U2

TOM PETTY/THE HEARTBREAKERS

HALL & OATES

THE CARS

THE POLICE

Some graphs on how it’s viewed.

Doesn’t necessarily look like GEN Z wishes to stay at home in mom’s basement. 

. . . and SYNTHETIC STRAWBERRY EXTRACT

This is just a setup clip for another that critiques how the LEFT manipulates the news which, LARGELY, it controls.  But to watch THAT CLIP, you have to subscribe to EPOCH TIMES VIDEO which I refuse to do as I don’t avail myself of ANYTHING online that isn’t either a) free or b) requires me to provide my email address.

Call me cheap AND paranoid.

But the Postmodernity/Baudrillard/Synthetic Strawberry Primer the linked video provides is itself QUITE USEFUL.  Because if you don’t understand Postmodernity, Baudrillard and today’s synthetic HYPERREAL array of EMPTY SIGNS AND GESTURES, you can’t POSSIBLY UNDERSTAND the world we live in.

While Baudrillard started out as a Postmodernist, he broke from the movement and wound up having little use for critical theorists, such as Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault, whose writings have been twisted into SKETCHY, HALF-BAKED FORMULATIONS SUCH AS CRITICAL RACE THEORY.

Believe me, if Baudrillard were still alive, HE’D HAVE ZERO TIME FOR THAT STUFF.

Here’s an overview of the different portions of his career through his writings.  It ends with a complete bibliography, most of which I’ve read and am familiar with.  

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Jean Baudrillard 

. . . Remembered?

The final question of a 2003 Walter Becker/Donald Fagen interview conducted by George Varga and published in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

Q: Okay, last question. And not to intimidate you, but the best answer I ever got to this question was from Miles (Davis): How would you like to be remembered?

FAGEN: “I don’t care; I’ll be dead.”

BECKER: “I don’t know.”

FAGEN: “My stepchildren aren’t embarrassed by my memory, I guess. So it isn’t a problem for them.”

BECKER: “Fondly. What did Miles say?”

Q: He said, and I quote: “For not being white.”

(Becker and Fagen look at each other in stunned silence.)

FAGEN: “We should’ve said that, too.”

BECKER: “Can we change our answers?”

And YET, Donald Fagen always felt that, musically, BITCHES BREW was a BUST.

But then, things aren’t always that black and white.

And for those interested, here’s the full interview:

Steely Dan Q & A

Best documentary of making a rock album you’ll ever see.

It’s also a piece of history.  And not just musical history.

I’ve watched it THREE TIMES.

Mother of All Supply Chain Disruptions coming?

. . . Given Current Policies

This is a HOMERUN piece by Daniel Lacalle.

I’m not even going to weigh in except to post some excerpts from it.

Here they are:

• “Europe is not going to achieve a competitive energy transition with the current interventionist policies. Europe does not depend on Russian gas due to a coincidence, but because of a chain of mistaken policies. Banning nuclear in Germany, prohibiting the development of domestic natural gas resources throughout the European Union, added to a massive and expensive renewable roll-out without building a reliable back-up.”
• “Solar and wind do not reduce dependency on Russian natural gas. They are necessary but volatile and intermittent. They need back-up for security of supply from nuclear, hydro, and natural gas. Dependency rises in periods of low wind and little sun, just when prices are highest.”
• “Batteries are not an option either. It is impossible to build an industrial-size network of enormous batteries, the cost would be prohibitive and the dependency on China build them (lithium etc.) would be even more of a problem. At current prices, a battery storage system of Europe’s size would cost more than $2.5 trillion, according to an MIT Technology Review paper. Massively more expensive than any other alternative.”
• “Just the added cost of a battery grid plus the distribution and transmission network would make household bills soar even further.”
• “Europe was already in an energy crisis in 2020 and 2021.”
• “European governments should think hard about misguided policies when the continent has been saved this winter by natural gas imported from the United States produced with a technology, fracking, which has been banned in Europe.”
• “All technologies are necessary, and renewables are key, but they are not the alternative because they need natural gas back-up while the technology is developed, as it is still in its infancy.”
• “All the ‘magical’ alternatives that interventionism sells mean going from depending on Russia to depending on China.”
• “Demonizing nuclear energy has left Europe in the hands of expensive and volatile alternatives.”
• “Border taxes on oil products or natural gas are not taxing producers, it is taxing consumers in European countries . . . A true energy transition must be competitive, reliable, and cheap, not a tax collection and looting machine.”

