"'The Last Train Home' is a cinematic song about growing older, carrying the past, and slowly discovering what “home” really means. A man boards a train at twenty with a single ticket and a small suitcase. As each carriage carries him ten years forward, the suitcase fills with the pieces of his life - childhood, love, family, loss, memories, regrets, and the words he never said. By sixty, the weight of everything he has carried becomes impossible to ignore. But the final carriage brings a different kind of journey: not back to the place he came from, but toward acceptance, release, and the life still waiting ahead. The Last Train Home is a story about letting go without forgetting. About understanding that the past can shape us without defining everything that comes next. And sometimes, after searching for home for an entire lifetime, we realize we have been carrying it within us all along."
"We don’t have to stay young… just stay together. “Before the Light Goes Down” is a heartfelt Delta blues/Southern soul song about growing old with someone you love and realizing that ordinary moments are the ones worth holding onto. Told through the eyes of an elderly bluesman, it’s a tender reminder to love deeply, say what matters, and cherish the time you still have together. A gentle acoustic guitar carries the melody like an old man’s slow walk at sunset. The harmonica sighs soft and low, like memories drifting through warm southern air. The rhythm moves slow and steady - the kind of blues made for porch swings, fading sunlight, and hands that still find each other after all these years. Because sometimes the real blues isn’t about heartbreak…it’s about a love that stayed. Grandpa’s been around long enough to know: the best love story isn’t the loudest one - it’s the one that keeps going. Growing old ain’t so bad… if you ain’t doing it alone."
“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”
It’s deliberate so that we can have “order out of chaos”,
as in New World Order, also known as the tyranny of the ruling sociopaths.
by Milan Adams
"Other than the obvious consequences, what might we expect from a partial economic collapse? A total collapse of the economy would throw the nation into utter chaos. But what if we endure an economic depression, or a severe and long-lasting downturn? I think that some of the effects are not so obvious.
1. The college and university system will collapse: As I explained in this previous post, the system of higher education is a house of cards. The cost of getting a college degree has risen sharply and steadily, while real income has remained relatively flat. The price rise is due to the easy availability of grants and loans for education. But with so many persons getting a college degree, its value in the marketplace has plummeted. Many college grads are out of work, or they are working in a job that does not require a degree. Eventually, this practice of paying more and more, for something that is worth less and less, will collapse the system. Colleges and universities will not have enough paying students, and professors will not agree to a drastic pay cut. Overhead expenses are far too high. All that is needed is an economic collapse, or partial collapse, to topple this house of cards. Many universities and colleges will be forced by economics to shut down.
2. Agricultural yields will plummet: The current U.S. agricultural system is based on the expectation of high yields. But high yields are obtained by high inputs - all the things that go into growing the crop, including lots of fertilizer, perhaps irrigation, herbicides, pesticides, labor, machinery. Then those high yields are sold and the money is then used to fund the inputs for the next crop cycle.
An economic collapse will mean that farmers will not be able to afford all the inputs needed for high yields. And when yields fall, the amount of money from that crop will be less. Then the next crop cycle will have even less money for inputs, resulting in even lower yields. And the process will continue — lower yields, less money, lower inputs — until many farmers are out of business and a food crisis results.
3. Violent crime will increase: When people lack money and food, they become desperate. And desperate people do desperate things. Theft and robbery will skyrocket, and people will be afraid in their homes, and afraid to go out in the community. Even a quick trip to the market will become risky. Sales of most goods will plummet, causing the economic crisis to worsen. Protests will turn violent. Home invasion robberies will become much more common. Many people will be killed or injured as a result of this increase in violent crimes.
4. Law enforcement will be overwhelmed: The law enforcement system in the U.S. is commercial. Officers are paid. We don’t keep a large excess of officers on the payroll, just in case crime sharply increases. So it is relatively easy for the system to be overwhelmed. And that means a call to 911 might not bring the police to your door in time, if at all. Those who have firearms for home defense will be much better off than those who rely solely on the police. But many households have no firearms. And that means that robberies will increase, and so will the economic damage and the number of injuries and deaths.
5. The healthcare system will be overwhelmed: The healthcare system is also commercial, and lacks a safety margin in the form of excess doctors and nurses. Hospitals operate at close to capacity. A sudden increase in persons who are sick or injured will overwhelm the system. The aforementioned increase in violent crime will undoubtedly increase injuries. But it is less obvious that a disruption to the food production and distribution system will increase illnesses. Plenty of good healthy food is the first line of defense against illness. Malnourished persons are much more likely to get sick. So an extended disruption to the food supply will cause an increase in illnesses.
6. Travel anywhere will become dangerous: As a result of all the above described problems, travel will be dangerous. Want to make a quick trip to the supermarket? You risk having your house robbed, if it is left unoccupied. And you risk being attacked on your way back from the market. Robbers might wait outside the market and follow anyone who looks like they purchased a lot of food.
There will be protests in many places, and violence will often break out. People who are hungry and afraid do not make the best decisions. Then there is the cultural aspect of the situation. We live in a culture that tells us to expect the government to take care of us, and to protest whenever anything doesn’t go our way. Ironically, self-sufficiency is abhorrent to our narcissistic culture. I expect that the roadways will be dangerous, as violent criminals will see travelers as easier targets than homes.
7. The death rate will jump higher: People will be malnourished because of the disruption in the food supply, so they will get sick more easily. Violent crimes and violent protests will result in many more injuries than usual. And yet healthcare will be much more difficult to access. There will be a shortage of hospital beds. It will be difficult to get a doctor’s appointment. There may be a shortage of prescription and OTC medications.
