Brains of Potent Euphemisms and Metaphors

It is said that the brain is so complex that it cannot understand itself. Scientists at Harvard and technologists at Google Research have collaborated to map out the massive volume of 1 cubic mm of human cortex! More:

Now, a team from Harvard and Google Research have made a major breakthrough, publishing the largest ever dataset of neural connections in a human brain. Or at least, a tiny piece of one – this sample measured just 1 mm³, or about the size of a single poppy seed. But contained in that space is an incredible 57,000 neurons, 230 mm of blood vessels, and 150 million synapses.

Mapping just this tiny chunk of brain generated an astonishing 1.4 Petabytes (PB), or 1.4 million GB, of data. Let’s put that in perspective with some back-of-the-envelope math – a standard, double-layered Blu-Ray disc can hold 50 GB. That means mapping just this tiny chunk of brain generated data equivalent to 28,000 Blu-Ray discs. How can we visualize that pile? Well, each Blu-Ray case is 13 mm (0.5 in) thick, so if you stack them all up that’s 364 m (1,194 ft) tall – or, higher than the Statue of Liberty standing atop the Eiffel Tower. All that just to map a poppy seed.

If we really want to wrap this back on itself, the human brain – the most dense data storage medium we know – is estimated to have a data storage capacity of 2.5 PB. That means a brain would run out of room after being loaded with data describing just one and a half cubic millimeters of itself. Mapping out the full human brain would require an estimated 1 exabyte (EB) of data, which is the scale of CERN’s data centers for the Large Hadron Collider. __ A Bit of Brain

1 mm cube: A Poppy Seed of Brain

Of course mapping every structural detail of the brain is not what we mean when we talk about “understanding” the brain. And it is not clear how useful it would be to memorize every synapse, every blood vessel, every glial cell, and every neuronal projection for each cubic mm of brain tissue. Just the turnover of blood cells, hormones, nutrients, and other substances to and from all the compartments intravascular, intercellular and extracellular in that cubic mm, would overwhelm every supercomputer. And the crushing reality of neuroplasticity and constant neuronal landscape redesign, makes a laughing stock of our best efforts to “understand.”

That is why we simplify and abstract. That is why we clump and use mnemonics, metaphors, heuristics, and sweeping assumptions. Because the very fact of understanding something occurs on several different levels depending upon the level of detail and precision. And it is not necessarily the deepest and most precise level of understanding that is the most meaningful.

The brain is simplest when seen from afar. It is when we get up close and personal that we begin lose confidence. And it is the dynamic nature of gene expression in the brain that wipes the smug grins completely off our faces.

Our brains were evolved to ignore most of the world around us, which most of the time proves to be quite superfluous in any case. But do such evolved skills gain us any respect from the artificial intelligence systems that are waiting at the gate for a chance to deceive us — and displace us? No. Indeed, they will use anything they can learn about us to help slip the knife between our ribs.

It took millions of years of evolution for our brains to become the way they are. The complex programs of gene expression in the brain have been sufficient to allow populations of humans to devise space rockets, supercomputers, nuclear reactors and particle accelerators.

But these things can change a lot more quickly than most “learned men” believe. Due to the multiple levels of genetic and epigenetic control affecting gene expression in all tissues of the body including the brain, it might be possible one day to wake up and discover that we and our like are no longer sitting on top of the cognitive heap. I am not talking about artificial intelligence, but rather a new type of human whose brain just works better. And then we may need to learn to say “yes sir” and “yes ma’am” again.

Sure, a smarter human would make much better use of advanced computing tools, including artificial intelligence. But it is also likely that he would not mistake AI for anything remotely intelligent. Given how easily contemporary humans fall for AI tricks, the newer smarter humans would almost certainly use AI tools to keep old style homo sapiens in their places.

Where we are weakest — the size, speed, and precision of our working memories and our lazy tendencies to fall into hypnotic trances — our newer replacement selves are certain to fashion superior auxiliary parts and prostheses. Using bio-tools currently unknown to us.

Will they go by new names and use clever metaphors and euphemisms to walk invisible among us, we never suspecting any such transition had taken place? Do not be too surprised.

More: In a different context and at a different time, we need to discuss the prevalent attribute of pre-senile delirium in modern highly networked populations. This common form of delirium is associated with confusion and delusion in a complex interactive manner. Being so prevalent among educated and networked individuals, it cannot be seen as a pathology but rather as an attribute that is commonly displayed, with negative consequences for the individual. As social media and other forms of media become more perfectly adapted to AI tools, popular delusions can be more precisely controlled from the top down, without the conscious awareness of populations.

Maintaining the brains of most of the population in a state of chronic delirium (engineered confusion/delusion) simply facilitates this top down manipulation. Strictly speaking, no pharmaceuticals are required, although modern populations tend to percolate in mind-altering chemicals.

Hannah’s Children: Social Scientist Mother of Eight Writes Book About Why Some Modern Women Choose to Have Many Children

The social scientist Catherine Pakaluk, herself the mother of eight, traveled across the United States and interviewed fifty-five college-educated women who were raising five or more children. Through open-ended questions, she sought to understand who these women are, why and when they chose to have a large family, and what this choice means for them, their families, and the nation.

Hannah’s Children*is more than interesting stories of extraordinary women. It presents information that is urgently relevant for the future of American prosperity. Many countries have experimented with aggressively pro-natalist public policies, and all of them have failed. Pakaluk finds that the quantitative methods to which the social sciences limit themselves overlook important questions of meaning and identity in their inquiries into fertility rates. __  Hannah’s Children by Catherine Pakaluk

The trend in the US has seemed to be for more and more women to be childless by choice. College girls are indoctrinated into anti-natalism, and they believe they will have all the time in the world to change their minds. But their ovaries could tell them a different story.

Other women — mostly women of religious faith — are choosing to have many (five or more) children. The book “Hannah’s Children” by Catherine Pakaluk is their story.

The Family

Who is still having babies, and why? I traveled to ten American regions and interviewed college-educated women with five or more kids. Hannah’s Children presents a narrative account of my findings. What emerges is a portrait of an overlooked group of women whose motives and experiences have profound relevance for the crisis of low birth rates, as well as for the deeper public dialogue about who we are as a people.

The narrative approach revealed that women with large families may be outliers, but their behavior fits a normal framework of rational choice. Women had reasons for what they were up to—reasons that often dealt in higher things, like meaning and purpose. Their stories help explain why pro-natalist policies haven’t worked in the past. You can’t pay people enough to take on the life-altering costs of having children beyond their own level of demand for a child. Nations that want to turn the tide will have to do the harder work of freeing up the religious communities that nurture belief in the intrinsic value of children. I profile one case where a high demand for children was unrelated to biblical tenets. But for the rest, high demand for children was experienced initially as a religious conviction: children were the purpose of marriage and a blessing from God. If we want to see more children born in the future, we’ll need more women and men with such convictions.

___ Catherine Pakaluk Interview in City Journal

Where to buy the book

Podcast interview of the author by John J Miller: (12 1/2 minutes)

Schools and social media such as TikTok are indoctrinating young girls against getting married and having children. But that decision should not be based upon ideological indoctrination and brainwashing. The female brain and body evolved to have children. And some women will never be happy until they have several children, as Catherine Pakaluk discovered when she traveled the continent to interview such women.

Public schools shape a child’s values according to the thinking of bureaucrats and intellectuals, speaking for elites who want to rule the world. But the elitist world view of today is a freakish thing, and has nothing in common with the evolved human brains — male and female. The elitist world view is devised and propagated solely for the benefit of stratospheric level elites, and not for you and your children. Unless you want to turn the world back into a feudal society of serfs and lords, you had best wake up. And in order to see that your children are awake as well, pay very close attention to what other people are inserting into their minds.

Children are very suggestible, and schoolteachers and professors take advantage of that suggestibility when they indoctrinate and brainwash children and youth.

In order to see that the brainwashing doesn’t take, you must make sure that children read their 10,000 books by the age of 21. Consider Hannah’s Children by Catherine Pakaluk as one of them.

Hannah’s Children

Mormon Family

Amish Family

9 Children in Evangelical Family

Catholic Family

The common element that Catherine Pakaluk usually found in large families was a strong religious faith. The type of religion might vary from Roman Catholic to Jewish to Mormon etc., but a strong connection to a higher power and a higher power’s will was important to most large families.

In both North America and in Europe there is a strong fascination with the idea of large families, which reflects the strong residual minority of religious families that still exist in those places.

It is crucial for readers to understand, however, that a strong feeling of connection to a higher purpose is a spiritual phenomenon, which does not require religion. If a couple is committed to having a large family, they are not required to convert to a religion before they can build their lives. Spiritual commitment to that degree, without religion, is more rare however. Trust is crucial.

Russia to Celebrate Victory Day 9 May

The strategic Ukrainian town of Chasiv Yar is under attack by Russian forces. Suicide attacks have been ordered to achieve victory in time for the Moscow celebration of Victory Day. In the video below, you can see Russian troops being urged on to a suicide charge by the unit’s political propaganda officer:

Meanwhile Ukraine continues its deadly drone attacks against Russian refineries, battleships, airfields, factories, and military training facilities. Russian attacks focus on Ukrainian civilian targets such as preschools, hospitals, apartments, civilian electric power infrastructure, and shopping centers. Russia also bombs its own cities with unsettling regularity.

Late Tuesday night to Wednesday morning, a fire broke out at a Rosneft-controlled refinery in the town of Ryazan, about 100 miles southeast of Moscow and 300 miles from the Ukrainian border. The region’s governor, Pavel Malkov, confirmed that an attack had occurred but did not provide further detail about location or damage.

Open source intelligence sources suggest that the refinery was hit by multiple drones. A Ukrainian official confirmed the strike to Reuters on condition of anonymity, but it was not possible to immediately confirm the extent of the damage.

As of early March, Ukrainian drone attacks have reduced Russian refining capacity by an estimated 14 percent nationwide. Gasoline exports have been temporarily banned to prevent shortages in the domestic market, and Russian officials have acknowledged that the refinery outages are tilting the balance of petroleum exports away from refined products, which are now less plentiful. Instead, Russia is focused more on exporting unrefined crude oil – effectively increasing the crude supply available for purchase on the global market. 

Defense analysts note that in picking oil refineries, Ukraine has found a particularly vulnerable target for long-distance drone attacks. Refineries are expensive, immobile, readily catch on fire after a small drone explosion, and are hard to defend because of their sprawling size. The attacks also have an outsize propaganda effect because of the dramatic fires they produce. 

As a measure of the difficulty of defending this vital energy infrastructure from a persistent drone threat, Monday’s attack was the second time that the Ryazan plant has been hit. Two of its distillation units were struck on March 13, and it had just come back up to full capacity. __ Maritime-Executive

Vladimir Putin expected a cakewalk into Kiev when he ordered the invasion of the neighboring nation of brother Slavs in February of 2022. The Victory Day celebration of 9 May 2022 was meant to celebrate the acquisition of over 40 million new Russians and a lot of new loot for oligarchs and siloviki alike. Fast forward two years and Putin’s propaganda machine must be happy with whatever small gains can be eked out — at the cost of over 1,000 Russian men per day.

Ukraine is not going gently into Russian slavery, as Putin had previously expected.

Russian leaders are dismayed at how effective the Ukrainians have been at destroying valuable Russian economic assets with long range UAVs attacks. Not only do most of the Ukrainian UAVs manage to evade Russian air defense systems, but the attacks on petroleum storage sites usually result in spectacular, difficult to extinguish and long lasting fires. These fires are visible to many Russian civilians who no longer accept the government explanation that the fires were the result of accidents. Sometimes the Russian oil storage sites are near factories that use that fuel for their operations. When the factories go up in flames along with the oil supplies, many Russians become unemployed. The damage is even more widespread because the large oil losses have caused shortages for Russian consumers. The Ukrainian attacks have reduced oil production and refining in Russia by twelve percent. Russia has banned Russian oil exports until the internal supplies of oil return to normal levels. __ Strategypage

Russia needs all of its men to shore up its flagging economy back home — which has become shakily dependent upon military-industrial spending in a form of terminal Dutch Disease. But having lost roughly 500,000 troops in the Ukrainian meatgrinder, and another 1 or 2 million young men having fled the country to escape the fighting (or are preparing to flee), Russia’s manpower/labor shortages are growing dire.

Russia’s industries require male labor — a lot of male labor. But Putin is very profligate with Russian males. The population is melting away.

China waits in the wings, ready to pounce on the Kremlin’s weakness at the appropriate time. That is Putin’s legacy for Russia. The fatal descent into the lapdog role.

At best, Putin set Russia back 30 years. But if his bumbling hands all of Russia over to China as its Slavic vassal, the Russia story becomes a footnote to the China story.

Reflecting on a Russian Collapse

Solar Power from Space: News and 137 Year Timeline

Space to Earth Solar Power

Our planet is bathed in sunlight 24 hours a day, but solar power arrays on Earth can only efficiently access useful solar power for less than 8 hours a day. Worse than that, solar power peaks at a time several hours from peak use time for modern human societies. Earth-based solar power is not useless, but it is nothing to hang your hat on. Government mandates to force the use of earth-based solar power actually hurt societies by driving up costs while not providing a substantial amount of useful new energy.

Humans have known about the photovoltaic effect for almost 140 years. Human theorists have contemplated using solar energy from space for over 100 years! Theoretical work toward space-based solar power satellites began in earnest in the 1970s. But only with the coming of SpaceX and cheaper reusable space launch vehicles, is it becoming more realistic to discuss the actual building and placement of large fleets of space-based solar power arrays.

