RFK Jr. was confirmed yesterday as HHS Secretary and the MAHA Alliance held a press conference to celebrate this important moment in history.
Del Bigtree was RFK Jr.’s Communications Director. Now that RFK Jr. has been confirmed, Bigtree’s job is finished and he’s able to speak for himself without representing RFK Jr.
Sen. Ron Johnson introduces Del Bigtree at 10:20.
Bigtree’s speech starts at 16:00 and is a must watch for anyone concerned about improving our collective health, and righting the wrongs of covid.
If any of you, like me, feel the need for a little revenge after covid, this speech is righteous.
Bigtree brutally destroys the mainstream news media for their incompetence, indifference, and corruption.
This speech by RFK Jr. after his swearing in ceremony is also excellent.
I don’t have too many heroes, but RFK Jr. is one of them. This video is a nice introduction to the man.
Here is the president’s executive order authorizing MAHA. It’s inspiring and worth a read.
ESTABLISHING THE PRESIDENT’S
MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN COMMISSIONEXECUTIVE 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.
Sec. 3. Establishment and Composition of the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission. (a) There is hereby established the President’s Make America Healthy Again Commission (Commission), chaired by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (Chair), with the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy serving as Executive Director (Executive Director).
(b) In addition to the Chair and the Executive Director, the Commission shall include the following officials, or their designees:
(i) the Secretary of Agriculture;
(ii) the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development;
(iii) the Secretary of Education;
(iv) the Secretary of Veterans Affairs;
(v) the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency;
(vi) the Director of the Office of Management and Budget;
(vii) the Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy;
(viii) the Director of the National Economic Council;
(ix) the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers;
(x) the Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy;
(xi) the Commissioner of Food and Drugs;
(xii) the Director for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention;
(xiii) the Director of the National Institutes of Health; and
(xiv) other members of my Administration invited to participate, at the discretion of the Chair and the Executive Director.
Sec. 4. Fighting Childhood Chronic Disease. The initial mission of the Commission shall be to advise and assist the President on how best to exercise his authority to address the childhood chronic disease crisis. Therefore, the Commission shall:
(a) study the scope of the childhood chronic disease crisis and any potential contributing causes, including the American diet, absorption of toxic material, medical treatments, lifestyle, environmental factors, Government policies, food production techniques, electromagnetic radiation, and corporate influence or cronyism;
(b) advise and assist the President on informing the American people regarding the childhood chronic disease crisis, using transparent and clear facts; and
(c) provide to the President Government-wide recommendations on policy and strategy related to addressing the identified contributing causes of and ending the childhood chronic disease crisis.
Sec. 5. Initial Assessment and Strategy from the Make America Healthy Again Commission. (a) Make our Children Healthy Again Assessment. Within 100 days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment, which shall:
(i) identify and describe childhood chronic disease in America compared to other countries;
(ii) assess the threat that potential over-utilization of medication, certain food ingredients, certain chemicals, and certain other exposures pose to children with respect to chronic inflammation or other established mechanisms of disease, using rigorous and transparent data, including international comparisons;
(iii) assess the prevalence of and threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, antipsychotics, mood stabilizers, stimulants, and weight-loss drugs;
(iv) identify and report on best practices for preventing childhood health issues, including through proper nutrition and the promotion of healthy lifestyles;
(v) evaluate the effectiveness of existing educational programs with regard to nutrition, physical activity, and mental health for children;
(vi) identify and evaluate existing Federal programs and funding intended to prevent and treat childhood health issues for their scope and effectiveness;
(vii) ensure transparency of all current data and unpublished analyses related to the childhood chronic disease crisis, consistent with applicable law;
(viii) evaluate the effectiveness of current Federal Government childhood health data and metrics, including those from the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics and the National Survey of Children’s Health;
(ix) restore the integrity of science, including by eliminating undue industry influence, releasing findings and underlying data to the maximum extent permitted under applicable law, and increasing methodological rigor; and
(x) establish a framework for transparency and ethics review in industry-funded projects.
(b) Make our Children Healthy Again Strategy. Within 180 days of the date of this order, the Commission shall submit to the President, through the Chair and the Executive Director, a Make Our Children Healthy Again Strategy (Strategy), based on the findings from the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment described in subsection (a) of this section. The Strategy shall address appropriately restructuring the Federal Government’s response to the childhood chronic disease crisis, including by ending Federal practices that exacerbate the health crisis or unsuccessfully attempt to address it, and by adding powerful new solutions that will end childhood chronic disease.
Sec. 6. Additional Reports. (a) Following the submission to the President of the Strategy, and any final strategy reports thereafter, the Chair and the Executive Director shall recommend to the President updates to the Commission’s mission, including desired reports.
(b) The Commission shall not reconvene, following submission of the Strategy, until an updated mission is submitted to the President through the Executive Director.
Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(c) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
THE WHITE HOUSE,
February 13, 2025.
<edit>
A few comments below from angry, now ex, followers suggest they were unaware of my gradual transformation over the last 4 years of observing and researching covid, from being certain RFK Jr. was a nut job, to now supporting RFK Jr.’s mission to improve our abysmal and worsening pubic health.
I’ve copied my replies to the criticisms here so that the reasons for my new beliefs are clear.
notabilia: You make excellent, well-researched points at times.
And you throw it all away by being an anti-vaxxer ass clown.
I too thought anti-vaxxers were nut jobs.
Then the experts I trusted renamed a 20 year old technology, known to be unsafe and ineffective in humans, from transfection to vaccine, pretended transfection was a new miracle technology, and coerced it into 5+ billion people after insufficient and fraudulent testing, including children that had zero risk from the virus, and when adverse event data showed the transfections were dangerous at levels far higher than had been sufficient to withdraw prior vaccines from the market, they doubled down, and hid and denied the data, and they continued to coerce transfections despite the disease being low risk for all except elderly and co-morbid people, and despite several safe and effective alternate treatments being available.
Today the rate of sickness and all-cause mortality is higher than pre-transfection, and the only thing our “experts” are certain of is that the cause is not the mRNA transfections. This despite there being several easy to understand first principle reasons to suspect mRNA transfections will never, and can never, be made safe.
The mRNA transfections are just the tip of the covid iceberg. They lied about every single covid issue, and they used tax dollars to corrupt news media, and to censor social media, to make us believe the lies.
Every covid policy was exactly wrong. To maximize your probability of good health the best course of action was to do exactly the opposite of what they told us to do. Incompetence does not explain this. They would have achieved a better public health outcome had they flipped a coin on every decision.
After observing 4 years of a healthcare system incapable of learning and correcting when new data emerges, and that pathologically lies, I no longer trust a word they say about anything.
So yes, I now proudly call myself an anti-vaxxer.
Go get ’em Bobby!
Anonymous: The health problems of the US population can largely be traced to a crap diet… good luck changing that. Any real attempt to do so will be shut down as a communist plot.
Yes, unhealthy food is a huge problem. It’s also not that complicated. Reducing sugar would be a good start.
We face many existential overshoot threats for which there is no “fix” thanks to MPP and MORT governing our behaviors, and thanks to the core design of the system that keeps us alive.
The threat from relatively recent, extremely poor public health is different. There is nothing fundamental blocking us from improving public health. I think we should support RFK Jr. and try.
A healthy population will be a strong asset, perhaps our only asset, when the everything bubble pops and modern civilization collapses.
<edit>
Secretary Kennedy delivers welcoming remarks to HHS staff.
Godspeed RFK Jr.
un-Denial 
This might be of interest to Australian readers. At the end of this interview they discuss the JFK files and John Helmer discloses the CIA also controlled the Australian government.
Helmer has first hand information on what happened in Australia that he is now able to discuss because the participants that swore him to secrecy are all dead now.
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It’s been a very bad few days. Looks like I broke another family relationship. This one was important. I don’t have many left.
I let my anger over covid out of the bottle thinking it was ok to vent with this person. I was wrong. They view covid disagreements as political and their politics differ from mine. I view covid disagreements as scientific questions that can be settled with evidence.
I hope time heals. I’ve said I’m sorry every way I know how.
Today’s discussion between James Howard Kunstler and Dr. Chris Martenson made me feel little better on my walk today. It’s probably my new favorite big picture recap of problems in the healthcare system, the covid crimes, and RFK.
I may be an unpleasant person to be around, but I’m not crazy, and I’m not wrong about covid.
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Ya, that sucks. Would love to hear the nitty gritty details of that conversation.
And even though I sometimes make fun of your CDS, you are absolutely not wrong (or crazy) about covid.
This article might lift up your spirits. It sure did for Crazy Eddy.🤭
“I experienced a SCHAD ejaculation while reading this and almost passed out!”
Horrifying Breakthrough in the WHITE FIBROUS CLOT Saga
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Thanks. I don’t wish harm on the transfected like Fast Eddie does. I just want authorities to stop harming more people, especially children, and to hold accountable those who caused prior harms.
The paper on clots did not mention Dr. Joe Lee’s string theory which is a clean simple explanation for the observed clots. Unfortunately everyone ignores Lee’s theory because he’s a crazy prick.
Rintrah frequently says an individual loses a few IQ points with every covid infection. I wondered if that claim had any science behind it and found that it does. So maybe it’s these small clots at work in the brain.
Sorry, I can’t provide more color on my family problems. It’s bad enough that I blog about overshoot with my real name. I don’t want to embarrass them or make them more uncomfortable than I already have.
I justify any discomfort I’ve caused by the fact that I don’t just discuss inevitable collapse. I discovered Varki’s MORT theory that explains why every one of millions of people with good intentions have failed to make the future less bad.
I thought and think MORT awareness is a required first step to ANY better path. If you can’t see reality you can’t possible craft a useful response.
I’m correct except MORT awareness turned out to be impossible for most people.
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How can you not have CDS (covid derangement syndrome) when you listen to heartbreaking stories like Dr. Mary Talley Bowden tells in today’s excellent interview?
It brings tears to my eyes listening to how evil the health system was during covid.
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Just so that you know, I didn’t listen to this. Waste of time.
Heartbreaking stories, like the ads for foreign aid, picturing hungry children with balloning stomachs? Or the Bill Gates notes: https://www.gatesnotes.com/meet-bill/save-lives?
Sorry, Rob, but no, no, no.
Get better with the people you care for. The way to heaven is not to fight evil, but to do good at your accessible scale. (There are many ways people will benefit from your skills, practical knowledge and integrity)
And I still believe you are roughly in the right about covid and overshoot, but that’s not what matters. I am saying all this, as someone who made similar mistakes for a very, very long time. Get out of the trap of the illusions of the mind, hate and projection.
And about JFK: Matthew 7:15-20. The rest is mere excuses.
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I’m struggling to understand Charles’ advice. Can someone please translate “Get out of the trap of the illusions of the mind, hate and projection.” into words I might understand.
Matthew 7:15-20 seems to imply RFK is bad person pretending to be a good person. I’ve not studied his past but have not detected any problems with his integrity in recent years. He may have had to make some unpleasant promises to get confirmed, like not immediately banning mRNA transfections, but hopefully we’ll get there with his strategy of shining light on the science and data.
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Sorry for not being understandable.
“Get out of the trap of the illusions of the mind, hate and projections.”
You believe some things about covid and vaccine. OK. I am not going to debate these. Because, frankly I don’t know and I even tend to believe you are right.
But let’s pause for a moment and observe, not the belief, and its plausibility but the effect it has on you and on your life. Also, examine the reason this particular belief appeals to you.
It seems to me that the net effect of the covid story is division from the ones around you.
I think the ones who are in the position to talk to the masses (and they are a few selected ones) are playing you. They are doing this on purpose. Have you noticed how it’s always about hating some group and it’s also always about tomorrow being better than today, thanks to them, if you just give up your power to them, for the time being? But your day never comes.
What about the simple, small now, and the people around you? The “real” ones. The ones you know. Not some character on the screen.
Basically, I am saying they are playing you. This is all narration. Why would you trust anything on youtube? Your life energy is going to the system instead of going to your happiness and those who matter around you.
And they are able to play you, because of un-examined vulnerabilities already present in you.
Get your life back. Every thing that triggers you is an opportunity to see what’s below the surface, to remember and reconnect, to turn this integrity of yours towards yourself and investigate.
Note that by giving you this advice, I am doing exactly the same thing as them 🙂 So don’t listen to me: find your own truth. Just know that the truth can not be put in words.
And they can’t block you forever, they are only postponing the moment, you will find it out. But, why wait? Why suspended living?
