oxymoron
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I don’t think the coral story is entirely temperature related. 200 years ago the eastern side of Australia was a great big bio-filtration system – now it’s pumped with fertiliser, pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, huge volumes of soil sediment washed there in the wet season from tree removal etc. Hardly a pristine environment for fish and coral. It’s a shame because on a very dry continent you would think cutting down the rainforests to plant a type of grass would be illegal or punishable by death but apparently under the watchful eye of mother england you can do what the hell you like. I guess Europeans were pretty cool with species extinction already so didn’t seem like a big deal to them….
A quote from Jacques
“What should we do to eliminate suffering and disease? It’s a wonderful idea but perhaps not altogether a beneficial one in the long run. If we try to implement it we may jeopardize the future of our species…It’s terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn’t even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable”.[15]It will be nice and quiet though won’t it. And if a globalised population falls and there’s no one to hear it then did it really fall? People are so myopic and we are all just a bit too clever to be particularly hopeful here aren’t we. If it’s any consolation a lot of my anecdotal observations have shown me that insect populations are very high in our forests in Australia because our fertility here is just so pathetic that large scale chemical farming is an option for only small parts of the island continent. We are clearing a shit load of trees here though so it’s still just a matter of time. Bummer. And we had a nice reef when the Beatles broke up but it’s pretty shit now. Jacques Cousteau wouldn’t bother with it.
Dr D., I reckon it’s called predation. It’s not like just visiting TAE or similar site more than once doesn’t put you on some ‘watch’ list. The autobots just keep running their scripts. And we keep moving up the red flagpole.
So if the GFC of eight years ago was the worst recession since 1930’s then why weren’t people starving and super mobile etc. I’m so used to seeing graphic images in black and white from that time period that the recent crash just seems more like a bummer than a shit storm. I know people are working long hours etc and are leveraged to the eyeballs but people just seem fatter than they did in those old photos. It just doesn’t seem as dire. Am I missing something?
The oceans used to be the great sinks of the world catching all the nutrient and plant and animal matter washed from land and recombined into a vast array of seemingly endless varieties and volumes of creatures. They are now getting to be like wet deserts.
When you are alive to see an animal or a person die it has an impact but to see an ocean of sea life, and the flying and walking and crawling things that spawn from it disappear in your lifetime – well my friends, that is truly a cause for deep contemplation.Nassim – right you are about the Aboriginal people here – they certainly didn’t have pecan and walnut raining down on them from above like the Americans did. And when the Europeans arrived it just wasn’t that hard except maybe in Wyoming or the few other harsh areas which remain similarly under populated to this day.
sumac.carol – we are in a similar situation though not a hayfield but a township. I think this is our main problem – the wildlife refuge and survive in the forest – Our place and the 35 thousand acres behind us to the south – but nightly and daily come in to the town past our place for whatever picking they can get. Our chickens live in an absolute fortress which, idealistically, is all made with recycled local hardwood. And again I have had huge issue with termites eating the hardwood and have had to paint it in diesel sump oil (toxic) so it doesn’t get consumed. All the fertility we import or create here gets exported into the forest as excrement and feathers. But hey this is a finance blog and I should just get back into monetised debt based income and not bother.
I tell myself at least we have a system set up for when the shit hits the fan. But if it does I reckon I’ll be eating a lot of Kangaroo and Wallaby meat. I’ll probably set some night light grasshopper traps like they do in Africa as well for extra protein.
Crazy but Nicole and Raul have always maintained to reduce or eliminate debt and I think I should just head that way and smash out the last 30 thousand we owe and then garden after that…..Piping in while Oxymorons are popular.
The disappearing wildlife thing got me…. After so much homesteading distress I have started to get a taste for murder. I have started to detest thing I always loved. For example – Kookaburras – since my earliest of memories they have always been one of my favourite friends but now…Oh for god’s sake it’s carnage out there. Kookaburra’s are mating and eating every single one of my last crayfish in my dams. Almost every bird is eating my fruit, if not a bird then a rat, if not a rat then grass hoppers. Kangaroos and Wallabies come in every night consuming everything and now since it hasn’t rained for 6 weeks and there is no grass anywhere we are at a new order of magnitude. They are eating grape leaves, plum leaves the whole Pomme family – apples, pears, quinces, loquat etc… It’s pure carnage!