Space-Based Solar Timeline:

• 1887: Photoelectric effect experimentally observed by Heinrich Hertz
• 1905: Albert Einstein publishes theory explaining the photoelectric effect based on quantum physics
• 1913: A solar cell patent is registered with the United States Patent Office
• 1923: Konstantin Tsiolkovsky theorized using mirrors to beam sunlight from orbit
• 1941: Asimov’s “Reason,” featuring society where energy comes from space-based solar, is published
• 1954: The first modern silicon solar cell is invented by Bell Labs
• 1956: Asimov’s “The Last Question” featuring SBS published
• 1957: The Soviet Union successfully launches the first artificial satellite, Sputnik into orbit
• 1958: NASA is founded
• 1964: The rectenna is invented (this is the device that would allow the solar energy in the form of microwaves to be converted to usable electricity for the electrical grid)
• 1968: Space-based solar power is seriously proposed for the first time by Dr. Peter Glasner
• 1969: The U.S. lands a man on the moon
• 1973: A space-based solar power satellite is patented by Dr. Peter Glasner
• 1978: NASA and the Department of Energy perform design and feasibility studies of the SBSP concept
• 1981: NASA launches the Space Shuttle fleet
• 1982: Boeing proposes SBSP concept
• 1995-7: NASA conducts “Fresh Look” study on the viability of SBSP
• 1998: Japan begins work on a SBSP concept
• 1998: International Space Station launched
• 2002: SpaceX founded
• 2011: The Space Shuttle is retired
• 2012: Joint proposal by China and India for a SBSP system
• 2012: John Mankins publishes study about SPS-Alpha, his proposal for an American SBSP system
• 2023: Caltech Space Solar Power Project engineers demonstrated the feasibility of space to Earth power
• 2024: UK startup Space Solar demonstrates 360 transmission of solar power from space
• 2024: US startup Reflect Orbital readies demonstration space mirrors to redirect solar energy from space
• 2024: US startup Virtus Solis plans fleets of photovoltaic arrays in eccentric Molniya orbits
• 2024: South Korean scientists propose large fleet of geosynchronous PV space based power satellites more

Timeline adapted from source via

While solar energy projects have become cheaper and much more efficient in recent years, there are still significant limitations to producing solar power. Solar panels can only produce energy during daylight hours and rely heavily on batteries to store any excess energy to deliver to the grid at night. This means that there is no stable supply of energy provided by solar farms without the use of expensive, high-tech battery storage. Further, the sunlight on the Earth’s surface is far less intense than that at the top of the atmosphere. 

The potential for generating far higher levels of solar energy has led scientists worldwide to explore the possibility of space solar power over several decades. Researchers found that if they could access solar power at a high enough orbit, it could provide continuous power from sunlight that could be beamed to stations around the globe. The idea is to transform solar power into electricity using photovoltaic (PV) cells in a geostationary orbit around Earth. This power can then be transmitted wirelessly in the form of microwaves at 2.45 GHz to dedicated receiver stations on Earth, called ‘rectennas’, which convert the energy back into electricity and deliver it to the local grid.

As well as reducing the amount of land required for solar farms, these systems could serve remote parts of the world, providing rural communities with a stable, green energy supply. However, the technology is not yet available to launch such a project, and significant research and development is required to overcome the technical obstacles involved.  __ Shalemag

The US based L5 society in the 1970s was very active in the promotion of space-based photovoltaic arrays for beaming microwaves to Earth-based rectenna farms. But the means of launching such significant masses of materials into space affordably did not exist at that time. The appetite of ordinary citizens for massive human activities in space has existed for many decades, without the actual ability to carry such things off.

In the 1970s US, the big concepts of space colonies, solar power satellites, moon-based mining and manufacturing, asteroid mining and colonization, and many other ambitious ideas, were batted about in heady fashion by young engineers, computer scientists, and other nerds — mostly young men. The moon landings were still in recent memory, and the space shuttle was just getting started.

But it wasn’t quite time for those ideas, and many other big ideas of the futurists of the time. What was needed was cheap, affordable space launch, and lots of Earth-based energy to build the things.

Space Colony

The mass for building space colonies and super-massive solar power satellite arrays was to come from the moon and any convenient asteroids that may fly by.

Brian Wang recently featured a story on South Korean efforts to design a geosynchronous space based solar power satellite array. China and Japan have also announced intentions for designing and placing in orbit large solar power satellite arrays for beaming energy to Earth from space.

Al Fin electrical and aerospace engineers say that there are a million ways to do this wrong, and only a few ways to do it efficiently and effectively. If governments or large bureaucracies (eg Boeing) are involved, the needle swings violently toward the wasteful and catastrophically wrong end of the scale.

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the wealthiest man on the planet, gave an hour-long presentation yesterday about his plans for humanity’s future living on the moon and in space colonies. It was a bit like watching a monologue from a sci-fi movie in a lot of ways. And now you can finally view the entire presentation online for yourself.

Fellow billionaire Elon Musk generally makes a point of offering a live video stream whenever he announces something important and futuristic like this. __ Source

Elon Musk has proven the ability to alter the landscape of a number of human enterprises. Jeff Bezos has likewise shifted important human economic landscapes. Either or both of them may well contribute to the expansion of the cis-lunar economy — including solar power satellites and lunar mining/manufacturing. Musk may even place a successful human outpost on Mars.

But I suspect that the human future in space will depend upon future, more clear-sighted mavericks who learn to master advanced human technologies and economies/finance. Mavericks who devise ways to bypass and sidestep the avaricious grip of large bureaucracies private and public. Thinkers who can do and doers who can think quickly and decisively.

Nihilist elites are choking the life out of the human future while the proportion of bright and intelligent humans is rapidly dropping in all human populations. And of the bright and intelligent young humans who make it to university and other even better training grounds, too many are falling by the wayside and being indoctrinated into broken DIE-Wokeism.

Hope for the best. Plan for the worst. A future of networked but somewhat isolated islands of competence may be coming, for a time.

Attack of the Pattern-Seeking Systematizers: Why Men Build Skyscrapers and Women Build Grass Huts

“If civilization had been left in female hands, we would still be living in grass huts” and “There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.” __ Camille Paglia, a Female Legend

Earlier this year, neuroscientists at Stanford University devised an artificial intelligence model that could pore over human MRI studies, and with an approximately 95% accuracy rate could distinguish between male and female brain scans. PNAS study link … Full study PDF

When the Systematizing Mechanism evolved in the human brain between 70,000 and 100,000 years ago, instead of looking at a [thing] as if there were nothing more that could be done with it, our minds started to look at it as a system, something governed by if-then patterns. The Systematizing Mechanism was the result of a revolution in the human brain that caused humans to diverge from all other animals and dominate the Earth. It all came down to the drive to seek out if-then patterns. This drive was most prominent in the male brain. __ Paraphrased from Simon Baron-Cohen’s The Pattern Seekers

Female brains are different from male brains in size, structure, and function. Male hormones cause human brains to be more interested in the patterns of things and the reasons for things. Female hormones bring about differences in the human brain which are reflected in female behaviors.

What we’ve found is that the female brain is so deeply affected by hormones that their influence can be said to create a woman’s reality… Because of the fluctuations that begin as early as three months old and last until after menopause, a woman’s neurological reality is not as constant as a man’s. __ The Female Brain

It does not take an artificial intelligence to see that male and female brains are different in size, statistically. More importantly, specific brain centers are different in both size and activity, between males and females. The Stanford study above was published just a few months ago, and we can expect more such studies looking at both anatomical and functional differences, using both artificial intelligence and advanced brain imaging.

Statistically, male and female brains are different. We have always known this, but lately few have been brave enough to say it out loud, due to fear of recrimination. What we did not know, was just how different male and female brains can be — and the dramatic impact this difference has on societies.

Males are pattern seekers, and systematizers. Men look for patterns in the world around them, and try to develop systems within which their worlds will make sense. But men do not stop there. They test and explore, they push the boundaries. Smart men test the boundaries in smart ways. Stupid men test the boundaries in stupid ways. Violent men test the boundaries in violent ways.

Women are strong “feelers” and empathizers. Women soothe and comfort, they nurture. This is an excellent approach to babies and young children. It is a fine approach to the weak and the ill. And often it is the best approach to men, who carry violence with them like a third arm.

Women have very strong feelings, and modern western women resent being made to feel inferior or subservient. Because of this resentment, they often overreact against ideas that make them feel uncomfortable, when put in positions of power. Many of these powerfully placed women will typically overreact in an emotional, rather than a logical way. Evolution could have told us that.

Leftism and Apocalyptic Environmentalism are Often Female Dominated

The ongoing downfall of Germany owes much to the female component of the powerful Green Party. The German Greens are unable to understand the scientific and technological aspects of nuclear power, for example, and adopt a superstitious approach to the question. They began rejecting nuclear power in the 1970s and 1980s, before “climate change apocalypse” became a trendy political movement. Germany closed its nuclear plants before it closed its coal plants, supposedly in the name of stopping the climate change apocalypse! This was all based upon the logic of feeling, the logic of fear, and the logic of superstition toward an incomprehensible technology.

The female dominated German Greens are okay with burning wood, however. That is a technology which they understand, and which has been understood by human females and their ancestors for millions of years. Logically it makes no sense for climate-obsessed females to burn wood, but logic has nothing to do with it. Female brains have their own “feelings-based” logic.

And so, women build grass huts while men build skyscrapers. The female phenotype is the default pattern, while the male phenotype requires massive insertions of testosterone at the proper developmental intervals. Males are an ongoing experiment, and we can never be sure how it will turn out.

Male vs Female Brains

Males can be violent. Russian males, for example, and the males of southern continents, tend to display an inordinate tendency toward violent behaviors.

But there is always the bad that comes with the good. The male experiment has had some unfortunate side effects, but it is still ongoing.

The male phenotypes that have generated the most human advancement over the years appear to display lower rates of violence overall. A subset of those less violent phenotypes has also displayed higher rates of exploration and discovery on Earth and beyond.

When extending human civilization beyond the natal planet, it may be possible to artificially select for higher rates of discovery and advancement, and lower rates of violence.

As for women, it is likely that selecting for higher accomplishment and lower violence is possible. The problem is that the extremes of behavior and achievement in women are not so dramatic as with males. Even so, a significant positive effect for future generations is quite likely if the founder populations of far-flung colonies were selected wisely, male and female.

There will always be exceptions, such as Madame Curie and Hypatia. This is why women should have every opportunity for advancement and self-discovery as men do. But no more than that.

More: We have been looking at this issue for a long time at the Al Fin blogs. It is not surprising that the underlying reality is different than the politically correct propaganda provided by government, media, university, and other goose marching social institutions. The surprise is how far from reality the echo choir is willing to stray.

There was a systematizing gent

Who ran amok in Kent

Heh! I’d like to meet his tailor!

Adapted from Warren Zevon

EV Disaster Plays Out Like a Train Full of Rocket Fuel Derailing at 3AM on a Sunday Morning in Midtown

When governments try to steer consumer and business choices from the top down, catastrophe ensues. The USSR learned it the hard way. NetZero imbeciles must likewise do.

EVs Are Piling Up Unsold, Despite Huge Discounts

The government is killing the auto industry with its senseless emissions rules. The economic impoverishment flows from the top down.

Ford said it lost $1.3 billion on the sale of 10,000 electric vehicles in the first three months of the year — a staggering figure that amounts to $130,000 lost for every EV sold. __ EV Economic Devastation

It is a classic case of supply greatly exceeding demand, in this instance brought about by politicians and regulators determined to impose arbitrary deadlines on carmakers regardless of whether they are realistic and without any consideration for the wider fallout.

It is further evidence, if any was needed, of the wrong-headed pursuit of net zero at all costs. Almost eight in 10 new electric cars are now being sold at a discount as demand stalls – a sharp increase on just over half a year ago. And while a similar proportion of petrol cars are experiencing price cuts, electric vehicle (EV) prices are being cut more sharply.

Meanwhile, the market is increasingly being propped up by tax-efficient corporate schemes as appetite among private buyers goes into reverse.

Fleet purchases have accounted for 60pc of registrations so far this year, up from a little over half over the same period in 2022.

Private sales have fallen nearly 10pc, suggesting the so-called early adopter phase that drove the first wave of purchases is already over. In Germany, Sweden and Italy, electric sales have plunged 30pc.

As carmakers scramble to meet strict deadlines for phasing out petrol and diesel models that have been imposed on them by complicit governments, overproduction of electric cars is taking place on a massive scale. ___ Dictatorial Governments Destroy Everything They Touch

Electric Car Prices are Plummeting

The only folks who should be buying new EVs right now are those who plan to keep them for a long time. Otherwise, buying an EV is a very risky financial decision if there’s a chance you’ll be looking to sell anytime soon.

Unless a hefty down payment or trade-in is made, buying a new EV in 2024 puts buyers at significant risk of becoming ‘underwater’ on their car loan. This means that your car is worth less than you owe on the loan (learn more here). It’s a situation you want to avoid, no matter what. __ CarEdge.com

Bryan Dean Wright, former CIA operations officer and host of the podcast “The Wright Report,” told Fox News Digital that American society has shifted to EVs largely because some people are “just so hellbent on making sure that this transition happens, even if that means wrecking the economy, in terms of electricity, its reliability, the grid, getting brownouts or blackouts or economic wreckage by people who otherwise can’t afford these new vehicles.”

“That cost is being shouldered by buyers and car companies by raising the price of gas-powered vehicles, [which] is basically just a direct wealth transfer, just paying for EV subsidies and that will grow over time, if we continue to keep this regime in place,” Brent Bennett, a policy director for Life:Powered, an initiative of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, told Fox News Digital. 

California, Wright said, is likely a “really sad test case” for what the rest of the country could face, where he said it currently costs about $250 an hour to service an EV. The state has made a strong push for EVs under Gov. Gavin Newsom, and Californians will by 2035 not be allowed to buy new gas-powered cars and light trucks. __ The Reign of Terror Continues

When the US national elections of 2020 were taken over by parasitic elites, the $trillion dollar NetZero escapade was only one of the criminal enterprises that had been carefully planned out. The US government has become the largest and most corrupt wealth dispenser in the history of mankind. Stealing a presidential election was child’s play for the corrupt vultures soaring above the field of blood, but the lockdown hysteria of the Chinese COVID virus helped to coverup the fraud.

For 2024, without the pandemic panic, the elites were forced to jury-rig several highly questionable lawsuits against their political opponent, in hopes that perhaps one of the dubious charges would lead to a conviction or judgment. Needless to say, the actual election will be scrutinized closely, but that does not mean that the results can be trusted. All of the elitist players — including big tech — have joined in the campaign to negate any possibility of an election victory for the reform party.