Ultimately, the mind is the great illusionist. He is the one making up worlds. And there is this division we artificially created, to expel everything we reject/we do not allow (about ourselves) and project it towards something external. Uncover this, all of it, and they can not feed you hate anymore. For how could we hate ourselves?
BTW, I am not saying you necessarily have to reconnect with people around you. Only if it matters to you. If there is no conflict, you will know, then you are being true to yourself. It’s independent of the external conditions.
I hope I was able to be a bit more understandable. If not, I can try again. Anyway, don’t worry, somehow, at the right moment, it will come to you as this is the natural unfolding of things.
Best 🙂
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Thanks kindly for trying but we inhabit different planets. That’s ok. Diversity is good.
Let me play back what I think you are advising:
Our leaders, who we elected to protect us, intentionally brainwashed people who did not have the motivation or skills or time to verify what they were being told, with the goal of increasing their power by sowing division in society including breaking up families.
The solution to not letting our evil leaders win is to get along with everyone by ignoring beliefs, even if those beliefs killed over 20 million people, and could easily repeat with another bioweapons research “mistake”.
I can’t do this with citizens I don’t know.
For close family members I can agree to never again discuss the topic of covid.
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🙂
I am not sure I am recognizing what I am trying to share.
Yes, I understand you can’t get along with citizens you don’t know. I was not asking this. I was talking about the cases, when it creates an inner conflict.
I have a hunch, neurality will not necessarily be enough. It seems to me, life is trying to show you something.
Apologies are good. However, the intention and the channel matters. It can done out of fear (of finishing some future day all left alone), or it can be done in an effort of love and understanding for the other party. It can be done in a mental, mechanistic, robotic way, or it can be done deeply through a channel that goes through your body. You can feel it, in the heart, or in the throat or maybe elsewhere. It’s like there is an invisible string connecting us with the people we care for. There is probably even a string of that nature between us.
I believe the task for you today is to receive your family member as he is. Try to see and understand deeply how he came to believe something different than you about this topic. To knock down the protecting walls around you that numb (remember this word) your connection.
Walk into the forest, ask the trees, they know.
Oh well, that’s reality for me 🙂 I tried to be as transparent as possible, to share that which is dear to me.
But yes, definitly, be yourself, do it your way. That’s the greatest thing. Simply, as you do, look into yourself. You will know you are not lieing to yourself, by the absence of inner conflict, of physical tension, by the presence of joy. Follow what you love.
Well, again, I am just sharing. As you say, we probably inhabit different planets. If the shoe fits, wear it, otherwise pick another one 🙂
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The knot in my stomach and difficulty sleeping tells me I made a mistake. I have been trying to apologize in as sincere a manner as I know how. Viewed from a higher level, my awareness of our predicament and desire to discuss it, may require me to spend the balance of my life mostly alone.
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I wouldn’t be so sure: don’t give up on yourself. Because you can have both: be faithful to yourself and be open to others.
Don’t worry. I am pretty sure, they will eventually accept your apologies (don’t give up, think of other ways if necessary, and time heals all). Just don’t forget that you are a strong warrior with an incredible will and not everybody is at that level. Also (I am not sure about that, but) it seems to me that negativity (avoidance goals), gives you energy: this is contrary to most people who take their energy from setting positive goals. So, indulgence is always welcome, room to breathe. And you have other extraordinary traits to discover in others.
I don’t want to reveal everything, because it takes the fun out of discovering. But I am pretty sure you will reconciliate and it will fulfill a purpose. Nothing happens by chance in this strange world we seem to inhabit.
About the desire to discuss it. Maybe it’s time for you to reproduce the success of this site, but in real life. Maybe you can start a local group to discuss and act on these topics with other people (the young adult generation who will have to face collapse now). A kind of doomer’s anonymous, with preptips and experiments (you can teach your unique organization skills)…
For me, the obsession has toned down. I don’t know how or why. Letting it out in the two essays you welcomed was most probably part of it. Planting trees, gardening, studying alternative agricultures another part. And also listening to a multitude of different people, trying to refine my interactions so that it’s smooth and fulfilling to both parties (I have slowly learned to give and take different things with different people). And introspection. Or maybe, I am just growing bored of the subject 🙂
Cheers 🙂
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💖
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I listened to this and it was NOT a waste of time. This woman was a courageous figure and stood up against the establishment medical pharma and truly followed the Hippocratic oath and did what was best for her patients. Too bad that the other 99% of medical personnel don’t have the same ethics, or desire to find out the rational scientific truths.
My only problem is with Tucker himself, his podcasts are inconsistent and sometimes are of little value. This was not one of those times.
AJ
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Thank you for confirming I am not crazy. I agree Tucker is hit and miss.
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🙂
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Ya, once in a while I might still get emotional. And I’m definitely still guilty of wasting too much time getting angry… but no CDS for me because I’m tapped out on the evils of White Empire. Nothing stands out as most evil anymore. It’s all blended together on full throttle for the last 500 years.
And then I have to hear this at the 10:42 mark from a couple of rich Empire Babies
LOL… Ok minus that asinine moment of unawareness, it was a good interview. And just like I did with Suzanne Humphries, I got the vibe that Mary is one of the Jane Goodall’s of our world.
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Hello Rob,
I am sore sorry to hear you’ve been having a difficult time. You have the best intention at heart to get to the truth of the matter and reduce suffering and have been turbulently misunderstood. I can sense how painfully hurtful the results of your exchange have been for you and that adds even more insult to the injustices you are already bearing.
It is my belief that the overwhelming emotional response from your family member is masking their own underlying concern and fears about the whole Covid fiasco and they are not ready to face the consequences to themselves and their loved ones. Perhaps they are truly worried about the repercussions of the mRNA shot and knowing that you didn’t take it only made them feel more disadvantaged. Surely a more measured “agree to disagree” conclusion would have been more logical and reasonable if the topic wasn’t so charged and your presentation to them was lighting of their fuse that caused everything to blow up in your face. In my own experience, family is the punching bag to absorb negativity, and both the deliverer and receiver of that frustration and anger suffer. The shock of negativity’s intensity is like a violent attack and you happened to cop it directly, and I feel for you both.
I trust along with you that time will set things in a more balanced perspective. The thing with family (most of the time) is things can blow over as quickly as they exploded, and there is a good chance that this will fall into that category. You’ve already apologised for disturbing their peace (even though it really was their own reaction that did so, but you are big-hearted enough to own your part in this) and they probably know how awful you feel so if anything, it is their turn to show a generous spirit. I wish you patience and acceptance if this takes a bit more time, as I’ve intuited, their reaction probably has its basis in something much more than just a political difference.
Now that you know this topic hits a direct nerve with so many, you will develop a sense of when it is useful to bring up discussion that will be purposeful rather than invite another possible incendiary reaction that leads to suffering on both sides, even if it is the truth you champion. This is the art (and angst) of being human, sometimes the best decision at the time is just keeping one’s own counsel, and being right is secondary to seeing where and how to meet the other in empathy and understanding. Thank you for being brave and honest to go through this as best as you can.
Sending you strength, comfort, and peace, friend.
Namaste.
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Thanks Gaia. I have learned to hold my tongue with most people on covid issues. Given that early possible concerns have now become obvious facts, it really bothers me that I have to remain silent to protect relationships.
So many of our “problems” like climate change and resource depletion have no solution so it is understandable why people prefer not to discuss them. Covid is not like that. It’s a virus that was created by bad people, and there are safe and effective responses that were blocked by bad people who instead coerced unsafe and ineffective responses. There’s no good reason not to acknowledge this and to take corrective actions.
I made a serious mistake by venting with someone I thought it was ok to vent with. They were not pushing their views on me. I was the aggressor said some bad things. I hope time heals.
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Good podcast by Kunstler and Martenson. I generally think Kunstler is too much of 100% Trump guy. I liked Martenson’s take on it. He was 100% against the Dems and as far as Trump goes he doesn’t like anything that Trump is doing in the Middle East, but does agree with the MAHA in the US, same as me.
AJ
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You see no irony in someone like environmental lawyer RFK joining the most anti-environmental President in decades? He’s worse than Reagan & Watt in some areas. Basic things like replacing leaded pipes have been defunded or delayed by Trump, and he’s unlikely to impose new regulations on chemicals (the opposite is true).
I’d like to see RFK clash with him on some toxin that directly crosses into the medical realm. But RFK promotes archaic hazards like raw milk just because it’s technically “natural.”
One health-related thing I respect about Trump is that he shuns industrial wind turbines, and Kennedy has also fought them, e.g. Cape Wind. Quasi-environmentalists, who industrialize scenic open spaces, like to mock Trump’s wind turbines “cancer” claim. They’re unlikely to cause cancer directly, but stress from noise and visual blight can weaken immune systems over time.
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The following from the local news this morning, just showing the increasing pressure put on farmers and property owners as they are seen as an easy target for raising more money for governments. I expect this to get increasingly worse as the pressure of debt, net energy and material decline continues to increase…
“Last year, the Victorian government announced its Fire Services Levy would be expanded and rebranded to become the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund.
All property holders will pay significantly more, not just for fire services, but for seven other agencies such as Triple Zero Victoria.
For residential and commercial ratepayers the levy will double, and for farmers it will almost triple.”
Over the last 40 years, because of the increased complexity of everything governing us, the overall costs have gone up vastly, with “permission”, that costs money to apply for, has become rampant for nearly everything we wont to do on a property.
It’s all couched in paying for services, or to look after the environment, or health and safety concerns, but realistically it’s because we are in massive overshoot.
There is actually no-one to blame as it’s humanity as a whole getting closer to collapse, while trying to save everything, which of course is not close to possible….
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Must be very frustrating when you’re trying to live smaller and disconnect. Governments should be prioritizing local food production, even if they are unable to say publicly why they’re doing it.
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Sam had an excellent 6-part series recently. Part 6 was extremely intense and emotional, but this one hit home the most for me.
Made me want to share a story.
When my mom was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer, we knew we didn’t want to go the traditional route. We researched the hell out of alternative medicine. We paid good money to a doctor in Florida for herbs and skype consultations (Dr Robert Morse… who I do not recommend… yes he has good info, but his office only cares about the fucking money). After a few months we ended up bailing on the herbs, grape diet, and Morse because the tumor in her chest had gone from golf ball size to baseball size. You could feel it and even see it popping out. Was scaring the hell out of us.
So out of fear and desperation she ended up going the traditional route. I had already moved in with her so that I could be her full-time caretaker. The day prior to her 1st chemo treatment, she was fine. Doing yard work. We even went to a park and played some putt-putt golf. Two days later she was permanently in bed and feeling terrible. I’d bring her meals, but she could barely eat. She had no bathroom control and I had to clean up some god-awful messes. After a couple days of this, I called her doctor and was reassured that this is all normal and part of the process.
The chemo sessions were once every three weeks and eventually would go to every two weeks. Sixteen total. A few days after her 2nd session, she started doing much worse. I called the Doctor and got the same reassuring “this is all normal and part of the process”. In the middle of the night, I got up to use the bathroom. I peeked in my mom’s room to check on her and she was not in bed, but on the floor. She was trying to yell for me, but her voice had dried up. She was able to communicate that she was having major trouble breathing… and I could see that she had been coughing up blood.
I had already mapped out the route to the emergency room, just in case. So I picked her up and threw her in my truck. 911 would have taken 20 minutes minimum. Took me under five minutes to get her to the hospital and in the e-room. Turns out she had fluid in her lungs and it was a big deal. After dealing with that, they kept her under observation for a week.
While she was in the hospital, I started the tough conversation with my brother. After only two sessions, I was convinced the chemo was going to kill her very soon. And she had 14 more of these sessions to go!! I explained how I want her to stop chemo altogether. Let her at least enjoy her final days, months, whatever. He was not on board, at all. In fact, we got into a big fight because I had brought it up to my nephew. My brother did not like me talking to his 16-year-old son about how his Nana might die soon. That was the last fist fight I ever had. Got my ass whooped by my little brother that night😊.
He wasn’t the one living with and taking care of her. Watching up close how this poison was killing her slowly. Plus, it was more about his fear/denial of death being so strong that he can’t even consider doing something drastic like opting out of chemo (or even her meds when we decided on that one too). So I decided to not keep him in the loop anymore.
When my mom finally returned home from the hospital, we started talking about quitting chemo. It was funny because she didn’t even let me finish the first sentence before declaring, “I don’t care what happens to me, I’m not doing this anymore”… Ahh, music to my ears.
To wrap up this story, we got lucky that those two sessions actually did shrink the tumor down enough that they could now do the surgery to attempt to remove it. But it was a hell of a task to get to that point because as soon as you tell the doctors “no more chemo and don’t even mention radiation”, everything starts working against you. I’m convinced that even the cleaning lady at the doctors office was being rude to us now that we were no longer participating in their bullshit. Had to jump through hoops to finally get that surgery approved.
