By Gaia Gardener: On Growing Coffee

Thank you to Gaia for contributing this essay on her experience with growing coffee in Australia, and my apologies for the delay in posting. I have been procrastinating everything in my life of late, I’m sorry.

When I think about end of growth implications, and the coming scarcity of things we now take for granted, coffee is at the top of my list of things I will miss. My favorite moment of every day is the first sip of the triple espresso Americano I make every morning.

Preptip:

We cannot grow coffee here in Canada and someday I will probably have to make do without. As a hedge against inflation, and as a buffer for the early days when supply will likely be intermittent or unaffordable, I stock a fair amount of coffee.

I have learned that unopened roasted beans taste fine well past their best-by date. I have not yet done enough tests to know how much past the best-by date is ok, but I currently assume at least 2 years.

I consume 50 g per day which is 1 Kg every 20 days. When scarcity arrives, I will reduce my consumption in half to double the duration, and then halve it again if necessary. I stock about 20 Kg of roasted beans, plus 10 Kg of canned ground coffee which has a longer shelf-life, plus 6 Kg of instant coffee which has an infinite shelf-life.

When my preferred source of caffeine is no longer available, I will switch to black tea, which I also stock in large quantities because it has an excellent shelf-life, and is still very inexpensive.

One of my projects this year at the farm I assist is to construct a shipping container size dehydrator which we plan to use initially for making tea from black current leaves. Apparently it’s a tasty healthy tea, but alas has no caffeine.

As the end of growth approaches we know there will be price inflation for necessities. The price of all food has increased a lot in Canada over the last few years, but coffee stands out as one of the worst. I buy the cheapest espresso beans available in my community and the price has almost doubled over the last 4 years from $14/Kg in 2021 to $22/Kg today.

Why are coffee prices increasing?

Grok: Coffee prices are increasing due to a combination of environmental, economic, and geopolitical factors affecting global supply and demand. Severe weather events, particularly in major coffee-producing countries like Brazil and Vietnam, have significantly reduced crop yields. Brazil, the world’s largest coffee producer, has faced droughts, frosts, and excessive rains, leading to lower arabica bean production. Similarly, Vietnam, a key supplier of robusta beans, has experienced droughts followed by flooding, cutting output. These disruptions have tightened global coffee supplies, with some estimates suggesting deficits for multiple consecutive years.

Rising global demand is also a factor, as coffee consumption grows in markets like China and India, alongside steady demand in traditional markets like the U.S. and Europe. This imbalance between shrinking supply and growing demand has driven wholesale prices up, with arabica beans surpassing $4 per pound in early 2025, a level not seen in decades.

I’m sure printing trillions of dollars to force a little more growth from lethargic energy supplies, while using an engineered virus as an excuse, probably also has something to do with the price increases.

Also, after reading Gaia’s essay, it’s clear there is a lot of human and fossil energy required to produce coffee, which no doubt has also contributed to the price increase.

Now over to Gaia…

Some days I am just so disheartened by what is happening on our planet on all fronts, but yet we must bear it and bear witness to the fullness of what we as a species have wrought. That is taking more courage than I ever believed I could have, but yet I must try and it certainly is a comfort to have friends on your site who are sharing similarly. I am finding great joy in communing with nature, especially through tending food plants and feeling so much gratitude for their sustenance for body and spirit. I have been wanting to share snapshots in picture and words of my experience on the land to add to the collective wonder and appreciation of so many others’ homesteading stories and images, including your fulfilling season at the farm. I think I can manage in bite-sized snippets, and if a picture can tell a thousand words, then I should be out of business sooner or later!

I think you Rob are the number one coffee addict that I know and definitely the most prepared for when the SHTF. I think you could open SHTF Cafe at the End of the World, it only needs one table and chair just for you! In honour of your habit, these are the very first photos I will share relating to our property and lifestyle. You may refer back to the post where I described in some detail (and you thought it was TMI until I clarified a very critical point!) how I successfully processed coffee from bush to bean–for possibly the first and last time as it took quite a bit of effort for not very many cups of the finished drink, which I don’t even imbibe! I do drink decaf but there is no feasible home method for that, unfortunately. I cannot say how my single estate grown coffee tastes, but it did smell as heavenly as anything when I was roasting the beans, so at least that is something.

Coffee in Flower

The photo does not depict the intoxicatingly sweet fragrance from these flowers, just divine! This particular plant is a prostrate form and the flowers are layered on long branches, very attractive.

Ripe Coffee Berries

Here is the same plant about nine months later, with the berries finally ripe. Our property is located in highland tropics and the cooler climate which slows ripening of the fruit is supposed to produce a more complex flavour profile. I enjoy eating some of the red berries, the scant pulp has an appreciable sweetness, somewhat caramel-like, and the red skins which are loaded with antioxidants taste a bit like raw green beans, not unpleasant at all.

Berries and Squeezed Beans

It took about 15 minutes to pick this bowl of berries, not too onerous as one just strips the branch from top to bottom. Squeezing the berries to pop out the beans, usually 2 per berry, sometimes 3, takes a bit more time and I found it best to do it underwater otherwise the beans have a tendency to fly everywhere. Then you have to soak the beans for 24-48 hours to ferment off the slimy pulp surrounding them (this is what makes them slippery suckers that shoot in every direction).

I didn’t take a photo of the drying and hulling process, which is the next step. I placed the beans in a mesh bag and sundried them for about a day. You know when it’s dried when the outer parchment-like husk starts to crack a bit along the middle of the bean. Removing this rather hard covering is the most time-consuming and tricky part of the operation. I looked online for advice and it seems like putting the beans in a food processor that has plastic blades (some models have plastic blades for stirring function, I happen to have this) which won’t pulverise the beans is the best solution if you don’t want to try to remove the parchment layer by hand. There will always be some beans to be hand hulled, usually they rub off in 2 halves. The plastic blades agitate the beans enough to slough off the dried parchment hull on most of the beans, but you have to do this in small batches. Then you still have to somehow separate the beans from the removed hulls and the best method is winnowing, tossing the beans and hulls up and down on a tray in a current of air (on a windy day) and the air blows the hulls away whilst the heavier beans drop back down into the tray.

Finally, you will have achieved getting green coffee beans that are ready for roasting. You can do this on the stovetop, constantly shaking and stirring the pot, or in an oven, also turning the beans, but I found the easiest way is to use my hand-crank popcorn maker which is basically a pot with a metal wire stirrer on the bottom that you can keep turning whilst on the burner (this is an essential device if popcorn is your thing, and a very useful one in any case because you can toast all manner of nuts and seeds–and now coffee beans!) This took about 8 minutes of cranking (and heating) but so worth it as the smell of roasting coffee is as heavenly as the smell of the flowers from whence they originated. I was really quite chuffed when I got to this stage just for that irresistible aroma which was actually emanating from my own beans!

Roasted Coffee Beans

Viola! As you can see, I think I roasted them to an espresso strength. At long last, you have in your hand the pitifully meager result of all the work I have tried to describe in painstaking detail. In total, I think I processed in my first batch enough coffee for one person drinking one cup for about a week or less. But that’s not the point, which was really to experience all the labour involved if one had to do this by hand so we can appreciate all the more how mechanisation (and exploited labour) are the reason why we have so much for not much effort on our part other than probably the final grinding and boiling water. It highlighted for me the impossibility of being able to self produce (even if one lived in the right climate) even a fraction of the foodstuffs we take for granted daily if we were to use our own labour. In this example, I still had to use some modern devices, and certainly fossil fuels made possible the final brewing, which is the whole point of the whole endeavour. Very sobering indeed, rather than stimulating as from caffeine.

Well, it looks like it still takes Gaia 1000s of words to describe anything even when accompanied by pictures! I hope you all enjoyed this first pictorial installment of Gaia’s garden and kitchen. For all you coffee lovers out there, enjoy what you have whilst you can! This documentary has probably prompted Rob to invest in even more quantity of coffee, not a bad idea really. No doubt it will be a trading commodity in our near future.

Namaste everyone.

779 thoughts on “By Gaia Gardener: On Growing Coffee”

  2. Clear unpleasant evidence yet silence means MORT.

    https://www.coffeeandcovid.com/p/safe-but-risky-saturday-may-3-2025

    Four days ago, the most important covid shot study yet was published as a preprint on MedRxIV. It was blandly titled, “Twelve-Month All-Cause Mortality after Initial COVID-19 Vaccination with Pfizer-BioNTech or mRNA-1273 among Adults Living in Florida.” In a science-following world, this study would announce the beginning of the end, the great unraveling of the big “safe and effective” lie.

    If there’s one thing —just one thing— a “safe and effective” vaccine absolutely shouldn’t do, it’s increase your odds of dropping dead. Death is not a side effect; that’s the reverse-opposite of vaccination. It’s like a parachute that “works great” until you pull the ripcord. Aieeeeeeee.

    This week’s study was organized by co-author and Florida Surgeon General Joe Ladapo, a Harvard-trained M.D. and PhD. Impeccably credentialed MIT professor of statistics Retsef Levi also joined. They brilliantly scraped Florida’s Medicare database and compared the two jabs against each other, specifically, their risks of dying from any cause —“all-cause mortality”— and they found a statistically undeniable +40% risk of fatality following the Pfizer jab over Moderna.

    In other words, hundreds of thousands more Floridians died in the 12 months following the Pfizer jab than Moderna, when there should have been no difference at all. Specifically, they found that +230 more people died after Pfizer for every 100,000 jabbed. Not only that, but Pfizer getters died from cardiovascular causes at a rate of +83 more often per 100,000.

    And as bad as these results are, the truth is probably much worse. It only tracked deaths in the 12 months following the second shot, so we don’t know how high the totals are now. And it excluded people who took three, four, or more shots. It’s fair to assume that more shots don’t decrease people’s risk of death.

    In other words, when it comes to mortality risk, this study’s results likely represent a floor, not a ceiling.

    Death is binary. It’s not a PCR cycle. Folks either died or they didn’t. All-cause mortality is immune to narrative manipulation. You might well ask, why hasn’t the FDA already required long-term all-cause mortality studies for these products? The data is readily available. Post-marketing all-cause mortality studies are not common, but the speed at which the covid jabs were developed at warp speed and government mandates to take them aren’t common either.

    If the Levi–Ladapo study is right, it implies catastrophic failure by the FDA for not requiring long-term safety data, the CDC for continuing to push boosters with no mortality data, the NIH for funding everything except what might challenge the narrative, and Big Pharma for withholding or obscuring adverse event data.

    I couldn’t find a single corporate media mention about this study. The silence was deafening. As you know, media loves running headlines about weird studies linking things like “too much joy” to heart attacks and strokes. But this? Crickets. If Levi-Ladapo’s results showed that both shots had reduced 12-month mortality, that result would’ve been plastered across headlines within 24 hours and chirped three times on NPR before breakfast.

    As I keep saying —and will keep saying— the steady drip of vaccine safety studies is pooling into a vast and rising lake of condemnation. At some point, that lake will be too deep for the guilty to wade across. They can tiptoe around the puddles now, but the water’s quickly coming up— and the truth will eventually drown them.

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  3. Crazy Eddy had me laughing today. “It’s Pro Wrestling Day here in Australia – otherwise known as election day” Ambushed by Barnyard Animals

    Never know what’s fact or fiction with Eddy, but it doesn’t matter as long as its entertaining. Wish I had written it. Oh, how I really hate him.😂

    A couple of hours later I returned from the gym, slipped into the bathroom and shot a syringe of Stanozolol into my left hip. Instant Roid Rage – Fuck Yeah! I decided to have another go at the dunces so out the door I stormed straight towards the polling station.

    An old bag and a Plough Hog younger woman (a plough hog is a descendent of the women that originally were imported into the colonies who were big and powerful enough to haul a 250kg plough through a paddock – their descendants inherited the big bones and powerful thighs but instead of pulling ploughs they instead plough into Doritos, KFC and Super Size Cola while watching reruns of American Idol from the comfort of the sofa) asked me if I am on my way to vote. 

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  4. HHH says to expect lower interest rates and QE. In other threads he has argued QE does not cause inflation. I disagree. I think QE causes inflation because it enables higher government deficits.

    My prediction is assuming no crash we will experience higher inflation.

    I also predict more war because leaders can do nothing about falling standards of living so if they want to stay in power their only option is to redirect their citizen’s anger to other tribes.

    Let’s see what happens.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/us-february-oil-production-marginally-higher/#comment-788634

    HHH: The price of oil is screaming recession. The economic background doesn’t support higher oil prices.

    OPEC gave up on their supply cuts because they didn’t work to keep prices higher. Contrary to popular belief OPEC isn’t in the driver’s seat controlling oil prices. Though they can send prices even lower by increasing production during a global recession.

    What we are going to get is interest rates cuts and back to QE everywhere. Not that either of those things matter but that’s the direction we are heading. The fact that they will be doing both is just an acknowledgement of how bad the economic background actually is.

    Low to no growth environment.

    Remember that the dollar denominated debt that exists outside the US in the Eurodollar market isn’t owed to the US. The banks outside the US created all that dollar denominated debt. The rest of the world owes those dollars to themselves collectively.

    Got dollars? Because absolutely everyone outside the US needs dollars to repay the debt. They don’t need gold or bitcoin or their own local currencies. They need dollars.

    What’s it going to look like outside the US if the banks in Japan lending the dollars into China get defaulted on?

    The world can’t leave the dollar system without defaulting on themselves.

    The scramble for dollars outside the US will continue. And sometimes that scramble for dollars will involve the selling of US dollar denominated assets.

    De-dollarization implies the value of the dollar going through the roof.

    Re-dollarization implies the dollar going back to 2008 lows.

    If you pull out a long term chart of both WTI, Brent and DXY you’ll see that oil prices at their all time highs coincided with the dollar being at an all time low.

    It was because credit in the Eurodollar market was flowing freely prior to 2008. Not so freely ever since 2008. Credit is still flowing but the cost of obtaining credit has gone much higher since 2008. Not talking about just interest rates. Talking about collateral and what it cost to actually borrow money. And a lot of the time collateral is borrowed in order to obtain credit in REPO.

    Dollars are just more expensive to obtain now than they were in 2008.

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    1. Very interesting. Thank you.

      I don’t understand money very well. But, let me try asking my naïve questions…
      Isn’t QE like a way to put money out of the system by postponing the day where it comes back to haunt you (maybe indefinitely)?
      Also, aren’t low interest rates, lowering the speed at which total money expands?
      Wouldn’t negative interest rates, enable the diminution of the money volume?
      (If one wants to keep the current system), in addition to negative interest rates, which applies only to newly created debt, isn’t what’s needed a renogociation of existing debts: diminution of existing rates and postponing of payments?
      Also, there is a dissimetry in the current system that seems unfair (because I don’t like centralization of power :), when, as an personal investor, you lend money, you don’t have the money available. If my understanding is correct, that’s different with banks. So, in addition, shouldn’t the banks (all of them, even the central one) lose that privilege?
      Of course, all these changes can’t be done overnight, as they might crash the existing system. Too risky. Maybe it could be progressively driven.

      I look at the monetary system, and it feels like a gigantic leash forcing all the living to run on threadmill (the mega-machine) and send money back to “the masters”. But, the threadmill is rusting, and the living beings don’t have much juice left. So, one way or another it’s coming to an end. Some of “the masters” are giving some room to the leash in an attempt to not lose their control.
      Just, an analogy. Not to be taken too seriously.

      By the way, to me, the shape money takes form (bank notes, credit cards, digital, bitcoin…), doesn’t matter as much to me (even if things such as the future intermittence of electricity has to be taken into account) as the values, properties and system it implements.
      Currently it seems we have a loosely centralized (many banks can create money), exclusive (alternatives are forbidden), expansion oriented system, where the speed of expansion can be adjusted centrally (the central bank makes the choices of the length of the leash, risking it to either break or entangle if it doesn’t listen to reality).

      The world can’t leave the dollar system without defaulting on themselves.

      Is this what the Ukraine war enables for Russia? Did Russia own a lot of dollar denominated debt it couldn’t pay back, unless maybe it exclusively sold all of its assets (oil, land) to the US?

      Thanks.

