By Alan Urban: I Don’t Wanna Live In The Modern World

This essay spoke to my heart.

I don’t often copy and paste whole essays from other blogs but today’s piece by Alan Urban is so good I thought the many millions of un-Denial lurkers would love to read it.

I don’t monetize un-Denial so hopefully Alan will not object, but if he does I will of course remove it.

https://www.collapsemusings.com/i-dont-wanna-live-in-the-modern-world/

I Don’t Wanna Live In The Modern World

Humans weren’t meant to live in a world like this.

What a weird, fucked up world we live in. Fascists are taking over the government, genocide is being normalized, old diseases are making a comeback, hundreds of species are going extinct every day, and the natural resources we rely on—such as oil and rare earth minerals—are rapidly disappearing.

As for climate change? Worse than the worst-case scenario we were warned about decades ago. Not only is it worse than the worst-case scenario, the government is pretending climate change doesn’t exist and vowing to “drill baby drill.” It’s almost as if they’re trying to destroy civilization as quickly and thoroughly as possible without resorting to nuclear war (yet another danger that is becoming more and more likely).

Sometimes when I see a terrifying headline, I hear a song in my head. It’s called American Eulogy by Green Day, and in the second half of the song, the chorus goes, “I don’t wanna live in the modern world”. It’s from a brilliant but often overlooked album called 21st Century Breakdown. I keep hearing that chorus in my head, over and over, like a mantra. I don’t wanna live in the modern world.

Humans weren’t meant to live in a world like this. We weren’t meant to sit all day, staring at computer screens, absorbing thousands of terrifying headlines and advertisements for bullshit products. We weren’t meant to spend our free time alone, desperately seeking connection through a tiny screen, getting validation from likes and emojis which can never truly replace hugs and shared laughter.

We were meant to be together—building things, solving problems, telling stories, teaching one another, and enjoying the beauty of nature. For most of our history, humans lived in tribes of a few hundred people. The average person had about 150 meaningful relationships and about 5 intimate friendships (look up Dunbar’s number).

Today, people have very few meaningful relationships and only about 3 intimate friendships—and those friendships are mostly experienced through phones. So despite the fact that there are more people on the planet than ever before, we’re more isolated than ever before. Meanwhile, the news gets scarier every day, and it seems impossible to escape it. The stress and loneliness are literally killing us—and killing me.

About a year ago, I abruptly stopped writing. I know this disappointed some people who really like my work, but I just had a to take a break. Why?

For the first four decades of my life, I was blissfully ignorant. I knew the world was a fucked up place, but I still expected civilization to continue advancing and improving for a few more centuries. I was excited about all the amazing technologies and scientific breakthroughs I would witness in the 21st century.

Then, about 4 years ago, I realized that civilization doesn’t have a few centuries left. It doesn’t even have a few decades left. In all likelihood, everyone I care about will die in the next 10-20 years, whether from disease, murder, starvation, nuclear war, or some climate disaster.

I wanted to warn people, but I knew they would think I was crazy if I didn’t do it carefully. So, I started blogging about it. I documented all the horrible things happening in the world and explained why they were happening. Eventually, I sent a link to my blog to a few friends and family members. One family member really liked it. As for everyone else… Nothing.

I waited a few days, then I reached out and asked if they had read any of my articles. Most of them had, and to my surprise, a few of them thought I was right about the modern world coming to an end. Even so, they didn’t have much to say. As one close friend told me, “There’s nothing we can do, so why even talk about it?”

After that, I felt like I was living in The Twilight Zone. Why weren’t they freaking out as much as I was? How could they just go on living their lives and pretending everything was okay? Why weren’t we selling our homes, pooling our resources, and building an off-grid community somewhere up north? Wouldn’t that be the rational thing to do?

I suggested this to a few of them, but the main excuse I heard was that it’s too difficult. In order to move up north, they’d have to leave everything behind and completely upend their lives, and they simply aren’t willing to do that. Never mind that their lives will soon be upended by the collapse of civilization. Doesn’t matter. It’s much easier to just bury their heads in the sand.

They are slaves to the modern world, and so am I. If it weren’t for my kids, I’d probably find and join some off-grid community. As it is, I have two boys—ages 9 and 12—and their mother won’t let me take them to some commune. It seems I have no choice but to keep working a regular job and preparing for the future as well as I can.

Maybe this is cope, but I wonder how much extra time we’d get by living off grid somewhere. A few years? Maybe a few months? After all, it’s almost impossible to be completely self-sufficient, and even if a group of people did become self-sufficient, how long before a wildfire burns down their home? How long before a weather disaster destroys their crops? How long before they’re invaded by marauders from the cities?

So here I am, living in a single family home and contributing to the climate crisis with my computer and my furnace and my car and my plastic crap and my foods that were delivered to my town on refrigerated trucks. Just glancing around my room, I can think of a dozen ways I’m contributing to climate change.

I hate that I’ve always been part of the problem, but I don’t know how to stop. This is the harsh reality of the modern world: Not only is it going to collapse into chaos and widespread suffering, by continuing to live in the modern world, we’re making the collapse that much worse.

I’m often reminded that corporations are the ones we should blame. If you don’t know, several fossil fuel companies specifically created marketing campaigns designed to shift the responsibility for climate change onto individuals. And I agree, oil companies should held accountable.

Even so, whenever I turn up my heater because it’s cold, or buy something online that I couldn’t find locally, or eat some frozen fruit that was shipped here from across the world, I feel guilty. My carbon footprint isn’t as large as a billionaire’s, but since I live in the United States, it’s still larger than the average human’s. The only way to cut my carbon footprint completely is to go live in a hut in the woods, and I’m pretty sure I’d lose custody if I did that.

Speaking of children, trying to raise them in this dystopian nightmare gets harder all the time. Whenever they talk about what they want to do when they grow up or what the world will be like when they’re adults, I wince. Of course, I don’t say anything. Not yet. I just smile and listen. They know the world is a mess, but they still don’t know just how bad it is.

How am I supposed to tell them that it’s extremely unlikely they’ll make it to my age? Maybe not even half my age?

So why did I take a break from writing? Because I was tired of feeling sad. At first, reading everything I could about overshoot and collapse was fascinating. But over time, the reality of collapse began to sink in, and I started imagining all the awful things that could happen to me and my family in the future.

The cherry on top was getting divorced around the same time I became collapse-aware, and later being faced with possibility that I’ll have to change careers. The end of my marriage, the end of my career, the end of the world… it’s just too much.

I’ve struggled with anxiety and addiction for decades, and if I allow too much negativity into my life, I’m either going to have a mental breakdown or I’m going to start binge-drinking again, and neither of those are an option. If I were ever going to rise to the challenge and meet my potential, it’s right now, but I can’t do that while learning every single detail of how this civilization is completely fucked.

However, I’m still going to keep blogging. But instead of articles where I go into painstaking detail about how bad things are (such as my article, The World Has Already Ended), I’m going to write articles more like this one, where I simply share my thoughts on life in the age of collapse. I’m hoping it will be therapeutic for me and anyone who reads it.