And thankfully the surgery ended up successful and knock on wood, no problems since. One of the stats from my research back then that stuck with me was how every cancer diagnosis is worth $180,000 to the doctor. Don’t know where I got that… and it actually seems too low. But it is most definitely true. And you can really feel it when you opt out of their ponzi scheme.
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Wow, what a story. So wonderful that it ended well.
If I get cancer I’m going to try ivermectin plus fenbendazole. If it doesn’t work, no harm done. Canadian Dr. William Makis is a leader with this treatment. Good chance your local feed store has both drugs on the shelf for horses.
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And go zero carbs in the diet for maximum effect.
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I don’t know what I will do if I get cancer, but I get a neurodegenerative disease, I will off myself.
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Hello Chris,
I only got to your post after responding to Rob. I believe this is the largest measure of why we’re here and how we can help one another through this time. Overshoot is the stage but each of us still has a life to play out and connecting with one another and every other being on this heart level is the only thing remaining to us that will make it a good life. Perhaps it took our species going through the fire and the aftermath (literally) to work out that it was always so, everything else we got distracted by was just the trappings of life but how we are to one another defines who we are.
I am humbled by your and your mom’s story of family unity and trust through your love and care for one another. Despite foregoing that profession, my background as a Western medicine trained doctor allows me to still feel shame and indignation for what your mom experienced, but your family have overcome through a more secure and sure route of healing that transcends whatever so-called health professionals can offer. Just being open to one another when we are most vulnerable and allowing for us to be truly seen and accepted as a part of the whole, isn’t that a definition of love? Our ultimate wellness and wholeness is measured in our capacity to love and be loved in return.
All the best going forward to you and your family. It’s so heartening to see you and everyone else here on Rob’s page. We are all born into a family but we also have the blessing to choose those we care for as family and I trust we can continue to fulfil that connection with one another at this time’s end and beginning.
Namaste.
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Thanks Gaia. Appreciate it.
After looking at your lovely comment and the one you left for Rob… I can’t help myself from dishing out some praise. Rob, I hope you understand what you’ve created here… a goldmine of aware people who know how to communicate it impressively through writing.
At this point I’m a doomosphere connoisseur. There is no place else that has this level of consistent talent in the audience. Might be some good ones over at Gail Tverberg or ZeroHedge. Or the other bloggers who get 500 comments on every post… but you have to sift through tons of shit to find any gold. You don’t have to sift through anything here at un-Denial. There are easily 6 or 7 of us who should have our own websites. Actually, half the audience could probably pull it off.
But I have no interest in being a lone wolf like the majority of collapse writers. The group dynamic thing is so much better. Megacancer’s audience is in the same boat… just not enough contributors over there. The perfect storm would be if un-denial and mega merged into one. Since your site is bigger Rob, I give you permission to begin the hostile takeover of James’ company.😊
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Thanks for the kind words. I respect James very much. We do have an impressive little community here.
I do harbor some disappointment towards all the big names in the overshoot space. Over the last 10+ years I have promoted the work of all of them, many many times. Not one has reciprocated by promoting the work of Dr. Ajit Varki. In fact I can’t point to one that even understands MORT or its significance. This used to really bother me. I don’t think about it much any more. It’s too late now and I’m numb.
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This is from a discussion with my friend Chris:
“Have Trump and Putin already divided the world between them, and where does China stand? With MAGA and Trump’s aggressive actions against Greenland, Venezuela, and Mexico, the picture is emerging that the US clearly wants to swallow the Americas completely. Driven by dwindling resources, and also due to the rapidly ending globalization caused by peak oil, the US is increasingly pulling the countries surrounding its core closer to itself. MAGA serves to strengthen local structures, and the US is trying to bring as much technical know-how into the country as possible.
The ongoing fight against the Deep State is nothing other than the fight between nationalists and globalists.
Russia appears to be striving to reverse the collapse of the Soviet Union. Ukraine, as a gigantic source of resources, is only the first step. Europe, and especially the EU, is deeply permeated by globalists via the WEF and the Deep State and is incapable of finding its place in the new world order. The expulsion of the Deep State from the US has turned Europe into a plaything of the globalists (=Deep State).
The structures in France, Germany, and even Great Britain as part of Europe, among others, are deeply permeated with Deep State actors.
One scenario could therefore be that Europe is torn apart between the nationalists Trump and Putin until it falls to Russia virtually without a fight. The Eurasian countries would then form one bloc, including China as Russia’s neighbor, and the American continent with its nearby satellites would form the other bloc.
Thus, the wheel will have to continue turning for a while until it reaches its final conclusion, when the two gigantic blocs must clash in a battle for the last resources.
Based on this assumption, all participants in the nationally operating states are in cahoots, and the USA in particular does not need to intervene in Europe at all. Instead, it can bring valuable industry into its own country through tariffs, watching as the Deep State continues the unwinnable battle of globalization and, in doing so, invests valuable energy in an unsolvable task.
Putin can simply continue the grueling battle in Ukraine until Europe, or rather the EU, is completely crushed due to a lack of human and material resources.
The globalists’ increasingly desperate struggle is producing the most absurd legislative flourishes and further accelerating the decline by pushing the boundaries of complexity.
All Trump and Putin have to do is keep the wheel turning. Europe is being crushed in Ukraine on the one hand, and tariffs on every product on the other are robbing it of the necessary financial resources. Europe is dismantling itself, and as a result, a good 500 million people who contribute significantly to resource consumption are being eliminated.
Since the players at the table are aware that the end of fossil fuels will end all cultural development, Europe, as the cradle of education and culture, no longer plays a role in their considerations.
Regarding a major war between Europe and Russia, one can sit back relatively relaxed. Apart from a few possible skirmishes, Europe does not have anywhere near the resources to wage this war. These are the familiar threats of a declining Deep State, helplessly following Nero’s orders.
Due to a lack of energy, the whole spiel about CDBC, surveillance, and social control will go down in a flash in the pan faster than it took to plan and build.
And even if it’s madness, there’s a method to it.”
Saludos
el mar
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https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/04/01/prophets-nomads-and-a-fourth-turning-accelerating-towards-a-bloody-climax/
“I think everyone needs to understand we are entering a time of war, a time to hate, a time to kill, and a time to die. I wish it weren’t so, but the cycles of history don’t lie. Good luck and Godspeed.”
Saludos
el mar
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Thanks. The essay is heavy on politics and light on overshoot and depletion which is my preferred lens to view the world. I’m not a fan of the Fourth Turning idea because we haven’t had modernity long enough for any cycles to reliably expose themselves, but ignoring that there are some good observations.
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https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-3-2025/#comment-787463
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https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-3-2025/#comment-787500
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Super interesting Peak Oil Chat presentation on fossil energy technology and economics.
There’s a lot of information I’ve not heard before. I’ll be viewing this several times.
Hideaway will probably love this.
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Unintended consequences in a complex world:
– Authorities required ships to reduce sulphur emissions starting 2020.
– Ship owners took the path of least resistance and switched to burning diesel instead of installing scrubbers.
– This caused a diesel shortage that started in 2020.
– Diesel shortage may soon get worse because refineries are closing.
– Reduced pollution particulates caused a big jump in global warming as predicted and confirmed by James Hansen (not discussed in this video).
Another:
– A continent wide network of pipelines for super critical 2000 psi CO2 was planned to squeeze more hydrocarbons out of old oil wells.
– Then farmers figured out how dangerous a leak was and blocked CO2 pipeline development
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This video about an F-150 truck with all the pieces laid out, says everything about complexity, scale and efficiency, which all the experts in the above video on peak oil miss out on, even though they discuss complexity.
In looking at the LNG plant or the refinery, even though they know it’s highly complex, they are not concerned with the why it’s complex or how complex, as in where the parts come from, or the materials that make the separate parts come from.
Both the how and why are because of markets size and efficiency gains. Back to the Ford-150 truck. The tyres come from a giant factory in South Korea, made from rubber, plastics and steel belts from different industries in other countries. By trying to set up another factory in the US, to do the same, the system becomes more inefficient, it’s another factory not needed in the world view of one global civilization.
Globalization gave our civilization further efficiency gains and greater market size, that allowed further complexity to develop, which was also going in the direction of further efficiency in energy and material use.
If Trumps tariffs are truely an end of globalization, then all that’s going to happen is another step down towards collapse faster than if the system had kept on self organising towards more efficiency, by means of an attempt to use more material and energy in the re-localization ‘planned’.
Personally I don’t think these tariffs will bring an end of globalization, as the world of materials, energy and market size is much larger than the USA, and no-one can guarantee the tariffs wont be just removed in 4 years time. The most likely outcome will be higher prices for Americans, with the rest of the world continuing to trade with each other more cheaply relative to in the US.
Anyway, the part missed by the experts in the doomsphere is that our system of civilization requires the current size and growth to maintain the complexity of everything. This increasing size and complexity is more efficient than trying to do the ‘same’ on a more localised level.
We need the size and complexity to gather the energy, materials and food because of the lower grades of energy and material resources, plus depleted soils and huge monocultures in food production.
Re-localising requires more energy and materials to do exactly the same as at present, so it’s much less efficient. At some point something breaks, be it debt, or complexity, or energy, material or food gathering, perhaps even a breakout of more wars.
With the level of complexity we have, if the system starts to break, then a cascade of complex feedback loops will be set off. Look at the parts of that Ford 150 truck and imagine if suddenly 50 parts were unavailable, then as the company tries to fill all those bits with some different suppliers, then another 50 parts become unavailable next month and so on. As Ford stopped supply from other suppliers (as they can’t make the trucks without all the parts), then suppliers without sales are likely to go bust and so the cascade goes on. Pretty soon Ford goes bust as they cannot make any vehicles. Meanwhile all the workers laid off have greater effect on other businesses, with reduced sales due to no income.
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Yes. Excellent.
I am thrilled to see what comes next. After all, I have been kind of waiting for this moment for more than 25 years 🙂
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Excellent video, excellent analysis, thanks.
Please keep the complexity lessons coming. Soon all of us here will be including complexity in our overshoot stories.
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Being a retired engineer that worked for a company that supplied the energy industry, I loved this. They were talking my language. (No bullshit when solving real world problems).
Had not heard of the Braess paradox. Another way to express the “overhead cost” of complexity.
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Fun little philosophical comic “about the inevitable anguish of living a brief life in an absurd world”, for those who are into this kind of things:
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One of my favorites. Part of my Sunday morning funnies routine.
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🙂
The world is blessed with a variety of talented people, all for us to discover.
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Insightful comment from Alexander Mercouris.
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This is the first article I’ve come across talking up the environmental benefits of the tariffs.
https://open.substack.com/pub/scaledown/p/why-the-big-freak-out-over-tariffs?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=yn9sg
“…insofar as tariffs might diminish industrial manufacturing in other countries, their environments could certainly benefit.
Globally, an economic downturn triggered by tariffs would slow growth, and reduce international shipping of goods and materials across vast distances. The result would be less energy use, less carbon emissions, and less pollution for the planet as a whole.”
It also links to a good article on the impacts of the steel and aluminium industries which is a useful piece to counter proponents of the” clean energy” transition.
https://news.mongabay.com/2024/09/aluminum-and-steel-take-environment-and-health-toll-even-as-demand-grows/
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I am not sure this has been posted here but it is interesting. Not the whole picture for sure as so many intelligent people can’t see overshoot but it does address why they have a hard time fitting into society.
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I suppose this could be an alternate explanation for some of behaviors I attribute to Varki’s MORT. I personally didn’t find it persuasive.
He says physical strength and wealth are not threatening but high intelligence is. It is easy to argue the opposite.
A super-smart person promising an (untrue) green abundant future with self-driving cars is (was) admired. A super-smart person explaining (true) overshoot and resource depletion is disliked or ignored. It’s not the level of intelligence. It’s not whether the information is true or false. It’s the unpleasantness of the topic.
Philosophy studies issues not grounded in science. I prefer hard facts. Like why does only one species believe in gods? Why is there only one species smart enough to fly to the moon but unable to understand a simple concept like its own extreme overshoot? Why are they the same species? Why do polymaths understand everything except those topics that are vitally important to properly understanding anything?
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Yes I tend to agree. I think that it always comes back to being a realist. I think in general people don’t like realists, particularly intelligent ones. People are mostly prone to being optimists and shut down when that is threatened.
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Good video. I’ve already seen it, but I don’t think it was shared here. More than likely megacancer.
