What force is powerful enough to synchronize every leader in almost every country to do the wrong thing on almost every covid action without assuming every leader is evil and/or stupid?
Why has no one figured out what’s going on, including normally intelligent alt-media?
Let’s assume that most of our leaders are normal people, of average intelligence, with good intentions, and they care about the future of their children.
By normal I mean they are decent people with flaws, just like you and I.
By average intelligence I mean they probably have some high school level science, have read a few popular books, and maybe watched a few documentaries, but are not well grounded in the laws of physics, and their mathematics skills are modest at best. Like most people, they do not have a good understanding of energy and its relationship with everything, nor do they have a good grasp of what is technically feasible.
By good intentions I mean they want to do a good job for the people that elected them, while of course making a living, and perhaps providing some extras for their family if a benign opportunity arises, just as you or I would.
By caring about their children I mean they are genuinely worried about:
- The threat of an economic crash caused by unsustainable debt and its associated everything bubble that is now flashing red and impossible to ignore.
- The reality and threat of climate change that is now obvious to anyone that has been alive for more than a few decades.
- Limits to growth. Our leader’s understanding of energy depletion is probably a mixed bag, as it is with our next door neighbors. Most leaders probably understand that fossil energy growth is no longer desirable, some may understand that fossil energy growth is no longer possible, most probably still hope the green energy story is true but are getting worried it may be false, and a tiny minority may understand the reality of peak oil and its implications.
Overlaying all of the above, our leaders, like most humans, have a genetic tendency to deny unpleasant realities, which manifests as an optimism bias, and an inability to grasp the reality and implications of human overshoot. We can be fairly certain that none of our leaders have defective denial genes, which would permit them to see overshoot, because that would have prevented them from winning their election.
Given these assumptions about our leaders, which are probably true, what would we expect them to do?
Let’s start with what they’ve done to date:
- Increased the debt and lowered the interest rate to buy time for someone to think of something.
- Signed free trade agreements to squeeze more efficiency out of the global economy.
- Subsidized surplus corn to stretch gasoline with ethanol.
- Subsidized green energy and electric cars in the hope it would reduce fossil energy use. They don’t understand why, but they can see this strategy is not helping.
- Invested a lot of money into nuclear fusion returning zero prospects of success.
- Agreed with good intentions to many climate change protocols and subsequently learned it is impossible to fulfill those agreements without damaging the economy.
- Continued heavy military spending, just in case.
I expect our leaders now understand that:
- We are between a rock and a hard place. They don’t fully understand why we have reached limits to growth, nor can they due to their normal denial genes, but they do understand something must change soon.
- Debt is a bomb waiting to explode. They can see the end of the runway with rising inflation.
- Climate change is a really nasty problem. Consumption must go down, but that will crash the economy. Even with CO2 reductions, it’s too late to avoid refugees and starvation.
- Avoiding damaging social unrest, and mitigating/reducing the coming suffering will require sacrifice and sharing between countries, which will require some form of global cooperation with tight control over citizens.
Those of us that have paid attention and not listened to the official narrative know that nothing about covid makes sense. To be blunt, almost every action and policy has been wrong, in almost every country, and all of our leaders are synchronized, including their political opposition, almost without exception. How can this be? It’s simply not possible that all of our leaders are evil and/or stupid.
What force is powerful enough to have caused a diverse group of big ego leaders from many countries to cooperate on a secret plan that no one discusses? What force is powerful enough to have caused them to do things that under normal circumstances would have been blocked by their good ethics and character?
We know the various central banks have been working as a team since at least the 2008 GFC to keep the global wheels on. Recall that in the 2008 aftermath it was disclosed that we were hours away from a collapse of the banking system had the US congress not approved the bailout. The stresses and pressures in the system today are MUCH higher than they were in 2008 because we fixed a too much debt problem by adding a lot more debt.
In 2019 something in the global plumbing was beginning to break and it came to a head in September with a crisis in the repo market. The central banks together decided what needed to be done and the head of each central bank sat down with the leader of their country and spelled out the reality that an imminent “recession”, if not averted, would likely take out modern civilization due to the global debt bubble and lack of growth.
I imagine they said something like, “we need an excuse to print a gazillion dollars, and we’re going to need a digital currency soon that restricts many freedoms, and we might fail so you should think about a plan B for controlling social unrest. We think a not so serious global pandemic exaggerated into a panic is the perfect cover to accomplish all of this.”
No other force is powerful enough to explain the behavior we observe. It explains everything, including why no one talks about it, because if they did it would cause panic in the markets, which would harm themselves and their children. This also thankfully means we can continue to assume that most (not all) of our leaders are decent people like you and I.
The covid pandemic provided:
- A reason for everyone from all political persuasions to support printing and handing out trillions of dollars to avoid a “recession”.
- A means via lockdowns of reducing energy and materials consumption, and restricting freedom of movement and assembly, that can be invoked as needed without causing the panic that disclosing the end of growth would cause.
- A reason for creating the infrastructure and social behaviors necessary for a digital currency via vaccine passports. A digital currency will be very helpful for implementing negative interest rates needed to avoid a Minsky Moment, and for rationing food and energy, and for preventing bank runs. The path they chose was to require all citizens to be injected with a substance and to carry proof via a vaccine passport. I expect they hoped the injected substance would be harmless with some tangible benefit but it appears their hopes have been dashed by Murphy’s Law and inadequate time for testing.
- Most powerful countries agreed to this plan. The US, EU, Japan, Canada, and Australia are all on board. As is China who engineered the virus with funding from the US, and which influenced the WHO to ensure global spread of the virus in the early days.
- Russia refused to join the plan, perhaps after calculating that with its healthy ratio of natural resources to population, modest debt, food self-sufficiency, and citizens capable of enduring some hardship, they will be better off charting an independent path.
- The collaborating leaders viscerally hate Putin for not being a team player and are attempting to cause a regime change in Russia by provoking Russia into an expensive war and by applying economic sanctions. As with covid, it seems this plan is failing so we should expect a Plan B soon.
- A new repo crisis began in 2022 and so Monkeypox was introduced just in case another pandemic is required to get the financial system under control.
Finally, we can now answer another burning question:
- Why has no one figured out what’s going on, including normally intelligent alt-media?
- Because to understand requires acceptance of the end of growth and overshoot, and that’s not possible for most people due to our species’ tendency to deny unpleasant realities as explained by Varki’s MORT theory.
- For those that don’t believe the official covid narrative, it’s ok to blame corrupt pharma, or a scheming WEF, but it’s not ok to blame overshoot.
Let’s hope Plan B does not involve nuclear weapons but does have something to do with humane population reduction.
un-Denial 
Interesting post by Nate Hagens on his Great Simplification Facebook group page addressing population in his intro to an earlier Paul Ehrlich interview (see below). I must admit I haven’t listened to the interview yet. Have you heard him talk so openly about population previously Rob? His comment that… “8 billion at once is unsustainable…. its a problem but it’s also not ‘solvable’ in the near term..” is maybe can kicking a little and it seems he puts it in the too hard basket and / spreading himself too thin. Like you I think actions aimed at reducing human suffering are highly desirable and so introducing policies now is well worthwhile.
From Nate post.. “I’ve known Paul for over 10 years during which time we became friends. He’s quite a character. I did this interview not to promote his views or to present him as an authority on what’s going to happen but out of respect/deference to those humans who have been working on ecology/overshoot/sustainability for their entire careers.
Population is one of those polarizing topics. My view is -its obvious that many billions of humans can exist on earth – but spread out over time. 8 billion at once is unsustainable. What # is sustainable? That depends on the culture, the technology and how much they consume per person. It is TECHNICALLY possible to use regenerative ag/permaculture to grow food for many billions (as per Jason Bradford in upcoming episode) but then there is no industry, hospitals, museums etc as most everyone is working intensively in fields.
My view, FWIW that population -like climate change – is not the problem but downstream from the bolus of fossil productivity from the carbon pulse. As energy surplus declines, the initial reaction will probably be more people -as economies will pull out all stops to encourage growth by any means – including baby subsidies (happening already in parts of Europe and Japan). We will head towards 9-10 billion (barring war or complexity dislocation) but the average person will be poorer – to significantly poorer.
Additionally, we have TWO population problems – 1) the number of people and 2) the average consumption per person. We have 80 million new (net) humans added to the world every year. Which means we are adding 10,000 new humans every HOUR – during that same hour 1,000 humans starve to death – somewhere. It’s all a very complex and overwhelming topic.
I get a lot of flack for not talking more about population – but to me its a given that its a problem but it’s also not ‘solvable’ in the near term. Economies (and politicians) are optimizing for growth – the near term will be money/energy rubber band that will impact all things. The reason it is important to talk about though is to plant seeds for some new ecolate culture in future. I do expect the odds of gigafamine in back half of this century are quite high -but first I suspect it will more people and wider and deeper poverty. Humans -from an ecologicaly/biological perspective -will always (indirectly) strive for 15-20 billion poor humans than 1 billion living sustainably. IMO
I read Pauls book 30 years ago – and while I systemically disagreed w his predictions then – and still do – the larger backdrop -8 billion of us and our livestock comprising 98% of mammalian biomass on planet – fueled by the productivity provided by a one time pulse of ancient carbon – pretty obviously lays out the longer term picture. I personally decided to have dogs, not kids. I don’t regret that.
Malthus was ‘wrong’ when he layed out geometric vs linear growth (population vs food) because he didn’t know about fossil hydrocarbons. Paul was ‘wrong’ in 1968 because he didn’t know about debt and globalization. Peak oilers were wrong in 2008 because they neglected central banks (short term) magic powers and USA fracking. But we’re running out of cans to kick…
…Thoughts welcome. I have no answers”
Here’s the interview link which I know you posted a few weeks ago – https://youtu.be/mjaj5gFd2qY
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Interesting and thanks. I’m no longer on Facebook so did not see this.
About a week ago Nate and I spoke on the phone for the first time ever. It was a wide ranging conversation, some of which I can’t discuss, but I did lean in to him pretty aggressively about population reduction.
My key points were:
1) We’ve been tip-toeing around the issue for 50 years because we didn’t want to offend anyone, it hasn’t worked, and we’re out of time.
2) Many people are going to have horrible lives and die from starvation. The only goal that makes sense is to minimize suffering, and therefore any progress at preventing births will be a success.
3) If people like he and I, who understand overshoot, don’t talk about it, who will?
4) Nate is not unique. No one in this space talks about it except Jack Alpert and myself.
5) Discussing something tends to normalize it. If we all start talking about population reduction then it will lose its taboo status and many people will begin to think and act on it, and even in the absence of government policies we will make progress towards the goal.
Nate made most of the same points from his Facebook post to me, and explained he has many differing constituents that he must keep happy.
It seems possible that my conversation with him had some positive effect.
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I’m thinking it did Rob.
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Hello Campbell, or rather, Mr Campbell,
I’ll tag a post here (too lazy to scroll back up today) to say I’ve really enjoyed your personalised tour of your beautiful land and home sanctuary. You really have planted so many trees, and each will give back in its own way in time. And oh my goodness do you have a lot of bamboo! No matter, all you need are some pandas! Thank you so much for sharing, and good to see you and your son, too! I am filled with awe and reverence for what you and your family (please give Nikki my best regards and admiration) are doing and wish you all the best going forward. May you grow older and wiser amongst your trees and always know a certain peace and abundance no matter what the outer world brings. This is your haven manifested through your intention and hard work, but I know you have first a heart of joy and wonder to make it possible. Namaste, friend.
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Thanks Gaia. Glad you enjoyed the virtual tour. No pandas but we do have tree shears and a large mulcher coming in a few weeks. Need to reduce the shading.
Letting you know too that I’m picking up 2 black sapote (black pudding) and 2 rose apple seedlings on Thursday. Your mentioning the sapote obviously put the good energy my way and they appeared for me. Thanks for that.
Happy gardening. Namaste.
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Overpopulation is the proximate cause, not the higher-level ultimate cause of our predicament. It is, as Nate suggests a downstream problem.
If I may put it mythopoetically, the gift of fire from Prometheus is the ultimate cause.
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Yes, but it took our unique intelligence to exploit fire, and denial to enable that intelligence, so I blame denial.
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Denial would be the penultimate cause.
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Nicely put. And I’m going to store ‘mythopoetic’ for future scrabble encounters. Apparently I can score a maximum of 73pts with it 😉.
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I tried Mytho as my first word in Wordle this morning but it was rejected. Not on the word list.
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I just finished a new 2 hour conversation between Dr. Robert Malone and Dr. Bret Weinstein about covid.
I posted it above but am reposting it here with more informaiton in case you missed it.
These are two super intelligent truth seekers with impeccable integrity.
It is the best conversation I’ve heard to date on covid. I’ve listened to and read hundreds of covid discussions. It seems I’m encountering a new “Best Of” on a regular basis. How is that possible?
The covid “system” is dizzyingly complex. Brilliant minds are working hard to unpick the puzzle, and they’re learning new things all the time.
Some of the topics covered in this podcast include:
– underlying motivations for policies
– Event 201
– WHO pandemic treaty
– newly discovered and shocking information about mRNA technology
– possible long term harms from vaccines (fiberglass logs don’t decompose)
– vital vaccine testing that was never done
– Bossche’s prediction and why it is possible but not certain
– evidence and implications of lab origin “this virus is VERY unusual”
– lab leak may have been deliberate
– Omicron lab origin theory
– Ivermectin would have produced much better results than the vaccines
– cover-up of Ivermectin effectiveness in Japan and India
– Ivermectin studies designed to fail that failed and still show Ivermectin works
– and much more
The body of evidence that risks and harms exceed benefits for covid policies is staggering.
How is it possible that thousands of health ministers around the world are not modifying their policies in light of this evidence?
What are the possible reasons that not one health minister has broken ranks and admitted that a grave mistake has been made and that policies will be changed and restitution offered?
Possible explanations include:
1) Malone, Weinstein, and dozens of other brilliant minds are simply wrong and there is no problem with current policies, despite no health minister being able to articulate why they are wrong.
2) Every single one of thousands of health ministers is brain dead stupid.
3) Every single one of thousands of health ministers is so evil or cowardly they’d rather harm their own citizens than admit making a mistake.
4) Every single one of thousands of health ministers has been corrupted by pharma money.
5) Every single one of thousands of health ministers is so deeply in denial that they cannot see the mountain of growing evidence.
6) The health ministers have received direction from the leader of their country that there is a classified objective, agreed to by most countries in the world, and also intended to protect citizens, that far outweighs the harms and risks created by covid policies.
Feel free to add any possible explanations to the list that I missed.
I know which explanation I think is most probable.
There was some discussion at the beginning of the podcast about possible reasons for policies inconsistent with public health. They don’t seem to have a clear opinion on the underlying motivation. I get the sense they think we may be forming an inverse totalitarian state, where the power is wielded by the bureaucracy collaborating with corporations, rather than politicians, and driven in part by citizens that are scared and want to be told what to do.
I strongly suspect both Weinstein and Malone are in denial of overshoot and how close we are to a serious economic problem for which there is no fix.
I’d like to think my above covid theory fills a vacuum by combining their covid expertise, which I lack, with my understanding of overshoot and denial, which they lack.
I’m struggling to get the links to work here. If what you see is not 2 hours and 6 minutes long, then google the title for alternate sources.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/if-a-fiberglass-tree-falls-in-a-forest-bret-speaks/id1471581521?i=1000565812707
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My bet is on option number 5….
Every states health ministers have overseen some form of mandate in Australia. In Victoria and Western Australia you literally still can’t work if you not vaccinated.
Can you seriously imagine a health minister coming out and publicly saying “yeah we forced you to get vaccinated with a vaccine that’s deadly, doesn’t work and still hasn’t even finished being trialled yet….. sorry about that folks. Really sorry . Won’t happen again”
On a totally unrelated topic, I watched The Alpinist last night which I believe was filmed in your neck of the woods Rob.
OMG! I have never watched such a nail biting documentary in my life. I thought I was a fairly fearless individual when I was younger but it turns out I’m just a wimp. What possesses people to hang unroped from gigantic cliff faces has me beat.
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Yes, number 5 is consistent with what Varki’s MORT predicts.
An argument against it is there are so many health ministers in the world that it is improbable that not one has defective denial genes.
An argument in favor of it is that it is impossible to be elected with defective denial genes so we would expect them all to be deeply in denial.
You might be right. Maybe the whole covid debacle is one giant reaffirmation of Varki’s MORT.
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The Alpinist does look really good. Thanks for the tip, I’m going to add it to my queue.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11790780/
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Thanks for recommending another doco, Perran, this one I know I will enjoy much more than the AIDs story, but it will be cliff-hanging in another way! I assume you’ve lapped up Free Solo, that was a peak experience watch, too. (gee, today I’m full of unintended puns)
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Maybe the reason is subconscious or conscious awareness of the population problem and they figure it’s the only life they’ve got and if they tumble to their sure deaths then that’s one less person on the planet. I don’t think you can do this sort of thing if you have a fear of dying. Another thing, these extreme sport enthusiasts may find it hard to get a partner who wants children with them, seeing as they may decease at any time through their risky endeavours. So, maybe we should be encouraging this breed of Ubermensch! In the meantime, I’m happy to watch their feats vicariously, if only more people might choose to satisfy their child-bearing urges that way, too.