All of these factors will make life a riskier endeavor. Now if you are a seasoned prepper, who has long considered the dangers inherent in an economic collapse, you may have anticipated some of the above consequences. But I hope I’ve added to your understanding of the possible problems that we may soon face."
"What is happening on the other side of the world is starting to have a very real impact on the daily lives of millions of Americans. The chaos in the Middle East and the rapidly escalating war in Ukraine are driving up oil prices. As a result, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has never been so high this late in the calendar year, and the average price of diesel just keeps surging even deeper into record territory. Of course higher prices are only part of the story. Global supplies have gotten so tight, and so it was inevitable that shortages and rationing would begin to occur. Earlier today, I was shocked to learn that Costco is now rationing motor oil…
As The Drive originally reported, Costco has officially started rationing its motor oil to combat a rapidly deteriorating global lubricant shortage. The days of grabbing cheap bulk oil are over. A 10-quart box of Kirkland Signature full-synthetic motor oil, which historically retailed for a bargain-basement $30, has skyrocketed to $58. More concerningly, Costco has implemented a strict two-box-per-customer weekly limit. Name brands aren’t faring much better; a six-quart case of Mobil 1 is currently sitting at $44, with purchases capped at five per member to prevent hoarders and scalpers from clearing the shelves.
I can’t remember Costco ever doing this before. So why has this happened? Well, it turns out that we normally import a very large percentage of our motor oil from the Middle East… Modern synthetic motor oil relies heavily on Group III base oils. Historically, the United States imports nearly 44% of its Group III supply directly from three major Persian Gulf producers: Bapco in Bahrain, ADNOC in the United Arab Emirates, and Pearl GTL in Qatar.
The ongoing military entanglement with Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz have effectively choked off these crucial exports. To compound the supply chain disaster, the massive Pearl GTL facility in Qatar sustained heavy damage from Iranian airstrikes in March 2026, instantly crippling a major portion of global production for at least a year.
Unfortunately, it appears that the global energy crisis is about to get even worse. On Friday, the Saudis announced that they had been forced to close down their East-West oil pipeline…Saudi Arabia said Friday that it shut down the kingdom’s crucial East-West crude oil pipeline as a precautionary measure after multiple attacks by drones launched from Iraq. The drones targeted the pipeline in the Riyadh and Medina regions Thursday morning causing fires and some damage, the Saudi government said. Several people were injured in the attacks, it said. The Saudis have relied on the East-West pipeline to shift crude oil exports away from Persian Gulf as the U.S. and Iran battle for control over the Strait of Hormuz. The pipeline, which has a capacity of 7 million barrels per day, runs across the kingdom to export terminals on the Red Sea.
Global oil inventories are already incredibly tight. So this is really big news. It is being reported that up to 4 percent of the global supply of oil could be affected by this shutdown…Saudi Arabia risks losing up to 4% of global oil supply unless it restarts its major east-west pipeline to the Red Sea within days, threatening a key export route that has helped the kingdom bypass the wartime shutdown of the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reported on Sunday. Drone attacks forced Riyadh to shut the pipeline on Friday, cutting a route that had been carrying around 4 million barrels per day to the Red Sea port of Yanbu. Yanbu has enough oil stocks to maintain exports for only five to seven days, three industry sources told Reuters, while smaller volumes are also stored at Egyptian ports.
Unfortunately, it appears that the refinery in Yanbu is now out of commission as well. On Sunday, it was being reported that smoke was “billowing” from that facility… A major oil refinery in Saudi Arabia has gone up in flames as tensions soar in the Middle East. The Yanbu refinery in the city of Yanbu, on the Red Sea coast in western Saudi Arabia, has been pictured with smoke billowing above the facility.
Many believe that the Houthis were responsible for that attack, and we also just learned that a military base in southern Saudi Arabia has just been hit…The Iranian-backed Houthi militant group in Yemen said early Sunday local time that it used drones and missiles to attack a military base in southern Saudi Arabia. The attack at the Sharurah base targeted “weapons depots and command and control centers that are managing the aggression against our nation and people,” Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree wrote on X.
The Houthis are in all-out war mode. As I detailed for my core supporters on Friday, the Houthis were able to capture more than 3,000 square kilometers of territory in Yemen in just 24 hours. The Saudi-backed forces that are fighting the Houthis are collapsing, and Saudi leaders have been pleading with the Trump administration for help…Saudi Arabia is urging Washington to take direct military action against Iran-backed Houthis, Fox News Digital learned after the terrorist group seized key positions along Yemen’s Bab al-Mandab Strait on Friday.
The dramatic strengthening of Houthi’s positioning along the coastline of Yemen is in one of the world’s most important shipping choke points - a narrow passage that links the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, which has been used as a bypass as the Iran war continues to severely disrupt shipping, especially of oil, through the Strait of Hormuz.
The rapid advance on Friday triggered urgent discussions at the highest levels in Riyadh and Washington, and a source familiar with the matter tells Fox News Digital that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman urged President Donald Trump to take military action against the Houthis.
Of course the Trump administration already has their hands full with Iran. Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is almost entirely paralyzed at this point, and there is no end in sight for the war. Ominously, we are being told that there is solid evidence that entities in China “supplied Iran with high-quality satellite imagery of a US Air Force base in Jordan” just prior to an Iranian ballistic missile attack on July 17th…Chinese entities supplied Iran with high-quality satellite imagery of a US Air Force base in Jordan both before and after Tehran launched a deadly ballistic missile attack on the facility on July 17, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing US officials familiar with the matter.