I give up. I’m going back to getting my food through the military industry-controlled oil and fossil fuel farming system! I’m gonna spend more hours making cash money and less getting my heart broken and just – you know – chill out. I’m over it.
Permaculture is a dirty word to me right now and I’m thinking poison and guns and dogs and fences and netting and ground water pumping and all that stuff that kills wildlife so that I can eat.
No wonder we are losing species – it’s us or them people. Not joking.
Angry faceGreat info Nassim. The comments here at TAE often have real gems and I am grateful to be in the midst of people who actually research and make up their own minds.
Thanks again people.Dr. D that was a sweet rant. The world is just so disappointing. It’s why we stare at the stars or smoke a joint or meditate or whatever. Can’t we just lead simple little lives and give that others may live. Or at least share. Or at least not threaten violence to steal what is not really ours to have. And yes it really is just the international banking cartel. I mean usury means that you are forced to give back more than you took. And we are always taking something from someone or somewhere that we are giving back to the banks.
It’s why I never had a chance to see the largest subtropical rainforest on the planet – that WAS the east coast of Australia. Because it was all cut down for sugar cane (which is why the barrier reef is dead – not warming) before I was born. And we are not talking trees hugging the sides of rock like the pockets that are left here and there – we are talking deep well drained volcanic soil with 1 and a half metres of rain a year. You know RAINFOREST. I just get Diabetes. Sugar. And Debt. Thanks for cutting down billions of trees for sugar cane. Thanks for making people wage slaves to pay back debt. I love how you can pay back money by extracting natural capital from earth. Go Basel!!
Rant over
Nassim, I reckon you might be lying by omission. To mention Melbourne as an indicator or marker for heat reference seems to support a narrative – not be scientific. Mentioning one metric is to omit a lot of others. If one were to drive less than an hour away from a maritime climate you would find – as I have that this summer has been very hot. Here in central victoria we are supposed to have .9 of a day per year at 40 celsius or above. We have had 5, and about 9 days over 36. Oh and did you mention February is our hottest month. No you did not. I know that south of the divide you are getting a very particular set of variables with weather pattering, but here it has been awful.
Yeah – i must say a big thanks too. Been around 9 years for me here and it’s been inspirational – particularly to 2011 and then after that more like the best little newspaper for me on the net. I am very thankful to Illargi for linking and commenting on a range of articles I wouldn’t have time to dig for.
All the best and keep up the good work. Get out of debt no matter what. Nothing much gets cancelled out down the line of history….. there’s always someone who’ll look to collectIn Australia our major crypto site is Coinspot. Interestingly they are not able to accept deposits of Australian dollars for the last few days with the issue not resolvable till the new year. Seems the banks may be noticing the tiny little bank run or currency flight or whatever it is that has been accelerating as of late.
Coinspot vows to find another bank somewhere else……
Strange the relationship between fiat and crypto right now.My understanding is that banks create money on their balance sheets out of thin air – couldn’t supermarkets, retailers and the like end up getting govt. subsidies for their plastic bottles? It’s all bullshit.
If we could just get a massive stock market crash – then perhaps people would start using glass bottles and washing them at home for re-use and supporting a local dairy farmer etc.
A messy situation but by the standards of what we have now, maybe not so muchCalifornian fires being lit by energy weapons… WTF? I guess you haven’t lived in a forest or spent a great deal of time living within natural systems – bound to give you a little too much technobrainia. Wild fires start because indigenous peoples are no longer using firestick culture to work within natural systems. There is no way in the world our fires here in Australia are coming from anything other than Really flammable material on REALLY hot days in REALLY hot winds. It’s as if you believe fires can only start from the power of evil men or something’ – you kinda sound crazy dude.
I know I sound a bit rude but I live in the bush 35,000 acres of the most flammable forests in the world and I tell you you just don’t need any such thing as man made intervention to get that thing cooking.V. Arnold – re facebook, couldn’t agree more. That shit is evil. It’s like fiddling while rome burns when we could be looking for a bucket of water or leaving the building. The thing most people never seem to want to come to grips with is that it is okay to live a humble little life that no one has to know much about – except those closest to you and most of those should be within a few kilometres in a saner world.
I am just so wary of “Scientists studying climate change”. You see they have to do it using all the planet degrading tools at their disposal – flying jet planes, sophisticated instruments of measurement and analysis made from rare earth metals and the like – plundered from the ground by digging up once beautiful forests. They are just so very tedious these scientists explaining the things we need to stop doing to save ourselves from the fates that await us from the things they are doing.