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Hi Rob, hope you’ve had a more gentle day. Thanks for the podcast, that was really excellent. If we have two such as those for us, then who can be against us? (apparently plenty but I’m just trying to be oratorical)
I want what’s behind Door #5, definitely!
It is still hard to fathom how hundreds of thousands of people who can stand for the truth haven’t been able to make headway mainstream but then again even these giants of the cause are still mainly preaching to the choir, albeit a growing one. I can see how it happens, though, just the same way millions of Germans shut their eyes and ears to the Holocaust around them, and maybe obeying orders and not rocking the system is even more ingrained in our nature than denial, certainly they are critical attributes to survival especially in times of crisis. Because to be thrown out of the group, ostracised, abandoned, is a fate of suffering worse than death both physically and emotionally, and in modern times this plays out as denigration and slander, de-platforming, gas-lighting, and the most immediately threatening and consequential of all, losing one’s livelihood. I cannot stress how much a motivating factor that is, especially since our system has gotten many of us hopelessly entangled with debt and reliance on future earnings just to remain barely afloat. This has made us easy victims for control, and even if there were some brave souls who left their positions and/or spoke out and were made to leave, there were always others to fill their place and that became a clear signal to the rest to cast their eyes downward and keep mouths shut.
I speak with the experience of our little family, my academic husband is the sole bread winner as I am full time on the homesteads (it would be really handy to have teleportation sometimes) and taking care of a dependent elderly mother. Our house debt is reasonable and nearly repaid, and that is even more reason to maintain the status quo in hopes that we may free ourselves from this net as soon as we can. Having no children and only one dependent, and being in good health makes our situation a picnic compared to most other families. But still, he has taken the shots because of the mandate and remained silent or at least, has not pushed back on the narrative in his capacity at the university. We would not risk the life we have built up, and we also have to consider the life of my mother who is under our care. I can imagine many in the medical and health policy field have far more complex financial and family situations that depend on their positions. And once ostracized, they have very little recourse to obtain employment elsewhere. Now we truly understand that we are all cogs in the system and replaceable ones at that.
However, I do think there is more that drives the few medical elite which are our main spokespersons and the higher level health ministers, probably on a need-to-know basis, along the lines of what you suggest behind door #5, Rob. In addition, I would think they would have been assured indemnity at the highest level, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to maintain such confidence for so long.
Still this whole Covid thing is a bitter pill to swallow, but someone has decided it’s the best medicine for us, maybe it’s even an early treatment in their view.
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Your argument is clear and persuasive. Tribal cohesion and fear of losing livelihoods may be keeping the health ministers et. al. in line. It’s consistent with Malone and Weinstein not being dependent on the system for a living.
So then all we need to explain is the behavior of the most senior people.
Please confirm the #5 (denial) is what you favor. I edited the comment after first posting it to add another item to the list. You might mean #6 (collapse prep).
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I’m wondering if the coming US election might be one way to determine what’s driving senior leaders?
If the republicans win and do not fire and prosecute all the senior health leaders for crimes against humanity, then it might be reasonable to assume there is an agreement in place between countries that overrides public health. Ditto for other country elections.
One of the observations that makes me suspect a hidden agreement is the covid unanimity of opposed political parties. A quiet conversation with each political leader about a classified project in everyone’s best interest might have silenced them.
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Last thought from me for tonight and I thought I would tuck it in here. I’m generally a very intuition-feeling type person (confirmed INFP in the Myers – Briggs for what it’s worth) but have been trained to develop some logic and reason aptitude to keep me more anchored on the ground. I’m usually quite empathetic and can sense the underlying emotions of most people I’m with, sometimes to the point where I actually feel what they do, not just understand them. I tend to go with gut feelings about things that trouble me, but I often obsess over my reactions if it was the best choice, especially when there is possible conflict.
With this in mind, what has really got me from near the start of the whole pandemic exercise is the facial expressions of our leaders and health “experts” when they presented various information and rolled out policy, from lockdowns to mandates. I don’t watch MSM much (seeing as I don’t have TV) but still I saw plenty of clips on-line. The lower level administrators seemed to have bought into the narrative hook, line, and sinker, because they truly believed they were doing the right thing following all the upper level advice, as minions carrying out their duties. When it came to the actual heads of countries, and here I am mainly focussing on Canada and New Zealand, both having relatively young prime ministers who have the background of being groomed for the part (the Young Globalist WEF club), I sensed and saw evidence of disconnect from what they were saying and how they were actually feeling, through their facial gestures and tone.
In the beginning of the pandemic, both Trudeau and Ardern seemed quite confident and rallied their countries to lockdown frenzy with a certain charisma which both have. Their exhortations seemed congruent and had the right balance of solemnity and forcefulness tempered by sympathy. You could see in their eyes and their carriage that they truly believed they had the mandate to do what was necessary and it was like the start of a grand adventure with them at the helm. As the Covid inconsistencies began to mount, and especially with the push for the experimental inoculations on the widest public, cracks in their composure began to show. They started to sound insistent, whingy almost, making comments that at once were flippant and irreverent given the gravity of the situation. Trudeau dipped into gas-lighting comments and of course everything went to hell with the trucker protest. He really did look like a spoilt boy whose parade got rained on because things weren’t going his way nicely as he had hoped, or had been told it would. Now he seems more than anything just resigned, resigned to see out whatever he agreed to engage in, the game no longer fun and exciting but a drudgery he wishes over as soon as possible. Jacinda just seemed to melt under the pressure, becoming a frazzled shell of her once confident and assured self. She looked absolutely haggard at times, but more telling was the way she smiled and laughed and tilted her head when she said “It’s simple, really. All you have to do is get the vaccine and everything will be back to normal”. It was clearly disingenuous to me, but also seemed forced, even pleading, like she was saying something she didn’t mean nor want to say but yet she had to (with our current theory, because of a deeper, more powerful reason that must remain above all, hidden.) And therefore her body couldn’t lie and showed the disconnect, trying to gloss over something utterly distasteful by trying to assume a carefree, blithe manner which totally miscarried. To me, she just seemed nervous and uncomfortable and the fake smiles couldn’t assuage it. In both these leaders, I could sense their own uncertainty and even fear, doubt that they were choosing the right course, but yet overriding pressure to stay the course, even as the narrative continued to disintegrate around them. And for both of them to eventually contract Covid and yet still having to insist that boosters were the only way forward, oh the mockery, loss of confidence and anger from their once fawning people, even threats to life, how difficult a cross that must be for two once shining stars of the political firmament to bear! They, too, have been badly used, and if it be expedient, they, too, will be discarded when their usefulness is finished, even if it be as a scapegoat when needed.
If these observations and interpretations can go some way in giving more credence to option #6, then it hit the mark, but since all of this is pure opinion generated by a self-professed airy-fairy empath-type, please feel free to rip it to shreds and don’t worry, I won’t cry in front of you.
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Really good observations. I’m dense to body language so thanks for providing more evidence that there is some objective other than public health.
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Not fair to add another choice after I finally signed off late last night! I’ll be sexist here (and it’s okay because I’m female) and say changing one’s mind is a woman’s prerogative and what I really want is behind door #6! But you knew that already.
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Sorry, I should have put the new choice at the end of the list, but the engineer in me wouldn’t permit ideas to be logically out of order.
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I go for some combination of # 3 and # 5. Plus I would add that for most university scientists and health ministers the pandemic has put them in the media spotlight with a larger voice and more power than their previous lowly positions were ever given before. I think of our local county level head of pubic health bureaucrat – he never in his life had more tv airtime, got to announce more restrictions on people and businesses than Covid gave him. It must have been a power trip high for him. So, is that evil? maybe, but I’m sure it was a fulfillment of a lifetime dream of finally being taken seriously after suffering years in an ignominious position . Petty power trip.
I don’t think the system can accept a Truth & Reconciliation position – especially our leaders.
Thanks for posting the podcast again. It was definitely worth listening to. Except I hate the link (apple) as you can’t speed up the playback – unlike most videos that I watch at 1.5 or 1.75 playback 😉
However, I still think the war in Ukraine and the loss of U.S. unipolar dominance (imagined) is the more pressing issue. Nuclear annihilation as civilizational collapse unfolds is the more frightening possibility as opposed to any attempted imposition of totalitarian control (due to economic or pandemic catastrophes) is doomed to fail. IMHO.
AJ
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Yes, #3 and #5 are possible for the majority. Doesn’t it bother you that not one health minister has sufficient courage, ethics, remorse, or reality awareness to have broken ranks?
PBS Frontline used to be a news source I trusted. I started to watch their recent episode “Putin’s Road to War”. I couldn’t watch more than the first couple minutes. It was disgusting. An obvious propaganda hit piece with no regard for history or facts. It made me wonder if our leaders are prepping citizens for an escalation.
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Very insightful thread by David Korowicz, one of the most important minds thinking about responses to human overshoot.
Other work by Korowicz here:
https://www.korowiczhumansystems.com/publications/
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Korowicz explains the risks and the impediments to what we should be doing to prepare for collapse of the global economic system.
Reading between the lines I see some evidence that supports my theory that covid is cover for collapse prep.
I have unrolled his Twitter thread here to make it easier to read:
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It’s amazing the number of people/blogs I no longer read. Since the Covid started I have eliminated a vast forest of people/bloggers that I used to read in the doom-o-sphere. Why? Because they went full idiot and bought the MSM/government take on everything Covid. These used to be people I respected, because they understood collapse/doom/overshoot. Web sites like, The Easiest Person to Fool, or Dark Green Mountain Survival Research Center (why were both of these Canadian guys?). Both of these guys were taken by Trump derangement syndrome (not that I liked the orange nut job but I currently don’t see much difference between Trump (narcissist) and Biden (dementia)). They ultimately supported Trudeau and his reactionary approach to anyone on the perceived right.
The reason I bring this up is that one of the people who used to comment on The Easiest Person to Fool website (another Canadian) wrote a series of post-apocalyptic e-books on people living north of one of the Great Lakes. He (can’t remember his name) is the only person I have seen who articulated the consequences of nuclear reactors in a post collapse future (I think he had been a tech at one of the nuke reactors in Canada). He had a group of people tend the spent fuel for millennia, even to the hunter/gatherer stage.
My fear of nuke reactors/nuclear war stems from the existential threat they pose to all life on this planet – not just human civilization. Korowicz is kinda right in that collapse of the financial system will probably bring on collapse of civilization. That only concerns me about what it portends for all those nuclear weapons and plants. Who cares if I starve to death in the cold and dark – not me too much. I care if the planet (life) dies. Could to much radiation destroy everything above bacteria? Maybe? I don’t know.
So, I think there are things far worse than civilizational collapse.
Hence my focus on nuclear problems.
I also think that Aza Raskin (Nate’s podcast above) misjudges AI. Civilization won’t last long enough for it to be a serious threat to civilization (that and I think that he/AI researchers have a fundamentally flawed understanding of human consciousness – how the mind works). I do think he hit on the biggest threat it poses to us now – it’s use by Meta (Facebook) to push content on people that drives them further to extremes and radicalizes them. The people who have already started to repeat radical tropes (rebellion, civil war, hanging leaders) is growing (Kunstler, Denninger, my next door neighbor). That is the threat AI poses.
Correct me if I’m wrong and my hubris or paranoia is showing.
AJ
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Well said on all your points AJ.
I also saw some bloggers I used to respect, and some friends and family, go full retard with covid. It makes me sad that it’s so difficult to agree on reality on things that to me seem unambiguous.
Like you I care about other species as much or more than humans. Although I’d be dishonest if I said I don’t care about my own life. I find myself constantly thinking about what I can do to improve my chances of survival. Building food reserves and having some redundancy for things I care about has become a bit of an obsession. Having said that, in the back of my mind, I’m prepared to end my own life if things someday get really bad.
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On nuclear, I find it odd, and maybe yet another confirmation of MORT, how many energy depletion aware people advocate for more nuclear power without thinking about the risk to proper governance and maintenance of nuclear as we become poorer with shortages of everything.
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Yes Rob-I found this little nugget on one SRSRocco’s open posts
https://srsroccoreport.com/public/two-big-events-palisades-nuclear-plant-permanent-shutdown-srsrocco-on-palisades-radio-twitter-spaces-chat-on-friday/
Entergy, the owner of the Palisades Nuclear Power plant, decided to shut down the plant because it lost nearly $200 million a year (based on 2020 data) versus the typical natural gas generation plant. However, with natural gas prices now triple what they were in 2020, nuclear power may be more economical. Regardless, Entergy ceased operations at the Palisades Nuclear Plant on May 20th and will be selling the plant to Holtec International for decommissioning, which will cost an estimated $630 million and won’t be complete until 2041.
2041 for one reactor!!! As I understand it France will have the thick end of 60 reactors to decommission- the expense is truly mind boggling let alone, as you say, the question of resources to do the work
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Wow. Yes, even with wise well intentioned leaders, how can we afford this with a shrinking economy, and even if we can afford it, where will we get the parts, tools, and diesel when global trade breaks down?
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I totally hear you, Rob. Maybe that’s a subject for another new post another day, preferably before things start looking too desperate, though. As Klingon Worf liked to say “Today is a good day to die” but today is not yet that day and Allah willing, we may have yet some good work to accomplish!
To give a little more background, I think Mandrake mentioned that I must have been seriously disillusioned to leave medicine almost as I began it–one of the reasons was I was already bucking the system and asking too many whys and making my own decisions as an intern, so much so that I was regularly hauled into the chief resident’s office for a talking down. I could foresee that the road forward would be very rocky for me, and I would probably have ended up losing my license one way or another. In medicine, you are groomed to follow orders and there is a strict hierarchy, med students were the scum level, and working up to the attending and chief physicians. This is another insight on why it is so plausible, and in fact expected, that the medicos have all just fallen in line like ducks in a row. On my side, my work was excellent and they could not fault my patient care, but the higher ups did not like the fact I often did things in an unorthodox way but always for the benefit of the patient. Anyway, I digress a bit but what I wanted to say is that one of my major brouhahas was I championed euthanasia when it was still a taboo subject for most doctors. One of my patients had end-stage kidney cancer and it was looking like she would have a very painful ending and she didn’t want to even begin going through it. She asked me, the intern, for some help in getting information on ending her own life when the time came. She knew her attending physician would not have a bar of it, and in fact, might have even kept her under closer scrutiny. I had an undergraduate degree in Gerontology and one of our required classes was Death and Dying, so I was well versed in this subject, being keen on the ethical basis myself. Anyway, I gave her some of my books (notably Final Exit) and when the chief resident and the attending doctor found out, it almost made my own final exit. I stood my ground that I was only responding to what the patient asked for was information, and my supervising resident (who was somewhat sympathetic) pleaded my case that I was just a silly naive intern and somehow I got off with a severe reprimand. So, long story short (alas, too late!) I am also prepared to consider and execute (bad choice of words) my decision to end my life if and when I deem it no longer bearable or if by doing so I fulfil a greater cause. I say this with a great peace and it gives me certain comfort that this is a choice that no-one can take from me (unless they just take it from me!)
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Thanks. I wondered why doctors don’t seem to think. I thought maybe they aren’t very bright and now understand the system trains them not to think.
I wish I could find a doctor that thinks like you. In my community there is a shortage and it is impossible to get a doctor, good or bad. The only option for new comers is to use public health clinics or the ER.
It pisses me off that nembutal is the most difficult drug on the planet to buy. I don’t want to pay $100+ to some dodgy source in China. And I’m not going to travel to Mexico to buy it from a vet. Do you know of a trustworthy online source? Maybe I should just buy some party balloon helium? Or would you recommend fentanyl?
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Hi Rob,
You do realize that it’s common knowledge that pre-meds aren’t the brighest, just the most cut-throat and obsequious to nauseum! Most have been primed from early formative years to follow rules, do the “right” thing, don’t stand out from the crowd, and that’s how you’ll get ahead. Of course there are plenty of free-thinkers, but once we get inculcated into the higher education system which is the only ticket to medicine, there’s precious little time left to encourage disparate interests and ideas. There is probably a significant minority of doctors who began their careers thinking like me but the system ground them down to become the public minions that they are. I would think only a very small percentage aren’t practicing medicine anymore because of philosophical differences, or maybe now after Covid, the ones that always wanted leave finally got the courage or were forced out.
