands. President Trump can never do that, because giving in to every single one of their outrageous demands would make him look like an all-time loser. So it appears that we are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the global energy crisis is poised to greatly accelerate in the months ahead."
"Bank Of America & Walmart Issue Major Warnings"
Full screen recommended.
Snyder Reports, 8/17/26
"Bank Of America & Walmart Issue Major Warnings"
"Walmart, Bank of America, and TransUnion just raised the SAME red flag in the same week - and it's a warning most American households are about to feel. Walmart's CEO identified fuel prices as the single biggest "stress point" for consumers. Customers are now filling up with fewer than 10 gallons per visit, buying only a couple days' worth of groceries, and turning to Buy Now Pay Later just to cover food. Bank of America's own customer data confirms it: lower - and middle-income households are pulling back on discretionary spending, and their wage gains are barely covering the jump in gas prices. TransUnion sees the same strain from a third angle - consumer credit profiles. People have drained their savings, maxed their credit, and already tapped retirement accounts. There's no backup left."
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"The Looming Debt Crisis: Is America Following the Path of Collapsed Empires?"
"The Looming Debt Crisis: Is America
Following the Path of Collapsed Empires?"
by Nick Giambruno
"Debt can topple even the most powerful empires. Whether it’s Rome, Spain, France, Britain, or the Soviet Union, excessive debt has played a critical role in their decline. The typical pattern in these examples of collapsing empires is:
Stage #1: Empires achieve success and become overconfident.
Stage #2: Overconfidence leads to extravagant spending on luxuries and wars.
Stage #3: Empires finance this lavish spending by going into debt.
Stage #4: The debt grows to an unsustainable level and creates a crushing burden.
Stage #5: Empires finance the debt through taxation and currency debasement.
Stage #6: The populace bears the brunt of debt repayment as empires raise taxes and debase the currency - to the maximum extent - until it causes internal instability.
Stage #7: Empires cannot finance their militaries because of their debt burden. This is usually the tipping point.
Stage #8: Underfunded militaries plus internal instability make empires vulnerable to foreign invasion, domestic revolution, civil war, and other existential dangers.
Stage #9: The empire collapses.
Now, it’s the US Empire’s turn. The US federal government has the biggest debt in the history of the world. And it’s continuing to grow at a rapid, unstoppable pace. Annualized interest on the federal debt exceeded $1.2 trillion recently and is shooting higher at an exponential rate.
The federal debt’s annualized interest cost is already higher than the defense budget. It’s on track to exceed Social Security and become the BIGGEST item in the federal budget.
Historian Niall Ferguson summed it up nicely: "Any great power that spends more on debt service (interest payments on the national debt) than on defense will not stay great for very long. True of Habsburg Spain, true of ancien régime France, true of the Ottoman Empire, true of the British Empire, this law is about to be put to the test by the US beginning this very year."
Bonds, T-bills, and dividend stocks may still pay on schedule. But in today’s environment, the bigger question is whether that income is enough to preserve purchasing power.
Consider this:
1. The American populace is nearing its breaking point as taxation and inflation rise.
2. Interest on the federal debt exceeds defense spending and is set to become the BIGGEST expenditure, and it will keep growing from there.
As a result, the US Empire is somewhere between Stage #6 and #7 in the empire collapse pattern I described above. It is nearing the point where its crushing debt burden will make it difficult to finance existing military spending.
As we saw in the historical examples, a tipping point is reached once an empire’s debt burden becomes so great that it struggles to pay for its military. It’s like someone waving a big red flag. The US government will soon have to choose to:
1. Cut defense spending amid the most chaotic geopolitical period since WW2.
2. Default on its promises regarding Social Security, Medicare, Veterans’ Benefits, and welfare generally.
Though it may try, the US government cannot continue to pay for entitlements and defense even if their current levels stay flat into the future. But they won’t stay flat. Both are set to grow significantly in the years ahead. Tens of millions of Baby Boomers - about 20% of the population - will enter retirement in the coming years. Cutting Social Security and Medicare is a sure way to lose an election.
With the most precarious geopolitical situation since World War 2, defense spending is unlikely to be cut. Instead, defense spending is all but certain to increase. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently said: "Barely staying even with inflation or worse is wholly inadequate. Significant additional resources for defense are necessary and urgent."
The most likely outcome is that the US will try to have its cake and eat it too by paying for both growing defense and domestic obligations via currency debasement. However, it will likely end up just like other powerful collapsed empires that preceded it - with an underfunded military and domestic instability.
The truth is that Trump cannot make America great again any more than Gorbachev could save the Soviet Union. Once an empire struggles to pay for its military, the decline is impossible to reverse.
Consider this. The Denarius - the Roman silver coin - lost nearly all its silver content between 180 and 280 AD. The US dollar has lost over 98% of its value against gold since 1971.
Just as the Roman citizens realized their government was defaulting on its promises to them through currency debasement, I am confident that Social Security and Medicare recipients and others who have been promised something from the US federal government will notice they are being paid in debased currency. They won’t be happy. Just as Roman soldiers realized they were being paid in debased currency, I am confident American soldiers will realize the same thing, and they won’t be happy either. In short, the US will soon reach the tipping point that has caused the collapse of other powerful empires.
Its crushing debt burden is nearing the point where it will cause the military to be underfunded and internal instability as average citizens bear the brunt of debt repayment through increased taxation, inflation, and broken promises on Social Security and other programs.
Remember, the interest expense is set to exceed Social Security and become the biggest item in the budget. It will only get bigger from there as the debt continues to grow at an unstoppable and exponential rate. Therefore, I don’t think it will be long before the exploding interest expense crowds out funding for defense, Social Security, and other domestic commitments. As that happens, I expect the US is headed for a disaster of historical proportions.
I am confident that the collapse of the US Empire, which has been in place since the end of WW2 - otherwise known as the US-led world order - could happen a lot sooner than most realize. The global geopolitical situation was already trending towards a multipolar world order. The US debt crisis is compounding its geopolitical problems and will accelerate this established trend. That means we’re likely to see the end of the US-led world order and the emergence of a multipolar world order in the not-so-distant future.
Many people will be unprepared for the collapse of the US Empire. However, when you look at the Big Picture, that is where I think we’re headed. And just like the collapse of previous empires, debt will play a significant role. When private businesses go bankrupt, shareholders get wiped out. When governments go bankrupt, those who hold its fiat currency get wiped out.
Given the historical examples, one thing I think we can be sure of is that the US government will try to service its debt costs with currency debasement, just like many empires that collapsed before it. That’s terrible news for the US dollar. The consequences of this debt crisis will extend far beyond geopolitics.
As the US government resorts to increasingly aggressive currency debasement to fund its obligations, the value of the dollar will continue to erode - and capital will seek refuge in scarce assets. Gold will likely be one of the primary beneficiaries. But silver could offer even greater speculative upside. Silver is a tiny market. During periods of monetary stress, even a modest influx of investment demand can overwhelm available supply and send prices sharply higher."
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