I hope you had a good year and that next year is good for you. It’ll be a bad year for the world, but that doesn’t mean it has to be for individuals.
I’ll probably hold off on the promised “what can Europe do” post till next week.
Feel free to use as an open thread.
Curt Kastens
i was able to buy Blueberries from Peru yesterday for 5.98 Euros a kilo. That is the same price that blueberries cost in July when they are on sale just before the berries start getting moldy. Based upon the amount of fireworks that went off last night I would say that a not insignificant amount of people spent 1000 Euros just for fireworks and a lot of people spent 500 Euros. i bet a lot of Champaigne flowed last night as well.
We spend a lot of time the subject of Europe and North America becoming compairatively disadvantaged. But I think that when one looks at the rest of the world things are going terribly wrong everywhere at this point. Iran is even suffering from an energy shortage. Schools and factories have had to close because of it.
it might be China’s time to shine. But China’s time in the sun is going to be very short lived.
The world*s largest electic car maker produced 500,000 electric cars last year. That same company also produced 3 million ice cars. Ice cars do not melt in the sun. They cause ice to melt in the sun. Hahaha that is not at all funny.
425 ppm that is about 4 ppm higher than last year. Or about 1% higher. Sea ice is at record low levels. The movie, The Future, has arrived at local theaters for many people around the planet already. It is getting terribly bad reviews. Non the less this movie will not be pulled from distribution. In fact its distribution is sure to accelerate until it has reached every human market. It will in fact be required viewing for anyone still with a pulse.
bruce wilder
An Inconvenient Truth — the documentary film about Al Gore’s efforts to alert people to the risks posed by increased CO2 in the atmosphere and its consequences for climate — was released in 2006. I can remember, probably in roughly that time-frame, trying to wrap my pea-brain around the problems posed. I thought — and still think — that a coherent political response would be more difficult to organize than Gore, the professional politician, seemed to believe. Political discourse is, among other things, the way humans reason together and think things through. Thinking is far more social than our myths about individual lucubration allow. I don’t think “we” have done much thinking, yet, about the aspects of climate change most closely adjacent to human affairs and the human capacity to organize mitigation or prevention. Climate science and climate modeling may have advanced a remarkable pace — I couldn’t judge in any fine-grained way — but if it has, it fails to matter politically. It has been nearly two years since the 8-year (!) effort to produce the IPCC’s Sixth(!) Assessment Report culminated in the release of a turgid mess of hyperbolic narrative prose agreed by a trans-national cadre of bureaucrats of no consequence.
As a (former?) professional economist of no consequence myself, I have been mildly interested in the apparent inability of the IPCC to escape the constraints of narrative storytelling and its moral obsessions, or to find economists capable of modeling the economic consequences with anything like the sophistication of climate modeling. The release of CO2 and other greenhouse gases by the continuing Industrial Revolutions has been the trigger and, so far, the main driver of climate change. A normal person would probably imagine that analysis of the Industrial Revolutions would be a subject of interest to the economics profession, but such a normal person would be wrong. The IPCC through six generations of assessments — interesting that the science bureaucrats have adopted the grammar of the surveillance state intelligence agencies and talk of “assessing” “with high confidence” this-and-that while displaying meaningless statistics in nifty graphics — have failed to find economists capable of modeling the economic consequences and implications of global industrialization driven by expanded energy production. Every one seems aware that fossil fuel use is involved and many intuit that electrification is a feasible remedy, but the effort to critically examine that intuition remains feeble to non-existent. The Narrative demands an harangue regarding whether human activity is “responsible” or paranoid speculation on whether the whole thing is “a hoax”. The earnest are left to demand that we “do something” without any idea what “something” might be beyond collective self-restraint in the release of CO2 that never happens, while the tech bro “Masters of the Universe” speculate on doing “something” reckless, like everything they do isn’t reckless.
In the Big Picture, I suppose, the human species has over 70,000 or so years found itself accelerating along a path set for it by the accidental emergence of a highly imperfect eusociality, an acceleration that passed some important inflection points (if “inflection point” is the right term, I don’t know) 5000 years ago and 600 years ago and 250 years ago. I kind of feel like we are capable of a bit more intelligence in coordinating and constraining our collective affairs than a slime mold overshooting the carrying capacity of its Petri dish. We are at least dimly aware — some of us are or maybe just imagine we are. So far that awareness is limited to understanding that the struggle to avoid civilizational collapse is not going well.