The massive wealth transfer from the middle class to the elites is the best scam ever, and the elites do not intend to give it up. Not when they have big media, big tech, big/deep government, big education, and virtually every other big bureaucratic social institution in their pockets.

NetZero and the economic devastation it brings to the real world, is just one piece of the thieving scam, as interesting as it is. Without the climate apocalypse religion, it would not stand a chance even with the best propaganda.

Here is a dash of cold ocean spray on the delusional religion of climate apocalypse:

Neutral Switzerland Prepares to Defend Against Russia

Geneva

Since the Russian invasion of Europe in 2022, European nations have anticipated the spread of Russian hostilities beyond Ukraine and Moldova. As a result, NATO members have positioned more weapons and troops closer to the war zone, and Sweden and Finland have joined NATO. Switzerland has not been blind to Russian belligerence and threats of attack. The Swiss would prefer to be neutral, but if attacked they will respond. Like Poland and the Scandinavian and Baltic nations, Switzerland does not want to be caught napping.

The Swiss have stayed out of European wars for over 200 years but the recent Russian aggressiveness and frequent use of guided missile carrying non-nuclear warheads has changed Swiss attitudes towards total neutrality. __ Switzerland Joins Euro Sky Shield

Russia has declared its hostility toward Switzerland, and the Swiss have decided to take that hostility seriously. The Swiss have frozen Russian assets which the Russians might otherwise use to commit acts of war against European nations, including Switzerland.

Until Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Europe was not concerned about air defense systems because there was no threat. But the war in Ukraine involved heavy use of cruise and ballistic warheads with high-explosive warheads. In effect, these missiles were unmanned bombers that were difficult, but not impossible to stop. Western Europeans realized that they were within range of these missiles and now they had an air defense problem they could not avoid. That led to the Sky Shield Coalition.

While Patriot has been in combat before, especially during the 2003 Iraq War, it has seen a lot of combat actions since. That enabled more improvement to the system that made the Patriot more capable, especially against ballistic missiles. The European IRIS-T is undergoing a similar situation in Ukraine. The Ukrainians were quick to master the operation of both Patriot and IRIS-T systems they received. The Ukrainians had experience with Russian built systems and found Patriot and IRIS-T a major improvement. Ukraine also obtained the Norwegian NASAMS systems, which was favored because of its adaptability. ___ Switzerland Joins European Air Defense

Russia is a dying empire. But even a dying empire can take others out when it goes. That is why Poland wants nuclear missiles to counter the threat of Russian invasion and attack.

European responses to Russian military escalation, have just begun. The reawakening of NATO was just the first step. The reawakening of Switzerland is another.

Sanctions against Russia continue to be ramped up. Meanwhile, the Russian economy is dying for lack of manpower — despite the artificial lift provided by the Kremlin’s massive injection of funds into Russia’s hollowing out military industrial complex.

Russia’s main industries require men to operate. But Russia’s men are dying in Ukraine and on the skid rows of Russia’s cities. Those that haven’t escaped Russia altogether for a better life elsewhere.

Russia’s troubles are just beginning. If Putin instigates a last-gasp attack into Europe beyond Ukraine, the rest of Europe will be better prepared than it was two years ago.

Someone Wants to Bomb This Beautiful Villa, But I Hope They Never Do

Bel Canto Choir

“From a Distance” written by Julie Gold, is an ironic work of exquisite beauty. The masterful performance of the song above was recorded almost within earshot of one of the most cruel, destructive, and unwarranted wars in human history. Which makes it doubly ironic I suppose.

When they recorded the song, they had no idea the local carnage would still be going on 2 years later.

Within the human soul are dark shadow-monsters that sometimes justify and even celebrate every act of rape, kidnapping, and genocide. Wrapped tightly to smothering in nihilistic ideologies made comfortable through long familiarity, people are blinded to the multitude of alternative pathways that might improve almost any situation, without landing everyone in a gory sea of mutual destruction.

Julie Gold gave the world a precious gift when she wrote the above song. But she never lived under a slave-making tyranny. She has no conception of the things that might be worse than losing your home, your family, or your life in a bloody war.

But all of the people who live within a thousand miles of the villa where the song above was recorded know too well what would be worse. People of that part of the world formerly lived under monsters and they do not want to serve them in slavery yet again.

Violence is contagious. And grievance drives violence. Propaganda drives grievance. And in our world, propaganda is the coin of the realm almost every-where you go.

Julie Gold needs to write an ironic song exposing the deep tragedy of cruel and impoverished slavery, approaching genocide. People of North Korea understand that. People of Xinjiang understand that. People who lived in the former Warsaw Pact understand that. And the proud people of the nations that escaped the former USSR understand that.

If there are any accomplished songwriters reading this, consider the need for powerful songs that can expose the real monsters, hiding behind armies of propagandists. “From a Distance” can make you cry from the irony. Perhaps your song can do even better.

Russia in Five Diverging Paths

As more Russian men are thrust into the Ukrainian meat-grinder, more planes are shot down, more ships are sunk . . . perhaps it is time to take a step back and ponder the uncertain future of Russia through a wider lens. A manic burst of war-industry spending is helping the empire to tread water. For now. But in a surreal war like this one, when things change, they can change very quickly.

Historian Stephen Kotkin provides us with an interesting analysis of five possible Russian futures, in the May/June 2024 issue of Foreign Affairs. In brief, these five futures comprise:

• Russia as “France:” A solid country bound by professional institutions and rule of law
• Russia without war: A Russia that remains much the same, but without the war in Europe
• Russia as subservient vassal to China: Beijing calls the shots
• Russia in isolation like North Korea: Descent into an angry perpetual grievance under China’s wing
• Chaos, anarchy, dissolution: Final loss of empire
• Source

Russia as “France”

Notwithstanding the country’s moments of instability, over generations, France developed the impartial, professional institutions—a judiciary, a civil service, a free and open public sphere—of a democratic, republican nation… The problem [is] that Russia was much further from a stable, Western-style constitutional order in 1991 than France had been three decades earlier.

Russia Without the War

Russian elites know the damning statistics. They are aware that as a commodity-exporting country, Russia’s long-term development depends on technology transfers from advanced countries; Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has made it harder to use the West as a source, and his symbolic embrace of Hamas’s nihilism gratuitously strained Russia’s relations with Israel, a major supplier of high-tech goods and services. At a more basic level, Russia’s elites are physically cut off from the developed world: hideaways in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), however agreeable, cannot replace European villas and boarding schools.

Russia as Vassal to China

Moscow is now holding a substantial pile of renminbi reserves, which can be used only for Chinese goods. But despite innumerable meetings over decades, there is still no final agreement on a major new natural gas pipeline that would originate in Siberia and make its way to China through Mongolia. The Chinese leadership has keenly avoided becoming dependent on Russia for energy or anything else. On the contrary, China is already the global leader in solar and wind power and is working to displace Russia as the top global player in nuclear energy.

Russian elites, even as they vehemently denounce an imaginary U.S. determination to subjugate or dismember their country, have by and large not raised their voices against Putin’s subordination of Russia to China.

Russia as North Korea

Russia could become something of a gigantic North Korea: domestically repressive, internationally isolated and transgressive, armed with nuclear weapons, and abjectly dependent on China but still able to buck Beijing.

Chaos, Anarchy, Dissolution

Amid chaos, even without major territorial loss, criminal syndicates and cybercriminals could operate with yet more impunity. Nuclear and biological weapons, as well as the scientists who develop them, could scatter—the nightmare that might have accompanied the Soviet collapse but was essentially avoided, partly because many Soviet scientists believed a better Russia might emerge. If there were to be a next time, it’s impossible to predict how Russians might weigh their hopes against their anger. Chaos need not mean a doomsday scenario. But it could. Armageddon might have only been postponed, instead of averted.

Read the entire article by Historian Stephen Kotkin

The Other Option

Kotkin goes on to discuss the Russian future where Russia continues as it is, fighting wars of expansion against Europe, seeing itself as a major geopolitical pole in a multipolar world. In that future, Russia is seen as pushing forward as it is currently going, maintaining its own independence of action while forcing its enemies to respond to Russian aggression under a threat of nuclear annihilation.

This might be the preferred future for most Russians, but do they have this as a choice? Too many counter-trends are taking place at a rapid rate. Russia is losing influence in Central Asia to China. A Putin-inspired expansion of NATO to Finland and Sweden signals a loss of influence in Northern and Eastern Europe. In fact, Russia is losing influence virtually everywhere, as it loses its foundations of manpower via war, emigration away from Russia, and accelerating decay within.

[Russia] is less able to sell weapons—it needs them itself and is even trying to buy back systems it has sold—and has been reduced in some cases to bartering with other pariah states. It has lost its strong position as a provider of satellites. It belongs to a pariah club with Iran and North Korea, exuberantly exchanging weapons, flouting international law, and promising much further trouble. It’s not difficult to imagine each betraying the other at the next better opportunity, however, provided they do not unravel first; the West is more resilient than the “partnerships” of the anti-West.

Even many former Soviet partners that refused to condemn Russia over Ukraine, including India and South Africa, do not view Moscow as a developmental partner but as scaffolding for boosting their own sovereignty. Russia’s foreign policy delivers at best tactical gains, not strategic ones: no enhanced human capital, no assured access to leading-edge technology, no inward investment and new infrastructure, no improved governance, and no willing mutually obliged treaty allies, which are the keys to building and sustaining modern power. Besides raw materials and political thuggery, the only things Russia exports are talented people.

Russia has never sustained itself as a great power unless it had close ties to Europe. And for Putin or a successor, it would be a long way back. He undid more than two centuries of Swedish neutrality and three-quarters of a century of Finlandization (whereby Helsinki deferred to Moscow on major foreign policy considerations), prompting both countries to join NATO. __ Stephen Kotkin

In the end, it is the lies that Russians tell themselves which keeps them from seeing the reality that they must face: Russia is rapidly growing weaker. Without genuine friends and reliable partners, Russia is rapidly sinking into terminal subservience and dependency in relation to China, one of the most treacherous partners possible that one could choose.

The method of analysis through counterfactuals used by Kotkin above is useful for considering alternative strategies, counter-strategies, and policies/counter-policies. It is what we all do when we imagine our possible pathways forward in our lives. And it is related to what fiction writers do when they write stories and novels. Without that kind of thinking, we would be constantly blind-sided by the unimagined and unanticipated.

The value of reading 10,000 books is not merely in the entertainment provided. Good fiction combined with good history, biography, true adventure, and serious studies of the interior and exterior worlds we inhabit, can provide us with scaffoldings and jumping-off points for all kinds of invaluable exploration and discovery.

It was easy for Putin to start the war against Europe. But now thanks to Putin the very existence of Russia itself is up for grabs.

Ukrainians will never stop fighting back no matter what

Putin stirred the hornet’s nest as if Russia could suffer no adverse consequences from his callow fumbling. Now with Putin reduced to a scorched Earth battle against blood kin near-Russian civilians and civilian infrastructure, Putin’s Russia is exposed as its least common denominator Genghis Mongol holdover. Savage, reflexive, near mindless. It is difficult to imagine how such a mindset could ever emerge into an abundant and expansive future without first feeling the need to force all of humanity to crawl through hell first.

The ups and downs of a long war

A Fine List of the Best 10,224 Books in 409 Pages

Greatest Books (10,224) Page 1

Book lists can be rather “hit or miss” sometimes, depending upon the quality of the people who are doing the recommending. The list of 10,224 “Greatest Books” linked above is compiled from 268 “best of books” lists which have been filtered according to this extensive set of ranking criteria.

This list of 10,224 greatest books comes from TheGreatestBooks.org website. There are no published hardcopy books listing the best 10,000 books to read, so hopefully the website will remain online in stable form for a long time.

There are two reasonably good hardcopy books of the best 1,000 books to read:

In 2006 a list of 1001 Books to Read Before You Die was made into a fine book, edited by Peter Boxall. A more recent list of 1000 Books to Read Before You Die was published in 2018 by James Mustich.

Still, 10,000 great books is the recommended goal to aim for ultimately. But if you are just starting to climb this mountain as an adult, you will need to spend some time discovering where your richest literary rewards lie. The book lists above are meant to help you avoid getting bogged down in just one kind of book or from getting your imagination stuck in only one point of view.

The best way to read 10,000 books is to do it while you are still a child, powered by that magical childhood energy that seems inexhaustible. Your parents can read a thousand books or more while you are helpless and at their mercy. If they are smart they will get you so addicted to ideas and stories that you will be unable to stop yourself from reading several thousand more on your own.

If they are really smart, they will not give you a smartphone until you are 18, but instead will provide you with an endless supply of the best reading material.

10,2224 Greatest Books, Page 409

But no list is perfect, so use your critical faculties. Not surprisingly, the more careful reading you do, the better your critical faculties will serve you.

Perhaps you will even be like me, a person who discovers dozens of factual errors in virtually every mainstream news or information story he comes across. Finding a more ignorant batch of persons than contemporary journalists, educators, TV/Movie producers, and gurus would be difficult, even when looking in hospital nursery wards.

One recommendation will serve you well: Read on the road. Mixing traveling with the reading of great books provides a double reward that yields high rates of interest over time. Read to your lover as you travel, and to your kids. Use funny voices for the different characters. If you discover that an author got a place wrong, point it out but allow for literary license if you can.

China, Germany, Russia: The Long Decline

The three former industrial titans of Asia, Europe, and Eurasia, are settling in on a long downhill slide of codependent decline. Example: Germany’s fatal dependency on Russian natural gas, before Putin’s decision to invade Europe.

When Russia invaded Europe, Germany’s green mirage was exposed as mere vapor. And German industry began to dismantle itself along with the German economy.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany has found itself in the unusual position of becoming the major laggard of Europe’s stuttering economic engine.

The country is on the brink of a technical recession after its economy contracted 0.3% in 2023. The outlook for this year is bleak, with the German government slashing its GDP growth forecast from 1.3% to 0.2% in 2024.

The former driver of its economic powerhouse, energy-intensive industry, has been sputtering since Russia’s invasion and has turned into a serious thorn in the country’s side.

