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PlanktonPunkt Designs puzzles available in CreateJigsawPuzzles

link to order print on demand PlanktonPunkt Designs jigsaw puzzles (printed in China)

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Printify

link to order PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from the source

PlanktonPunkt Designs POD products in Etsy

A link to order from a selection of PlanktonPunkt Designs print on demand wares from Etsy

Author: PlanktonPunkt

  • Survival September 2025

    I have decided to start a Survival September 2025 campaign in my on-line POD stores (though probably not in CreateJigsawPuzzles.)

    My first design theme was the hardy little Cladonia cup lichen, because I think they are photogenically cute and because they survive the Finnish winter despite being small and cute.

    Shameless commercial exploitation of cup lichen and National Preparedness Day.

    When it comes to POD business, I have had to adapt and learn fast during the past few weeks and months, but I now think that the focus of my non-jigsaw puzzle stores will be the urban, educated and international professional who nevertheless is alarmed at the direction the world is going, economic, cultural and ecological axes. Someone like me. How many we are and does anyone find my stores (links in the top of this site), is anyone’s guess.

    This person, usually traveling a lot within and between continents for work and fun and therefore keeps only minimal apartment, but nevertheless wants to be prepared on the emergencies specific for their circumstances, probably needs lightweight but stylish travel and tech accessories and home decor that does not take too much space. Colorful and / or complex nature or garden based designs balance the dullness of the concrete jungle on-the-go and brighten the home base during a break from hectic life.

    With such lifestyle, preparedness does not mean homesteading in a remote bunker hoarding spam and ammo. It means being flexible and able to travel at a moment’s notice, though the home apartment may have micropreps like cash, backup power pack, good first aid kit, and food and drink for a couple of weeks in case of a natural or governmental disaster.

    As for my theme, this year has been tough, but I hope to keep going next month, too. Then I learned that September is the National Preparedness Month in USA. Additionally, this September 2025 we have survived over halfway through the 2020s, despite all the calamities that are still befalling around the world, and that is an accomplishment.

    There are many governmental and non-governmental websites promoting this (some examples linked in this paragraph and more can be found by searching the Internet using National Preparedness Month as a search term. Disclaimer: None of the agencies or organizations linked here are sponsoring or endorsing me, nor am I their official partner, representative or otherwise connected with them – I just thought people might be interested in the National Preparedness Month.)

    Having checked the National Preparedness Month content online, I felt frivolous about my crass Survival September 2025 commercial promotion, but then I remembered that people are commercializing also Christmas and Halloween which to me are actual holy days, and decided to keep on it. I may get booed or even reviled, but even if people buy nothing but get inspired to increase their preparedness, that is important.(By the way, I think most important part of preparedness is the attitude, closely followed by skills – gear can be helpful but without the first two, it will only be a talisman, an emotional support blanket.) As part of my Survival September 2025, I try to post every now and then about prepping for urban international professional (though I think most of us already know the relevant tricks, or at least most of them.)

    Meanwhile, to all the people who have survived so far, you are Doing Good, Keep Going! Hopefully to the end of the 2020s and long after that!.

    If you have any ideas or opinions on this, or any other content in my shop(s), please comment – feedback from public is always important help for a hermit like me to understand how people actually think.

  • Food Inflation in UK

    Armstrong Economics posted that Bank of England is cutting interest rates despite rising inflation, especially of food prices. The BoE tried to put that on employee costs of the supermarkets.

    I have an alternative explanation. Inflation in classical sense is a short for inflation of money supply. BoE apparently worries that lowering interest rates will make lending cheaper leading to increase in money supply, i.e. classical inflation. However, the market prices actually depend on supply and demand. When supplies are low but demand high, prices rise to what the wealthiest market segment can pay for it, whereas if supplies are plentiful, nobody will take the product even for free. Also, the value of British pound had fallen by 4% on July, while the food price inflation was 4% – coincidence?

    I think the inflation pressures on UK food prices are due to combination of increased demand (according to Worldometer, last year UK had 0.4 million more people on the top of 69 million already there, and that is on the top of the growth from the previous years) and reduced supply. The Western countries have reduced food production for environmental reasons, whereas political instability and weather have reduced crop production and / or exports elsewhere. Ant then there are artificial trade barriers and monopsonistic practices of the Western food and agri conglomerates (and Western in this case includes Japan and their rice crisis), which have created artificial scarcities to maintain the high prices.