Gives me an excuse to share this comment from Sam’s channel.
Don’t necessarily agree with ccz, but I do like what he’s saying. IMHO it’s more about doomers flaking out on the last couple layers of denial. I know it’s hard to accept that life is completely full of shit, but c’mon people, you’ve come this far and every moment of your reality journey you’ve seen that denial is always heavily involved. Get over it and start rooting for human extinction like the rest of us over at megacancer. LOL. I suppose those last couple layers might be damn near impossible to shed… except for the truly sick basterds like myself.😊
And btw, acceptance of “Life is for living” can still be had even when you’re this deep into reality. I’m slowly starting to see that.
Since I have no link to provide, time for some music. This band is from Iceland. 1st one is a happy song. Try to focus on a good memory while watching it (I always picture when my nephew was born). I bet you’ll have a happy cry by the end of the song.
The 2nd one is a downer. Perfect collapse music. If you like it, search for the official video which is 6:35 in length. It’s a doomers paradise. I just like this audio version a little better.
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I’ve been downloading loads of youtube vids over the past few weeks, as I have a feeling that the internet isn’t going to be available forever, and music is one of life’s joys. Wikipedia on the same basis. Anyway, I notice 2 things from going to 100s of youtube vids; the number 1 comment is almost always a mindless “anyone here in 2025?” type remark, and in the suggested videos as I scroll down to see if there’s anything else I want to download from youtube’s suggestions, these videos by Schopenhauer. Over and over and over again, by different youtube accounts in an attempt to make it appear organic, but I’m sure it’s not. They all seem to be about coping with loneliness, how society hates intelligent people, and it’s best to cope with your isolation by realising you’re smarter than everyone else and they’re all just morons. I haven’t watched any of these videos, to be fair. But it does make me wonder why this is being pushed now; I would hazard a guess that it’s an attempt to get people to accept their increasingly shitty lives by convincing them that they are in fact superior to everyone else and their terrible circumstances are in part due to their outstanding intelligence and others’ stupidity…your isolation is other people’s fault. I would guess it’s the elite’s way to try to divert blame from themselves as the gap between rich and poor grows ever wider, and they attempt to maintain their positions by diverting people from blaming those very elites who have indeed caused the problem. Dialogue Works did a good interview with Alex Krainer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWkZE8cxveA) a week or so ago where Krainer noted that the governments of the world are attempting to start WW3 as the other alternative is that the masses realise what is really going on (impoverishment due to FF limits and insane money systems), blame those responsible for at least the latter part of that equation and we get a generalised class war.
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Maybe.
Another possible explanation is that social media algorithms have become really good at figuring out what people want to see. They don’t care what you watch. They only care about maximizing screen time.
I try to avoid being manipulated by never looking at pages with recommendations. For example:
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A most interesting interview with Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.
In addition to presenting a different spin on the crazy-making covid crimes, Dr. Soon-Shiong also discusses a new type of drug that offers hope for curing cancer, and for clearing the covid virus from infected people.
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Although both Tucker and Dr. Soon appear overshoot/collapse unaware this was perhaps one of the Best interviews I have seen.
Dr. Soon appears to be an unusual person in that he is articulate, rational, uber-wealthy and ethical. His take on immunology is far more advanced than almost everyone in medicine. He offers an understandable explanation of the crux of the cancer, covid, vaccine dilemmas and a solution in his therapeutic injections. I want one!!
AJ
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Thanks for the feedback. I try very hard to only post information from people that impress me with their integrity and competency.
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Notice that the authorities are deliberately making it difficult for Dr. Soon-Shiong to bring an innovative technology to market that might actually undo the damage done by mRNA transfections.
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Agreed that Soon appears to be thoughtful and well-informed. I’m not sure I’m going to leap at another untested vaccine that is completely novel, though. He says that covid is causing chronic inflammation because the immune system can’t clear it, partly due to shortages (caused by the virus) of natural killer cells, and thus his new vaccine is based on these NK cells. I’ll let others be the guinea pigs again, note that I can believe the chronic inflammation story so start taking some anti-inflammatories like vitamin C (Humphries has done some really good stuff on this – humans are almost unique in their inability amongst mammals to make vitamin C), and look at some natutal ways to boost NK cell production (reishi and a bunch of other mushrooms, for example).
Simon
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If you haven’t had the vaccines then for most people your body can clear the virus because you will have developed the correct response using NK cells.
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I’d be cautious too.
I think I heard him say his drug has already been in testing for 5 (or did he say 10?) years.
That’s a lot better than the 3-ish months they tested covid mRNA transfections before injecting them into billions of people, including children and pregnant women who were never tested.
mRNA transfections had a 20 year history of failing all prior tests. Which means our “leaders” should have demanded even more than the usual 10 years of testing required to validate a fundamentally new drug technology. That’s probably why they renamed “transfection” to “vaccine”, changed the 50-ish year old definition of a vaccine in Wikipedia, and pretended Operation Warp-Speed was an optimized but thorough method of testing with no corners cut.
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A very good interview. I am keen to learn more about bio shield and how it primes NK cells. Sounds promising.
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2025 could be the last year for music with integrity.
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LOL. Had not even thought about the music aspect.
As far as noticing AI in overshoot essays, I’m starting to get the hang of it. I’ll be a pro eventually. But Rick’s video just showed me that I’ll never be able to spot it in music, ever! This is great. Get the popcorn. We really are gonna dump every last resource into this garbage.
IIRC, you think AI is gonna prove to be not so profitable and therefore be abandoned sooner than later… I still owe you one can of sardines. Let’s make it double or nothing. If you wanna raise the stakes, I’m willing to bet my life on it.😊
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I’ve been using AI to solve technical problems with my computer and I’m quite impressed. It seems to have a good command of all the documentation plus all the forum discussions by people who have had similar problems.
I can now see AI will be useful for some applications. AI will put a lot of people in customer support, service, and entertainment positions out of work. I expect and hope AI will impoverish the medical profession, they deserve some serious payback for their covid crimes. AI will be excellent at improving our war fighting effectiveness. It will worsen our lack of a shared reality and the division created by social media.
I don’t think AI will help with our core overshoot issues of energy and minerals scarcity, climate change, ecosystem destruction, the debt bubble, or economic collapse.
Given the high capital and complexity required to build AI, it’s high depreciation, and the high energy required to operate it, I expect AI will have a limited lifetime.
But I’m also the guy who thought it was all downhill from the 2008 GFC, so take my opinion with a grain of salt.
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there’s nothing sexy or communal about AI. We’ll still have plenty of music made by and listened to by humans
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The Ecological Case for the right to abortion:
Abortion bans are unjustifiable when viewed from an ecological perspective.
https://dgrnewsservice.org/featured/an-ecological-basis-for-the-right-to-abortion/
https://overpopulation-project.com/pro-life-anti-choice/
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If this guy had said any of these things about any other other group of people, he would be regarded as a deranged psychopath.
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On X (Twitter) Dr. Makis (an Oncologist) said that almost all Oncologists were aware long ago that there were problems with the nucleocapsid (delivery system?) and the mRNA technology. He said that most of them did not get the shot and spoke up about it’s dangerous properties, But that they are a small group (Oncologists) and hence were easily sidelined by the medical/pharma establishment and the media.
I remember back 10 – 20 years ago when they were doing research on mRNA technology to help people with terminal disease (from missing genes). The research failed with the deaths of the research subjects due to the mRNA. This was the reason Moderna had been working on it for 10 years but still couldn’t get approval when Covid struck (their good fortune). I did not know this was the same technology that had never gotten FDA approval and thought (my big mistake) that they had somehow “fixed” the flaws. They sure did FIX it by having bought off Pharma and the NIH, to my eternal regret.
AJ
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When I reflect on the covid years the thing that stands out for me was the total obsession our leaders had with transfecting everyone, whether they were at risk or not from the disease.
It was super strange because they knew the transfections did not stop transmission (and were never tested for this property).
They also knew from the history of transfection technology that there were significant risks.
Why would you expose people who received zero benefit to these risks?
There might be an explanation for children because getting a vaccine on the schedule for children apparently confers some legal immunity from harms for all age groups. But how can we explain the push to vaccinate 20-50 year-olds who also had near zero risk from the disease?
The only logical explanation is they wanted to eliminate the control group.
If and when RFK releases the vaxxed vs. un-vaxxed data, the crimes will become clear to everyone. If they had gotten rid of the control group, sunlight would not be a threat to their corrupt business.
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Rintrah with a most interesting question.
Are people becoming stupider due to something physical in the environment like covid?
Or are we witnessing behavior changes caused by an evolved emotional response to scarcity?
https://www.rintrah.nl/what-it-would-look-like-if-most-people-had-brain-damage/
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I feel rintrah’s brain damage is on display when you read a lot of his posts. The covid ones are good but most of his others have some real bias issues.
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I agree. He seems to seriously broken on everything other than covid. I believe he was recently committed for mental health problems.
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Exactly.
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First time I was introduced to Deb was a post doom conversation with Dowd. Also heard a couple of audio only interviews with her. She seemed cool as hell.
Sam said it happened two months ago and he just found out today.
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Very cool tiny home in New Zealand.
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Don’t forget your seasoning.
From Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1jrqu4n/dont_forget_your_seasoning/
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This is an excellent ten-minute rant.
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Very nice find.
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Intelligent thought provoking analysis of Trump’s tariff policy.
Dr. Bret Weinstein thinks Trump really is trying to help the US working class. Skip to 17:10.
I don’t have a strong opinion yet, but I lean more to Dr. Helen Thompson’s view that the US is bumping up against debt limits and Trump is simply trying to get money from other countries so he doesn’t have to increase income taxes. This also explains DOGE.
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HHH agrees with Hideaway that things will blow up when we see energy shrink.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-3-2025/#comment-787552
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Rob, I think it’s very possible that something else collapses us first, but if we manage to muddle along for a few more years, perhaps even a decade or so….
However it’s when oil production is in an accelerating decline collapse becomes unavoidable because of the feedback loops, from increased inflation in everything, which is likely to trigger financial collapse due to high interest rates, to reduction of complexity due to businesses going bust all over the place.
Coal and gas can’t make up for the shortfall in oil as they both rely totally upon oil, so both of these are likely to have reductions in production due to oil shortages and lots of businesses providing parts/services/heavy machinery also having immense problems in operating.
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Tim Watkins discusses Trump’s tariffs through the lens of limits to growth and overshoot.
https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/04/05/economic-chemotherapy/
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Right at the end of Watkins post….
“ Largely absent, though – at least for now – is any alternative to the post-neoliberal world that Trump and his backers are forcing into place…“
The reason for this is that there isn’t one, anything less than a globalzed world of all our complex machines means a reduction in complexity and a faster crashing of civilization itself, via less efficient means of production of everything.
One aspect both Watkins and T. Morgan get wrong with a lot of other people in the world is that we can cut back on discretionary spending for essential spending. Sorry it doesn’t and can’t work, it’s all essential to the our global civilization.
Take computer games/machines and all the porn websites and attached computers in the world, plus the amount of bandwidth and data centres set up to accommodate it all. I think we could easily argue it’s all discretionary spending on such things.
Now assume we stop it all by decree as it’s not essential. All the businesses involved from the chip makers to the box makers and software developers, to the data centres and machines within, plus all the workforces of the whole lot, are instantly retired. Sales of chips, computers, parts, all fall off a cliff, making all those businesses that also cater for essential uses likely to go bust unless they raise prices greatly for their remaining businesses.
Catch 22, if everything else that relies upon computers suddenly goes up in cost, relative to everything else in our society, then a lot less of it happen a people/businesses can no longer afford the higher prices. Take the sensors, computer chips and parts of a directional oil rig that need constant replacing because of the heat, pressure, water and steam they are constantly subject to. Suddenly it all becomes a lot more expensive to drill for deep remote oil with directional drilling (the only drilling used in horizontal rigs with fracking).
There will be a myriad of other things none of us can think about that will also be affected. One example.. All those people unemployed by the sudden decree to ban computer games and porn sites and spending, will leave the people behind, which still require food, shelter clothing etc, so they still have a demand on the overall economy, all while the taxes collected from all those businesses and employees goes to zero.
Realistically, all the discretional spending in the economy is just as essential for the economy as a whole and our world economy is based on growth. All the efficiency savings from going to giant 400hp tractors and 400 tonnes mining trucks, allowing a huge excess energy for the rest of humanity, has gone to energy and material spending by those not engaged in mining, farming and energy collection, which has given the ability to grow, and become more highly complex in our ‘gathering’ ability of lower grade fuels/ores while mining the soil more efficiently..
