It'll take awhile -- putting it mildly -- before cheap, energy-dense oil is displaced by any other energy source. Not to mention all the OTHER things oil is used for.
I'm all for alternative energy sources, including whatever "suppressed" energy sources that may be coming, but even that won't end our need for and heavy use of oil for a good while.
She is one of us.
Exactly. Race, religion, home culture, nationality, sex, whatever: none of it matters here. Accept the truth as you find it, even when doing so hurts, and you're one of us. And I believe in most (but not all) cases, truth-seekers / accepters are also decent human beings.
Thrillers -- books, movies, and TV shows -- about serious corruption in government and in corporations aren't anything new, of course, and The Night Agent is a worthy member of genre. I'm not a fan of the male lead, but otherwise it's an engaging story and yes, bigwigs (including the Vice-President) are involved in corruption and murder. I've not seen the last episode yet.
Sincere condolences, purkiss. Nothing hurts like the loss of a loved one.
You won't have to wait to be reunited with him, really. His personality, his mind and his heart are recorded in your memory, and you can spend as much time with him there as you wish. Talk with him when you need to; you already know his responses. Remember his kindnesses, his laughter, his wisdom, his love. You were connected to him and still are. Today is no different than if he'd just left the room.
I have found that keeping my connection to a deceased loved one helps a great deal; the grief is nearly unbearable at first but gets drained off as you fully feel it. The connection remains, and brings strength.
Interesting data and questions, CoolAsACucumber.
https://www.qwant.com/?q=ford+raised+pay+for+production+line+workers+to+%245+per+day
Early in the 20th century, line workers at Ford were paid less than $2.50 per day. Turnover was high -- the work was monotonous -- and then Henry Ford had the genius idea to start paying workers $5 per day -- a quarter-ounce $5 gold coin, or 5 one-ounce silver dollars. (The actual pay scheme was more complicated than that; see some of the articles at link above for details).
Forbes suggests 240 work days per year for these workers, meaning yearly wages were being upgraded to $1200 or 60 ounces of gold, = $117,426 at the current gold price as I type this.
As for silver: 240 working days at $5 each = $1200 silver coinage face value = $27,684 at current silver pricing, again per current silver market value.
Back then (January 1914), each dollar was worth one-twentieth of an ounce of gold or one full ounce of silver (minus the seignorage, or the Treasury's cut for coining the metal). Roughly speaking, gold (by weight) was pegged at 20 times the value of silver. That is fairly close (a bit high, really) to the historic average over the centuries.
Today, gold's market value is ($1957.10/oz divided by $23.07/oz) = 84.833 times the value of silver.
Yes, it seems reasonable to believe that silver is dramatically undervalued today. That doesn't prove it will rise in value relative to gold, but if one had to bet . . .
Can confirm. Most things, including supplements, Rx drugs (not all), canned goods, and frozen food are fine well beyond the printed expiration date. Short dates are a legal shield and a money-maker for the manufacturer but certainly not a precise cut-off date for safe ingestion. Some things are good for YEARS after the date.
Stock up on non-perishables so you can go shopping in your basement in the future; paper goods, shoes, clothing, alcohol in glass containers (if you drink and/or want it for barter), electronics you've been thinking about getting, etc., and of course long-dated canned goods and other food items that won't go bad next week.
https://www.summerhillschool.co.uk/
and for Sudbury, https://sudburyvalley.org/
My personal belief is that these schools are very close to optimal environments for human beings to grow up in. Freedom and compassion early in life are key elements in creating mature and healthy adults, as is the insistence that children respect others, just as THEY wish to be respected themselves.
Neill pointed out in his writings that very young children have almost no awareness of or concern for protection of property -- such as furniture, lamps, knick-knacks, or anything else. This is how human children are MADE and it's a stage parents and others must learn to live with, in part by keeping valuable and breakable items out of the areas where children spend time. Kids grow out of this stage naturally; trying to punish them out of this stage only harms them and harms the relationship between the children and the adults.
Likewise, chores and other coerced or manipulated behavior is harmful; children (like the young of other animals) are designed to play, which is how they learn about the world, about themselves, and develop their minds and bodies. Children are naturally curious (unless this is crushed out of them with coercive schooling) and begin feeling the need to learn adult knowledge and skills at their own pace. These schools have shown (for a century now, in the case of Summerhill) that this is our true nature, not just theory.