Germany’s Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) for its construction sector has been declining since early 2022. Manufacturing, meanwhile, has been in decline since mid-2023.

“Germany’s manufacturing sector has been mired in recession since around the middle of last year, and the latest PMI readings signal another contraction in the first quarter of 2024,” Dr. Cyrus de la Rubia, chief economist at Hamburg Commercial Bank, wrote.

Germany Will Pay the Ultimate Price for its Russian Dependency

An industrial power must have abundant electric power and abundant natural gas + coal. Germany closed its nuclear power plants, tried to close all its coal plants, and was deprived of much of its natural gas by Russian sanctions.

Russia On the Brink of Oblivion

In Russia, men barely live to the age of 60, while women often live to 80. Russia is based upon male-dominant industries and must have its men to do the jobs. But Russia’s men are melting away into nothing, thanks to war death and disability, emigration of the best to more civilized countries, and self-sabotage into alcoholism, drug addiction, and suicide.

The country has no future, and invading Ukraine will not change that.

First of all, for Russia to have a future it needs future Russians: The current fertility rate across the Russian Federation is on average 1.8 births per woman, which is significantly below the replacement rate of 2.1 needed to keep the population stable. Unless there is a surprising baby boom, Russia will lose a quarter of its population by the end of 2060, a trend that is most likely to be accelerated, not slowed down by an ongoing war of attrition. 

While declining birth rates are a global trend, Russia has additional problems to wrestle with: In no country does the life expectancy between men and women differ so widely. The average Russian man has a life expectancy of just under 64 years, while Russian women can expect to live almost 77 years. Rampant alcoholism and drug abuse among men lead to early deaths, a development made worse by the spread of heroin abuse and high HIV infection rates, that in some areas reach levels usually only seen in African countries. 

War and a demographic structure in which drugs, HIV, and poverty decimate the population is a constant reason for the younger generation to turn their back on the country. Although the war makes it harder for young Russians to leave, the occurring brain drain is real, and will be a growing problem in the years to come. 

Further, the much hyped alliance between Moscow and Beijing is much less harmonious than it currently appears: Certainly, demographically speaking, Russia and China would be the perfect couple for a geopolitical matchmaking agency: Mother Russia is running out of sons, while in China there are only 100 women for every 120 men.

Other than that, however, the conflict potential between the two countries is enormously high: Central Asia and the future of Siberia are points of contention, and Beijing is subtly but relentlessly making its territorial claims on the Russian Far East known.

No Future for Russia; Conflict with China Coming

Russian weapons perform poorly; sales collapse

Running out of weapons, such as they are

Putin’s Swiss bank account to be raided to pay Ukraine reparations?

Manpower issues intensify for Russia as troops desert, disappear

Putin caught short when his FSB loses its rhythm

China is Imploding

What is Chinese Industrial Overcapacity?

…for capital-intensive industries such as steel, oil refining and
semiconductors, when capacity utilization is below 75% for an extended
period of time, most observers would label that excess capacity.

…the utilization rate of China’s silicon wafer capacity dropped from 78% in 2019 to 57% in 2022. In 2022, China’s lithium-ion battery production reached 1.9 times the domestic installation volume, showing that the problem of overcapacity in clean energy fields is emerging.

China’s exports of electric vehicles, solar cells and lithium batteries have increased even more significantly. Data shows that in 2023, China’s electric vehicle export volume was seven times that of 2019, while its solar cell export volume in 2023 was five times that of 2018, an increase of 40% from 2022.

The report notes that while temporary overcapacity may be harmless and a normal part of the market cycle, it becomes a problem when it is perpetuated by government intervention.

VOANews

Chinese overcapacity has been an inbred part of the CCP system for forty years and counting. It sets the stage for the coming all-parts implosion.

A worker checks solar photovoltaic modules used for solar panels at a factory in Suqian in China’s eastern Jiangsu province, May 9, 2023.

Overcapacity played a significant role in the Great Depression of world markets in the early 20th century. But Chinese overcapacity is driven by government policy, and extends across China’s entire economic and financial landscape. The famous real estate implosion in China is an example.

China’s property/infrastructure implosion is only the tip of the iceberg for the troubled communist dictatorship. For another example of China destroying its own future, China has poisoned its own land, water, and air, and badly damaged current and future generations of Chinese with residual toxins. China has also burned its bridges with neighboring nations. China’s neighbors hate the regional bully, and are all arming for the coming conflict.

Stagnation has also resulted in a stock market crisis and increasing unemployment, leaving ordinary Chinese people in a more precarious position.

Longer term, China also faces the threat of a rapidly aging population.

Fitch Ratings Inc, an American credit rating agency, has dropped its sovereign credit outlook for China from from stable to negative.

They said: “Wide fiscal deficits and rising government debt in recent years have eroded fiscal buffers from a ratings perspective.”

Fitch added that there is “increasing risks” to public finances as a result of the crisis in the property market.

China’s Long Goodnight

Top-down mandatory overcapacity has become the CCP’s shtick. Real estate, electric cars, all kinds of counterfeit merchandise, cheap knockoff weapons, etc. — you name it, China overproduces tonnes of the junk. The resultant misallocation of capital and manpower shows why straying too far from free market principles usually leads to economic ruin eventually.

Russia and China have been bound together in codependency for decades. Even now, Russia and China are strengthening superficial links and alliances of convenience, ties of the moment. But like the Hitler:Stalin alliance, the Putin:Xi alliance is destined to dissolve in bloodshed.

Germany and China are likewise extending their economic ties to each other. For Germany, this is a matter of survival, but China is likewise desperate for any lifelines it can get from the more advanced civilization of Europe. China has risen high on the transfer of European technology — both legitimate and illegitimate. But there is a limit to what the brittle and rigid system of Beijing can assimilate, in terms of complexity.

The CCP is not China. The CCP is a corrupt foreign ideological parasite sapping the blood and strength from what could have been a great nation. China will have to throw off the communist parasite and start over.

One Possible New Economic Fragmentation Regime

The video is thought-provoking, but the author fails to comprehend how ultimately dependent China and Russia have been on European (and Anglospheric) innovation. The two corrupt and criminally tyrannical governments control a lot of land area which looks impressive on visual maps, but in reality they comprise only a few clusters of cities of uncertain quality. Both Russia and China contain huge spans of worthless lands, immense poverty, and unfortunate geography and climate. Being overly dependent on central control and central planning increases innate fragility.

China can supply Russia with many substitute products, both military and civilian. But the deeper the codependency, the more violent the clash when the relationship collapses.

Besides the foolish rush to mindless conquest on the part of China and Russia, their greatest mistake seems to have been their co-dependency with each other. Corrupt, criminal, top-down ordered societies can only steal from more innovative outside cultures for as long as they can. Like the Soviet Union before them, their own internal contradictions and bloody conflicts bring them down.

I Picked the Wrong Century to Start Believing in Peak Oil

Record Historical Crude Oil Production for Any Country

The United States produced more crude oil than any nation at any time, according to our International Energy Statistics, for the past six years in a row. Crude oil production in the United States, including condensate, averaged 12.9 million barrels per day (b/d) in 2023, breaking the previous U.S. and global record of 12.3 million b/d, set in 2019. Average monthly U.S. crude oil production established a monthly record high in December 2023 at more than 13.3 million b/d.

EIA.Gov

In the informative video below, chemical engineer Robert Rapier provides his expert opinion on trends in US oil production. Robert also discusses the problem of premature government efforts to influence EV automobile adoption. He also talks about the need for rapid expansion of US electrical generation capacity (esp. nuclear) and the need for expansion of electrical grid infrastructure.

Telegraph

These numbers are stunning, and they are coming in the face of a President, Joe Biden, and an administration that continues to invoke federal regulations and executive orders designed to impede the industry’s ability to grow. So, other than advancing technology and human ingenuity, how do we account for this ongoing expansion of America’s energy might?

It can be explained through the convergence of several key factors:

Firstly, a confluence of ideal geology and geography. Through an extremely fortunate accident of history, it turns out that the most productive shale formations happen to lie beneath regions in which the federal government owns little or no land. Two of the most prolific regions – the Eagle Ford and Permian Basin – lie all or mostly in Texas, where the feds own virtually no land at all outside of military bases and Lake Falcon, which is fed by the Rio Grande River on the border with Mexico. This means that the Texas state government exercises virtually all operational regulatory authority related to oil and gas operations in the state. The prolific Bakken Shale is mainly contained in North Dakota, and the DJ Basin is in central Colorado, where the feds own only a relatively small percentage of the land. 

Second, America is fortunate in its law. Simply put, no US president has much ability to regulate the domestic industry’s operations unless they take place on lands owned by the federal government. As a result, the Biden administration – like the Obama administration before it – has been left to try to impede the industry at the margins, using such ploys as slow-playing approvals for interstate pipelines and the recent halt in permitting for new LNG export facilities. The EPA is also trying to slow it down with a multitude of new regulations on methane and auto emissions. 

David Blackmon

Another factor in the current US oil boom is the legalization of crude oil exports under the Obama administration. That allowed shale oil producers to export large quantities of light sweet shale oil, which US refineries were not geared up to refine.

EIA 2023 Oil Production by Nation

Shale Oil Is Not Just a Flash in the Pan

Peak oil prophets did not anticipate the shale oil boom, back in their heyday of the 1990s and 2000s. Ever since US shale started booming in the early 2010s the peak oil believers have proclaimed that the shale boom had just about used itself up. Art Bermon and Chris Martenson are particularly famous for this — for over ten years now and running! But a person has to make a living somehow.

Chemical engineer — and longtime energy analyst — Robert Rapier is a far more objective commenter on the broad energy picture than any members of the peak oil crowd of the past 30 years or so. And his expertise comes from walking the walk, and not just talking the talk.

The video below is a running comparison of oil production by nation, from 1900 to 2020. You may want to watch it a few times in order to match the dynamic trends of comparative oil production with other historical processes that were happening at the same times.

The world is full of people who are just as ignorant in adulthood as they were when the doctor was spanking their bottoms in the delivery room. Many of them work in government, media, education, and in large corporations such as Facebook and Google.

Try not to take your cues from people like that. The alternative, of course, is to read your 10,000 books and to do your research. This will provide you with a rational foundation for your views — something that is sadly lacking to the members of the DIE-Woke fraternity who do the dirty work of the underhanded elites who are attempting to herd the masses of sheep over the cliff.

Peak Oil Apocalypse, Climate Apocalypse, Overpopulation Doom, and any other convenient hobgoblin scare tactic will serve to stampede the herds — as long as the herds do not bother to do their own research. Don’t be like that. Pay attention, and build strong foundations.

It is never to late to have a Dangerous Childhood ©. Fortify yourselves, your families, and your communities with knowledge and competence. Hard times can bring out the resilience in people if they make provisions ahead of time.

Climate Apocalypse: The Prime Delusion

Climate apocalypse is the main driver of many corrupt and destructive initiatives of the global elitists, who fear your freedoms above all else. The recent video documentary: “Climate, the Movie” exposes the basic structure of this global movement, and the delusions upon which it is built.

… almost everything runs through a series of cycles, and it’s because of this inconsistency associated with the planet. The idea is that we are not a linear system. We are a nonlinear system that brings about chaotic, unpredictable behavior in which higher order terms, which are difficult to predict, start to take over. That was what Ed Lorenz found when he was attempting to simulate a simple climate back in the ’60s.

And so that variability is built into the system. And it’s a lot of cases why we have El Nino, La Nina events, why we have the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and so forth with things that just simply flip back and forth with apparently no forcing, but nevertheless, it’s because of the second order, higher order terms associated with climate.

Getting Real About “Climate Change”

Neil Diamond Sings Bob Dylan to Perfection

Both men were born in the northern US in 1941. Bob Dylan was born in Minnesota of Russian /Lithuanian Jewish stock. Neil Diamond was born in Brooklyn, NYC, of Russian/Polish Jewish families. Both became celebrated singer-songwriters known around the world, from the 1960s to modern times. Neil Diamond was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease, which has slowed him down a bit, although he sang at a Boston Red Sox game a couple of years ago. Bob Dylan is still releasing new albums.

In the recording below, Diamond sings a Bob Dylan song, “Make You Feel My Love,” a song Dylan wrote in the 1990s. Over 450 musical artists have recorded that song, several of them quite famous in their own right. This is not a typical Bob Dylan song, not being a blues song, rock song, or a folk song. In my opinion, Neil Diamond’s version is the best I’ve heard so far at capturing the raw essence of the song.

I was watching a TV show recently, and absent-mindedly let the end credits roll. “Make You Feel My Love” was playing in the background of the credits, floating across my unconscious unawares. I wasn’t paying attention, and not until the end of the song and credits did I recognize the song as one I “knew”, mainly by the chord progression. It was an unfamiliar version of the song in both voice and arrangement Suddenly, it bothered me that I couldn’t remember who wrote the song or who made it famous. That kind of problem nags at my mind until I can solve it.

I hunted down and listened to several versions of the song, but I still am not sure the exact route that the song captured real estate inside my musical memory. Which of the 450+ versions?

I enjoy Bob Dylan on occasion, but this is not the kind of song I would normally attach to the Dylan category, and I don’t remember having heard the Dylan recording of the song before. I probably heard one of the 450 arrangements of the song from one of the large number of artists who recorded it, sometime, somewhere. But which one?

Is it the song I remember, or perhaps just the chord progression, which occupies the heart of another song with a similar lyrics theme? Now I have to go looking for other songs with similar chord progressions and lyrics. Until I answer my question about the origin of my memory of the song.

Anyway, it is almost spooky, the parallels between Neil Diamond and Bob Dylan. And did you know that Neil Diamond went to high school with actress Barbara Streisand, and chess champion Bobby Fischer? Small world.

Later,

Valerie

PS: Here is the sweetest version of Bob Dylan’s song:

Want to Rule the World? Then Rule the Moon

Challenges and Opportunities

“He who controls the moon controls Earth.” … After all, the moon is the ultimate high ground, providing clear vision to detect attacks and material that might attract Earth-based powers to seek an alliance with the moon – assuming the proposition that humans might live on the moon merely to become wealthy… Europeans went to South America seeking gold, silver and all the rest. Given current technologies, the relative distance between Portugal and Brazil and between the moon and Portugal is not wildly different. The voyage to the moon may even seem less daunting.