Our economy/civilization relies upon growth, which is growth in energy, materials, population, technology, all of which are complexly interrelated, all before we get to the impossibility of it all on a finite planet with material, energy , climate, pollution and species limits, which are also highly interrelated to every aspect of our civilization.
If we try to deliberately shrink any aspect of our civilization, including population/market size, then the whole lot collapses as it’s always been unsustainable unless growing, such is the monetary system that brought us to where we are.
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I tricked you Rob. Hehe. (sorry, I’m just so bored)
You either didn’t read the comment or I’m actually getting good enough at this that you believed I’m capable of producing that level of genius.
Had to have been Hideaway.
You can delete this comment. Thanks. And I’ll stop horsing around… maybe🤭
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It did remind me very much of Hideaway but I thought I’d be polite and assume you have learned from him as I have. 🙂
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Hi Hideaway,
At this point, it seems to me that, when this system finally breaks, it will come as a relief for many (more than only human beings). In spite of the tales telling us otherwise.
The status quo is not to be encouraged.
Best.
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I think it’s less of deliberately cutting back by central enforcement but more of a market thing – people have to shift their limited cash towards essential spending for survival thus causing discretionary industries/businesses to inevitably contract.
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The youtube bushcraft/camping industry is almost dried up. The OG’s like Joe Robinet, Mike (TA Outdoors), and Shawn (My Self Reliance) are still making good videos, but as is the case with everything in our culture, capitalism has sucked the life out of it. The industry is saturated with no talent ass clowns. Doing childish things like building a Lord of the Rings hobbit house, which usually takes up damn near half the resources of the forest. Promoting products that sponsor their sorry ass video. Or some hot girl in tight spandex chopping wood and trying to make me believe that she’s out there doing everything alone. GTFO!!
IMO, Jon (Lost Lakes) is the best. He started 5 years ago. You can tell there’s nothing phony about his love for nature. The commentary and storytelling are excellent. And his filmmaking skills are the best in the biz.
His wife is great too, but I like the solo trips best. This one was awesome. Jon had me freezing cold last night because of his ability to bring the viewer into his world. (not kidding, had to grab a couple blankets throughout the video).
ps. Charles, don’t you dare type what you’re thinking right now! LOL. I know I shouldn’t be living through these videos. I should be out camping and creating a life of my own… baby steps.😊
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I enjoyed that. He’s the real deal. Canadian too eh.
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Ah ah ah 🙂
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Nate Hagens on why we won’t achieve Net Zero via Technofixes. However, we will achieve Net Zero through depletion.
A few months ago, someone on this server predicted a 50% decline in oil extraction by 2030. Is that enough to rule out RCP 8.5 or will feedback loops take us there?
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Obviously the COVID lockdowns were overdone, but people who wish away all the deaths and hardships viruses cause are cranks.
Humphries seems to be very religious when you dig into her writings, which predisposes people to not believe a wide range of scientific evidence. She also has a fast-talking style (see Rogan podcast) where you can only assume she’s telling the truth as she quickly piles on other claims to what she just said. Gish Gallop is the famous term for that.
Her claim that polio wasn’t such a big deal is missing a lot of context, and empathy for its victims: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/wrong-about-polio-a-review-of-suzanne-humphries-md-and-roman-bystrianyks-dissolving-illusions-part-1-the-short-version/
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@False progress
Your latest post gave me a chuckle.
https://falseprogress.home.blog/2025/01/20/co2-initiates-less-warming-contract-trump-worthless-fish/
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I’m continuing to top up my supplies, trying to look after my health, and will be eating popcorn watching the show with much interest over the next couple weeks.
The best experts disagree on what’s going to happen which means they have no clue.
The aware people know everything is fragile and there are a lot of black swans hovering.
Stocks could continue lower triggering a self-reinforcing 60%-ish correction and global depression. Or stock buy-backs and algos buying the dip could push stocks back up. Flip a coin.
US may attack and crush Iran. Or Iran’s response may be tougher and more damaging to the global economy than expected. Flip a coin.
China may attack Taiwan to take advantage of the US preoccupation in the middle east. Or wait for the US to weaken. Flip a coin.
All of Europe plus some of US leadership may lose their shit when Russia remains firm on peace demands and accelerates advances into Ukraine. Or Europe may stand down because they’re broke. Flip a coin.
Very interesting times.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-3-2025/#comment-787582
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Mixed emotions for me, as a Brit. Pride that we started the industrial revolution, that led millions (billions?) out of poverty…shame that we started the industrial revolution, that has led to the destruction of 2/3rds of all life since I was born. Finally I’ll go with biophilia, all life matters (not just human), and in the end, the fall of industrial civilisation will be a sigh of relief for the rest of the biosphere.
Elsewhere, one of the more thoughtful takes I’ve seen on what Liberation Day intends, means and might actually achieve:
According to Dr. Joeri Schasfoort, host of the Money Macro channel, The Bessent/Miran plan comes in three stages:
“Step 1: Tariff chaos. In this step the administration shows that it means business. It no longer cares about the stock market crashing. It no longer cares about the economy temporarily doing poorly. It just applies a lot of high Tariffs to foes and friends alike to create negotiating leverage…
“Step 2: reciprocal tariffs… This is the long term goal of the tariffs. Or in Bessent’s words: ‘tariffs are designed to address – leveling the playing field such that the international trading system begins to reward ingenuity, security, rule of law, and stability, not wage suppression, currency manipulation, intellectual property theft, non-tariff barriers and draconian regulations…’
“Step 3: a Mar-a-Lago accord… Yes, a Mar-a-Lago accord that will go into the history books to rival the 1944 Bretton Woods agreement, or 1985 Plaza accord in which Japan, the US and European countries came together to collectively raise the values of the Yen, and European currencies versus the Dollar.”
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Thank you. That was very interesting.
It would be good if Dr. Joeri Schasfoort would integrate into his story the implications of falling energy and mineral supply.
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B on the decline of US energy and a nice primer on oil formation and extraction.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/bye-bye-saudi-america
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Now integrate the above prediction by B of US energy decline with HHH’s explanation of the implications:
https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-april-3-2025/#comment-787597
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Debt-based fractional-reserve monetary systems are legalized Ponzi schemes.
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62% of US commercial honeybees died over the last year.
That roughly agrees with the percent of hives that died this winter on the farm I assist.
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I know the disheartening feeling of losing 3 honeybee hives 3 years in a row and then just giving up. One year my hive threw off 2 swarms but then the remaining bees either didn’t have a mated queen or were too few (and had too little of the season left) and didn’t make it past the winter even with me giving them supplemental nutrition. I have plenty of pollinators around (wild bees of multiple species) so that won’t be a problem but it’s tough doing small scale agriculture.
AJ
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I took a beekeeping course by an old-timer. He talked about how easy it used to be. Very little skill and no chemicals required 50 years ago.
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https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/nights/audio/2018982407/new-zealand-s-first-beekeeper
My aunt just wrote a book about new Zealand ‘s first bee keeper for any one that’s interested.
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China just pulled the rug out from under U.S. dreams of high-tech domestic manufacturing.
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/05/china-just-turned-off-u-s-supplies-of-minerals-critical-for-defense-cleantech/
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Super interesting, thanks.
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I think Tariffs are extortionist tactics like the Epstein videos , not long term policies . Everyone knows who financed Trump’s campaigns .
The neoliberal military empire is not going to be abandoned , especially in that military colony called the middle east . The only reason for the exit from Afghanistan is that they did not find big oil wells there .
Syria has already been destroyed and balkanized , with the americans occupying the most oil rich part, east of the euphrates , linked to Iraqi kurdistan where the plundered oil flows through the ceyhan pipeline into otanist Turkey . One of the partners in the plunder of Syria .
Israel has already occupied southern Syria and one of its major aquifers and installed military radars on mount hermon , all this while Al Julani and his gangs massacre the Alawites and let Syria’s entire military infrastructure be demolished
It seems that an agreement was reached on Ukraine and Russia just dumped Syria in exchange for keeping its bases on the coast for its business in West Africa.
Everyone knows that Russia has ties with Israel
The next booty serms to be the offshore gas fields off the coast of Gaza.
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What’s your best guess on what happens with Iran?
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Signs point to a major attack but I don’t know how they will respond because after the fall of Syria they have been isolated. Southern Lebanon is already being heavily bombed despite the false ceasefire because Hezbollah has lost the land supply lines through Syria. Even the militants who have taken over Syria have attacked Lebanese border posts and do nothing about Israel advances in the south. They are working together since 2011.
Don’t be fooled by Erdogan’s statements about Gaza , Israel and Turkey are business partners and the biggest oil supplier to Israel is Aliyev’s regime in Azerbaijan , in fact they collaborated closely against Armenia in Karabakh .
And let’s not talk about the suspicious death of the Iranian president in the alleged helicopter crash right on the border with Azerbaijan after a meeting with Aliyev.
It seems that October 7th was a trap and just like 11S, the orchestrated trigger and excuse to force geopolitical changes
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Thanks. You have good insights. It’s a dark world.
Iran seems a lot stronger than others the US has pummeled. I doubt they’ll go down without a fight.
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Found this comment in a reddit thread about sustainable cultures. Had to edit it to make it legible.
LOL. There is some major confusion going on there. First off, it’s helpful to not see the New World natives as “we”. Just like my King Kong observation with the primitive low-energy monsters meeting up with the civilized high-energy pretty boys (the real monsters) … there’s nothing “we” about it.
And his timeline logic falls into the usual illusion trap. Ya, we might have an example of the majority of humans on one world living in right relationship only a few hundred years ago… but it’s a time machine. They were thousands of years behind the true “we” with technology… agriculture, mining, domestication, separation & superiority worldviews.
And of course there’s the whole sustainability thing. Look close enough at those New World lifestyles and I’m sure there’s nothing sustainable about it. Just less destructive and slower paced than Old World culture.
Here’s a great song that still makes me yearn for the good old days of less progress/technology.
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Planned blackouts are becoming more common − and not having cash on hand could cost you
https://theconversation.com/planned-blackouts-are-becoming-more-common-and-not-having-cash-on-hand-could-cost-you-253319
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Art Berman today on renewable energy and the MPP.
https://www.artberman.com/blog/maximum-power-minimum-awareness/
He concludes the essay with some more profoundly deep spiritual wisdom. 😦
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Was just reading it off another link and thought of you. First part was pretty good and then the descent into woowoo.
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That quote might as well say we are the only species that creates meaning out of nothing in order to hide and deny the bleakness of it all.
LOL. Based on some of his replies to me, I’m certain that Art doesn’t buy into the theory that 100-200kya something unique happened to sapien brains… but maybe subconsciously he’s coming around. Because that quote is a perfect description of the nightmare of full consciousness.
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Chris this appears to me to be really insightful,
“That quote might as well say we are the only species that creates meaning out of nothing in order to hide and deny the bleakness of it all.”
Do any other species try to create ‘meaning’ that we can detect? None that I’ve ever observed. Every other lifeform tries to survive as best it can in the world it finds itself, while allowing instincts of protecting pack, partners, offspring to happen.
I’m a believer in determinism, as it really explains all life, that just exists as best it can (‘best’, as in survival according to genetics and life experiences), all without meaning.
There is no meaning nor purpose to life, it’s just a form of increasing entropy from small pockets of concentrated energy thrown up by the universe at times in the overall complex process of entropy.
We know for certain that within a billion years or so the sun will have enlarged going towards red giant, thus extinguishing all life on Earth in the process, on the only planet we know for certain has life on it. So what was life ‘for’ over the 4 billion plus years it existed here? No reason, or meaning at all, it just formed to exploit an energy gradient, hence increase entropy.
Apart from the people that inhabit this un-denial site, almost no-one wants to accept this reality we find ourselves in, as it goes against everything we’ve been trained to believe, from sociality and religion.
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If you find comfort in assigning a purpose to our existence, or if you like to view our species as having evolved a higher level of capability than other species, then it is true to say that humans are the champions at helping the universe achieve its goal by degrading stored chemical energy faster than any other species.
Photosynthetic cells are of course the champion at degrading solar energy gradients.
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Thanks Hideaway. And I totally agree with you on every word.
You are actually partly responsible for me being able to slowly develop an acceptance for this “live now, love now” bullshit. In a couple of your comments you had emphasized that “life is for living”. Annoyed the hell out of me at first. Especially the fact that it was coming from you. You have way too much denial control to be spouting off that blasphemy.😊
But I chewed on it for a while and along with some other sources… I finally get it. And I also see the absurdity of my point of view… life sucks and I can’t wait till I’m dead. LOL, hard to be productive in that mindset.