The officials, who declined to identify the Chinese entities, said Washington had linked the satellite imagery to the strike, providing what they described as the clearest evidence yet that Chinese support for Tehran during the war had contributed to the deaths of US troops. They stopped short, however, of accusing Beijing of directly participating in the attack, according to the Journal. Senior US officials reportedly brought up the imagery from the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base with their Chinese counterparts, but Beijing rejected the allegation and demanded that Washington provide evidence, the Journal cited its sources as saying.
This is an extremely alarming development, because now it is very clear that China is helping Iran fight us. That puts us dangerously close to the sort of military conflict with China that I have been warning about for years.
Sadly, we are also dangerously close to a directly military conflict with Russia. A little while ago, a Russian drone hit a train that was just minutes behind a train that was carrying Boris Johnson, former Swedish premier Carl Bildt and other prominent western leaders…"Boris Johnson has blasted “warped” Vladimir Putin after he escaped across the Polish border when a Russian drone struck a train minutes behind his.The former Prime Minister, who is understood to be unharmed, was travelling back from a security conference in Kyiv.
Former Swedish premier and foreign minister Carl Bildt, who was on the same train as Johnson, said their train was “just minutes” behind the one hit by a Russian drone. “This wasn’t our train [that was hit], but the one just minutes after us by the [Polish] border crossing,” said Bildt. German Chancellor Merz’s primary security adviser and security advisers from the UK, France, and Italy were on the train as well."
Also riding the train was former CIA director David Petraeus…"Ukraine’s state railway operator says top Western figures - including former prime minister Boris Johnson and ex-CIA director David Petraeus - were at a west Ukrainian train station shortly before Russia struck a Warsaw-bound train there. “Shortly before the locomotive was hit at the Ukrainian-Polish border, a diplomatic train was at Yagodyn station,” Ukraine’s rail operator Ukrzaliznytsia says in a statement.
“There were, among others, security advisers from several EU member states and former European leaders on board, including former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. In another train that was at Yagodyn station at the very moment of the attack was former CIA Director David Petraeus.”
Can you imagine what would have happened if the Russians had struck that train instead of the train behind it? Footage of the train that the Russians did hit shows that it was severely damaged. So it looks like we dodged a bullet.
But we continue to creep even closer to a nightmare scenario in Europe. Many of our NATO allies have been preparing for war, and Russian President Vladimir Putin just warned that if any European nations send troops to Ukraine it will mean “war with Russia”…President Vladimir Putin warned Europe on Friday that sending any troops to help Ukraine would mean an escalation of the conflict and “war with Russia.” UPI reports Putin laid out his stark warning while speaking to reporters at the BRICS summit in New Delhi. “Now, they say they are thinking of how to deploy troops to Ukraine,” he told reporters, as quoted by state-run news agency TASS as seen by UPI. “This would mean a war with Russia.”
All of the pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, but a lot of people out there still don’t realize that what we are witnessing is literally World War III. For quite a while, many of us that live here in the United States could safely ignore the drama on the other side of the planet because it was not significantly affecting our daily lives. But now it is. If you go to Costco today, there will be a strict limit on how much motor oil that you can purchase. Of course this is just the beginning. Global events are starting to spiral completely out of control, and a tremendous amount of chaos is on the horizon."
"Nothing is a dollar anymore. Dollar Tree prices went from $1 to $1.25, and now shoppers are finding $1.50 and $1.75 on the shelf, $5 candles and $6 buckets, in a store built on one promise: one dollar. Dollar Tree keeps raising prices, and the dollar stores around it are running on empty. These are real Dollar Tree, Dollar General and Family Dollar shoppers and workers, filmed on their own phones: a Dollar Tree manager alone with a huge line, one worker for a whole row of registers, half-empty containers of laundry beads for $1.25, and stores closed in broad daylight, boarded up, or shut down by the health department.
Dollar store prices keep going up while the staff keeps disappearing, and this is what Dollar Tree falling apart looks like from the inside. The price on the sign is only half of it. The box got smaller behind the same sign: shrinkflation, a quieter kind of price increase. The other half is hours, the one cost a store manager actually controls. The rent, the freight and the price on the tag are decided far above them, so when the number has to come down, it comes out of the schedule. And that means it comes out of a person: one worker doing the job of three.
What this video covers: • From one dollar to $1.25, then $1.50 and $1.75 - shoppers telling Dollar Tree to change its name. • $6 buckets, $10 items, a $20 Christmas tree and three small bags for $28. • Half-empty containers sold for $1.25. • One cashier and a line out the door at Dollar General and Family Dollar. • A Dollar Tree manager alone in the store with no backup. • Stores closed in broad daylight, boarded up, or shut down by the health department. • A town full of dollar stores that can't keep a single employee.
Every clip is a real person, filmed on their own phone, in their own words. Nothing here is staged. Two things that actually help. If you shop there, ignore the shelf price and check the unit price, the cost per ounce on the small tag. Three items, one photo, against the supermarket on the same street: in ninety seconds you know whether you are still saving anything. If you work there, write down every shift how many people were on the floor and what time you were alone in the building. "We were understaffed" is a feeling. "I was the only person in this store from seven to eleven on these fourteen nights" is a record. What does your local Dollar Tree look like right now, and what used to be a dollar that isn't anymore? Tell us the state below."
