Guest Post by Jim Kunstler
“Respect the blob, learn from the blob, love the blob.” — Robert Kagan, Arch Blob Monster, Brookings, 2020
HG Wells concocted a marvelous trick ending to his classic tale The War of the Worlds (1897). Remember: the colossal Martian tripod “fighting machines” swarm all over the planet zapping cities with “heat rays”. . . it looks like all-is-lost . . . but finally the darn things just quit marching, stop zapping, and stand down . . . the alien protoplasms at the controls (surprise ending) turn up dead and rotting inside from the action of our tiny invisible allies: the earth’s one-celled, disease-causing bacteria, to which the Martian blob creatures have no immunity!
The Gaian overtones in that story resound today as we Earthlings devise ingenious new methods to wreck terrestrial life, including ourselves. The planet seems to have some teleological drive to save itself, a kind of immune system. Notice: in all the ongoing debates about the wonders and dangers of A-I, and Bitcoin, and suffocating surveillance, nobody ever talks about the sketchy condition of the electric grid that all these worrisome phenomena utterly rely on. In our chatter over Peak Oil, there’s little awareness of oil production’s utter dependence on steady capital flows. In all the guff about centralized control emitted by Klaus Schwab and his World Economic Forum, there’s no mention of the centrifugal forces driving human affairs to re-localization, dis-aggregation of large states, and down-scaling of many activities. In our zeal to become Gods, we miss a lot.
Imagine: Bitcoin shoots up to a million dollars. You’re a zillionaire! Uh Oh. . . somewhere outside Zanseville, Ohio, a squirrel takes a final chaw through some old insulation on a wire coming out of a transformer. His head blows up in a blue arc flash, and in a few seconds all the electricity goes out from Chicago to Boston. It turns out that seventeen substations in ten states have blown relays, transformers, and switchgear. Some of those components were forty years old and are now manufactured twelve thousand miles away in a country that doesn’t like us anymore. The replacement parts get held up in a Chinese port. The power doesn’t come back on for weeks. Nobody who lives in the eastern USA can get to his Bitcoin wallet, which is just a virtual entity made of computer code residing in a digital “cloud,” i.e., nowhere real.
Of course, in an event that bad, a lot of other things would fail — really just about everything that comprises modern life — but for sure you could kiss your Bitcoin goodbye, perhaps forever, because by the time the juice comes back on (if it even does), nobody will ever again want to invest their wealth in digital “money” they can’t access, and Bitcoin will go back to whence it came: zero.
Likewise, the financial system we depend on is a gigantic apparatus grown extremely janky from over-elaboration and hyper-complexity — to the degree that all kinds of things denoted as having “moneyness” are simply hallucinations of the markets that trade them. How many quadrillions of dollars do “derivative” financial instruments represent on the landscape of “money” these days? Most of these things amount to little more than bets that some number — an interest rate, a currency, a revenue flow — will change either up or down. That is, they are figments.
Under Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), the evolution of figments can theoretically go on forever. Derivatives can be ever more abstracted from what they purport to represent, until they fly up the system’s cloacal vent. MMT has become popular economic dogma, but its theory remains to be substantiated. Since the formula relies on the unlimited “printing” of money by central bank proxies for governments, you might bet that something will go wrong with such a system — and it kind of looks like something is about to go wrong in the system we’ve built for regulating and distributing capital. And do we need to state what “capital” is? (Real wealth, not figments, wishes, bets, and hallucinations. . . hard things like good land, ore pockets, installed machinery, railroad tracks, and so on. . . .)
Bitcoin has gone “hockey stick” the past month, meaning on a chart the move up looks nearly vertical. Do you know why it’s going up? I’ll tell you: it’s going up . . . because it’s going up. People and groups of people (wealth funds, banks) see the up-trend and deduce that Bitcoin is going “to the moon.” Meanwhile, they view the tea leaves of the currency scene and see a lot of brown, crumbly debris where there used to be “capital.” The money itself is losing its “moneyness” all over the place. The most vulnerable module of the system now is the bond market.
The bond market is based on the idea that borrowed money will be reliably paid back, the key word there being reliably. One crucial condition, though, is that money has to stay “money.” People have to regard it as possessing value. And now all kinds of money is visibly losing value. Approaching the $35-trillion mark in our national debt, there is reason to doubt that the USA can plausibly pay off its debt, or even service it anymore — that is, keep paying interest on it. The more money we “print” under MMT, the more value the money loses. The interest rate on the borrowed money has to go up to compensate for that loss of value, and all of a sudden you’re borrowing a shit-ton of money to pay the interest on the money you owe, the gross volume of which is only increasing . . . moving rapidly toward critical. . . . Uh-oh.