Plant some bloody potatoes and trees and stop talking already. We don’t need your science we need small communities of people looking after the necessities of their existence. I’m sick of the arrogance of experts.
There is a lot to be said for living a humble little life. Facebook can go and eat itself too. The whole shebang is crazy.Best line this year – It’s all just snake oil. We want to save the planet, and the life upon it, but we’re not willing to pay the price and bear the consequences. So we make up a narrative that feels good and run with it.
Diogenes, thnaks for the men women life cycle – cracked me up – the comments were gold – that rooster must have had a lousy attorney So funny.
I think you may be still missing one of my points that I don’t really care about carbon so much – I got a wood fire after all, but if you think energy generation doesn’t come at some serious environmental cost you are caaa-raaayzee man.
Having said that I think you are right – the technology is here to stay and for better or for worse we are gonna get involved someway or another. So I perhaps should not have sold my Bitcoin? I dunno – got a bit of Ethereum and I have probably spent far too long looking into crypto currencies (had waves, litecoin, ripple tenx and a few others till I freaked out about my environmental credentials going out the window. I run a permaculture business and it JUST AINT COOL. Right now.
Oh and I like you so I’m not being antagonistic or judgy when I say – No one is shining my shoes except me. I’m just saying.Diogenes, I love your enthusiasm – you are a true believer and a lot of what you are on about I agree with entirely except that until a currency goes beyond the blockchain we are screwed. If any of these ideological and altruistic solutions to the current mess (control by guys with muscle and guns – through debt) doesn’t move from the technological to the biological then what hope have we. The more I run it through my brain the more I end up with long term solutions aligned with Holmgren, Orlov, Foss/Meijer etc. In the crypto world of exchange we have the chance to move away from debt slavery but get slammed right into energy slavery and that is a game over situation – we are seeing it already with huge Chinese bitcoin mining operations running coal out of the ground and into the air faster than ever before. And if anyone tries to jump on me to explain that climate change is a non issue – then how about no more trees or waterways you can drink from. It doesn’t matter if it’s climate change! It’s environmental disaster anyway you look at it.
Good grief I’m going back to making beeswax candles and making love by an open fire!The banks and energy giants that own coal must love cryptocurrencies – you’d be forgiven for thinking shadow banks in china haven’t financed these huge bitcoin mining warehouses full of computers. And given cryptos are no where near as valuable in the real world as people think they are (like shares and likes on social media) then I think bubble is gonna pop.
But not just yet. A lot of crazy people chasing yield and a lot more who like the idea of easy money.Wonder what the govt or tax office will do about them
I wonder what the wealth ratio of whites to aboriginal families looks like in Australia – remembering it was all their wealth less than 250 years ago.
Gee Raul – I reckon you underestimated how poisoned the chalice was actually going to be! You wouldn’t be the president of the US for anything right now. Bernie dodged a bullet.
Great article and reminds me that I have worried that at some point in the not too distant future even more trees will come down and pelletised as part of the ‘renewable’ base load mix. The sun won’t shine at night but you can take down Tasmania’s forests and chuck em in the coal plant if city folk get bummed out by intermittent internet.
Lord give me the sense of mind to be in the world but not of it.“These loans are for people who have no choice but to borrow to buy a car, and no bargaining power on the interest rate they pay: close to 20%. Even though the borrowers pay through the nose, they depend on cheap global credit.”
Really? 250 million used cars on the road in america at the moment and they have no choice? I dunno but I think people may need to get used to the idea of re-use and recycle if they want to get ahead. My whole house is made of other people’s junk and my wife and I have never bought a new car and paid cash. People need to life-hack the system some more me thinks.
Oh and while the caviar is getting consumed at these lavish parties the sturgeon is nearly extinct. Eat it while you can I guess. Like the turtle soup of yesteryear that the northern hemispheric parasites consumed till the edge of extinction. Bet those bankers are spewing they can’t have that on the menu- outside the private parties that is.
Trump managed to stuff the top of his Cabinet with a jaw-dropping collection of perverts, tyrants and imbeciles, the likes of which Washington has never seen.
Like there has never been any of them in politics before. I think career politicians are just a bit better with mask wearing.