The reason I left when and as I did was firstly because that’s who I am and I could not do what is against my convictions and live. But despite wanting to think I had a high moral ground, I once again turn to the financial implications. I left the medical profession with over $100,000 US in debt (private undergraduate and medical schools) which ballooned out to over $180,000 after some years of default. This was 25 years ago, so quite a significant sum. I had no way to pay that level of debt once I wasn’t going to have a doctor’s salary, in fact, I was totally unemployable despite my umpteen years of higher education. For a little while, I did retail and worked at a bagel chain (we ate a lot of bagels then). I was already married when I entered medical school and my husband was on the academic track and quite successful in his research program so he obtained a good post-doc position, but that still paid very little. Hence the years of default and mounting debt. Fast forward to our new start in Tasmania and he getting a permanent post in the University medical school. I would have easily continued default but my better half insisted that we front up to our debt and so we commenced repayment on a nominal rate, but still significant on our early budget. We still owe $160.000 and that is after nearly 20 years of making monthly payments just to service the interest. There is no hope of loan forgiveness in the States (we remain US citizens, although we have taken out Australian citizenship), not even bankruptcy will cancel student debt, only death. But we pay everything else first and forged ahead with our self-sufficient dream before tackling this monkey on our backs. This is just something we have lived with for half my life and counting. I can’t begin to tell you of the emotional and mental stress my decision has cost our family and I do think there is lingering resentment on several fronts that I have learned to bear. You can just imagine the anger and disgrace my parents (remember, they’re Chinese) felt towards me, and then there’s the pressure on my husband to keep his job.
But most young doctors who become disillusioned one way or another just cannot walk away. They are usually still single and to be swamped by such a debt load is unthinkable. I don’t know anyone else who has done what I did, certainly not in my graduating medical class of 105, although I knew a few others who were having second thoughts. And the further you are along the road of this profession, the more reputation is at stake and possibly more financial commitments and familial expectations. Those of us entering the medical field have drank from the poisoned chalice, we are given a position of respect and power in society and relative financial comfort, but there is a price to pay. Dare leave the fold, or go against it, and you shall know vengeance. Sooner or later, all succumb to our true masters, BigPharma and the dictates of the various medical boards that hold your license (aka spokespieces of Big Pharma). Denial and the original intent of helping others keep one on the straight and narrow, that and a hefty mortgage perhaps.
In regards to our other topic, I’ll have to follow up on that in another post. Suffice to say that any opiate derivative drug is a useful sedative, that includes codeine and morphine which should be easier to obtain than the others. It’s all in the technique which is actually spelled out quite clearly in Final Exit by Derek Humphry, the founder of the Hemlock Society. Not a bad book to have on hand at any time. I’m humbled with great respect for your openness and wish to help you gather any information you may need. You and all others have my compassion and support for this singular decision if and when you choose, just as I gather I have yours.
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Thanks Gaia. Very interesting insights into the medical profession. I knew none of it. You’ve had quite the life. Nice to meet someone who stood up for principles. I expect you are a fan of Dr. Pierre Kory.
I do have Final Exit and other similar books in my library so no need to explain more.
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Today’s essay by Dr. Sebastian Rushworth is relevant to your comments about the medical profession.
https://sebastianrushworth.com/2022/06/14/should-the-patient-really-get-the-drug/
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Thanks for sharing that timely validation of what I was trying to explain. It looks like nothing has changed in the past quarter century of medical school education. I left for compounding reasons, one of which was in good faith I couldn’t prescribe drugs that I knew were harmful and weren’t the answer to the cause of illness, only covering up symptoms and manipulating lab numbers. And yet, if one didn’t prescribe the drugs, you were deemed not providing the standard of care and faced consequences, including losing your license. And remember, just having to renew a script is a reason for seeing the doctor who can bill for that freebie of a visit–it’s a bread and butter income generator in most practices.
Yeah, the drug lunches–that brings back memories. We were required to attend these sessions, usually once or twice a week, ostensibly for “education” but of course it was clearly just drug reps pimping us medical students and junior doctors to prescribe whatever the major pharma wanted to see boosted. Some of us vowed not to take their tainted food (I was not 100% faithful, sometimes the growling stomach won) but still we all ended up bedecked with pens, calculators, visors, clipboards (remember those? the ancestors of the modern tablet) emblazoned with the name of the drug of the day. The idea being that if you’re stymied about what to prescribe, you might just be reminded looking down at your pen, or pad of paper, or whatnot. One rather hilarious example you might get a laugh from was a mug I got which advertised an antifungal agent. But it wasn’t just the name of the drug on the mug but also the preparation format and indication in bold letters “Vaginal gel for candidiasis (thrush)”. Like that’s going to be a favourite vessel to drink from! I should have kept that one, at least it might have been useful to hold all the pens, penlights and other crap.
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LOL
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Hi AJ,
Hope things are going well for you and your family. I really appreciate your stance which shows your great reverence for life on Earth and the continuation of it–with or without our species. I can understand your concern about the nuclear question and our on-going responsibility to ensure the biosphere is protected from this threat. Because of our species’ great brains and hubris thinking we will always find a solution, we have dug out and concentrated radioactive elements which were safely in the ground, to harness their energy before trying to find a way to put them safely back into the ground, which is not a straightforward matter. The cat is well and truly out of the bag and it may take hundreds of thousands of years to put it back in, given the rate of decay. The possibility that something catastrophic can happen to our nuclear depots and waste will always be with this planet now, whether or not we are here to try to clean up our own mess. One only has to look at Fukushima to realise that geological forces of unpredictable magnitudes can create disasters at any time beyond our control, and given the timescale it is most likely that there will be other seismic events all around the globe that will awaken the dragon. I suppose the saving grace is it is unlikely that these cataclysmic events will happen all at once to release enough radioactivity to affect the entire planet, but then again, who can predict these things over thousands of years? I think we will have to own this as another addition to our dubious legacy (and rightly so, probably the most egregious), a lasting souvenir of Homo sapiens’ brief but spectacularly vivid dominance of this planet. Unless AI figures out a way to clean up after us or maybe we can shuttle it all to Mars for safe-keeping. Yeah, that’ll be the answer so we don’t have to worry too much now, phew!
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Excellent thread. Reminded me of this recent post by Alice Friedemann on North Korea after the Soviet Union collapsed and their energy supply was disrupted. It didn’t go well.
https://energyskeptic.com/2022/north-korea-what-happens-to-a-country-when-the-oil-is-cut-off/
I do hold some small amount of hope that my own country might respond more like Cuba did as described in this excellent documentary.
Ultimately I’m a big believer in the Monkeysphere (also known as Dunbar’s number) which is “the suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. In other words, there is a number of other people that you can know and relate to at any given time – either in real life and social media, and that number is somewhere between 120-150.” Here’s a pretty humorous spin on it (although I’m not a fan of experimenting on monkey brains) https://www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
I think that’s at play here too in the whole Covid response saga and the lack of response to overshoot and is maybe linked to MORT / denial.
I’m working on those actions in Korowicz final tweet.
To your list of options above I’d say 2-6 are all possibly at play which would lead me to settle on 5 and 6 combined. My problem is I just don’t think our leaders are that well coordinated or aware. As a minor example I went to a community meeting last week run by the recent ex-deputy mayor of our local council. I asked if in her 6 years in that role whether the issue of peak oil had ever come up. No was the answer. So maybe I’m back to #5.
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Excellent article on North Korea. I observe that despite the poverty they somehow found enough wealth to develop nuclear weapons.
I’m thinking New Zealand will be a great place to be. I also like where I am but am worried about the drought stricken hordes with guns south of of me that are likely to migrate north.
I think Gaia is making a similar argument about “the plan”. We don’t need a conspiracy to explain the behavior of thousands of health ministers, just tribal pressure and the desire to keep their jobs. Maybe “the plan” only requires a few people to be in on it. I’d guess the head of each powerful country, head of important central banks, and a few key players like Fauci and Gates.
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I think it was Michael Mann, in a recent piece on NZ television (by the way, I’ve gone off Mann over the last few years as he refuses to admit that 1.5C is an impossible target or that renewable energy can’t power our economy), who said that Australia was probably the worst place to live and New Zealand the best place to live as climate change took hold.
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Don’t forget Tassie! We’re kinda like NZ-lite, the mountains are less spectacular but we’ve got lots of sheep, too! But we’ve also got poisonous snakes and jack-jumper ants that cause anaphylaxis. So a point to NZ. However, we don’t have earthquakes or active volcanoes, that must bring us up level. Toss a coin and either way, you’d win and I think you’d be welcome in several homesteads!
Regarding the other point (do we have to get back to serious stuff?) you are correct that I believe the Plan only needs a few to control all the rest in a top down, need-to-know basis, which is how our society seems to work in all areas and we’ve all gone along with it all this time without question. Think politics, business, military, the medical hierarchy, academia, the art and entertainment world–we’re all pretty much programmed to follow orders, don’t ask too many questions, report to your immediate supervisors but you won’t get a look-in with the top brass, you’re too low down the ladder. This is just how it is and always has been, and if you want to participate in this society, you’ll have to follow the rules. That’s the fundamental mass formation we’ve been swimming in all our lives and we don’t even recognise it because we’re fish (and small fry at that). So I can see how it’s totally logical and possible to have a small cadre of power players pulling all the strings, and we don’t even need to know who they really might be. The Faucis and Gates and the like are the key strings which move the puppet (the rest of us) to act out in a certain desired way (the agenda), but following this logic upward, they are not the ones controlling the whole show. It’s like a fractal, or the Russian nesting dolls, there’s always another who wields more power.
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Hate to rain on your parade but last I checked NZ and Tassie are on planet Earth. The best is saved for last. A tasty dessert* for the ravenous planetary mob. Think Marial boat flotilla on steroids. Better get working on that cloaking device like in “Lost.” Hey but good luck.
Hokey pokey ice cream is a popular flavor in NZ as I remember
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One of our big challenges in NZ in the future will be keeping our roads open and infrastructure working. We have some of the most expensive roads in the world (we spend over 1.5% of GDP on roading). Our roads can not be built from concrete because we are so geologically active, so they are built from chip and asphalt. We experience a lot of flooding, bridge washouts, and slips – all require expensive diesel plant and skilled workers to fix. All of our highways are driven every day by a highwayman, to keep them clear. NZ only looks small on the maps, but it’s a similar land size to Italy, with a lot of mountains and rivers. If the sea level continues to rise, most of our useful infrastructure will be contaminated with seawater. Look up the challenges Dunedin is already having. Most of our big airports are right next to the ocean LOL (Dunedin airport had to be moved a few decades ago due to flooding). All our big cities are at sea level.
As Gaia Gardener says, we are overdue for our next big earthquake on the Alpine fault line https://theconversation.com/nzs-next-large-alpine-fault-quake-is-likely-coming-sooner-than-we-thought-study-shows-159223
Nutritionally-wise, NZ soils are minerally deficient because they are young soils. A way around this is to eat a lot of food from the sea, but our fish stocks getting low.
I do think we may fair better than most countries, but it is certainly not going to be an easy ride either. I like to point these things out because NZ might not be as great as some people think it is. When you look over the last 100 years, only about 20% of immigrants ending up staying here permanently. Many went on to a better life in Australia, America or Canada, or went back to their home country.
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Thanks for explaining the reality of NZ.
Perhaps if you live on a little inland sheep farm in a small single story home and you don’t drive or fly anywhere?
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Could the explanation for much of the events of the last few years be just as simple as some people said it would be? Conventional Oil production plateaued beginning in 2005, final peak in all Oil production was 2018, and we are now in terminal decline of energy production and a contraction of the economic system?
Just asking, not saying this is the case. Time will tell.
In economic degrowth how would any of the major parts of the current economic system work? Fiat currencies, debt-money created by loans by banks, bonds, equity markets, life and property insurance, futures markets, pension/retirement plans, government budgets based on tax revenues, etc. My guess is they don’t work, at least not very well.
So my guess is the existing economic system “must” collapse when exponential growth powered by the annual increases in fossil fuel production ends. The end of that financial system is the end of the fiat money and debt “pump” that pulls forward consumption from the future, and from the periphery of that system to the center. The end of that pump results in a sharp economic contraction downward to a new global economic system with a lower level of energy production. Then we attempt to grow again from there.
And so on….
But I am just guessing.
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Yes, I think we’re saying the same thing. If you thought I said something else then I need to fix what I wrote.
Our monetary system requires growth not to collapse. We hit limits to growth a while ago and have been pretending otherwise by growing debt much faster than the economy.
Now the end of the runway is in sight and things are starting to break. Some of our leaders, especially the central banks, understand this and are trying to get some tools in place via covid to help maintain social order when a reset is forced.
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“Paging CPT. Sully…CPT. Sully you are needed in the cockpit.
CPT Sully! Please report to the cockpit immediately”
Crickets.
This life is not real. It is only for practice. If this life was real you would have been told where to go and what to do.
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Thanks to Herbie Ficklestein @ OFW for finding this.
https://www.businessinsider.com/why-gas-prices-rising-energy-fracking-boom-ending-oil-shortage-2022-6
A reply by Student @ OFW nailed the implications:
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Well that’s a timely coincidence…
Maajid Nawaz today interviews Dr. Mike Yeadon and asks exactly the same question as my post, “What is the reason that everything we’ve been told about covid is wrong?”.
Nawaz concludes covid is a global plan to control citizens. Being apparently unaware or in denial of overshoot, Nawaz does not draw my proposed connection to collapse prep.
https://odysee.com/EP8-Radical:93141ffa7a818f56b65173802a614f39bf7b6f9c
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The plot thickens so much that you can cut it with a knife. Excuse my mixed metaphors but we’re definitely into the pointy end of things now. Wow Rob, this trio of recent interviews (Weinstein and Malone, Malone and vanden Bossche and this one with Yeadon) really puts it all out there. I just can’t fathom how anyone who has even a few spare neurons to rub together upon hearing this won’t be able to get that we’ve all been duped in the most grievous way, and maybe that will stimulate the rest of the little grey cells to try to understand why it happened so. But truthfully, I hope most will remain in denial because if the masses truly awaken to the cataclysmic scenario we are envisioning through free fall economic collapse, we may be plunged into a situation from whence there is no recourse.
Australia’s headline news today are twofold–our market plummeted 3.6%, wiping 90 billion AUD from the already illusionary cache, and there are threats of rolling blackouts in most of our states due to electricity shortfalls from a perfect storm of factors. Just getting us ready for what more fresh hell to come. That’s bad enough but what if no-one shows up to work at the power plants due to chaos and panic? And in America’s case, an angry mob of millions with guns ready to deliver their own justice? There is a very fine balance point needed here to keep things going just recognizably enough so we have some sense of continuity whilst the soiled sheets are changed from underneath us. The masses can never awaken, whatever it takes. I predict there will be ever more emphasis on sport, entertainment, and other distractionary devices, it will be bread and circus all the way now, even as Rome burns.
Ironic that I had just finished dissecting Trudeau’s public facade and the poor mug got Covid again. By the way, we do all know that he is Fidel Castro’s son, right?
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We will require a delicate balance to avoid Mad Max.
In case I wasn’t clear in the original post, I don’t personally want it, but I expect we’ll need a digital currency to keep the wheels on the monetary system, and for fair rationing of necessities. I also expect lockdowns for a ginned up virus are preferable to violent mobs in the streets.
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I think I was too young to truly appreciate the Mad Max series when I first saw it, long ago in a galaxy far, far, away. I never knew Australia would be my future home and the spectre of social collapse would hang precariously over all of us. Maybe it’s time to revisit these films and instead of rewinding history, we will see our future shimmering before us like a mirage in the desert. Yes, lockdowns and the boogeyman virus are very effective tools that can be sharpened further. One can see how a population, no matter how large, as in China, can be controlled quite convincingly once the government is omnipresent in every aspect of life, and how helpless one is, especially if city-bound.
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Nice crisp powerful summary statement made on April 22, 2022 by Dr. Bret Weinstein asking health ministers and workers to stand up and speak the truth.
“The Nuremburg trial did not accept the argument I was following orders.”
https://rumble.com/embed/vxx0z9/?pub=4
https://rumble.com/v10j6zj-nuremberg-violations-we-are-unlearning-the-most-important-lessons-in-histor.html
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A lovely calm intelligent documentary released yesterday featuring Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche and Dr. Robert Malone discussing:
– what explains WHO behavior?
– Bill Gates involvement in vaccine development
– The strange flip by the Biden administration upon taking power from being mandate hesitant and vaccine skeptical to advocates of both (Rob: perhaps another piece of evidence that the central bank told them they had to get on board with “the plan”)
– the growing power and authoritarianism of the deep state
– Bossche’s theory
– the criminal insanity of vaccinating children
https://rumble.com/embed/v15gjii/?pub=4
https://rumble.com/v182pga-headwind2-the-debate.html
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I agree with some of this. Bill Gates trying to tell us about health issues is a joke. The issue of vaccinating children isn’t criminal (there is no law against it) but, especially with Omicron, it seems unnecessary and, of course, potentially harmful (though rarely). However, a lot of what was said raised my eyebrows.
