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Category: Collapse

  • Resource Competition

    I saw an interesting video from YanasaTV. He was discussing about blue pigs and their causes in California. I think this is a symptom of even bigger problem than he described, so I thought to expand a bit.

    The starting point was boar meat that had turned blue in some parts of California, because of liberal use of rat poison, which dyes the meat.

    According to the video, farmers have been fighting against a figurative tidal wave of rodents, whose populations had exploded in four counties due to farm and orchard closures leaving them tens of thousands of acres of prime breeding areas in almond country.

    The orchards and farms are closing because of California’s water policies, justified by drought blamed on climate change, specifically the conservation laws passed 2014 were a death blow to many farms. I remember the wave of orchard cuttings when many farmers got rid of their almond trees and then the markets in the urban areas got bundles of (expensive) almond firewood. After all, you might at least sell the cut trees for the last bit of income. Recent growing season, documented orchard removals took more Kern County almond acreage than those of Stanislaus County. Again, not surprising. When I drove to LA in 2022, Kern County was drought burned chiaroscuro, like Dali painting, only dusty orchards being green, Stanislaus County being greener, though still dry. If I correctly recall, that year Kern County had gotten 100% of its water allocation cut, Stanislaus County 50%.

    The official explanation of the laws was the environment and need to save water. However, an important underlying cause influencing the passing of water laws was consolidation of water rights under the big players. (get reference)

    Any case, according to Yanasa TV, last year California lost 8000 farms, to multifactorial causes, but lack of water is a big one. Oddly enough, Texas lost even more farms, 18000, also often due to lack of water. In Texas, the irrigation competes against AI server farms. And is losing.

    That caught my attention. The news have been buzzing for a couple of years about how the Silicon Valley firms have been moving to Texas because of their nicer regulatory environment. The discussion online had given me the impression that this was due to the taxes and insane regulatory policies of California. I had not thought about the water regulation, but in hindsight, it should be obvious. The firms are moving to what is greener pastures (more resources) for them, never mind the parched pastures of the ranchers. Which are blamed on climate change.

    The final point I got from this YanasaTV video was the question, how do we feed the billions of people if we reallocate agricultural resources to feed AI? The regulations hindering the agriculture are passed under the pretense of ‘conserving the resources’, but to me it seems that most if not all conservation regulations are nowadays just to preserve the ‘protected’ resources for the powerful, whereas the little people like me get to enjoy the Green New Leap as increased energy and food prices. And as shortages of critical resources.

    The California water rationing for urban dwellers and destruction of small farms is not about conserving resources, since water is very much available for the Big Almond, golf courses, and such. It is about extirpating the competition for scarce resources the big players want for themselves. If the side effect is the ballooning fruit, vegetable and meat prices for the small people, someone is making money of that, too. At some point the breakeven point when increasing prices will not bring more profits because the consumers cannot afford to buy will be reached but the availability of food (and energy or other resources) relative to the need will determine whether that happens before or after a mass uprising.

    Speaking of AI and energy, I wrote the other day about rolling blackout warnings in Maryland and New Jersey. I think the AI industry will have to begin to address its effects on the energy grid soon, maybe already next winter. Once people will begin to experience survival threatening acute shortages, backlash is guaranteed. The incoming collapse of the power grid, by the way, is the main reason why I chose coastal California as my bugin place. If the grid fails, I will not freeze to death.

    But my realization about all of the above: there is no such thing as a conservation law. There are only resource reallocation from the poor to the wealthy laws.

    Note added in proof:

    Nova Scotia in Canada banned people from going into woods, either Crown lands or privately owned lands belonging to someone else. Traditionally people had enjoyed access to Crown lands, but now they had been told that this privilege had been taken away to prevent forest fires. 25000$ fine for people trespassing their country’s forests. Would you feel like hemmed in?

    Then I read that the Nova Scotia woods (over 3500 acres of them) are getting sprayed with defoliant that is being used to kill unwanted (less economically useful) tree species. Imagine large swathes of dying and drying trees in the middle of a drought. Controlled burns to free land for more profitable tree species were speculated. The cost to the ecosystem is hideous, so is the loss of immaterial (and material) value to the people.

    Not that immaterial value even matters to the powerful. My uncle back in Finland told that they are planning a data center next to a big hydropower plant in the town he lives in, and the land being developed has stone age sites on it. I don’t know how valuable these sites are archeologically, but I suspect they have not been properly studied, either.