Charles and I were talking about this as well. I still have the same views about life… It’s not a gift. It’s not precious. It’s a goddamn nightmare, especially with full consciousness. The dead are much better off than the living, no doubt… but there will be plenty of time to enjoy the eternity of being dead. Might as well make the most of this short-lived meaningless experience called life.
Funny how this obvious common-sense type thinking is not so obvious until you actually start believing it. So ya, life is for living… not doomscrolling. I’m nowhere near full acceptance, but at least I can see it now and have something to strive for. And like I keep telling Charles… baby steps😊
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OK, A fun notion occurred to me. Bear with me a bit.
Occam’s razor would argue that the Trump phenomenon is simply humans being humans, we’re at the end of empire, systems are breaking down, it’s just how things fall apart.
BUT- what if there was an intentional trigger that has been pulled? (conspiracy alert!)
What if- Trump has been played by some cabal that saw a unique opportunity? Consider the following:
The indicators of overshoot, peak oil, etc. have been flashing for years. We have to assume that some segment of the elites “get it”, but are in the same quandary as this small group- what to do? They may be in the halls of power, but see no way to shift the trajectory. Further assume that they have true benevolent intentions, to minimize the trauma that is inevitably coming.
They’ve war gamed various scenarios, they keep quiet counsel, but bide their time for the optimal leverage point. And the comes Trump. Not a huge surprise, he’s the collective expression of a society that is short sighted and nativist, but what to do?
Take his autocratic bent and fixation with tariffs and balance of trade as the leverage point to trigger the end of global alliances and economy. No more WTO, no more NATO, no more USMCA, no more TPP, and each country re-isolates to autarky as best it is able. The U.S. is actually much better set to do this than most, so a win for the home team. Things will be tough, but it still looks like the least bad way to collapse. Maybe best path for minimizing environmental damage.
The simple step to initiate this is to work up bogus tariff calculations for him, convincing him that these are the right numbers to bring about his restoration of American greatness. This shadow group has seen that his followers will go with anything he says, and congress has abdicated all constitutional power, so the ruse will take off and do its work before any corrective action can stop it.
The game is still afoot, and who knows how this chapter will play out, but thought it was fun to imagine a story line that might explain the bizarre numbers he came up with.
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Interesting and plausible speculation. There have to be a few people in power that understand the implications of overshoot.
It’s so hard to determine the cause of actions.
You can also make a plausible argument that the US (and world) is hitting limits to debt growth and has no choice but to pull back from complex global structures.
Ditto for covid. Was the virus engineered at the Wuhan lab with US funding deliberately released and spread around the world via the Military World Games held in Wuhan October 18-27, 2019 to create an excuse to print the trillions that were required to save the banking system that was beginning to fail late 2019? Or did an accident provide a fortuitous excuse to print trillions?
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See new postsConversation
@RetroAgent12
How did we get here? Donald Trump tanked the economy based on a book his son-in-law found on Amazon. He told Jared Kushner to find him an economic advisor—someone who could make him “look tough” and talk tough on China.
Jared searched Amazon, saw a book called Death by China, and thought the title was “cool.” So he cold-called the author, Peter Navarro, and gave him a job. Navarro had no real economic credibility—just an obsession with tariffs and a made-up expert named “Ron Vara” whom he cited repeatedly in his books. Who’s Ron Vara? A fictional economist Navarro invented. It’s an anagram of his own name.
This is not a joke. This is literally how the Trump administration created its trade policy—one that wiped out $11 trillion in wealth, crashed markets, and is nearly sending the world into another Great Depression. A fake expert. A book cover. An Amazon search. That’s it. That’s how we got here.
Saludos el mar
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So….Occams razor- simple stupidity. Figures. Our versions of Idiocracy.
electrolytes- it’s what plants crave!
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Haha!! I hope that’s true.
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That was my initial thought as well, is it true? so I went and checked. This is from 2016 and the Booktopia web page about the book Death By China….
“Publisher”s note – in this book various quotes and viewpoints are attributed to a ”Ron Vara”. Ron Vara is not an actual person, but rather an alias created by Peter Navarro in order to present his views and opinions.“
https://www.booktopia.com.au/death-by-china-greg-autry/book/9780134319032.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqy8XAyfotiYcUiaGE2bBc0ngh_JbJH73PvVCQYJ6xxCXTcPz1b
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Trump has been talking reversing tariffs since the 80’s.
Everything for Trump is a strategy to a deal.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7st2oG5AwU
This man is changing the world for better or worse. He is having more impact than most of all the other lousy politicians and bureaucrats. Personally I am happy with globalism being shafted. Isn’t everything that relisence org and every other relocalise movement has wanted. Yet are they supporting this?
Best thing was removing the TPP and telling the WHO to stick it.
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I think you may have meant “reciprocal” instead of “reversing”?
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Yes and no. By reversing I mean that the other countries would drop their tariffs.
None of this is simple because it ignores other issues such as product safety. Eg: GMO foods are banned for import due to health concerns by some countries. Trump says lower restrictions and eat our crap. The best outcome would be grow healthy food locally and not care about import foods and remove tariffs. Just ensure that they are labelled for the population to make healthy choice.
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“This is literally how the Trump administration created its trade policy—one that wiped out $11 trillion in wealth”.
How much of that $11 trillion dollars was real and how much was fictitious?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_capital
Maybe Trump will be the president who reduces CO2 emissions the most, by causing a global depression. /s
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Nice. I always like the speculation game.
I tried really hard to assume it… but not even in my wildest fantasies.😊
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Speaking of fortuitous coincidences….
Market’s are tanking and 3Kg tubs of ghee just went on sale. 🙂
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Rintrah is lucid and sane today with a deep dive that’s over my pay grade on recent worrying mutations in the covid virus.
Good chance Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche will eventually be vindicated for predicting it was a REALLY bad idea to vaccinate the entire population in the middle of a pandemic with a non-sterilizing vaccine, as we knew from 100 years of pandemic experience that our leaders chose to ignore.
https://www.rintrah.nl/how-sars2-improves-its-polybasic-cleavage-site-to-survive-immunity/
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It is definitely complicated. There are numerous forces at play here. One of the biggest issues is the conversion of IGG3 to 4 which makes the immune system tolerate the virus rather than eliminate. That means that the pressure on the virus to mutate is not high but creates a fantastic breeding ground for it to happen. Sigh…….
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Jimmy Dore nails a core issue that troubles me.
Based on recent family problems, one possible explanation is supporters of government policies view covid divisions as political rather then scientific, and therefore dismiss all evidence that does not align with their beliefs.
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Yeah, you’re spot on. Both my wife & kids view all talk of Covid/shots and their harm as political and will not discuss it.
AJ
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It’s understandable because:
1) Someone who does zero research or thinking to fact check what our leaders, and family doctors, and mainstream news say will see no problems.
2) Believing the dissidents is painful because it casts a very bad light on trusted institutions.
3) Believing the dissidents is scary because it leads to worry about possible harms to self.
4) In the early days, covid skeptics got associated with TDS, and now that Trump is back in power, those feelings have returned.
5) There are some unscientific people in the covid skeptic camp, like the no virus people, and the Universal Extinction Plan (UEP) people.
6) Varki’s MORT.
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Rob, exactly the same set of reasoning, your 6 points above, goes to explain the narrative that renewables/nuclear will save us from climate change, or we can ban chemicals and go organic/regenerative, permaculture, syntropic farming to save ‘nature’.
The whole lot of what appears to be going wrong in the world, as in not making sense, are just symptoms of our massive overshoot reaching limits of planet Earth, with the feedback loops hitting us from all angles in very mysterious (to us) ways. I expect more absurdity as we head into collapse on every front, totally unpredictable, by a chaotic self adapting system in decline before the collapse phase (or perhaps causing it!!).
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Yes, but healthcare is in a different bucket than our overshoot problems.
Healthcare is not like climate change or peak oil or peak debt that have no good path.
There is no good reason for our healthcare system to be doing such a poor job at optimizing human health.
For example, to optimize your health during covid you needed to do exactly the opposite of every single thing our experts recommended. That’s not acceptable or forgivable.
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Rob, you seem to have a belief that ‘health’ as portrayed by the western medicine system is about helping humans and not the practitioners within the industry, how quaint…
We’ve accepted and relied upon the western health care system for over 100 years. All the people at the top of this industry are those that accept and work towards the notion of everything within ‘mainstream’ thinking and way of doing research, studies etc is good, while all alternative approaches are bad/poor/quackery.
When I did a lot of research into healthcare back 20-30 years ago (spent years down that rabbit hole), I found so much of ‘alternatives’ that were in fact used by mainstream doctors, but always on the quiet. I convinced my own GP that I knew outside of his doctoring as well, about a few different ‘alternatives’ that were a no-no in mainstream. I convinced him with papers and research on different aspects to do with real health. He ended up being hounded/forced into taking early retirement by his own practice by doctors that were 100% mainstream thinking.
I once spoke to the Secretary of the International Heart Research Foundation about CoQ10, in a conversation where I’d done mountains of research, he couldn’t speak highly enough about taking it regularly, including himself and all colleagues taking it for all sorts of proven benefits from research done around the world. At the end of the conversation he thanked me for the interest and said it’s hard to get cardiologists to understand the importance of this, right as he was saying goodbye (it was a phone call). I never claimed to be a cardiologist, but just spoke like one with my understanding of the topic because of my research.
However have I ever seen him promote it publicly? No never. After this time, the pharmaceutical companies did extensive biased research to discredit CoQ10’s use, while doing their own research in trying to find a patentable product that mimicked CoQ10 (they failed, despite spending vast sums).
Changing tack, who do the politicians put in charge of ‘health’ policy and take health advice from? People who have made it to the top of the tree in their fields, professors of medicines from different universities, or medical associations. What advice are they, who are often in revolving doors with pharmaceutical companies or medical equipment providers etc, going to give the politicians? Advice that conforms to the mainstream way of doing things.
Upton Sinclair all over….”It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it”..
In this country we had 2 advices about masks early in Covid. Initially when masks were in short supply, the official advice from the chief health officer, was that masks wouldn’t protect anyone and were needed by surgeons/surgery staff, so everyone should not panic buy them, leaving shortages for medical professionals. This was fully supported by the politicians who had put these ‘experts’ in power.
Fast forward a couple of months, and once there were plenty of masks in the country, suddenly the ‘advice’ about wearing masks changed 180 degrees, you couldn’t go to a supermarket unless wearing a mask for protection. I was carefully looking for the reasoning given for the 180 degree change in position, there was none ever given. Everyone just knew that they had to lie to have enough masks for hospitals.
It’s clear evidence they, as in nearly everyone is prepared to lie about what they perceive as helping in an ’emergency’ situation and counted as acceptable if it gets the job done. If they are prepared to lie this blatantly about masks, why wouldn’t they lie about MRNA, or Covid source, or general health if it keeps them well paid in positions of influence??
Which brings me to this part of you reply above…. “There is no good reason for our healthcare system to be doing such a poor job at optimizing human health.“
If everyone ate a healthy diet, kept weight down with regular exercise etc, it would turn our entire civilization on it’s head.
Firstly it would probably mean abandoning grain farms, which would put so many relying on that industry out of work.
Secondly we couldn’t feed the huge population we have in cities, which would make politicians unpopular very quickly.
Thirdly most medical professionals would not be needed, so there goes the prestige and income of those now involved. There is more than likely a fourthly, fifthly and sixthly etc….
What I’m getting at overall is that it’s all part of the complexity of our modern civilization, that has reinforced every aspect that promotes overall civilization growth as a self adapting system.
We have had the ‘social construction of reality’ working against our individual best interests for thousands of years, all with reinforcing feedback loops to promote every area of ‘expertise’.
The social construction of reality is a sociology term, that when I first heard of it I though what a load of bullshit, until I observed over time how it kept happening. I now understand it’s part of the increasing complexity of our civilization which is enacted to solve perceived problems (as per Tainter’s observations of past civilizations).
To me it’s very, very tied up in our story of civilization and the following collapse. Those in charge of every area of ‘expertise’ live off the existing system and inherently understand that rocking the boat of consensus thought in their area, will mean they are ‘out’, so only research whatever confirms their position, rules on anything, as in the Upton Sinclair approach. Hence why I think it’s not really different to the other aspects of overall denial, whether about renewables, farming, climate or any other aspect of modern civilization..
Sorry about the long post, but it’s complex …..
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I understand and agree with most of the why’s you provided however I think you are making excuses for something that should perform much better than it does.
We do not and would not tolerate the same level of incompetence and poor performance in other professions that our well being depends on like building design, bridge design, airplane design and operation, car safety and reliability, etc. etc.