Speaking of planting trees – and I don’t wanna be smug but I planted around 40 Oaks this week (and got paid for it!) Years ago I got despondent about the work available that you can do to make a buck. It all has some impact on the environment that we just put up with – building with cement, cleaning with dodgy chemicals etc. I had been involved in regular jobs people do.
One day it was like – fuck this I’m gonna find me some work where I am growing veggies, planting trees, making chicken runs etc. Had to run my own business it turns out.Dam it feels good to be out in the country planting trees. Especially Oaks. Here in Australia there is a very strong aversion to cutting them down and you get the feeling when you plant them they will be there for a while. And if things get real tough there are always acorns to consume or feed to animals.
Will F. Okay if the financial aspects of Mr Hudsons ideas don’t resonate could you explain to me how capitalism is nurturing the environment. All costs are externalities for poor assholes to wear like the Somali’s and their rich fishing grounds being a e-waste dump to name just one of many many arguments. Also if people do not have access to their own land and rent it – where do they get their food from? They get it from Monsanto serfs who also smash the land and soil to pieces to pay their fucking rents until they can’t and then they get aggregated into giant biosphere destroying farming entities. There are just so many arguments against the financial rentier vampire squid that I can’t begin.
You worked hard and made good decisions but I think we are talking about an order of magnitude here.
Having said that I respect your point of view.People need their pensions for sure and society should look after the elderly but what the hell do you need $48,000 per year for?!!
The biggest year I have ever pulled is $25,000 Australian dollars and live very comfortably. Do we need overseas holidays? Motorhomes? New anything? I mean we all crap on about making and fixing things here and caring for the environment etc. – The only way I know to bring down corrupt morally bankrupt pricks at the top of the trophic pyramid is to not. buy. any. of. their. shit. Which means very literally to not require a great deal of money.
Within reason I guess but if I was getting $48,000 each year – man I would be kicking goals.John Day, I agree that vegetables and eggs etc. produced at home is far more expensive than if you were even working minimum wage jobs to pay for even organic produce. Without the huge energy component in the mix of our lives it would be a much larger chunk of our income/time spent on food being a necessity of our existence. When many years ago Nicole Foss advocated here to gain some control over the necessities of our existence I factored food production too heavily in the mix for what the situation is now. Now it is more about debt minimisation, tight social cohesion with friends, clients etc, then fuel and water etc.
I guess I am saying I have worked out that it is better to earn a dollar right now and set up the infrastructure for survival/thriving as things get tougher rather than purely homestead (which baby boomers had a better shot at funding than we have now (I’m in my early 40’s).Here in Australia potatoes are $2 per kilo (which is a lot of calories) and when you can get $40 per hour gardening or consulting or building and $20 per hour to be a farm hand or dish washer or whatever – you work out over time that a lot of energy is wasted in the garden and that the time for gardening may not be now. Planting nut trees and citrus and Oaks – perhaps, because of the long turn around time but potatoes – no.
We learn a lot from looking back at history and it helps with risk analysis in terms of our life decisions but we best be careful not to dwell and chew up huge hours altruistically gardening or on the net lamenting if we don’t have our financial position first sorted out. Having said all that I still put in at least 10 hours a week in my garden and get very pissed overtime a wallaby or an insect takes my harvest!
My 2 Cents
“Forgive them for they know not what they do” in no way evaluates what they do – there is no judgement.
I guess when shit gets really dark – we have to find some light to turn to – find it where you can and if you can’t – be still and try not to be the author of your thoughts.
The french revolution hinged on debt and scarce food – basically liberal economists deregulating the grain market. Any parallels with the world right now? I mean water is a commodity and unsustainably managed – think Vegas. All this we know but the conditions for shit going cray-cray are quite good. Raul’s post – Unrest in the only growth industry left – sums it up.
Anyone watched Kate Tempest. New voice cracking through hyper normalisation. The track is called Europe is Lost
Things looking more shaky-wakey all the time here in oz.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-09/national-debt-helpline-overwhelmed-by-calls/8256508And while I’m on a rant. The way out of consumption (consumerism) is production. i.e. making stuff. Not reconfiguring stuff which is what you do in cities – get raw product like the last wild fish in the world and craft you’re amazing sushi or whatever. I know I sound a bit binary and it is never as simple as that but there is not enough actual action going on and debt is one of the big blocks to getting shit done. I dunno what I’m trying to say but I just built a whole house out of tiles and wood and dirt and straw and windows and electrical conduit and cans of paint etc. that pretty much all came from the dump or the side of the road. The average house in inner Melbourne is now 1.5 million and the debt load on these idiots is astounding. Me and the wife owe 30 thousand and even that is too much but I mean come on people (not you good folk on the forum) stop buying shit and start making shit!!!!