  • Power to the People (Or Not)

    Midwest Chick posted recently that Lava Ridge Wind Project in Idaho was cancelled.

    This project was opposed by the residents but the previous administration gave it go ahead in December 2024 anyways. Now the approval was canceled by the Department of Interior due to legal deficiencies, including proximity to a Minidoka National Historic Site (WWII Internment of Japanese-Americans) and local opposition including lawmakers and local 0fficials

    Meanwhile, Maryland is threatened by rolling blackouts. Rolling blackouts may have lots of proximal reasons, but my gut feeling is that the main causes in some order are: fragility of green power sources, deferred maintenance of the grid, and increasing power demands of everything is computerized AI society. In the end of the article was a warning for people with refrigerated medication or medical devises needing electricity to have an action plan in case of outage. The power prices in Maryland and New Jersey are moving up and the consumers are livid.

    As a Californian, I am not in a position to point fingers on energy grids, but ours should have been a warning example, not something to emulate.

  • 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?

  • 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.

  • Insects Are Vanishing

    A small Hymenopteran and a probable bug in the same flower in Berkeley, June 2025

    Recently, a samizdata channel I watch has had multiple reports that insects are missing this summer, in locations scattered around United States.

    This was not unexpected. The reduction in insect numbers started decades ago, if German amateur entomologists’ data is to be believed, but it has since been recorded around the world, including places like Colorado and Costa Rica.

    The scientists have sounded an alarm – insect are possibly the most important group of land animals in terms of species numbers and biomass. They are important pollinators, decomposers, soil and biome modifiers, and they disperse nutrients even when not serving as important food source to other species in food web.

    Bee colony collapses around USA and the rest of the world have been reported for years, and is important for food production and economic reasons. Without the ~2 million beehives transported annually, canola, almond, citrus, and many other insect pollinated crops would collapse. Because not only the natural pollinators are about gone, all the flowers in monoculture orchards are blooming only few weeks a year.

    The loss of insects has been attributed on a variety of reasons, among other things pesticide use (and other environmental poisons, including chemtrails and 5G radiation), monoculture, spreading diseases (especially Varroa mite born in bees), and changing climate. While a large number of species are affected, reading the reports has given me an impression that the selection of missing species seems to vary from place to place, suggesting multifactorial causes. The modern world apparently does not have space for bees or butterflies.

    I would probably blame monoculture, i.e., humans have appropriated too fat a slice of ecological resource flows for themselves. Traditional agricultural landscape in Europe had many verges, ditches and hedges, where wild plants and insects that relied on them could flourish. Now such places are rare.

    For example, I have observed in horror, how most species of the meadow flowers, once common on road sides near Turku, Finland, seem to have had a population collapse in the past decade. I blame this on the municipal maintenance crews mowing the verges before the seeds have ripened. Annual plants fare the worst, but I suspect perennials will eventually follow. Any insects relying on those flowers also likely fared poorly.

    As the small wild spots grow fewer and further between, I suspect we have crossed a critical threshold on insect metapopulation dynamics. Ilkka Hanski, studying Glanville fritillary butterflies living on dry meadows on rocky islands, showed that as long as there were enough patches with butterflies near each other (in this case, the minimum was estimated to be 32 patches covering total 10ha over 5km2 area), individual patches of plants or insects living on them could be ephemeral, i.e., the butterflies on a given patch could disappear or appear from year to year, but the butterfly populations of individual patches form a metapopulation that keeps the species going if the amount and density of patches are sufficient.

    Extrapolated onto insects in general, I think the on-going collapse may indicate that despite good people setting their individual gardens for butterflies, bees and other insects, if a garden population is lost, for example to local bad weather or disease outbreak, there are no longer enough insect patches left nearby to repopulate the patch. Sooner or later, isolated gardens will lose their insects. And then the metapopulation is gone.

    What can be done to reverse this trend? I suggest starting by restoring some verges. Also not mowing your yard while the flowers are seeding, as ugly as the drying seedheads may look. Insects are not very big, so they do not require nearly as large sanctuaries like roaming megafauna, but there should be plenty enough patches to maintain a viable metapopulation, so that if some species is lost from one spot, it can be colonized by insects from the neighboring spots. I believe this type of microrewilding to be compatible with current human population, possibly even essential if we want to retain their ecosystem services necessary for food production. Assuming there are no confounding factors like (possibly) 5G radiation to prevent its success.