That’s all for now. I don’t know how to end this one, so here are some lyrics from American Eulogy by Green Day:

“Well, I wanna take a ride to the great divide
Beyond the “up-to-date” and the neo-gentrified
The high-definition for the low resident
Where the value of your mind is not held in contempt
I can hear the sound of a beatin’ heart
That bleeds beyond a system that is fallin’ apart
With money to burn on a minimum wage
Well, I don’t give a shit about the modern age, yeah
I don’t wanna live in the modern world
I don’t wanna live in the modern world
I don’t wanna live in the modern world
I don’t wanna live in the modern world.”

86 thoughts on “By Alan Urban: I Don’t Wanna Live In The Modern World”

  1. As I learn more, I revise my theory of what happened and why with covid. Here is my latest understanding:

    A US government bioweapon program, illegally conducted in China to bypass US laws, leaked (or seeded) an engineered virus, and the bioweapon countermeasure based on a known to be unsafe mRNA transfection technology was rushed into production under emergency order of the US military, using freshly passed US laws that permitted bypassing of safety testing, effectiveness testing, informed consent, and liability for harms, and my Canadian government signed on to this US bioweapon response plan, telling Canadian citizens that the mild disease was deadly, blocked us from using safe and effective treatments, while coercing and assuring the mRNA transfections were safe and effective, even for pregnant women and children that were never tested, and when data showed it was very unsafe with almost zero benefits, they ignored and hid the data, and told everyone to get boosted. Four years later, they continue to recommend mRNA transfections, and deny the consequences of their actions which include increased rates of sickness due to damaged immune systems, increased all-cause mortality from turbo cancers, heart disease, clots, etc., and a proliferation of covid mutations that increase the probability of a deadly re-emergence.

    That’s about as bad as it gets.

    The people responsible must be prosecuted and put in prison for murder.

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  2. Great to see Alan Urban come out of retirement. His timing coincides perfectly with a big life change I just had.

    I finally broke out of Shawshank. Quit my job. Been waiting to see if there was going to be a severance package offered for the work from home people who aren’t coming back to the office. Found out yesterday that that pipedream is a big fat no. Gave my resignation letter this morning. I’m 100% convinced that I’ll never have a corporate gig the rest of my life. And it feels spectacular!

    I actually have genuine faith that full collapse of civilization will have happened well before 2030. (Gaia’s correct about this stuff being a religion😊). My biggest fear (much scarier than cannibalism) is that I’ll still be working when SHTF and I will have never gotten to enjoy the good life of retirement.

    And I know it could backfire big time, but that’s ok. I always have the exit strategy to fall back on if collapse is delayed and I end up flat broke. I really don’t want to be around by 2030 anyway. Especially as everything gets worse. Empire Babies like me will not be able to handle the enshittification madness… although getting to witness the full chaos of collapse and shouting from the rooftop “I told you so”, is a big motivator to stay in the game.

    Time to enjoy my retirement. I’m still too giddy to write anything good. In honor of this beautiful day, I’ll let Eddie Vedder do the talking for me. (hey corporate society; you’re a crazy breed, I hope you’re not lonely without me)

    ps. Dave Pollard’s newest article has a good line here that totally resonates with me (at least I haven’t spent most of my life on it). The Double Bind of Collapse | how to save the world

    I’ve spent most of my life trying to make sense of how the world really works, and now I’ve kind of worked it out, it would seem that that knowledge is utterly useless. It’s like I’ve been told a cosmic joke, but without the punch line.

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    1. Sincere best wishes for the next phase of your life. I hope it brings some happiness.

      I love the Pollard quote and added it to the sidebar quotes.

      Pollard’s whole essay is really good:

      There are some I think who recognize the first bind, depicted above: That massively complex systems are extremely resistant to change, thanks to reinforcing feedback loops, the Jevons Paradox, and their interconnectivity with other massively complex systems. No concerted effort by even the smartest group of humans can significantly change the trajectory that the 100 billion humans who have lived on Earth have set in motion.

      And there are a smaller number who recognize the second bind, depicted below: That we humans have no ‘agency’ (free will), and that our behaviour is entirely the result of our prior biological and cultural conditioning, given the circumstances of the moment:

      There are very few of us, from what I can fathom, who recognize both binds, that together create a dilemma of utter powerlessness, and a predicament that has no ‘solutions’.

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      1. Both Alan Urban and Dave Pollard’s pieces really resonated with me. I am surrounded by family (wife & kids) that deny any overshoot/collapse scenarios as figments of my senile brain. It it very difficult to deal with. I have some solace in knowing that their denial genes are working well and they really have no Free Will in the matter.

        I used to be equivocal about the arguments surrounding Free Will. I just finished reading Robert Sapolsky’s “Determined”. Almost all of the first half of the book I disliked. He tried to explain and then counter all of the philosophical arguments for and against Free Will. I generally like philosophy but found it most tedious. The second half of the book was much more enlightening in that he went into the biological/neurological/chemical/you name it, evidence for us lacking free will and then followed it up with all the cultural/sociological evidence. It was a good tour de force.

        He made an excellent point in that evolution has crafted us to hate cheaters/social wrongdoers and want their punishment (and so believe in Free Will). That causes us a quandary in that rationally deterministic science says we have no Free Will (biology/neurology). When it comes to “crime” he proposes that we separate wrongdoers from us for the good of society but do not punish them in that they are no more responsible for their actions than we are – as we all lack Free Will. (he proposes a Scandinavian system of Justice) As a lawyer this argument would have in the past never made it with me as the law is all about your Free Will and punishment/retribution for violators. I now believe that is misguided.

        As much as I feel retribution (for the likes of Fauci) is right, I now believe he is just like us and has no Free Will – we are a determined. “What the science in this book ultimately teaches is that there is no meaning. There is no answer to “Why?” beyond “This happened because of what came just before, which happened because of what came just before that.” There is nothing but an empty, indifferent universe in which, occasionally, atoms come together temporarily to form things we each call Me.”

        I did dislike that Sapolsky had a few words of dislike for Trump and in support of the Covid/vax insanity, BUT he is the product of Stanford/The Bay Area/California syndrome.

        The book provided me with some equanimity in the face of my reality and the collapse unfolding before us.

        AJ

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        1. Thanks for the book review. I’ve read many of Sapolsky’s books but quit Determined shortly after starting because I hate philosophy. Good to know the second half is better. I’ll try it again starting in the middle.

          I guess we could accept Fauci and friends had no free will and exile them to Greenland. On the other hand, the pleasure of an ice cream cone is real and I will get a lot of pleasure seeing Fauci hanging from a public gallows with his children watching. Fauci killed more than twice as many innocent citizens as Hitler killed. He needs to burn. If for no other reason than to put the fear of god in his bioweapons colleagues.

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        2. surrounded by family that deny any overshoot/collapse scenarios as figments of my senile brain.

          Good post AJ. That quote is relatable to most of us here. Sucks being the smartest one in the room. It doesn’t just suck, it’s a fucking curse. My mom and brother are ready to put me in a straight jacket and send me off to Bellevue because of my “senile brain”. 