Many sentient beings viewing the scene warn us that the bond market is liable to blow, and with it most of the other modules in the current MMT-driven system. That will be the magic moment when a big theory gets disproven rather vividly and injuriously. The price of everything will vaporize in a mushroom cloud of malinvestment and when the dust settles — which might take a long time — everything will be priced differently, including many things at zero.
This is the kind of world we’re in now, and all this is why I don’t worry quite so much about the machinations of the various blobs that have self-assembled to defend their particular special interests while doing harm to many of us: the military-industrial blob, the censorship blob, the fake news blob, the intel blob, the corporate monopoly blob, the medical blob, the central banking blob. The systems we depend on to make all things blobish function are looking pretty ill, like they’re not going be working a whole lot longer.
The result will be a beneficial time-out from blobbery. I’ll venture to predict that it will be a rather long time-out. A lot of the scary things going on around us, tyrannizing us, stripping our assets and our freedom, will not find their footing easily in the aftermath, perhaps never again. We’ll have decades, maybe centuries, to think about the hubris that brought all of that on, and in the meantime, we’ll have to live the earthly life as the earth allows and abide with it. And maybe dote on some new dreams of what a perfect world would look like.
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Bitcoin = Finite supply of nothing.
I don’t care what anybody says, if it’s 0’s and 1’s, binary code, it can and will be, hacked and like Jim says, if the electrical grid goes down……..
I’m starting to think that would be a plausible reason to not have an election, even if just a significant part of it was down. Not to mention it could be blamed on ( fill in the blank ____).
Can’t have an election without electricity. God forbid we use paper ballots because they “take too much time.” As someone who sat and watched votes be tallied manually back in the prehistoric days of the 1980’s that were done by 9 or 10 pm, we can’t go back to that why? Anyone else notice how since they went to these machines it takes days to declare winners in too many cases. You can’t “erase” a pallet load of paper very easily either.
A little gasoline and a lit match tossed on a pallet of paper makes a fine bonfire.
You can’t do that unnoticed at the County Court House. You can use a smartphone or other device to steal an election over the wifi that supposedly is not connected or a thumb drive etc.
Now with all the “Green” crap like smart thermostats and wifi connected lighting, the wifi can be “turned off” and still hack or send by hacking into the wifi light bulbs and smart thermostats and other internet of things tech that is everywhere. My damn washing machine has tried to go online.
/s
The election is scripted long before the “election”.
Bitcoin is an op, whose purpose is to take buying pressure off of precious metals, and provide a test bed / proof of concept for CBDCs.
Bitcoin is Q for Wall Street.
Bitcoin is SUCH a good idea, that soon it will be mandatory, and enforced by guns.
Hope this helps.
What a pant load. Respectfully, you know nothing about bitcoin. Do yourself a favor and learn. Study.
I don’t think they will do that. It is easier to lead the flock with a Judas goat than to turn the wolves loose.
I’m in at 38K average with BTC…reckon I ought to sell now?
And give up the chance to become a multi-millionaire?
Some bought at $0.11, it’s time.
Hell no
I wouldn’t mind crypto if it was just a finite supply of nothing. Unfortunately it is also a massive consumer of very real energy. That is energy that is already in somewhat limited supply and that we are going to need in the future for more important things at some point, like heating homes, powering vehicles, fertilizer, etc. Instead, all we get for that energy is that some hipster can pay for his soy latte with his bitcoin wallet.
You are soooo right, Brock.
What is the rough kwh cost per bitcoin?
According to an article over at ” Coingecko” 266,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity is required to mine a single Bitcoin (BTC).
The people who invented this profligate psychotic nonsense hate humanity – and love money — get it?
Shear ignorance
No one ever mentions the japanese to english translation of the words Sitoshi (middle or central) and Nakamoto (intelligence)
Sitoshi Nakamoto literally translates to Central Intelligence.
How many liberty people touting bitcoin feel like fools now?
The mining is literally hacking encryption itself as they needed a way to find every hash collision that exists so they created bitcoin to distribute the load and motivate crowdsourcing the hack. The mining of bitcoin is exactly what guarantees bitcoin’s eventual uselessness.
Yes many got ‘rich’ and many of those were murdered.
Stupid is as stupid does.
In Japan “Satoshi” is a common masculine first name. It means intellgent, clever, wise, or intellectual. I could find no association with the notion of centrality.