Humans pursue wealth and will use military power to attain it. The history of the world is the history of movement and the struggle for wealth.

George Friedman

But first, due to risk aversion in modern humans space launch to Earth orbit has to become routine, cheap, and reliable. After that, a number of steps must follow.

Cost of Spaceflight Over Time

Until SpaceX, the cost of launching mass to Earth orbit was stuck around the level of $10,000 per kg. The SpaceX Falcon rockets have lowered the cost per kg to $2,000 or below. That is helpful, but it isn’t good enough for large scale movement of infrastructure to cis-lunar space and beyond. We are hoping that the SpaceX StarShip will provide an order of magnitude reduction in costs down to $200 per kg, or less.

Elon Musk has targeted an orbital launch cost of $10/kg for Starship, with propellant costs accounting for roughly one-third. Orbital launch cost would be about four times more than the cost of point to point on Earth rocket delivery costs. Point to point rocket delivery would only need the Starship upper stage. There are only six engines in the upper stage instead of 39 engines for the upper stage and the booster stage. The fuel usage would be four times less. This would mean point to point rocket delivery at $2.50 per kilogram.

Unbelievable Reduction in Launch Costs Possible?

Costs of Space Launch Since 1980

The trend in launch costs is certainly in the right direction. Until SpaceX, no one actually believed that space launch could be turned into a routine operation, with mass-produced reusable rockets and the increasing substitution of AI and robots for human personnel at launch centers.

If the overall trend continues, access to space may become relatively affordable to most people during the second half of this century. Visiting a space hotel could one day be as routine as a holiday overseas.

NASA has stated a long-term goal of making LEO accessible for tens of dollars per kilogram by 2040. The agency has also speculated that a space elevator (requiring 15 years to construct) would lower this cost even further, to just a few dollars per kilogram.

Making it Affordable

NASA is just another corrupt government agency. Without the assistance of private profit-driven innovation, NASA would still be spinning its wheels and spawning kickbacks — just like the defense agencies.

Cost of Space Launch since 1960: Visual Capitalist

It is taking between 65 and 75 years to achieve affordable and reliable space launch to Earth orbit, for the purposes of colonizing the moon. Once space launch is cheap and reliable, infrastructure has to be put in place for routine transport of materials, supplies, and personnel between Earth and Luna.

But as we have seen in the space launch example, government and corporate bureaucracies do not follow the same trails — either mind-trails or real-world trails — as visionary innovators do.

CisLunar

Space development plans that are devised by government or corporate bureaucrats, are not likely to match the plans laid out by more visionary individuals of talent. That is one of the unpredictable elements of future planning and prediction. Bureaucrats hate those unpredictable elements.

The Goal for Visionary Dreamers is to Inhabit the Larger Space

Space visionaries don’t want to rule Earth. That is small potatoes. They want access to the greater wealth of the solar system. Past Mars, past the asteroid belt, past the giant gas worlds and their rich moons. The Kuiper Belt and the Oort Cloud lead on to the edge of the solar system, and what waits beyond.

NASA

Visionaries who are reality-based will always be looking for the “killer-app” that can start the ball rolling, and pay for the next step at the same time. Elon Musk saw that cheap space launch was a killer app for the nascent space value chain. But the next space economy will have a much larger value chain, so the killer apps will need to keep coming. Bureaucrats are not much help with that.

But politics will be politics. There will always be fanatics willing to destroy the world in order to control their own little sphere of influence, or to promote their own little pinhead ideology — religious or secular.

The relentless movement of restless humanity outward (space) and inward (technology) threatens the ability of earth-bound tyrants to control everything and everyone.

So far, humans have not built appreciable colonies and settlements on (or beneath) the ocean. The costs and hazards involved in full-time deep ocean living do not seem to be balanced by any obvious benefits, so far.

Irish Times

But Earth is not the only large body in the solar system to have an ocean. So it is possible that the first undersea colony will be built and inhabited by humans somewhere else than Earth.

A primary goal for space-going humans, is to assure that the home planet is preserved at the same time as they are assuring themselves of a resilient future far beyond the home sphere.

Develop Late, Decay Early: The Last-In First-Out Brain Networks That Keep Human Societies on the Treadmill

Some societies seem to have better brains than others. Patents, Nobel Prizes, innovative startups and IPOs, all attest to the presence of brains that seem to be thinking better and faster. Societies with better brains (on average) are more prosperous and innovative societies. National GDP rises exponentially with the average IQ of the population, for example.

But the parts of the brain that make smart people special, are slow to develop in childhood and can be quick to degenerate in adulthood. It is tragic for a person to just begin to reach his potential, only to start fading into oblivion. But that is what happens too often in even the brightest societies, as the fragile LIFO (last in first out) brain networks fall prey to the hazards of daily life.

It is the way that the brain is “networked” which makes it possible to be intelligent. There are (at least) three classes of brain networks:

• Brain networks based on structural connectivity: These are neural elements that are connected anatomically. These networks depend upon normal maturational development.
• Brain networks based on functional connectivity: These are neural elements that are distant from each other, but are “coactivated” in functional manner in the course of normal brain activity. These networks cannot emerge fully until the structural networks and elements have developed fully.
• Brain networks based on effective connectivity: These networks can emerge from computer model analysis (and graphing analysis) when examining possible causal effects of a sometimes obscure and abstract nature.
• More at source

Top left, spatial map of the LIFO network (in red-yellow, thresholded at Z > 4 for visualisation) used to extract the loadings from every scanned participant from UK Biobank (n = 39,676). Top right, these LIFO loadings (in arbitrary units) show a strong quadratic association with age in the UK Biobank cohort, i.e. grey matter volume decreases quadratically with older age in these specific regions (R² = 0.30, P < 2.23 × 10⁻³⁰⁸; inset: residual scatterplot). Bottom, the vulnerable network appears to encompass areas mainly involved in execution, working memory, and attention (using the BrainMap taxonomy⁶⁰, and with the LIFO brain network thresholded at both Z = 4 and Z = 10, see Supplementary Information)… Source

The fragile LIFO brain networks involved in working memory, attention, and execution (executive function) are very sensitive to a number of modifiable risk factors (MRFs) including blood pressure, diabetes, air pollution, alcohol consumption, and several others. The choices a person makes regarding what to eat, how much to smoke or drink, whether to treat common medical conditions, where to live, and how much to exercise, contribute to the longevity of his reasoning skills. His lifestyle choices on these matters (and others) will affect the genetic control of cellular and organ functions which will determine how soon he will be afflicted with dementia and other disorders of aging.

This study reveals, in a cohort of nearly 40,000 UK Biobank participants, the genetic and modifiable risk factors’ associations with brain regions in a ‘last in, first out’ (LIFO) network that show earlier and accelerated ageing and are particularly vulnerable to disease processes such as that of Alzheimer’s disease⁸. Seven genetic clusters, two of which in the pseudo-autosomal region of the sex chromosomes coding for two antigens of the XG blood system, were found significantly associated and replicated genome-wide. In addition, after accounting for age and sex effects, diabetes, traffic-related pollution and alcohol were the most deleterious modifiable risk factors (MRFs) on these particularly vulnerable brain regions.

Nature Communications 27 March 2024

It is of interest to me how the development of higher level brain networks must wait for the development and maturation of lower level brain networks. Lower level brain networks cannot develop fully until the white matter is myelinated and the gray matter is “pruned.”

What is of special interest to me is the implied existence of even higher, largely undiscovered, brain networks which must wait in their turn for the development of mid-level brain networks.

It can be a long time to wait, if one is expectant of reaching the higher levels of brain function. Sadly, just at that time, the processes of decay and degeneration can set in. It is a tragedy when that happens.

Some people are genetically predisposed to dementia, schizophrenia, or Parkinson’s Disease etc. They may never have to chance to modify their own risk factors meaningfully via lifestyle choices, if they are born into an impoverished society or an impoverished life and mindset.

It is not a coincidence that populations with a higher average IQ tend to live longer, and more prosperous lives.

We are all born ignorant. But if people choose to squander their natural inheritance of cognitive wealth, or submit the control of their intelligence to corrupt elites who will squander their natural inheritance for them, it may make little difference in the long run whether they were born smart or stupid.

Learn what you can. Read your 10,000 books. Develop a wide range of practical skills and philosophical competencies. Learn to listen and to get along with others, to learn from their experiences and proficiencies.

Watch closely. Things may get interesting.

More:

What you see in the video below represents the low end of the rampant brain decay taking place inside poorly governed cities and towns around the world — but particularly in parts of North America and Europe where governments have been taken over by leftist nihilists. Follow the money. Follow the journey of fentanyl and other synthetic drugs.

You don’t have to be addicted to chemical substances in order to ruin a perfectly good brain. There are many other forms of ruinous addiction, for those who wouldn’t be caught dead using illegal drugs. Some of them are almost as lethal — but just as destructive in the long run.

Social media is as addictive as most drugs. For too many adolescents and young adults, social media destroys brains and lives.

University education — for both graduates and dropouts — can be lethal to an otherwise perfectly good brain. The lefty/nihilist brain virus (sometimes called the woke mind virus) is prevalent on university campuses in particularly virulent and lethal forms.

Mainlining mainstream media and government propaganda can destroy brains of all ages. The lies the media tells are designed to lull brains to sleep. When brains are not used, they decay. This is one of the reasons for a high prevalence of senility, along with other causes mentioned above.

Fake crises such as the climate apocalypse crusade contribute to economic decline (except among the elites who directly benefit). This economic decline contributes to a high amplitude baseline anxiety which is damaging to brain health. The elites profit, while the middle and lower classes are pummeled by legislative, bureaucratic, and judicial malpractice.

A massive governmental downsizing, targeting the deep state first, is the only relief that citizens can hope for. Everything else is just bandaids on an infected wound, with sepsis following the bloodstream to the brain.

Unfortunately, the deep state has learned to control national election outcomes in the US through control of just a few corrupt election districts in almost every state.

Putin is an Experienced Moscow Bomber of Old

Crocus City Hall Ablaze 22 March 2024

When you need a terrorist attack in Russia to justify something foul, “Who you gonna call?” If history is any judge, you should look no further than Putin’s FSB. They have gotten the job done many times before, and as long as Putin is at the helm they are ready and at the chief’s disposal.

…video images show the alleged ISIS assailants walking throughout the venue shooting their victims with ease.

The absence of any Russian armed security forces or checkpoints suggest the FSB facilitated an “open door” for the soon-to-be Islamic martyrs.

Russia’s national guard took an hour and a half to respond to the massacre.

Notably, no Americans were injured or died.

Why? Putin needed US intel to look — but not too closely.

Even the rounding up of the usual suspects appears contrived.

__ Mark Toth, Jonathan Sweet NYP

Putin’s FSB has used Islamic agents in the past for assassinations and terror attacks, to pave the way for otherwise unpopular Kremlin actions.

Guardian Article w Image

Images and videos are being released on Telegram showing alleged ISIS terrorists being tortured.

It’s a tad too obvious — and likely misdirection.

Why Putin probably did this is the easiest question to answer.

He needed an elaborate false-flag operation to justify doubling down on his faltering war in Ukraine — and to further mobilize and put Russia on a full war footing.

Putin’s FSB Behind the Scenes

If Putin now goes forward with a large-scale expansion of war mobilization and escalation against Ukraine, he will be supporting the argument of the authors above.

Putin’s War on Slav Brothers Opened the Back Door to Russia’s Enemies

Now that most of Russia’s military fighting forces are facing western Europe, Russia’s back doors to Muslim Asia and China are wide open to attack. Moscow struggles to maintain a stalemate in the Ukraine invasion, losing thousands of working-age and fighting-age men every week. It is a Putin clusterfoque of immense proportions that will take a great deal of covering up, if Putin is to survive. Or, if Russia is to survive with or without Putin.

In Other News

At the NextBigFuture blog, Brian Wang has been discussing the global collapse of fertility rates among women in the developed world. His latest posting on the topic concerns the development of artificial wombs, and discusses what possible impact artificial wombs may have on the ongoing fertility crisis.

The artificial womb would have more cost than a standard incubator. Let’s simplify and assume 9 months of neonatal care at even less cost than intensive care of $1000 per day. This could be like $10k for the IVF to start and then $1K per day for the womb. This would be $270k for the procedure once it is a relatively mature process.

If there are humanoid robots, the cost might be reduced to $30-50k.

If we only have half of the number of needed babies to sustain the global population of 8 billion in 2060 or so. We are at 75 million per year instead of 150 million.

This would mean scaling up IVF by 5000%, mastering the development of the new artificial womb technology, having the artificial womb work not just on premature animals but on humans, extend from 20-28 week operation to 0-36 weeks, mass produce to about 100 million units.

NextBig Future on Artificial Wombs

The thinking on global fertility is a bit muddled, even among the most clear thinking analysts. If humans would learn to focus on “quality” rather than on “quantity,” the issue would be much easier to analyze.

What does the human future actually need?

First of all, there is no perfect population number for humans on planet Earth. Humans need to maintain trade, innovation, prosperity, and decent living conditions for humans and for the evolving ecosystems of Earth. To do this, terrestrial societies will need ample numbers of intelligent and healthy humans able to work with sufficient degrees of freedom to construct a resilient future.

That could be accomplished with 1 billion humans or with 10 billion humans, if the quality of the human substrate were adequate for the task. It is not politically correct to focus on human quality metrics — such as IQ, executive function, autonomy, etc. — under current political regimes.

Current political regimes on the planet are terminally corrupt, and devoted to the endless compilation of power and wealth by small elite fractions at the very tops of political and economic hierarchies. That might be sustainable if the rise to the top were a result of merit, rather than corruption and criminality. Unfortunately, most of the topmost elites around the world reached the top through criminal and corrupt means.

This means that any large-scale action taken by these criminal elites will not be done for the benefit of the human population at large, but rather for the benefit of criminal elites themselves. This is true for all large-scale actions including actions on “climate,” actions on “fertility,” actions on national sovereignty and “spheres of influence,” and actions with regard to patents and technology adoption on a large scale.