"Food prices could be headed significantly higher as a new wave of supply chain problems begins to develop. JPMorgan analysts are warning that global food inflation could reach 5% in early 2027, while farmers and ranchers are already dealing with rising costs for fuel, fertilizer, feed, labor, transportation and equipment. The Strait of Hormuz, Middle East conflict, diesel prices, corn, wheat and shipping disruptions could all create additional pressure on the food supply. What happens when those costs finally reach the grocery store?
Four years ago, I documented the massive supply chain backup off the California coast as container ships sat offshore and businesses struggled to get merchandise. That video went on to nearly 700,000 views. This time, the potential problem is much more serious because we're talking about food. Corn and wheat affect everything from bread, pasta and cereal to animal feed, which can ultimately affect beef, pork, chicken, milk and eggs. Farmers and ranchers are already under pressure, and if transportation, fertilizer, fuel and global shipping become more difficult, the result could be higher prices - or products that become difficult to find. Don't just watch grocery prices. Watch fertilizer, diesel, corn, wheat, cattle, ranchers, trucking, shipping and the Strait of Hormuz. The supply chain warning may be coming before consumers see the full impact at the store."
”Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies – or else? The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
”I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain.”
"1. Life is not easy. Hard work makes people lucky, it's the stuff that brings dreams to reality. So start every morning ready to run farther than you did yesterday and fight harder than you ever have before.
2. You will fail sometimes. The faster you accept this, the faster you can get on with being brilliant. You'll never be 100% sure it will work, but you can always be 100% sure doing nothing won't work. So get out there and do something! Either you succeed or you learn a vital lesson. Win, Win.
3. Right now, there's a lot you don't know. The day you stop learning is the day you stop living. Embrace new information, think about it and use it to advance yourself.
4. There may not be a tomorrow. Not for everyone. Right now, someone on Earth is planning something for tomorrow without realizing they're going to die today. This is sad but true. So spend your time wisely today and pause long enough to appreciate it.
5. There's a lot you can't control. Wasting your time, talent and emotional energy on things that are beyond your control is a recipe for frustration, misery and stagnation. Invest your energy in the things you can control.
6. Information is not true knowledge. Knowledge comes from experience. You can discuss a task a hundred times, but these discussions will only give you a philosophical understanding. You must experience a task firsthand to truly know it.
7. You can't be successful without providing value. Don't waste your time trying to be successful, spend your time creating value. When you're valuable to the world around you, you will be successful.
8. Someone else will always have more than you. Whether it's money, friends or magic beans that you're collecting, there will always be someone who has more than you. But remember, it's not how many you have, it's how passionate you are about collecting them. It's all about the journey.
9. You can't change the past. As Maria Robinson once said, "Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending. " You can't change what happened, but you can change how you react to it.
10. The only person who can make you happy is you. The root of your happiness comes from your relationship with yourself. Sure external entities can have fleeting effects on your mood, but in the long run nothing matters more than how you feel about who you are on the inside.
11. There will always be people who don't like you. You can't be everything to everyone. No matter what you do, there will always be someone who thinks differently. So concentrate on doing what you know in your heart is right. What others think and say about you isn't all that important. What is important is how you feel about yourself.
12. You won't always get what you want. As Mick Jagger once said, "You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you might find you get what you need. " Look around. Appreciate the things you have right now. Many people aren't so lucky.
13. In life, you get what you put in. If you want love, give love. If you want friends, be friendly. If you want money, provide value. It really is this simple.
14. Good friends will come and go. Most of your high school friends won't be a part of your college life. Most of your college friends won't be a part of your 20-something professional life. Most of your 20-something friends won't be there when your spouse and you bring your second child into the world. But some friends will stick. And it's these friends, the ones who transcend time with you, who matter.
15. Doing the same exact thing every day hinders self growth. If you keep doing what you're doing, you'll keep getting what you're getting. Growth happens when you change things, when you try new things, when you stretch beyond your comfort zone.
16. You will never feel 100% ready for something new. Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means you won't feel totally comfortable or ready for it.
And remember, trying to be someone else is a waste of the person you are. Strength comes from being comfortable in your own skin. "
"We are not gods, and we are not omniscient. We cannot foretell the future with certainty. Most often, cultural and political changes are terribly complex. It can be notoriously difficult to predict exactly where a trend will take us, and we can be mistaken. We do the best we can: if we wish to address certain issues seriously, we study history, and we read everything that might shed light on our concerns. We consult what the best thinkers of our time and of earlier times have said and written. We challenge everyone's assumptions, including most especially our own. That last is often very difficult. If we care enough, we do our best to disprove our own case. In that way, we find out how strong our case is, and where its weaknesses may lie.
Barring extraordinary circumstances, we cannot be certain that a particular development represents a critical turning point at the time it occurs. If we dare to say, "This is the moment the battle was lost," only future events will prove whether we were correct. We do the best we can, based on our understanding of how similar events have unfolded in the past, and in light of our understanding of the underlying principles in play. We can be wrong. "
“Nothing like this has ever happened before or will ever happen again,” a friend said to me about a lucky turn of events - a statement that struck me as touchingly self-negating: a recognition that life has violated her predictions about what is possible, immediately followed by a reassertion of unquestioned confidence in her powers of prediction.
