Steve Bull's Blog, page 107
August 7, 2023
7 Things Grandpa Did that Made His Tools Last Longer
Tool maintenance begins as soon as you get a hand tool. To increase the longevity of your hand tools and help them last a lifetime use these tool maintenance tips that grandpa used. If you do these things you can pass your tools on to the next generation.
They sure don’t make tools like they used to. Have you noticed that tools from Grandpa’s era seem to have a much longer lifespan than the tools we get at the hardware store now? In fact, you may even have a few of grandpa’s tools in your garage. Those tools just lasted longer. Is the metal weaker now? Are the tool handles less robust? Or did Grandpa know something about tool maintenance that we don’t?
Grandpa bought quality to start with
Grandpa didn’t buy the cheapest tool on the rack. He knew that a quality tool was an investment, not an expense. So grandpa looked at the tool he was purchasing, checked the keen edge, the weight and strength of the steel, and the quality of the handle before he made a purchase. Money wasn’t as plentiful in grandpa’s day and he wanted to make sure this tool purchase wouldn’t be necessary again.
Once he got that tool home, Grandpa did a few simple tasks to ensure that those tools maintained their sharp blades and smooth handles for a long time.
Grandpa preserved the tool’s handle
Most tools have ash, hickory, or maple handles. They are strong but generally unfinished. In fact, the unfinished handle is a mark of a quality wooden handle. Some manufacturers put a varnish on the handle to disguise inferior wood stock.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
The Long Wave Versus the Printing Press
Winter has been coming for a very long time. Here’s why
The fascinating thing about “long wave” analysis (broadly defined to include Kondratieff waves, Elliott waves, and William Strauss and Neil Howe’s Fourth Turning) is that while each theory uses its own indicators and terminology to show how societies move through recurring cultural/psychological/financial stages, they’ve all reached the same conclusion: we’re toast.
The first decade of this century marked the theoretical end of an Elliott Wave Grand Supercycle — and of an even bigger wave that began in the Dark Ages…
…the start of Kondratiff winter…
…and the beginning of a Fourth “Crisis” Turning. As Strauss and Howe put it in 1997:
Around the year 2005 [give or take a few years], a sudden spark will catalyze a Crisis mood. Remnants of the old social order will disintegrate. Political and economic trust will implode. Real hardship will beset the land, with severe distress that could involve questions of class, race, nation and empire.…Sometime before the year 2025, America will pass through a great gate in history, commensurate with the American Revolution, Civil War, and twin emergencies of the Great Depression and World War II….The risk of catastrophe will be very high. The nation could erupt into insurrection or civil violence, crack up geographically, or succumb to authoritarian rule. If there is a war, it is likely to be one of maximum risk and effort – in other words, total war…
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Greater Depression: We’ve somehow kept it together, inflating the 2000s housing bubble and, when that burst, replacing it with the everything bubble. Policymakers, talking heads, and most investors (judging by the past year’s stock market action) seem to think that a normal recovery is underway and that a crash remains a low-probability event.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Leave Home
As an increasing number of people realize that their home country is becoming a liability to them, the most common question I hear from them is, “What do I have to do to remain where I am and still be assured that I’ll be able to retain both my wealth and my freedom?”
The simple (and tragic) answer to this question is that there is no such solution. The two objectives are mutually exclusive.
Throughout the ages, whenever an empire has begun its inevitable collapse, no country has ever woken up and reversed the process. In every case, the government rides the decline to the bottom. And, along the way, a series of policies is invariably undertaken to save those in government in the downward rush. These policies are always at the expense of the populace.
Invariably, as the decline worsens, governments drag out the same policies that all other failing empires have implemented before them: Devaluation of currency, default on debt, increased warfare, creation of a police state and, finally, the looting of all those citizens who have even a modicum of wealth.
The question is not whether we like our home country as it presently is, but whether we’re prepared to accept what it’s about to become.
As people become more aware that their government is not only not their friend, but has become their greatest threat, it’s human nature to hope that “it won’t get any worse.”
And, of course, it then gets worse.
The great majority of people don’t actually try to escape until they find that they’re now trapped and cannot escape. (Curbing the outward flow is surprisingly easy for any government to achieve – by implying that those emigrating are enemies of the state. This time around, those attempting to exit will be called domestic terrorists.)
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Normies Awake!
So-called Normies might be musing, this month of approved mental languor, whether the mighty efforts to suppress news of all kinds, about everything, have concealed the true tendings of our wayward country — leading them to wonder whether it is even possible to be a Normie in such an abnormal time and place.
What news is suppressed? That the USA is worse than dead broke. That the people were poisoned, apparently on-purpose. That the spectral “Joe Biden” sold out our country. That the war we started in Ukraine, on purpose, for no good reason, is about to be lost, and with it our standing around world. That there actually is such a criminal organism as the Blob at large in our government, responsible for the astounding abnormality immersing us. But never mind all that… for now, just go see Barbie. Have a clam roll, a dip in the ocean, another margarita…. September will be here soon enough.