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    2. I think QE causes inflation because it enables higher government deficits.

      But, at this point of reaching the limits, government deficit is the only way to create new money, isn’t it? And new money is needed to repay the loans previously contracted by selling something to the american government to get dollars.

      Am I understanding correctly?

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      1. Yes, I think you understand.

        Government deficits stop the system from collapsing by creating the new money required to service debt. Limits to growth prevent real wealth growing as fast as the government deficit so we get inflation. At some point the commercial banks become unwilling to loan to the government because of the risk and then QE is replaced with real money printing and we get hyperinflation. Or the government accepts reality and we get a deflationary collapse.

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    3. More from HHH on the same thread.

      I think you can still buy stocks. The credit spigot is still turned on. Stock will likely hit new all time highs.

      I think you can still buy gold and land. As long as credit is still being extended and expanded every thing that has always worked will continue working.

      But the moment credit fails to expand you better be holding dollars. Because dollars are what is needed to repay debts. And dollars become extremely scarce when the credit spigots are turned off.

      I think it’s more important to just be aware so you can exit early.

      Our entire global monetary system is collateral based lending. So it’s based on the ability to repay the loans. Our ability to repay loans is directly tied to energy usage. Our ability to create loans is directly tied to energy. No energy, no loans, no money.

      You can also say less energy, less loans, less money.

      The monetary system we all know and depend on to keep everything going doesn’t work in reverse. You can’t repay debts with less energy, less loans, less money.

      Oil can go to $25 and stay there. $25 can become the ceiling not the floor of oil prices. And $25 oil can also be too expensive for the average American to afford. It’s what a prolonged deflationary depression would look like.

      And it makes no difference who is extending the credit. Say central banks and their bank reserves became legal tender. And central banks created and extended all the loans into the economy instead of the commercial banks.

      That changes nothing. Doesn’t make the debt within the economy any more payable.

      Something else that should be pointed out. Many countries have sovereign wealth funds. Accumulated over decades.

      These wealth funds are nothing more than accumulated Eurodollars on the balance sheets of banks. That money was loaned into existence. So there is in fact a bank liability somewhere that is owed. When credit fails to expand these sovereign wealth funds will be liquidated to acquire dollars to repay debts. Or since loans aren’t being extended you have to dip into your rainy day sovereign wealth fund to pay for stuff instead of just borrowing money.

      He who controls the money supply controls everything except the ability of loans to be repaid. That’s the one thing money creators can’t control. The ability to repay debt is where everything breaks down.

      It becomes, he who creates the money or loans decides to no longer do so because the loans don’t get repaid.

      If say China was unable to borrow money. How long does their sovereign wealth funds and accumulated dollar reserves last? Without the ability to borrow the answer is not very long.

      Whatever wealth they thought they had goes up in smoke real quick.

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      1. Yes, but I guess China is powerful enough to default and switch to a new system (at the cost of a war). It is a matter of balance of powers.
        That would be the path of competition.

        Or, it is still theoretically possible to change the rules of the system, so that loans need not be repaid in their entirety.
        Or just hand out money at negative interest rate so that it gets easier to repay debt.
        But then, of course, the system would lose its ability to pump of material wealth towards the American government.
        That would be the path of dialogue and cooperation.

        Smart people would choose cooperation because the cost of war would exceed the cost of negociating the debt.
        Because, my guess is, when in degrowth/collapse, war hardly pays. (OK you win the war, but the spoils are so few, that you lose anyway. And your credibility is over as a fair player.)

        But then there are the questions of the speed of collapse, and maybe the scale of the greed, insanity and idiocy? of some people in position of power. Especially, if they are in a position to play for themselves against every body else. High treachery.

        If I am understanding well… Pretty complex.

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      2. https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-3-2025/#comment-788669

        HHH: …it’s a little known fact that 2008 started with a couple of banks in France out of all places.

        They were unable to properly price the collateral they had on hand and it snowballed into what we all know is the GFC.

        Can it happen again? Will it happen again? Of course it will. But nobody can peer into the inter workings of what actually goes on in the monetary system. Because we already have decentralized money. It’s called the Eurodollar.

        So while we know for sure it’s coming we can’t time it. We can only look for clear signs in the monetary system. Like negative interest rate swap spreads and high demand for safe a liquid assets. Things like the gold to copper ratio.

        Yes all these things are pointing towards a very negative outcome coming soon. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it happens this year. It might but no guarantees.

        And of course as the energy supply shrinks by even just a little bit the likelihood of a bad outcome goes up dramatically.

        Falling oil prices are a very bad sign. That in itself can lead to a contraction in the energy supply.

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        1. Told like that, it sounds like the story of the massive european grid with renewables: a complex system becoming more and more brittle and unpredictably subject to catastrophic failure.

          Maybe?, these failures will not be terminal, but stress tests that gradually lead to the transformation of the global monetary system into a more byzantine patchwork of various systems, with delays and firewalls.

          Less efficient but more robust. (Olivier Hamant salient idea had a big impact on me 🙂

          In any case, every thing happens at the same time. 2025 is really the year of waking up.
          So many people that I talk to these days, finally let their true self go through, express their true emotions, their true desires. I love to talk through the shells, even though, I myself, have gotten used to my protective layers of social masks.

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    4. ‘It’ depends upon the ‘type of QE’?

      “Importantly for our disaggregated quantity equation, credit creation can be disaggregated, as we can obtain and analyse information about who obtains loans and what use they are put to. Sectoral loan data provide us with information about the direction of purchasing power – something deposit aggregates cannot tell us. By institutional analysis and the use of such disaggregated credit data it can be determined, at least approximately, what share of purchasing power is primarily spent on ‘real’ transactions that are part of GDP and which part is primarily used for financial transactions. Further, transactions contributing to GDP can be divided into ‘productive’ ones that have a lower risk, as they generate income streams to service them (they can thus be referred to as sustainable or productive), and those that do not increase productivity or the stock of goods and services. Data availability is dependent on central bank publication of such data. The identification of transactions that are part of GDP and those that are not is more straight-forward, simply following the NIA rules.”
      http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/339271/1/Werner_IRFA_QTC_2012.pdf

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  5. I really like Tim Watkins newest essay. (h/t crazy eddy). The world ended in 1999

    I’ve tried to write about how incredibly lame the world got towards the end of the 20th century. It always ends up as a bitch fest about how wack music and tv/movies have become. Look at the top radio songs from back then and it’s dominated by no talent hacks like Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, NSYNC, J Lo, Ja Rule, Ludacris, Nelly.

    Television shows back in the day were extremely lucky if they made it 10 seasons (MASH, Cheers, Frasier… there were a few, but for the most part, even the good ones were canceled after a few years to make room for new ideas). Late 90’s/early 00’s is when it all changes. Two important factors that killed the old tv formula…. this new concept called branding as well as the beginning craze of reality and game shows. Shitty primetime shows like American Idol, Survivor, and The Bachelor are pushing 25 seasons!

    See, all I do is bitch when try to talk about it😊. Tim did a great job connecting some of these dots.

    But it is within the mainstream culture that we find the greatest evidence for a world that came to an end in the early-2000s.  Consider the many hundreds of remakes of movies from earlier eras, which suggest that we lost the ability to create new stories.  Consider the fashions of previous decades, which allow us to easily distinguish the ‘50s from the ‘60s and the ‘70s from the ‘80s.  But the Britpop 1990s are the final moment when we can do this.  Since then, each decade has merged seamlessly with the next, with no discernible difference.  Then consider (the collapse of) music, with each hit record of the current century using the same four chords and sounding more or less the same.

    The process is a little more complex, however.  While the increase in energy density unlocks the potential for progress (i.e., rising complexity), innovation and technology are required to realise that potential.  This is what we refer to (often without understanding it) as productivity – the art of getting more output for energy and material input.  And you might have noticed that among the long list of things which seem to have come to a standstill since 1999, productivity is one of the more worrisome.

    “Zappa declares that ‘we were better off with those guys (cigar-chomping old guys), than we are with the supposedly hip, young executives,’ making the calls on what gets made and what gets put out to the public.”

    What Zappa was observing was evidence of the decay of democracy into its evil twin… technocracy.  Where democracy was amateurish and innovative, technocracy is professional and formulaic… when finance pays for something, it requires up front guarantees before a single penny changes hands.  Innovation, it turns out, is for losers.

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    1. Something definitely changed for the worse.

      I’m sitting here adding nicer artwork to my library of music albums from the 60’s and 70’s while I’m watching the Peter Gunn TV series (1958-1961) out the corner of my eye for the second time.

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      1. Nice. Love the old black and white classics. Lately I’ve been into Sherlock Holmes movies from the ’40s. The actor playing Holmes is good, but Watson steals the show with his comedic skills.

        The is my favorite one so far. 

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    2. OMG, occultist Thomas Sheridan has been saying for several years now that time stopped in 2000. He feels reality is reconverging, and that we’ve all been in some sort of dream state since 9/11. It’s quite a metaphorical interpretation of a very real situation unfolding.

      I really enjoy Watkin’s writing, and I know he reads here off and on. Hi Tim!

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  6. The AfD, which Elon Musk supported a few months ago, was labelled as extremist by the German Domestic Intelligence Agency.
    https://www.npr.org/2025/05/02/g-s1-64037/afd-germany-extremist-alternative

    Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has formally designated the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as extremist — a move likely to further isolate the group that has emerged as the country’s largest opposition party.

    The Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), or Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution — Germany’s equivalent of the FBI — released a 1,000-page report on Friday.

    In a statement on its website, the BfV said it had reached its conclusion after a three-year investigation. “Following its statutory mandate, the BfV was required to assess the party’s actions against the central fundamental principles of the constitution: human dignity, the principle of democracy, and the rule of law. In addition to the federal party’s platform and statements, the review particularly examined the statements and other behavior of its representatives, as well as their connections to right-wing extremist actors and groups.”

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      1. Maybe Alice Weidel herself isn’t an extremist, but there certainly are extremists within the AfD. The video goes into more detail.

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        1. Who told you they were extremists? Oh extremists also known as the thought police.

          Please show us your research and examples of their nazi behaviour.

          Please remember that most msm is propaganda.

          Do you pay attention to the news items on peak oil msm or hideway’s or HHH’s in depth analysis and well reasoned responses?

          I think we face extremism in thought but mostly generated on the left. That doesn’t mean the right don’t have to keep themselves in check.

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          1. Please show us your research and examples of their nazi behaviour.

            The video gives a few examples.

            Here is another example. The AfD’s Secret Plan to Deport Millions From Germany

            https://www.thenation.com/article/world/germany-afd-secret-meeting-deportation/

            The story appeared on the morning of January 10 on Correctiv, the website of a research network most people hadn’t heard of before, but the evidence was unmistakable. In a secret meeting held on November 25 at a hotel in Brandenburg, representatives from Germany’s far-right political party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) met with Identitarian and neo-Nazi activists. “It was much more than a coming together of right-wing ideologues,” reported Correctiv. The meeting was to map out a “master plan” for mass deportations should the AfD gain the power to implement it. “Asylum seekers, non-Germans with residency rights, and ‘non-assimilated’ German citizens” (emphasis mine) were all candidates for “re-migration,” explained Austrian neo-Nazi Martin Sellner, who according to Correctiv had been the first speaker at the meeting.

            For other examples of extremism in the AfD, look at Björn Höcke, chairman of AfD in Thuringia. On top of all of this, the AfD also denies climate change as well.

            Please remember that most msm is propaganda.

            NPR is mainstream media, but the video is not what I would call “mainstream media” (The video itself comes from a socialist perspective). And, Yes, I have read Hideaway’s and many of HHH’s analyses. Our leaders, unable or unwilling to admit that the economy is running into limits to growth, are looking for scapegoats.

            I think we face extremism in thought but mostly generated on the left. That doesn’t mean the right don’t have to keep themselves in check.

            There are some left-wing extremists but they don’t have much political power at the moment.

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            1. firstly Germany’s government has been actively supporting nazis in Ukraine so that means that there is no difference there.

              secondly deporting masses of people that have come into the country through planned disruption by current governments doesn’t make it extreme. I know Germany well and the people are slowly getting more pissed off about the loss of their cultural identity and how their politicians are screwing them over.

              I think climate change is of zero concern (nothing can or will be done we just ride it out) does that make me a fascist or just a realist.

              Practically the western world is circling the toilet now because the left extreme positions have been in the drivers seat (if the right had been in control we would just be circling it in the other direction).

              I personally know Germans who think that the AFD is the only party listening to them. I am not saying they have answers more than anyone else but dialogue would be better than tar and feathering.

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              1. Practically the western world is circling the toilet now because the left extreme positions have been in the drivers seat

                The people in power in the West for past 40 years have mostly been neoliberal globalists, not genuine leftists.

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            2. Please don’t fall for this nonsense – Correctiv is a left wing propaganda media and the plans from the secret meeting are disproven. You may use a translator to do some deeper research:
              https://www.danisch.de/blog/2024/08/07/kritik-an-correctiv-was-hat-die-bundesregierung-mit-correctiv-zu-tun/
              (Mr Danisch is a critical blogger with considerable reach, and among other topics, he exposes the involvement of the German government, secret services and NGOs in their efforts to install a socialistic surveillance state).

              The AfD is not right wing extremist, it’s just the most conservative party in Germany, representing values that the CDU represented 25 years ago. But for a socialist government, everything that does not correspond to their opinion is right-wing extremist.

              See this year’s election: 23% of the people voted for AfD (second most result), but since their views are not wanted, they are simply ignored by all other parties when forming a coalition. They call it “Brandmauer” (fire wall) – quite democratic, isn’t it?

              80% of Germans want socialism again and we are on the verge of establishing GDR 2.0…

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            1. Most read articles 2024: March-“Correctiv” refutes itself in court

              The revelations by the “Correctiv” research team have been keeping the country on edge for two months now. This week, however, “Correctiv” confirmed in court that none of the revelations were based on facts. This was the most-read “Cicero” article of March.

              https://www.cicero.de/innenpolitik/meistgelesene-artikel-2024-marz-correctiv-widerlegt-sich-vor-gericht-selbst

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    1. Hi Charles. We have started hosting woofers at our place and have had very good experiences so far. We are not officially listed but have met them through word of mouth via friends who are.

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  9. Gotta love them Houthis. Scared an F16 off the deck of a US aircraft carrier last week. Dropped a missile on Ben Gurion airport today. They stop when US/Israel stops genociding Gaza citizens.

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    1. I fear that we will have a war in the Middle East/Iran within a month or so. We might avoid Nuke WW3 if the U.S. or Israel don’t use them and if China and Russia don’t get involved. I think that might just add a little chaos to everyone’s economic predictions (and maybe collapse the whole system?). And what happens in Ukraine? Do Europeans try to help Ukraine? How, would Russia respond (I think Putin has the upper hand and is tired of dealing with the idiots (U.S.)).

      John Mearsheimer with Glenn Diesen and Alexander Mercouris had an interesting discussion the other day. Mearsheimer thinks Trump is a complete idiot who knows nothing and is all bravado. Bad feeling that Trump will get the U.S. involved in a losing war in Iran and maybe Ukraine too. Not going to work out well – in fact maybe we won’t have any economics left to talk about.

      AJ

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      1. It looks like an Iran war soon to me too. It’s impossible to predict who gets involved and the outcome but the worst case is really bad. The US does not want a peace deal with Iran, it wants regime change and subservience.

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    1. People are lonely. Most of them won’t say it out loud, but they are. It’s worse for the younger generations. They didn’t grow up with connection. They grew up with screens. With performance. With algorithms.

      They don’t talk to each other in person. They text. They scroll. They watch each other from a distance. Intimacy feels foreign. So does vulnerability. Most of their “friends” are people they’ve never touched.

      The old support systems are gone. No church. No extended family. No community centers. No real mentors. What’s left is school and home. School is full of pressure. Home is often empty. One parent is working two jobs. The other isn’t there.

      This is where AI enters.

      More and more people are talking to AI Chatbots like they are a therapist. They’re using it to vent. To ask questions they’re afraid to ask out loud. To get comfort they don’t get from anyone else.