          That’s why I’m so jealous of Campbell & Nikki. Not sure who else here has an aware partner… maybe Hideaway, Gaia, and Monk.

          I’m a simple man. Just want to be able to talk shit about humans with the person I love.😊

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      2. Is there an aspect of consciousness called ‘will’ or ‘free-will’? I do believe so based on some evidence. The most basic evidence is that neuroplasticity is a thing: viz we can and do grow new neurons and synapses all the time, in response to stimuli including our own thoughts. Which means we can change the way and content of our thought and therefore action. Norman Doidge expresses this more fully in The Brain’ Way of Healing , pg 169ff. and many others, esp about the work of Moshe Feldenkreis.

        More escoteric evidence is in the study of lucid dreaming, as described by Robert Waggoner, Ed Kellogg, Steven LaBerge and others. The process of being aware of and participant in a dream while dreaming makes clear that a human is not an automaton or a random biological event. Best single source on this is Waggoner’s Lucid Dreaming, Plain and Simple.

        This doesn’t detract from the reality, Rob, that we are failing as a species to make a positive contribution to the continuity of Life on Earth. But we have had the choice and didn’t realize it.

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    2. Good news Chris. All options are available to you now. Look forward to hearing about your next moves.

      Great tune from Eddie. Never heard that one before and liked it. Onto my favourites playlist it goes. Cheers. 🍻🙏

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      1. Actually I see that song is from the Into the Wild soundtrack. Have you seen that movie? Very good despite the tragedy of his story.

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    3. Hey little brother,

      Congratulations on your big decision, that took a lot of guts and heart to declare to the wider world that only values you as an automaton cog in the wheel that this is not what and who you are, and never was. But how will you live, what will you do for money, what about your future–all these clamorings will only serve to steel your resolve to find your own way, after all, only you can test out the experiment called Your Life. All the best to you– it’s gonna be cool to see what the universe conspires now that you’ve firmly closed one and opened another door. You have the blessings of everyone here, for most of us have done something similar at some point and the best thing was just having someone seeing and accepting you, no judgment, just beholding.

      This song almost immediately came to mind to express my solidarity with you on this momentous occasion–Send Me On My Way by Rusted Root. Swear to our god, I just checked out the video first time and it’s even more appropriate than I could imagine, what do you think? I think the universe is trying to say something. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGMabBGydC0 Imagine me doing a happy little dance in your honour.

      Meet you here at Rob’s corner soon.

      Namaste, friend.

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      1. Thanks big sis… as well as everyone else for the kind words and support. I really appreciate you guys.

        Awesome song/video from Rusted Root. Never heard of them. And isn’t that funny right there?… I can picture you yelling out “Have you been living in a cave! I’ve been jamming out to this song for thirty years”. LOL, music is so cool like that. Like how Tom Murphy the other day heard a 40-year-old classic Talking Heads song for the first time in his life. I love it.

        But ya, this is already a classic song in my book. Got it on repeat right now. Will be adding it to my library. And picturing Gaia doing her little happy dance in honor of me quitting the corporate machine… how can that not bring a smile to everyone’s face.

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    4. Chris, congratulations. Not an easy decision but, as Gaia notes, one that probably most here have made. I lived in a squat for a couple of years after making a similar decision…definitely not an easy 2 years, but equally definitely some of the most memorable I’ve experienced. I think it’s Eddie Vedder that sings “I’m a lucky man, to count on 2 hands, the ones I love”, and those years of squatting led me to double the number of people I can count…never quite know what’s round the corner.

      I quote I always liked that makes this path a little easier sometimes; even if you win the rat race, you’re still a rat.

      Simon.

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    1. This is possible good news.

      I do not understand the US political machine and was worried the legal attacks underway might slow DOGE. This article suggests they’ve plowed through the barriers and DOGE is picking up momentum with assistance from congress.

      I’m praying that every person associated with the covid crimes is brutally and publicly destroyed.

      Then Johnson delivered the coup de grâce, the single sentence revealing a ghastly Sword of Damocles dangling on a gossamer thread right above the Deep State’s masked head, and a critical puzzle piece dropped into what we perceive in the strategic brilliance of Trump’s de-Swamping order of operations. Johnson said:

      We have a $36 trillion dollar federal debt. We have got to get ahold of these things. You’re going to see it reflected in the reconciliation package that comes forward, you’re going to see it reflected in the appropriations as we go forward, and you’re going to see it in these efforts to cut waste, fraud, and abuse.And we think the final number on that is going to be substantial and a game changer in Washington.

      The clear threat was in Johnson’s final sentence. A game-changer in Washington. DOGE isn’t the weapon, it’s just the canary in the limestone mine. Now that Congress knows where the waste is —like USAID, the National Endowment for Democracy, the Department of Education, DEI spending, the Treasury, Social Security, and the rest— legislators are working up a budget bill to nuke the Deep State from orbit.

      It’s wonky, but this is very important. The fact Johnson announced a budget bill is critical. Bills related to reconciling the budget can be passed using a process called ‘budget reconciliation,’ which avoids the Senate filibuster and can be approved with a simple majority. In other words, it’s the Deep State’s worst nightmare: first, DOGE identified the bureaucratic bloat, and so now Republicans in Congress have a viable legislative path to cut the guts out of the bloated, mutant Swamp whale.

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  4. Mike Benz is the man for information on how the US has covertly influenced foreign governments since WWII.

    Beginning about a decade ago, the same tools have been applied to influencing US citizens on issues like covid and who they should vote for.

    USAID is at the center of it.

    If something’s too dirty for the CIA, they give it to USAID.

    Benz was interviewed a few days ago by Tucker Carlson and it was a crap discussion. Benz must have had a good night’s sleep for today’s 3 hour interview with Joe Rogan because it’s superb.

    Starting at about the 55 minute mark they discuss a core issue: Was covid a mistake, or was it deliberate?

    Benz has no direct evidence yet for covid being deliberate but the fact USAID was a instrumental in both creating the covid emergency by funding work at the Wuhan lab, and in covering up the lab leak and coercing mRNA transfections by censoring critics, means both explanations are plausible.

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  6. Hideaway explains why the downslope will be steeper than the upslope.

    #299: The arc of inevitability

    Dr Tim, the arc of inevitability is very, very, real in the context of modern civilization. I hope you go further down this road..

    What we know on a world wide scale is that both the ECoE is rising and also the ECoM (energy cost of materials), leaving a double edged sword for civilization past peak.

    Another aspect that has to be included is ‘efficiency gains’, as these have been a Faustian bargain, both from Jeavon’s paradox, plus hiding real world depletion and suffering from the laws of diminishing returns..

    The following shows the ‘arc’ simply…

    Imagine we have total energy of 70, call the units whatever you like, while the ECoE and ECoM are at 10 units of energy, leaving 60 for ‘all other purposes’..

    70—-10—60

    80—-15—65

    90—-20—70

    While costs are rising there is plenty of excess energy for everything else, the system is growing, even though we use twice as much energy for energy and materials..