As for artificial wombs, such technology may prove to be extremely helpful for the sake of preserving genetic variety among populations that have proven competence and innovation, but have been unable to sustain their numbers due to the well-known issues of demography that are diminishing fertility among educated classes.

Human intelligence arises from particularly harmonious genetic symphonies which arise from time to time, and from place to place. These promising genetic ensembles should not be lost, if it can be helped.

How Can Young Girls Find Their Way Home?

The following is a brief anecdote about a college coed who temporarily lost her smartphone service, just before she was to drive home for the weekend. She asks her professor what to do:

… her phone plan was switched by her parents at home, hers was inoperable until the following Monday. She had no idea how to drive home without google maps telling her every move. This is despite driving home every weekend for the last two years.

This isn’t a dud student, but one of my best. Another student steps up and says he uses google maps to go to Walmart, it’s just down the road and you really can’t miss it. Suddenly the digitally marooned said “I’ve got it!” And she accessed wifi and took a bazillion screenshots of the google maps directions. She planned to swipe through them as she drove.

As she left I heard a “Oh no!” and asked now what happened. She said “LOOK! this says turn after 300 feet! I have no idea how far 300 feet is.” I told her it’s about the length of a football field. She throws her hands up to the sky and wails “I don’t watch football.” __ Reddit Forum

Are cell phones making students stupider?

Will artificial intelligence tools make people stupider?

Many changes are conspiring to make younger generations less competent and capable. A mindless nihilism and lack of grounded principles permeates schools, media outlets, workplaces and governments.

During development, young brains change rapidly until the age of twenty-five or so. White matter connections expand and myelinate, while gray matter is pruned, with a reduction in gray matter volume and thinning of the cortex.

Image Source

The pre-frontal brain is the last to mature and myelinate, reflecting the delay in development of judgment, impulse control, and perspective until the mid-twenties or later for many young people.

Here is another series illustrating gray matter volume change:

Image Source

Gray matter plasticity can result in volume reduction as the brain specializes, and particular connection routines are preferred habitually over others, which are neglected. Use of smartphones, for example, can lead to the atrophy (or redirection to other uses) of parts of the brain that would have been used for route finding. Social media can be particularly damaging to the psyches of young minds.

Traumatic experiences in childhood can alter brain development, as can the use of mind-altering drugs such as alcohol, marijuana, amphetamines, or other trendy substances.

Marijuana and the developing brain

The brain is under constant assault regardless of a person’s intentions or self-control levels. Well before the brain is fully matured, it is already being damaged by innate conditions inside the human body itself. High blood pressure, hyperlipidemia, excessive drinking or drug use, cigarette smoking, other high risk behaviors and high stress environments etc. all take their toll on the brain and other high metabolic tissues.

Genes that influence brain development and function may be programmed to self destruct.

Schizophrenia is well-known for causing hallucinations and delusion, which can be at least partly treated with medications. But it also causes debilitating cognitive decline, which has no effective treatments and is common in aging as well. The new findings suggest that the cognitive changes in both conditions might involve similar cellular and molecular alterations in the brain.

Schizophrenia can be triggered by the use of particular drugs or by traumatic life experience and chronic stress. The genetic triggers are there, waiting to be set off.

In other news:

Dangerous mass delusions prey upon the emotionally weak and unintelligent. Delusional religions, political ideologies, and pseudoscientific crusades that feed the coffers of corrupt elites

In the video below, Greta Thunberg asks the assembled eminences “How Dare You?” Her thinking was a bit muddled, but as a spokesperson for the wealthy elites who stand to make $trillions from the climate apocalypse crusade, the underlying intent was clear:

How dare you threaten the eternal riches of the elites? How dare you think for yourself? How dare you weigh the objective evidence using logic and all the tools of science and technology? Why won’t you submit to the corrupt consensus of those who are so easily bought?

Human Brain, Smartphones, Uncategorized

Uppity Han Women Refuse to Marry; What Would Confucius Say?

In China, girls have been aborted more commonly than boys, resulting in an excess of almost 50 million men of marriageable age, compared to women. But now, even the diminished numbers of women who remain are refusing to marry and have children.

The Communist Party views the nuclear family as the bedrock of social stability, with unmarried mothers stigmatised and largely denied benefits. But a growing number of educated women, facing unprecedented insecurity amid record youth unemployment and an economic downturn, are espousing “singleism” instead.

Reuters

Feminism Hits China Hard

After decades of improving women’s education levels, workforce participation and social mobility, Chinese authorities now face a dilemma as the same group of women have become increasingly resistant to their propaganda.

Long-term single lifestyles are gradually becoming more widespread in China, giving rise to online communities of mostly single women who seek solidarity from like-minded people.

Posts with the hashtags “No marriage, no children” from female influencers often in their thirties or forties on Xiaohongshu, China’s Instagram, regularly gain thousands of likes.

One anti-marriage forum on Douban, another social media platform, has 9,200 members, while another dedicated to “singleism” has 3,600 members who discuss collective retirement plans, among other topics.

Liao Yueyi, a 24-year-old unemployed graduate in the southern city of Nanning, recently declared to her mother that she “wakes up from nightmares about having children”.

“No marriage or kids is a decision I’ve made after deep consideration. I don’t owe anyone an apology, my parents have accepted it,” she posted on WeChat.

Instead she has decided to “lie flat” – a Chinese expression that means doing just enough to get by – and save money for future travels.

Laurie Chen

Graduating But Unemployed, and Unmarried

For about ten years now, getting a job for university graduates in China has been more and more difficult. Unemployment rates for young Chinese have been vexingly high, forcing tens of millions to put off buying a house, getting married, and having children.

But now, western style feminism is sparking a revolt among young Chinese women. The basic womanly duties that would normally be expected of them are now seen as repulsive and unthinkable. An alarming decline in the mainland Chinese economy does not help. Millions of houses and apartments sit unfinished from one end of China to the other, due to defaults on loans and a lack of capital.

Millions of young Chinese may be choosing to “lie flat,” but at the same time millions of jobs across the land have simply disappeared. Feminism and a bad economy comprise a one-two punch to the chin of “business as usual” in mainland China.

In Haiti Dining Options are Impressive

Bungalows situated directly on the beach provide panoramic views and direct access to the sugar-fine sand and crystal-clear sea. Dining options are equally impressive, with a restaurant offering breathtaking views of the ocean and epic sunsets…

The tourist beach at Abaka Bay is featured in the image above. Haiti offers many fine beaches, as does the Dominican Republic — the country that shares the island of Hispaniola with Haiti. But Haiti and the Dominican Republic have been at odds for a long time, and recent unrest in Haiti has caused the border between the countries to be closed.

Haiti was the first independent “black republic” in the world, having broken free of French colonial control over 200 years ago. Once Haiti was freed from malaria, yellow fever, and other tropical diseases by its Yankee neighbors, its people found themselves occupying a tropical paradise.

Haiti began its history in 1804 with a massacre of the French. Since then, not much has changed. Over the centuries, massacre has followed massacre. Rebellion has followed rebellion. A country that could have become a tourist mecca like Hawaii or the Virgin Islands seems to be perpetually mired in poverty, violence, and depravity.

Haiti is a Little Piece of Africa in the Caribbean

There is nothing that you can say about Haiti, which you could not also say about most parts of sub Saharan Africa in terms of demography and social statistics. Not coincidentally, 95% of Haitians are ethnic Africans, descendants of the original transplants.

25 Poorest Countries in World

According to the chart above, Haiti is the 16th poorest country in the world by average GDP. Almost all of the world’s poorest 25 countries are located in sub Saharan Africa. Which is # 25? Zimbabwe! Zimbabwe has dropped about 150 places since the year 1970 when it was the 53d richest country in the world.

Haiti is not like Zimbabwe. Haiti has always been poor. It is easy to be poor if you know no other way to be. Zimbabwe achieved massive impoverishment through governmental corruption. It is what is happening in South Africa at this very moment, by increments. And it is what is happening in Washington DC, now that the “one party” has mastered the art of election rigging. All you need is total control of particularly corrupt voting districts where you can shut out all objective observers.

It is clear that election riggers have turned manipulation into a science.  I have repeatedly demonstrated that the major democrat centers were massively inflated in key states, while the massively “red” Republican areas were artificially shaved to generate smaller Trump margins.  After all, there was not enough paper in Philadelphia to give Pennsylvania to Biden without the Lancasters, Lycomings, Yorks, and Westmorelands of the state being rigged, too. 

Democrats are masters at taking over and completely owning massive urban centers.  In fact, 18 states “won” by Democrats in 2020 are controlled electorally by one single county.  This means there is no combination of Republican counties that can combine to overwhelm the Democrat margin for the largest Democrat county, let alone negate any other “blue” county inside the state in focus.  The result is a permanently blue state, like all in New England, which flipped entirely in 1992.

For example:

State X

Largest Democrat County margin (Democrat votes – Republican votes) = 200,000 votes

Republican County 1 = 50,000 votes margin

Republican County 2 = 20,000 votes margin

Republican County 3 = 10,000 votes margin

200,000 votes Democrat margin – 80,000 votes Republican margin = 120,000 votes Democrat margin statewide

The one county’s margin cannot be overcome by all the Republican counties combined.  In the map below, states shaded in light blue are completely run electorally by the county within its boundaries shaded in dark blue.  Each state (with exception of Oklahoma and West Virginia, which have no Democrat counties from 2020) highlights the largest Democrat margin producer in dark blue and shows (in red) the counties needed to negate the margin from the one county.  Notice how many Republican counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin are required to take out the largest Democrat margin maker.

Vote Rigging 101

Since 2009, the “one party” of vulture government has been systematically stripping the world’s wealthiest nation of its wealth, its property rights, and its rule of law. Although Haiti and the US became republics at roughly the same time, the natural wealth of the US (both geographic and demographic) has allowed for much greater prosperity and general well-being — up until the rapid increase of government corruption in the US over the past 16 years. That sets up the decline.

Don’t be misled by the change in figurehead presidencies that have occurred. The deep state endures despite the best efforts of reform presidents such as Trump. The rigged election of 2020 is solid testament to that fact. The massive flood of dysfunctionality into the country since Biden took office attests to the growing difficulty of turning back the tide of corruption.

Wealthy Rhodesia became poverty stricken Zimbabwe over time, given ample graft and corruption. The same is happening in South Africa. And the same can happen in the EU and the US, with enough sleight of hand over “climate apocalypse policies” and transfers of many $trillions to the friends of the “one party,” whatever it calls itself.

Rise of the radicals can bring Haiti to the US

The new devil worship, as US elites borrow Haiti’s voodoo zombie ways

Better make provisions

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst. Stock up for what may be an extended siege. Do your best to fortify your island of competence.

Manpower Bleedout: A Fatal Demographic Weakness

Russia is unable to compensate for its looming wartime manpower losses during a pre-existing demographic collapse. Russia’s economy is based upon natural resource extraction, refinement, and industrial production. All of these foundational industries require manpower to operate. Without men, Russia’s industrial base will simply fold.

Russia is losing up to 1,000 men per day in Ukraine. Already, over 300,000 Russian men have been lost, and at an ongoing rate of 1,000 per day now, the total will grow quickly. The manpower deficit is already being felt in Russia, but the pain will grow in exponential fashion.

Keeping Russian industry running without men or fuel will keep the Kremlin body jugglers busy:

In addition to the drone strikes overnight, two armed militia units based in Ukraine and backed by Kyiv — the Russian Volunteer Corps and Free Russia Legion — made incursions from Ukraine into the Belgorod and Kursk regions of Russia.

The group of anti-Kremlin fighters has previously broken across the border into Russia leading to skirmishes with the Russian army. Russian pro-Kremlin military bloggers on Tuesday said several groups of armed men on pick-up trucks stormed the border, with some reporting gun battles.

The Free Russia Legion posted a video claiming to show its tanks crossing the border at night. “We are coming to rescue you . . . from dictatorship,” a group leader said in a video. In another video, the group showed what it said was a Russian armoured personnel carrier being destroyed by its fighters.

A Divided Nation

Liberating Russia from thieving tyrants

North Korean arms production cannot supply Russian demands. Supply chains are breaking.

North Korea has not been able to obtain the metals and explosives needed to build lots more 152mm shells or unguided rockets fired in salvos from launchers on trucks that hold 20 or 40 rockets that can be launched at once. The problem is that North Korea is unable to obtain the metal, explosives and gunpowder needed to build enough 152mm shells and unguided rockets to fill Russian orders. North Korea had already shipped millions of old 152mm shells and thousands of old unguided rockets from its stockpiles. It took North Korea decades to accumulate these stockpiles. When Russia offered to buy these weapons and pay with cash and food, the North Koreans could not resist. Now they are encountering problems producing more shells and rockets for Russia, and replacements for their own stocks, but find they don’t have raw materials to build more than 30 percent of the Russian demand.

Strategy

Russia produces a huge amount of crude oil. But Russia’s refining capacity for specialized products is limited. Even under peacetime conditions, Russia’s gasoline refineries had an insignificant output on the world markets. Russian crude is exported and turned into gasoline overseas. During war it is much worse for Russian gasoline output.

Russia’s oil refineries cannot keep up with demand for fuel — both wartime demand and domestic demand. That makes the gasoline export ban into a huge joke, since due to Russia’s refinery deficit Russia must now import a growing amount of refined fuel — gasoline, kerosene, diesel, etc.

Every refinery that Ukrainian missiles and drones put out of operation, makes Russia’s fuel pinch all the worse. The longer this war goes on, the more loss of blood and destruction of economic potential will occur in Russia.

ISW has previously assessed that Russia’s labor shortage, which is partially a result of its war in Ukraine and partially a symptom of Russia’s ongoing demographic crisis, will likely continue to complicate Kremlin efforts to balance increasing Russian economic capacity and force generation while catering to select members of the Russian ultranationalist community by disincentivizing migrant workers from working in Russia.[16] The Bank of Finland also reportedly found that Russia’s increased DIB production has focused on low-tech products, such as fabricated steel, and that Russia is still reliant on foreign suppliers for higher-tech items such as semiconductors.[17] WSJstated that while Russia has successfully evaded sanctions and imported some products, Russia is struggling to source some necessary specialized items, such as tank optics, from third countries.  