Malone suggested pathogens tend to become more benign but he seems to miss the point of SARS-CoV-2 being most infectious before it produces symptoms in its host. So there is very little pressure on the virus to become more benign in order to more easily spread.
Bossche is trying to present the fact that variants have become more infectious as proof that vaccines are resulting in more infectious variants. However, before Omicron, alpha, beta and delta were more infectious than the original strain (and delta particularly so) but arose in an environment when vaccines were either non-existent or only recently rolled out. All of those variants arose in unvaccinated populations (or, in the case of Omicron, a low vaccination country) and there were plenty of other variants which were not as infectious. We only get to see the more infectious ones.
Malone acknowledged that some actions are needed to slow the advance of the virus to prevent health systems from being overwhelmed resulting in more deaths that would otherwise have occurred. However, he didn’t mention what actions they might be, given that he seemed against mask use and social distancing because they result in increased pressure for the virus to become more infectious.
Bossche was saying we need to know where “the end station” is for the various strains to be able to make good policy. I.e. he seems to want us to gaze into the future before taking actions now to prevent that future.
Malone seemed to be suggesting that so-called neutralizing antibodies seen early after vaccination were actually antibodies to betacoronaviruses that the body had encountered in the past. He didn’t say why they had been mis-identified as such (i.e. why were the labs showing these as antibodies to the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 and not to other virus spike proteins)?
Bossche keeps going on about immune selection pressure as though it would be better to let all virus just reach its own end point. What does he suggest societies’ actions should have been, just letting it rip?
Malone keeps mentioning the “leaky vaccine” which ignores the fact the most or all vaccines are leaky, to different degrees. And he doesn’t seem to think the rarity of adverse events is important, rather the fact that they could occur at all. I agree that the vaccine makes little sense for young children, since the protection against transmission (at least with Omicron) is low and the chance of serious illness is low.
Insurance companies saying it’s a known risk seems bizarre (not that Malone or Bosche say it’s not) because almost everything one insures against is a risk and insurers know there is a chance of needing to pay out (in fact a certainty across all insured). So I’d need to find out the facts on that before knowing whether Malone was generalizing or not.
Bossche’s comments on taking away our last chance of herd immunity by vaccinating children seems bizarre. So if we don’t vaccinate children, we might get herd immunity? It also assumes that mRNA vaccines don’t elicit a full spectrum response, but Malone said that they do except that drug companies haven’t quantified that because its difficult to do.
Bossche seems to think, but admitted we don’t know for sure, that vaccines damage immune systems. I’ve seen some counters to that and I’m not sure Malone agrees with him (though he tried to make sure he didn’t overtly disagree with what Bossche said, referring instead to “nuances”).
Malone: “we have to be humble”. Right! No-one knows everything about this. Good take-down of the NEJM editor, who suggested “just do it” to find out if vaccines for kids are safe and effective.
So, it was a calm discussion among like-minded people but it didn’t really progress the discussion much, to my mind. At least it was only just over an hour long. So many discussions posted by, let’s call them contrarians, seem to be much longer. Even an hour is difficult to find time for.
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Another thing no one, friend or foe, talks about.
How much is crypto worth when the internet is unreliable?
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That’s why it’s called crypto–now you see it, now you don’t! Magic!
Or a less facetious answer, it’s like a Zen koan, the answer that can be spoken is not the true one, we all just have to meditate on it. And then it will be generated from our brain waves.
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“Crypto” Means “Cryptography,” Not “Cryptocurrency.
Many people (OK – a select few) are annoyed that the word “crypto” has been co-opted by the blockchain people, and no longer refers to “cryptography.”
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/nov/18/crypto-cryptocurrency-cryptographers?mid=1
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The early episodes of Steve Gibson’s Security Now podcast do a great job of explaining how crypto works. So much of our world is built on the fact that it’s very hard to identify the two prime numbers used to produce a publicly known product of their multiplication.
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The other glaring elephant in the room is how is crypto going to be generated with the energy crunch? I think I read somewhere (and forgive me for not being rigorous here) that it takes an enormous amount of energy to keep the supercomputers going and cooled to “mine” the stuff. Now I’m curious about how much and here’s what I found just cursorily–The Digiconomist’s Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index estimated that one Bitcoin transaction takes 1,544 kWh to complete, or the equivalent of approximately 53 days of power for the average US household. !!!! Some days I really have to pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming, but if this is really reality, then maybe I rather be asleep, perchance to dream. Oh give me sweet denial, the soporific of the masses!
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That’s true. I think it may have been Dennis Meadows who said the best solution to climate change is grow bitcoin because it will burn up the remaining fossil energy faster while doing nothing of lasting value (damage) to the planet.
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Conformity:
“Too many are too careful. They study, they teach, and they fail. Convention strips them of their fire.” – Charles Bukowski
Most doomers are entirely passionless and/or avoidant concerning overpopulation, mainly because 99.9 percent are breeders. They will gladly partake in apocalyptic conversation centered on climate change, peak oil, nukes, etc., yet avoid THE most important, moral issue.
However, TR from xraymike’s blog is a most welcome exception to doomosphere dullness:
Verbatim quotes:
It’s a great time to be a 73 [year] old childless codger. I’ve done my share of stupid stuff, so I feel qualified thru my experience to point out how stupid others are & it’s relatively easy.
I don’t mind self-created consequences, should have thought more about a few of my decisions, but it pisses me off when the Clever Apes overpopulate this rock & I suffer from their collateral-damage stupidity. I’ll have to watch what suffering children experience in the future, consequences created by their self-absorbed parents. I enjoy the videos of women & their children escaping Ukraine, what a great life. I’m sure kids love a great adventure being completely lost in the fog of war. Parents aren’t special & it’s too late for them to fix their stupid.
Best wishes,
Non-parent.
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Rob, you asked what our leaders are doing. The comedy continues:
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Thanks! Reality is better than the best satire you could imagine.
If I’m not mistaken that’s the 2nd or 3rd? time he got covid? He must need another booster.
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Better yet, give him lots of boosters. We could use a change in leadership.
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I like this idea, but maybe he also just fake vaccinated as quite a few prominent Spaniards:
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/thousand-of-spaniards-named-in-fake-vaccine-certificate-scandal/
Then, multiple fake boosters won´t make a difference.
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DEFCON 0 ?
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Yep, maybe the old economy is going down? 😱
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Let’s watch for monkeypox getting worse.
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Hi everyone, has anyone come across this which came to my attention today–
Click to access Absolute-Zero-online.pdf
This group of Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College, Bath academics make up the UK government funded
UK FIRES (locating Resource Efficiency at the heart of Future Industrial Strategy, it took me a while to get it, the RE is between FIS, so makes FIRES), a research programme aiming to reveal and stimulate industrial growth in the UK compatible with a rapid transition to zero emissions. From their site:
Our Vision
With fewer than thirty years to attain zero emissions, UK FIRES is uncovering the lowest risk path to zero emissions prosperity in the UK by 2050 by:-
Optimizing current industrial techniques with new decision making tools
Uncovering gaps in the business space to be filled in by entrepreneurship, finance and policy
Extensive public engagement through innovative communication channels
The date the document was released was just before the Covid pandemic unleashed. I only skimmed it which has the usual green energy spin of somehow being able to electrify everything, including cement and steel production but what really got my attention was its recommendation that in 2020-2029 all UK airports except Heathrow, Glasgow and Belfast close and all air travel cease 2030-2049. Also, all shipping ceases in that time. I am not familiar with too many of these position papers but this one seems to at once align drastic and necessary interventions with hopelessly impossible means of achieving them in the given time frames, but the urgency is definitely there and clearly stated enough. The recommendations encompass every aspect of living from what one eats and buys to how we keep warm in winter (wear more clothes). I think this gives more traction to the theory that governments worldwide have crossed the Rubicon and are attempting to mitigate the course ahead, both in energy and economic terms. Only a widest ranging government with something in place akin to Social Credit and digitalization of means to obtain goods and services can hope to effect what they believe is the answer forward. Covid and the aftermath has put a lot of the scaffold in place.
Today in Australia it became MSM news that several major retail chains have been using facial recognition technology unbeknownst to customers to “identify persons of interest who have previously been involved in incidents of concern in our stores. This technology is an important measure that helps us to maintain a safe and secure environment for our team and customers.” Always for our own good and safety. Big Brother is alive and well and here to stay.
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I skimmed it. Although they offer many good ideas for reducing consumption I was not impressed because:
1) It’s a big red flag for me when someone recommends a policy that’s going to happen even if we do nothing. I’ll be very surprised if anyone except the super rich is flying in 2030, regardless of our policies. This means the authors are in denial of energy realities, or are being deliberately disingenuous. Why not call for no air travel by 2024? Then we’d actually have to do something.
2) Anyone that discusses reducing consumption without immediately discussing required changes to the monetary system and the implications of a world with much less credit is either an idiot or is being deliberately disingenuous.
3) Anyone that calls for large reductions in consumption and does not simultaneously call for population reduction to maintain a reasonable per capita standard of living is in denial or is being deliberately disingenuous.
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Hi Rob, perhaps you misunderstood my passing interest in this piece and why I flagged it. I was not impressed either by their disingenuous recommendations, in fact, much of it was less than rigorously presented (and typos abound), to the point that it seemed almost deliberately disingenuous. Of course their not bringing up the monetary system and population issue makes this a very incomplete and futile work on the main. The fact they didn’t get into anything on how to manage a society undergoing such radical changes shows that this was never meant to be a proper policy directing exercise, those have already long been decided. For those “green” revolution minded, this paper would satisfy, and it does tick a lot of points superficially on how we’re to manage our energy future so it presents as a worthwhile addition to the narrative to the great unwashed masses. What struck me as interesting was the out-in-the-open, matter-of-fact stance that we need to completely collapse our Western way of living and this document was funded by the UK government, which makes it the closest thing we have to a government admitting that they know what is at stake and finally agreed to say it in whispers here, hidden in a position paper the public is unaware of. Of course it would be less disingenuous if someone from No. 10 came straight out and said we’re collapsing the economy deliberately now so to spare more suffering that is inevitably coming for all of you very soon. But we know why that can’t happen.
Here I go out on a conspiracy limb just to see if the branch holds–I am reading the ultimate intent of this type of document as a dissembling attempt to say “don’t say we didn’t warn you, this is what’s going to happen all along and we got smart experts to back it up” just like what was done by the pre-Covid simulation. It seems to me that a critical part of how the agenda works is we do have to be told what is going to happen, but it can be obscured and our silence or resignation to the decisions made for us is construed as acquiescence to the social contract.
In any case, I thought this document gave more weight to the theory that governments worldwide do have a finger on the pulse of our immediate predicament and follows nicely in line with the WEF reset.
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Thanks for clarifying. I see your point.
I’m curious to see if they can engineer a smooth decline in our standard of living. I’ve got a bad feeling things are going to break in unexpected ways and our leaders will be caught unprepared. You can’t print food and energy and our extreme debt is a bomb waiting to explode.
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I wanted to share an observation about who to blame for inflation. I’ve seen a few memes floating around saying things like “corporate profits are the highest ever!” Which is implying that inflation is caused by corporations skimming too much off the top. Now I totally agree that corporations have sucked a lot of wealth out of the common people; but isn’t it convenient for the central banks if the common folk are pointing their pitchforks at corporations?
There is also a maths problems with saying corporate profits are too high, or are up a certain percentage. Because these are given without the context of what it is being compared to. Of course as a total number, corporate profits will be the highest ever this year, so will taxes, so will most other things that denominated in dollars. Everything is inflating so it is meaningless to say it is the highest ever this year. We have to separate what is a genuine increase and what is just inflation.
This problem is easily fixed by pegging ‘corporate profits’ to something else. For example, the FRED has a great chart that shows corporate profits as a percentage of GDP. When you look at this, indeed corporate profits are high, but out of this world high, no! Since the GFC, this ratio sits anywhere from .9 to .12. We are currently at around .11. So corporate profits are high, but they are not at unheard of levels.
Tying this back to oil and denial, we know that corporate profits for oil producers have been too low for many years. They are finally making some profit now, thanks to increasing oil prices. Maybe oil companies should be excluded from ‘corporate profit’ memes, and we would find the rest of the corporations are making more or less the same amount of profit. I’m also not against corporations taking a bit more profit in a year like this and using it to shore up their supply chains and increase their resilience. If it means they can provide continuity of service, that’s actually a good thing for the general public. It’s very easy to blame the big bad corporations for our current challenges. It enables people to ignore the structural problems in our system, especially the real material shortages.
What we should be concerned about is where capital is going. Wealthy people might see these structural problems in the economy and try and get some money out of their investments to put it somewhere safe. This could look like demanding companies pay a big dividend this year rather than reinvesting their profits back into the business.
Here’s are a couple of old articles talking about the same phenomenon. It seems that understanding quantitatively whether corporates profits are high or not, isn’t actually a simple thing to measure.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/05/07/why-have-corporate-profits-been-rising-as-a-percentage-of-gdp-globalisation/?sh=4c7379d82a6e
https://www.economicgreenfield.com/2018/05/30/corporate-profits-as-a-percentage-of-gdp-22/
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Cleared fence line today at the farm.
WTF with weather forecasts?
9:00am this morning 3 weather sources said 50% chance of a few mm rain around 5:00pm.
4:00pm full on downpour for an hour.
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Yeah,
Kinda the same thing here in the PNW. Even the TV weatherperson has been saying that we are having April weather in June. Only two days over 75 (F) and rain every couple of days for two or three days. Everything is still mud. The only things liking this are the slugs/snails (which eat everything I plant) and the grass.
AJ
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Hay cut yesterday, about 20 days later than normal. It’s for haylage so some rain ok.
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Hi AJ. Have you tried beer traps for the slugs and snails? We use the cheapest beer we can find in old ice cream containers. Works well. Let your local bottle store know you’ll take any expired / past use-by-date beer. Makes for an interesting conversation about why you want it 🙂 https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/plant-problems/pests/insects/killing-slugs-with-beer.htm
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Yeah, tried the beer traps a couple of years ago. Had a dozen or so that had “shades” over the top so the beer wouldn’t evaporate in the sun. Didn’t do much good – got some slugs but others just decimated everything else. The only thing I use now is “poison” bait where the “poison” is not a pesticide but either sulpher or iron that stops slug’s digestion, killing them. It’s safe around mammals/birds so no harm to anything else and sulpher and iron end up as nutrients in the soil. Only problem is it’s expensive and is only good for a few days in the rain (good for a few weeks if it doesn’t rain much). This year it has rained so much that the slug baits starts molding – never had that happen before.
AJ
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I may have happened upon a solution for slugs that is beneficial for the soil at the same time, still a bit too early to tell for sure but so far, excellent results in Tasmania where we have had our share of early winter rain. We started making biochar this year and adding to everywhere, including on top of the veggie beds. The pieces were manually crushed, so not too fine, some about 1-2 cm, others finer. The crystalline structure of the finished charcoal with its hard, sharp edges may be a very good deterrent for the soft bodied slugs and snails, slicing them up upon contact, and because the biochar structure is fixed (capturing the carbon for hundreds of years), it doesn’t dissolve in the rain. I actually think having different sized pieces is important, so when the slug has to negotiate sliming over the obstacle, it gets cut up. So far, the broad beans, peas, lettuce, and brassica seedlings have been unscathed, but then again, it’s been quite cold in Tassie so that could have driven the little darlings into hibernation. If things are still good come our wet Spring, then I think we’re on to something. In the past I’ve used the iron-based pellets, too, but they disintegrated in the wet as you have experienced, AJ, but I don’t think they ever molded. Rain patterns are so unpredictable everywhere now, I’ve found that raised bed gardening is the best way to grow veggies otherwise they end up drowning.
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wool as a mulch works too, for similar reasons; at the micro scale, there are lots of tiny hooks and barbs on the fibres, unpleasant for slugs. as a material it’s about 10% nitrogen, plus it tends to be full of sheep manure, so it’s mulch, fertiliser and slug repellant all at the same time. wool is thrown away by sheep farmers here, so a free resource, too.
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Great idea, yesyesyes! Thank you for sharing. There are clearly benefits to living in a land with more sheep than people! Throwaway fleece isn’t easy to come by here in Tasmania, but how about wool socks long past darning? They might make a good slug barrier, or better yet, maybe old wool socks filled with charcoal! How’s that for a Christmas present for the naughty Gastropods!
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it astonishes me that it’s available for free here. it’s an amazing material to make clothes from. it’s what kicked off the industrial revolution, arguably, in the UK, it was such a vital material, and here we are 250 years later throwing the stuff away. i think it’s an insult to nature, frankly. one of the many our biophobic culture makes.
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We are technically in a temperate rain forest area. The forest around me is nothing but moss & fern covering and hanging down from all the Douglas Firs, Alders and Hickorys, i.e. logs of vegetative growth. So, I’ve been making biochar for 5 years now to amend my gardens. No affect on the slugs that I can tell.
