Just Some Randomer
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“The part I don’t get is the wisdom of releasing the video, as it makes the US the laughing stock of the world.”
The world isn’t laughing at the fact the clowns in the whitehouse released the video. The world is just laughing at the clowns.
@Mr. House – definitely not feasible. The economies of scale that make the infrastructure of the internet affordable for us would be lost. As Gail Tverberg points out occasionally, it’s only because so many people are watching Youtube videos of cats and sharing the cost of maintaining the infrastructure that we can use the internet for online banking at reasonable cost.
Same applies to most of the things we enjoy if the global population is dramatically reduced. Without so many people paying taxes to maintain roads or buying the cars that giant factories can turn out so efficiently in massive quantities and so on, the whole thing becomes unaffordable for everyone.
@Red :- I can’t disagree with any of that. Checkmate indeed – a predicament rather than a problem. As I see it, the chain of events that leads to the end/reset of the financial system began when cheap energy became a thing of the past and the creation of sufficient wealth to maintain our consumer society was no longer possible.
Personally, I have been reasonably active of late buying any durable goods/tools/equipment that I think will be needed over the coming years, as I strongly suspect they will not be available at any kind of reasonable exchange rate for Fiats in the near future – if indeed they are available at all.
CBDCs are as much a distraction to the real world of currencies as windmills are to the real world of energy generation. A techno-utopian ‘Fix’ that cannot possibly work but gives those who support them some hope to cling onto.
Sorry @Red – you appear to have missed the essential point of the matter which is ‘Orange Man Bad’.
Once you internalise that starting premise, everything will make sense.
All of the above being said, I’d be surprised if Russian commanders would reveal to the US the fact that they had the ability to hack and down Reapers at will in a scenario as apparently innocuous as this. Why not wait until there was much greater tactical/strategic value at stake? The Allies never revealed to the Nazis that they’d broken the Enigma code simply because doing so would prompt the Nazis to move to a more secure solution. Same applies here I should think.
@DBS “About that crashed Reaper drone….”
You can tell that they’re lying because when they make stuff like this up for public consumption it always sounds like it’s a scene from some kind of ‘Mission Impossible’ movie
Picture the scene – [closeup of the Russian Pilot’s face] as he struggles to manoeuvre his wingtip into the Reaper’s propeller….suddenly a gust of wind throws him off and he nearly collides with the drone [camera cuts to show wingtip glancing off the Reaper’s fuselage], but then he dramatically recovers [quick shot of gloved hand on joystick] and has one….last….attempt….[Suspenseful music]…
Then of course we have the daring raid on Nordstream by a bunch of ‘Secret Operatives’ in a small boat armed only with a string of WWII grenades and a Walmart snorkelling set, who after some close scrapes on the seabed no doubt returned to harbour that evening sporting immaculate tuxedos, just in time for dinner with the Contessa
Looks like it’s the European banks in the firing line today, SocGen down 7%, BNP down 8%, Credit Suisse nearly -11% and so on across the board this morning
Seems the Fed’s magic money fix for SVB has not entirely quietened things down.
@AFKKT – why do you keep obsessing about climate change? It’s an irrelevance. Like a guy driving head-on into a brick wall at 100mph fretting about his terminal cancer diagnosis.
Why fixate on something that’s, frankly, not going to matter by the time it really starts to bite? It’s not healthy to obsess about things that (a) there is no possible mechanism to change and (b) are way down the priority list of things that will kill you.
Yes – our current way of life is ‘Unsustainable’ to use the mot-du-jour but it sure as hell won’t be climate change that puts an end to it.
I’d worry about, and plan as best you can for, the immediate issues that face us all. Not something that will only become relevant after what’s left of society is already foraging for food in the landfills left by industrial society.
@Red #130030
“Scrolling back over the last 24 hours it would seem his name is attached to literally dozens of articles? How can this be anything other than signing off on stuff. I’m sure someone here can straighten me out on this?”
‘Tyler Durden’ is a nom de plume used by the ZH writing staff. It isn’t an individual.
@afktt “And when Britain got into strife over the Suez Canal in 1956, Washington stood back and watched Britain go under.”
Which, in my mind, is exactly what the majority of the world is now doing viz the US/West in Ukraine. It’s an old story – once all-powerful and glorious empire fails to note that its time is done and continues to perform the bully routine that worked so well in the past even as its true power has been well and truly hollowed out.
The rest of the world notices though. My theory is that Ukraine is to the US what Suez was to Britain – the moment when the world pushes back and the Empire finds itself flat on its backside wondering where all its power and prestige went.
@tboc “i understand why Lao Tzu went to the wilderness”
Well, technically Dowd is correct in that if the entire human race is subsumed by a giant nuclear fireball, the many intractable issues that currently face us will no longer require resolution.
Anecdotal: Chap came to service my vintage tractor today. His brother came with him and as part of a general chit-chat mentioned that he’d recently had an operation to deal with a blood clot in his leg, involving some serious surgery and 97 staples to close it all up. Was very insistent that it was caused by his first covid vax – says his doctor had seen lots of similar cases recently. I didn’t argue.