Nakamoto is a Japanese surname. “Naka” means “middle.” “Moto” means “origin, base, or “root”.
Admittedly, I am not fluent in Japanese. My ballroom dance parnter is Japanese, so I know a litttle.
At best it’s now completely controlled by the Deep State/Bankers. Play along if you dare. Whitney Webb gives some back story machinations in the video below.
https://dailynewsfromaolf.substack.com/p/whitney-webb-globalists-plan-to-impose?publication_id=1300612&post_id=142522105&isFreemail=true&r=ljez8&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
“In our zeal to become Gods, we miss a lot.”
In our zeal to become false Gods, we miss a lot.
Fixed it.
ALL Gods are false, fixed your fix for you.
You’re Welcome.
Only a moron would be so cocksure about that . Its akin to computer models designed to ascertain outcomes ,the incomplete data sets , the thing you don’t know , the thing you don’t even know that you don’t know factors in, but you didn’t factor it in ,in your model of a meaningless universe ,see ? Junk science .
You know the origin of lucifer is “bringing light”.
Red hot burning fiery light under your ass. Forever.
yawn….
Above are examples of the filth one can expect showing up in election years.
Yes, the ‘Light Bringer’ was supposed to bring and reflect the light of the Almighty God, but was too proud.
Nope.
I’m a god.
Yeah, whatever…..
Lucifer can gargle on my Nutsack…..
Careful! Might take you seriously….
good luck with that. Every knee shall bend and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord!
“Jesus” and a quarter won’t get you jack squat.
Unless you are a shill.
The argument for Bitcoin is always the same. Take your legal tender fiat money not backed by anything and invest it in imaginary money online that’s not backed by anything.
What are ETFs for crypto currencies quantified, bought and sold with?
Hint: Not crypto currencies.
crypto derivatives
That’s not strictly true. Plenty of transactions are completed in btc. But yeah, just about everything in the world is priced in USD right now, including precious metals. Btc is only 15 years old and its early in the adoption phase. There is a real chance that sometime in the not too distant future major commodities will commonly be transacted in btc. If that happens its value will go through the roof. One of the many reasons you should hodl some.
Which is a perfectly adequate use of the stuff of course. My question is why would the owner of bitcoin sell it to a person in exchange for unbacked fiat if the bitcoin were worth anything?
Why do people sell anything?
Because “unbacked fiat” can buy you stuff all day long and is easier at this stage to transact. Why would you sell your gold for cash? All you need to know is that somebody will pay you for the bitcoin, that’s a pretty good indicator it has value.
Value is imputed, not instrinsic. Hstorically , there were even a few civilized societies that did not value gold or silver.
Or a shiny rock thats not worth anything.
This is incorrect. Gold, silver, palladium, etc. all have critical uses integrated into current adopted technology. Bitcoin… well currently it’s a net drain on our current infrastructure. While crypto may go through the roof and make people a lot of money- it’s actually insane that people have been conditioned to become true believers of it.
Brilliant distillation, BTKids; That’s some catch that Cash-22.
Cash-22, Copyright All Rights reserved, Aunt Acid 2024.
” Take your legal tender fiat money not backed by anything and invest it in imaginary money online that’s not backed by anything.”
– BTK
That’s the Cash-22.
Worth repeating and understanding.
Nah. The argument is that it is a scarce, sought after commodity which you can make a lot of money out of. No other investment you can make has the same potential upside as btc. It’s still in its adoption phase and is still cheap. The price will stabilise now it’s gone mainstream but even if it falls 50% tomorrow history shows it will recover and the mid/long term prospects are still better than any thing else you could invest in.
Maybe ,but how is it a commodity to you ?
I’d say it’s a commodity because people want to buy it, trade it and hold it. As far as I know the definition of “commodity” is ‘something that can be traded, bought or sold’. Does it matter? It’s now the 8th biggest asset by value in the world after 15 years. Worth more than silver which has been mined, traded and used as currency for thousands of years. Obviously a lot of people consider BTC valuable, even if the goldbugs on this site haven’t worked it out yet.
I was told long ago that when it happens, stocks will crash first. Then the bond market collapses, followed by Treasury notes. Then you get the Four Horsemen. There was no mention of timing slow or fast. Just the order. I suppose it could all happen so fast it will seem simultaneous, but I have no doubt it is coming.
My gut tells me that Bitcoin goes first.