ahhhhhhI still dunno about Der Spiegel – What had happened to this once-proud country? . I thinks it’s called running out of stuff you numb nuts. You only get to be all confident and proud when you are rich and prosperous. Why do so many journalists look through this prism of trying to understand cultural and social changes without thinking about energy and finance. Have any of them read Limits to Growth or did they not get time while on assignment to cover another story about how their heads are up their arses.
Get the hell out of the cities and make yourselves useful. Chop some wood. Build a compost toilet. Help the poor. Grow some vegetables. Be the change. Man
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under[Verse 1]
Broken glass everywhere
People pissing on the stairs, you know they just don’t care
I can’t take the smell, can’t take the noise
Got no money to move out, I guess I got no choice
Rats in the front room, roaches in the back
Junkies in the alley with a baseball bat
I tried to get away but I couldn’t get far
’Cause a man with a tow truck repossessed my car[Hook]
Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under[Verse 2]
Standing on the front stoop, hanging out the window
Watching all the cars go by, roaring as the breezes blow
Crazy lady, living in a bag
Eating out of garbage pails, used to be a fag hag
Said she’ll dance the tango, skip the light fandango
A Zircon princess seemed to lost her senses
Down at the peep show watching all the creeps
So she can tell her stories to the girls back home
She went to the city and got so so siditty
She had to get a pimp, she couldn’t make it on her own[Hook]
Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under[Verse 3]
My brother’s doing bad, stole my mother’s TV
Says she watches too much, it’s just not healthy
All My Children in the daytime, Dallas at night
Can’t even see the game or the Sugar Ray fight
The bill collectors, they ring my phone
And scare my wife when I’m not home
Got a bum education, double-digit inflation
Can’t take the train to the job, there’s a strike at the station
Neon King Kong standing on my back
Can’t stop to turn around, broke my sacroiliac
A mid-range migraine, cancered membrane
Sometimes I think I’m going insane
I swear I might hijack a plane![Hook]
Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under[Verse 4]
My son said, Daddy, I don’t wanna go to school
’Cause the teacher’s a jerk, he must think I’m a fool
And all the kids smoke reefer, I think it’d be cheaper
If I just got a job, learned to be a street sweeper
Or dance to the beat, shuffle my feet
Wear a shirt and tie and run with the creeps
’Cause it’s all about money; ain’t a damn thing funny
You got to have a con in this land of milk and honey
They pushed that girl in front of the train
Took her to the doctor, sewed her arm on again
Stabbed that man right in his heart
Gave him a transplant for a brand new start
I can’t walk through the park, ’cause it’s crazy after dark
Keep my hand on my gun, ’cause they got me on the run
I feel like a outlaw, broke my last glass jaw
Hear them say “You want some more?”, living on a see-saw[Hook]
Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under[Verse 5]
A child is born with no state of mind
Blind to the ways of mankind
God is smiling on you, but he’s frowning too
Because only God knows what you’ll go through
You’ll grow in the ghetto living second-rate
And your eyes will sing a song called deep hate
The places you play and where you stay
Looks like one great big alleyway
You’ll admire all the number-book takers
Thugs, pimps and pushers and the big money-makers
Driving big cars, spending twenties and tens
And you’ll wanna grow up to be just like them, huh
Smugglers, scramblers, burglars, gamblers
Pickpocket peddlers, even panhandlers
You say “I’m cool, huh, I’m no fool.”
But then you wind up dropping outta high school
Now you’re unemployed, all null and void
Walking ’round like you’re Pretty Boy Floyd
Turned stick-up kid, but look what you done did
Got sent up for a eight-year bid
Now your manhood is took and you’re a Maytag
Spend the next two years as a undercover fag
Being used and abused to serve like hell
‘Til one day you was found hung dead in the cell
It was plain to see that your life was lost
You was cold and your body swung back and forth
But now your eyes sing the sad, sad song
Of how you lived so fast and died so young, so…[Hook]
Don’t push me, ’cause I’m close to the edge
I’m trying not to lose my head
It’s like a jungle sometimes
It makes me wonder how I keep from going under