    95—-25—70

    100—30—70

    103—35—68

    Energy use is still going up, and efficiency gains throughout the system still look like improvement but all is obviously not well.

    105—-40—65

    107—-45—62

    We are building a lot more energy devices at large overall increasing ECoE and ECoM, while efficiency gains have declined. We rely a lot more on the older easy and cheap energy while wondering why our system is underperforming despite increases in overall energy use. Then we pass peak and overall energy availability starts to decline…

    105—-50—55

    100—-55—45

    95—-60—35

    90—-65—25

    The road down is way too fast for the system to accommodate, so something breaks in the process long before we reach these last levels.

    It is definitely an ‘arc’ that is inevitable, simply because of the exhaustion of easy to get energy and materials combined with every civilizations propensity to use up all the easy to get resources first.

    The world as a whole is still on the upslope of total energy used but must be nearing the peak, which can only leave a steep slope down, much steeper that the climb up…

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    • drtimmorganon  said:Hideaway:Yes, I’ll be continuing along this road. I think it’s fascinating in itself, and adds valued to our understanding.As I see it, we can only proceed effectively on a step-by-step basis. The sequence, for me, has been one of (a) dissatisfaction with orthodox economics, (b) identifying the material as the glaring gap in that orthodoxy, (c) studying and calibrating the material (ECoE, prosperity, etc), and (d) benchmarking the monetary against the material. Only with these foundations in place did I feel able to reach a view on inevitability.

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    1. Uh-oh, I’m having a deja vu feeling of when I was brand new to un-Denial. Because this is the first comment of his in a long time where I have no idea what the hell he’s saying (with the numbers).

      Hey Hideaway (or anyone), if it’s not too much trouble, can you help me understand those numbers? If it’s too complicated and requires a novel instead of a paragraph or two… don’t worry about it. Thanks.

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      1. There are 3 numbers on each line. The first is the “total” energy produced. The second is the energy used to obtain energy and minerals (the “cost”). The third is the “net” energy available to run civilization and is equal to the total minus the cost.

        Scan your eye down the total energy column and observe that initially it grows quickly at 10 units per interval, then growth slows, eventually it peaks and then begins to decline at 5 units or half the speed it grew.

        Scan down the middle “cost ” column and observe that it grows steadily forever as we would expect a finite resource to behave.

        Now look at what the “net” column does. It grows steadily at 5 units per interval, then slows, then declines rapidly at 10 units per interval which is twice the rate it grew.

        Hideaway thinks the rapid decline will break civilization.

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        2. I should just put up numbers and let Rob explain it…

          The rapid decline in available energy will collapse civilization providing we haven’t collapsed from something else first. Energy is the last straw holding everything up.

          Everything going wrong in the world today can be traced back to a squeeze on net energy, as population is still growing, material use is still growing and complexity is still growing.

          If we go back to the late ’60’s the world looked fantastic for the future as net energy was growing in leaps as well. Even the period of 2000 – 2011 when China’s growth was accelerating total energy was also going ahead in leaps and bounds.

          Total energy production growth has slowed while the ECoE and ECoM have both continued to go up. Are we past peak net energy? I have no idea but we must be close.

          All the easy very high EROEI energy is used first, we no longer drill a simple hole 400ft deep and get a gusher, we used the easiest and are still using the second easiest oil (Saudi etc). Likewise for gas and close to everything coal.

          Sure we have lots of resources and reserves, but they all take increasing energy and materials to gather, with the materials themselves having lower grades requiring more energy to supply. To maintain growth in total energy production is probably reliant upon an exponential increase in energy used for energy and materials. Perhaps we keep going up for a decade in total energy produced while net energy starts to crash. For sure though, once total energy declines, net energy starts to crash.

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          1. I like that idea… Rob as the official Hideaway translator.😊

            Now that I understand what’s going on with those numbers, I can’t stop looking at em. Fascinating way to view it… And I don’t follow Tim Morgan but based on his reply to you, I kind of sense a vibe that you blew his mind a little bit with that comment.

            But it mainly makes me wonder how many other gloomy angles you know about that I don’t even know exist?… Actually, don’t answer that cuz it might end up scaring the shit out of me. LOL

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              1. It’s really 3 separate graphs. First graph is total energy that grows, goes to a peak then gently falls a bit.

                Second graph is just a straight line increase in the ECoE and ECoM combined. The rising cost is relentless, which is why any civilization based upon metals and minerals has to have a limited life. This energy cost can never go above total energy produced.

                Third graph of net energy for everything else, is very much a rise, then peak then sudden fall, like Bardi’s Seneca cliff.

                Excuse me if I’m a bit off today as I have an infected root canal, with high fever and I’m on antibiotics. I’m thinking of using the Ivermectin protocol, but struggling to think straight..

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                1. I’m sorry about your tooth. Don’t know if this will help but I have had a morbid fear of dentists my whole life. I needed a root canal a couple years ago and was scared because I had this horrific image in my mind of the procedure.

                  In reality it was no problem at all. Zero pain or discomfort. The only issue is the time you have to hold your mouth open which if I recall was about 90 minutes. Also costs a fortune.

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          2. Also a peak in energy will cause a steep drop-off in extraction of non-energy minerals. We only are able to use low ore grades because of the surplus energy. Even most recycling will also come to a halt, because most recycling is very energy intensive. Since a lot of agriculture is propped up by fossil fuels, what happens to agriculture when we go over the net-energy cliff?

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      1. I followed Ugo Bardi 15 years ago when he did that good work. Then something strange happened, kind of like what happened with Berman. I remember Bardi suddenly reversed his position without explanation and I stopped following him.

        Are you following Ugo Bardi today? Does he have integrity?

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        1. I don’t know. I am not following Ugo Bardi specifically.

          He seems to now be on substack, with 5 different streams of articles (1 in Italian), and writes a lot:

          I don’t have much time to read all that. But I like what I find: it’s entertaining. Ugo Bardi is a very cultivated man.

          Some posts that might entertain you:

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        2. I follow Ugo Bardi. High level thinker in my opinion. Above my level anyway. His posts often provide unique perspectives that can pry my mind out of its usual thinking. He posts on various topics but often on topics of similar interest to Un-denial. He will sometimes go deep on climate change topics and with a fresh take on issues there.

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    3. #299: The arc of inevitability

      Energy return and monetary return tend to be the same thing. Imagine you have $US10M to invest, in either a new Saudi oil well, or a solar array..

      The old Saudi wells would cost around $US10M to drill and connect up to the existing piping and refineries. A single well could easily return 10,000 bbls/d.

      How does the math work?? A $10USM spend is the equivalent of around 250,000MWh of energy at the last 10 years price for wholesale energy on a rough average.

      Likewise building a 10MW solar array would also cost around 250,000MWh of energy or around $US10M..

      Over a year the oil well produced 10,000bblsd X 365 d/yr and often delivered for decades.

      For just one year the return is 3,650,000 bbls of oil worth, at the same $US40/MWh $US248,200,000 or in energy terms 6,205,000MWh.