The people using it are the least likely to be any kind of threat, and as of today the claim at least is that there’s more money in Bitcoin than silver so that’s a pretty big chunk of change to pillage. Plus you don’t actually hold it, it’s on their systems, powered by their grid and almost certainly their creation.
But what do I know.
Bitcoin is so fucking fake I can’t even understand why we’re discussing it at all.
In the words of Rick Sanchez, “You’re trying to use Disney Bucks at a Caesar’s palace!”
I cant even understand that you don’t understand.
there’s more money in Bitcoin than silver
But what kills the entire Bitcoin illusion is that silver is actually money while the “money” that is being represented is illusory.
Show Me
For years now, the buttcoiners have sounded like people with Iraqi dinars. The only difference is that they are actually worth something.
For now.
I am seeing what I think are signs of a massive crypto pump and dump operation. Like any pump and dump you can make a pretty penny if the numbers on the slot machine are all 7s with the timing. Of course I thought the same thing about the last 15 years of this bull “market”.
Yep ,and when it comes to the bull market I think I’ve already stayed at the rodeo too long .
Even though it is the Blobs in twilight we might all still get that Wagneresque Gotterdammerrung finale we have been expecting.
(Too early to post the magnificent music.)
Wounded ,cornered rats can be vicious .
Shit. They were vicious long before they were cornered and wounded! It’s just more obvious now.
Instead of the magnificent “Twilight of the gods” we’ll probably get some rap shit. “All you bitches and ho’s……”
Yes. Composed at Hahvahd’s Hip Hop Institute.
. . . and plagiarized from other hiphop.
Unrelated to JHK’s article, it was discovered when David McCallum died recently that he had recorded an album about sixty years ago which caused someone to listen to it whereby they discovered that what is the biggest rap hit of all time was a McCallum song plagiarized and modified by the singer or composer whose name I do not recall.
1965’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is a rap tune:
Oh, oh . . . he said, “Coonskin”. . .
(Blob Dylan)
Shhhh, mentioning the beat poetry pioneered by white middle class beatniks in the nineteen fifties is raycis.
I think he is catching on. Embrace the EMP / CME!
This reminds me of every time I ever tried to teach someone how to swing a hammer properly.
I’m logical, thorough and know what I’m talking about from a lifetime of experience.
Not one of them has ever listened to me.
They are convinced that their way works and will continue to do it their way for a few hours or days depending on the project we’re working on and then start to do it exactly like I first tried to communicate to them.
Some things you can only learn by doing. No amount of reason and good intentions given freely from an outside source has any impact on their decision making process. Only Nature and Her mighty powers of physical reality can crack that nut.
It’s all in the wrist.
It’s all in the muscle memory.
Scru’s all in the server’s memory.
Your mother is in MY memory!
What an exemplary Christian.
That’s profound ignorance of what a Christian is. A Christian is a sinner like everyone else, only he is forgiven by the blood of Jesus Christ.
That’s profound ignorance of what a Christian is. A Christian is not someone who can sin all he wants, because it will all be forgiven at next confession.
Tell it to the Pope!
A true christian never sins.
That was the path presemted.
It is impossible for any human to never sin. (Plus that would make him god-like.)
I thought that was the whole reason for Jesus? Was he not without sin and human? If he did sin, that would not make him very god like. Why is it a sin for men to murder, but not for gods?
No.
He wasn’t.
On earth he was human.
Good luck trying to define, or even just claim any understanding at all, what a sin for a god is.
So you are saying Jesus wasn’t without sin? And he was human? I thought the whole point was to offer a sinless sacrifice to cover the sins of the world, and especially adam’s original sin?
I don’t have to define it. God already did that with the 10 commandments. “Thou shalt not murder being one.”
I imagine Hardscrabble would say its all about how far back on the handle you hold it , but that would depend on whether your trying to drive nails quickly or take extra care with something, like say nail off a window fin . Muscle memory definitely plays a huge role . hand skills are a” learned action ” .
The Humble Farmer once again, let’s us know how we are all hapless students and HE and only HE, is the ultimate teacher, that owns the wisdom of the ages, that by the grace of his benevolence, shares with us plebs.
Let us all bend the knee and pay respect, in the hope that we may somehow, someday, learn from him and fully understand his gift of superior intelligence and morality.
I’m not sure I understand your criticism.
Are you implying that a person shouldn’t show someone how to do something or do you not believe I know how to use a hammer?
It is telling that you act precisely like the kids I described above. Yes, why listen to someone who knows something when a snarky comment will suffice.
There’s got to be something else that bothers you.