AJ
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Oh, that’s disappointing news. I was hoping that we found a cure. Do you put it on top of the soil or dig it in? Our biochar is mainly from mid sized branches that pyrolize to be substantial sized nuggets of charcoal, maybe that makes a difference? They are rather sharp on the fingers as I try to break them up manually. I had hoped that would effect hari-kari on the slugs.
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Beer expires?
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Not in my world. It’s a conspiracy to get you to drink it faster and have to buy more.
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Sounds like a job for Professor Slughorn. Btw I read on a Permie website that pickled slugs are delicious. Lots of garlic required.
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Not keen to try that at all. Even our chickens turn their beaks up at them.
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I haven’t had much luck with it yet but a scientist interviewed in New Scientist said his team had looked at all sorts of attractors for slugs and snails. The best one they found was bread dough. Apparently it lasts for up to 2 weeks and slugs and snails can’t resist it. It doesn’t kill them, of course, but you can just go and collect them of an evening (our ducks love them). I’ve tried but always forget to look and by the time I do, something else has eaten the dough. I think my dog was the main culprit but I think a rat has also managed to find them. So I’m still trying to think of a way to make them accessible to slugs and snails but not to other creatures. I tried upturned plant pots, with staples, but the rat just burrows under.
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Interesting. My wife is mainly in charge of the raised gardens for annuals and seems happy with the cheap beer. Might try some of my Sourdough in an ice-cream container with holes cut in it as an experiment. I’ve got rats but relatively low numbers.
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https://wolfstreet.com/2022/06/13/that-was-fast-30-year-fixed-mortgage-rate-spikes-to-6-18-10-year-treasury-yield-to-3-43-home-sellers-face-new-reality/
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As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden.
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I pay attention when HHH @ POB says something.
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Just added some albums by these guys to my music collection.
They don’t make music like this anymore.
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Sri Lanka has told its citizens to grow food in their backyard.
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Kind of like Victory gardens of WWII. Sort of. Where are they going to get their fertilizer? Poop? As Sri Lanka goes so goes the rest of the world. I can see it now – a televised State of the Union address to rally the jolly green giant brigade “Fellow Americans! Join us on the Farm Front! as the POTUS slaps on a wide brimmed straw hat and holding up a hoe cries out “this here shovel can help you plant potatoes and much more besides!”
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We have been using our own poop for fertilizer for some years now, having a compost toilet. The raw shit is composted with green and carbon matter and becomes a friable humus which is the ideal amendment to the garden. If you cover it over enough, there should be no smell. For those new to this topic, I highly recommend Joe Jenkin’s Humanure Handbook, subtitled Shit in a Nutshell. He’s been composting his family’s poo for over 40 years and the photos of his garden tells the beneficial effects–his corn is 8 ft high! We save our urine, too, and once fermented, it becomes a powerful tonic for plants. Even better when you soak wood ash in it for a while. We must use what nature provides (or the call of nature), and for smaller scale food growing, this is integral. The only waste is not having used what is considered waste to complete the cycle. Have I overshared?
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no, but you’re guilty of not being insane. a major problem when the majority are as bonkers as can be. my only comment is that urine is a good way to “charge” biochar, too; not a million miles away from what you’re doing with ash, of course, but just another alternative. also, with humanure, if you ferment it, you get a usable product in a few short months, rather than the typical year. easy to do by inoculating sawdust with lactobacillus, there are a couple of guides on youtube if you search for fermenting humanure.
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Is fermented humanure sort of like kombucha?
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I don’t get the kombucha craze. How can any sane person think fermenting white sugar and tea transforms it into some kind of nutrient dense miracle beverage?
If you’re after a refreshing beverage, chilled water is free and requires no work.
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you think most humans are sane?? or indeed, that most humans actually think?
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I’ve hit the trifecta. Composting toilet, biochar and kombucha at my place. We also have sweet cool creek water for our drinking supply which I agree is refreshing. We’re growing sugarcane and tea plants for own kombucha raw ingredients. It’s a nice luxury currently. 🙂
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Sounds idyllic. Good luck with h your endeavors. Have you harvested any tea yet?
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No the tea plants are in pots waiting to be planted this winter. Sugarcane is well established already.
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I think the kombucha benefit was meant to be as a probiotic, to give you some good bacteria
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you’ll get me started on the uses of colloidal silver in gardening if you’re not careful there, mandrake. want to double the root mass of your seedlings by application of a part per million or 2 of silver? danger, danger, unconventional gardening tips dead ahead.
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So you’re like the Don Corleone of gardening? Gulp. Robbbbb……I thought this was a safe space.
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more heath robinson than corleone, i think. generally in the “whatever works” camp, which recently seems to be what i’ve seen referred to as “natural farming”, i.e. to some extent stand back and let nature be your teacher. my most recent lesson has been that “weeds” = shade for what i’m trying to grow, and they’re therefore not weeds at all. i live in mediterranean climate where we get months without rain and 40C plus, and our soil is the worst i’ve ever seen (pure clay with not a hint of sand, silt or humus), so the lessons i’m attempting to take in are often a bit unconventional. which suits me!
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Good strategy. The shade from the weeds impedes soil moisture loss and saves you from using expensive mulch. Bonus, you are maintaining soil structure by not over cultivating. Of course it might not have any structure if it’s an urban disturbed compacted soil. Anyhow, its nice to use trial and error to see what will grow with min amendments and water. My philosophy is similar. I’m gardening not farming. If a plant can’t survive with min help I let it die. I do help them a bit to get established or during a prolonged dry spell . So I water occasionally, but I don’t over-water as many of my neighbors do. I’ve never turned on the sprinkler. I like to toughen my plants. One of my favorite plants which tolerates poor soil and takes a beating from the sun is partridge pea. It has profuse yellow flowers and is leguminous so is nitrogen fixing as well. It’s a host plant for sulphur butterflies and the bumbles love it. In my area it blooms 2-3 months. I let it go to seed and it self propagates. Provides a lot of shade and can grow to over 6ft. Very nice in mass plantings. It looks good with salvia and iron weed. When it’s done seeding I take my pruner and cut the dried plant into small bits to add organic matter to the soil.
ps pure clay? you would improve the tilth of your soil by adding compost and a sandy/ silty fraction to increase soil permeability.
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regarding pure clay; the area used to be a shallow sea, that was covered and uncovered repeatedly. this has apparently left it devoid of anything but clay; i now compare it to trying to grow on a beach. not impossible, but it massives limits what you can grow. regarding sand, people often recommend this, but unless you add perhaps 30 to 40% sand, you end up with something like concrete after some rain. my solution has been to import as much organic material as i can (we’re lucky to have access to as much green waste and horse manure as we can carry, so i bring a couple of cubic meters each weekend when we visit this piece of land), and dig big bloody holes every time i plant a tree. typically i can only get down 20-50cm before hitting bedrock, as i’m on a steep slope too, but by using plants in the rose family (as these just about cope with our terracotta soil), as much green matter as i can get into that hole, the wool mulch and an olla (as i can only water things once a week, which makes it even more interesting trying to grow under these already extreme circumstances!), we seem to be making progress. i had to readjust my expectations of what was possible, so now i’m on trees in the rose family and drought-tolerant grasses. we don’t have water on the land, so it’s all harvested rain water, from the roof of a small shed and another big bloody hole i’ve dug to make some raised beds.
trial and error is definitely a good approach. i was watching a vid by someone yesterday who recommends 100 hours of observation for 1 hour of work; nice idea, at least. another thing i’ve been trying lately is just to look at what grows locally, and not think i can grow all the standard things like cucumbers, melons, whatever else. what i do see growing locally and which is doing well at our place is amaranth, and other plants in the same family, like good king henry and fat hen. so i’m letting all that grow, self-seed and see how it looks the next year. i think the place is evolving towards fruit trees aplenty, and stuff like amaranth and sorghum growing between the trees. it’s my hope to get to the stage where i could feed my family from this piece of land; if it ever came to that, i’d enlist the help of at least chickens and rabbits (i’m veggie but if needs must, plus there’s the dog to consider!), but for now it’s learn (hopefully) from the mistakes, and listen to nature by seeing what actually works, and encourage that.
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Hi Simon. You’ve got a great gardening adventure underway there and sounds like you’re well on track to transform your soil. We’re lucky we are on deep volcanic soils. Just add water and things grow well. In our food forest we’re roughly following the Syntropic Agroforestry path which originated in South America and is now being applied all over the world. You may have already come across it in your learning journey. Here’s an overview of the principles by Permadynamics who live about an hour from us.
And this video covers their food forest which was started on straight clay on a steep slope.
They have a subscription option with weekly videos and monthly q+a’s where you get people from all over the world and different climates asking great questions.
Happy gardening
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Sorry Simon, I haven’t read all your posts. Where are you planting?
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whatever grows in my baked clay, and will feed me, is essentially the plan.
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I meant geographically.
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Hi Simon, I’m here ready to learn from your unorthodox wisdom in the garden! I only call myself Gaia gardener but perhaps I have met a true master!
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ha no i just enjoy learning new stuff and trying to think outside the box as much as possible. the wool idea came from the fact that i can source it free locally, and the silver idea i learnt about due to recently discovering that ionic silver can enable woulded cells to actually revert back to stem cells. more info in this thread: https://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message1590481/ (an example of a jewel of a thread among the giant steaming pile of manure that GLP typically is)
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So pissing on a fire to put it out at a campsite is a good thing right? Nice to gave a scientific excuse handy next time I encounter a park ranger. “Well you see officer I’m super charging this here bio-char”
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Err rather “have” for the spelling & grammar freaks out there.
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that’s my most basic biochar production system you’ve just nicked there. the patent is still pending, dammit.
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And you, my friend the Mandrake, are the jester that brings much mirth to my day, thank you. We need laughter as much as sunshine.
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We’ve done both the compost bucket with sawdust/shavings and the separett, which separates the urine from the poop. Each has advantages.
Haven’t tried intentionally fermenting our urine, but sometimes it’s a while in the container, so it’s probably well fermented? Note that the nitrogen will dissipate as ammonia quickly, so must be quickly applied if you are trying to up the nitrogen in the soil. The phosphorus stays, so you still get that.
I second the recommendation for Joe Jenkin’s book. We’ve had our lovable loo for eight years now.
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Thanks everyone for the feedback–yes, I think excreta should be a perfectly acceptable and much needed topic. Everyone poos! I think that’s the title of a children’s book that is supposed to teach kids how normal bowel movements are, rather sweet and sensible.
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While we’re waxing on things scatological I’d say there are definitely some anal retentive types on this blog. Possibly a bit stopped up & could use a swig or two of refreshing Kosmic Salty Dog kombucha followed by a didgeridoo sound bath.
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Does your bra button front or back? That would be over sharing. Humanure may not be something to discuss at a tea social with the ladies who lunch but is perfectly acceptable for this site. Although of course, I defer to Rob’s judgment as he is the penultimate arbiter of what passes the mustard. I mean what passes muster.
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Need a bit of ethical advice Rob. Is it wrong for me to find myself on Team Orang’s side? Am I a species traitor by thinking that this pillock is getting of very lightly – the orangutan could quite easily snap his leg in half.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/travel/news/orangutan-grabs-and-attacks-taunting-zoo-visitor/ar-AAYp6DJ?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=127641627fda4cbfbf4503ac58b31963
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I saw that a few days ago LOL. I’m with you 100%!
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I realize this question is not directed to me me but it depends on what Orang you’re talking about. Oh wait – sorry I read too quickly.
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I’m into Nick Lane’s new book Transformer by a couple chapters. It’s complex but I’m enjoying it.
First big idea so far is energy (metabolism) drives information (DNA), not the other way around.
Here’s my analogy. You discover oil and design a crude diesel engine. Then you use that engine to help you mine more minerals and oil to make more diesel engines. Then you use those engines to makes things that growth your wealth. Then you use that growth to enable abundant credit. Then you use that credit to invest in complex factories to make computer chips. Then you use those computer chips to make your diesel engine more fuel efficient with less emissions.
It’s not possible to construct a plausible story by starting with a computer chip. Energy drives everything and life began at an energy gradient.
Second big idea, I’ve got to finish the biography of Peter Mitchell, “Wandering in the Gardens of the Mind”. He’s the great mind that figured out chemiosmosis which is one of the most unintuitive and profound discoveries of science. The energy in food we eat is used to pump protons across a membrane creating a gradient which then flows back through spinning turbines which build the ATP molecules that power cells.
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Ran into a friend I see once a year. He twice worked into our brief conversation that he and family are triple vaxed. Then he said the whole family got covid but it was thankfully mild because they are triple vaxxed (third mention).
I smiled and did not offer my vaccination status but said I’ve luckily not yet been sick.
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it’s like a badge of honour, it seems. i met someone recently who had just been “boosted” and seemed quite proud that he felt shit. he actually referred to himself as a guinea pig for big pharma, but seemed oddly pleased by this. i think it’s as JMG posits, that “progress” is the modern, secular religion, and vaccination is part of that, hence it’s an almost religious drive to be vaxxed. people are strange, this much at least i’m sure of.
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I am thinking that some might see it as a badge of honour to be triple-injected, as validation that one is a card-carrying member of the in-group, having followed the rules and their leaders to the letter. Surely there is some reward awaiting for these most faithful? It does have overtones of religion; blind faith is the same prerequisite. In these changing uncertain times, the survival mechanism of staying on the right side of the group with power, those who can most likely protect you and not abandon you to the wolves, overrides any need to think for ourselves (for the majority). Especially when it has been shown that those who do think for themselves, ask questions, and make another choice, receive the equivalent of being drawn and quartered publicly.
This is precisely the same passive-aggressive intimidation power that doctors wield over their patients who ask too many questions about their course of treatment or are considering another type of therapy for their illness. Immediately the cloak of advocacy and protection is withdrawn, the doctors voice their displeasure and condemnation in no uncertain terms “well, that unproven therapy is not going to work and not backed by science which clearly tells us this protocol I am prescribing is the best/only chance to save you from cancer (insert disease of choice) and if you choose to do so, then we can’t do anything for you and you’re on your own”. How many patients have the confidence to stand up to that, especially when they believe their lives will be forfeit if they don’t have the backing of the medical system if and when things get desperate? I have known many patients who caved to that pressure of staying with the conventional therapy because of their fear of being dumped by the only system they know. This is purely human nature for self-preservation, and may be part of the explanation why so many still went along for the third or fourth shot just because the whitecoats and other leaders said so.
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Snap! funny that Simon and I both used the exact same terms, “badge of honour” and “religion”! He posted first but I only saw it after I submitted mine so I am not guilty of plagiarism.
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GMTA, perhaps? or odd ones, at least! doctors do seem to hold a special sway over the masses, and they’re often total assholes, in my short experience of working in the health field. they were among the first to sign up en masse to nazi ideology, back in the day, too. i guess it’s something to do with having power over life and death decisions, it’s easy to become convinvced of your own greatness under these circumstances. but i think you’ve already expressed that more eloquently than I, Gaia gardener. Terry Hall does a good job of the same thing:
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I also have encountered this boasting with the vaccination status multiple times. Just recently, I met a colleague from the US in the cafeteria of the company I am currently working for. Somehow, we came to the Covid topic during lunch and he was really proud of being “quadruple vaccinated”. As I have a good relationship with him, I didn´t tell him that I am not vaccinated against Covid.
I also have some friends of the more esoteric brand who were celebrating their week long suffering after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine because they interpreted this as a sign that the vaccine is working well. If you spin this attitude further, a medication that kills you is better than dying from the illness against which you took the medication…
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Rob, over the years you’ve talked about the dangers of tribalism. This vax vs anti-vax focus seems polarizing.
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I thought the tribalism was dying down with the current mild variants and so I was a little surprised by the conversation with my friend.
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I was referring to the posts on your blog.
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You’ve lost me. Are you saying I’m offending readers and should stop talking about covid?
There’s only reader I’m aware of that supports official covid policies and I’ve asked him to recommend a super smart expert with integrity that supports his views.
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If you’re talking about me, Rob, I don’t support “official covid policies” (whatever that means; different countries have had different approaches). I support some of what our government did early on and do think the vaccines were safe and had some efficacy in some respects. That’s about it.
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I think every single decision was wrong.
Not randomly wrong which might imply incompetence.
Rather, exactly opposite of correct, which implies a priority other than maximizing long term public health.