      How much would the 10MW solar array return at the same $40/MWh? Assuming a very sunny place at 5.5hrs/d, again it’s easy math.

      10MW X 5.5hrs X 365d = 20,075MWh or in money terms 20,075 X $40/MWh = $US803,000.

      The same spend on solar compared to the sweet spot of Saudi oil, returns just 3% of what the oil well returned or 3% of the energy for the year.

      The 20,075MWh energy return in year one for the solar has gone nowhere near returning the 250,000MWh cost of building the solar array in a world where the average wholesale price of energy has been $40/MWh. In fact it will take over 12 years to repay the total energy cost of building it, all before extra grid transmission is factored in or any backup..

      The fact we have so many “papers” with heavy boundaries showing solar and wind can return 20/1, are all nonsense as in the real world ALL energy costs must be included. We know a civilization based upon fossil fuels can exist, simply because it does while the fossil fuels are easy and cheap.

      Any energy system that is wildly profitable has a high EROEI while all those systems that make losses or require tax subsidies, grants, and mandates to go first to just exist, have very low EROEI when every aspect of energy is included.

      To my knowledge there are no wildly profitable solar arrays, not wind turbine farms, nor nuclear reactors, when in full competition with local coal and gas.

      The system obviously cannot remain on fossil fuels indefinitely, because of depletion and environmental destruction, but deluding ourselves about renewables and nuclear isn’t doing us any favors…

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      1. Brandon’s providing entertainment over there again. Thinks he’s a psychologist. 

        What is the fundamental nature of your fear? Do you even know?

        So already you can tell poor Brandon is way out of this element to be asking this to Hideaway. But here’s the good stuff (regarding Hideaways fear of solar/wind😊)

        Denial is the fear of knowing. It is understandable to a degree when it comes to the dark and frightening prospect of civilisation-destroying climate change, but far less understandable when it comes to renewable energy, the only real weapon we have at our disposal.

        LOL, there’s like 8 or 9 layers to that lunacy. My favorite is the big shift to hopium at the very end of an attempt to define denial… I might have to submit this quote to The Onion. 

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        1. LOL! It’s fascinating.

          People are super easy to brainwash. Now that I understand how western governments shape beliefs with the news media and NGOs (thanks to Mike Benz) I see it everywhere. The headline out of Europe this morning was Russia is attacking the Chernobyl sarcophagus to release radiation. What a strange thing for Russia to do on the day after the US admitted defeat in Ukraine.

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          1. I’m about 90 minutes into that Rogan/Benz interview. Ya, he’s on fire again. But I have to view it in small doses because Mike makes my head spin from all the corruption (especially the shaping of beliefs stuff)

            He’s so good that he’s actually dangerous for me… Last night he had me thinking about how maybe we really did get the worst-case scenario with how things played out, and under different circumstances, we could be living in harmony with nature right now😊… ok, maybe not that extreme, but anything different than what we have now. (Mike makes me forget about the MPP somehow)

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  7. https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/

    The growing crisis in the insurance industry may make it hard to get a mortgage in parts of the country in the coming decades, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said on Tuesday.

    “If you fast-forward 10 or 15 years, there are going to be regions of the country where you can’t get a mortgage,” he said during his semiannual testimony to Congress, noting that banks and insurance companies have been pulling out of coastal and fire-prone areas they deem too high risk.

    Despite this Donald Trump openly denies climate change and JD Vance won’t give a straight answer about whether he believes climate change is real.

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    2. https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/establishing-the-presidents-make-america-healthy-again-commission/

      ESTABLISHING THE PRESIDENT’S MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN COMMISSION

      EXECUTIVE ORDER

      February 13, 2025

      By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

      Section 1.  Purpose.  American life expectancy significantly lags behind other developed countries, with pre‑COVID-19 United States life expectancy averaging 78.8 years and comparable countries averaging 82.6 years.  This equates to 1.25 billion fewer life years for the United States population.  Six in 10 Americans have at least one chronic disease, and four in 10 have two or more chronic diseases.  An estimated one in five United States adults lives with a mental illness.

      These realities become even more painful when contrasted with nations around the globe.  Across 204 countries and territories, the United States had the highest age-standardized incidence rate of cancer in 2021, nearly double the next-highest rate.  Further, from 1990-2021, the United States experienced an 88 percent increase in cancer, the largest percentage increase of any country evaluated.  In 2021, asthma was more than twice as common in the United States than most of Europe, Asia, or Africa.  Autism spectrum disorders had the highest prevalence in high-income countries, including the United States, in 2021.  Similarly, autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis are more commonly diagnosed in high-income areas such as Europe and North America.  Overall, the global comparison data demonstrates that the health of Americans is on an alarming trajectory that requires immediate action.

      This concern applies urgently to America’s children.  In 2022, an estimated 30 million children (40.7 percent) had at least one health condition, such as allergies, asthma, or an autoimmune disease.  Autism spectrum disorder now affects 1 in 36 children in the United States — a staggering increase from rates of 1 to 4 out of 10,000 children identified with the condition during the 1980s.  Eighteen percent of late adolescents and young adults have fatty liver disease, close to 30 percent of adolescents are prediabetic, and more than 40 percent of adolescents are overweight or obese.

      These health burdens have continued to increase alongside the increased prescription of medication.  For example, in the case of Attention Deficit Disorder/Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, over 3.4 million children are now on medication for the disorder — up from 3.2 million children in 2019-2020 — and the number of children being diagnosed with the condition continues to rise.  

      This poses a dire threat to the American people and our way of life.  Seventy-seven percent of young adults do not qualify for the military based in large part on their health scores.  Ninety percent of the Nation’s $4.5 trillion in annual healthcare expenditures is for people with chronic and mental health conditions.  In short, Americans of all ages are becoming sicker, beset by illnesses that our medical system is not addressing effectively.  These trends harm us, our economy, and our security.

      To fully address the growing health crisis in America, we must re-direct our national focus, in the public and private sectors, toward understanding and drastically lowering chronic disease rates and ending childhood chronic disease.  This includes fresh thinking on nutrition, physical activity, healthy lifestyles, over-reliance on medication and treatments, the effects of new technological habits, environmental impacts, and food and drug quality and safety.  We must restore the integrity of the scientific process by protecting expert recommendations from inappropriate influence and increasing transparency regarding existing data.  We must ensure our healthcare system promotes health rather than just managing disease.

      Sec. 2.  Policy.  It shall be the policy of the Federal Government to aggressively combat the critical health challenges facing our citizens, including the rising rates of mental health disorders, obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases.  To do so, executive departments and agencies (agencies) that address health or healthcare must focus on reversing chronic disease.  Under this policy:

      (a)  all federally funded health research should empower Americans through transparency and open-source data, and should avoid or eliminate conflicts of interest that skew outcomes and perpetuate distrust;

      (b)  the National Institutes of Health and other health-related research funded by the Federal Government should prioritize gold-standard research on the root causes of why Americans are getting sick;

      (c)  agencies shall work with farmers to ensure that United States food is the healthiest, most abundant, and most affordable in the world; and

      (d)  agencies shall ensure the availability of expanded treatment options and the flexibility for health insurance coverage to provide benefits that support beneficial lifestyle changes and disease prevention.