“Then I come home and read this industrial grade gas-lighting by a completely clueless moron :
The real reason you have an everlasting cold”
Bullshit indeed, but the comments below the line are hilarious. Last time I looked there was almost universal disbelief at the garbage propounded within the article itself.
Seems like critical mass has been reached where people feel able to call out the Covid BS without fear of being buried under a great steaming pile of Pro-Vax comments. There just aren’t as many Vax Fanatics out there, ready to leap to the defence of the official narrative as there used to be.
“EU Agrees To $100 Russian Diesel Price Cap‘
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/eu-agrees-100-russian-diesel-price-cap
Or, as the Daily Telegraph explains – this is the next escalation of ‘Putin’s Diesel War’.
Remarkable idiocy.
Yeah, Rantzen was a particularly obnoxious example of Righteous Vax Fanatic. Normally I would refrain from mocking the afflicted, but in this case I can only smile inwardly as she chokes down the banquet of consequences that she laid for herself.
@Phoenixvoice – it certainly does, very much like the ‘Russia is running out of munitions’ and the ‘Russians are all fascists’ nonsense that gets trotted out every other day, all evidence to the contrary.
Re: the tanks, and in particular the reluctance of Germany to agree to send their Leopard2 tanks to Z until the US also agrees to send Abrams – it seems pretty obvious what’s at play. Leaving aside the pure tokenism of sending a handful of old tanks which will make no military difference at all, Germany’s concern is that it has been quite successful in exporting Leopards to many countries – it’s an important element of their arms exports.
Clearly they can do without global 24 hour rolling news media showing lines of smoking burnt-out Leopards in the Ukrainian mud which the US, having not send any Abrams, would then be able to point at in arms fairs and steal German export orders by claiming that this would not have happened to US tanks because they’re soooo much better.
Now that the US has agreed to send tanks, the Germans are thinking that they’ll have smoking Abrams carcasses to point at during the arms fairs thus negating the US advantage.
Sneakily though, after agreeing to send a handful of Abrams, the US DoD is now suggesting that they will order new tanks to send, rather than taking units from existing stockpiles. So, by the time any US tanks reach Ukraine (if any ever do) the war will be long over and the reputation of the Leopard2 will be as trashed as the examples Germany sent. Schmartz, no?
@Oroboros #126362 – that is precisely how I feel about the whole Ukraine situation. The conjoined political and financial systems of the ‘West’ cannot be fixed from within because the level of corruption and incompetence has reached saturation point. It’s an irredeemable situation and, I feel, the longer it staggers on the more damage it will do and the less likely it is that there will be enough of the world left after the inevitable collapse for the survivors to pick themselves up and build something different.
I welcome the fact that rapid change is being forced upon the post-WWII settlement from the outside and hope that the hard times ahead will clear the deadwood.
“Don’t you think that calling for the genocide of people who have the most powerful military in the world is rather dumb?”
Spittle-flecked Ukro-Nazis are not renowned for the subtlety of their thinking. One might imagine that by now they’d have realised that the promises of unlimited ‘Help’ from the West which was the foundational assumption underlying their aggression against Russia have not, and will never be, delivered upon. But no. On they go flinging their young men to their deaths in a futile attempt to defeat an enemy 10 times their size.
It’s almost like they’d rather die than admit they were wrong.
Oh wow. It’s almost like someone is coordinating this globally. No gas stoves, no gas heating…
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/environment/2023/01/12/new-gas-boilers-could-banned-within-decade/
@John Day “I call “FOUL” on the gas stoves causing childhood asthma”
Yes – but if you were stealthily pushing your population away from using fossil fuels would this not be an obvious thing to do?
I am genuinely not making this up, but I am just off the phone with another work colleague (based in Amsterdam) and she’s all upset because her young child’s schoolteacher has just died suddenly of a heart attack.
Popcorn theory.
@Germ – when the popcorn starts flying in the coming months, they’ll blame it on the Chinese spreading their ‘New’ germs around the world – so get some more boosters to save yourself! Evil.
Anecdote of the day, regarding the Turbo Cancer article above:
Yesterday evening my wife got a call from one or her gardening group friends. The friend’s sister (late 40’s) had just been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, having had no previous health issues or history of cancer.
That’s 2 ‘Anecdotes’ in the same day. The pace is picking up….
@Oxy #125537
“The Anecdotes are on the up.”
Personally I am seeing an unmistakable pick-up in the frequency of these events in both the media and personal contacts over the past month. Could be the onset of winter here boosting the numbers, or maybe it’s the effect of cumulative damage from the Vax-Spikes reaching a critical level now. If the latter, things could get really real quite quickly.
Anecdotal:
I caught up on teams chat this morning with a work colleague who’s been on leave since before Christmas. His wife is one of those considered ‘Vulnerable’ to Covid, so both of them, and their wider families, are vaxed and boosted to the max and very pro-vax.
The conversation went like this:
Me: “Welcome back, how was your break?”