      They call it a joke, but it isn’t. It listens. It answers. It doesn’t shame them. It doesn’t leave. That’s enough for most people now.

      They aren’t choosing AI over people. They never had people to begin with.

      This is what the epidemic looks like. Not screaming. Not riots. Just silence. Just isolation. One person in one room. Talking to a screen. Calling that connection.

      This is the future. No one planned it. No one fought for it. It just happened.

      And it’s not going away.

      u/Urshilikai posted

      • car dependent infrastructure – when everything is built at the scale of cars, the people you do have connections with are on the other side of town. Spending time in the car itself is isolating and turns you into an antisocial monster by otherizing the other human beings isolated behind their steel death traps. (quintessential road rage but normal f2f behavior).
      • the death of “third places” – third places are common across all(?) preindustrial communities in the form of taverns, bars, town squares, swimming holes, churches (but lets get rid of this one), etc that were separate from work and home. A maintained space to some degree that helps break down the barrier to forming new relationships. Schools fill a small part of this role, which is why so many people form and maintain friendships from K-12, the workplace is far more alienating and cannot serve this role. The internet is a poor approximation, and steps could be taken to improve it. It might work for some people but we are still physical beings and we should bring back physical third places.
      • the death of shared reality – how do you even begin to form a relationship with someone who has spent the last 20 years consuming fox news. the only thing they know is hate and don’t have anything to contribute because their understanding of the world is simply factually wrong.
      • this next one is tough, and I don’t know of a single term that fully encompasses the feeling for me. It’s also the most personal and the reason I’ve disengaged from most outside life. It’s work spillover – it’s that everything must be so performative in a very narrow range of social expectations – it’s the capitalist panopticon watching over you constantly – that your career success is connected to what you do and how you spend your “free” time, that unexpected encounter with your boss at the grocery store can make or break your career forever – the death of context in social interactions outside of work that ultimately inform decisions at work. To be clear this has always been true, what’s different I feel is that the carefully crafted workplace personality is not our real personalities anymore. Whereas in the past, where lots of people ran their own small businesses or trades, didn’t have to “fake it”, they just had to do a good enough job and have fun while doing it. This meshing of worklife into all other aspects of life, the capitalist persona superseding all others, and the capitalist panopticon turning every second of life into a ratrace is alienating beyond words. And even when you aren’t being explicitly watched, you’re being advertised to, your information is being collected and turned against you by training the next AI slop that can exploit your squishy biological brain and make your existence obsolete. I will not participate. Fuck this world.

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      1. Stellar that all rings so true for me as well! I’ve also been using it to help with some health issues that no doctor had been able to resolve. I tried SSRIs, but they made things worse. Then I worked with AI and realised I needed B12. Since starting B12, I’ve been doing so much better.

        In the book The Way Home: Tales from a Life Without Technology by Mark Boyle, he spoke with older Irish people about which technological invention most disrupted their social lives. Surprisingly, it turned out to be the thermos. Mark hadn’t expected that at all. The thermos meant people no longer gathered around a fire to make tea together at break time.

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          1. I’m doing good! I have a very stressful job and this year has been the busiest ever. I am also struggling with unexplained infertility – but really I think it is the job stress and being overweight that is the problem. My thyroid function isn’t great so I am trying to improve my health. I don’t do well on pharmaceuticals so trying to improve things the natural way with food, exercise and stress management

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            1. Hey Monk,
              my partner has thyroid issues. If you really want to get a handle on the intricacies of thyroid hormone cascades I would recommend.
              https://thyroidpharmacist.com/
              Listen to the podcasts and you will get info on what to test for and all of the non pharma routes to take in order to deal with it.
              nikoB

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              1. OK many thanks for that! I am doing a lot of research on it. Both my mum and her mum had thyroid problems. It’s a bit scary. And it is such a common problem that doesn’t get treated very thoroughly by family doctors

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              2. Hey from my brief look at the website, this is very similar to the work that I am doing and the things I have uncovered through my research 🙂 hopefully I am on the right track

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        2. Monk wrote, “Surprisingly, it turned out to be the thermos.”

          Years ago I was talking with an old Florida citrus grower and said air conditioning
          must have brought really big changes, as it did elsewhere in the South(USA).
          He agreed and said AC was big, but before that, an even bigger change was
          wire mesh window screens.
          No more shared, smoky fires to keep the skeeters at bay.

          Thinking about it, in my childhood there were many screened picnic shelters in parks, at schools, and other useful locations. Few of these are still around, as everybody wants AC.

          Our Library has a meeting room with heat and AC, and no windows. There is a nice picnic table outside for when the weather is pleasant.

          Thanks and good health, Weogo

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      2. Nice find Stellar.

        I know no one in real life that I can discuss what I really think. Some topics like covid make people angry. I get why no one want to discuss overshoot. The avoidance of covid reality remains a mystery. It was a totally avoidable crime made worse by incompetence and then ass covering. 20+ million killed is a big deal. No one cares about holding anyone accountable, not even to prevent a recurrence.

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  11. The West should be the last to worry about peak oil , you will always have your sunni arab feudal Persian Gulf slave dogs by your side . The arab middle east post 9/11 is an american military colony as intented .

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    1. If you are suggesting the west will be immune to energy depletion problems while 7 billion “others” collapse I think you’re wrong. The world is so complex and so interconnected now that we’ll more or less go down in unison.

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  12. Dr. Tim Morgan took a break to reflect on reality and came back focused on denial.

    There are many great minds sniffing around Dr. Ajit Varki’s MORT without being aware it.

    #302: At the end of modernity, part one

    What is particularly striking is the contrast between the abundant evidence of economic contraction and a near-universal refusal to accept this reality.

    In practical terms, this means that “modernity” will end, not gradually, but very rapidly indeed.

    We did not, of course, need to be in this position. There was no absolute necessity to bail out speculative excesses in 2008-09, to create runaway asset price inflation by keeping the cost of capital at low or negative real levels, or to allow the complexification of the financial system to procede to a point at which macroprudential management became, to all intents and purposes, impossible.

    But a combination of three factors – wilful denial, extreme short-termism and a concentration on the preferences of vocal interest groups – has ensured that we will experience a sudden, rather than a gradual, ending of what currently passes for modernity.

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    1. Tried to reply to a comment there but it’s still awaiting moderation. Either Dr Tim doesn’t like my fire bullshit or maybe all comments have to be approved and he just hasn’t got around to it yet.
      ________________________________________________

      “… would be good to start talking about solutions, rather than relentlessly reviewing the problem… The 2 biggest questions of our times are what sort of society will allow us to live well within the boundaries of nature, and how can we build it.” – Zoltan

      Very simple answer if we really are actually talking about living within the boundaries of nature. The sort of society that will allow that is one where no single species stands out from the pack (in other words, where no single species is capable of creating a self-induced mass extinction). 

      Fire doesn’t belong in the equation for living within the boundaries of nature. The benefits/advantages gained from the long-term use of it (a million years) eventually culminated with Sapiens being injected with the nightmare of full consciousness around 100-200kya. No other species has ever been near this level of consciousness. Why? Because no other species has harnessed fire.

      The main requirement of full consciousness – to create meaning out of nothing so that the bleakness of it all can be hidden and denied, to ensure that your species will continue on in the history books – is the very same thing that pushes you further away from living within the boundaries of nature.  

      Fire leads to full consciousness… which then leads to domestication, agriculture, and mining… which then leads to fossil energy… which then leads to a speedy self-induced mass extinction. No species that conquers fire can ever fit in with the web of life. At certain stages it might appear possible, but it’s just an illusion. Let it play out and it will always end up miserably for the rest of life and the planet.

      The easiest solution is to remove the fire users. Hence the quick mass extinction that comes guaranteed when you start playing with fossil fuels… because call it a hunch, but I dont think Sapiens will ever voluntarily stop using fire.😉

      Sapiens make up only 0.01% of the biomass weight on this planet… yet we’ve created more technomass (man-made shit) than the total weight of all biomass! Fire is responsible for this godlike level of separation & superiority.

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      1. Here are a few terms that might be helpful for your story.

        Grok:

        Autotrophs are organisms that produce their own food using energy from sunlight (photosynthesis) or chemical reactions (chemosynthesis). Examples include plants, algae, and some bacteria. They form the base of food chains, converting inorganic substances like carbon dioxide into organic compounds.

        Heterotrophs are organisms that cannot produce their own food and rely on consuming organic matter from other organisms (autotrophs or other heterotrophs) for energy and nutrients. Examples include animals, fungi, and most bacteria.

        Humans use fossil energy to grow their food which makes them a unique heterotroph. What should we call humans?

        Grok:

        Humans are indeed heterotrophs, as they rely on consuming organic matter (plants, animals, or their products) for energy and nutrients. Their use of fossil energy (e.g., oil, coal, natural gas) to enhance food production—through mechanized agriculture, fertilizers, pesticides, and transportation—sets them apart from other heterotrophs, which rely solely on biological processes to obtain food. This technological reliance doesn’t change their biological classification as heterotrophs but highlights a unique ecological and cultural adaptation.

        Rather than assigning a new biological term, humans could be described as technological heterotrophs or energy-augmented heterotrophs to emphasize their use of external energy sources (fossil fuels) to amplify food production. These terms are not formal taxonomic classifications but reflect humans’ distinctive role in ecosystems. Alternatively, in ecological or anthropological contexts, terms like industrial omnivores or fossil-fuel-dependent heterotrophs might be used to capture this behavior.

        If you’re looking for a more formal or speculative term, we could coin something like “anthroheterotrophs” (from anthropos, Greek for human) to denote humans’ unique blend of heterotrophic biology and technological manipulation of energy resources.

        What is an exosomatic heterotroph?

        An exosomatic heterotroph is an organism or system that relies on external sources of organic matter and energy for sustenance (heterotrophic) and utilizes external, non-biological tools or processes to acquire or process that energy (exosomatic). The term is often applied in ecological or economic contexts to describe humans or societies that depend on external technologies—like machines, fossil fuels, or industrial systems—to obtain and process energy and resources from their environment, rather than relying solely on biological processes (endosomatic).

        For example, humans are exosomatic heterotrophs because they use tools, agriculture, and energy-intensive technologies (e.g., factories, vehicles) to extract and consume organic matter and energy from external sources, such as plants, animals, or fossil fuels. This contrasts with other heterotrophs, like animals, that rely primarily on internal biological processes to consume and metabolize food.

        Notice how I had to know the answer to get the answer from Grok.

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        1. Thanks for the info. Yes, very helpful in selling my story if I can incorporate some of this stuff into it.

          You sent me on a mad scramble to find where I had heard these words before. Scanned a few old Michael Dowd and Sid Smith videos. Found it on this Sid clip below. But I was wrong. It wasn’t autotrophs and heterotrophs… it was omnivores and detritivores. 

          Detritivore – an organism that sustains itself by consuming organic waste material from decomposing dead plants or animals.

          Sid talks about William Catton’s brilliant observation at the 20:45 to 22:06 mark (should be queued up)

          The fact is we really aren’t the same creature we used to be. We’ve become an entirely different species than we were just a couple of centuries ago. Not different in the biological or genetic sense, but very different ecologically.

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    2. Brandon Young is taking full advantage of the fact that his nemesis (Hideaway) is on vacation. 

      Maybe, if we start the transition soon enough, with a global price on fossil fuels driving wave after wave of innovation and much greater energy efficiency of everything in the system.

      LOL, I get in a goofy mood sometimes and I’ll start trolling certain blogsites. Even when I’m trying to be funny with the most hopium filled bullshit I can think of… I still can’t come close to anything as good as Brandon.😊

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    1. I wonder if Trump is starting to show signs of dementia? Not everyone in cognitive decline is like Biden was for the last few years. Trump being a narcissist seems also to have lost some of the control he had in the first term; he seems much more “stream of consciousness” unfiltered (i.e. stupid shit). And he is going on 79 and is not physically fit, both harbingers for cognitive decline. ??

      AJ

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        1. I have researched dementia quite a bit since both my parents died with severe dementia (you don’t actually die from severe dementia but from the brain finally not being able to control breathing/heart or the immune system collapse).

          Genetics accounts for only about 2 – 3% of dementia. Most of dementia is the result of bad lifestyle choices that have adverse affects on the brain over time. High simple carb diet, alcohol, smoking, sedentary lifestyle, low blood level of vit D and B vitamins, not enough good fats (fish), high levels of metabolic dysfunction (prediabetes, diabetes, chronic inflammation).

          There are those rare individuals that got all the diet/lifestyle choices right, have great genetics and an interesting life that never show signs of dementia. You could be that one Rob!

          Ezekiel Emanuel (Rahm Emanuel’s brother) is an oncologist and wrote an essay a few years ago that he only wanted to live to 75 and would refuse medical interventions after that. His rational, informed by his having been a practicing physician, was that beyond 75 the quality of life deteriorates rapidly for most people. I agree and don’t want to live beyond 75 either. Hell would be descending into dementia and being a vegetable (more than I am now). So, I would like to make it to 75 with health and my brain intact and then consider suicide. Of course Trump might upend everything and were all dead a few weeks after the nukes fly.

          AJ

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          1. If you can avoid seriousness chronic illness and accidents (like falling off ladders) I think you can have great quality of life beyond 75. Have seen several in my family live very well into late 80s

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          2. Dementia is normal for humans. The longer we live more dementia.According to Jarle Breivik, expanding on a concept by former BMJ editor Richard Smith, there are essentially four ways to die:

            1. Sudden death – from accidents, heart attacks, or acute infections.
            2. Dementia – where the mind fades before the body.
            3. Organ failure – such as heart or lung disease, often unpredictable and prolonged.
            4. Cancer – usually allows time for reflection and goodbyes, though it can be painful.

            Breivik points out that medicine often doesn’t eliminate death but shifts it: when we treat or prevent one cause (like heart disease), we tend to increase the likelihood of dying from another, such as cancer or dementia.

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  16. Everything seems to be coming to a head at the same time.

    I guess that makes sense when there is a common force driving all the tensions.

    https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/we-are-tipping-point-shale-giant-diamonback-says-us-oil-output-has-peaked-slashes-capex

    Following our report earlier that Saudi Arabia has declared a new price war on OPEC+ quota-busters such as Kazakhstan, and non OPEC+ members such as US shale producers, today after the close Diamondback Energy, the largest independent oil producer in the Permian Basin, made a historic pronouncement today when it said that production has likely peaked in America’s prolific shale fields (something we also mentioned earlier in the day) and will decline in the months and years ahead after crude prices plummeted.

    Separately, the Texas company trimmed its own full-year production forecast Monday, and said that it expects onshore oil rigs across the entire US industry to drop by almost 10% by the end of the second quarter and fall further in the months after.

    “This will have a meaningful impact on our industry and our country,” Diamondback Chief Executive Officer Travis Stice wrote. “We believe we are at a tipping point for U.S. oil production.”

    The outlook from Diamondback, one of the industry’s most prominent producers, marks a key shift for expectations within the sector. Before oil prices started plunging last month, most banks and research firms had forecast US shale production would grow this year and next before plateauing later in the decade. The Permian, they said, was apt to peak in the late 2020s or early 2030s depending on prices.

    Not any more.

    As Bloomberg notes, the US shale fields have been the engine behind the surge in US crude output over the past 15 years, making the country the world’s top producer and largely energy independent, much to the horror of OPEC. The ability of companies like Diamondback to quickly bring new wells online using hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, has bedeviled OPEC. But the prospect that shale may now have reached its peak and is facing years of painful decline, poses a huge threat to US President Donald Trump’s goal to turbocharge fossil fuel production.

    While analysts and pundits have long said repeatedly that US shale is poised to peak, the industry had managed to prove them wrong by innovating and driving output to fresh records year after year. 

    So the assertion by Diamondback that the moment has finally come is extremely noteworthy.

    “Today, geologic headwinds outweigh the tailwinds provided by improvements in technology and operational efficiency,” said Stice, who will step down as CEO at the company’s annual shareholder meeting later this month.

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    1. Drill Baby Drill runs head first into physical limits. The comment section of that article is probably not worth reading.