      ….

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    3. Lament of the Vaxx-Injured

      Written by Margaret Anna Alice & read by Cody Hudson

      https://margaretannaalice.substack.com/p/lament-of-the-vaxx-injured-video

      Multi-stroke survivor–vaccine-injured Cody Hudson delivers a heartrending reading of my poem “Lament of the Vaxx-Injured,” first published at my Substack on April 11, 2024. I scored the video with “The Tension of Purpose,” the last music composition my beloved husband, Shawn Patrick Michael, exported before he died of a cardiac arrest on July 21, 2024.

      They told us it was safe.
      They told us it was effective.
      They told us everyone was doing it.
      They told us not getting it was selfish.
      They told us it was the only way
      we could study, work, shop, live.

      We listened to them.
      Why would they lie to us?
      We trusted them.
      Why would they hurt us?

      So we got it.

      And every day since
      that irrevocable,
      life-shattering decision
      has been unrelenting
      agony and exhaustion,
      apprehension and regret,
      uncertainty and dread.

      Our lives are now a continuum
      of questioning,
      of searching,
      of testing,
      of fretting.

      They tell us we’re faking it.
      They tell us we’re lying.
      They tell us we’re imagining it.
      They tell us we’re anxious.
      They tell us we’re exaggerating.
      They tell us we’re grifting.

      And once it’s undeniable—
      when the diagnostics show
      heart damage,
      blood clots,
      myocarditis,
      pericarditis,
      cardiac arrest,
      hematologic abnormalities,
      impaired immune functionality,
      shingles,
      Bell’s palsy,
      Guillain–Barré syndrome,
      autoimmune disease,
      multiple sclerosis,
      transverse myelitis,
      neuropathy,
      paralysis,
      multi-organ inflammation,
      leprosy,
      strokes,
      dementia,
      prion disease,
      cerebrovascular disease,
      brain damage,
      tinnitus,
      turbo cancer,
      DNA integration,
      deep vein thrombosis,
      post-vaccination syndrome,
      multisystem failure—
      then they tell us
      they’re baffled.
      Then they tell us they don’t
      know how to fix it.

      Every day, we research
      as if our lives depend on it,
      because they do.
      Because only we
      and our loved ones
      care enough to save us.

      For some, we’re a statistic,
      a number on a spreadsheet.

      For others, we don’t exist.
      They don’t want us to exist.

      They refuse to see us.
      They refuse to hear us.
      They refuse to feel us.
      They refuse to help us.

      Every minute, we scrape together the strength
      to endure the anguish,
      to resist the gaslighting,
      to seek out supplements,
      procedures, practices—
      anything that will offer relief,
      anything that will soften the suffering,
      anything that will delay our terminal diagnosis.

      They tell us to shut up.
      They tell us not to scare others.
      They tell us it is rare.
      They tell us it was worth it.

      And no one takes responsibility—
      not the NGOs that hocus-pocused us,
      not the corporations that poisoned us,
      not the governments that coerced us,
      not the agencies that betrayed us,
      not the institutions that mandated us,
      not the philanthropaths who targeted us,
      not the ideologues who ridiculed us,
      not the tyrants who scapegoated us,
      not the politicians who maneuvered us,
      not the enforcers who penned us,
      not the psychologists who manipulated us,
      not the propagandists who petrified us,
      not the experts who hoodwinked us,
      not the scientists who head-faked us,
      not the censors who erased us,
      not the doctors who pushed us,
      not the nurses who needled us,
      not the pharmacists who stabbed us.

      They call us anti-vaxxers.
      But we got jabbed?
      They call us conspiracy theorists.
      But we believed them?
      They call us science-deniers.
      But we trusted it?

      And now we’re on our own—
      without support,
      without compensation,
      without legal recourse.

      Some of us have lost
      our jobs,
      our insurance,
      our babies,
      our lives.

      They don’t need us anymore.
      They don’t want us anymore.

      They got what they ordered
      … and moved on.

      Each twinge of pain
      is silver in their pockets.
      Each desperate scream
      is Muzak in their waiting room.
      Each vaxxicide
      is another piece of evidence
      buried.

      So that’s why we have to live.
      That’s why we have to survive.
      That’s why we have to fight.
      That’s why we have to wage justice.

      We are living proof
      of their fraud,
      of their cruelty,
      of their tyranny.

      Chisel our truth into your hearts.
      Tattoo our stories onto your arms.
      Photograph our faces with your minds.

      Testify to our torment.
      Testify to their lies.
      Testify to their crimes.

      See us.
      Hear us.
      Feel us.
      Help us.

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      1. Damn!! I’m dead inside and this video still got me to shed a tear towards the end.

        Ya… hang those MF’ers… or better yet, a public stoning.
        Implement a recruitment outfit headed by Luigi Mangione, to round them all up…. dead or alive

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  10. Ukraine’s Defeat And The FALL OF THE WEST. Both the West and Putin are culpable for this war.

    Putin launched a war of aggression against Ukraine and Ukraine has every right to self-defense. I can’t blame countries in Central and Eastern Europe for wanting to join NATO (especially Poland, the Baltic States and most recently Finland), given their histories.

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    1. The Top comment on the above video was this

      “19,000 sanctions in force against Russia and zero sanctions for Israel, which flouts international law like no other country since the creation of the UN”

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      1. I get the feeling stellar that you are having a hard time dealing with the fact that the way you thought the world operated or should is now being spun on its head.

        I think it is time you considered that maybe your view on some things has been from an incorrect perspective and change is inevitable because the pendulum swung to far. That doesn’t mean that all that is happening now is the correct course but maybe you should just relax a little about because there is nothing you can do about it and stressing will mess you up.

        All we know for sure is that things will get harder going forward no matter the intention of our so called leaders. Personally I see the current situation as a little respite from the immense insanity that has been pushed down our throats the last decade or so. Perhaps just the eye of the storm.

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  11. https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Chinas-Coal-Power-Construction-Is-at-a-Decade-High-Despite-Renewables-Boom.html

    Despite soaring solar and wind power installations, China launched construction of as many as 94.5 gigawatts (GW) of new coal power projects in 2024, the highest level since 2015…

    China added 356 GW of wind and solar capacity in 2024 alone – 4.5 times the EU’s additions and nearly equivalent to the total installed wind and solar capacity in the U.S. by the end of the year….

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  12. Can’t remember whose blog I got this link from. Was written by someone named David Price over 30 years ago when global population was only 5.5 billion. It’s really good. I enjoy these older articles where I can tell that the author fully understands our predicament. I even recognized some Hideaway language scattered throughout. 
    Energy and Human Evolution – dieoff

    No resources are truly renewable. Only in terms of human time is an energy resource renewable or nonrenewable; and it is not even clear how human time should be measured. Wood is often considered a renewable resource, because if one tree is chopped down, another will grow in its place. But if a tree is taken off the mountainside rather than allowed to rot where it falls, nutrients that would nourish its successor are removed. If wood is continually removed, the fertility of the forest diminishes, and within a few human generations the forest will be gone.