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China’s leading the way for western leaders to follow…
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-06-14/china-s-iphone-city-may-be-using-covid-controls-on-protesters
Lots more interesting global economic news today from Panopticon:
https://climateandeconomy.com/2022/06/16/16th-june-2022-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
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I enjoyed el gato malo’s essay today. He paints a plausible path out of the covid insanity. His prediction is that pharma will be found guilty of fraud thus invalidating contracts and providing a scapegoat for our leaders to avoid consequences for their horrendous decisions.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/pfossible-pfizer-pfutures-and-the?s=r
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He lost me immediately: ” mRNA vaccines have failed on efficacy, are likely making covid spread and recurrence worse, and have a side effect profile orders of magnitude greater than any other vaccine.” Where does he get his data from? None of the claim makes any sense on the data and research I’ve seen on this. Admittedly, the efficacy wanes quite quickly but not the degree he’s claiming. I follow the NZ data closely and used to follow the Israeli data closely. In neither case could that claim be made. On side effects, most claims seem to be made based on very imperfect systems like VAERS and CARM. The claims may turn out to be true, I don’t know, but a statement like the above just can’t be made.
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Rob, i think you’ve got your first dedicated troll. normally a sign you’re on to something. if you’ra taking fire, it’s cos your directly over the target. i think “Mike Roberts” trolls OFW, too.
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I don’t think Mike’s a troll. I think he’s run into some covid critics that he’s found to be dishonest and that makes him wary. There are lots of crazies out there. I’m trying to introduce him to critics with intelligence, expertise and integrity, and to make him wary in the opposite direction because he can’t identify similarly sound covid policy supporters.
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I don’t think your a troll either Mike. Although I don’t agree with you that the vaccines are safe. I really struggled with whether to get vaccinated. In the end I didn’t. It took me a long time to come around to my current view which is that I think these mRNA vaccines are a massive fraud.
I even registered to participate in a vaccine trial but ended up catching covid so didn’t bother. I wouldn’t say that covid was a mild illness as I was reasonably unwell but this year’s flu was way worse. I was bedridden for 24 hours with the flu but with covid I was able to soldier on. All the people I know who’ve caught both said the same thing.
That my government would come out and force vaccinate the population with an experimental product just makes me so fucking angry. Being called antivax makes me angry too and I find it deeply offensive. In fact nearly every part of the covid fiasco makes me mad.
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Me too. Well said.
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One aspect I’ve found really hard to deal with was finding myself sharing views with people that I normally wouldn’t.
People like Australian politician Craig Kelly. He just got voted out in the last election. In some respects he is what I regard as a fringe lunatic. (Obviously a lot of his electorate thought the same). He’s a known climate change denier and has many other views that I find disturbing and yet when it came to covid I found myself sharing many of his ideas. He certainly isn’t the only one in my list either. Dr Naomi Wolfe is another name that springs to mind. I was reading something of hers the other day and got the strong impression she’s a religious nut and yet find many of her arguments about fraud in the pfizer trials compelling.
I keep asking myself if I’m wrong because it doesn’t feel normal to be in common with known climate change deniers and religious quacks. But the evidence really is starting to stack up that these mRNA vaccines are a massive fraud.
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It’s very rare to find someone without flaws in their understanding of reality. See for example my list of polymaths in denial. These people are all brilliant and yet can’t see the most important and obvious thing.
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Well that was interesting reading that old piece. I must have read it as I commented. There was only 16 comments. Turns out I’ve been reading this blog now for 5 years. The comments have come a long way.
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Thanks, Perran. Luckily I haven’t had COVID-19 but, if I’d had both that and the flu, that would only give me a comparison of one person with one specific strain of both viruses and one particular initial viral load for each. And they would have different effects on different people with different underlying conditions (which may not even manifest normally). Unfortunately, we can’t do direct comparisons but studies may be able to winkle out the differences. For the original strain, COVID-19 seemed to be about 10 times as bad, in terms of deaths but I doubt that is the case now as different strains are dominant and we know more. But it’s hard to tell. If another dominant variant emerges, we may get a different picture.
I’m sure I come across as a troll to some as I’m pretty critical of almost all opinions – I rarely accept them 100%, on almost every subject. I guess I don’t often waste a response on an agreement, unless I have something to add, but I do use the like button if available. On another forum, I’m currently being critical of the FDA approval of the vaccines for kids, so I don’t take the official line 100%. But I still do think the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are as safe as most vaccines, for adults. I certainly don’t think they have been developed maliciously (the teams developing the vaccines have even had their own vaccines, so malicious intent is unlikely). The frequent referral to the vaccines as “experimental” seems disingenuous. They’re not experimental but I acknowledge that they may have been rushed.
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i really hope el gato is right. but i’ve found much truth in that line about it being easier to fool people than convince them they’ve been fooled. i’m guessing many will just keep doubling down on their mistakes and keep taking more and more “boosters”. i’m reminded of when it became public knowledge, via Danish mainstream broadcast news, that nanothermite (a substance available to the US military only) had been found in the dust and rubble of 9/11, this info being presented by a credentialled Danish scientist, who published this work with a bunch of other scientists in a peer reviewed journal, before the Danish nightly news had him on. i remember thinking, if this doesn’t change the narrative around 9/11, nothing will. that was a decade ago now.
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As with peak oil. The deniers of depleting fossil energy will find something else to blame after Ukraine is done.
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The hard-left is going to blame corporations. I’m already seeing this meme a lot. “Those damn oil companies and their profits, that’s what done it!”
The hard-right is going to blame ‘renewable’ energy and climate change policies.
The financially-aware people might blame the central bank and financial gimmickry.
The conspiracy theorists will blame the global elite. Either the elites are hoarding and / or they’re trying to starve the masses of energy.
Politicians will blame the other parties.
Very few people will turn to geologists for answers
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Oh I forgot there is always plain old racism to fall back on. How dare those people not give us our oil!
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Decent interview of Tim Watkins yesterday by Nate Hagens. Nothing new about overshoot however Tim is also an expert on mental health and provided a few good nuggets of advice for a healthy brain.
https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/23-tim-watkins
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Does anyone suspect that Nate is a little in denial about the Seneca cliff type risk in the system?? Or his he trying not to be too alarming I wonder?
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Nate understands all of the possible paths for eliminating overshoot. Some of the people he is trying to influence would stop listening to him if his message was too bleak. My main criticism is that he should dial up the discussion of population reduction because it is a hopeful message, since even small progress can be viewed as success.
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A new excellent discussion between Dr. Bret Weinstein and Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche with a nice mix of deep diving, big picture analysis, and many new important insights.
Includes discussion of:
– what we should have done
– how the scientific community has completely failed society at the cost of millions of lives
– what Bossche got right and what he got wrong
– why Ivermectin effectiveness is declining
– why seasonality of infections is declining
– why young people are becoming more susceptible
– why natural immunity effectiveness is declining
– why the effectiveness of boosters is down to a few weeks
– where we are today: applying pressure to increase virulence and the situation is not stable
– where we are going: population reduction biased to vaccinated people
– what we should do now
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Gosh, another 2 hour video. Sorry, but I just can’t find time for this. Can you summarise what they think should have been done? This was something missing from the Malone/Bossche discussion, that I mentioned in my comment to that. It’s all very well criticising actions but it would be good to know what else might have worked other than what various countries did. Malone did say that something needed to be done to avoid health systems being overwhelmed but then criticised all of the actions taken (or he seemed to).
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It’s 2 hours because covid is complicated.
I’d welcome a 2 hour video from you by two super smart experts with integrity that explain dozens of troubling observations and why our policies are correct.
What Bossche thinks we should have done:
– tell smart systems thinkers in scientific community to investigate and debate instead of censoring
– vaccinate only elderly and obese (today I think he’d say stop all vaccinations period)
– wide spread deployment of anti-virals (might be too late now)
– early treatment of vulnerable
– allow sickness to run course in resilient people
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Yes, I know it’s complicated but I’ve come across so many 2 hour videos that I’d like to watch to get another angle but I just don’t have the time. I watched the hour and 10 minute video that you linked for the conversion between Malone and Bossche. I left comments on that and wasn’t that impressed.
I can’t really find fault with those actions that Bossche mentioned, apart from the last (because how does one identify “resilient people”?). However, what if it turned out that the anti-virals didn’t work or had low efficacy? Would we have ended up with actions similar to what we got? We have to remember that, at the start, there was virtually a panic situation when we had very little information.
The problem with experts who toe the official line is that I’m sure you wouldn’t regard them as having integrity.
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Thank you again Rob for highlighting yet another erudite Covid discussion. Even though this topic is becoming very familiar territory, I was totally riveted by the depth of the discussion which brought up many new and fascinating insights. For me, the pursuit of knowledge and understanding is its own great reward and this being part of the defining event of our time makes me duty-bound and fulfilled to pursue any extra light shone upon the why. In watching and hearing this podcast as with the others, I felt such a great sense of pride and respect for these brave human beings who have chosen to openly share their particular talents and hard-earned expertise, compelled by their ethics at great personal cost, to help other humans reach their own convictions. It is humbling and awe-inspiring to know that we are sharing this blink in time with so many who have risen to the occasion in the search for truth and understanding, exemplifying qualities those of us who have found this site honour so much and strive to emulate–integrity, honesty, objectivity, wisdom, courage, and compassion. This site is safe harbour for us, and I can only try expressing my heartfelt gratitude for this forum. I receive great joy knowing that I am seen and accepted by fellow earthlings whom I wish to also encourage and support. Whilst we necessarily should have differing views, we can agree that each of us fills an equal niche in the near-infinite solution space! It is perhaps humanity’s greatest achievement that we have developed the theory of mind so we may congregate together to exchange ideas and emotions. Thank you, everyone, for gathering at this oasis in the desert, as someone so poetically described, and drinking deeply and refreshingly from the water we have drawn together.
Sorry Rob, that was one of those long-winded run-on paragraphs again. You may all be pleased to know that you’ll have a Gaia holiday for some little while as my better half will be coming up to Queensland next week for 3 weeks of serious property maintenance (what else did you think we’ll be doing?) and I may not be as present on-line. Just in case you were wondering if Gaia fell off the face of the earth, which may still happen at any moment of course! I will still check in to all your news which is like manna for my sanity, the checking in is, the news will most likely drive me to lunacy!
Namaste and go well everyone.
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I too think Weinstein and Bossche are good men, and it makes me feel better to know there are a few good men out there.
Good luck with the weeds and the hubby.
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This is for you Rob. You know how annoyed you are that no one ever mentions the word “overshoot” – well there’s a new gang in town and they are called the
Climate Overshoot Commission
(Sorry it’s not ‘population overshoot’ but at least TPTB are using the magic word)
Here’s an excerpt from their website.
“ What is climate overshoot?
In 2015 in Paris, the countries of the world agreed to limit global warming to well below 2 °C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C. In recent years, the lower goal has gained prominence, especially after the special report on global warming of 1.5 °C from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
A temporary breach of a warming goals is known as ‘overshoot’ – and its consequences have attracted growing attention.
As scientists and policy-makers explore the actions necessary to stay within 1.5 °C warming, most optimistic scenarios foresee overshoot by mid-century, potentially lasting several decades or more.
Indeed, in April 2022 the IPCC said “it is almost inevitable that we will temporarily exceed this [1.5 °C] temperature threshold but could return to below it by the end of the century.”
https://www.overshootcommission.org/overshoot
I’m relieved to know climate overshoot is only temporary. I feel better already.
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“Will temporarily exceed 1.5C”
LOL, you can’t make this shit up.
More evidence that Varki’s MORT is correct.
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Would this qualify as an example of Korowicz’s Reflexivity Trap? Keep the messaging ‘low key’ so as not to start a panic? “We have an emergency folks but it’s only temporary and we can mitigate it.”
Good messaging on holding the meeting in Lake Como. Pass the buttered snails and Chateau du Snoot. Maybe they’ll run into George and Amal while on an excursion field trip to see the retreating shoreline of the famed Lake.
Excerpt from Treehugger.
“Like other lakes around the world, however, Como is facing an uncertain future due to climate change. Of particular concern this year has been the lake’s regressing shorelines, dropping more than three feet (or 4.6 billion gallons) from normal water levels. As CBS News correspondent Chris Livesay discovered in interviews with local geologists,
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climate-change-shrinking-italy-lake-como-glacier-melt/
The rapidly-shrinking Fellaria glacier that feeds Lake Como is the largest contributing factor to its record-low water levels.
“With global warming, there’s hardly any glacier left,” geologist Michele Comi told Livesay, noting that Fellaria has lost nearly two-thirds of its total mass since the 1880s. “The glacier when I was a baby was very big,” he added. “Now, where is the glacier?”
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Forgot to include this link to an article by Robert Hunziker.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/06/14/the-overshoot-dilemma/
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to CampbellS; thanks for those vids about Syntropic Agroforestry, that looks very interesting. wordpress seems to limit how many comments can be nested, so i can’t reply to your original comment.
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Tim Watkin’s writing can be hit and miss. Today he’s very strong with some deep and fresh insights into the energy/inflation story. It’s also a nice refresher on recent economic history which my brain so easily forgets now.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2022/06/17/literal-insanity/
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thought you’d find this thought-provoking, Rob and friends:
https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/p/rational-liars/comments
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Thanks. Dr. John agrees with me that covid was cover for bailing out the economy, but takes it a step further and thinks covid is also a plan to reduce the population which I don’t agree with.
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Nice eulogy for Gail Zawacki by James Galasyn.
https://desdemonadespair.net/2022/06/the-diva-of-doom-remembering-the-late-great-gail-zawacki-in-the-end-what-matters-more-than-time/
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Thank you for sharing. I didn’t know she had passed. I really loved her blog and the few interviews she did
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We also discussed Gail’s death above.
https://un-denial.com/2022/06/03/what-are-our-leaders-doing/comment-page-1/#comment-63499
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Great photo. I’m sure the Heartland Institute troglodytes were thrilled when she showed up. Bunch of good old red-blooded American retrograde ignoramuses… As the late great Joe Bageant said, “the world’s aristocrats do what they have always done: surf the crest of power and wealth with their dicks pointed into the sunset of their civilization and their heads up their asses.” (from his 2008 essay The Audacity of Depression)
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Continuing on the themes of 1) slimy things under every covid rock, and 2) every covid decision being the opposite of correct, rather than randomly wrong, Dr. Yeadon, who used to work for Pfizer, argues that using the spike protein was exactly the wrong way to design a covid vaccine.
El gato malo then speculates on why all 4 vaccine manufacturers made exactly the same wrong decision.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/stunning-interview-with-michael-yeadon
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Kunstler interviewed Mattias Desmet today on his mass formation theory that attempts to explain the covid insanity.
It’s the first time I’ve heard Desmet speak at length and in detail. I was not that impressed, perhaps because his psychologist’s brain is incompatible with my engineer’s brain. I have a feeling he may have been saying something important but it was obscured by way too many words that danced around the core idea.
I think maybe what he’s saying is that human behavior is not governed by facts and data, and we need some god guided purpose, with of course some denial of death, to stay sane.
If we lack this spirituality anchor then everything gets fucked up and we end up with a covid fiasco (my observations) in which:
– our global health organizations failed us
– our experts failed us
– our political leaders failed us
– our political opposition failed us
– our government agencies failed us
– our business leaders failed us
– our pharma failed us
– our hospitals failed us
– our doctors failed us
– our universities failed us
– our intellectual elite failed us
– our cultural elite failed us
– our news journalists failed us
– our social media failed us
– our next door neighbors failed us
– our friends and family failed us
Basically everyone went crazy and we still haven’t recovered. The magnitude of our error is breathtaking.
I’m wondering if someone with a different brain than me can listen to the interview and then distill the essence of what Desmet’s trying to say. I’ve got a feeling I misunderstood him.
https://kunstler.com/podcast/kunstlercast-359-a-conversation-with-mattias-desmet-mass-formation-and-the-totalitarian-mind/
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Hi Rob, thanks for this fascinating podcast which I appreciated as much as the others to understand the bigger picture of what has happened to our human existence especially in light of Covid. I think Mattias adds the third leg to the stool, and ultimately the most grounding in my opinion, because he attempts to explain the psychology behind the reactions of every player in this story including the masses. Seeing as we live our day to day lives in the human world of behaviours and interactions, and whilst the science and governing legs provide the material framework, understanding the behaviour drivers will give us the most clues to answer the whys which cannot be explained rationally. Mattias concludes, our world cannot be understood completely through a rational and logical lens, though we have tried to compress our materialistic and mechanistic views into the only focal point, because ultimately that is too limiting and unsatisfying for a species that developed with a capacity for seeing, thinking, and feeling beyond our sensory inputs.
Far be it from me to try to attempt what you do so skilfully, that is outline the salient points in any discussion. I am afraid my ramblings have also caused you enough disconcertment; it is a wonder that I am able to communicate as much as I believe I have! I think part of the reason you may have lost the thread of the Kunstler podcast is that it wasn’t a clearly directed interview as the others, and also it is always more effective, at least for me, if I can see the face and gestures of the speakers, especially when dealing with the subject of behaviour. I found this excellent similar but more guided interview by Aubrey Marcus if you want another crack at it Desmet’s message, the beauty of this link is it has a transcript which makes the 1hr 22min interview very straightforward digesting, and perhaps that format makes it easier for you to collate his ideas.
https://covidvaccinesideeffects.com/mattias-desmet-on-mass-formation-psychosis/
In my opinion and experience, the Mass Formation Psychosis theory covers all the bases as an adjunct to everything else we have been discussing on why people have acted so. Moreover, historically it has been a pre-requisite condition for the formation of totalitarian states which seems to be the goal. If everything is a grand experiment on multiple levels to try to achieve the aim of stable collapse, then it stands to reason that encouraging or engineering a scenario in which something akin to Mass Formation is more likely to arise, is also a premeditated plan.