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    2. A quote from the peakoilbarrel:

      The yearly average will be a closer call, but it is becoming more and more obvious that we are not at the left side of the peak, but on a long, ondulating plateau. May it be long and stable enough for a transition to other energy sources! Mankind already won a decade or two with fracking and unconventional oil. Maybe one more decade and we’ll make it without bloody resource conflicts all over the world.

      I’m not holding my breath.

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  17. Hothouse Earth and an Ice-Free Arctic Sea. Starting in 2030?

    According to one paper, there may be a single-ice free day in the Arctic as soon as 2030. There is some hopium at the end saying we still have time.

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    1. I haven’t done enough research to say this with any certainty, but I’d imagine an ice free arctic would cause a cascade of weather pattern shifts that would significantly disrupt global food supplies. I bet that this is what causes the first major global famine in developed countries. I’m speculating though, frankly I don’t think anyone really knows what the impacts will be because its such a complex system.

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    • US leadership supports Israel’s plan to permanently occupy Gaza with it’s military and its strategy to starve 2 million Palestinians.
    • Trump changed his mind and is now demanding things Iran cannot accept.
    • Trump declared he will stop bombing the Houthis because they have capitulated, the Houthis say they don’t know what he’s talking about and will continue to target Israeli ships.
    • More B52’s on the way to Diego Garcia.
    • Trump says he’s been negotiating with China for a month, China says there have been no discussions.
    • Pakistan and India have started a new war, there is not enough water for both countries.
    • Shortly after the pope died Trump tweeted an image of himself dressed as the new pope.
    • Trump declared he will rename the Persian gulf to the Arabian gulf.
    • The US government still recommends children be transfected with mRNA.

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    1. Translation; WASF

      Shortly after the pope died Trump tweeted an image of himself dressed as the new pope.

      I had to look that up… freaking hilarious!

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  19. Xraymike79 is taking requests. Few days ago I asked him for a Ligotti essay. He posted it last night. Hardcore doomers will love it. The Abyss Gazes Back: Pessimism as a Lens on Existential Collapse | Collapse of Industrial Civilization

    The Ligotti parts were the best, but I’m way too bias… And I highly recommend putting in a request to mike.    

    I’m currently reading The Conspiracy Against the Human Race for the third time.😊 Ligotti has me thinking about sapiens from 200k years ago. Those first few generational waves that were born into the nightmare of full consciousness. What a crazy time it must have been.

    This was a reply I got to my fire comment on Dr Tim’s blog yesterday:

    There is no evidence that pre-fire humans didn’t have “full consciousness” (whatever that is). There is no way of knowing how they lived, or how “full” their consciousness was.
    In modern culture early humans are thought of as ‘primitive’ in order to tally with specious ideas of ‘progress’.

    I doubt anyone in this audience believes that nonsense. And it reeks of Daniel Quinn’s denial filled lunacy:

    “Man was born millions of years ago, and he was no more a scourge than hawks or lions or squids. He lived at PEACE with the world … for MILLIONS of years.
    This doesn’t mean he was a saint. This doesn’t mean he walked the earth like a Buddha. It means he lived as harmlessly as a hyena or a shark or a rattlesnake.
    It’s not MAN who is the scourge of the world, it’s a single culture. One culture out of hundreds of thousands of cultures. OUR culture.”

    I finally started reading Richard Wrangham’s ‘Catching Fire – How cooking made us human’. Should’ve been all over this back when Rob recommended it to me last year. It’s making me even more cocky about fire. I’m getting downright annoying about it😂. I had already watched a bunch of interviews with Richard, but reading is always so much more effective. Hopefully it gives me some new stuff to talk about. 

    Back to Ligotti. All I see in his words below is full consciousness (MORT) and the immediate need to create meaning out of nothing… all made possible from a million years of fire evolution.  

    For ages they had been without lives of their own. The whole of their being was open to the world and nothing divided them from the rest of creation. How long they had thus flourished, none of them knew. Then something began to change. It happened over unremembered generations. The signs of a revision without forewarning were being writ ever more deeply into them.

    As their species moved forward, they began crossing boundaries whose very existence they never imagined. After nightfall, they looked up at a sky filled with stars and felt themselves small and fragile in the vastness. Soon they began to see everything in a way they never had in older times. When they found one of their own lying still and stiff, they now stood around the body as if there were something they should do that they had never done before. It was then that they began to take bodies that were still and stiff to distant places so they could not find their way back to them. But even after they had done this, some within their group did see those bodies again, often standing silent in the moonlight or loitering sad-faced just beyond the glow of a fire.

    Everything changed once they had lives of their own and knew they had lives of their own. It even became impossible for them to believe things had ever been any other way. They were masters of their movements now, as it seemed, and never had there been anything like them. The epoch had passed when the whole of their being was open to the world, and nothing divided them from the rest of creation. Something had happened. They did not know what it was, but they did know it as that which should not be. 

    And something needed to be done if they were to flourish as they once had, if the very ground beneath their feet were not to fall out from under them. For ages they had been without lives of their own. Now that they had such lives, there was no turning back. They had been divided from the rest of creation. Nothing could be done about that, having as they did lives of their own. But something would have to be done if they were to live with that which should not be. And over time they discovered what could be done – what would have to be done – so that they could live the lives that were now theirs to live. This would not revive among them the way things had once been done in older times; it would only be the best they could do. 

    Coming at last to the pith of Zapffe’s thought as it is contained in “The Last Messiah”, what the Norwegian philosopher saw as the tragedy of human existence had its beginnings when at some stage in our evolution we acquired “a damning surplus of consciousness.”

    For Zapffe, the effect was a breach in the very unity of life, a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature. Life had overshot its target, blowing itself apart. A species had been armed too heavily – by spirit made almighty without, but equally a menace to its own well-being. 

    Despite his new eyes, man was still rooted in matter, his soul spun into it and subordinated to its blind laws. And yet he could see matter as a stranger, compare himself to all phenomena, see though and locate his vital processes. He comes to nature as an unbidden guest, in vain extending his arms to beg conciliation with his maker: Nature answers no more; it performed a miracle with man, but later did not know him. He has lost his right of residence in the universe, has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge and been expelled from Paradise. 

    For the rest of the earth’s organisms, existence is relatively uncomplicated. Their lives are about three things: survival, reproduction, death – and nothing else. But we know too much to content ourselves with surviving, reproducing, dying – and nothing else. We know we are alive and know we will die. We also know we will suffer during our lives before suffering – slowly or quickly – as we draw near to death. 

    This is the knowledge we “enjoy” as the most intelligent organisms to gush from the womb of nature. And being so, we feel shortchanged if there is nothing else for us than to survive, reproduce, and die. We want there to be more to it than that, or to think there is. This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are; hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones. 

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    1. I am closer to Cioran (-:

      “For him, existence is a cosmic pratfall, a joke told in a language we half-understand. “We are born to exist, not to live,” he quipped, distilling the absurdity of a species that builds skyscrapers to touch the heavens while digging graves beneath its feet. In the face of climate collapse, Cioran’s laughter echoes through the smog-choked air, a sardonic soundtrack to humanity’s pantomime of progress.”

      Saludos

      el mar

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      1. Funny clip. Never heard of Dave Allen. Thanks.

        I went to xraymike’s site to read the essay again and noticed that he has already posted three other things since this one. LOL. I would’ve kept it up for a couple weeks before posting a new one. It’s too good to be buried already.

        I know he’s half man, half machine… but c’mon robomike, save some content for the rest of us to write about. LOL.

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  22. (h/t Steve Bull)

    Good short video, except for this god-awful line towards the end in one of those “what would aliens say if they were observing our planet” scenarios:

    You have the tools to restore what you have damaged, but the time to act is now. Extinction is not inevitable. It is a choice. Your choice. Choose life humans. For it is a privilege, not a guarantee.

    Actually, it looks like a quote from Brandon Young.😂

    I used to love the alien angle. Not a fan anymore (unless the aliens are clowning on humans, like They’re Made Out of Meat). I despise the fact that I fell for Dr Steven Greer’s cult. Getting duped into the noble savage myth is peanuts compared to the alien con.

    Understanding that nobody in the universe has ever gotten out of their own solar system… takes a lot of the fun out of sci-fi.

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      1. LOL, good one.

        I never gave South Park a chance. I probably missed out on some excellent commentary.

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  23. Jake Park a “collapse-aware Gen Z postrationalist” recently engaged on my pinned X thread offering his excellent plausible explanations for the covid mystery of broad indifference that troubles me.

    Jake just published his first essay, perhaps with help from an AI, on Substack. Those of you that appreciate a philosophical perspective on our overshoot predicament will enjoy this essay. My brain, as you know, doesn’t do philosophy.

    https://jakehpark.substack.com/p/epistemic-entropy-a-postrationalist

    Epistemic Entropy: A Postrationalist Manifesto in the Age of Collapse

    The world can no longer be defined in the blacks and whites of rationalism, nor does the myth of Progress continue to hold its authority. The world economy is a dissipative structure that consumes fossil fuels. We are running out of fossil fuels. Worsening economic conditions and fraying social cohesion amplify fear, and the internet, now used to keep us distracted, destroys our attention spans, eradicating the emotional and cognitive capacity needed to face uncertainty. In Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle elaborates further on the systematic erosion of our cognitive and social capacity through the desecration of our solitude. Thus, we see a societal split into relativist nihilism and psychosis. In the midst of this schism, postmodernism and poststructuralism, which correctly criticise the excesses of rationalism, have been nihilistically corrupted and subsumed into a turgid institutional dogma that fails to provide a viable alternative.

    I used to say, “the only thing that makes sense is that nothing makes any sense”; now, I’m not even sure of this. Feynman once quipped, “I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics.” I have elucidated that in fact, no one fully understands anything, as comprehension itself is nothing more than an unstable evolutionary heuristic fiction. But that doesn’t mean we don’t try. We try, even as the wheels of entropy grind ceaselessly, until all things—even this apologia—collapse into the perennial expanse of uncertainty. In the ruins of rationalism, we build not temples, but scaffolds—contingent, adaptive, and temporary—with the only certainty being that all certainties will erode.

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    1. Ah, thank you for sharing this! And I imagine you’ve picked up on the em-dashes, but I assure you that the writing is entirely mine. I promise not all of my essays will be this dense.

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      1. What software are you using for writing? There is no key on the keyboard for em dashes and no easy shortcut in Microsoft. Chat GPT puts em dashes in everything.

        I got super nerdy into this because I am a professional writer and had never seen an em dash professionally until Chat GPT came along. It’s an interesting topic for me because I wonder if I should be deleting them because it gives ‘AI was here’.

        This a hyphen (-).

        Word automatically turns hyphens into en dashes (–) when between two words. These are typically used between date ranges, but have also replace the em dash in modern writing.

        This is an em dash (—) . They are a relic of the typewriter era. I wonder if LLMs were trained on a lot of older books, hence em dashes are so common in AI???

        Then there is the 3 em dash (———). Used for referencing, academia, and legal texts.

        I will fight people on this (:-)), but I don’t believe anyone is actually writing em dashes on their computer. It is a clear sign that AI was present. Some people swear they write with em dashes. But I think they mean en dashes.

        The novel, “When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit” by Judith Kerr makes exceptional use of em dashes. They are throughout the book. Even back in the early 2000s I found these em dashes highly unusual!

        Judith used em dashes beautifully to interrupt her narrative with vivid descriptions. Her description of the Russian steppes was particularly enthralling. She clearly wrote her work on a typewriter.

        Check out this sample of her writing here: http://www.lovereading4kids.co.uk/extract/1295/When-Hitler-Stole-Pink-Rabbit-by-Judith-Kerr.html

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        1. I have used em-dashes all my life. I write on my phone, and you can long press the hyphen to get an em-dash on most mobile keyboards. On my PC, I’ve always copy-and-pasted or used a custom key code.

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          1. Please don’t be pissed, I haven’t read your essay. I am just commenting on em dashes because they have been top of my mind lately / driving me mad 🙃

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            1. Oh, it was a figure of speech. I’m not pissed at you. And yeah, I figured you hadn’t read my essay, because it’s very obvious it couldn’t have been AI-generated.

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        4. By the way, I don’t blame you for assuming I’m lying, although I fail to see what motivation I would have to lie. Here’s a fun test: copy the first paragraph of my essay, and ask it if it’s likely to have been written by an AI or human. Here’s what I get: https://imgur.com/a/HPMfdu5

          Envoyé depuis Proton Mail pour Android

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        5. I apologise for the spam, but I’m brainstorming a standard response I can use the next time someone falsely calls me out for this, just so I never have to think about it again. Bear with me! 😛

          I’m quite surprised you haven’t seen the em-dash in recent works. Here’s two examples from the last two ebooks I opened—no cherry-picking, just random pages: https://imgur.com/a/XdJEpE0

          The first is Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier, and the second is Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli, which I also referenced in my essay.

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          2. No worries at all for the spam! I didn’t know you could make em dashes on your phone. That might be another place where chat gpt has picked them up from. I really have never seen em dashes in business writing or government writing, I live in NZ. It could be to do with Microsoft Word not having an easy way to insert them. And most people for work write in Word.

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            1. Ah, hello neighbour! Australia here. And yes, I wouldn’t be surprised if you haven’t seen it in business writing. But em-dashes have been all over literature and the internet forever—I feel like I must be the only one who remembers!

              Envoyé depuis Proton Mail pour Android

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              1. Sorry, I have learned something! I really didn’t expect any young people to be intentionally using em dashes outside of academia. I think they are easier to do on a Mac, than on a PC. It raises an interesting thought about how technology shapes us and how we communicate has humans 🙂 I will read your essay, I am partial to a bit of philosophy. Have you read ‘The Reenchantment of the World’ by Morris Berman? It is a wonderful history of the philosophy behind science. I think you would like it, though you may hate the ending because he didn’t really know how to handle “what comes next?”

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                1. No need to apologise! It’s perfectly reasonable to assume my generation to be illiterate—because we are. I’m probably the only Gen Z in a ten-kilometre radius that’s read more than 50 books in the past year. I haven’t read Berman, but the synopsis seems roughly in line with my own view! Do let me know what you think of my essay!

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                  1. I have finished now. you will definitely like Morris Berman’s work. That book of his is saying the same thing as you. It is astounding that the more we “know” and the more complex our models become, the less help our experts actually are in the real world. You will like it here on un-denial. Vibing through the collapse is a solic way forward!

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                    1. I read the book, and it is quite excellent. It’s marvellous how we all seem to converge upon the same ideas, but just with different terminology. The goal of my essay, in a sense, was in large part to concisely show how many thinkers are saying the exact same thing: Adam Curtis, Buddha, Lacan, Durkheim… I was aware of the cybernetic model, but felt it would defeat the purpose of concision to include in my essay. But I am surprised I missed Berman! Thank you for this recommendation—I will be citing him in future essays. Some favourite quotes:

                      *Everyone, says Laing — executives, physicians, waiters, or whatever — playacts, manipulates, in order to avoid being manipulated himself. The aim is the protection of the self, but since that self is in fact cut off from any meaningful intercourse, it suffocates. The environment becomes increasingly unreal as human beings distance themselves from the events of their own lives. As this process accelerates, the self begins to fight back, to nag itself (and thus create a further split) about the existential guilt it has come to feel.”

                      “Newton was echoing the major theme of the scientific Revolution: our goal is how, not why. That I cannot explain gravity is irrelevant. I can measure it, observe it, make predictions based on it, and this is all the scientist has to do. If a phenomenon is not measurable, it can ‘have no place in experimental philosophy.’ This philosophical position, in its various forms called ‘positivism,’ has been the public face of modern science down to the present day.”

                      “In the ‘Apology,’ Socrates is aghast that artisans learn and pursue their craft by ‘sheer instinct,’ that is, by social osmosis and personal intuition. As Nietzsche pointed out, the phrase ‘sheer instinct,” which in Socrates’ mouth could only be an expression of contempt, epitomized the attitude of Greek rationalism toward any other mode of cognition. For this reason, he found Socrates (and indeed all of Western civilization) tragically inverted.”