    The notion of balance in nature is an integral part of traditional western cosmology. But science has found no such balance. According to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, energy flows from areas of greater concentration to areas of lesser concentration, and local processes run down. Living organisms may accumulate energy temporarily but in the fullness of time, entropy prevails. While the tissue of life that coats the planet Earth has been storing up energy for over three billion years, it cannot do so indefinitely. Sooner or later, energy that accumulates must be released. This is the bioenergetic context in which Homo sapiens evolved, and it accounts for both the wild growth of human population and its imminent collapse.

    Life evolves to exploit every possible niche, and as autotrophs developed better ways to capture and store the sun’s energy, heterotrophs developed better ways to steal it.

    The extent of human energy use is a consequence of the human capacity for extrasomatic adaptation. This capacity makes it possible for human beings to adjust to a wide variety of novel circumstances without having to wait many generations for evolution to change their bodies. A comparison of somatic and extrasomatic adaptation will show just how remarkable an ability this is: If longer, sharper teeth are adaptive for a predator, animals with teeth that are slightly longer and sharper than those of their fellows will have a slight reproductive advantage, so that genes for longer and sharper teeth will have a slightly greater likelihood of being passed on, and so, over the course of time, the teeth of average members of the population will come to be, little by little, longer and sharper. In contrast, a human hunter can imagine a longer, sharper arrowhead; he can fashion it with nimble hands; and if it is really more efficient than the short, blunt arrowheads that everybody else has been using, his peers will soon adopt the new invention. The chief difference between the two means of adaptation is speed: Humans can adapt, relatively speaking, in a flash.

    But the most remarkable human innovation is the use of extrasomatic energy, wherein energy is made to accomplish human ends outside the bodies of its users. And the most important source of extrasomatic energy, by far, is fire. Fire was used by Homo erectus in northern China more than 400,000 years ago, and there is sketchy evidence suggesting that it may have been used long before that.

    Within an evolutionary wink, petroleum and natural gas were also being exploited, and Homo sapiens had begun to dissipate the rich deposits of organic energy that had been accumulating since the beginning of life. If the slow accretion of these deposits in the face of universal entropy can be likened to the buildup of water behind a dam, then with the appearance of a species capable of dissipating that energy, the dam burst.

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    3. Just had some woo woo. I had read this essay again and was starting a comment here to say that it’s one of the more aware and better communicated papers I’ve seen… especially for how old it is. While typing I got an email from Megacancer for a new guest post that went up. It was this essay. ooohhh spooky. MAGA – MEGACANCER

      It’s such a great essay, I’m reproducing it in its entirety. I can’t find any fault with it. It seems like chemistry will find a way to reduce energy content of matter if at all possible. Molecular and human RNA are part of the possible. The consumption feels good to us because our nervous systems have evolved to monitor and maintain homeostasis of the dissipative structure that is the human being. And so we blissfully eliminate energy gradients that contribute to our sustenance and comfort mostly unaware that those most recently accessed fossil fuel gradients are susceptible to exhaustion within the near future.

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      2. I think what bothers me about this essay is it’s sorrowful vibe, like we’re sad to see human civilisation go. On one level, I get that, I’ll miss Bach and Mozart. On another, much more inclusive level, fuck absolutely everything about human civilisation and its callous indifference to all other forms of life, and indeed its own. The overall feeling of being alive as a human in the west is grief or insanity, as witnessed by the first line of Urban’s essay here. I do not regret its passing. I regret that we were not wiser, that we did not make better choices as we started to become aware of the costs of pesticides and corporations and profit above everything when we could still meaningfully have made those choices, but today the end of our “civilisation” would be an end to industrialised torture for millions of animals and billions of human animals…we are not happy, healthy or wise, and the passing of this will be a sigh of relief for the rest of the biosphere, and indeed most of us.

        Simon.

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        1. Hi Simon. Nice comment. Totally reminds me of this quote.

          I pity animals and I pity people because they are thrown into this life without being consulted. Maybe people are more deserving of pity because they have just enough intelligence to resist the natural cause of things. It has made them malicious and desperate. And not very loveable. And yet life could have been lived differently. There’s no impulse more reasonable than love. It makes life more bearable for the loving and the loved one. But we should’ve recognized in time that this was our only chance, our only hope for a better life. For an endless army of the dead, mankind’s only chance has vanished forever. I keep thinking about that. I can’t understand why we had to take the wrong path. I only know, it’s too late.

          https://un-denial.com/2024/01/21/by-hideaway-energy-and-electricity/comment-page-2/#comment-93769

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    5. I felt bad for not being able to give credit to the blogger who provided me this link. And now that James posted it as his featured essay, I went looking for where I got it… Turns out it was in the comments section of Xraymike’s site from someone named Random Cool Stuff…. Thanks Random!

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  13. Must watch remarkable speech by JD Vance at the Munich security conference a few hours ago.

    Don’t listen to what the corrupt news media says about it. Listen to it first hand.

    One of many noteworthy things said: The vice president of the country that controls NATO criticized the EU for cancelling the results of the Romanian election because its citizens elected a government that opposes the construction of a new NATO military base.

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    2. I suspect that most in the audience would have “shot the messenger” if they could have. This was the exact opposite of what the EU & NATO wanted to hear.

      I loved his tirade. I don’t care that he is overshoot unaware or big time religious, he is pro free speech (even if he disagrees with what is said). He is also pro democracy (small d, not that disingenuous crap that the former administration pushed).

      Of course none of this truly matters because civilization collapse is on tap and the problems that Trump may solve are not going to matter much in a short time.

      AJ

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      1. 8:40 JD Vance says he supports free speech. Yet, the administration he is a part of is trying to deport people for holding vigils for Palestinian children murdered by the IDF.

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          1. The gesture Elon made very clearly resembles a Nazi salute. Either the gesture was intentional, or he is extremely oblivious. I don’t know which one it is.

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            1. The last time you posted something about Musk’s nazi salute I replied with a clear unambiguous debunking of it.

              If you’re going to criticize Musk, say something intelligent with integrity instead of bullshit.

              Here’s an example of a legitimate criticism: Musk has a conflict of interest on cutting government waste because he benefits from EV subsidies. All EV subsidies including Tesla should be cancelled because EVs will not help, and are probably making worse, our overshoot predicament.

              On Palestinian issues, almost every US politician in both parties is morally bankrupt. We just had a genocide conducted with US weapons and full US political support. It makes me sick. You destroy your credibility by claiming this is a Trump issue. The entire US political system is evil on Israel issues.

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              1. The last time you posted something about Musk’s nazi salute I replied with a clear unambiguous debunking of it.

                I don’t know what was going through Elon Musk’s head when he made that gesture, and it is not the main point of the video.

                If you’re going to criticize Musk, say something intelligent with integrity instead of bullshit.