The very fact that life surprises us is evidence that it can surprise us, that it will surprise us over and over. To mistake our theories of probability for a realistic representation of possibility is to forget that the improbable gave us all we know of existence. And yet precisely because the future is a garden of infinitely forking paths in which any outcome is possible, we yearn to know the direction our lives will take. This is absolutely and categorically impossible. We may, of course, have expectations and beliefs about what is likely to happen. But they are simply imaginative stories to which reality bears no obligation, stories negating the fundamental fact that the imagination of life is always greater than that of the living.
Because we cannot bear this indeterminacy, we have been inventing technologies of divination since ancient times. But while they may be futile in foretelling the future, they are not useless — their misunderstood gift is that they tell us back to ourselves, revealing regions of our psyche over which our conscious thought casts an impenetrable shadow, giving us a tuning fork for the purest note of the inner voice. (This, of course, is the concept of the bird divinations.) D.H. Lawrence knew this when he observed that divination is really just an annealing of attention and that “an act of pure attention, if you are capable of it, will bring its own answer.”
Chilean-French filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky articulates this beautifully in "The Way of Tarot" (public library) - his insightful exploration of one of our oldest and most enduring divination technologies not as a predictive mechanism but as a spiritual path. Declaring himself “absolutely opposed to reading hypothetical futures,” and “repulsed” by the notion that we are prisoners of destiny - a notion that began in the Greek theater of antiquity and was replicated in the determinism of twentieth-century physics - he writes:
"If, from the moment we are born, a god is directing every step we take, what is the good of striving for anything at all? Should we believe that our life is inevitably laid out in advance and all we are allowed to do is submit? To confront the idea of reading the cards, I had to define my notion of future. The reading subject either has or does not have a purpose in his life; he acts in accordance with projects, and he makes plans. When he starts worrying about knowing his future, he is depreciating his present actions, which he doubts. But the present is a fleeting instant: what weighs upon the development of the person receiving the reading is the past, which can act like ballast that tends to cause the future repetition of traumatic experiences from childhood (I will either do or not do what others have done or did not do to me), or as a source of energy that pushes us to progress, to change - in the best cases, transform ourselves.
If I have to accept the existence of a preordained future, I would visualize the present as a point from which a fan of infinite paths departs. An intentional action or an accident, something that happens by chance, projects us forward and obliges us to live one of the countless fates possible. This would allow me to declare, even when “everything has been written,” that the divine menu does not consist of a single dish but a huge selection. Free will consists of choosing one of these infinite sentences Fate hands down."
Just as the primary function of prayer is to clarify our own hopes and fears, to hone our priorities and reassert our values, the primary purpose of tarot is not to give us a telescope aimed at the frontiers of the future but a microscope aimed at the most elusive intricacies of the self. Jorodowsky writes:
"When we eliminate the illusion of “reading the future,” the Tarot becomes a psychological tool and a tool for self-knowledge. By honestly confronting the characteristics of our personalities that have gone off course - habits, identifications, manias, vices; narcissistic, antisocial, schizoid, and paranoid disorders; personal delusions, crazy ideas, depressive feelings, emotional immaturity, twisted desires, and needs imposed by the family, society, or culture - we can attain knowledge of our real essence, in other words, what is innate in us and not acquired. The individual can stop being what others want so that he can become who he truly is."
That’s a good thing, right? Isn’t that what we’ve been fighting for all along? Isn’t that what Norman Rockwell meant when he painted "Freedom of Speech" - the guy standing up to speak, with some folded-up paper in his pocket? That’s what free speech is all about, isn’t it?
“Every man has a voice to be heard.”
Yeah, I thought that was the whole point, too. Now I’m not so sure. I remember when the Internet was first coming into mass awareness, and I read an article commenting on it as a forum for every thought every person ever had. The article said this would be the first time such a bulk of information would flood our attention, almost all of it unedited and unvetted.
The author who wrote this article believed this would be a huge problem: that before then, information was sorted through, vetted, and deemed “worthy of human consumption” before it was made available to the throngs of humans grabbing for it.
This is good and bad, of course. The “good” is that before something was published, many eyes went over it, it was carefully determined to be accurate, and it was rejected if found to be preposterous, sensationalist, or downright a lie. (I am speaking here more of news items and non-fiction work.) Of course, if something was labelled “fiction,” the scrutiny was a bit less extreme. But it was still important to identify it as such (recall the famous Orson Welles “War of the Worlds” broadcast).
Now, with the internet, and to a lesser degree with self-publishing that bypasses traditional publishers, anything can get out there. Anything. And there seems to be no responsibility regarding accuracy, identifying fiction from non-fiction, and opinion from evidential proof.
Of course, needless to say, the “bad” of the old system is that anyone who controlled the press controlled what the press published. This would include even book printing, and particularly the printing of news, which should not be controlled by anyone other than editors and writers. Writers expressing their free thoughts is one thing; editors determining who gets published, or radically altering what writers write in order to express a certain narrative, is another.
But often editors are owned by the system (whether it be governments, institutions, special interest groups, or advertisers), and don’t even do the proper job they were meant to do. This is a problem - and quite frankly always has been. Particularly in countries known for the restriction of their citizens’ freedoms, such as the former Soviet Union, Communist China, and a litany of other countries, current and past. A “free press” is a relatively new thing. As well as a “free country” - both are now rapidly disintegrating.