I’m an old man with a specific set of skills and knowledge that I share. If I don’t know anything about a topic I don’t comment. I don’t make any of this up, and none of it is the kind of thing that makes me out to be some kind of genius. I’m one of the few people who actually welcome personal visits to anyone who wants to see for themselves what I do and meet me face to face, but you haven’t bothered to do that.
So what’s the real problem that bothers you so much you feel compelled to denigrate my rather mundane comment rather than address your underlying problem?
I’m sure it’s been difficult for you going through whatever it is that’s made you this way but I had nothing to do with it.
Whatever. The past few years broke a lot of people.
I’m implying that you are an arrogant ass.
How’s that for a mundane comment?
The fact that you think you KNOW my reasoning that underlies my comment and you think you KNOW I have some kind of a problem only proves my point.
HSF has never given the impression of a know-it-all, unlike Scru, for example. He seems to just share, not strut and crow. Plus, in this particular case, HSF said that no matter how accurate or sage one’s advice, there’s no replacement for a diploma from the school of hard knocks, or the First Teacher Ever . . . the one that always whispers in everyone’s ears. Experience and expert have the same root word. Empiricism beats all.
Never ?
LOL !
Another sycophant……..
He’s always willing to help the other people here. He’s a good man and the real deal. There is a reason he is held in high esteem. Take your Alinsky bullshit somewhere the IQ level of the posters will let you get away with your shit. Because this is not such a place.
LOL! Another Langleybot. TPTB hate it when those they seek to rule, talk among themselves and learn. HSF is just talking, and humbly, but it puts TPTB’s panties in a knot . . . .
Yoi are a bad anonymois.
ChatGPT fails again.
Your behavior is why I haven’t bothered to comment about much of anything. I grew up with a dad and grandpa who said we can do anything but make a nigger baby and we did all sorts of crazy construction and maintenance projects. HSF is actually walking the walk and trying to help others along the way.. In the past (and still) when someone made a comment it got jumped on a picked apart(usually some sliver unrelated to context), then the shit flinging would start about the comment on the comment. Some day you may wish you had some of the skills and knowledge that you scoff at today.
You are like the crab in a bucket.
Oh and that’s MASTER Simple Carpenter to you . Lol . Hows that for arrogant ? What was Rodney Dangerfields main complain in life ?
Just so you know? That AIN’T me.
It’s an unattractive single woman
Misogynist !
Hmmm….maybe you ARE an ass !
You’ll notice she didn’t reply.
Now you are hating on us asses hater !!!!
I have no reason to doubt you at this juncture. Soldier on.
To quote Marjorie Taylor Greene “Why don’t you fuck off?”
Auntie prefers the imperative when using that phrase; but, yes, HR.
Unlike the court, I cannot give orders, only suggestions.. LOL!
” Just be the hammer, be the hammer, be the hammer. You’re not being the hammer Anonymous.”
Yep, it would seem that is a big part of the human condition, probably more so today. I have always had a natural aptitude for learning things myself (sometimes, maybe even most times, the hard way), but I always appreciate a hand up as you suggest, but never had much of it. I think the side of the family I was raised had the opinion of pay attention and that should be good. My daughters call it being tumbled up, but is seems to have served them fairly well, though I think they listen more than they let on.
When I went through Basic at Ft Benning I didn’t know anything about firearms. It was probably two months before we even started training with the M-16 and when we finally got around to it they had a foolproof system based on an explanation, a demonstration, and a practical application.
We practiced dry firing with a penny balanced on the front sight from the prone position for days before we ever fired a single round and by that time almost everyone including the dimmest bulbs were able to qualify.
The difference of course between those instructors and some guy writing a blog post- even someone as smart as JHK- is that he can’t whip your ass if you get mouthy or fail to meet the standards. Drill sergeants, at least back then, would tune up a trainee pretty seriously in front of everyone and then punish the rest of us so we’d police the smart ass on our own later if he kept it up.
Today everyone knows everything even when they don’t know anything.
They’ll figure it out at some point, like all the died suddenly folks.
Blanket parties do work. Vaxxes and boosters for CoVid…also compliance and obedience tools that make some players “hors de combat.”
Oh yeah; everyone knows everything because Internet.
Note: I’m not the anonymous (above) that was giving you crap for no reason.
Anyway, I used to know things (backed by degrees/ credentials and whatnot).
Then I came to find out that more than 50% of what I “knew” was utter horseshit, and another 40% was true but simply useless. Maybe ten percent was true and useful but I’ve now forgotten 90% of all of it. What I’m left knowing is that “knowing” things isn’t always everything it’s cracked up to be.