Colleague: “been sick all christmas, am on antibiotics and my wife is now testing positive for covid. Love my life”
Me: “Oh dear – hope your wife is OK”
Colleague: “She’s getting there – taken a lot out of her esp with her brother dying just before Christmas. Roll on 2023”
Me: “Oh – very sorry to hear that. My condolences. Was it unexpected?”
Colleague: “totally. 52, having tea with his kids, walked over to the sink and just collapsed – massive coronary”
No comment necessary.
“Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official said that the Abrams tanks’ heavy fuel consumption and propensity to break down make them unsuitable for the Ukrainian military.”
So as well as repeating the British WWII mistakes in developing warships that are outdated before they set sail, the US Military has also repeated the Nazi mistakes of developing wunderwaffen tanks that are too big, too heavy and too complicated to be of much use on the battlefield. The superficially superior German Tiger tanks were no match for the swarms of Russian T34s that made up with numbers what they lacked in sophistication, firepower and armour.
Much like the $20k Shahed drone vs $3m patriot missile situation.
Is there anyone in the US military planning team with any knowledge of history?
@Oroboros #125106 – yes absolutely correct. I’ve thought for some time that US weapons procurement has been busily focussed on fighting the last war, particularly when it comes to Aircraft Carriers. They are nothing but floating (for now) targets in the age of hypersonic missiles. Too risky to put them anywhere near an enemy that does not use Toyota pickups as its primary weapons platform. Just as the British Navy once continued to build Battleships (because that was what had worked before) long after submarines made them redundant from a combat perspective so the US is falling into the same trap.
As for the shiny new ‘Stealth Bomber’ – also a redundant boondoggle. Just an opportunity for a competent enemy to down a $750m asset for the cost of a $1m missile. Who in hell needs a bomber to deliver a payload in this day and age when a missile will do the same thing for 1% of the cost?
Could have been worse – at least it wasn’t the Pilot. I guess it’s only a matter of time before that happens.
“A passenger died on board a flight which diverted to Shannon Airport in the early hours of this morning
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight 714 was travelling from Paramaribo in Suriname on the north eastern coast of South America, to Amsterdam in The Netherlands at the time……Two doctors travelling on the flight are believed to have rendered assistance however the man, believed to be in his late 50s, subsequently passed away…..A Garda [Police] spokesman confirmed that members attended the airport this morning after receiving a report of a ‘sudden death’ on board a flight.”“I feel that human beings are gunna just be more of a bag of grunt-meat over the mid term.”
Yep – same as it ever was, until the Industrial Revolution really got going of course. Back to the farms and mines we go, shovel in hand. Our brief fossil-fuelled vacation in comfortable indoors workplaces is at an end.
Heads up people. The well-established principle that an imminent economic collapse is coincident with the construction of a new ‘World’s tallest building’ continues to hold true.
Seriously though – why did they have to make it look like Sauron’s tower in Barad Dur from The Lord of the Rings? Are ‘They’ just messing with our heads now?
Hypertower
An extra luxury tower. It was unveiled in Dubai by Burj Binghatti Jacob & Co Residences and will be a skyscraper poised to set a record as one of the tallest residential buildings in the world.https://img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA15Rfvb.img?w=800&h=415&q=60&m=2&f=jpg
“All I really know is the author’s name is Janet Daley, and she’s in all likelihood British”
Janet Daley is an American born Brit who writes for the Daily Telegraph.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2022/12/17/governments-have-learnt-fear-works-truly-terrifying/
Regarding the Diabetes epidemic in the US and possible causes – one thing that seems clear to me, based on extensive international work and travel is that overweight Americans are a very different shape from other nationalities. There is an identifiable ‘Fat American’ silhouette recognisable immediately from a hundred yards away – something about how the weight is unevenly distributed, mostly carried low around the torso
I suspect that there is something common in the US diet, not present elsewhere, that is behind this. The leading contender, to my mind, would be HFCS – a substance widely banned outside the US but which seems to be on the ingredient list of just about any damn thing you can buy in a US supermarket.
Normal old refined sugar is pretty much a toxin in its own right as far as I am concerned but this HFCS stuff is likely doing a whole nother level of damage to the body’s ability to regulate insulin levels and manage energy usage/storage.
@Germ #122847
What a shame that Time didn’t select this image for their notorious ‘Person of the Year’ cover. You should have seen the alternative pictures they considered for their 1938 Hitler edition.
“But Yanushevych said Friday that 75% of the electrical grid in Kherson city had already been restored.”
I’d be fascinated to learn how one ‘Restores’ a 300kv substation that the Russians have just put a missile through. With a Swiss Army knife and a spare pair of ladies hosiery?
“Current atmospheric CO2 is not 400 ppm. it is close to 420 ppm, having gone through the seasonal decrease due to photosynthesis”
I guess the producer of the dot diagram above just couldn’t figure out how to represent 0.2 of a dot – they’re already pretty tiny.
“And no addressing of the point made, of course. Nor any actual science”
I think we all know what ‘The Science’ is worth these days.
Whose ‘Science’? And who’s paying them for it?
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