So, rah-rah for the internet and self-publishing! Not so fast. With it come more problems of a different nature. With the advent of the “free internet,” where it takes nothing to get your voice in front of millions, and with no editing to free it from untruths and crappy writing, the responsibility for accurate literature falls on the reader, not on the author or the agency that releases the writing. The crappy writing is the responsibility of AI to correct (ha ha!). That leads to another problem: it is more difficult now to dismiss bad information based on bad grammar as it used to be!
This dilemma, sadly, gives the agenda even more power to announce nearly everything that hits consumers as “misinformation.” Since they now can say that if information does not come from their own established sources (and we all know what those are), then it simply is not to be “trusted” - it is “dis” or “mis” information, and should be ignored, or worse, attacked, deplatformed, etc. The net they cast is wide, intending to capture anything they find that does not meet their own criteria, thus labelling far more than unedited, unvetted nonsense as misinformation.
It makes you wonder if the internet was invented for this very purpose - to make it impossible to distinguish information coming from reliable and accurate alternative sources from information coming from Yahoo-types with diarrhea of the mouth. The same goes for the invention of AI - since everyone is now on a witch hunt to discredit AI writing, we may be throwing the baby out with the bathwater if we believe nothing good can come from AI literature.
Again, I don’t have a solution to this problem (do I ever?). I only hope for more awareness on the part of the consumer of information. As I said earlier, it is largely now our responsibility to weed through the junk and find what is true and makes logical and heartfelt sense. This requires more than a cursory look at Facebook chatter (and similar social media sources). We need to be reading history, science, and medical literature to vet the authors, their research methods, and particularly their funding.
We cannot be like the sheep-types who only look at the source for their vetting of information, who do not “do their research” and only believe verbatim anything their exalted leaders have to say, or their idolized news sources have to convey. And at the same time, totally ignoring, and I mean TOTALLY ignoring, ANY AND ALL information that comes from other sources, even empirical sources such as friends and family who have experienced contradictions in their own lives that the mainstream sources insist on.
We are being forced to take more action in this regard every day, considering the onslaught of AI-created visuals and text. Most of what we actually see now in media is AI-generated, and of course that means that most of what we see now in media is simply not true and is prompted by people who have their own agenda - whether that agenda is just a mischievous prank or a desire to sway masses of people to take certain action that fits a nefarious agenda.
I have no desire to stop the flow of information, regardless of where it comes from; I firmly believe everyone has the right to speak their word (although fewer should probably exercise that right!). I do have a desire to facilitate change in people so fewer and fewer of them find benefit in being liars, evil, or advocates of destructive agendas.
I also have the desire to see people develop more critical systems of thinking, not because the world is out to get them and they have to be aware of such a probability, but because a thinking mind is a healthy mind that is not easily swayed by unhealthy minds. Just as it was before the advent of the printing press, people must begin to rely more on word-of-mouth information, and information coming from uncertain sources needs to be more carefully scrutinized.
The reliance on word-of-mouth needs to come from the expectation that the majority of people we come in contact with are decent and share the same values we do. In my humble opinion, this is the world we must all be willing to work toward."
"People Get Offended Faster Than They Get Smarter"
“People Get Offended Faster Than They Get Smarter” is a witty, tongue-in-cheek blues about modern life, thin skin, and the disappearing art of laughing at yourself. The singer watches the world with a raised eyebrow, noticing how quick people are to take offense while being much slower to learn from experience. Driven by a rolling blues guitar groove and the sly, sarcastic cry of the harmonica, the song blends humor, observation, and old-school blues wisdom. The voice carries the tone of someone who has seen trends come and go and isn't surprised by much anymore. Everybody's got an opinion... But not everybody's got perspective."
"There are two separate things going on in this video, and it matters that they do not get blurred together. The first is what somebody says once they are caught. Hardly anybody argues they did not do it - they argue about what it was for, and the sentence that keeps surfacing is some version of I needed to feed my family. That may be true and it may be a line, and there is no way to tell which from the outside. The second thing is not people at all. It is equipment. A camera counting you. A check at the door. A glass case you have to ring a bell for. All of it signed off as an answer to the first thing, and all of it landing on the ninety-nine who paid. That is the part nobody explained to anyone who shops in one of these stores, and it is the part this video is really about.
What this video covers: • Baby formula, eye drops, razors, shampoo, deodorant and even cereal locked behind glass. • Pressing a call button and waiting ten minutes for someone to unlock one item. • Walmart staff opening a cabinet for every single makeup item. • A chaperone just to smell a candle, and $9 Legos behind a glass wall. • Carts that lock their wheels at the Walmart exit. • Receipt checks at the door, and the shoppers who refuse them. • A cashier with no security in the store, told to call management and nothing else. • The math behind stealing baby formula: gas, work, the next paycheck.
A lawmaker who says stealing for basic needs is fine, and a shopper who disagrees Every clip is a real person, filmed on their own phone, in their own words. Nothing here is staged. If it happens to you: do not run, do not argue standing there, and do not sign anything in a back room. Ask for the police rather than a private conversation - a written record protects you, a manager's memory does not. Say very little, say it calmly. In nearly every state a shop can legally hold you briefly if they genuinely believe you took something; what they generally cannot do is search your bag without your say so. A receipt check at an ordinary shop is a request, not an order. Warehouse clubs are different. What is locked up where you shop - and how long did you wait for someone to open it? Put it below, with the state."
Excerpt: "As of this weekend, the Iran War has done more to diminish US power in the Middle East than I have seen in my lifetime. I’m going to start with the smallest of events that I’ve said was coming in order to share some valuable information with everyone. Then I’ll move on to the massive turn of events in the Middle East that happened over the past two days due to US ineptitude in this war.