                I have made legitimate criticisms of him before. Elon Musk is doing everything in his power to make overshoot worse while at the same time peddling ineffective techno-fixes.
                The post about Palestine was to show that the Trump/Vance/Musk administration doesn’t really support free speech. Actions speak louder than words and there is no place where that is more true than in politics.

                You destroy your credibility by claiming this is a Trump issue.

                I never claimed it was only a Trump issue. In fact, I posted about this under Biden several times last year.

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                1. I don’t know what was going through Elon Musk’s head when he made that gesture, and it is not the main point of the video.

                  What do you mean you don’t know why? I posted the video with his full speech when he made that gesture. He was throwing his heart to the crowd in a gesture of thanks.

                  Wake up. You are being manipulated to believe what others want you to believe with a carefully edited clip.

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          2. An addition to the above comment.

            However, Elon Musk’s gesture and Owen’s response to it is not the issue I was talking about. I was talking about how the Trump administration threatening to deport pro-Palestinian activists. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/2/4/advocates-warn-trumps-threat-to-deport-pro-palestine-students-harms-all

            Vance’s administration is already threatening to deport people who disagree with its views on Palestine.

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  14. JHK on particularly good form today:

    “The histrionics of the past three weeks are only the beginning, you understand, since USAID was just a mole-hill beside the mountain range of past turpitudes yet coming into view as Mr. Trump’s generals deploy in the battle-space. Yesterday — mirabile dictu! — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was sworn-in for Health and Human Services, to oversee the empire of fraud that public health became during the rogue reign of Tony Fauci and his cohorts. The flip-side of MAHA is Make Medicine Truthful Again. Everything about health-care in America slouches in disrepute and ignominy, from the doctors hostage to their private equity taskmasters to the faked drug trials at FDA to the deliberate data mismanagement at CDC to the grant-and-kickback game at NIH and NIAID, to the hellscape of medical insurance fraud, to the revolving door between pharma and government —RFK faces one of the most onerous tasks of filth-clearing since Hercules shoveled out the Augean stables.”

    https://www.kunstler.com/p/darkness-dying

    Simon

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    1. I’m not religious but I pray for RFK Jr. every day.

      There are many unwise things our species does, and we at un-Denial understand we’re not likely to stop because of MPP and MORT, however, corrupt and dangerous healthcare is different. There is no reason whatsoever we can’t clean up healthcare before we collapse.

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  15. https://x.com/jimmy_dore/status/1890509898028290166

    Slothrop: Anyone screeching about abuse of government power right now should have to state whether or not they were on board when the state tried to compel all citizens to receive an experimental medical treatment or lose their jobs.

    Jimmy Dore: Great point!! It was AMAZING to see so many people turn into authoritarian covid nazis overnight.

    All it took was some Big Pharma propaganda & their bought media to inject a little fear into them & they became monsters.

    Now same people are screaming about “abuse of power!”

    Liked by 1 person

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  16. Hideaway and Brandon, again, and again, and again. What’s wrong with Brandon’s brain?

    #299: The arc of inevitability

    Brandon…. “Why does an energy system need to be profitable?“

    This seems to be an area you don’t understand at all. The profit can be in energy which then translates to money.

    In a world where wholesale energy has cost around $US40/MWh over the last decade, the $US10M cost of a 10MW set up of solar, could have been spent on 250,000MWh of energy.

    The return of the solar at 5.5 hrs/d is only 20,075MWh per year. It takes 12 years to repay itself in energy terms or dollars.

    The 10,000bbl/d Saudi oil well, is just an example of how the system has worked. For the same $US10M spend on a new well, the energy return is 10,000bbls X 1.7MWh/bbl is 17,000MWh/d or 6,205,000MWh/yr.

    This high profitability in energy terms is vastly more than the solar array. The total energy return is in just 14.7 days, compared to the solar energy return in 12 years!!

    We know that many elite have become fabulously wealthy on the back of coal oil and gas, because of their huge energy and therefore money returns. These have been high EROEI investments.

    I know of zero examples of where solar installations, wind installations or nuclear power plants return huge profits to the owners. Huge profits from generating energy are the mark of high EROEI. Zero profits are the mark of barely returning the energy invested in the first place.

    If fossil fuels go up in price, because of a world carbon tax, the cost of building solar, wind and nuclear will rise as they all are totally reliant upon fossil fuels for their construction, operation and maintenance.

    Everything in the human built world suffers from entropy, and has to be rebuilt over time. Therefore not counting the built world and all the workers involved in building renewables is just false accounting. It’s a shame you refuse to do the research to find out the reality of our situation and instead just follow quack conclusions.

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  17. Aging Members of Congress Refuse to Disclose Details of Their Top Secret Hospital

    https://prospect.org/health/2025-02-12-aging-members-congress-office-of-the-attending-physician

    After a presidential election that saw an 82-year-old commander in chief unable to complete sentences in a debate or instill confidence in the public that he could carry out his duties, elected leaders in Congress are faring no better.

    …

    In 2023, Congress designated $4.2 million to the Office of the Attending Physician (OAP), a Navy-staffed hospital with multiple branches spread across Capitol Hill. The current attending physician, Dr. Brian Monahan, who serves as a rear admiral in the Navy, oversees a staff of dozens of Navy doctors, nurses, and technicians whose primary responsibility is providing care to members of Congress and the Supreme Court.

    And while the office has long justified its existence by providing emergency care for an increasingly brittle class of politicians, it also quietly serves as a dirt-cheap clinic for elected officials, some of whom have voted to slash Medicare and Medicaid and abolish the Affordable Care Act, potentially taking coverage away from tens of millions of Americans.

    …

    Every committee member—Republican Reps. Bryan Steil (R-WI), Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), Morgan Griffith (R-VA), Dr. Greg Murphy (R-NC), Stephanie Bice (R-OK), Mike Carey (R-OH), Laurel Lee (R-FL), and Mary Miller (R-IL), and Democratic Reps. Joe Morelle (D-NY), Terri Sewell (D-AL), Norma Torres (D-CA), and Julie Johnson (D-TX)—did not respond to a request for comment on the full list of members who paid for OAP services, and the 2024 and 2025 cost of those services.

    Perhaps part of the committee’s hesitation is due to the fact that over the past ten years, local Washington pharmacists have said they fill prescriptions for things like Alzheimer’s drugs written by staff in the Office of the Attending Physician. In addition, three current and former Hill staffers confirmed to the Prospect that there are multiple sitting members struggling with symptoms of dementia and taking medication to combat its effects.

    So there are members of the US congress who have Alzheimer’s.
    Yes, I know the first image in the article is an image of Nancy Pelosi receiving MRNA.

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  18. Just testing something Rob. You can delete this. Trying to figure out how to do a strikethrough with the word “Repoman” and want to see how it looks after I click submit.

    … situations. <del>Repoman<del> Doomerman spends his

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      1. Ah. Both methods are working now. Thanks.

        Just putting this note for future reference. Have to type it first then copy then “paste as plain text”.
        ~~Repoman~~ Repoman

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