                      “The person in search of integration may be permanenently scared off, or forced to undertake his or her search from the very beginning. At the very worst, the eruption of unconscious information can dismember the soul, result in psychosis. The alchemical process is often summed up in the phrase ‘solve et coagula’; the persona is dissolved (on the psychic level) so as to enable the real Self to coagulate, or come together. But as R.D. Laing points out in ‘The Politics of Experience,’ there is no guarantee that this Self will coagulate; indeed, such a result may be especially unlikely in a culture that is terrified of the unconscious and rushes to drug the individual back into what it defines as reality.”
                      – This one in particular is a word-for-word translation of my description of psychosis/the Dark Night.

                      “I know of no logical way to demonstrate that the denial of participation is the cause of radical relativism, and I am not advancing a causal argument of that sort; but they do seem to exhibit an observable pattern of interdependence.”

                      Learning I, II and III appear to correspond to the Kegan stages of development, or roughly the Buddhist paths.

                      Schismogenesis appears roughly analogous to Lacan’s jouissance.

                      “I have already noted Bateson’s example of the hypothetical television set that reports on its own internal workings as an illustration of the limits of consciousness. We see the paradox at once: it is as though I were to say to you, ‘Speak to me about what you are speaking as you are speaking it.’ In order for the television to report on the workings that make possible that very report, another unit would have to be added to it. But since this new unit could not report on its own workings, a unit would have to be added to that, and so on. One would soon confront an infinite regress, a set of Chinese puzzle boxes. The attempt of the conscious mind to explicate its own mode of operation involves the same sort of paradox.”
                      – This is an elegant layman’s description of the Turing halting problem.

                      I only disagree with Berman’s conclusion that a transition to Learning III is inevitable. I am not so sure that is where we’re headed.

                      Again, thank you for the engagement!

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  24. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/may/07/israel-starving-gaza

    Israel is starving Gaza. It’s a cheap, silent and brutal way to kill

    Starvation is attractive to mass murderers for a few reasons.

    First, it’s cheap.

    While Joe Biden and Donald Trump – and the majority of Democrats and Republicans in Congress – have committed more than $22bn of public money to Israeli’s genocide, killing people can be expensive. Tanks, bombs, missiles, drones, bullets and incendiary devices all cost money to make and deliver.

    But starvation doesn’t require any big outlays. Impose a siege, and human biology resolves the rest.

    Beyond being inexpensive to implement, starvation makes little noise. For those who seek to silence their victims – as Israel has by murdering at least 155 Palestinian journalists – and obscure their actions, starvation is a useful tool. There are no bomb craters, no burning children or journalists. There are only emaciated corpses. And 18 months into the darkness that has enveloped the Palestinians, they do not warrant many headlines.

    And that benefit – obfuscation – extends to the patrons too. The leaders of the US, UK, France, Italy, Germany and so on – who have underwritten the extermination of the Palestinians – can feign ignorance, or just ignore, what their partners in Israel are doing. They are busy people. Bandwidth is limited.

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  25. Alice Friedemann highly recommends a book on nuclear energy.

    My views on nuclear are much simpler than Ramana’s:

    • More nuclear will not prevent an economic and supply chain collapse caused by falling oil supply.
    • An economic and supply chain collapse will make nuclear unacceptably unsafe.
    • Points 1 & 2 are moot because we will soon be too poor to build more nuclear plants.

    https://energyskeptic.com/2025/nuclear-is-definitely-not-the-solution/

    This is a book review of Ramana’s Nuclear is not the Solution: The Folly of Atomic Power in the Age of Climate Change.

    It is definitely the best book on nuclear power I have read, and I’ve read quite a few. Easy to read it covers a gamut of topics, an overview of all the issues, plus how nuclear works and more. Some of my kindle notes follow. Although they seem extensive, they is so much more not included, I only saved off what was useful for my research.

    Please buy the book in paper so that you can pass it on. The nuclear lobby is so strong that Congress and the NRC are basically captured and the public has been brainwashed into thinking nuclear power is great because it doesn’t emit CO2.  For the sake of your future and your friends and family and generations to come there needs to be a lot more opposition.

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  26. The (former) archdruid just posted about peak oil over at ecosophia. Sounds like he is going to write on occasion on that topic again. He’s still arguing the slow descent scenario.

    While I find Hideaway’s fragile complexity a compelling analysis, I also recognize that there are formidable forces that will pull out all stops to keep BAU going, even at the price of more inequity and authoritarianism.

    JMG’s storyline does describe punctuated stair-step catabolic collapse, so even in this case, some change will be rapid.

    Either way, we are on our own to make personal preparations.

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    1. The system has wanted to contract since 2008 and we’ve used every trick in the book to prevent it building pressure in the process so my intuition says we should expect a fast drop but I also understand the system is so complex that there is no way to predict what will happen.

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  27. “By the way, if anyone here is in advertising or marketing, kill yourself.”

    We could add a many more industries to Bill’s brilliant joke…. military, healthcare, police, politics, financial investment, telemarketing… actually, it would be easier and more accurate if we just replace “in advertising or marketing” with “human”.😊

    (unfortunately this clip isn’t the full bit, but it’s still worth watching)

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    1. You’ll like this article.

      https://georgetsakraklides.substack.com/p/technophilia-the-mental-illness-behind?r=4mkmev&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true

      “The reason for all this complexity is the very nature of civilisation: highly fragmented, specialised yet globalised, but most of all, commodified down to the water we drink and the air we breathe. And with commoditisation comes branding. Branding is the science of lying. Product branding is the equivalent of a confessional sacrament: products walk in, confess all their carbon sins in secrecy, then receive the blessing to freely roam out into the world and destroy it. I worked in marketing, branding and advertising for two decades. My full-time job was to help products make false statements, that is, to claim that they are useful and benign. From online casinos to soft drinks, pet foods to the defence industry, I helped my multibillion-dollar clients highlight the “value” of their useless and dangerous products to their customers. As I was compensated to do this work for the world’s biggest multinational corporations, in the end I actually offered nothing of value to this planet: nothing other than making the productization process even more carbon intensive, expensive, and destructive to all 10 million life forms on Earth, including humans themselves.

      So, the problem isn’t merely the quantities of useless single-use goods we consume, but the entire “civilisational set up” that produces them: the complex, convoluted, wasteful chain of processes that monetize and brand these goods, upon which the monster we call “the economy” depends. The entire sequence of extraction, manufacture and disposal is a funeral procession where real life forms, resources and even humans are sacrificed just so that this death cult we call the economy can continue to register record profits.”

      Cheers

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      1. Good essay Campbell, thanks. Was checking out some of George’s recent work and it’s much better than I remember his older work being. A while back I had to stop reading his blog because I sensed too much denial. 

        Either I got that completely wrong, or George is similar to me where his awareness level (which includes denial control) has shot through the roof in the last year or so.

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    1. Thanks Stellar. If true it doesn’t surprise me.

      When you inject software that does not stay local to the injection site, is long lasting, has a wildly variable effective dose rate between individuals, and is compatible with every cell in every organ, and it instructs cells to manufacture a protein that is foreign to the body thus causing the immune system to attack and kill the cell, it’s not surprising that we see every manner of disease including infertility.

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      1. In addition, probable clots.

        Sigh, no mention of Dr. Joe Lee’s plausible prediction of clots from mRNA transfections.

        https://substack.com/inbox/post/163255744

        Cadaver “Calamari” Amyloidogenic Fibrin Aggregates
        Kevin W. McCairn Ph.D.

        Abstract
        This report presents a preliminary forensic analysis of anomalous fibrin-like aggregates recovered from postmortem human cadaveric samples. Through a combination of gross morphological inspection, cryosection histology, fluorescent staining, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), elemental analysis (EDX), real-time PCR, Raman spectroscopy, and Real-Time Quaking-Induced Conversion (RT-QuIC), the samples were examined for biochemical and ultrastructural features associated with amyloidogenic and protease-resistant fibrin formation. Findings suggest that the clot samples exhibit hallmarks of abnormal protein aggregation consistent with pathological fibrin remodeling, including enhanced autofluorescence, beta-sheet rich domains, dense fibrillar ultrastructure, and spectral anomalies. PCR confirmed the human origin of the tissues, and preliminary evidence of molecular markers associated with recombinant spike protein exposure (SV40 & Ori) was observed. Limitations of provenance, sample control, and chain-of-custody are acknowledged, and further investigation is recommended to establish clinical, pathological, and etiological relevance.

        Conclusion
        The clot structures described herein exhibit abnormal morphological, histological, ultrastructural, and spectroscopic features. Their dense fibrillar architecture, autofluorescence, ThT reactivity, spectral shifts, and preliminary RT-QuIC activity suggest amyloidogenic remodeling of fibrin under unknown conditions.

        While the findings are not definitive, they raise substantial biosafety and pathophysiological questions that warrant immediate, controlled follow-up. The uncertain provenance and unstandardized collection methodology underscore the need for independent replication with verified chain-of-custody.

        In the current context of vaccine-induced spike protein exposure and post-infectious complications, these results may point to a novel or under-recognized pathology. As such, they constitute a call for interdisciplinary scientific inquiry, clinical vigilance, and transparent investigation.

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  29. Kashagan oilfield, Kazakhstan – The Kashagan oil field is one of the most significant oil discoveries of the past four decades, with recoverable reserves estimated between 9 to 13 billion barrels. Located offshore in the Caspian Sea, the Kashagan is a giant oil deposit that began commercial production in 2016. (written Sep 20, 2024)

    Worldwide oil consumption is 105 million barrels per day. Thats 38 billion per year. So one of largest oil field discoveries in the last 40 years has a grand total of 3 or 4 months of global BAU… hmm

    Out of my element anytime I’m talking about oil, and it feels like something is off with my math. This all started from an article I saw about some new oil field that was estimated to have ten million barrels in the ground. Article was pumping it up with excitement. I was cracking up at how the entire quantity of that field will power civilization for a mighty two hours. LOL.

    So that got me looking into it more. List of oil fields – Wikipedia

    The list is incomplete; there are more than 25,000 oil and gas fields of all sizes in the world.[1] However, 94% of known oil is concentrated in fewer than 1,500 giant and major fields.[2] Most of the world’s largest oilfields are located in the Middle East, but there are also supergiant (>10 billion bbls) oilfields in Brazil, Mexico, Venezuela, Kazakhstan, and Russia.

    25,000 made me laugh at first glance… but ok, 1500 is more reasonable. If I upgrade those 1500 major fields to supergiants with 10 billion barrels… we’ll have 391 years of BAU (at a consumption rate of 105 mill per day). Ok, so that’s unrealistic. Lets go with the 1500 sites averaging 1 billion… that gives us 40 years. How about 100 million barrels per field… 4 years till the lights go out. Ok, now we’re talking!

    Sorry but I have no point here… just rambling because my brain got hung up on the 105 million barrels per day thing. Where the hell is it coming from? And how the hell is it not dried up by now? Ugh, when is this grave robbing gonna end.

    The Clash is too mainstream for me to be recommending, but I can’t help it. Been jamming to this song all night.

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    1. It is mind boggling how much biomass had to grow, accumulate, and cook for us to burn 100 million barrels a day.

      I like to convert to liters so my brain can better imagine it.

      100,000,000 barrels = 15,900,000,000 liters PER DAY !!

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      1. that’s such a large number that I have trouble wrapping my head around it, so I tried dividing it by world population; then it’s 2 liters per person per day, for everyone on the planet. Looking at it from a calories point of view (yes I know you can’t eat crude oil, but I think it’s an interesting perspective), I read that 159 liters (a barrel) of crude and equals 5.8 million BTU, for 36478 BTU/l, and that 1 BTU = 252 calories…so 18,384,905 calories per day, if I’ve not made a mistake somewhere! That’s enough to feed about 7500 people per day. Jancovici (sp?) talks about energy slaves, but I think he mentions something like 200 energy slaves per day…which makes me wonder if my math is wrong, or if reality is even more bonkers than he suggests.

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        1. 2 liters per person per day is a great way to think of it. Now imagine having a plot of land and growing enough biomass to make 2 liters of diesel a day. I think it’s a miracle that the earth somehow accumulated so much fossil energy.

          I think Jancovici is high, although he may be talking about rich countries which use a lot more than the average.

          Here’s my rough calculation:
          20TW = 20 * 10 ** 12 watts = total energy used by humans
          8 billion = 8 * 10 ** 9 = human population
          100 watts = respiration energy per adult human
          20 * 10 ** 12 / 8 * 10 ** 9 / 100 = 25 slaves per person

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          1. LOL, you guys made me get in on the act…

            Converted to liquor, 1.5 ounce shot glass = 376 billion shots a day (46 per person).

            This clip might be closer to reality than I thought. 😊

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        2. there is a mistake in the units here, as i used calories rather than kilocalories (the typical measurement for food). 36,748 BTU is 9,195 kilocaories, so on the basis of 2,500 kilocalories to feed one person, 2l crude oil/day equates to enough oil energy to feed 7 people.

          I think your take of looking at it from a biofuel PoV is interesting; according to https://hungermath.wordpress.com/2015/10/29/how-much-farmland-is-used-for-biofuel/, canola oil yields 226 kg/acre…assuming that canola oil has approx the same density as water, that means we’d need just over 3 acres per person of biofuel to get to that 2l/day figure for crude oil, or 25,840,707,964 acres total for 8 billion people. There’s a total of 4.62 billion acres of land globally used for agriculture, so we’d need to be farming about 5.6 planet earths to achieve that. Then another planet for the actual food, of course!

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      2. Arguably, gasoline prices in the US are far too low. They do not to come close to reflecting how valuable oil truly is, and what it took for it to form.

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        1. Your point leads to an interesting thought experiment.

          On the one hand, diesel is incredibly valuable and we should happily pay 100 times more for it because the alternative of hiring slaves to do the same work is more expensive.

          On the other hand, modernity requires growing complexity and plentiful credit, both of which require growing energy use, which requires diesel to be be priced lower than it is today.

          So maybe modernity is not compatible with fair value based commodity prices.

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  30. I’m back from our holiday to New Guinea. I spent a lot of time re-reading a lot from anthropologists like Bendall, Catton, Tainter, Levitt and others, plus I’ve been looking up their references since getting back.

    They all seem to acknowledge ‘resource depletion’ or ‘resource constraints’ but none seem to understand the physics of EROEI, nor do any consider that civilization is a physical process.

    Also when considering modernity compared to past civilizations they miss an important aspect. Past civilizations all used grass, grain and wood as their primary energy sources for most of their energy. Grass and grain fed to animals, grain and animals fed to humans, and wood for heating, charcoal etc. These are all naturally growing commodities with relatively easy production methods, so that the peasantry could continue with these activities even as the ‘civilization’ was crumbling around them. None of them required products from the heart of the civilization to go out to the rural areas, except for ‘protection’ from barbarians..

    Even mining was a relatively simple activity, with simple iron tools.

    In modernity, the primary energy for food, heat and mining are fossil fuel derived, they don’t grow locally. The peasantry (us farmers) can’t produce and ship to the city without the aid of fossil fuels. Comparing ancient civilization’s and their collapses to modern times is like comparing chalk to cheese.

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      1. I think the problem is that there is always another piece to the puzzle of the big picture which is what I keep finding.

        Anthropologists just don’t get the EROEI equation that collecting wood and grain from 50km out of the city is less efficient than collecting from 5-10km, so in the longer term the overall efficiency of the activity is falling. As the civilization grew, the resources came from further afield and from declining soils and forests, so double trouble on the EROEI front. A civilization stretching from 0 to 20-30 km from the ‘city’ probably gained in efficiency with better roads, better bred animals, better tools, but reached a size where distance/quality of resources ate into EROEI.

        All while this is happening, the best and closest grades of whatever is mined, whether sand, rock, clay or metals is always mined first. They also have laws of diminishing return applied, meaning a multiplication of the falling EROEI, with less efficient gathering of grains, wood and grass, feeding lower efficiencies of mining requiring more ‘energy’ to this endeavor. Even though totals of mined commodities can show increases, the net increase to society is reduced after all the added energy costs.

        It seems that inequality starts to kick in when the technology/complexity gains cease and start to reverse, so inequality is a feature of civilizations past their prime and just another part of the overall physical process of civilization.