Oh well.
Larnin’s fearful dangrous. Or can be.
That sounds more like what I learned at Paris Island. Benning was a joke by the time I got to it, but I also found more competent infantrymen to work with. I just had to teach a lot of people to shoot with a snap-in barrel and loose change.
It’s “Parris ” Island.
Yeah they already know every damn thing which completely explains their rationale behind insisting that they start at the top of the organization ( crew ) . Belivee me, I know all too well of what you speak . That said there are still some good kids out there and you can tell them by their humility
I went to culinary school 26 years ago as a second career guy. I called it boot-camp-lite because the chefs demanded that we pay strict attention to their demonstrations and explanations, much like you described. We had to “turn” vegetables into very precise shapes, as required by the exacting French cuisine standards. We were expected to say “yes, chef” without backtalk. All of us in that class were older with lots of work experience in other fields, but we all knew to shut up and listen and do the work with no back-talk. And learn we did. They prepared us for the meat-grinder that a modern restaurant kitchen can be.
Things are different now, unfortunately. No more raised voices and whithering looks. Now that school is all feel-good pandering to weak know-it-alls.
Here’s a hammer story from one of my classmates. His grandfather worked as a carpenter for a building contractor. The contractor hired a young guy and saw that the kid was holding his hammer halfway up the handle. He showed the kid how to hold it properly and explained why. Later he saw that the lesson had not taken, asked for the hammer, took it to the table saw, cut off half the handle and gave it back to the new guy.
Bob bailed out on all this awhile back for just these reasons. Stopped in and read a few today…ain’t coming back.
Yep
This is the history of the Church and the Holy Gospel. Humans never change. We can’t.
The way I use a hammer , and I pretty much exclusively just frame houses , is as little as possible, that’s what the guns are for, mainly . Consequently , after going on forty years of doing this I still don’t have a bad elbow or wrist. Now I can assure you that back in the day I could swing a hammer( a 32oz rigging axe back in those days ) with the best of them .
I went straight into a framing crew when I got out of the Army, bought a 32 ounce Estwing with a waffle head and pretty much copied everything the other guys did. My advantage was that heights didn’t bother me, so I walked the walls and set rafters while the old guys passed materials up to me.
The thing I was saying about swinging a hammer- not putting up picture hooks, but rather framing/sheathing/shingling type hammer work- is that there is no wrist to it. Most people swing the hammer by rotating the wrist which doesn’t deliver any power and wears the hell out of the radial ligament and eventually grinds down the scaphoid (?) disc at the base of the thumb. Instead you have to swing from the elbow, using the bicep like a piston, forging a single lever of the forearm and hammer. With decent hand/eye coordination you can load up nails from the pouch into your left hand and let your thumb set each nail up between the index and middle finger while you drive them with the right hand. I know that air guns have all but replaced hammers, but there was something supremely satisfying about the rhythm of setting the nail- tap– and driving it home in two strokes-BAM! BAM!
The efficiency increases with fewer strokes required to drive the nails and the wrist doesn’t get worn out.
I don’t know why I used that particular comparison to JHK other than to show that simply explaining to someone that something works or is true rarely gets through to people just because you’ve explained it to them rationally. They have to swing that hammer until their body tells them they’re getting it right or they injure themselves, whichever comes first.
The good news is that either way, if the person keeps at it- researching a topic or building something-sooner or later they’ll discover what feels right and makes better sense.
When I was a kid my dad showed me how to use a grass scythe, a skill he’d learned from his uncle.
My parents were 1940s, pre-hippy back to the landers. We had a milk cow and Dad cut and put up hay by hand before he bought a Willys jeep and rigged up an old horse drawn mowing machine.
A guy once told me that a scythe was “a man killer”. Not if you’re fit, know how to use it and keep the blade sharp.
My uncle, my Dad’s youngest brother, was a Master Carpenter. He held nails like you describe and was like a machine-gun putting up panelling or plywood. I have never seen anyone so fast before or since.
…brown crumbly stuff where the money used to be…(to paraphrase)… what a wonderfully accurate visualization of what is happening with our cash… it’s just getting dingier and more fragile, little bits of the bills crumble off and fall away, we have to shake out the wallet every so often to get rid of the accumulated money duff from the bills residing there….
Nice imagery, and everyone will play along to the very last tune to be called. Bitcoin, of course, will just disappear in an instant, with wallet holders standing in shocked awe. At least they’ll still have their piece of the blockchain.