Curt Kastens
Aahh, I just remembered a more immediate subject that I wished to bring up. Today Russian natural gas no longer flowed to Slovakia, The Czech Republic, and Austria through a pipeline that runs across the Ukraine. The Ukrainians are refusing to let it flow through the pipeline because they wish to damage Russia financially.
But this wish is so stupid that it is really funny to watch the Ukrainian leadership make fools of themselves.
Anyone should be able to understand that if the Russians do not sell this natural gas to the Central Europeans they will have this gas for their own use. There are so many practical things that they could do with the gas that will help them a lot more than heat European living rooms. Just a few ideas that quickly come to mind are make fertilizer with it, make explosives with it, make plows with it, make tanks with it.
The new situation is a win win for Russia.
different clue
Here I am at my place of work. Eating some breakfast before work itself begins at 3:30 p.m. Reading internet on the Powerful Academic Computer resources here at Mighty Midwest Academic Hospital Systems.
Turn the wheels on New Years Day. Keep the wheels turning so we can keep turning the wheels. As the Wheel Turns, these are the Days of our Work.
Its good to have a job. And don’t let anyone tell you it isn’t. I’d rather sleep in a dwelling unit than under a bridge or behind our local friendly neighborhood dumpster.
Wouldn’t you?
different clue
Here’s a festive New Years Day Photo guaranteed to warm the cockles of the coldest heart.
https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/1hr8nso/cyber_truck_catches_fire_outside_entrance_to/
Revelo
We know where (outside Trump’s hotel) and when the message was sent, but what is the message and who is sending this message to whom and why are they sending it?
mago
Spent a few hours with my ex and decades long friend this evening over dinner: fish chowder, fusilli pasta with smoked salmon cream sauce, capers, pesto, broccoli and other stuff.
Baked kabocha squash. Sourdough garlic bread, etc.
Reminiscing about days gone by, our youth and folly, the food events we busted out here and there. The sex. Our deceased animal friends. The crazed state of the times in which we live.
Then we parted.
Just reporting a little slice of life without expecting anyone to give a good goddamn.
Function and thrive in 25.
Joan
2024 was an incredible year for my self-growth. It turns out I was misdiagnosed with panic disorder and what I was actually dealing with was neurological dysregulation from complex ptsd.
Switching to a new toolbox was extremely fruitful. I did a lot of work on my own psychology last year, spending 1-2 hours a day every day working on re-regulating my brain. This has greatly minimized the “hamster wheel brain” phenomenon, and has allowed me to get my thinking brain online much more often.
I had a breakthrough in early autumn when I realized that I actually had space in my brain to fix my life’s problems. I’ve now been working on that full-force and 2025 will involve some big life changes to make things better.
Ian Welsh
Really glad to hear that Joan. I had (still have a bit of) PTSD and it was bloody no fun.
different clue
Now that I have found out that the Tesla fire at the Trump Tower was not the spontaneous battery-pack self-ignition I thought it was, but turns out to have been a home-made Tesla bomb, the image is not so heartwarming.
The driver was apparently in the car at time of detonation. Was he a suicide driver-bomber? Or did someone send him there with the Tesla and then detonate it remotely without the driver’s foreknowledge?
Is this the start of the kind of disorder which the Altruistic Punishers and the tankies for Trump hoped to get when they worked to defeat Harris? Do they hope they will be able to make some Left-wing hay out of it?
different clue
Latest comment from President Musk:
https://www.reddit.com/r/WorkReform/comments/1hrvhf5/elon_musk_says_americans_are_too_retarded_for/
Mark Level
DC– thx for the pic of the Cyber-Truck in flames outside of Trump Tower. I certainly hope it is an omen of developments between the God-King & the Power Behind the Throne. (Co-PBtT, we cannot discount Miriam Adelson. RuinASwami is loud, but does not truly rank.)
I think the biggest news is the Truck driven by a US Army Vet with a Muslim-sounding name “flying an ISIS flag” as he plowed into a crowd at Bourbon & Canal St. NOLA, 3:15 am New Years morning, 15 dead initially. He then got into a gun fight with cops, is among the dead, a house surrounded in Houston by a SWAT team linked, other reports include a couple (man/woman) planting IED-like devices around the city, but no carnage recorded.(Dummy “bombs” or bombers?) This clearly seems like a Classic False Flag operation which the FBI is behind– oops, FBI “is investigating.” Dude had the kind of loser profile one would expect– messy divorce with ex-wife, losing their home as post-Army the guy could only make $12K annual, etc. Due Dissidence had a great update on their morning show, shared an ABC report that said the guy who blew up himself & the fireworks, etc. in the Cyber-truck was also a Vet, and that he in fact was at the same Texas instillation as the NOLA killer.