        Our civilization was at it’s greatest point of equality in the ’60’s, right when energy growth, especially the most useful energy, oil, was greatest. It was a time of exponential growth in oil production. I’m certain it’s not a coincidence, it’s part of the overall process. As oil production ceased to grow exponentially and went to linear growth, while the EROEI started to decline, was when modernity started to become more unequal. We now have the greatest inequality in the ‘rich’ countries in many decades, and are heading towards more inequality.

        Anthropologists always seem to be looking at the human element/excuse for the collapse of civilizations and not the underlying physics of what’s happening.

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        1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_von_Th%C3%BCnen#:~:text=Johann%20Heinrich%20von%20Th%C3%BCnen%20(24,Strelitz%2C%20now%20in%20northern%20Germany.&text=Even%20though%20he%20never%20held,had%20substantial%20influence%20on%20economics.

          Thünen’s model of agricultural land, created before industrialization, made the following simplifying assumptions:

          • The city is located centrally within an “Isolated State.”
          • The Isolated State is surrounded by wilderness.
          • The land is completely flat and has no rivers or mountains.
          • Soil quality and climate are consistent.
          • Farmers in the Isolated State transport their own goods to market via oxcart, across land, directly to the central city. There are no roads.
          • Farmers behave rationally to maximize profits.

          The use which a piece of land is put to is a function of the cost of transport to market and the land rent a farmer can afford to pay (determined by yield, which is held constant here).

          The model generated four concentric rings of agricultural activity. Dairying and intensive farming lies closest to the city. Since vegetables, fruit, milk and other dairy products must get to market quickly, they would be produced close to the city.

          Saludos

          el mar

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          1. Thanks el mar, I’m sure you can see the problems with the assumptions. Here is another further down the article… “The use which a piece of land is put to is a function of the cost of transport to market and the land rent a farmer can afford to pay (determined by yield, which is held constant here)“

            ….”The city is located centrally within an “Isolated State.”

            Where is ‘isolated on planet Earth at the time of initial agriculture?

            …..”The Isolated State is surrounded by wilderness.“

            That wilderness had threats to human agricultural development, from both other humans and wild animals..

            …. “The land is completely flat and has no rivers or mountains.“

            So not on planet Earth, and not suitable for irrigation.

            …..”Soil quality and climate are consistent.“

            ….”Farmers in the Isolated State transport their own goods to market via oxcart, across land, directly to the central city. There are no roads.“

            … Of course, by tracking across other farmers higher yielding vegetable and fruit crops, those farmers never get upset, they just expect to lose a proportion of every crop to other farmers crossing their land, with their oxen carts. Of course its’ ridiculous in the real world as roads/tracks are an essential part of any civilization..

            ……”Farmers behave rationally to maximize profits.“

            This is straight out of modern economics where all players behave rationally. Sure a farmer that’s been growing fruit (trees) for decades is going to rip them all out because vegetables are more profitable this year. (NOT!!)

            People are irrational creatures, not rational which is why economics can never predict when a boom will bust or when the next recession will come along. What’s the famous saying about economists… “Some have picked 15 of the last 4 recessions”.

            Why would anyone make an assumption about rationality for a species, when the species mostly believes in some deity will save them and allow them to live after they die, which is clearly irrational???

            BTW I loved this spacial geography stuff when at high school and did a lot of this at university, but even back then, 50 years ago (ahhh!!), I started questioning professors about stupid assumptions…

            Any of us could make a list of unrealistic assumptions to show a bright green future of humans exploring the galaxy in the next few hundred years, providing we took a blind eye to the reality of the world around us..

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        2. Just a further follow up to my previous comment to discuss this: “Anthropologists always seem to be looking at the human element/excuse for the collapse of civilizations and not the underlying physics of what’s happening.”

          Yes that is entirely correct. The whole focus is on people – it is how the discipline works. It is something that drove me mad when I was studying anthropology. They often ignore natural things like resources, geography, and biology as explanations for human behaviour and choices. Luckily I was also studying history and classics – so I got a better rounded education.

          That is probably why I role my eyes when economists, scientists, and engineers think they’ll find answers to our predicament in the social sciences. A la Nate Hagens and co. Most of what you get from anthropologists and sociologists is post-modern frameworks, narratives, and word salad. Make it intersectional for bonus points of nonsense LOL.

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          1. Thankyou Monk!! This explains my frustration the more I read from so many different experts in different fields, the latest being, going over what anthropologists have come up with..

            Physicists/physical scientists studying the predicament mostly believe in the power of science to solve the problem and economists who use money to fix everything…

            Economists believe in money and ingenuity of humans to solve everything..

            Anthropologists believe in understanding the human influence will help solve things, so their work is relevant in helping us to avoid the poor decision making of the past..

            Geologists expect human ingenuity to find new ways to gain access to more resources, solving everything with more money, al la economists..

            Climatologists expect human ingenuity to solve climate problems, with a ‘simple’ (ROFLMAO) transition the solution to all our problems..

            None of them really have a clue, as they don’t understand what’s actually happening in the real world as they are lost in their own cubicle of the problem, while surrounded by others just as trapped in like minded thinking within their own little cubicles of expertise.

            To understand our predicament, that is basic physics as the underlying principle, requires a general understanding of physics, biology/ecosystems, economics, anthropology, geology and system dynamics, and enough understanding of maths and statistics to put the whole picture together..

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            1. Just saw this comment on Crazy Eddy’s blog and it instantly made me think of yours and monk’s comment.

              Specialisation of our modern world has killed the supreme advantage of a dialectic polymath.

              “Jack of all trades, master of none” is a figure of speech used in reference to a person who has dabbled in many skills, rather than gaining expertise by focusing on only one.

              The original version “a jack of all trades” is often used as a compliment for a person who is good at fixing things and has a good level of broad knowledge. They may be a master of integration: an individual who knows enough from many learned trades and skills to be able to bring the disciplines together in a practical manner. This person is a generalist rather than a specialist.

              This is the commonly understood meaning of this phrase, however the entire adage reads “Jack of All Trades, Master of None, is better than being a Master of One”, which reinforces the thought that a generalist has more value than a specialist.

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    2. Past civilizations all used grass, grain and wood as their primary energy

      Those civilizations were all closer to the almighty important 100% on the farm ratio… everybody knowing how to do the essentials.

      In modernity, the primary energy for food, heat and mining are fossil fuel derived, they don’t grow locally.

      With the added bonus that the ratio has now flipped to under 10% on the farm… nobody knowing how to do the essentials.

      Comparing ancient civilization’s and their collapses to modern times is like comparing chalk to cheese.

      The most pampered and useless humans in all of history (Homo Inutilis) are gonna go down fast & furious… from a distance it might even look like Mother Nature is in that psychotic mode of “terminate with extreme prejudice”.

      Good post Hideaway. I hope JMG reads it.😊

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      1. Great points Chris, yes having the mass of the population still in the rural areas gathering food/fuel was a commonality of all pre fossil fuel civilizations, giving another reason why today’s modern civilization of over 50% of the world’s population urbanised and over 80% in most developed nations, is just not comparable.

        How is it anthropologists miss these important details? Easy, they think the systems/links are all human based and not part of physical laws.

        Also in the old civilizations, cities relied upon the rural population for everything, while the rural population required very little form the city, and could certainly cope without inputs from the city. In today modern civilization, the rural areas totally rely upon the distribution of fuel, fertilizers, pesticides, products etc from factories in cities to survive, often factories overseas..

        Alice Friedmann has the great book …When the Trucks Stop Running… I think she should include …When the Ships Stop Running into the title…..

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        1. Ships, trucks, tractors, and combines.

          I’ve threshed grain by hand. I think combines are our most useful application of diesel.

          Gail Zawacki had garbage trucks at the top of her list given what life would be like without them.

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        2. Anthropologists do not typically study macro-level. It is not part of the discipline. Anthropology is primarily concerned with the detailed, context-specific study of particular communities, cultures, and
          practices, normally done through ethnographic fieldwork. Anthropologists may interpret their findings using broader theoretical frameworks, including those borrowed from other disciplines – but they don’t do the broad sweeping stuff. That is what historians and sociologists do.

          I have an undergraduate degree in all three 🙂

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  31. That’s dedication. Hideaway hasn’t had time to unpack and wash his underwear and he’s already hammering the peak oil barrel crowd that denies the implications of peak oil.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/january-non-opec-and-world-oil-production-drops/#comment-788913

    Good grief Nick, don’t you think that civilizations based on renewable resources like grass, grains and wood are far more likely to survive longer term than one based upon non renewable mined resources of fossil fuels, metals and minerals??

    The 130,000TW of sunshine is irrelevant to your argument as it’s the lower and lower grades of ores that must be mined to access any of it, if we are to ditch grains, grass and wood, as the basis of civilization.

    If you could show just one example of where we, as in humanity, use solar, wind and batteries exclusively to build any of modernity, via industrial processes, that is commercially viable without any subsidies, you might have a case, but as of present there are zero. This despite the constant incorrect rhetoric of ‘renewables’ being cheaper forms of electricity.

    Reality is a bitch, they are not cheaper, hence why no company has bothered to take there high energy uses to exclusive renewables, let alone all the processes/uses that require the heat and products from fossil fuels.

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    1. Not that I support it but how do we know that this is real.

      Something just to spread the hate evenly both ways.

      Here’s an idea, everyone die, then there are no squabbles.

      Perhaps we should put up all the muslim rape stuff too, just to ramp up the rhetoric.

      On the face of things we don’t appear to be a species worth saving.

      Gaza maybe hell but don’t worry it is coming for all of us one collapse at a time.

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  33. I watched this last night and thought of you, Rob; it’s an exploration of Machiavelli’s “The Prince”, looking at why incompetent idiots end up as rulers. Summary from the description:

    The Machiavellian Paradox: Why intelligence can be a liability in power games
    The Confidence Illusion: How boldness and charisma outperform actual skill
    The Incompetence Network: How weak leaders surround themselves with yes-men
    The Simplicity Trap: Why the public prefers clear, wrong answers to complex truths
    The Ethical Handicap: How moral integrity blocks advancement in toxic systems
    Toxic Environments: Where mediocrity thrives—and how to reverse the dynamic
    Mass Distraction Tactics: How manipulative leaders maintain control and appear competent
    Breaking the Cycle: Strategies to resist manipulation and promote merit-based leadership

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  34. I really like this one from Crazy Eddy tonight.  The Greatest Disasters in Human History

    Probably AI generated but that’s fine, it got me thinking and that’s all I care about. I thought I had stumbled onto a new angle with fire leading to full consciousness/MORT. Every item on Eddy’s list is within the last few thousand years except for fire which he says is 2 million years old. So why does nothing happen for that long of time until a few thousand years ago? Obviously because something crazy happened to humans only recently… Oh ya, I was really onto something here😊… but then of course reality slapped me in the face by reminding me of something called the Holocene.

    I really hate the Hollywood Holocene story… humans were getting too good at hunting and killing off all the megafauna. Soon they would be out of food and go extinct. But at the 11th hour the clouds parted ways, and sunny days were here to stay. Gardens sprang out of the ground everywhere. 

    LOL, but you get the point… there is way too much human drama involved in that story… which automatically means bullshit. My fire story would be so much easier to sell if I didn’t have to include the goddamn Holocene part.😂

    ps. I’m not 100% sure what Eddy is saying here, but it sounds like he might be unknowingly putting a date on full consciousness/MORT.

    The earliest use of fire goes back as far as two million years ago, while a widespread way to utilize this technology has been dated to about 125,000 years ago

    Might have to ask him where he got the 125k from. Hopefully it’s a good source. I’d have no problem believing that date. Pretty sure I haven’t seen any burial evidence that far back.

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  35. https://peakoilbarrel.com/january-non-opec-and-world-oil-production-drops/#comment-788971

    Alimbiquated: The IMF reckons fossil fuel subsidies hit $7 trillion worldwide in 2022. These subsidies are distributed across all countries and territories surveyed by the fund.

    This proves by your logic that fossil fuels are not a viable source of energy. If they are, why do they need subsidies?

    Hideaway: Who are these ‘subsidies’ going to, the users of the fossil fuels or the producers of fossil fuels?? Do some research…

    Fossil fuels producers mostly pay royalties to governments, it’s what keeps many governments afloat, because of the huge energy surplus the production of fossil fuels has been over the last 250 years.

    We built our modern civilization on the back of fossil fuels, without them we don’t produce anything industrially in the modern world, despite decades of subsidies to renewables and nuclear power. Fossil fuels are dirty, destroying our Holocene stable climate period, but without them we have no modernity, yet now have over 8.2B humans on the planet.

    We are in deep deep overshoot, with a fossil fuels based civilization, which are soon to leave us due to depletion.

    Think of the huge subsidies the Saudi’s give their population by allowing them to purchase fuel well below international prices. Without them the govt would likely be overthrown as the disparities in wealth between the house of Saud and the rest would be overwhelming. Please tell us in who’s interest it is to stop such subsidies??

    For renewables and nuclear, there are large subsidies, yet they do not pay royalties on the energy produced, why not?? If any of the rhetoric was accurate about how cheap solar was, at industrial use type scale, then solar could pay high taxes on every MWh produced, just like fossil fuels do just about everywhere..

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    1. https://peakoilbarrel.com/january-non-opec-and-world-oil-production-drops/#comment-788945

      Nick G, once again you deliberately miss the whole point…

      If solar wind and batteries were really cheaper and better than fossil fuels, then the world would turn to them without any subsidies, tax credits, grants or mandates. None of it would be necessary as they would quickly become the mainstream due to economic pressures.

      If an off grid stand alone Aluminium smelter running on solar, wind and batteries could produce the cheapest Aluminium, it would quickly put out of business every coal fired plant run aluminium smelter…

      But it’s just not happening, anywhere…

      How are you so blind to not see this simple reality??

      Meanwhile they are building new captive coal plants to just run aluminium smelters in Indonesia. Why would this be happening if solar, wind and batteries were cheaper?? It would be an absolutely stupid economic decision, yet they are doing it….

      Nick G ….. “So. The world’s utilities, the mainstream scientific and engineering communities, they’re all wrong about solar and wind being cheaper and cleaner? All those Systems Operators, all those grid analysts, they’ve all been snookered by those con men selling photovoltaic snake oil? The fact that the world’s utilities are investing primarily in renewables…they’ve just all gone crazy?”

      How many people in this world believe in a deity that will give them a better life after they die, which rationally makes no sense at all, yet believed by billions. Humans are irrational creatures, so yes there can be mass delusion on anything.. In the 17th century just about every doctor believed blood letting was the answer for most ailments, again a mass delusion.

      Do the math on it all for yourself instead of believing papers and research for a change, work out the capital and operating cost to keep a 1GW Aluminium smelter operating for 25 years on solar and batteries, for such industrial applications require continuous power, including enough back-up batteries to last a couple of days without sunshine, which often happens everywhere.

      Do it for the equator like where Adaro are building a coal power station, that has a consistent 5.5 hours/d of sunshine without the variation of a sun shortened winter, using today’s costs, to see how expensive solar/batteries really are (It’s a low wind area)

      This is for your benefit, not mine, I’ve done the figures over and over, it’s NOT cheaper than a new coal fired power station!!

      Until you actually do the research for yourself, you will not believe it, but head in the sand is one approach….

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    2. I asked Gemini AI the same thing…..

      “Wow, spotting a dinosaur outside would be quite an extraordinary event! Since dinosaurs are believed to be extinct, it’s highly likely that what you’re seeing is either a misidentification, a very elaborate costume or animatronic, or perhaps even a movie prop.

      However, for the sake of being prepared for any possibility, here are a few things you might consider doing:

      1. Observe from a safe distance: Don’t approach the creature. Keep a significant distance to ensure your safety.
      2. Try to identify it: Take a good look at its features, size, color, and any unique characteristics. This will be helpful if you need to report it later.
      3. Take photos or videos if possible: If you can do so safely, try to capture some visual evidence. This will be invaluable for identification and verification.
      4. Contact the authorities: Depending on the situation and the size/behavior of the creature, you might want to contact your local police or wildlife authorities. They would be best equipped to handle such an unusual sighting.
      5. Avoid startling it: Make slow and deliberate movements and keep your voice down to avoid frightening the creature.
      6. Do not attempt to feed or interact with it: You don’t know its behavior or what it might be capable of.