    All in all, I don’t blame the greedy Tesco cashier for the possible ham or bacon price increases in UK. I think it is the lack of pork anywhere except in government budgets.

  • Resolution Weekend

    I just saw a video on YouTube by a gentleman who seems to be into Bitcoin. Aside from the Bitcoin part, there were interesting little news.

    Bank of England has published a bail-in guide. The term of note is ‘resolution weekend’. That’s when the peoples’ bank accounts will be converted into bank stocks at some fraction of value.

    I had already become aware that millionaires and billionaires are fleeing the UK by their thousands, an exodus greater than that afflicting PCR, despite PRC having vastly larger population. I was surprised at the claim that the departing assets are equal to 4% of UK GDP. Dividing the 91.8B$ cumulative wealth of the departees by 3640B$ estimated GB GDP gives only about 2.5% in mu calculator. It will be interesting to see if the UK government will go full DDR and slam the exit doors shut at this hemorrhage. They already have the hate crime reporting lines and speech crimes police (in case someone could post something UK government does not approve) so why not go for the full experience, complete with empty shops?

    Meanwhile, EU has made a deal of the decade (this century is too young to claim that something even weirder would not be coming through the pipes) agreeing to: 15% export and 0% import tariffs with US, 750 billion euros worth of US fossil fuels while banning all the Russian fossil fuel imports (which had continued despite the war, including quite a lot of natural gas transiting in pipelines through Ukraine), and 600 billion euros of private direct investment to US.

    Exactly what this private investment is and how EU Commission can agree to seems unclear. According to the document description page on EU side, the agreement is not legally binding. I suspect that the tariff and energy deals were a bribe to US to let EU still continue their war – I further suspect large amounts of US military gear to be included in that 0% import tariff. Also, I suspect that EU will rather soon have a resolution weekend for bank accounts as they are already talking about mobilizing funds laying in peoples’ bank accounts to fund plans that are excessive for the public purse. Pension funds are joining the arms bonanza. Bonus points if these ‘privately funded’ imports/investments will count towards the 5% of GDP funding target for non-US NATO members.

    Joker in the game: EU CBDCs, denied by European Central Bank to be programmable with expiration dates (not to mention blocking or sin fees for non-approved uses, which would similarly depend on programmability.) (There are also privacy questions.) I wonder what the actual utility of EU CBDCs for the small people would be, and how CBDCs (programmable or non) would affect application of a Resolution Weekend?

  • Red Admiral Butterfly

    A short clip I posted on YouTube and Pinterest.

    I think this butterfly is an immigrant. The video was filmed in early June, meaning it could not have hatched in Finland.

  • I Have A Pinterest Account

    This post is just to announce that I have a Pinterest account for PlanktonPunkt Designs. I’ll use it mainly to publish pictures, jigsaw puzzles (those typically after they have been published here or in CreateJigsawPuzzles.com), designs with links to the PlanktonPunkt Designs online shops, and maybe short video clips. Hopefully, you’ll find something beautiful there!

  • A Bumblebee And A Rhododendron

    A short video from material filmed in Finland.

    I have been working through my insect clips and this is a bit too short for YouTube as a stand alone but too big for Pinterest, so I posted a mobile phone formatted version here, since the bumblebee and rhododendron video was so pretty.

    A bumblebee is an important part of Finnish ecosystem.
    A garden Rhododendron is an imported species.

    I hope this little clip will provide a relaxing break, enjoy!

  • Jigsaw Puzzle – 6

    I have been busy making designs, but some of them could be used for jigsaw puzzles, so I am posting here a bubbles version of a yellow rose.

    Yellow Rose, Bubbles Version, a quick puzzle of 42 pieces

  • Jigsaw Puzzles – 5

    I have become more active on jigsaw puzzles and other short form posting, because I am now also in Pinterest, and as I make designs there, some of them seem to lend themselves for jigsaw puzzles, which I post here and on Pinterest.