There has been enough behaviour science experimentation on humans to have a good inkling on how the masses would react to such an up-ending of their reality. The lockdowns caused further sense of isolation and disconnect, the threat to livelihood as a result engendered extreme stress, not to mention the constant fear for getting severely ill or dying, and most sinister in my view, the pitting of one group against another, which was until this Covid vaccination divide an equal member of community. That had the most far-reaching psychological effect because it gave those majority who followed the narrative an anchoring reason to scapegoat all their discontent (or much of it) on a shunned minority, furthering the thrall of being part of the dominant, privileged, and protected group. The actual neurochemistry of the brain changes and it becomes an addictive condition that allows/compels one to wilfully enact behaviours otherwise illogical, reckless, or cruel if that means keeping that status. This tendency is wired in our social DNA, which predicts our survival as much as our physical. It is a phenomenon akin to denial on drugs, if I may bastardise it so. This has been played out even more specifically in all the sectors you have tagged as having failed us, but in understanding Desmet’s reiteration of the Mass Formation Theory, it is the great majority of us who have failed one another.
I interpret his intimation that the antidote to this predilection lies in the returning to wholeness through once again embracing mysteries of being which have been obliterated by the materialistic and mechanistic reductionist world view of the technologically dominant Western culture. A sense of self-worth, meaning, and purpose can once again be centred on and directed by the individual as a part of the whole rather than the whole dictating one’s existence and usefulness. Our minds have always been the mediator between that which we can process and control by our physical senses, and that which we yearn to express through art, music, and poetry. We are an upright creature with feet at once firmly grounded on the earth, and arms reaching up to the heavens where we cannot yet be. Our propensity for unrest and anxiety stems from this perpetual disconnect, the bittersweet birthright of becoming human, being. I believe Nate Hagen’s Great Simplification ideal is the best goal forward to achieve balance and reconnecting to nature will be the primary source of solace and sustenance. Namaste everyone.
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Excellent, thanks Gaia.
So isolation, disconnect, and threat, stoked by an entity wanting a totalitarian state, are the cause of our insanity, and god is the path back to sanity? As an atheist, I find that depressing, but I’m not surprised given the history of our species. I wish an understanding of the chemiosmotic proton pump/ATP synthase and the eukaryotic cell was sufficient to add awe to the lives of citizens.
Who is the entity wanting a totalitarian state? Is it, as Malone suggests, a bureaucracy aware of imminent collapse collaborating with powerful corporations, and bypassing our political leaders? Or is the entity actually frightened citizens?
I’m going to listen to the other interview with Desmet you found.
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My compliments, excellent analysis Gaia. Do you write copy for a living? Because if you don’t, you should. You know how to tell a story.
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I am glad that I could help in the unravelling of the Mass Formation Tangle in this space! You all know what I do for a living, grow trees and hope I can get a bit older along with them whilst taking care of my little family and community. That’s enough for now. You’ve already heard more than enough about my previous lives!
I think as Malone and perhaps many of you here that there is an over-arching confederacy (I picked a synonym of cabal) that is driving the machinations of our geopolitical and economic world, and has been for some long time to infiltrate insidiously into all arenas of power. It seems most logical to accept this because it explains best what is happening and gives feasibility to how it could have happened. The immediate motivation driving the current decisions would be the imminent total societal breakdown due to unmitigated economic collapse. Energy overshoot, population, climate change, food insecurity, war, and pandemic, as critical and intertwined as they are, are secondary concerns but all can be used to further the intended outcome, that is to create a milieu that will bring about the totalitarian new world order in the most smooth transition.
Mass Formation is critical to changing the mindset of the masses to accept this complete re-write of their previous programming, a total re-boot of both the system and human minds. If done successfully, the ushering of the new order will seem like a natural progression of what needs be so to address all the above crisis situations, to keep the total organism of the biosphere and the human presence upon it in the best possible homeostasis remaining to us. The masses will be ripe for a “saviour” government which will promise “salvation” and succumb willingly to all requirements for inclusion in the group just for survival. There is no other method for mass control more effective than this total group hypnosis, it will be as if the masses didn’t know what happened to them when they unconsciously re-align themselves to the new paradigm or programming. The fact is both the cabal and the masses to be controlled are needed to bring this about. In a way, neither side has a reason to exist without the other, both have become each others’ endpoints. One is here to explore pure Power and humanity is the object of their control, and we have been unwittingly corralled into contract with our ultimate overseers for centuries, culminating now with every aspect of our lives dependent upon their designs. We cannot live with them, nor they have purpose without us.
Well, that just poured out but this has been on my radar for a long time, only now I have been given an opportunity and forum in which to share, and you can’t imagine what that means to me. So much so that Mandrake, I think you can say I am following this space and contributing as I can for a living now!
Husband arrives tomorrow so I might make myself more scarce for a little while. But there’s always enough time in the day (or wee hours in the night) to lob onto this space, my brain’s been re-wired to require it, it’s the best addiction and I won’t deny it!
Go well, everyone.
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Watch out for that dopamine fix GG. Can’t stop! Won’t stop! I think that was the name for the App of the Day on the App Store last week right behind Retro Revival:Crash Bandicoot: On the Run!
Live long and prosper.
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But Rob, that wonder and reverence for the proton pump is akin to seeing and knowing god! I am an atheist, too, but that doesn’t preclude the feeling of utter awe, humility, and gratitude for life as a conscious physical entity able to seek for meaning in this universe as an infinitesimal yet discrete part of the whole . You can call it spirituality but to me that’s just another finger pointing at the moon, part of our penchant to name and own, whilst the universe just is. So, I am and that is all. And that goes for all of it!
There is a black hole of difference between organised religion and what cannot be put into words, but understanding why and how religion was created by the human social and psychological organism is very apposite to understanding how this Mass Formation process evolved.
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You’re right Gaia. The interview you found with Desmet is much clearer than the Kunstler interview.
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I too wasn’t impressed, Rob. It was difficult working out what he thought of the world other than it seemed possessed by Mass Formations. He seemed to think universities produce lies, hospitals produce sick people and all of the institutions we built ended up doing the opposite of what was intended. However, I didn’t detect an alternative. Desmet appeared to suggest rational thinking is impossible (which is probably true) but we should somehow connect with “eternal ethical principles”, though he didn’t seem to think ethics is a human invented term and it varies person to person; instead, there must be a hard-wired ethics in nature that we should connect with.
He gave an example of scientific research being found to have been riddled with mistakes – this being found by … scientific research in 2008. To his credit, he didn’t seem to entirely agree with Kunstler’s take on things and on how COVID-19 was handled although he did seem to think that the disease was “dramatically overrated” without explaining why. He also seemed to invent statistics (95% of covid deaths were multi-faceted and could have been counted a different, but unspecified, way even though he seemed to be against measuring anything) and anecdotes (someone who goes out and gets vaccinated despite their mother dying immediately after a jab).
Overall, Desmet seemed to be rationalising an attack on rationality. Interestingly, though, the idea of Mass Formation could be applied equally to the official narrative of COVID and to the contrarian community. The idea of being blind to alternative narratives and perhaps even violent towards outsiders. This is the problem, those who believe one thing can easily refuse to look at alternative beliefs, as it were. At least Desmet admitted that he could be wrong.
An odd finish on a JHK podcast: Desmet thinks the next few years will be “difficult”. Really? And he has an optimistic streak, thinking there is actually a path through it all, if we stick to our ethical principles.
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Hi Rob, Nate Hagens definitely understands energy but I see he’s on your list of polymaths that don’t understand denial, damn it. Good luck getting this message through to anyone.
I’ve been out fishing a lot this spring in both MA/ME and haven’t had to use bug dope even once! The fly fisherman I talk to notice and confirm it but don’t connect the dots, meh.
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Nate hopes to to interview Dr. Ajit Varki on his Mind Over Reality Transition (MORT) theory soon because although Nate doesn’t currently think the theory is correct, his mind is open to being changed. Nate has already read Varki’s book, but not his subsequent and much more persuasive paper which I recently sent to Nate.
Click to access B200.pdf
I agree the disappearance of bugs is a big red light flashing on the dashboard. As are sick trees everywhere. As is the very strange weather we’ve had over the last year.
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With regard to MORT, has Nate told you what part of the theory he has a problem with?
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No but I suspect Nate thinks the research he’s done into the dozens of behaviors that contribute to overshoot are a sufficient explanation. As happened with Jan Hanson, I have a strong suspicion that Nate does not understand Varki’s MORT.
https://un-denial.com/2018/03/26/by-jay-hanson-reality-report-interview-november-3-2008/
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Zum might zay zee haz an eerotic obzezzion viz MORT. Vee have various treatmentz….
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That obsession comes from finding a theory that answers some of the biggest questions:
– why only one species with a brain capable of having this conversation?
– why only that species believes in gods?
– why that species exploded in a short period and caused the extinction of all competitors?
– why that species can fly to the moon but not see its own overshoot?
– why have we not detected other similarly intelligent species in the universe?
– why is it impossible for most people to see the significance of MORT?
More whys here:
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A partial answer to some of your and other’s burning questions that of course you already know:
We evolved to become a tribal, bi-pedal species with opposing thumbs and a larynx that could evoke a wide array of sounds.
Basically, once the monkey learned to walk, talk, make tools, live communally, it grabbed what it wanted from others at first by force and later also through the power of words and social status. This created religion, beginning as a rationale that could be understood by the majority for why a minority had been given the mandate for power by an all-mighty force, the same unknown but omnipotent entity that hurled thunderbolts, so that if the masses obeyed and feared their leaders, they would have the blessings and protection of the gods, too, pretty useful in a harsh, uncertain world. These original religious heads morphed into the power elites of all levels of society today. Fast forward hundreds of thousands of years, add Guns, Germs, and Steel, and then we drilled and found oil, and the rest is modern history.
Somewhere in there we developed denial and the MORT mindset which became like rocket fuel to set off our social and material evolution.
As for why no-one has contacted us from the vastness of space, well, just one look at us now and I think the answer is clear–just like it’s best to leave a mad dog alone. As beautiful as this planet is for the sight-seeing grand tour of the cosmos, its inhabitants are having a bit of a melt-down now and best steer a wide berth, maybe come back in another couple hundred of years when the coast is clear.
Seriously, the hubris of us thinking someone else somewhere in the universe would want to check us out or that we actually have invented all the tools needed to find another life planet in our miniscule corner of the galaxy–I’d imagine that any even remotely possible candidate would have put up their cloaking device long ago…
No, now I’m being really serious now, thanks Rob for putting all these questions out here as the rationale for your site. Somehow we’ve all been lured in and what a mind expanding experience it’s been. It’s the only game in town for us denial deficients to ask these fascinating whys instead of just contemplating our navels awaiting doom.
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I agree with some but not all of your points.
Don’t forget mastery of fire, which enabled cooking, which enabled more nutrition, which enabled a bigger brain, which enabled better mastery of fire, etc.
Religion as you describe it is probably correct in it’s later stages. The initial genesis for each of our many religions was our genetic denial of death, and the wildly different stories we made up to explain life after death. Denial of death is I believe the only thing our thousands of religions have in common, as we would expect if MORT is true.
MORT did not emerge “somewhere in there”. Rather MORT created us. One small tribe in Africa evolved an extended theory of mind with a tendency to deny unpleasant realities like mortality about 200,000 years ago, which created behaviorally modern humans, and that tribe out competed all other hominids, and all 8 billion of us descended from it.
The most likely reason we have not detected intelligent life in the universe is that MORT tells us high intelligence is not possible without denial, and therefore advanced technology has a very short lifetime before the species goes into overshoot and collapses. In our case, advanced technology will have existed for only about 100 years. The probability that 2 planets will have advanced technology during the same 100 year window is vanishingly small. Hence we detect silence.
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I should point out that Varki would give me shit for using the term “high intelligence”. He thinks an “extended theory of mind” is the thing MORT enabled. The engineer in me views them as the same thing since an extended theory of mind requires more CPU power.
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Thank you Rob for that refreshing refresher of MORT. I do understand the logic of it and it does provide a big picture explanation which I also agree is elegant and most satisfying. My piece was written a bit tongue in cheek, and I have to learn to bite that tongue and be more reverent to the topic!
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No offense Gaia, I think that Rob has hit all the points exactly. Throw in a little thermodynamics – MPP and that about wraps a summation of us and life up. IMHO.
AJ
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I was going to write
“we flew to the moon?”
but reconsidered since there’s the distinct possibility you might think I was serious and ban me. I’ve been reading your blog since the start of this inglorious pestilence so I think I understand and appreciate where your obsession comes from. No need for the refresher. I was cutting up – thought you’d come back with a “well you see Herr Dr. it all started with my mother..”
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That’s an excellent video by Nate on energy blindness.
Notice that Nate blames the blindness on a lack of education. That’s clearly wrong because you can try to educate your next door neighbor and he will deny we have an energy problem no matter how much time you invest.
The problem is genetic reality denial, not a lack of education.
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I think there’s a time when a critical breakthrough can occur and that can be brought on in some people by education but a more powerful driving motivation is usually needed as an additional catalyst. For a long time I, too, was energy blind more or less, somewhere on the spectrum of denial, until my questions of why and observations of what was happening in the physical world coalesced finally into overshoot awareness. That took some initial education, which led to my self-directed seeking of more education that solidified my current understanding.
The limiting factor is motivation to change viewpoints, one has to amass enough potential energy gradient to overcome the inertia to reach a new understanding and then a change in behaviour might be possible. What would that motivating force be for our Western world which is the most intractably in denial, and whose changes in behaviour would be the most instrumental in addressing overshoot? I think the penny will finally drop on the masses just at the point of too late, when their immediate survival is at stake, nothing else is powerful enough to sway them from thinking life will always go on or better, especially since our society isn’t withdrawing all the false cues (EVs, ecotours, humane carbon friendly fake meats), despite an avalanche of true markers (floods, fires, dead fish and trees). When it finally becomes bleeding obvious that not only do we not have money to buy food, but the food is not even there, then I think the populace will cotton onto to energy and population overshoot. But even so, there is still a vast chasm between understanding overshoot and doing something pro-active about it.
It is my observation that the majority of those minority who eventually wake up to overshoot blindness are solidly in the middle class, that is, having enough resources to actually do some mitigating change for themselves and their families, which is a very important corollary to their un-denial. Their motivation to see overshoot can be matched with a means to do something about it, giving a person a sense of power to change their situation is necessary to overcome denial. Those who are too poor, even if aware of overshoot, can’t do much to protect themselves from the maelstorm, so it behooves them to remain in denial as their entire energy focus for the day is just on survival any way. However, for the poorest billions of us, overshoot is a luxury concept of the wealthiest billions, they are well and truly suffering from overshoot’s effects and there is no denial necessary when food scarcity, climate extremes, over-crowded slums, are your daily reality. It just isn’t quite ours, yet. One the other hand, those who are extremely wealthy are also obdurately in denial because they cannot fathom a reality where their wealth has no meaning and the earth is no longer their playground. That would go completely against their grain and thus, they have precious little motivation to change their viewpoint even when confronted with facts of overshoot. At best, they are easily lulled into thinking new technology will be the answer (such as EVs which are in fact another status badge), investing in green energy stocks, and adopting other such comforting distractions which fit their worldview and lifestyle. They simply have too much to lose, and as long as the money flows, denial can be bought.
One most significant cohort in our Western population is the young adults, they have drastically reduced prospects for wealth than in past generations, but still are not in the poorest category of people with no agency. Their worldviews are still in the formative stage, and whilst they can be easily motivated by causes, their power to effect change is limited to some political clout but very little economic leverage.
Many are well versed in the general concept of overshoot, still too few are hardened to the grimmer reality that we see, but they know something bad is upon them and they are the generation that will cop the most challenges. A green revolution is theirs for the taking, if only they had control of their parents’ money. This is the cohort I believe is most likely to fall in line with the least struggle to the new world order of WEF’s envisioning, as they are groomed to be the ones carrying the flag of climate change mitigation and many will become dependent upon the state for living once the economic collapse hits. In a way, they are also in a state of irreversible denial, betting their future security on whatever dominant paradigm of the day that matches their sensibilities, pledging allegiance to a system that will provide for their survival. To be young and owning nothing but only to be happy whilst doing your part for the planet is an attractive prospect, indeed.