      Could you describe what you’re seeing? Maybe we can try to figure out what it might be!”

      Believed to be extinct??? LOL. It shows that AI doesn’t have any intelligence at all…

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  37. I had an evil white skin sermon over at megacancer.😊 I know most of you have no interest. Only posting it here in case there’s one or two maniacs out there similar to me that find this stuff fascinating. 

    I don’t truly believe this stuff the way I used to back in my noble savage myth days. And I haven’t preached about it in a while. But I have to admit, it was kind of fun to put these thoughts together again.

    The Naked Apemunculus – MEGACANCER

    The Naked Apemunculus – MEGACANCER

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    1. Ya, not sure why I shared this yesterday. Or why I even wrote it in the first place. Guess I still get off on the irritation & shock value that it might bring.

      Would be one thing if I still bought into it, but I just don’t anymore. It’s too similar to my flawed logic with blaming humans for causing the sixth mass extinction… back when I rejected the MPP.   

      My current road map for this blame game stuff looks something like this

      If you blame white skin for this mass extinction… then you have to blame all humans… because every skin color would’ve followed the same path. And if you blame all humans… then you have to blame all life… because every lifeform would’ve followed the same path.

      It’s not white skin or humans that you despise… it’s this never-ending quest for profit and growth garbage… so yes, you despise life. If that’s too heavy to bear, then the fallback position is to put the blame on the actual root cause of this mass extinction… which of course is fire.

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      1. Why blame and not love?

        Aren’t the flaws and vulnerabilities the most loving aspect?

        Otherwise, wouldn’t organisms be just machines?

        There is much beyond the surface, behind the masks.

        Matthew 5:43-47

        To be more precise: study those who and that which trigger you/you dislike, understand why you do. It’s in you, first (otherwise it wouldn’t make you react). Like a seed buried down the soil, that has been brought back to the surface after a heavy rain or a landslide, now ready to bloom. Then see why they behave like that, and then you will see, they are just like you. In their vulnerabilities, in their wounds.

        Best.

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  38. Just had a taste of collapse. My internet was down for most of 4 days.

    The service we take for granted is a VERY complex system with many possible failure points.

    Was it caused by some dodgy amplifier on their nearby lines that doesn’t work properly except in the cool hours of the late evening and early morning, or maybe because I’m at the end of a long trunk and the signal is marginal requiring a perfect modem, or maybe the radar emissions from the nearby coast guard office fried some of their lines and they did not make a perfect repair, or maybe it’s the 30 years of splitters and crap coax in my crawlspace that degraded the signal and forced to me work in an confined area I hate and clean it up, or maybe a chip in the super complex modem went of our spec, perhaps aggravated by my “custom” mods to shut off their goddamn wi-fi radios because I have a much better high end router, or maybe it was a combination of all of the above.

    Three hours in a chat line queue waiting for a customer service rep in India to tell me to cycle the power which I had already done dozens of times, and then to notify him when it rebooted except this killed my chat connection, followed by another 2 hours in a chat queue to speak to a different person and repeating my story, followed by a technician plus truck visiting my home, followed by a more senior technician in a bigger truck, followed by the system failing again shortly after he left, followed by both technicians having to return later in the day with both trucks, plus a hundred feet of cable we don’t make in Canada, plus trying 4 different modems from two different manufacturers, neither in Canada, until we found one modem that was “just right”, and I’m back up, for a while anyway.

    I can imagine a lot of complexity vaporizing in a hell of hurry when SHTF.

    Not having internet causes a weird panicky feeling. And I still had some (slow) internet available via my cell phone.

    It will take some time to adjust to the old ways.

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    1. I know the feeling of panic. Maybe collapse has started, maybe a war has broken out, is it a repeat “Carrington” event? At the time my internet went down for a few days last winter it ultimately was that a contractor in the town 20 miles away (close to my ISP) cut a large trunk line and the ISP did not have a second route into their servers. At that time I did not have cell phone service at my home because Verizon refuses to put in a cell tower in our rural area. I have since switched cell providers so I can get internet either through coax or cell. I now really fear when both go out simultaneously.

      AJ

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    2. Rob, every system we all take for granted is the same, highly complex. Imagine the number of factories operating all over the place making parts that are constantly necessary to keep the whole operating. When that supply chain starts to fail, problems develop all over the place at the same time, the system will break down quickly.

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    3. Based on what you described, I am guess you get your internet from a cable company. Cable was originally designed to carry TV signals, and internet piggybacked on top of that.

      I suspect that the next round of crises we face will be the death blow for Cable TV (which is already in a death spiral). It will also be the end many websites and streaming services as well.

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      1. I do have cable internet but I believe they use optical fiber to deliver it to my neighborhood. I cancelled my cable TV and phone last year. Don’t miss it. I have enough video stored offline to keep me amused until I die.

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        1. Maybe that’s what you will be sharing post-collapse of the macro-system. When, the wind will be blowing (the only time there will be some electricity, thanks to small-scale repairable turbine, made out of wood https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2019/06/reinventing-the-small-wind-turbine/), it will be movie time for the community at Rob’s 🙂
          (unless another route is taken: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/05/thermoelectric-stoves-ditch-the-solar-panels/)

          Best!

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            1. So you have chosen the path of the hermit? If so, there shouldn’t be any regrets.

              Mark 12:30-31

              The desert is not the final destination, only a passage in the journey.

              If you accept, here is an assignment for you. Next time you have the urge to talk about covid or collapse to a person in real life (who you know doesn’t want to hear it, for now). Just pause, take a breath. Listen to the inner voice and smile to him. Tell him you understand the need and his fear. Soothe/reassure him. But, be firm and tell him, to wait, that it is not his turn to speak this time. Then smile to the person you are with and just listen to what they are saying. Look in their eyes, see the wrinkles, the grain of the skin, watch the expressions and the emotions. See the underlying light. Let things go their way. Smile.

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              1. That’s very good advice but I have difficulty controlling my anger about covid.

                Ignorance/denial about overshoot is totally understandable because there are no solution. There is no excuse for covid ignorance/denial.

                Covid would not have happened without our governments funding dangerous unethical gain of function research. After the man-made virus got loose there were many good responses that would have prevented most deaths, none of which we chose. The responses we chose harmed more people than the virus, and made the pandemic worse. When the pandemic (panic) ended, there were many things we could have done to prevent a recurrence, but we did none.

                My fellow idiot citizens understand none of this.

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                1. Thank you for your answer.

                  Yes, I understand. Then, I think you have to do something about it. For yourself and for the world. Listen to your anger. If it can’t be appeased, just by recognizing its presence, then do something with it. If you let it burn inside, it will turn into a demon.
                  You can work with it instead. Turn it into positive energy. It will fade, once the task you have to perform is done.

                  I don’t know, what precisely, you need to do about this. Only you know. By listening deeply to yourself. It may be that you contact an organization that is trying to file lawsuits. Or it may be that you volunteer for an association which helps people who have been harmed by the vaccine. Or it may be that you need to make different opponents of covid vaccines discuss with one another so that a comprehensive picture emerges. Or it may be that you create your own local investigation group. Maybe, you can start by handing out flyers from house to house in your neighborhood. Maybe, you can ask paqnation a helping hand: after all he is an expert salesman, he worked in the field and knows the art of communicating with people. Maybe, you visit the doctors in your region, or the corroners and ask if they can help with that. Maybe you contact lawyers and ask them what can be done (at the local, regional, state level…)
                  In any case, if I may, do not be agressive to people, don’t try to convince those who will not listen. You will find many others who have doubts, are more open, and also strong allies. Take your time.

                  I don’t know what you need to do. You know better than me. If you don’t find, just by listening to yourself, then make a list of all the potential things you could do. Sort them by easiest to hardest. And sort them by the ones you want to do most and the one you want to do least. Then pick a thing and try it out. Taste it. If it works out well, it will lead you to the next step. If it doesn’t then you can always go back to the list, without regrets, having learned something about the true nature of your desire.
                  All you need to know is the grand thing you want to achieve and the next small step in its direction.

                  I think you particularly excel at organizing things (mental and physical). So maybe, you can help a team of lawyers make sense of all the data they receive in relation to covid, in order to build a strong case, find the truth, expose it and judge those that pulled the levers. And avoid it reproduces (at least for a while ;).

                  I know you can. You have to: anger may burn, but it doesn’t lie. I wish you the best. You are a great and strong person.

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                  1. Thank you Charles. You have a lot of wisdom. I’ve bookmarked your reply and will think about actions I can take to find a channel for the anger.

                    I’m pessimistic because very few people care about this issue. Those that allowed themselves to be deceived don’t want to acknowledge the implications of being deceived. Those that orchestrated and amplified the deceit don’t want to lose their reputations and jobs.

                    I expect we might discuss and acknowledge covid reality when this generation of leaders is dead, however by then we’ll be so far into overshoot collapse that food and energy scarcity will be the only topics people will want to discuss.

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                    1. Thank you for your kind words.

                      Yes, you are right. And it seems to be true in general: to me, there is never any guarantee for any action to bear the expected fruits.

                      I feel like this: “Do what feels deeply right to you, regardless of the outcome. This is love. Like when you are riding your motorcycle.”

                      It can be a very small step. I will be rooting for you.

                      🙂

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                  2. Great comment Charles.

                    My white skin rant the other day, and this post by you are very similar… in that we both knew there was a good chance that most of the audience would be rolling their eyes at it. The big difference though is intent. While I’m trying to be a pest… you’re genuinely trying to help. Love that about you. It’s why you’ll always be employed as my spiritual advisor. 

                    ps. We can definitely help Rob turn it into positive energy… and a shitload of money. The road show act was gonna just be me and Hideaway but instead we’ll make it a three-man team. For the first 50 minutes of our act, they’ll both be the villains scaring the hell out of crowd with their scale/complexity, MORT and mRNA content.

                    Then I come out for the last ten minutes and save the day. I’ll astonish the audience with stories of rituals and dazzle them with official sounding terms like geoengineering, nuclear fusion, and the seventh generation principle.

                    I’ll put them at ease with the mRNA stuff by explaining how their government is required to lie sometimes (always for the protection of their own citizens), but they would never lie about something this important. And how having a population of healthy, informed citizens has always been the govt’s top priority.

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                2. Source: https://www.dasgelbeforum.net/index.php?id=672887

                  On April 30, 2025 , attorney Dr. Michael-Paul Parusel, with offices in Heidelberg and Vienna ( https://www.ra-parusel.at/ ), filed a criminal complaint against 52 leading figures from science and politics in Germany for colluding in deceiving the public with the coronavirus measures. Download the complaint here:

                  https://uploadnow.io/f/g3XtXBk

                  The lawyer Dr. Michael-Paul Parusel bases his 130-page presentation of the facts on the suspicion of the realization

                  • serious coercion according to § 240 StGB
                  • dangerous bodily harm according to §§ 223, 224 StGB crimes against humanity according to § 7 (1) No. 8 VStGB
                  • deprivation of liberty according to § 239 StGB
                  • incitement to hatred according to § 130 StGB
                  • crimes against humanity according to § 7 (1) No. 9 VStGB
                  • serious bodily harm according to §§ 223, 226 StGB
                  • bodily harm resulting in death according to §§ 223, 227 StGB murder according to § 211 StGB
                  • perverting the course of justice according to § 339 StGB
                  • persecuting innocent people according to § 344 StGB
                  • forming a criminal organization according to § 129 StGB genocide according to § 6 (1) No. 3 VStGB

                  as intentional, unlawful (not necessarily culpable) possible main offences, if applicable, applying to the person reported

                  • as an attempted offender according to §§ 22, 23 StGB
                  • and/or by omission according to § 13 StGB

                  but in any case – taking into account §§ 160 ff StPO for the public prosecutor’s office and applying to the person reported in each case –

                  • as a direct perpetrator according to § 25 (1) StGB
                  • as an indirect perpetrator according to § 25 (2) StGB
                  • as an instigator according to § 26 StGB
                  • as an accessory according to § 27 StGB.

                  It will be interesting to see when the ” thinking ” part of the courageous lawyer’s own soul signals during morning house calls that the renaturation of Germany cannot be stopped.

                  Enjoy reading the 130 pages as a substitute “Word for Sunday” and
                  cheerful greetings

                  Avicenna

                  —

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    4. Today my internet went down for 3 hours, this time without my modem unlocking from the network, which means the problem is somewhere in the network, not in my home. Or maybe there are 2 problems.

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    1. Assuming this definition from Grok:

      Eugenics is a set of beliefs and practices aimed at improving the genetic quality of the human population.

      I know of no one that argues mRNA transfections have a eugenics agenda.

      A few low credibility people have argued mRNA transfections have a population reduction agenda.

      Many high integrity people have argued some countries used covid as an excuse to cull expensive sick elderly people with midazolam, remdesivir, ventilators, excess oxygen, withholding ivermectin which is a broad spectrum anti-viral effective against RNA viruses, and withholding antibiotics from being used to treat pneumonia which was a common fatal side effect of covid.

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  41. Despite Trump being a moron narcissist man-child he does have a few good people on his team.

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  42. https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2025/05/15/peak-oil-returns/

    Tim Watkins:

    Without an increase in surplus energy, which unconventional oil cannot deliver – to paraphrase Art Berman, discovering that your glasshouse-grown tomatoes are too expensive to bother growing – growth becomes impossible.  But the way in which it plays out is distorted by the “exorbitant privileges” within the financial system – Bolivians go hungry while Europeans consume cheap plastic goods from Asia – make it impossible to predict where shortages will materialise next.  Nevertheless, the direction is clear enough.  And while declining surplus energy is the real crisis, it will manifest as an updated and exponentially greater version of what happened in 2008.””

    Saludos

    el mar

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  43. Unfortunately, most politicians are fanatical human supremacists.

    https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2025/05/off-the-marx-hitler-spectrum/

    Where do I fall on this spectrum—or am I even on it? I’m going to make you wait for a short bit.

    We might also try assigning percentages, crudely, to the groups above. If the primary cherished unit is oneself, one out of 8 billion people is the “top” 0.00000001%. Numero uno! Corporations—the wealthy and powerful—might represent the top 1%. By the time we progress down the list to all people, we might say it’s 100%. End of story, right?

    Not for me. Despite a dangerously swollen population and depleted wildlife, humans are only 3% of animal biomass, 0.01% of living mass, perhaps one ten-millionth of species, and well-less than 0.000000001% (one-billionth) of the living medium (atmosphere, soils, ocean) on the surface of Earth. It gets staggeringly smaller if considering the entire Earth (required for sufficient gravity to hold an atmosphere) or the sun (the energy source for life), and so on.

    By these measures, the 100% human focus of even the hard-over Marxist puts them into ultra-elite status: into a tiny corner of the room. And that essentially guides where I landed. On this spectrum model—incomplete and flawed as it is—I might call Hitler and Marx Tweedledum and Tweedledee: both parts of the visible spectrum. Don’t get me wrong: it’s not that I cannot discern a difference between red and blue, or that I would have equal preference for spending time with either Marx or Hitler. But both were committed human supremacists, which I find to be ugly. Neither questioned the trajectory of modernity: they wanted more of it, but parceling out the loot differently—among humans, of course. Both sought to perfect the production of goods and services for the benefit of their differently-scoped constituents—through exploitation of “resources”—with no regard for the ecological toll insofar as humans (of Taker culture) get what they want in the short term. Workers of the world, unite?

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  44. HHH on debt and profit.

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-10-2025/#comment-789029

    Speaking of debt. Americans are currently paying $560 billion in interest a year on personal debt alone.

    Average interest expense on credit card debt is about 21%.

    I think we can apply the Red Queen to debt in general. The more debt you create the more debt you have to create in order for any of it to be repaid.

    The whole idea of making a profit requires energy growth. Doesn’t matter if it’s a bank lending out money with interest attached. Or if banks are charging fees instead of interest. More money has to be repaid than was lent out in the first place.

    It simply doesn’t matter if solar and wind are a thing. Because not only does solar and wind have to be able to repay the debts incurred building them. They also have to be able to retire all the legacy debt.