    White magnolia flower modified from a photo in jul10 folder (63 pieces, click the image to play)

    Other photomodifications may make print-on-demand designs, whereas others might go to commercial jigsaw puzzle site.

    A palm top and a plant growing from the trunk, an interpretation (108 pieces, click the image to play)

    This is a mosaic bubbles version of a photomodification of a palm top and an epiphyte growing on it, also from jul10 folder, photographed in Berkeley.

    Both jigsaw puzzles were made in Jigsaw Explorer.

    Enjoy!

  • Insects Are Vanishing – A Video

    I have now made a short video (6 min 45 s) on the subject, its consequences, its causes (especially discussing metapopulation dynamics) and about one idea how to combat this trend (microrewilding.)

  • Department of Narrative Mismanagement

    I have followed the recent discussions about Jeffrey E., a dead criminal whose suspicious passing away in custody has caused years of speculation (including that he was taken secretly away and is now living somewhere nice.) Namely, he is known to have committed his crimes with lots of people and suspected of blackmailing the said people, which tend to be the very wealthy and powerful type. Which is why he was rumored to have been self-deleted.

    The current administration has loudly and repeatedly promised to publish the list of Jeffrey’s associates, until about a week ago an FBI memo was leaked(?) to Axios claiming: he offed himself, there is no list of people, and he did not blackmail anybody. The administration is trying to sweep the issue under the metaphorical carpet. Then the officials published a video of his cell from the night of his death. Except the video contained about 1 minute gap (or maybe more than 1 minute). It had been stitched together so badly that aside from the gap in the timestamp, the aspect ratios were subtly off. As Asmongold pointed out, there could be legitimate reasons for this blooper, but with all the other circumstatial evidence, to me this points towards a conspiracy concerning Jeffrey E.’s demise, the reasons for it, and the existence of more rot in the circles of power.

    As I keep on watching the government stumble from narrative fail to a narrative fail, with people becoming increasingly convinced that something is off with the official story (which has presented already by the previous administration), I have began to suspect that all this furor is deliberately fanned to distract the hoi polloi from something really important, possibly even more insidious than the idea that we are being governed by a huge criminal blackmail network, until it is too late to do something about it. This is quite a common tactic by the powers that be. For example, in Finland, I have imprecise memories on how government starts making noises about changing regulations or taxes on selling beer, and people get upset. Huge discussions rage over newspaper opinion columns and on-line boards, pro and con, while the government passes something else, much more important for people’s lives. The beer issue can be resolved, or if necessary, retreated from, people will calm down, and meanwhile something actually nasty was done to them.

    While the incompetence of governments can be stupendous, it stretches my credulity to have so many bloopers in the narrative management coming one after each other, and I am beginning to suspect we are being purposefully distracted. Whether it is from the coming (proxy) war against China (maybe started between Thailand and Cambodia, maybe still waiting for the Iran situation to worsen), the ongoing (officially proxy) war against Russia, the economic collapse (US consumers sentiment has been reportedly low earlier this year, though Goldman Sacks just reassured that everything is merely returning to normal), the incoming digital surveillance grid (brought to you in collaboration with Musk and Thiel under the guise of tracking immigrants – spoiler alert: to track immigrants they will “need to” also map the non-immigrants), or something possibly worse, it must be humongous to merit this level of egging of the masses. I don’t think Obama’s referral to Department of Justice for suspicion of having ordered narrative to be manufactured for the Russia Collusion quite qualifies, more likely it is just more noise to distract the masses. By the way, US just moved nukes to UK, but that’s probably a nothing-burger (I am still sitting on the fence about whether to link and comment to the article on the subject in aviationnews.eu.)

    I am also currently sitting on the fence on whether our government truly is this incompetent at narrative management or whether there is some obscure Department of Narrative Management, who are gloating about their latest glorious success in psyop against the people. Or maybe the Department of Narrative Management has gone rogue and is actively fighting against the current administration.

    Although considering the everyday dysfunction I live in due to the ongoing complexity crisis infecting all aspects of modern society and worsened by the ongoing incompetence crisis fanned by the decades of education crisis, I still think that, yes, they really could be that incompetent. Maybe.