I had it brought home vividly. I saw an article stating the 17 cent McDonald’s cheeseburger of my childhood, is now today’s $2.30 McD cheeseburger, and undoubtedly smaller.
If a crash is coming, our populus is ill prepared for it with even basic skills. Two weeks ago, I went to my local farmers’ market. I purchased a $12 item and gave the young man working at the booth a twenty-dollar bill and two ones. A minute later he was standing in front of the cash box with some small bills in his hand, his brow furrowed and his lips moving. I finally said, “It’s ten dollars.”
This week same booth same item, this time with a woman working it. I bought the same $12 item and gave her a twenty. She takes three one-dollar bills out of a large wallet and then brightly asked, “Do want a 10-dollar bill or two fives?” I said, “It’s eight bucks! Just give me a five.”
This is 4th grade math stuff. Apparently, without a calculator, people can’t figure it out. If the grid does go down and people can’t use their devices, we are going to see just how dumb they have become. But on the bright side, if the crash does come, I’m going to make a fortune at the farmers markets.
Forty years ago they pissed me off at McDonalds so I gave the counter guy a $50 bill for my One Dollar and some cents lunch. He had to call over the manager and it took the two of them a minute or two to figure what to do. Now when a family of four or five will cost $50, they have signs saying they won’t take anything bigger than a $20 bill.
Should have taken the one ten dollar bill
I profess I know nothing about crypto currencies other than it doesn’t sound like a very good idea to me to have all your eggs in a digital basket. Anything that can be shut off at the source and render you a pauper instantly including all your money in a bank account is risky. The only wealth you truly own is, well…what you have on hand. The most valuable things will be clean water, food, ammo, and shelter in a post collapse scenario. You have a $2,000. ounce of gold you want to trade, well okay…here’s a $2,000. chicken.
Of course. Bitcoin is too volatile at this stage of its adoption cycle to be a 100% bet. But having said that, last week some kid moved 1000 btc from a wallet which had been dormant for 10 years. The original btc moved to that wallet cost $300…. just cashed out for $67 million! And if he’d held another week would have made another 6 million. Not a bad investment……
Gold is for wealth preservation. Silver, food, lead, are for barter. Best to have all the above… Chip
So much Bitcoin hate. What is really driving the price of Bitcoin higher, is that the value of the dollar is dropping like a stone.
My water and gas bills DOUBLED last year.
People are looking for a way out.
it is difficult for people to realize, let alone accept, that prices go up and down related to the VALUE of the currency used.
Right now at least it is the “Mo-Mo” traders, ready to dump it at a moment’s notice to lock in profit. These crypto etf’s will soon if not already begin to hypothecate and rehypothecate crypto so when the music stops it will be discovered that there is only five or ten cents on the Dollar of supposed crypto.
Exactly. If they can’t manipulate via laws and regulations, they’ll buy in with paper ETFs and play it like Gold.
Some really genius opinions by the same people who have used paper backed by nothing for years. Don’t worry soon you will be using a Fed coin, CBDC that is centralized like the banks. all the gold bugs will find their gold useless when they want to buy almost anything. I watched some videos recently by a guy trying to use his gold or silver, even shops that sell it were not interested, let alone gas stations and supermarkets. Yeah, I like Decentralized Bitcoin, but I have done my research, I mentioned here to buy when it was at 18000,(not long ago) but now it’s at 70.000 and will still climb for many months. Yes, it is very volatile and goes up and down a lot. There are reasons for it. One thing that really sets it apart from the dollar is that there will only be so many Bitcoin, ever. Having ammunition and growing food will become more important. It’s okay, do what you think is best. sorry for the one-paragraph crap.
Serious question , what is ‘ the halving ‘ of Bitcoin all about. In simple terms. Thx.
Here’s a good article written by a mainstream economist which explains btc in simple terms, including the halving:
https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/finance/2024/03/06/alan-kohler-bitcoin-insurrection
🤦♂️
What about videos by a guy trying to use his bitcoins?
“The result will be a beneficial time . . .”
. . . with the minor caveat that most us alive right now won’t survive it.
…primarily because I never hit the same place twice with the Hammer. *
As a brief aside, Just Found out!
“The song was first performed publicly by Pete Seeger and Lee Hays on June 3, 1949, at St. Nicholas Arena in New York City at a testimonial dinner for the leaders of the Communist Party of the United States, who were then on trial in federal court, charged with violating the Smith Act by advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government.[2] It was not particularly successful in commercial terms when it was first released. It was part of the three songs Seeger played as the warm-up act for Paul Robeson’s September 4 concert near Peekskill, New York, which subsequently erupted into a notorious riot.[3]”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_I_Had_a_Hammer
But I digress.