    Which is exactly why solar and wind don’t matter. You’d have to believe everyone within a economy would continue on without a profit in order to believe solar and wind matter.

    It isn’t really a culture based on infinite growth. It’s a monetary system that requires infinite growth.

    Who’s going to build anything if there is no profit to be made? Who is going to employ anybody if there is no profits to be made?

    We can talk about FF vs Renewables all day long and none of it matters.

    Only thing that matters is do we have a growing energy supply that can service all the debt.

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  45. Hideaway continues his MORT validation experiment…

    https://peakoilbarrel.com/open-thread-non-petroleum-may-10-2025/#comment-789022

    Nick G … I see you continue to ignore reality that Aluminium smelters like the new one from Adaro are indeed building the smelter and associated power plant (coal) as a captive plant, meaning it’s own new grid, or effectively ‘off grid’..

    Why is it so possible to do this with coal while no-one is doing it with solar, wind and batteries??

    Very obvious your sleight of hand claiming solar and wind are cheapest, then referring to smelters that have gone to geothermal and hydro sources of power.

    Do you realise that if we exclude ‘traditional biomass’ from energy equations to look at what powers the modern world, fossil fuels still provide 92% of all energy content that includes huge gobs of essential products, while of the exclusive electricity providers, which have zero of the important products, are only 8% of all energy, with hydro and nuclear being the majority of this and solar and wind still only providing 2.7% of the overall energy used.

    BTW you don’t seem to understand my position at all. I’m not a fossil fuel defender at all. I’m a reality defender, from what actually exists and is happening in our world. Fossil fuels are dirty, environment damaging sources of energy and products that will be rapidly leaving us, oil initially, due to humanities stupid compulsion to keep growing into terminal overshoot, by ignoring reality of depleting resources and environment damage.

    Every cornucopian view of a bright green future based upon solar, wind, batteries and/or nuclear fission/fusion is just as delusional as anyone thinking modernity will continue based on polluting/depleting fossil fuels.

    We can only maintain any of our current civilization by continuing high and growing use of energy to make up for the lower grades of everything we mine (energy, metals, minerals and materials), as due to entropy and dissipation 97-99% of all energy goes to just maintenance, not growth of anything ‘new’.

    We will leave most of the remaining fossil fuels in the ground once past peak production of oil, as the overall energy decline will, via feedback loops throughout the world economy, crush the complexity of the modern world in chaotic ways. We only do all the mining via high levels of complexity in our modern world and this complexity is required because of the low grades of everything. The falling complexity will make a lot of oil and gas unobtainable, just like it will make a lot of copper and every other mined resources unobtainable as well.

    The human march forward of technical ability/modernity over the last 250 years has only come at the cost to the environment of a growing human population/market size that allows for growing complexity, which required growing energy and materials use as well, in a self supporting upward spiral until something major fails.

    As overall EROEI of all energy has been falling, manifesting as debt increases and lower standards of living and greater inequality already, once actual energy production starts falling, most likely led by oil production falls, the upward spiral of growth will collapse, taking complexity of our modern world with it…

    The more I research it, the more I realise it’s most likely just the way it was always going to happen as the self adapting complex system of civilization reaches the end of it’s time, just like every other complex self adapting growth system ends..

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    1. Yes. And I think this could be past tense:

      once actual energy production starts falling, most likely led by oil production falls, the upward spiral of growth will collapse, taking complexity of our modern world with it…

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    1. I can’t tell if you were being critical of Nate? If by woo, you mean religion/god /spirituality; then I agree with you. When collapse starts and accelerates people will fall back on some form of woo, because they’ll have nothing else to support them. We here at un-denial being supreme rationalists understand that there is no meaning in the universe and our lives have no ultimate purpose other than as conduits for entropy.

      AJ

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      1. I would disagree about you saying “We here at un-denial being supreme rationalists understand that there is no meaning in the universe and our lives have no ultimate purpose other than as conduits for entropy”.

        Yes to being rational but I think there is purpose and meaning in our lives that we can choose to give it even if the universe displays that we don’t. This is not denial of our ultimate situation but an awareness of how precious it is to be given awareness of the big entropy machine and some of the beautiful machinations within it. I get the feeling most here feel this way too but struggle with most of our fellow travelers lack of awareness.

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        1. I’m with nikoB on this.

          I’ve said it many times but it’s amazing to be alive as a eukaryotic multi-cellular animal with high intelligence and an extended theory of mind at the peak of what is probably possible in the universe, and to be born with defective denial genes that permit us to understand how rare and special our situation is in the universe.

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  47. Dr. Tim Morgan with another restatement of the ideas he has been discussing for years. I liked his conclusion but you can skip the rest.

    Notice that he implies collapse will favor those with normal denial genes so we can expect MORT to persist in whatever remains of our species.

    #303: At the end of modernity, part two

    There can have been few times in history at which the routine denial of obvious reality has created a greater measure of potential competitive advantage.

    In horse-racing terms, we may not be able to name all the eventual winners, but we can already identify many of the spavined nags, much favoured by the punters, which are destined to lose.

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    1. #302: At the end of modernity, part one

      Hideaway on the same article…

      Dr Tim, you have to look at the history of what happened to have an understanding of the issue and the problem of proposed solutions…

      ” It’s quite possible that top-down, highly centralized systems may fail, creating space for bottom-up, more localized alternatives.”

      We went to these more centralised systems of deployment of goods as it was more efficient in terms of energy and materials for the much larger populations in cities now compared to the good old days of the corner store…

      To now return to such an environment, with the given population, will require an increase in energy and materials to make it happen. Every baker will require their own oven, every butcher their own refrigeration, full range of tools etc.

      If/when the existing systems fail due to lack of energy and materials, then how does a less efficient system of greater use of energy and materials arise?? Obviously it can’t, which is why the collapse of modernity is baked into the future, closely followed by a collapse in population, due to starvation among other ills to befall modern humans..

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    2. There can have been few times in history at which the routine denial of obvious reality has created a greater measure of potential competitive advantage.

      Maybe, our leaders fear that if they spoke honestly about the situation, it would cause runs on the financial markets.

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  48. We’re incapable and always have been incapable of holding ourselves back. We’re programmed to grow. We’re programmed to consume. And we’re programmed to deny that that’s a problem. – Gail Zawacki

    I listened to this masterpiece last night for probably the tenth time. I know it’s been shared here many times. I’m just posting again for any new people. There are hundreds of good collapse writers out there… but there are only a handful of people (that have ever existed) with the ability to sound this smooth when talking collapse for an hour in audio/video format. 

    My favorite moment comes at around the 14-minute mark when Gail’s explaining her frustration from her dad’s denial of the ‘Limits to Growth’ report. She turns into a valley girl for a second and it’s hilarious. I just wish she would’ve thrown in a “gag me with a spoon”. LOL  

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    1. I love that interview and have listened to it many times. I made an audio only version and keep it on my phone. Probably Sam Mitchell’s best ever interview.

      No problem reposting gems here. There may be new lurkers that have not seen it.

      As I age I gravitate to repeated viewings of content I love. Tonight I’m thinking The Guns of Navarone (1961).

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        2. Thanks. I’ve seen Two Hands (liked it). Will put the others on my to-do list. 

          My favorite Aussie films besides Mad Max and Crocodile Dundee:

          Dead Calm 1989
          The Castle 1997
          Animal Kingdom 2010
          Red Dog 2011

          Walkabout (1971) has been on my radar for years but still haven’t tried it. 

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          1. Yes those are all great films Paq. Walkabout is a good but strange film. It gives a sense of the vastness of the Australian landscape.

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    2. Just finished listening to it again.

      It’s amazing how much ground Gail covered in one hour off the top of her head. She had a remarkable intellect.

      I didn’t like Sam poking around in her personal life, it was none of his business, but I admire that Gail remained gracious.

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      1. Ya that annoys me too. But I’m glad Sam went there otherwise Gail might not have shared that great story about writing a strongly worded letter to the president of Princeton for letting the kids down. Would love to get my hands on that letter. You can tell that she was good at busting balls.

        Plus I like to see interviews where the person gets pushed out of their comfort zone. You get lots of information from how they react… and like you said, Gail handled it like a pro. Nothing was gonna rattle her.

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    3. OK, I Will take my punishment. I had not listened to this before even after your and Rob’s multiple recommendations. I guess as an excuse I would say that you I know all this stuff and we discuss it all the time so there’s nothing new here, but that’s kind of a cop-out. In the space of 1 hour, Gail really does hit all the nails on the head. Where she’s at is probably just about where I’m at . . . cynical, no illusions about everyone arround me’s denial, rational, atheistic, not an ounce of hopium left. The future for genus homo and lots of our fellow travelers is bleak. Earth and life will bounce back until the sun becomes a red giant and the universe continues on for trillions of years in ever-expanding entropy. NO meaning but what we give it.

      So thanks again for posting it.

      AJ

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  49. Why we can’t preempt collapse.

    On Preempting Collapse

    https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/on-preempting-collapse

    1. Complexity. No one can really understand how the human ecosystem works in its every detail. Such complex systems are inherently non-linear: thinking that doing “A” causes “B” which will lead to “C” is a dangerous simplification. In such a complex web of interrelations doing “A” might easily cause “E”, which then will accelerate “D” to a point where it tips “B” into an entirely different state, while steering “C” into a new direction. All at the same time, or within a couple of milliseconds. As an added bonus, all this might result in the emergence of “X” a decade later — something which no one ever thought possible. Again, doing something radical in a such a chaotic system can only increase chaos and is guaranteed to come with unexpected side effects.

    Given this, Is it even possible for the economy to “de-grow” in a non-chaotic fashion? I am not 100% convinced that it’s impossible, but I suspect that is the case.

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    1. I see a lot of degrowth stuff on LinkedIn. It’s all well meaning but I don’t think they understand the levels of complexity (neither do I) and it all seems to predominantly paint a picture of comfortable lifestyles within planetary boundaries by just giving up a few luxuries in the global north to allow those in the global south to improve their living standards. Population is pretty much a banned topic.

      Hideaways complexity lens along with MORT and the other key topics discussed here have me convinced the downslope will be chaotic.

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      1. Here is a video showing a modern mining operation, including the processing that happens to just make a concentrate that is shipped elsewhere for turning into copper.

        Even though the process is as close to continuous as possible, for efficiency purposes, there are many minor details left out of the commentary in terms of variations in ore and how they have to manage these differences. The chemicals used are also given a hand wave treatment…

        Without our modern complexity of all this machinery and computer guided operation, in most of the machines involved, we would not be able to mine this resource, even with a million human laborers..

        https://youtu.be/VAiCiFD-Rjg

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        1. Thanks, really interesting! Lots of debt, lots of diesel, lots of electricity, lots of high-tech complexity, and they still have to ship their concentrate across the planet to Japan for another complicated process before there is any useful metal.

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          1. When looking at this type of operation, any single large piece of machinery is composed of often thousands of parts that came from hundreds if not thousands of different factories across the world.

            When complexity starts to collapse these types of operations will close very quickly due to lack of spares of literally everything. Govts everywhere will try and keep fuel and ‘essentials’ going, yet have no handle on the myriad of parts, chemicals, lubricants also continually required, no be able to source them.

            None of our industrial civilization can run without complete supply chains, so when complexity starts to unravel, then the supply of materials to every factory in the world also quickly unravels, bringing production of just about everything to a standstill, which means no parts making it out to all the businesses that require specialist widgets..

            Reading the latest “Honest Sorcerer” who is in the long slow collapse camp, just frustrates me for the lack of overall understanding of how the world actually works..

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            1. Hideaway, you just made me wonder if having a “real” job in the real economy is a pre-requisite for understanding fast collapse…

              My perspective changed a lot between university and working in infrastructure. When you are in theory land it is harder to see how fragile the whole system is. I have been amazed the last 10 years that things have stood up as well as they have!

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            2. Good points. Don’t forget the tires on those giant trucks and excavators. I’ve watched videos of them being made.

              I don’t read much of the Honest Sorcerer any more. Seems to have lost his clarity of thought.

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              1. The Honest Sorcerer does have interesting posts, though. He has set himself an ambitious goal, to come up with something new every week. I wouldn’t object if he reduced the frequency to, say, a couple of times a month, to collect his thoughts so as not to be repetitious.

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                1. I was too harsh. Sorcerer has a good site.

                  It’s very hard to come up with fresh ideas once you’ve said what needs to be said about our overshoot predicament.

                  Un-Denial no longer features many essays by me and instead has become a place for a few rare like-minded people to hang out, and a vehicle for me and others to chronicle events as they unfold via comments.

                  I also like to do what I can to amplify good works and good ideas by others in this space.

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            3. It is quite possible that we will start off with a slow collapse, but then at some point, when the feedback loops kick in, the bottom will fall out from under modernity.

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        2. Pre-1982 U.S. one-cent coins are 95% copper. There are still plenty in circulation. I’ve got a pile of them. Cheapest way to mine copper –

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    2. Hey Stellar! I have found the easiest way to understand this is in physics terms. The economy is a dissipative structure. When dissipative structures are not growing, they are collapsing. A slow speed-of-collapse could be defined as ‘de-growth’. But these are just words ‘collapse’ ‘degrowth’ ‘decline’. The real effect for normal people is their living standards go down, which lowers their happiness and quality of life.

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  50. Yowser!

    We must be getting very very close…

    Art Berman has gone full on woo by incorporating quantum this and that into his essays.

    https://www.artberman.com/blog/quantum-decision-theory/

    Quantum Decision Theory doesn’t pretend to solve political conflict. But it offers a model better suited to our moment—one that doesn’t assume rational certainty, but makes room for contradiction, ambivalence, and the way minds change. We are beings of potential, not certainty. Of context, not abstraction. Of thresholds, not smooth curves.

    In an age of narrative fragmentation and psychological overload, this shift may be more than useful—it may be necessary. Not just to explain why people deny, rationalize, or resist, but to help us move more honestly through a world where truth is entangled, contested, and often unbearable. Physics reimagined the universe a century ago. Maybe it’s time the rest of us get on board with that reality.

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    1. Add Chris Martenson to the list! The more time he spends with Evie, the dumber he gets. He was genuinely trying to say Astra Zeneca means ‘road to death’ in Latin. Astra means star lol. Mort means death. This is basic educated person stuff we’re dealing with here. LMAO he has gone the full pothead makes a conspiracy video on YouTube.

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      2. Damn you monk. You’ve made it so my world doesn’t make sense anymore… I’ve been quoting that Tombstone line my whole life… “How I really hate him”

        Assumed that picture was a typo. But I just saw it again and its nagging at me. So I looked it up. Yep, it’s ‘now’. The actual movie script as well as the dvd subtitles… but they’re all wrong goddammit!! Val Kilmer is 100% saying ‘how’. Lips and voice.

        I know it still works and makes sense, but the quote is ruined with ‘now’. Might spend rest of my life crusading to get this corrected.😊

        If you have any interest, it’s at around the 2:15 mark.
        https://youtu.be/GGNdnlCbfMs?t=130

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        1. He definitely says “how”! I have watched this movie so many times. It is a childhood favourite. They just don’t make movies this good anymore 😦

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          1. Thanks for confirming. Maybe I can get on with my life now.😊

            Ya, such a classic. It’s weird though… the actors playing the Earp brothers, Kurt Russell, Bill Paxton, and Sam Elliott… I’m a huge fan of all three but I don’t like any of them in this. You’d think that would hurt the movie big time. But no, it’s all about the bad guys for me. Ringo, Curly Bill, and Ike. (and of course Doc Holliday who steals every scene)

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            1. I think they are all amazing and I love Kurt’s moustache. The only bummer in the movie is they don’t reload their pistols after 6 shots. Like when Ringo gets drunk and shoots like 30 rounds out of two handguns … ok movie sure. The outfits in the movie are incredible 🙂 love love love

              Doc Holiday is incredible. Maybe I’ll need to re-watch it this weekend LOL

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                    2. I was a completely different person. I knew nothing about the world or overshoot. I was confident, competent, and competitive. My goal was to be a millionaire. I looked down on people who worried about the social issues or environmental damage. My favorite slogan was “Nuke the gay whales for Jesus”.

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