___ Institute for the Study of War: Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment

Russia’s catastrophic loss of surveillance/air control aircraft and repair facilities on the ground:

One of the Beriev A-50 airborne warning and control (AWACS) was downed over the Sea of Azov in mid-January, while a second was shot down over Russian territory in late February. The Kremlin has scrambled to replace the aircraft, reportedly attempting to refurbish least one A-50 from the several dozen that are no longer deemed flyable.

Ukraine responded by conducting a drone strike on the aviation facility in the city of Taganrog tasked with repairing A-50s. According to a report from Newsweek , the plant was “heavily damaged,” and an A-50 aircraft close to the facility was either destroyed or sustained significant damage.

Desperate Times for Russia

Putin thought to conquer all of Ukraine in only 3 days, at little or no cost. But the cost of genocidal conquest to the evil empire is piling up fast. Russia’s friends are beginning to look for the exit doors.

Russians cannot recruit foreign men fast enough, from India, Nepal, Cuba, Nigeria, Syria, Libya, etc. They die as quickly as they are recruited. Russian recruiters promise them that they will not be sent to the war zone, but like true Russian officials they lie.

Russian men, Russian youth, Russian boys. Answering Putin’s clarion call to war.

Putting Russia’s present problems into historical perspective

Under Putin Russia risks becoming a footnote to modern history. Perhaps that is why Putin would burn down all of Russia — and the world — for just another day in power and 15 more minutes of fame. Most members of the criminal enterprise known as the Russian Federation owe their positions to Putin, so if Putin falls, so do they.

More: Assessments of massive Russian setbacks here and here

What happens when all the serfs learn what their lords have been doing with their sons and husbands? Russia has had violent transitions of power multiple times in recent history. Putin’s foolhardy February 2022 decision in Ukraine has set the stage for disruptive change across the entire unstable empire. Russian troops are now concentrated in Ukraine, with backs turned toward the real threat.

China has moved into vital Russian industries inside Russian borders. The invisible invasion has begun.

Her Skull Could Not Protect Her From This

Within seconds, one student throws down the other teen girl to the pavement. She then unleashes a flurry of punches to the girl’s face. When another female student attempts to intervene, she is attacked by other teenage girls.

After [punching the smaller girl] at least a dozen times in the face, the more aggressive student then grabs the teen girl by the hair and repeatedly and viciously slams her head onto the concrete, according to the video.

The victim had her head violently bashed into the pavement at least four times.

The teenage girl is seen on video lying unconscious on the pavement and begins to go into convulsions after the monstrous attack.

TheBlaze.com

Please notice that a large black girl tried to protect the white girl from her attacker at the start of the fight. This protector was taken out of the action by another black girl, who apparently did not want her to “spoil the fun.” The fight then spread to several onlookers, while the original attacker continued to smash the smaller girl’s head against the pavement.

Deaths and permanent injury from this type of student-aged brawling and bullying is not uncommon in the neighborhood where this took place. Search “Hazelwood High School violence St. Louis.”

It is a tragedy what happened to the girl below. But it is not out of the ordinary for St. Louis, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, … , … The larger tragedy is the culture that is generating a larger future of such incidents, with no substantive mitigating forces.

But the reality of black on white violence of this nature should not be swept under the carpet. It is a far bigger problem than our elite overseers in government, media, and academia want us to believe.

🚨 WARNING GRAPHIC 🚨

White female student in critical condition after suffering significant traumatic brain injury during a fight with a black female student at Hazelwood East High School in Missouri. pic.twitter.com/fwKR5HIP1p

— The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) March 10, 2024

via

St. Louis, Mo. Near Hazelwood High School 8 March 2024:

The victim can be seen trying to push her attacker away as the girl continues to pummel her while repeatedly calling her a “bitch.”

NYP

What Motivates This Kind of Attack?

In the attack above, race may have played a part. But most such attacks and brawls occur between persons of the same race, usually black. Most intelligent persons will see trouble coming, and head the other way.

Black people tend to have sturdier bone structure, including thicker skulls. But anyone at all can be killed using enough blows of the type seen above, with sufficient force. The human skull is not made to protect against that level of viciousness, if done with malevolent intent.

Neuroscientists are just beginning to understand the internal mechanisms of violent thought and action. Human geneticists are slowly learning about some of the genetic mechanisms predisposing to violent behavior.

This type of behavior is exhibited by young blacks every day in dozens of cities and towns across North America, Europe, and Africa. The incident is only unusual in that it was captured and posted to Twitter/X at a time that X no longer automatically censors posts that are embarrassing to the woke contingent. The video contradicts the official politically correct narrative about the vector of causation for inter-racial violence. Pay attention to which media outlets ignore the story, or attempt to explain it away or divert attention from it.

Most black people are peaceful, and do not seek out trouble. But even the Reverend Jesse Jackson prefers to have white people behind him in a potentially dangerous situation. You cannot accurately judge a person by the color of his skin or by other ethnic characteristics. And yet, there are warning flags that suggest caution — as Jesse Jackson says so eloquently in the quote linked above.

Be cautious. Yes, be Dangerous. But be cautious as a routine. The world is a hazardous place, and becoming more hazardous with every graduating class of DIE-Wokers and graduating activist lefty-nihilist law students. Just counting on time to rectify the situation would be foolish.

More:

Low impulse control is the fundamental problem with blacks in America, and here in the UK. They do not create thriving and prosperous neighborhoods because they are waging a race war against white people, and have been doing so for the last 50 years. Nobody is going to like black people more if all they have to offer is victimhood, grievance-mongering, sky-rocketing crime rates and staggering levels of violence against whites. White people will just keep moving further and further away from them.

Source: The Race Card Project

Can You Live Long Enough to Live Forever?

It depends upon two things: Can scientists eventually develop rejuvenation technologies at a fast enough rate to keep a person young indefinitely? Can you live long enough to take advantage of those rejuvenation technologies?

Walking might help:

…walking ability is a holistic measure of cardiovascular fitness, physical strength and neurological health, other studies have shown that it’s the single best predictor of hospitalization, disability, functional decline and death in older adults.

Healthy agers were 75 years or older and could ascend a flight of stairs or walk for 15 minutes without resting, and the rapid agers, who were 65 to 75 years old, had to rest during these challenges.

Quick Assessment

Intense exercise might help:

…intense physical activity increases aerobic capacity, and intense mental activity preserves areas of the brain involved in memory and reasoning.

Becoming a Super-Ager

Agers Fast and Slow: Which Are You?

Metabolomic differences between healthy and rapid agers. (a) Difference in metabolomic profiles between healthy and rapid agers as evidenced from Orthogonal partial least square-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA) score plot. (b) Receiver operating curve analysis (ROC) was performed to identify metabolites associated with healthy and rapid agers. Metabolites with AUC_comb (combined area under the curve) value >0.5 and adjusted q < 0.05 were predictive of healthy agers, whereas metabolites with an AUC_comb < 0.5 and q < 0.05 were predictive of rapid agers; grey spots represent non-significant metabolites (c) Pathway-enrichment analysis was performed using Qiagen Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA). Network of enriched pathways in rapid agers shows alterations in amino acid (AA) biosynthesis. (d) Major disease and biofunction pathways associated with predictors of rapid agers are depicted in the bubble plot. Pathways are represented in y-axis and the size of the bubble indicates the number of metabolites identified in each pathway. The q-values were obtained following Benjamini–Hochberg correction of p-values. Source (Aging Cell )

Unlike chronological age, biological age is a strong indicator of health of an individual. However, the molecular fingerprint associated with biological age is ill-defined. To define a high-resolution signature of biological age, we analyzed metabolome, circulating senescence-associated secretome (SASP)/inflammation markers and the interaction between them, from a cohort of healthy and rapid agers. The balance between two fatty acid oxidation mechanisms, β-oxidation and ω-oxidation, associated with the extent of functional aging. Furthermore, a panel of 25 metabolites, Healthy Aging Metabolic (HAM) index, predicted healthy agers regardless of gender and race. HAM index was also validated in an independent cohort. Causal inference with machine learning implied three metabolites, β-cryptoxanthin, prolylhydroxyproline, and eicosenoylcarnitine as putative drivers of biological aging. Multiple SASP markers were also elevated in rapid agers. Together, our findings reveal that a network of metabolic pathways underlie biological aging, and the HAM index could serve as a predictor of phenotypic aging in humans.

Aging Cell

Some of the differences may be baked into the genes. But other differences may well come from a person’s lifestyle, and intentional choices that are made.

There are several ways to distinguish between people who age rapidly and people who age more slowly while retaining their mental and physical faculties for a longer period of time. One quick way is to test whether a person can walk up a flight of stairs without resting, or walk for fifteen minutes at a time without a rest. Another method is to look at DNA methylation in muscle cells. This is a test of the epigenome in the cell nucleus. Yet another method uses a blood test to measure a variety of biomarkers in the serum. There are two leading indexes for testing serologic biomerkers: The HAM Index (Healthy Aging Metabolic Index) and the SASP (Senescence Associated Secretory Phenotype) index.

Biological Age Estimation — various methods

Age Estimation Using Circulating Blood Biomarkers

One noninvasive method of predicting how rapidly a person is likely to age is by referring to an IQ test score from a person’s youth.

One study revealed a surprising factor connected to our biological age: intelligence levels measured earlier in life. Dunedin participants who had higher IQ test scores as children consistently had younger biological age measures as adults than fellow participants with lower childhood intelligence.

Epigenetics and Aging

Of course it does little good to have a fit and healthy body at age 80, if one’s mind is not running on all cylinders. For both the body and the brain, the rule is “use it or lose it.” For many persons who make a living with their brains, postponing retirement — or substituting a very demanding hobby — may be as important for survival as anything else a person might do. Reading another 10,000 books on the side may also help.

Meditation can be a useful skill for anyone, but there are indications that meditation can slow cellular aging and may also slow cognitive decline of aging. Most persons who give the matter some thought will likely agree that the quality of a person’s lifetime is the important thing.

No one wants to live forever in hellish torment. Ideally we wish for a long period of high quality living.

The sources above provide a few ideas for assessing a person’s biological age, and some hints for slowing the process of aging.

The website “Fightaging.org” is a useful source for a broad range of anti-aging approaches, news about longevity research, and numerous links to other websites rich with information about life extension.

Take care of the basics first. Healthy diet, regular exercise, no smoking cigarettes, drink in moderation and not when driving or operating machinery, control your blood pressure, stay away from biker bars on Saturday nights, etc.

Of course, if bad government leads to the collapse of our advanced civilization, all bets are off. Our complex societies are painfully dependent upon unstable infrastructures that are prone to chaotic failures if mismanaged. Modern science is already half infiltrated by corrupt politics. The pace of scientific (as opposed to technological) discovery has slowed appreciably over the past few decades. And the average IQ of the human population of Earth is on the decline. More

It is best to assume that we will all have to take our own futures into our own hands.

But remember: Until you know what you are doing, anything you do beyond wise lifestyle choices is as likely to hurt as to help. Most likely it will accomplish nothing at significant cost to your pocketbook. So take care to consult wise mentors and build your knowledge from the basics upward.

A brief glimpse into biohacking

Roving Death Squads in China; Russia Mobilization Roundup; Global Recession is Real, Includes China

There is no appeal for mercy when these Chinese death squads pull up to your door. They can’t be reasoned with. They do not feel pity, remorse, or fear. And once they have your scent, they will not stop until you are dead. (Quote #10)

“These cars just show up and execute you.”

They used to have public executions in arenas. They haven’t done away with that (or shooting you on the side of the road and burying you in a ditch), but the death vans are considered more “efficient.”“How [the government video] is framed, it’s like how would you be executed, this is going to happen to you. You’re supposed to enter this POV, this is from your perspective, how are you going to be taken out by the government?

”They make a point of how much more humane lethal injection is. “Look how nice we are!”They talk about how much cheaper a mobile execution van is than a fixed execution center. “This is really good! It’s a cost-saving method when we need to go murder all those people!”

“China, even per capita, executes more people every year than every single country combined. And that’s just the people that they count…every year, China is executing thousands and thousands of people.

”One estimate has 8,000 people per year executed in China. (And that’s just the ones we have some evidence for. “Some people just get disappeared.”) By contrast, there were 18 death row inmates executed in the U.S. in 2022.“It’s really grim and also very dystopian, the fact that when you’re strapped down and laying there, you’re looking up at the Communist Party of China’s insignia and right above that is a security camera.

”Remember: China has nothing like our legal system or the rule of law. They have a 99.9% conviction rate.There’s a long list of crimes you can receive the death penalty for, including owning a gun or using a VPN. “If somebody wants you gone, you could get the death penalty for really anything.”And the government video talks about the process of the lethal injection shutting down your organs.

Matthew Tye, the covering the video, lived in China for a decade. This is “how human life is treated on a political level in China…I think this gives you a perspective on how hard Chinese citizens have it.”

Return to CCP Roving Death Squads

Russia’s Mobilization Crisis

Kolesnikov: Russia’s Ultimate Destination

After massive losses of men and materiel in Ukraine, Russia is forced to institute an enormous new campaign of mobilization of troops. This will take place after the staged re-election of the dictator Putin.

Russia’s population contains fewer and fewer young men of fighting age who are capable of withstanding the rigors of combat. Alcoholics, drug addicts, physically weak and deformed youth, psychopaths and the mentally ill, all make up a large portion of Russia’s young men and boys. The capable and competent are leaving as quickly as they can.

The very numbers of young Russian men of fighting age are shrinking rapidly due to demographics, emigration, and war losses.

The basic Russian recruiting problem was two-fold. First, military service was very unpopular, and potential conscripts were increasingly successful at dodging the draft deliberately or otherwise. But the biggest problem was that the number of 18 year-olds was rapidly declining each year. By 2009 all draftees were born after the Soviet Union dissolved. That was when the birth rate declined year after year. Not so much because the Soviet Union was gone but more because of the economic collapse caused by decades of communist misrule that precipitated the collapse of the communist government. The number of available draftees went from 1.5 million a year in the early 1990s to less than half that by the 2020s. Less than half those potential conscripts were showing up and many have criminal records or tendencies that help sustain the abuse of new recruits that have made military service so unsavory.