Eventually, the official perversion of money — especially of borrowing an awesome lot of it with no intention of ever repaying — leads to the unhappy circumstance of money disappearing until nobody has any money. And by such, the broke-ness of the government transmogrifies to a whole land full of broke people. Many banks go broke as well. Even the high-fliers who hoarded things that purport to represent money go broke. Then, nobody has the means to buy anything. Businesses that can’t sell anything stop being businesses…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
August 6, 2023
From Covert to Overt: UK Government and Businesses Seek to Unleash Facial Recognition Technologies Across Urban Landscape
The Home Office is encouraging police forces across the country to make use of live facial recognition technologies for routine law enforcement. Retailers are also embracing the technology to monitor their customers.
It increasingly seems that the UK decoupled from the European Union, its rules and regulations, only for its government to take the country in a progressively more authoritarian direction. This is, of course, a generalised trend among ostensibly “liberal democracies” just about everywhere, including EU Member States, as they increasingly adopt the trappings and tactics of more authoritarian regimes, such as restricting free speech, cancelling people and weakening the rule of law. But the UK is most definitely at the leading edge of this trend. A case in point is the Home Office’s naked enthusiasm for biometric surveillance and control technologies.
This week, for example, The Guardian revealed that the Minister for Policing Chris Philip and other senior figures of the Home Office had held a closed-door meeting with Simon Gordon, the founder of Facewatch, a leading facial recognition retail security company, in March. The main outcome of the meeting was that the government would lobby the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) on the benefits of using live facial recognition (LFR) technologies in retail settings. LFR involves hooking up facial recognition cameras to databases containing photos of people. Images from the cameras can then be screened against those photos to see if they match.
The lobbying effort was apparently successful. Just weeks after reaching out to the ICO, the ICO sent a letter to Facewatch affirming that the company “has a legitimate purpose for using people’s information for the detection and prevention of crime” and that its services broadly comply with UK Data Protection laws, which the Sunak government and UK intelligence agencies are trying to gut. ..
…click on the above link to read the rest…
What If There Are No Politically Feasible Answers?
Political Realism vs Ecological Realism
At times, we are confronted with choices that demand us to pick between two undesirable alternatives, often known as a dilemma. The annals of history are brimming with such instances. When Hitler ascended to power in Germany and commenced his invasions across Europe, we were presented with the dire decision of either passively observing country after country succumb to Germany’s might or intervening in the war to halt him by force. There was no solution that could be deemed politically feasible, at least not in the traditionally peaceful democratic sense. Sometimes, circumstances unfold just like that.
It appears we find ourselves in the grip of a similar quandary at present. We’re forced to select from a set of distressing options. Some would present it as a decision between climate change causing widespread avian fatalities, or in their judgement, causing fewer with the installation of wind turbines and transmission lines and thwarting the climate crisis.
@McAffee is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Upgrade to paid
L.A. Times journalist Sammy Roth penned an article exploring the Audubon Society’s endorsement of wind turbines and transmission lines, notwithstanding the escalating tally of bird deaths attributed to these structures. Roth expressed via Twitter that while the loss of birds may not be the optimal outcome, it could be a required sacrifice for the broader objective of addressing climate change.
The Audubon Society and many others, including Roth, perceive our options as a choice between renewable energy and climate change. However, in my view, they overlook a critical component that they, along with the majority, are reluctant to contemplate.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
Opposition to mining will prevent a green transition to renewables
I could overwhelm you with world-wide trillions of tons of mining waste and how China has rendered 20% of its farmland too toxic to grow crops (BBC 2014), but let’s just zoom in on one mine in Arizona. In 2022, 13 years after the Rosemont Copper Mine near Tuscon, AZ was proposed in 2009, was finally shut down after strong opposition.
Yet clearly mines need to be built to make the transition to renewables ASAP. If world peak oil was in 2018 (EIA 2022) time’s a wastin’. Energy will get more expensive and scarcer as it declines. Mining will need increasing amounts of energy as ore quality continues to decline and remaining deposits further away and deeper, as well as the energy to crush ore, smelt metals out and fabricate them into parts. All of these steps require the high heat of fossil fuel energy, especially coal, for which there aren’t alternative electric or hydrogen processes and transportation. The first generation will have to be made with fossil fuels, not the electricity from yet to be built solar, wind, and nuclear power plants.
Michaux (2022a, 2022b) has made some rough calculations of the electricity, hydrogen, and metals to make them in an energy transition to 100% renewable energy by 2050 with wind, solar, nuclear, hydro, geothermal, and biowaste generation. It’s a work in progress, but the best estimate I’ve seen since he included not just the electric grid like most researchers (i.e. Jacobson 2011), but the electricity to replace the fossil energy used by transportation, manufacturing, and heating of buildings and homes.