Healthcare is a unique disgrace.
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Rob, …”Healthcare is a unique disgrace.“
That’s not the general perception though. How many people do you know that have had life saving operations or medications? I wouldn’t be alive if I hadn’t had a life saving appendectomy around the time I was looking into ‘health’ (well the way they treated such conditions at the time, here). Likewise for many people I know.
Everyone can point to someone that has had lifesaving heart surgery or high level antibiotics that save someone from an infection that could have killed them, so the general perception is the health care industry is good.
That translates to those at the top as being in positions of authority, to be trusted, put up on a pedestal of ‘goodness’ as they save lives, etc, yet they are just human like everyone else.
At the top, once a decision is made it is defended at all costs until overwhelming evidence of harm, not just a little bit.
Think of the car recalls because the engineers got it wrong. They are not recalled straightaway, there is always a lag and defense of the vehicle first as driver error or some such, until the evidence is overwhelming.
If a bridge fails, it is immediately the engineers or builders fault, and watch each group try and blame the other initially, always defending their position.
In the social construction of reality within the engineering fields, there has been a tendency towards excellence as can be easily seen failing with any large bridge or building collapse/failure, with fingers directly pointed at the engineering if that’s at fault. It’s cut and dried.
In health, it is an overall part of total complexity of the body in relation to people, unlike the more simplistic bridge, car or building, and sure health experts have been shown to fail drastically, with things like with thalidomide, which was also initially denied and/or blamed on something else.
Perhaps with time MRNA and all aspects of Covid response will be held to ridicule, if they can’t be swept under the carpet, which is the current attempt.
However because so many politicians went along with everything Covid, as told to them by the experts, there is great reluctance to research it thoroughly. Likewise for food pyramids and general health. People in general don’t want to be told that everything they have been doing for the last XX decades has been incorrect, so gaining funds to research ‘health’ properly is not in the current systems general interest.
I think you have too many expectations about health in general, especially with the way it’s been set up over the last few hundred years. I see it as just another industry that fights for it’s existence (as in portion of the magic money tree), and will fight tooth an nail to keep it’s relevance by always pointing to the good, which is all that most people want to see. In listening to people that have never studied anything about food, health, fitness, etc, all I keep hearing is that doctors, hospitals, drugs are too expensive and should be made cheaper.
Only those that have really researched it from their own interest seem to come to the conclusion that there is a lot wrong with the system..
To the quote The Big short, truth is like poetry and most people hate fu….. poetry….
Finding the truth takes a lot of research, which most people do not have the time or inclination to do, so allow the status quo to remain…
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You are much more tolerant of incompetence and corruption than I am.
A block of people from the left and right that share my views united under the banner of MAHA and helped to elect Trump in exchange for RFK being put in charge of cleaning up the health system.
Fingers crossed RFK makes some progress and other countries like Canada follow.
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Rob…… “You are much more tolerant of incompetence and corruption than I am.“
Not sure if tolerant is the correct word. I’m certainly aware, and have been for a long time. It’s more than likely a lot more widespread than you expect, with a lot trending towards incompetent corruption.
I once caused the government to spend more than $25M they never intended to spend, because I caught the highest levels of the public service and govt ministers in corruption/incompetence, from a position of power myself.
While never lying to the community over this issue outright, they certainly hid lots of very relevant information about spending they were making all sorts of promises about. Information like the community didn’t qualify for all the spending because of these rules over here (well hidden)..
The whole concept was to promise the community the world and get the community to close down some aspects in preparation for the new big build. Once closed down bring out the hidden reason of, sorry you don’t qualify because of these old rules over here…
Did they deliberately withhold those other rules (corruption) or did they not know about them (incompetence), no-one will ever know, but I had every reason to expect the former with a lot of the latter in trying to cover themselves..
One small aspect of the entire situation was when I attended a meeting which included ministers of govt and several heads of different govt departments, where, to a select group of people in positions of power, all sorts of promises were made, all carefully written down by a couple of secretaries. A few weeks later I asked for a copy of the minutes as I hadn’t received any, and was told there were none. I smelt a rat right away…
I’m not going into the whole situation, but I was put under immense pressure to sign some documents many months later about all sorts of stuff that we were told had been agree to in prior meetings, yet I later discovered no such agreements had been made. I never signed when under a lot of pressure, which left those that desperately requiring my signature in very vulnerable positions. They basically spent the money on the community as they had delivered my agreement to those at the highest level of govt, with my name on paperwork, prior to the pressure meeting for my signature ever happening..
At the time it reminded my of something I read in R. Cialdini’s book Influence, about how people once they make a decision about something, and commit to it, become a lot more certain about the outcome than they were before they committed themselves, even though nothing has changed other than their commitment.
Corruption/incompetence is far more wide spread than most of us think. We can all see it clearly in the promises of renewables/nuclear taking over from fossil fuels as the numbers clearly don’t add up. Why don’t those writing the EROEI type reports find this, is it incompetence in excluding the large parts of energy going into the manufacture of renewables/nuclear or is it deliberate corruption?
More likely it’s a combination along with acceptance of what’s used in that field so the writers of every new report get kudos and to keep their jobs by showing the rosy future that is expected..
Notice where the most incompetence/corruption resides, it’s in the areas where it’s a highly complex combination of factors like health, climate, resource depletion, pollution, natural systems, in other words all dealing with complex systems, it’s not as easy to do in simpler systems like engineered structures, where cause/effect is much more visible.
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Interesting story. I think a lot of people believe wrong things not because they are corrupt or incompetent but because the reality is too unpleasant and their brain blocks it. Green transitions and climate change fixes are common examples. I imagine for the typical health minister or family doctor, mRNA transfections fall in the same category. The implications of the truth are too unpleasant for most brains to accept.
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Rob, ….”The implications of the truth are too unpleasant for most brains to accept.“
Exactly, and it extends to people doing the wrong thing either due to incompetence or corruption, they believe their own truth, which discounts both those possibilities, living in their own world (mind) of what’s right and good for the whole of society.
About once a week I have a conversation with some god botherers (I’m sure they are trying to convert me LOL), they believe their evidence of god creating everything is more relevant and probable than evolution, thinking the theory of evolution is bunk and an invisible overseer of the entire universe is far more likely than any other possibility. They just don’t understand science, never did any higher education, nor do they wish to get themselves educated in any of it.
So many people deny what they believe in is nonsense, but just as common is so many people denying what they are doing for the greater good is corruption or incompetence, in the vast variety of complex fields..
I better let you get some sleep as it’s early evening here, and very late at night there according to wordpress time stamps..
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Great thread!
Keep preachin’ Hideaway… you’re on fire tonight🔥🔥
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As an anesthesiologist I would say that moderne healthcare is way too complex. Something is cost effective and something is quackery. Most is somewhere inbetween. Eg. Antibiotics works, anesthesia works, simple low-tech surgery works, insulin works, opioids works, ASA works, MMR-vaccine works. I have had appendectomy it can be done easy and with minimal carbon footprint. A general surgeon, open surgery, low tech anesthesia and multiple use equipment. Its interesting that the cost of extending average life expectancy from 85 to 86 approaches infinity. It looks like lifexpectancy falls when a country use more than 5000 dollars per person. The reason is that inequality rises.
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Looks like Mike Roberts has hopped on the AI assistance train. Just an educated guess, considering I read all of his post’s. His article today is different. (not in a good or bad way, just different formatting).
I liked it. Feels like I could send this to a couple of my clueless moron friends, and they might be able to grasp it. CampbellS, ditto for your LinkedIn buddies😊.
Not gonna leave the link here because it usually doesn’t show up. If you want to read it, just search for his blog titled: A Glimpse of Reality – Trying to shed light on what’s real and what isn’t
(article title – The Changing Meaning of Words)
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No AI for me, Chris. Slowly getting to grips with WordPress formatting, though I doubt I’ll ever master it.
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Sorry Mike, my bad.
Guarantee it won’t be the last time I wrongfully accuse someone of it. LOL, and this just the reading side of it. Eventually I expect AI to make me suspicious of everything.🤪
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I liked that post and you’re right it’s perfect for the LinkedIn technooptimistic hopiocrats. 🙏
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Very good rant today by Col. Larry Wilkerson.
I’ve followed Wilkerson for at least a couple years and have watched him slowly lose his shit as he struggles to make sense of the incompetence and insanity of western leaders.
This is probably a consequence of Wilkerson being aware of much in the world except the end of growth and the implications of overshoot.
Iranian Nima Alkhorshid, who lives in Brazil, has become my favorite interviewer. He’s an engineer, has a good grasp of what’s going on in the world (except maybe overshoot on which he is silent), hides his political beliefs, and lets his guests speak until they finish, at which point he has another intelligent question ready.
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Wow, I was not aware that the date of event 201 coincided with the World Military Games in Wuhan.
Many believe the military games were responsible for spreading covid around the world.
When were the World Military Games held in Wuhan?
When did event 201 take place?
What was unique about New York city in the early days of covid?
Was there anything unusual happening in financial markets in the last half of 2019?
When did Quantitative Easing begin in response to covid, and what was happening in the financial market just prior?
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Sabine reviews a paper that suggests that AIs are not remotely conscious.
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An interesting film about the water situation in the Southwest United States.
The footage is old but quite informative
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Trump is severely restricting global trade with his tariffs and America first policy.
This is exactly what the Green Party wanted in the 1970s.
Grassroots movement and decentralization. Less CO2.
Local food production, no travel and eleminatin of all superfluous frills!
Today’s wealth-starved Greens hate that. They want to maintain their
pseudo-sustainable overconsumption.
And rightly so, because industrial civilization must grow or die.
Now the dominoes are falling! Exciting times!
Saludos
el mar
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LOL. Who knew?
On actions that really matter Trump’s the greenest president ever!
Maybe he’ll do something about over population by triggering WWIII??
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A bunch of Crazy Narcissists (Republicans) drove out a bunch of Corrupt Ideologues (Democrats.
= Catch 22
Saludos
el mar
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I just hope WWIII doesn’t go nuclear.
Trump threatens TSMC with 100% Tariffs.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-told-tsmc-it-would-pay-100-tax-if-it-doesnt-build-us-2025-04-09/
It turns out that TSMC does have a semiconductor plant in the US. It is in Arizona, a very water-stressed state. And semiconductor plants are very water-intensive. Draw your own conclusions.
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I liked this presentation by Olivier Hamant (in the first hour and such):
It presents the idea that evolution favored robustness over performance in biological systems, because of the necessity to handle fluctuations. Olivier argues the focus on robustness in detriment to performance is a strategy worthy to be adopted in these times of planetary limits. The talk references several research results from the field of biology.
I particularly liked the slides with trees on a slope showing the change of behavior from competition to cooperation when resources get scarce:
And the speaker is a french researcher, with an accent I can easily comprehend 🙂 I found another, shorter presentation of him in english explicitly mentioning the Meadows report. The rest seems to be in french:
This movement away from performance has already started: I feel we are living through an inversion of values and a profound cultural change, for the better (in terms of overall well-being).
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HHH on the difficulty of changing the global monetary system.
https://peakoilbarrel.com/januarys-us-oil-production-drops-big/#comment-787679
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I am not knowledgeable enough. But I don’t understand any of this.
Money is mostly owed to rich people, isn’t it? Why not let them accept they will be reimbursed with negative interest rates, or later or not at all. Choose. Because that’s reality. (who needs all this stuff/control anyway, especially to be happy?)
And change the system for any new loan, so that growth is not a prerequisite.
It seems to me, it all boils down to greed and not really necessity.
The problem is upside down: start from reality and see what’s feasible, instead of starting from illusionary promises and try to bend reality.
And war is not really an option to get your money back at this point. Because wars seems to be increasingly costly and reap increasingly small benefits, if any. Those who will wage them, will learn at their expense.
That’s my limited understanding. 🙂
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Money is a concept used for trade, that comes out of thin air, yet everyone treats it as ‘real’ especially for everyday expenses. If you don’t have money to pay for your taxes then govts, courts will come after your assets and make you poor without any assets.
None of us can survive in today’s world without money to pay for things. Yet it’s all come out of thin air when lent into existence.
All those euro dollars that HHH keeps talking about, were created by European Banks out of thin air, a book entry as an asset while the money deposited into the loan account is a liability. In other words the person/company that has the new liability also has a new say $1m deposited into their account, that they can spend, most likely on what ever the bank now has a mortgage over (property).
Now if the bank is not repaid the loan over time, plus interest, the bank is said to have “lost” a large amount, yet they don’t owe the money lent out to anyone , it was created out of thin air.
