Russell Lee Gas station, Edcouch, Texas 1939 Ilargi: Someone linked to this almost 8 year old article from Nicole (July 19 2010), on Twitter. And yes, it’s even more relevant now than it was when she wrote it. So here’s a re-run: … the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 in the US, which drastically raised tariffs on imports, lead to retaliation by trading partners, and the resulting trade war dropped global trade by 66% between 1929 and 1934. One
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Pablo Picasso Bull plates I-XI 1945 Nicole Foss has completed a huge tour de force with her update of the Automatic Earth Primer Guide. The first update since 2013 is now more like a Primer Library, with close to 160 articles and videos published over the past -almost- 10 years, and Nicole’s words to guide you through it. Here’s Nicole: The Automatic Earth (TAE) has existed for almost ten years now. That is nearly ten years of
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Dorothea Lange River Food June 1936 Memphis, Tennessee. Original caption: "Coon dawgling." The Automatic Earth (TAE) is now five years old (as of January 22). That's five years of wide-ranging discussion on a huge range of issues, in the process of developing the biggest possible big picture of our present predicament. We are reaching limits to growth in so many ways at the same time, but it isn't enough to understand which are the limiting factors, but also what time
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National Photo Co. Mack Sennett Girl 1919. Actress Marvel Rea, one of film producer Mack Sennett’s well-rounded “bathing girls” Stoneleigh: Yesterday we talked about why we are facing deflation and today I wanted to review and explain the suggestions we have made previously for dealing with a deflationary scenario. In short, this is the list we have run periodically since we started TAE (with one addition at the end): 1) Hold no debt (for most people this means renting) 2)
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Samuel H. Gottscho When yesterday had a future November 28, 1933 Looking down South Street, New York City Stoneleigh: People have been asking how we see the future unfold. In case you wonder what we stand for, much of our view of what’s to come can be found in the primers on the right-hand side bar. Here is an additional brief summary (in no particular order and not meant to be exhaustive) of the ground we have consistently covered here
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Unknown Bass August 17, 1900 A world’s record 384-pound black sea bass caught by Franklin Schenck of Brooklyn with rod and reel off Catalina Island, California “You cannot survive without that intangible quality we call heart. The mark of a top player is not how much he wins when he is winning but how he handles his losses. If you win for thirty days in a row, that makes no difference if on the thirty-first you have a bad night,
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Detroit Publishing Co. Networking 1905 “Fisherman getting ready for a trip, Gloucester, Massachusetts”Stoneleigh: Last week, in Get Ready for the North American Gas Shock, The Automatic Earth evaluated the prospects of shale gas, a supposedly plentiful and clean fuel upon which many have placed their hopes of both energy supply and handsome profits. The first part of our shale gas analysis concentrated on supply and EROEI (energy returned on energy invested), pointing out that reserves are very much overstated and
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Detroit Publishing Co. Squeaky Wheel 1904. "Michigan Central Railroad engineer oiling up before the start" Stoneleigh: In this era of global bubble-blowing we have seen speculative fever flourish in relation to many different asset classes. At the peak of a bubble the euphoria can be palpable, and the perception that 'it's different this time' confers a sense of invulnerability that justifies throwing caution to the wind. Speculators cease to worry about how much they pay for an asset, since they
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Howard Hollem Lone Star August 1942 “Women from all fields have joined the production army. Miss Grace Weaver, a civil service worker at the Naval Air Base, Corpus Christi, Texas, and a schoolteacher before the war, is doing her part for victory along with her brother, who is a flying instructor in the Army. Miss Weaver paints the American insignia on repaired Navy plane wings” Ilargi: 39 airports, 850 ports, railways, motorways, sewage works, a couple of energy companies, banks,
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Ansel Adams Nurse Hamaguchi 1943 “Nurse Aiko Hamaguchi at the Manzanar Relocation Center, California” Stoneleigh: Welcome to The Atomic Village “Denko-chan (でんこちゃん), whose name comes from the “den” of electric power (電力, denryoku), the “ko” (子, child) in which female names so often end, trapping their bearers in a state of eternal childhood, and the generally female diminutive suffix “chan”, can be found everywhere in TEPCO propaganda. Here she is, with finger characteristically a-wagging, admonishing us to “Take care of
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