WILL NO-CARBON ZEALOT-PURISTS BE ABLE TO GRASP THIS, OR ARE THEY STILL STUCK ON THEIR ZERO-CARBON PURITY TESTS?

ALARMISM won’t help us.

Eight SOLID REASONS.

TAKE YOUR PICK.  One?  Several?  All?

This is an outstanding piece of analysis.  Below are the eight reasons, but to understand them and their interrelationship, YOU NEED TO READ THE ENTIRE PIECE by Soeren Kern via the Gatestone Institute.

Why Did Vladimir Putin Invade Ukraine?

The reasons:

• Empire Building
• Buffer Zone

• Ukrainian Independence
• NATO
• Democracy
• Energy
• Water
• Regime Survival

Again, none of these is MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE of one or more of the others.  How could they be?  In fact, one can make a very strong case that THEY ALL PLAYED A ROLE.

YOUR CALL.

First of all, is there really such a thing as a Davos-inspired/UN-partnered Great Reset?  I won’t go into that here, but it’s a valid question worth anyone’s time and interest.

But assuming THE GREAT RESET is, in fact, on tap, here’s what the folks at WinterOak.org.uk claim are 10 signs that show that the Ukraine-Russia war is A PART OF IT:

1. The war between Russia and Ukraine is already causing unprecedented disruption to global supply chains, exacerbating fuel shortages and inducing chronic levels of inflation.

2. The war’s economic fallout will lead to a dramatic downsizing of the global workforce. 

3. The war has significantly reduced Europe’s reliance on the Russian energy sector and reinforced the centrality of the UN Sustainable Development Goals and ‘net zero‘ emissions which lies at the heart of the Great Reset.

4. Food shortages created by the war will offer a major boon to the synthetic biology industry as the convergence of digital technologies with materials science and biology will radically transform the agricultural sector and encourage the adoption of plant-based and lab-grown alternatives on a global scale. 

5. Russia’s exclusion from SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) foreshadows an economic reset which will generate precisely the kind of blowback necessary for corralling large swathes of the global population into a technocratic control grid.

6.  This war marks a major inflection point in the globalist aspiration for a new international rules-based order anchored in Eurasia.

7. With speculation mounting over the war’s long term impact on bilateral trade flows between China and Europe, the Russia-Ukraine conflict will catapult Israel – a leading advocate of the Great Reset – to even greater international prominence. 

8. It is now common knowledge that Digital IDs are a central plank in the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset agenda and are to be streamlined across industries, supply chains and markets as a way of advancing the UN 2030 SDGs and delivering individualised and integrated services in future smart cities.

9. Europe is directly in the line of fire once a hybrid war between NATO and the Sino-Russia axis is underway.

10. The economic implications of this war will be so disastrous that governments and the public sector will require a significant injection of private capital to address the financing shortfall. 

As you can see, some of these claims are TRULY TECTONIC.  To evaluate their validity, it’s necessary to read the entire essay:

The Great Reset Phase 2: War

You can then decide for yourself a) whether or not you agree with them and b) what you think of The Great Reset itself as a VIABLE CONCEPT.  Is it real?  Is it propaganda?  And if the latter, WHOSE PROPAGANDA AND FOR WHAT PURPOSE?

In posting, I’ve ASSIDUOUSLY avoided the entire subject as it would require ALMOST MY ENTIRE ATTENTION SPAN given the sprawling amount that has been written about it despite almost ZERO MSM coverage.

And I’m not about to alter that here, particularly via a critique of the ten points listed in the linked piece.  It’s simply too much.

But MAKE NO MISTAKE.  The world is changing — and in ways the average person CAN’T EVEN CONTEMPLATE.  Most will only know what’s afoot far too late to do anything about it.

In the meantime, all the MORE VIGILANT can do is seek to be as aware as possible while PREPARING FOR WHATEVER NEGATIVES NOW SEEM LIKELY.

And if you don’t know what those are, IT MAY BE TIME TO CORRECT THAT.