Starting with the smallest point first, which is still of historic significance, diesel in the US just soared past its highest price in history! So, those rising fuel prices I promised would hit this summer are resoundingly and solidly here just as summer nears its close: "Diesel hits all-time high of $6 per gallon, and just about everything will cost more."
The nationwide average price of diesel hit $6 per gallon Friday for the first time, an ominous record for the fuel that powers much of the U.S. economy. The price was $6.05 as of Friday morning, according to data from motor club AAA. The national average price of regular gas was $4.29, up 15 cents since last week. Since the war with Iran began in late February, the nationwide average diesel price has soared by 60%.
“The cost of diesel gets into just about everything,” KPMG chief economist Diane Swonk said in a recent interview. “From running a farm ... [to the] cost of food, but also everything across the economy that’s shipped,” she said. When diesel prices rise, everything “gets that extra fee tacked onto it.” Swonk predicted that the high cost of diesel will be an “inflationary problem” for months to come.
And we made it here even ahead of seeing those “spotty” out-of-fuel signs at gas stations that I said would be coming. I did report on a few, but there was no deeper explanation in those X posts as to whether the gas station owners just didn’t realize their tanks were nearing empty, as sometimes happens, or actually could not get fuel. So, I won’t claim that as an accurate prediction yet, but what that means is that fuel prices are still going higher once actual shortages do start to show up. (At least, one of those did sound like more than the station owner/manager forgot to order fuel in time as the person wondered out loud, “What’s going on?” as in “Why hasn’t my fuel arrived yet?”)
This week, Trump made the surprising (only in that it came from his lips) announcement of the obvious, which is that the war and the high prices on fuel will continue until the day after the election because Iran will do all it can to reduce his power while in office. He’s pathetically blind or just lying, though, to be claiming their pressure will end right after the election due to their desperation for a deal. Not everyone has the short attention span of Donald Trump. The Iranians have been in the long game for decades.
Today, Middle East nations are negotiating with Iran to see if they can get Iran to open the strait. Iran will use the negotiations as a process to keep buying time, as they always do, so that the war of attrition bites deeper into America’s back side. They will say something along the lines of, “Yes, we will open the strait if every nation in this room promises to kick all American military bases out of their country.” That would be a huge win for Iran, and such a negotiation point puts the onus back on the nations that are begging for strait mercy to change the situation in the Middle East. It would achieve one of Iran’s major objectives in this war.
At this point it is actually within the realm of feasibility that Iran could get that kind of agreement and actually kick the US permanently out of the Gulf, and today’s blockbuster event really underscores why nations like Saudi Arabia will be seriously considering such a move. Moreover, the US has a huge financial burden to add to its toppling mountain of debt if it is going to rebuild all those bases, which means it might not press so hard to remain there. A US military official has just admitted the US received major damage: "Navy Secretary Casually Admits Iran “Blew the Hell” out of U.S. Base."
Fox News’s Jennifer Griffin wrote. “Haven’t heard a senior U.S. official admit this on the record until now.” Others noted the Iranian military capacity does not seem to be as depleted as Trump claims. Naturally, the always-lying Trump administration has been underplaying the damage done by Iran; but it eventually gets out as ships limp home in worse states than the US originally admitted.
With Trump now promising a $5,000 economic stimulus check to every single adult American if Republicans sweep both houses of congress at an estimated cost of $1.25-trillion, adding the cost of rebuilding all those military bases and replenishing their military hardware is going to be a tough addition to the price of this war. So, if nations that have experienced heavy damage because of those bases now demand the US go away, the US might not push back as hard as it would when it was a more prosperous nation. That is the cost of having a towering national debt that now looks like the Leaning Tower of Piza.
Yet, the costs of this war are hardly done mounting because Iran plans to do a lot more destruction to US military bases in the region in order to drive the US out and a lot more destruction to US oil infrastructure. And events that happened overnight show how rapidly that can come about!
Most of those costs where that kind of damage was already rendered are not imputed yet into the cost of this war because it is not known if the US will rebuild. Most of the oil rebuilding costs will have to born by US oil companies that are making bank off the war unless the billionaires manage to get bailout money from congress - always a possibility in our brave new world; but that may be a tough sell in congress with the debt tower now leaning so hard that the Treasury secretary was unable with his first-round effort to prop it up at all. The props snapped immediately, showing he’ll need to place far stronger timber under the structure of US debt if he wants to prop it up.
We’re back to massive financial rescue measures or just facing the impossible cost of soaring interest. That is a no-win scenario because, as the war continues to drive inflation up (sure to rise rapidly with diesel not over $6/gallon), interest rates will continue to rise, and with central banks lately casting off Treasuries like sand bags of ballast thrown off a falling financial balloon, financing that interest is a real problem."
"Donald Trump, whose war on Iran is the greatest strategic blunder in United States history, is not responsible for triggering the decline of the American empire, but he is responsible for its fatal denouement. This is the end.