Two observations:
First, it's amazing to me that these schools are still allowed to exist. The British government actually TRIED to shut down or neuter Summerhill several years back, but enough of an outcry was raised that they backed down.
Second: The character of such places can change as the founders and early staff retire -- just as happened in America as the decades wore on. I don't have any reason to believe things have gone downhill at either Summerhill or Sudbury, but it's a potential dynamic worth keeping in mind.
Here's some commentary by A. S. Neill, founder and headmaster of Summerhill:
"The politician's stance, 'I speak for the people who elected me,' often suggests a man of no principles and no guts. If one of my old pupils became a prime minister, I should feel that Summerhill had failed him. Politics means compromise, and free people are very bad compromisers."
"It is all so sinister. When I watch, on TV, the national party conventions in the U.S.A with their infantile parades and bands and flags, I feel dejected and hopeless. Behind these silly facades, I see the self-seeking lobbyists and the rat race of capitalism."
"Summerhill aims at a new democracy of free citizens who will not follow any leader. Until children are no longer molded into castrated sheep, democracy remains a fake and a danger. This is no theory; it is founded on long observation of children who have self-government. No child in my school holds up his hand because he sees me doing so when we vote.
What would I change? I'd add FREEDOM. To the surprise of many, freedom WORKS in a very positive way for children, and for the adults they become.
Two examples:
Summerhill School in England (est. 1921)
Sudbury Valley School (est. 1968 in Framingham, MA). Sudbury is a day school (not a boarding school like Summerhill) that was founded on the same principles as Summerhill.
So how does this work out for the children, really? Answer: Amazingly well.
In 1949, the British government sent inspectors to Summerhill School. Here are excerpts from their report, which Neil (founder and first Headmaster of the school) published in his 4-million copy bestseller Summerhill: A radical approach to child-rearing:
The main principle upon which the School is run is freedom . . . . the degree of freedom allowed to the children is very much greater than the inspectors had seen in any other school and the freedom is real. No child, for instance, is obliged to attend any lessons. As will be revealed later, the majority do attend for the most part regularly, but one pupil was actually at this School for 13 years without once attending a lesson and is now an expert toolmaker and precision instrument maker. This extreme case is mentioned to show that the freedom given to children is genuine and is not withdrawn as soon as its results become awkward . . . . The School however, is not run on anarchist principles. Laws are made by a school parliament which meets regularly under the chairmanship of a child and is attended by any staff and child who wish. This assembly has unlimited power of discussion and apparently fairly wide ones of legislation. On one occasion it discussed the dismissal of a teacher, showing, it is understood, excellent judgment in its opinions. But such an event is rare, and normally the parliament is concerned with the day-to-day problems of living in a community.
. . . the children are full of life and zest. Of boredom and apathy there was no sign. An atmosphere of contentment and tolerance pervades the School.
. . . the children's manners are delightful. They may lack, here and there, some of the conventions of manners, but their friendliness, ease and naturalness, and their total lack of shyness and self-consciousness made them very easy, pleasant people to get on with.
. . . initiative, responsibility and integrity are all encouraged by the system and that so far as such things can be judged, they are in fact being developed.
Summerhill education is not necessarily hostile to worldly success.
The report backs up that last point with a list of degrees held and careers followed by former pupils.
Wow! Thanks for posting this; it's the most interesting movie (1 hr 18 min) I've seen in awhile. The first ten minutes or so give a terrific overview of Tencent's global empire, business strategy, and the danger it poses to privacy and liberty because of the company's enforced ties to the CCP. The rest of the film goes into detail about how the company grew, how it makes money, why it remains dominant in China but mostly invests in foreign companies abroad rather rather than expands directly, and so on. It's a fascinating story and very well told.
Elon Musk's vision for X.com, an "everything app", is very much like what Tencent has created in China.
Normally: Another bank or a collection agency buys the debt and keeps sending you the bill. Pay up or lose your credit rating.
But after the fall of the current financial system (which will mean what exactly?), maybe not. We're heading for a societal Singularity, IMO, where things could go any number of ways and given Trump's track record, much of it will include directions and events we hadn't even imagined.
"In a panic, they try to pull the plug"