As it stands, we’re wedged between a rock and a hard place when it comes to increasing motivation in most humans for most things anyway, just look at how many billions (trillions?) are made in the weight loss industry. That is why it really would take something catastrophic on a scale never before experienced to shift the greater majority to changing their perspective and then behaviour. That inevitability might come far too late and then behaviours would be even more unpredictable and the whole system may irrevocably collapse. I believe the “powers that are” have decided that it is probably all for the best if they just juggle a situation to try to keep all the balls in the air and more or less force the motivational change on us. Once again, they have to resort to extreme measures which stress our sense of self-preservation in order to have measurable effect, but at least it is a calculated scheme and certain behaviour patterns are predicted and expected. That is why a knowledge of Mass Formation is critical in understanding how things are unfolding and the possible whys and hows.
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Bank runs in China.
Move along, nothing to see here.
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Kunstler has a wonderful ability to put words to an insanity that is indescribable for lesser writers. I do wish he would keep the politics out of it because it ruins his message since our insanity crosses all political parties.
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/all-this-and-world-war-too-2/
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Yeah, I too read his blog posts.
Sadly he is full on idiot when it comes to right wing politics (buys the whole Trump trope of “stolen election” due to mail in ballots). Oregon has had mail in ballots for 20 years – doesn’t seem to be a problem. Maybe some states are more corrupt? But, Kunstler a few things right (energy limits, resource overshoot, “green” propaganda, covid, MSM disinformation, rigged economy, war), but his bad is really BAD.
AJ
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I made a rare long distance drive yesterday and it cost $130 to fill my 60L tank.
I expect social unrest to spread soon. Our leaders cannot print energy. Will they respond with another pandemic scare? Or war? Or ??
https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/2022/06/20/flights-hit-as-thousands-of-striking-workers-set-to-protest-in-brussels/
h/t Michael Le Merchant
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It’s hot as Hades here. Going to be 99F tomorrow and 100F this weekend. Stuck in this infernal massive heat dome for a while yet.
Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.
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Col. Richard H. Black with a trustworthy update on the Ukraine war and what needs to be done.
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Excellent, we can all dissipate our cognitive dissonance stress and blame Russia for climate change.
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Tom Murphy, one of our few wise men, wrote a rare essay today.
https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2022/06/shedding-our-fossil-fuel-suit/
Tom here offers a new insight into a commonly discussed problem with non-fossil energy:
Here Murphy discusses Varki’s MORT without being aware that’s what he’s discussing:
Murphy ends with a big question:
I’ll answer it for him:
We end up as an intelligent rapacious social fire ape that believes in gods and denies death.
More work I’ve posted by Tom Murphy here: https://un-denial.com/?s=Tom+Murphy
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Tom was a presenter at a recent session hosted by a governing party MP at our Parliament here. His 20 minutes was excellent, clear and concise messaging.
http://wiseresponse.org.nz/2022/05/24/wr-workshop-how-to-respond-to-a-future-with-less-abundant-resources/
That FF blip graph is so powerful. Josh Farley was also good. I don’t know how many of our MPs or their representatives or policy folk attended.
There’s obviously a huge gap between Tom’s message and what our PM and other leaders are saying. We had a 0.2% drop in official GDP for the March quarter and our PM says this is a covid legacy and expects growth in the next quarter and no recession.
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Yes, Nate Hagens confirmed to me that our senior political leaders are mostly in complete denial that growth will continue. Since they are elected, how could it be otherwise?
That’s one of the reasons I think the covid plan to avoid and if necessary prepare for economic collapse was orchestrated by the central bank leaders. They for sure know growth is constrained because all they do every day is devise means to work around the end of growth.
Also, the central bank leaders are the only group with enough influence on country leaders, and have reasonable political independence, and have an existing global network of trust and teamwork between themselves to pull off the covid plan.
Note that one of their stars, Mark Carney, is a key behind the scenes architect for The Great Reset.
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Chris Martenson today talks about the certainty of economic collapse. I don’t recommended this video because he spends a lot of it painting central banks as the villain responsible for the coming pain, presumably because that sells memberships to his site.
However, if you skip ahead to about the 12 minute mark he shows how convenient covid was for central banks that had to get a repo crisis under control.
P.S. I know there are many complicated reasons for a repo crisis but in my mind I distill it all down to a breakdown in trust withing the banking system. In other words, a repo crisis is a collapse canary.
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Hey Rob, whatever happened to Marg from Tassie? She’s gone off radar. If you have her contact info you should put her in touch with our very own Earth Goddess Gaia. They could get together and have a pint at the Pub in the Paddock. It’s a bit of an attraction I hear. It has an adorable a beer drinking pig.
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Last comment from Marg was Jan 19, 2021 here:
It would be unethical for me to give Marg’s email to Gaia. If Gaia asks me to give her email to Marg I could pass it on.
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It goes without saying you should extend the most basic courtesy of asking permission. It never occurred to me you would do otherwise. Anyhow it was just a thought.
Other news. Insurance companies are canceling thousands of policies in the Gulf states right before hurricane season. Just pulling up stakes and leaving. Our agent had to scramble to find us a new policy. Watch what the insurance companies are doing on the GHW front, they are a better barometer of the state of play than are the throaty pronouncements of politicians.
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It was the insurance companies that forced citizens to accept the reality of climate change by raising rates. Am wondering if the same thing will happen with life insurance companies and covid vaccine side effects.
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Oh my goodness Rob, another fan from Tassie, it seems you have quite the following from down under land! I have arrived here after Marg but happy to be contemporary with Perran, and literally neighbour, too. If you think it would increase community, you do have my permission to give Marg my email, who knows, she might be a neighbour, too!
Here I am checking in after 4 days of un-denial withdrawal, too many new threads to unravel but I am skimming as best as I can. I had to reply to the Pig in the Paddock, though. My Chinese zodiac animal is the Pig (and today I just learned that Campbell is probably one, too, 1971 is our vintage) and I have been to Pyengana ,Tasmania, of Priscilla the beer guzzling pig fame. It’s a stunningly beautiful corner of the state, temperate rainforest surrounding verdant dales, as lush as any can be found on Gaia earth. However, I haven’t been to the Pub to pay my respects, yet, as the guests we have with us seem to prefer the dairy/cheese farmgate stops for which the region is also famous. But the those halcyon days of driving 5 hours touring are most definitely in the rear view mirror.
Today’s big news as you all know is the Roe vs Wade overturn in the land of my birth. Strange times to be sure, but one reflective thought, if it hadn’t been for the fact I was born before R vs W, I am certain that I would never have been born at all, such is blind fate.
I trust everyone is going well and holding steady. The Chinese have a certain benediction or perhaps it is a curse “May you live in interesting times”. That’s probably the understatement of the millennia! Thanks everyone for being here to support one another. Namaste.
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The covid reality is so crazy you couldn’t make it up if you tried.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/how-do-you-miss-the-most-blatant
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I’m not saying it’s not cause for concern but shouldn’t such graphs also have a “vaccine doses administered” line to gain some context?
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lol. it’s the most dangerous vaccine ever created by orders of magnitude, we know VAERS underestimes by 3 to 4 orders of magnitude, but there’s still some doubt to be found somewhere, if we shill, sorry i mean try, hard enough.
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How is that “known”? VAERS doesn’t estimate anything, it is merely a passive and open system for anyone to report an event which could conceivably be related to a vaccine, in some way.
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He means there have been studies showing that adverse events are underreported to VAERS by a factor of 3 or 4
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I’ve seen studies suggesting even worse underreporting but not in COVID times, nor categorised by severity, and we simply can’t know. Nor can we treat reports in VAERS of actual adverse events. That’s not what it is.
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If the goal of the pandemic response was something other than public health, as all evidence suggests, then we can understand why our leaders ignored cost/benefit analysis.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/first-a-trickle-then-a-flood-the
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If on the other hand you believe public health was the covid response priority for our leaders, then you have to believe they are all brain dead stupid, which seems improbable.
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Mike Judge discusses his 2006 film Idiocracy, one of my favorite films of all time.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
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Very good global economic round-up from friend Panopticon today.
Notice that pretty much all of the weaker countries are failing due to high energy costs. We lucky ones in the rich countries can expect the same soon.
https://climateandeconomy.com/2022/06/23/23rd-june-2022-todays-round-up-of-economic-news/
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It seems nicole foss is active on her blog again after being dormant for a while. https://www.foss.blog/
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Thanks for letting us know. I expect I will enjoy this series on prepping.
Nicole is active on Twitter but unfortunately spends more time on Trump than overshoot. Same thing happened with Gail Zawacki. I can understand why Trump is offensive and threatening to intelligent women but I still hate politics.
https://www.voicesforfreedom.co.nz/ready-set-prep
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I watched her first talk in this series on Finance. I thought it was a bit long and complex for the target audience. But then I’m not really a finance guy. I’ve heard past presentations from her and have got great value. Will dive into #2 on energy and see how it goes. Something in her voice makes me feel her anxiety about what’s coming has dialled up a notch. I get the same sense from Bill Rees in listening to his recent talks. Not surprising.
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Yes you can sense the tension in all the aware people.
I walked around the farm I assist today and thought about what will we do if we can’t get parts or fuel for the machines?
Our 1950ish Massey Ferguson 35 blew a head gasket a month ago. It’s taking longer than we expected for the mechanic to get parts. We use that tractor for all the mowing. Our grass is now out of control.
I put the flail mower on our BCS walk behind tractor and knocked down the worst of the hay/weed forest now going to seed. Then a fraying reverse/forward control cable broke and the BCS is also out of commission. The cable’s probably a $3 part and hopefully we’ll find one locally tomorrow, but I’m sure they come from China.
Hell of a lot of work to scythe the grass. Livestock would be good but they’d eat the vegetables without a ton of new fences.
No easy solutions. Life will be hard.
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I know that thinking well. I bought a couple of scythes but haven’t tried them out yet. We’re only 18 months here and have been largely focused on getting food in the ground. The other day I was on the roof looking at the iron roofing. It looks OK but well beyond its warranty life and I suddenly thought I’d better get roof paint and / or replacement iron on the prep list because a timber frame house without a weather proof roof is toast in a short time.
We’re working with our kids to design small cottages made from materials off the land as much as possible. I’ve been looking at roofing methods pre FF and what plants may be useful if we wanted to go the thatching route.
My father-in-law has a huge hand tool collection I’m very grateful he’s slowly offloading to us and every time I go to the hardware store I buy hacksaw blades 😃.
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Bought a scythe a few years ago. I use it occasionally when I have deep grass/weeds on relatively flat ground. It is real hard labor (for a 69 year old) (Not like digging a ditch with a shovel). I appreciate that our ancestors had to do it for hours straight and days at a time. I also appreciate how it feels good to do it and see that work.
AJ
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AJ you’re an inspiration. I’m 51 so I’m going to put a scythe together and give it a go. Think I should hone my technique now so it’s easier in a decade when replacement parts and batteries for my DeWalt line trimmer are no longer available. Might get a cow too.
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Oddly, apart from ground that has a lot of thick tufts of grass, I don’t find scything strenuous (I’m 68) but I say “oddly” because I really work up a sweat with it even though it doesn’t tire me. The key, I think, is to get that blade really sharp and maintain it well. I’m reasonable at peening the blade but I don’t do it often enough. The scythings make much better mulch than a machine.
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Hi AJ – upon reading your comment about the back breaking work of our farming ancestors, I thought you might enjoy the book “Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village” by R. Blythe. It tells the story of forty-nine men and women, from a blacksmith and a bell ringer to the local vet and a gravedigger. Each chapter is an evocative stream of consciousness narrative of life in the rural country of Suffolk.
I read the book some years back but remember stories about how hard farming was before mechanization. There were certain times of the year when young children were needed to be out in the fields helping with the crop. Teachers had problems with truancy as a result. Whole families living on nothing but apples, potatoes and bread. Children going without shoes. Poverty was a fact of life.
Excerp
“ERNIE BOWERS, 55, Thatcher: I get up at half past five of a morning. I work many hours. I get tired, but I will be all right, I suppose. There are all these great boys in the house–they keep you lively. But you can’t get into a conversation with a young person as you could years ago. They just haven’t got the interest. They don’t want our kind of talk. They’re all strangers–all strangers.
You don’t make much money if you work with your hands. You can’t make the turnover. But I have no regrets working so slowly. I began in a world without time.”
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I found and downloaded Akenfield. Looks very good. Thanks for the tip.
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Thanks, I put it on my list to read.
AJ
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Just finished Nicole’s finance talk. Pretty much what she was saying 10 years ago, except:
1) she thinks the collapse is underway now
2) she seems to have gone dark and believes our leaders are evil
Sounds like her targeted New Zealand audience may be new to all this and was shocked by her talk.
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In her energy episode Nicole says the Ukraine war is a resource war. She claims Russia’s objective was to take Ukraine’s oil producing and best agriculture land. I don’t buy it.
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Good summary. The VFF crowd came together around vaccinations and mandates and I think concerns over the UN Agenda 21 / WEF and the Great Reset (probably others too). Actually good to see them exploring overshoot etc.
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I finished today Nick Lane’s new book Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58999183-transformer
It was good but not excellent like Lane’s last two books.
The focus was on how respiration works and why it is more important than DNA. Basically, energy drives everything and dominates information.
There’s lots of detail in the book, too much for my taste, and not enough stepping back to explain the profundity of the detail. Lane does get across, once again, how amazingly complex life is. There’s something like a billion chemical reactions per second taking place in each of of 30 trillion cells!
Also interesting was that many of our diseases, like cancer, are caused more by respiration problems than genetic problems.
What does Lane say is the best thing we can do to have long healthy lives? You’d never guess. Eat a modest quantity of healthy food and stay active. 🙂 But be aware, there’s a large element of chance in health.
I like the unity he brings to our overshoot story. Energy is everything, in life, in our economy, and in our universe.
I’ll probably read the book again. I’m sure I missed some content. You really have to concentrate with this book.
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Interesting recent paper by Tim Garrett, et al. https://esd.copernicus.org/articles/13/1021/2022/
Some impenetrable (for me) technical equations but the gist seems to be that even steady state economics can’t save us from requiring more and more energy resources and the consequent environmental destruction.
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Thanks. in the past Garrett has argued that energy flow is proportional to accumulated wealth so if wealth goes up, energy must go up. That made perfect sense to me.
He seems to be going a step further in this paper arguing that if we stop GDP growth energy growth must still accelerate. I do not understand this. If GDP is at a constant level that balances capital operation and depreciation, it seems energy should remain constant.
I sent Garrett a question on Twitter asking him to explain.
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Still don’t understand. I may read his paper again if I find time.
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Yes. This concept took me a great deal of time to come to grips with but I’m not sure I really did. I think the key bit is that accumulated wealth has associated infrastructure and capital that needs to be maintained. Even a constant real GDP will accumulate that capital and infrastructure that needs to be maintained (and operated) and so require increasing energy. Real depreciation is covered in the paper (depreciation in financial records does mean that the thing being depreciated is less useful or less used). Given the relationship between accumulated wealth and energy use is much stronger than any relationship between GDP and energy use, it seems likely that energy use will accelerate, or at least grow so long as accumulated wealth is being added to. So even what seems like a crashing economy may still require increasing energy use. Maybe this is what collapse is – if energy use can’t increase, accumulated wealth must decrease – i.e. a lot of stuff must be destroyed or discarded.
One of the reviews of the paper also had trouble with this concept and it did get a much broader response than Tim tends to give on Twitter to these questions.
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Thanks. I definitely get that our system will crash without growth because of debt, and you probably can’t have advanced technology without credit, therefore it’s grow or crash and steady state is not possible.
But as you explained, he seems to be saying something different. When someone is unable to explain an idea with a single sentence it makes me suspect they don’t really understand it. Twice he referred me back to the paper rather than providing a simple answer.
It took me years to be able to explain Varki’s MORT theory with a single sentence and not have to struggle with every word.
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Everything is in a state of entropy. Age changes are characterized by increasing entropy, which results in the random loss of molecular fidelity, and accumulates to slowly overwhelm maintenance systems. Both biological systems and inanimate objects incur change over time.
With regard to steady state, Norman Pagett writes, “A steady state cannot exist in nature, no matter how much we might want it to. Everything is ultimately in a state of entropy, and requires energy input to offset that.”
Maybe think of the concept in a similar way to the lifetime distribution of healthcare costs. As people age, most of the per capita lifetime expenditures occur during the senior years. So just maintaining the equilibrium of the aging body, especially after age 85, requires increased resources and inputs to offset entropy. Likewise, an aging civilization with all its complexity, system failures, inertia, sclerotic bureaucracy, constant repair and interventions, rising costs, etc cannot achieve the elusive steady state.
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That makes more sense, thanks.
In summary, Garrett has revised his model so the “depreciation rate grows with time”.
Why the f**k didn’t he just say that. It takes 5 words to explain.
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Brian Czech, PhD – knows more about the possibly of steady state economics than I. He’s the president of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE).
https://steadystate.org/
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