We humans have placed rules on how banks account for the new loans and repayments, but it’s all just a set of rules, none of it is real. The rules are there to keep the system going. There is no practical reason why the world’s banks as a whole cannot change the rules so that only 90% of the loan has to be repaid, except we’d get massive inflation as people would instantly have 10% more cash to spend they didn’t have to repay, without the corresponding increase in actual resources, goods, services etc.
None of the ‘new’ thoughts or constructs about money can possibly work in our existing system of civilization. The whole notion of taking from the rich for more equitable distribution, can’t work as the ‘rich’ have most of their assets in paper wealth, it’s not a drag on the resources and energy of the real economy.
Give the poor a ‘lot’ of extra money after taking a ‘lot’ from the rich, creates instant inflation as the resources and energy to make all the goods that the ‘poor’ would go out and buy do not exist. It would require massive growth in goods, services, energy and environmental degradation for the poor to be a lot better off.
It all comes back to the simple model of our complex system of civilization. We need to grow, population/market, energy use, resource use to the detriment of the natural world for civilization itself to survive. The growth begets efficiency gains in some very important areas that offsets the lower grades of minerals, metals, food and energy gained from the natural world, while saving the use of materials by concentrating wealth.
It’s been the same throughout history with every civilization that has existed, until they collapsed.
Look at our current civilizations history over the last 200 years, we’ve had an abundance of increasing energy when there was enough excess energy creating many more goods, resources, food as efficiency gains were also vastly increasing, as we opened up all the worlds easy to get resources. We had an explosion of the population as well, which created markets for larger factories able to create much more from the plentiful energy and high grade resources , along with technical advances that boosted food yields.
Since the end of the end of the huge growth spurt of oil growth in the late ’60’s early ’70’s, the concentration of wealth creating greater inequality has happened, as it saved resources overall. All the easy technical/efficiency gains were used up. More of existing resources were spent on resources, minerals and food gathering, all which required greater complexity to continue happening at a cheap enough price to make a profit.
Considering all past civilizations have used money in pretty much the same way, of devaluing it’s worth over time as they headed towards collapse, with the devaluation coming after maximum gains of high grade resources and overall growth, as in they met their limits, it’s possible that civilization itself is just a natural physical process that humanity goes through always with exactly the same outcome at the end…
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Hi Hideaway,
If you have got some time, let me know what you think of Olivier Hamant presentation, I shared up there.
Thanks.
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Hi Charles, I watched a lot of this last night, and just rewatched a lot of it because he makes a lot of excellent points.
The robustness of less efficient systems is something I’ve been looking at increasingly. I’m well aware that as we increase complexity to become more efficient, as in using more ‘technology’, the system becomes more brittle or fragile in his words.
I find this in every day life when some modern technology to make life easier for someone, usually a corporation, suddenly fails, and the entire system comes to a stop.
We’ve had this in the local supermarket that went to all interactive computer registers, where all the sales get tallied directly to the ordering, recording every transaction exactly. However when the power fails due to storms or whatever, the store can’t sell you anything even for cash, as their system totally relies upon electricity to flow or they have no idea what to re-order from sales.
The call of the cornucopians is we need to become more efficient, as we ‘waste’ so much energy on irrelevant non essentials, which the never realise might be important to the overall system. The example of ‘gaming computers’ that I’ve given before helping overall sales of high end chips, might seem a ‘waste’, yet the business making those chips would probably go out of business if the extra sales to ‘gaming’ didn’t exist or was banned.
Increased complexity always comes at a cost, possibly of inefficiencies in a self adapting system, for reasons we can’t always immediately identify. Plants using only 1% of sunlight seems very inefficient, yet it is the basis of many highly complex ecosystems that might have abrupt changes if a plant came along with 2% efficiency, but lost robustness in the process.
the natural world has likely experimented with what works through evolution for 4 billion years, so has ejected 99% of all species that ever existed as they were not robust enough to stand (withstand) the test of time.
All our modern human systems are a couple of hundred years old, totally based on resources that we will not have access to in a short period of time.
There is no robustness in any part of the modern world, yet we are forced by ‘society’ to live in it with zero choice of opting for a different lifestyle, as all the land we could occupy ‘belongs’ to someone else and the govt will insist on taxes for the privilege of us living there…
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Thank you for taking the time to listen to Olivier Hamant. I am glad you liked it. I find his talks fascinating. I also get the feeling, he is trying not to frighten his audience, while probably well aware of the worst case scenarios of collapse.
I think the idea of robustness (and cooperation, and suboptimality and heterogeneity, etc…) is still slowly making its way in some fringes of society. Olivier presented some examples in the direction: several variety of wheat in 40% of fields in France instead of monoculture, simple bricks instead of high-tech building material, repair workshops, a french company which repairs electronic… These are mostly small steps and still not mainstream, but I find the recognition of the need to inverse values encouraging.
Yes, that is true. But, if you are decided, there are still ways to go quite a long way. And there are many stops in between. (At least, in France)
There are initiatives, associations, churches, public spaces, collective housing, even ZADs 🙂 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_to_Defend… You don’t necessarily have to own a plot to tend to it.
Cheers.
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“The call of the cornucopians is we need to become more efficient, as we ‘waste’ so much energy on irrelevant non essentials, which the never realise might be important to the overall system”
Those don’t sound like cornucopians to me. To me, cornucopians are people who believe there are no limits to energy consumption or there are limits, but we are no where close to them. People talking about waste in the system seem more like conservationists. Otherwise, I agree with most of the post.
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The problem is how to start building an alternative monetary system that can takeover when the current one crashes. People have already proposed alternatives. Here is one https://positivemoney.org/.
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Yes, indeed.
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Got this from megacancer. LOL, maybe these clips impress the normies as well… but we doomers love this stuff. I get hypnotized and go through the full gamut of emotions. Laughing at the absurdity, disgusted by the sheer volume of junk, impressed by the mass scale and engineering involved.
Reminds me of the claw machine game where you can never get the toy. But this claw operator is an expert at picking up the toys. 4:12 is my favorite shot. Looks like the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark when the Ark of the Covenant is put in that huge warehouse with the never-ending crates. And there’s something very eerie about not seeing any humans involved… like the factory is alive or something. A superorganism. LOL.
There’s no voice, but it’s worth watching with CC turned on for some narration.
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Thank you Chris for sharing that, what a representation of our Mordor economy and headlong race into Mount Doom! Decades ago I probably would have reacted with awe at how humans have engineered all systems but now I feel nothing but desperation knowing this level of complexity cannot and must not continue. Same feelings as you, bro and you’re so right, it seems that doomers do love watching this kind of thing for some reason, maybe it’s the same genetic tendency that makes people addicted to roller coasters–the anticipation of the fall after reaching a great height gives life some excitement I guess. Or maybe it’s more like the thrill of watching a horror film, you can’t watch because you know you’ll be scared witless and sleepless but you still do because it’s so tempting to see the depravity and gore. I don’t know. I have never been a fan of either so perhaps for me it’s like attending an open coffin wake, trying to pay respect to what allowed us to live as we do, absorbing emotions spanning gratitude and remorse, and then finding the courage to walk away, let go, and let be, knowing that all will be buried together. Whether or not we will have peace is something we may still have grace to receive.
Namaste, friend.
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Good onya to the faithful comrade here who has sponsored Panopticon’s Climate and Economy for the rest of April and May with a shout-out for Rob’s un-denial blog. We may be preaching to the converted but the gospel of doom will not be silenced!
I trust all are sailing well and finding safe harbour in these tempestuous waters.
I have cancelled my trip to the US at the last minute due to the increasing uncertainties just trying to get into the country and the general craziness emanating from that vortex of impending implosion. I send best wishes and commiseration to all friends here who are living in the States, may these days pass quickly and you and your families are kept safe and well.
Namaste, friends.
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Thanks for checking in Gaia. I’m sorry you had to cancel your visit with your father. The US does feel very unstable.
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Thanks for the info about Panopticon’s donor. That’s awesome! Took me a couple minutes to figure out what you were saying. LOL, but then I found this:
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Thank you to the anonymous donor at Panopticon’s Climate and Economy.
It was very kind of you to promote un-Denial.
For those who do not know, I have a history with Panopticon. I used to hang out with him and the late Gail Zawacki in a private group on Facebook. Together they encouraged me to start un-Denial which I probably would not have done without their motivation.
I started un-Denial with a pseudonym but they pressured me to stand up and use my real name.
Later, when Panopticon started his own blog, he used a pseudonym because he didn’t want to damage relationships with his neighbors.
Good thing I’m a loner. 🙂
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One of the headlines on climate and economy
It is warmer in Nuuk than in Chicago right now.
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Hello Stellar,
Thank you for your dedication to keeping us abreast of topical news and information. Not meaning to be a sticky-beak (Aussie lingo for someone being nosey) but I did wonder after your last post if you were in Chicagoland as that’s where I would have been going to visit my father-in-law. I spent my early childhood and first years of Uni there, so I well know how cold it can be even through late April. I’m really beginning to understand the saying that you can never really go back to a place after being away so long; everything and I have changed and there’s no there there anymore for me.
Anyway, you keep on keeping on and stay safe and well. I know you’re amongst the youngest in this group (if not the youngest) and it’s a joy and inspiration to know you’re on-board and aware. I admire your bravery to face the world as it is and wish you and your family all the best.
Namaste.
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Yes, I am from Chicagoland. The past few days have been rather cold, but it has been oscillating quite wildly for the past several weeks.
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Hey Stellar,
That’s pretty cool. In an alternate universe we could have been neighbours now! I grew up in Elmhurst and my husband is from Downers Grove. If you happen to be in those suburbs now that would really be a woo coincidence! All the best to you and your family.
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Curiosity killed the cat I know but what was your original pseudonym, Rob? I am really being a sticky-beak today with my queries! But I guess that’s a reverse reveal as we already know who you are! I did own up to my own name here once or twice but I think even I wouldn’t recognise it as Gaia suits me to a tee.
I’ll give Panopticon much credit–when you give a donation he does reply personally and gives his real name. I am not his sponsor for the month in case you’re wondering. But it does bring me to ask, would you like some monetary support to keep this site going? I remember you once said it was nominal but still, year after year does add up and I am sure many here would be happy to add to your sardine stash. Insert Smiley face. (Gaia is rather hopeless with the nuances of generating emoticons even though I know Charles gave us a thorough tutorial on that way back. And I think you all should be grateful that I am deficient, can you just imagine me communicating with emoticons, it could be a whole run-on paragraph of them!)
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Gaia, I honestly don’t remember what pseudonym I used. It might have been Kye Bay, which is where I live.
Thank you for the kind offer to support the cost of this site but I’m currently able to afford the annual $100 fee.
I am however a cheap bastard and subscribe to the bare minimum that WordPress offers. There are some extra cost features that might be of interest to un-Denial readers such as an improved commenting system, and possibly the ability to post videos (rather than just YouTube links).
If enough of you want an improved commenting system (which we’d need to research to confirm it is indeed better) then I’d be willing to split the extra cost of this feature with a few of you.
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Well, funny you should mention that as just today I got a message from my friend (and practically neighbour as we live 25 minutes apart in all of this planet, how lucky and cool is that?) David who visits this site and told me he can’t comment because WordPress doesn’t allow it for some reason, although in the past he has been able to (otherwise we would have never met). And from time to time, other here bemoan the few glitches we have already had, and especially that most dreaded of misfortunes of composing a long response only to have it disappeared into the ether, argh! I usually copy my thesis length replies from a word document having experienced that one too many times myself. So we probably are missing out on more eager beavers ready to take the dive and jump on the un-denial train (what a mix-up of metaphors) and if there is a possibility to reach out to more people at this time, I think we should seriously do it. I for one cannot express enough in words (and that’s saying something!) how much this space means to me as a morale boost and sanctuary for the spirit. I know most of us feel the same and thus this site has fulfilled one of your life goals Rob, that is to relieve suffering. Thank you and bless you for making it happen.
I wouldn’t be anywhere near the person to test the optimisation of the hopefully improved commenting system but count me in as a contributor if you decide to go ahead and upgrade.
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I don’t know why David is having problems posting comments. No one else is reporting similar problems.
I checked the settings and I’ve got everything dialed down as loose as I can make it.
You do not need to provide a name or email, you do not need to be logged into WordPress, and I’m not blocking any David’s. All I can suggest is David try again. He’s welcome to post null messages like “test” and I’ll delete them later. I suppose it might be a browser problem. He could check his security settings or try a different browser.
I’ll do some research to see is the extra cost commenting system is actually better.
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