Hundreds of U.S. bases in the oil-rich Persian Gulf have been damaged or destroyed and I expect will not be rebuilt. Our allies, even those in Europe, are abandoning us. The decadence and immorality of American society, embodied in the vulgarity, stupefying ignorance and cruelty of Trump, are the defining characteristics of the Empire. The Global South, horrified at the Empire’s flagrant disregard for international humanitarian law, including the enabling of genocide in Gaza, sees us as the enemy. Abu Ghraib Prison may have receded from our consciousness, but for the rest of the world, its images of U.S. soldiers and contractors sadistically humiliating and torturing imprisoned Iraqis has replaced the Disneyfied version of America we once exported. The war on Iran, which has disrupted the world’s oil supply, is rapidly pushing the global economy over the cliff.
We are going down. And we will bring many with us.
Osama Bin Laden may be in a watery grave in the North Arabian Sea. Al-Qaeda may be a shadow of itself. But Bin Laden’s most fervent dreams have been realized in the last twenty-five years of gross miscalculations of the Empire — its squandering of trillions of dollars on military debacles and the ascendancy of our version of Ubu Roi, Donald J. Trump.
Rather than defeating supposed enemies, the U.S. has swelled their ranks. It and its colony, Israel, are the most reviled nations on the planet. Every advance by Iran in its asymmetrical war against the Empire is cheered across the globe.
The humiliating defeats, the diversion of resources and at least $8 trillion to mount one war after another, which has killed an estimated 4.5 to 4.8 million people, has hollowed the Empire out. Its infrastructure is crumbling. Its democratic institutions are impotent. It survives on an unsustainable $ 40 trillion debt. The jewels of its democracy, including its education system, fair elections and a free press, are discredited and degraded.
An abandoned working class, crippled by economic insecurity and a government that steadily strips away social programs that keep those in distress afloat, is propagandized to believe the palpable decline is the work of traitors and enemies within. It has led Trump supporters to turn on the very institutions and ideals designed to sustain democracy. The usual targets of fascism - the “radical left,” Muslims, migrants, intellectuals, artists, people of color and journalists - are persecuted under laws such as The Espionage Act. Lies permeate the airwaves buttressing the self-delusion that once internal enemies are silenced, or eradicated, the glory days of the Empire, defined by hyper-nationalism, patriarchy, stable jobs and white supremacy, will return.
Violence against internal enemies along with election fraud are openly advocated by Trump and his court of sycophants, buffoons, grifters and Christian fascists. Attempting to bribe voters by promising them $5,000 if Republicans win the midterms, along with Trump’s contempt for the constitutional order, is the transparent admission that U.S. democracy is a farce. George W. Bush, who was appointed to the presidency by judicial fiat, planted these seeds of lawlessness and impunity. Trump has brought them to floraison.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goons, masked and offered the kind of impunity that allowed the torture and killing of innocents in Iraq and Afghanistan, terrorize U.S. cities. They carry out military-style raids against unarmed civilians that look no different than those the Empire carried out in Fullujah or the Helmand Province in Afghanistan. They are setting up a network of squalid internal concentration camps.
The tools of subjugation the Empire used abroad, including the stripping of civil liberties and the implementation of mass surveillance, were legalized at home with the passage of The Patriot Act, with its watchlists, informants and racial and religious profiling. Empires in decay impose the tyranny familiar to those subjugated abroad on their own citizens.
I was in the Middle East when it all went wrong. Nearly all of the Muslim world was appalled by the attacks of 9/11. There were massive public expressions of solidarity, including candlelight vigils in Iran. If we had built on this empathy rather than demonizing Muslims and inflicting suffering and death on millions in the Middle East, we would be far more secure today.
Instead, we drank deep from the poisonous elixir of nationalism. We foolishly believed we were attacked, as Bush said, because “they hate our freedoms,” not because of our support for the apartheid and genocidal state of Israel, our callous indifference to human life beyond our borders, including the killing of over a million people in Iraq by U.S. sanctions, and our propping up of brutal Arab dictatorships.
The wreckage we have left behind from our forever wars include the obliteration of whole cities, along with 940,000 direct deaths in post-9/11 war zones, 3.6 to 3.8 million indirect deaths and 38 million people displaced.
The hijackers chose massive death and destruction on a city skyline to send a message. They spoke the language we taught them. It is the message our warplanes, missiles and drones have delivered from Vietnam to Iraq. We did not listen. We naively believed we could use our military to remake the Middle East in our own image.
The failure of the War on Terror is not simply a moral failure. It is a strategic failure. We refused to ask the obvious question. Why did many outside our borders feel so much hostility towards us that they were willing to kill themselves and thousands of our fellow citizens? Those of us who dared to raise these questions twenty-five years ago were vilified as supporters of terrorism and silenced.
The only way to defeat terrorism is to isolate those who carry out acts of terror within their own societies. It is to build networks of understanding and solidarity. We did the opposite. We became the terrorists we claimed we were seeking to defeat. We did what Bin Laden wanted us to do. We defeated ourselves. Trump is presiding over the last act."
Messier's famous catalog, but definitely not one of the least. About 170,000 light-years across, this galaxy is enormous, almost twice the size of our own Milky Way. M101 was also one of the original spiral nebulae observed by Lord Rosse's large 19th century telescope, the Leviathan of Parsontown. Assembled from 51 exposures recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope in the 20th and 21st centuries, with additional data from ground based telescopes, this mosaic spans about 40,000 light-years across the central region of M101 in one of the highest definition spiral galaxy portraits ever released from Hubble.
The sharp image shows stunning features of the galaxy's face-on disk of stars and dust along with background galaxies, some visible right through M101 itself. Also known as the Pinwheel Galaxy, M101 lies within the boundaries of the northern constellation Ursa Major, about 25 million light-years away.”