Then he calculated the metals required to build these 586,000 average sized power stations in addition to the world’s 46,400 to generate the additional electricity and electrolysis of 200.1 million tonnes of hydrogen to power heavy duty transportation and manufacturing.
…click on the above link to read the rest…
August 5, 2023
Notes on Stormtrooper Syndrome
For some time now I’ve been looking for a way to talk about one of the most common bad habits of thought in the modern industrial world. Habits like this are far more important that a casual glance might suggest. Plenty of pragmatic factors are piling up crises for our civilization just now, but many of those could be solved—or at least faced in a more constructive way—if our government and business elites could think clearly about them. It’s the fact that they don’t seem to be able to do this that makes the crisis of our time so overwhelming.
It’s really quite remarkable, when you think of it. These days, if a government bureaucracy or one of those dreary panels of multibillionaires get together to try to solve some problem, you can bet your bottom dollar that they’ll either do nothing or make the problem worse. It’s not that the people in question aren’t educated—they have the best education you can get in a modern Western society. It’s not that they lack resources—for example, the money and energy that go into those climate conferences each year, put to some productive use, could have contributed considerably to mitigating the effects of climate change. No, the problem is that the people in question are stuck in habits of thought that make it impossible for them to do anything useful in a crisis.
I know that this is a controversial claim these days. Quite a few people have become convinced that our government and corporate elites can’t possibly be as stupid as they seem. No, it’s got to be a sinister conspiracy! It’s easy to understand why that sort of thinking has become popular…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
World Food Prices Jump Most In 18 Months
Global food prices increased the most in 1.5 years as trade disruptions from the El Nino weather phenomenon battered agricultural-producing countries, and Russia’s exit from a crucial UN-backed agriculture deal stoked supply concerns.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported Friday that the global food index, which tracks monthly changes in the international prices of globally-traded food commodities, averaged 123.9 in July, up 1.3% from the previous month.
The FAO Food Price Index’s July print was the largest monthly gain since March 2022.
FAO explained the FAO Vegetable Oil Price subcomponent of the index was responsible for the monthly increase:
The increase was driven by a sharp jump in the FAO Vegetable Oil Price Index, which rose 12.1 percent from June after seven months of consecutive declines. International sunflower oil prices rebounded by more than 15 percent in the month, due mostly to renewed uncertainties surrounding the exportable supplies after the Russian Federation’s decision to end implementation of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. World prices for palm, soy and rapeseed oils increased on concerns over output prospects in leading producing countries.
Also, the FAO All Rice Price Index increased 2.8% on the month and 19.7% on the year due to “India’s 20 July prohibition of non-parboiled Indica exports fostered expectations of greater sales in other origins, amplifying upward pressure already exerted on prices by seasonally tighter supplies and Asian purchases,” the report said.
This upward pressure on rice prices “raises substantial food security concerns for a large swathe of the world population, especially those that are most poor and who dedicate a larger share of their incomes to purchase food,” FAO warned.
We noted in April and in early May, “El Nino Watch Initiated As Ag-Industry In Crosshairs” and “Global Rice Shortage Looms, Set To Be The Biggest In Decades” as a disruptive El Nino weather pattern wreaks havoc on the world’s ag crops.
Rising food prices risk fueling social instability for the weakest emerging market economies.
Desperation Creeps In
That silence you hear these dog days of a wilting empire is the calm before the storm and everybody knows it. “Joe Biden’s” final desperate ploy against the menace of Donald Trump looks about on par with the Ukraine spring offensive, hardly even worth a “hey, nice try.”
So, the best they could do was to charge Mr. Trump with objecting vocally to an election that looked as rotten as Hunter’s uncapped teeth? We all saw what happened overnight November 3 and 4, 2020: what the numbers looked like in the swing precincts at midnight and the magic mathematics that swapped tens of thousands of votes over from the Trump column to the Biden column (say, whu?) … the shutdown of the Fulton County State Farm Arena due to a supposedly leaking toilet and the ensuing monkey business with rolly-bags full of ballots under the tables captured by the closed-circuit cameras… the miraculous wee-hour harvest of ballots in Milwaukee… US Postal Service truck full of completed ballots out of Bethpage, Long Island, that turned up in Philadelphia… Mark Zuckerberg’s $419-million-dollar operation using two front orgs, the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) to staff precinct election boards with party shills and buy votes… the thumb drives and modems in the vote-counting machines….
Special Counsel Jack Smith may find it difficult to prove that expressing an opinion about all that is some kind of crime. Meanwhile, he’s turned Mr. Trump into the poster boy for the many other aggrieved victims of a government weaponized against its own people…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