Source

Putin to the gods of war: “Apres mois, le deluge!”

Global Recession Includes Much of Europe, China

China would have been crippled by economic depression for decades if not for western corporations (including Apple and Tesla) who made Faustian bargains with the genocidal monster of Beijing. Western nations and corporations flooded Beijing with capital and technology, providing extremely advantageous trade and climate policies, which boosted China’s economy and military strength far beyond what the developing nation could otherwise achieve.

Russia’s deep and servile dependency on China’s technological and capital support is another significant prop, preventing the long-delayed collapse of the rickety communist contraption.

As China’s economic threads unravel, and the people feel the age-old strains of Chinese insurrection moving through their bones, the communist government must pull out all the stops of bloody oppression and war that it can manage. Including growing numbers of death squads.

Just the facts: China on the brink (Fact-filled podcast w/ Kyle Bass)

“The beatings will continue until you realize that what you are doing never works!”

Where Babies Are Being Born, Or Not

The global fertility map reveals that the nations with the highest fertility rates are almost all impoverished, backward, third world nations. Surplus persons from these nations are already flooding European countries. But as the above fertility trends continue, out-migrations of uneducated, untrained, low aptitude emigrants predisposed to violent and impulsive behaviors, will accelerate.

Bombs in the Suburbs Every Saturday Night in Stockholm

Low quality immigrants have a way of shifting crime rates in unfavorable directions. The video argues that the skyrocketing crime in Sweden is only happening because the socialists are no longer in power. Just restore the socialists to absolute power in Sweden and all the country’s problems will magically disappear. They have conveniently forgotten why Sweden turned away from the economic tragedy of socialism in the 20th century. Socialists always forget the bad things they have done in the past.

The Baggage that Africans Carry From Their Evolutionary Past

Populations in much of Africa and other tribal areas evolved separately from other major ethnic groups for tens of thousands of years, resulting in significant genetic differences — both internal and external — on the average. Statistically, black males appear to be 50 times more likely to possess genes that predispose to violent behavior than white males.

Since prior research has revealed that the distribution of the 2-repeat allele varies by race (e.g., Reti et al., 2011, Widom and Brzustowicz, 2006), the analysis begins by examining the allelic distributions by race. As Table 1 shows, the 2-repeat allele was carried by 0.1% of Caucasian males and by 5.2% of African-American males.

… carriers of the 2-repeat allele were at a statistically significant greater risk for engaging in serious and violent delinquency in adolescence and early adulthood. The effects were particularly marked for males.

2 Repeat MAO Allele Prevalence and Violence

For many reasons, evolution bequeathed many populations of Africa and other tribal areas with statistically lower levels of IQ, higher levels of impulsivity, and a higher prevalence of violence-promoting genes. These innate characteristics will reveal themselves on a statistical level through behavior including levels of achievement and levels of antisocial behavior.

These are things that anyone who has lived in a country with a large population of tribal peoples already knows. But many Europeans are just beginning to learn that evolution works on the deepest levels, far more than skin deep.

What the US has long-since learned:

• black-on-black violent crime is not a myth;
• blacks and whites generally commit violent crimes at substantially disparate rates (and, for homicides, sharply disparate rates); and
• as best we can tell, the disparity in arrest rates for violent crimes is pretty close to the disparity in crimes that are committed, and especially crimes that the victims report to the police.
• Source: Race and Violent Crime in the US

“There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps… then turn around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”

― Jesse Jackson

Jesse Jackson is not the only prominent black person to feel relieved when the person walking behind him is white, rather than black. It is why wealthy black persons tend to live in white neighborhoods, (and perhaps why wealthy black men often marry white women). It is one thing to mouth platitudes of “racial justice” and “reparations” to the echo choirs, but in one’s private moments one needs peace, quiet, and security.

It is important to point out that some African tribes evolved high average levels of IQ and apparently higher than the African average levels of executive function as well. Skin color is not a reliable way to distinguish between persons of high and low IQ/EF.

What is the difference between IQ and executive function you may ask?

Think of IQ as the engine in a car and Executive Function skills as the oil, fuel, belts and hoses that make it run effectively. That perfectly restored 1969 Pontiac GTO with a 330 horsepower engine has plenty of potential to cruise down the highway on a sunny Saturday, but see how far you get with faulty spark plug wires. 

Source

It is more complicated than that. Some executive functions contribute to intellectual performance, such as working memory and attention switching. Other executive functions contribute to emotional and impulse control. All of the executive functions — as well as all cognitive functions — are influenced by the genes, which are evolved and inherited.

Here is an interesting opinion from someone in the UK, on whether blacks have poor impulse control:

Low impulse control is the fundamental problem with blacks in America, and here in the UK. They do not create thriving and prosperous neighborhoods because they are waging a race war against white people, and have been doing so for the last 50 years. Nobody is going to like black people more if all they have to offer is victimhood, grievance-mongering, sky-rocketing crime rates and staggering levels of violence against whites. White people will just keep moving further and further away from them.

Source: The Race Card Project

The above quote is just one person’s opinion. It is overly simplistic, but I suspect it is an opinion that is shared by many persons of multiple ethnic groups in North America, the UK, Australia, and a growing portion of Europe.

If a person constantly ruminates on his own victimhood, he may not have enough energy left to dig himself out of his self-dug hole. That is the tragedy of the modern university, saturated with “victim studies programs.” After several years of academic reinforcement of the idea that one is a perpetual and permanent victim, one probably cannot detect the irony in the college degree conferred at the end.

The map at the top shows where the world’s future young people are being born, now and for some time to come. Since the average IQ of populations from those countries ranges between 65 and 85, it will be a challenge to keep the lights on. This is true for these high fertility countries themselves, but it is also true for the destination countries of their population overflow.

When a population ceases to contain persons of enough competence to maintain the country’s infrastructure, things are likely to go downhill quickly. See Zimbabwe or South Africa as living examples of developing Idiocracy.

Consider the ramifications.

Networked Dangerous Children, contained within networked Islands of Competence, can maintain repositories of competence for a long period of time, if provisions are made.

Consider various species of animals and plants that hibernate or go dormant for long periods of time, in wait for more propitious times. Human competence can be perpetuated similarly, if need be. Better, though, to use immigration laws to prevent things from descending to that point.

The aim is to create an abundant and expansive human future, with the fewest detours and roadblocks possible.

Bonus Video: Russia’s demographic collapse is coming to a head:

Most of Russia’s land mass consists of tribal lands populated by non-ethnic Russians. Russia is squandering its male population on Putin’s last-ditch war in Ukraine. This accelerates the ongoing demographic catastrophe. The tribal people who populate Siberia, Central Asia, and Mongolia, are watching the strength of Russia bleed away. Beijing is also watching closely.

More: Racial quotas giving preferential treatment to the less qualified are a fast lane to catastrophe

Good Elon / Bad Elon : Power Grid, AI, Crappy Energy

“I’ve never seen any technology advance faster than this.” The chip shortage may be behind us, but AI and EVs are expanding at such a rapacious rate that the world will face supply crunches in electricity and transformers next year, says Elon Musk.

“Then, the next shortage will be electricity. They won’t be able to find enough electricity to run all the chips. I think next year, you’ll see they just can’t find enough electricity to run all the chips.

“The simultaneous growth of electric cars and AI, both of which need electricity, both of which need voltage transformers – I think, is creating a tremendous demand for electrical equipment and for electrical power generation.”

Bosch Connected World Conference via New Atlas

We Are Going to Need A Lot More Electricity

Elon Musk points out in his remote teleconference linked above that demand for electricity will be skyrocketing due to new technologies such as AI, electric vehicles, cloud technologies, data centers, digital currencies, and other unpredictable loads and demands.

Unfortunately, a lot of people think that unreliable intermittent energy such as wind and solar will help to provide needed electricity for the coming crunch. But we are seeing from the German experience that unreliable intermittent sources of electricity drive up the costs of electricity while reducing availability of reliable power. As a result, Germany is losing its industrial base and a large part of its jobs base. That is the future for anyone who follows the path of unreliable intermittent energy.

Will Elon Make the Distinction Between Reliable and Unreliable Power?

We have talked about “Good Elon/Bad Elon” here at Al Fin for several years now. SpaceX is an amazing space launch company that has driven down the costs of space launch while also expanding the size of launch payloads. This accelerates the movement of humans into the space environment, something that is necessary if humans are to evolve as a species. Likewise the Starlink and “Twitter/X” companies are helping to expand the freedom of human speech and data access.

But Elon also wants to be known as a “green technology pioneer” which puts him in the camp of the less reliable persons who are touting the climate apocalypse religion and destroying national economies from Europe to the Anglosphere using green religious dogma to profit and deceive. This makes him a very bad Elon indeed. Some day Elon will have to choose between a lightspeed future of reliable tech, and the dishonest path to perdition which is the green religion of doom.

Teslas Being Burned by German Vandals

In a series of disturbing events, the city of Berlin has witnessed targeted arson attacks against Tesla vehicles and charging stations. The police are investigating these incidents as “left-wing politically motivated” crimes. The recent attack saw two Teslas set ablaze, with a third narrowly escaping the same fate thanks to the fire not reaching its battery. These actions come after an alarming letter was published by a self-identified left-wing group on the page Indymedia, openly advocating for such destructive measures against Tesla infrastructure.

Source

I suspect that the above vandalism of Tesla vehicles and chargers is only the beginning. And not just Teslas, but all EVs and all EV infrastructure. It is no secret that EVs are a threat to everyone on the highway. Millions of people — including children — are under threat from the overweight vehicles with their explosive lithium batteries.

The head of the National Transportation Safety Board expressed concern Wednesday about the safety risks that heavy electric vehicles pose if they collide with lighter vehicles.

The official, Jennifer Homendy, raised the issue in a speech in Washington to the Transportation Research Board. She noted, by way of example, that an electric GMC Hummer weighs about 9,000 pounds (4,000 kilograms), with a battery pack that alone is 2,900 pounds (1,300 kilograms) — roughly the entire weight of a typical Honda Civic.

“I’m concerned about the increased risk of severe injury and death for all road users from heavier curb weights and increasing size, power, and performance of vehicles on our roads, including electric vehicles,” Homendy said in remarks prepared for the group.

The extra weight that EVs typically carry stems from the outsize mass of their batteries. To achieve 300 or more miles (480 or more kilometers) of range per charge from an EV, batteries have to weigh thousands of pounds.

NPR

Lithium batteries can spontaneously ignite and explode up to several weeks after minor damage, water immersion, or due to poor charging technique — not to mention after more serious collision or penetration.

On average, fires involving standard, petroleum-run vehicles take an hour to put out, and can be extinguished with a few firefighters and about 1,000 gallons of water. Electric vehicles, by contrast, take an average of 5 to 6 hours, and can require 30 to 40 firefighters and about 20,000 gallons of water to extinguish. The danger can remain long after saltwater exposure as some vehicles exploded weeks after being affected. __ Hidden Dangers

Deaths from EV fires in NYC are increasing exponentially, with the rise of EV ownership. There are deaths from EV accidents with combustion, and their are deaths from home and apartment fires due to combustion while charging EV batteries. It is possible for EV batteries to spontaneously combust at any time, due to invisible processes that are unknown to the owner.

EV Vulnerability to Cyber-Attack is Increasing Rapidly

As ownership of Chinese EVs grows, the critical risk of cyber-attack grows alongside:

The challenge with electric vehicles falls squarely within this realm: any connected product that is subject to software updates from the vendor can be hard to control. It is likely impossible to introduce regulation that fully addresses the risks that arise from this relationship. Its success would ultimately depend on European authorities’ capacity to verify companies’ adherence to the rules. In the case of 5G, the conclusion in many EU member states as well as in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Japan was that the presence of Chinese vendors in network infrastructure was not beneficial enough to warrant the risk that it posed. These states went on to impose limits and bans on Chinese companies’ role. Yet, the decisions around 5G should not really have been that tricky (even if some member states, Germany included, are still struggling to implement them): no public backlash was likely to come from choosing European companies with a similar, if not higher-quality, product over Chinese ones in a sector mostly invisible to individual consumers. Experience from other member states now also shows that excluding Chinese providers did not push up prices for consumers or delay the rollout in the countries that imposed such limits.

In contrast, the nature of electric vehicles means this next question is going to be much more difficult – the price and availability factors are highly sensitive, the climate argument will feel compelling to policymakers and consumers alike, and the quality of Chinese cars is not only on a par with their competitors but often exceeds it. To start to address this, the European Union and member states need to buy time for decision-makers to think – and to plan what rules to introduce.

Chinese CyberAttacks Can Kill You and Yours

Driving down the autobahn at 130 kph is no time to learn that your Chinese EV has been hacked by malicious cybersoldiers.

The problem of malicious Chinese EV hacks is already in Europe and is coming to all of the Anglosphere. Mexico seems to have already surrendered.

For EVs, the connected charging network is a target. In a dramatic example of that, on February 21 the Telegraph newspaper reported that the Office for Product Safety and Standards in Britain told Wallbox that its Internet-connected Copper SB EV home charger was not properly secured against hackers and couldn’t be sold.

According to the newspaper, “Critics say continued sales of the charger… risks letting hostile nations disrupt the UK’s critical national infrastructure.”

Close to 40,000 of the chargers have been sold in Britain, at a cost of £500 ($631). Reportedly, updated Copper SB EV chargers can still be sold until June 30, but the company has stopped marketing the device.

Attacks on EVs, AI, and Beyond

It goes without saying that EVs are highly vulnerable to low tech “gang attacks” such as those sweeping over Haiti currently. Marauders looking for a target of opportunity for pyrotechnics will increasingly seek out EVs and associated infrastructure.

Elon has grown very wealthy due to market valuations of his Tesla stock. But EVs are not nearly as green as their spokespersons claim. The other components of “green energy” such as wind and solar are downright destructive to the power grid and to an abundant and expansive human future. The longer that Elon chooses to associate with unreliable intermittent energy and the threats such energy poses to the power grid, the less credibility he will have overall.