Caveat– just emailing with a friend and saw update in my email box, “FBI says no connection” between New Orleans killer and “others.” Yes, the FBI are so credible, aren’t they. Likely both traumatized, hate-filled veterans got a bit of the old COINTELPRO brainwashing, I would speculate.
Whitney Webb reports “ISIS” will be blamed. DD pointed out how odd it is that “ISIS never goes after Israel”. Assange’s torture in Britain was partly caused when he revealed the 2016 email from Jake Sullivan to HRC where he gloated that “ISIS now works for US” (paraphrase.)
Germany recorded 1,000s of arrests over the holiday. Natives restless after the Green Party helped Biden’s NordStream bombing fuel two years of rapid de-industrialization? Yes, the gas being cut off by Zelensky to 3 neighboring countries during one of his coke-fueled tantrums is also a big one.
Also, Insiders report that a last minute $2 Billion more in aid from Biden admin going out the door (that # could be wrong, but it’s a large amt. in any case.) This is not just to cement Bidet’s “legacy” of a half-dozen failed wars (contra Houthis, Afghans, Russia, Lebanon, China, Iran . . . can’t forget Palestine though the Genocide may be Joe’s biggest legacy, not a “failure” in the PTB’s eyes.) Word on the Street is the Green Goblin had to agree to start grabbing 18 year olds off the street to feed into the Russian wood-chipper (okay, flesh-chipper) for the payoff, so this might be a very Pyrrhic victory for Biden and the penis-piano-player, even in the immediate short term. At least if the Z-man survives I guess he’s got a couple more foreign villas funded from his “10% for the big guy”, to add to the ones he has in England, Italy, Israel (for his mom) etc.
I think this year will be a lot like the last one, but sped up. Certainly Ukraine won’t last the year, clapping for Tinkerbell to be alive only works in theaters for prepubescents, but guess we’ll see . . .
I do have reason to believe that 2026 will be the year when the Empire really falls apart, & the East becomes more Red & more dominant. I will share that in a future post. I have added to my resolve to move to Mexico in the fall a new resolution, to survive ’25 and see the Empire “in tatters” (as was falsely promised of the Ruble, before sanctions led to Russia becoming the world’s 4th largest economy, per the IMF and World Bank.)
Hopefully “The mills of justice grind slowly but incredibly fine” remains true. We’ll see!
different clue
I have sometimes mentioned a blogger named Ran Prieur, who is a leaner tougher meaner hippie for today’s leaner tougher meaner times of today. On his blog he offered a couple of paragraphs of advice so fun to read and so well worth considering that I will copy-paste it and offer it here in hopes that it might indeed be deemed good enough to publish for sharing with my fellow readers.
And here it is . . . .
” January 1, 2025. It’s possible that the next few years will be good for me personally. But in the realm of public events, every happy prediction I can think of is completely off the wall. Might RFK Jr legalize shrooms? Might AIs, while still arguably nonsentient, declare themselves gods and push progressive policies? Might enough competent people fall into homelessness that there’s a homeless renaissance? Might the white working class finally support redistribution of wealth? Might Trump give us a UBI, just to have his name on it?
None of those things will happen. In the ebb and flow of history, this has to be the part where things get worse so that later they can get better. It might be as mild as a few years of authoritarianism to show new generations why it’s a bad idea. Or it might be as extreme as a small nuclear war, a giant solar flare, or a deadlier pandemic, to accelerate the collapse of the global system and set the stage for something less insane.
This is my advice for the apocalypse. Last month I did a bibliomancy reading in an English-German dictionary, and the word was the German word zubereiten under the English word brew. Zubereiten means prepare, and I thought about the difference between those two words. You can prepare for something, but you don’t brew for something, you brew something. That’s my advice. “
different clue
@Mark Level,
The only things I know about Mexico are what I read or have read here and there and a little music I have listened to. I assume you know which are the safer places ( less cartelized, policed, etc.) One wonders if those parts of Mexico where the native indigenous languages are still firmly spoken would be more culturally and socially compatible and less stressful . . . or not.
I remember that little bit of von Goethe poetry . . .
The mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding small,
They neither rush nor tarry, but exactly grind they all.
Since i am here for the duration and going nowhere, I will just get to see what happens next, and then what happens after that.