ONE painful lesson that comes quite easily?
Hold the Nail, loosely, NEAR THE HEAD!
IF you hold it near the wood the nail is being pounded in to, and You miss…?
Stay tuned for additional helpful hints, tips, & tricks!
Next Up: “How to tape your finger to the drill press table so You don’t jerk when the bit pierces the nail and puss/goo squirts everywhere”. Nearly orgasmic.
*Not interested in the reality.
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-myths#:~:text=Myth%3A%20Lightning%20never%20strikes%20the%20same%20place%20twice.,especially%20if%20it%27s%20a%20tall%2C%20pointy%2C%20isolated%20object.
Will the collapse come before or after Whites are a tiny persecuted minority in every formerly White now multi culti country on earth? Will it come beg or after there is nothing left to save? I have no interest in trying to save our Tower of Babel.
This is fine…
https://www.fb.org/market-intel/over-140-000-farms-lost-in-5-years
For the last few hundred years the ruling class controlled the masses with “hope”. Hope that if you worked hard your kids would have a better life than you. That the flag you saluted stood for high minded ideals like unity and honour.
But too many people woke up that it was not true. That the people who rule us are cruel and greedy in the true sense of the word… that they can never be satisfied. The old ruling class tricks became increasingly ineffective so they moved to the alternative system of control. Fear. Hence the false flags, mass shootings, daily stories about deadly diseases and killer asteroids barely missing the planet. People who are scared can easily be controlled.
This article falls into the fear trap. DO NOT BE FEARFUL. Like Paul Atreides says, “fear is the mind killer”. Rejoice in the beauty of the world and your families.
And all the stuff about bitcoin is nonsense. If the electricity in the world stops working you’ve got a far bigger problem than losing the 5% of your investment portfolio you put in bitcoin. Expecting total societal collapse may be an insurance plan but it’s not an investment plan. Some of us on this site have been saying for years that everyone should hold some because it has more potential upside than any other investment. For all the negative comments about it, be honest; would you be so negative about BTC if you held some and had just made 400% in 3 months? (investment tip: it’s still cheap). Like they used to say, if you don’t like a company, buy some shares in it. You’ll be amazed how it changes your opinion.
I hope you do real well with BTC. The concept simply makes no sense to me. I believe my personal best performer was INTC and cashed in after a 3,500% run in the 90’s so I know about stuff that goes to the Moon. I just feel the same way about crypto as I did about the clot shot after reading so much here and hearing the guests on Warroom etc. I just choose to not participate at this time.
Thanks for the article..
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Thanks for the Article..
“WHAT EXACTLY IS THE UNITED NATIONS AGENDA 2030 WHICH IS CURRENTLY BEING ENFORCED GLOBALLY?”, To find out more, pls visit my blog 👇https://bibleprophecyinaction.blogspot.com/
Trump KNOWS this. Did nothing.
Trump is still telling people to take the VAXX.
The Blob got him. Change my mind.
Undoing the excessive (global) centralization of the 20th century is a major theme of the 21st.
But twilight can last a long time. There’s nothing inherently unstable within the MMT financial system; numbers can get bigger for a long time. They have demonstrated that for decades.
Change comes from political pressure outside the financial system (that’s why the discipline is called political economy). That’s why MMTers focus the conversation on the monetary plumbing, because that’s just basic chartalism. It distracts from the radical part of the ideology which depends upon coercive central planning.
Childhood SF, an “entity” with 4th dimensional capabilities will LAUGH at microbial science. YOU, will NEVER see one anyway, the best 100% “camo”, is to look like “nature”, when you’re standing DIRECTLY in front of it, and can’t see/feel/taste it….sorta like a “rock”.
Comment to @Michael_Yon on GAB , Raise yer hand if you remember Iran-Contra.
” Coincidentally, I commented yesterday on a different post as follows:
“I have a friend with contacts in Central America who assures me that Nicaragua is facilitating via direct flights to Managua the flow of hundreds of thousands criminal migrants from Africa and the Middle East into America.”
To elaborate more on why, my friend believes that Daniel Ortega is using the opportunity that Biden provides to drive a shiv deep into the heart of America. There are plenty of leaders in South and Central America who have decade long grudges against our country and this is a perfect way for them to exact revenge. Also, it helps their state economies by allowing them to empty their prisons and ship their criminals abroad. Win win as far as they’re concerned.”