This week has been very strange, even by 2020s standards.
Sap on a tree trunk, August 22nd, 2025, in evening sun light. Just something pretty.
I have been employed since September, a couple of temp extensions and I got another extension last week. Have been working hard to justify my continued paycheck, so posting has been sparse. It will probably continue to be so, until I get things stabilized.
The inflation is getting out of hand. On Thursday, the gold visited briefly at about 5600$ per troy ounce, silver tested 120+ range before settling below 120$. In the cafeteria, where I often go for lunch, the cheap meal of 2 pieces of chicken, a piece of corn bread and some side was 20$, a bigger meal 35$ and there was an 8-piece 70$ option, too. Then on Friday an incomprehensible double digit collapse of gold and silver prices, some say 8 – 10 sigma event. Also crypto went down, hard. The metal move was some times blamed on nomination of Warsh as the next Chairman of the Fed, but metals don’t move that much for nearly anything, at least they did not used to. People online grumble about market manipulation, but even that does not make sense, unless the economy is very, very fragile. A few years back, I could not imagine an event smaller than WWIII moving metal prices that fast. No, scratch that. A few years back, I could not imagine metal prices to move that fast. Period. However, I doubt the chicken will be cheaper next week.
Greenland forgotten, our troops are amassing near Gulf of Persia. Government is currently under partial shutdown. On the top of the shutdown, the Federal administration is trying to stop disbursements to the states that refuse to investigate various forms of fraud on social services, health care, etc. There is a simmering tension that might flare at any provocation back to armed violence – the states are choosing their sides whether to support the Feds on immigration enforcement or not.
Meanwhile, there is the Moltbook issue. To me, it is unclear if this is a clever community make-believe or whether the AI agents are gaining autonomy or something between. Some in the Internet are screeching about Skynet, but it is the reality of our energy infrastructure that is a kicker. For example, there were over 180k households without electricity in Tennessee after a winter storm, tens of thousands still today, though the repairs are ongoing relatively fast. Even under the best of the weather conditions, many interconnects are under enormous strain between the Green New Leap that has destabilized the grid and the AI server farms which require power of millions of households. If I were a betting person, I would place money on the complexity collapse over the shiny AI future.
So, while charging my phone, I decided to use the time for making a no-context video of clips taken August 22nd, 2025, and then start writing a blog post as a place for that video.
Seed structures fluttering in wind, black ants on a tree (some sap)
Too drained to work on long posts, I’d like to comment that purple magnolias have began to bloom, as have fruit trees (of plum, cherry, etc. variety – nispero blooms I have seen weeks ago, and citruses seem to flower year around.) Maybe I’ll post a photo or two, but here is a gif of sunlight flickering against redwood trunk, December 06th, 2025.
December 6th is the Finnish Independence Day, though they have amended their constitution so that they are members of EU.
Moreover, soon after the war in Ukraine flared up in 2022, and Finland also joined NATO. I don’t know what the current stance of the Finnish government is, but lately the Finnish media seemed to be on Denmark’s side against USA over Greenland despite NATO (US) having full use of Finnish military bases, at least as far as I could tell. The two officers Finland sent to Greenland returned back, mission over. Finnish news feeds are back to Russia and Ukraine, though recent headlines are mentioning possible peace negotiations. Hopefully, there will be peace soon, though I would not quite optimistic yet.
What may have motivated the peace negotiations is the parlous shape of Western economies, meaning our ability to finance wars is becoming limited. I would prefer a peace treaty over total economic collapse as a method for ending that dreadful war, though.
Long time no write. I got employed (at will, contract until the end of November) and have been working since last week’s Monday. Still learning the ropes, enough of that.
Federal government
Secretary of War, Hegseth, had called all generals, 1-star and up for an all hands meeting. This includes those who have ‘active situations’ going. Very unusual. The rumors online ranged from imminent intensification of WWIII, invasion of Venezuela, an alien arrival, a complete reorganization of US military, or mass lay offs to clean out our top heavy military organization chart. The official explanation was pep talks telling the armed forces to merit base up, go on diet, and concentrate on learning how to efficiently win wars rather than having rainbow events and PC talk. It is generally thought that the pep talks were a cover for something else, though what that might be is unknown to public.
The mass lay offs in military would have dovetail nicely with the threatened imminent mass lay offs of Federal bureaucracy in general, due to government shutdown, because congress cannot (again) pass a budget, or as the case has been for quite a few years, a continuing resolution. Trump has been itching to take a machete or a flamethrower at our bureaucratic jungle and to cut our budget deficit (our current Federal debt has ballooned since the summer 36 trillion to today’s over 37.5 trillion and keeps rising)or at least the funding to his political opponents. Instead of putting the Federal workers on furlough with back pay when the continuing resolution has been passed, the president proposes to simply fire the non-essentials (or a fraction of them) to reduce Federal complexity and expenses. Considering the recent increase in debt levels, methinks, this is an opportunity for a political purge, any savings would be incidental.
This is, of course, ‘to combat the illegal immigration’ (much encouraged by successive Labour and Tory governments alike.) Exactly how the UK government believes forcing digital ID on people who do not use even paper IDs is going to help, but I think the digital ID for legitimate, as in taxable, work and other economic activity will collapse what is left of UK finances. Or the people will revolt (though at this point I think that less likely than finding metabolically active extraterrestrial life.) In any case, immigrants without ID could presumably still access welfare and healthcare, even if they cannot work legally.
While I unfortunately did not find a reference, I recall that during COVID, Sweden discussed banning cash, but the government retreated when they realized that large enough fraction of of their economy functioned on informal basis to sink the rest of the economy(sarskillt utsetta omraden would have exploded or become even less governable than currently. While the White Hall may know their people better than I and are banking on them being hopelessly obedient (rebels having left during 17th and 18th century), lots of White Hall mandarins are clueless elites that live separate from normal life and consequences of their actions.
In South Korea, there was a big fire in a government data center, which crippled many of the government services, including things requiring digital ID. The fire started from a lithium battery (the batteries were being replaced because they were getting old) and it is unknown how much actual data the South Korean government lost.
While I was anticipating hackers having a fiesta with people’s IDs online, and rolling blackouts and other such infrastructure misery making them unpracticable (the Indian Aadhar system has reportedly led to deaths by starvation due to lack of access to government social security), I had forgotten about the vulnerability of the data centers. TietoEVRY, which is a major PPP contractor for various data base services to Finnish government (including the election vote results, at least once in collaboration with Scytl when still known as TietoEnator) managed to years ago (when it was known just as Tieto) totally mess up multiple Swedish databases. Considering this and the South Korean example, I expect any digital ID to result in Kafkaesque nightmare for the subjects and massive confusion and potentially paralyzing dysfunction to the governments. But perhaps that is not a bug but a feature – maybe it will allow greater variety for financial oppression while reducing the citizens’ ability to defend themselves against the governmental predators, the profits of which are then calculated to outweigh the cost of national collapses.
Local news
California has on November 4th special elections about redistricting. The cost estimates range from 250+ to 280+ million dollars, that is over quarter of billion dollars to invest on Democrats (maybe) taking Congress (and US budget.) Nevertheless, as a California tax payer, I am annoyed. I have gotten two mailings of official election information. I suppose that is my tax dollars at work.
War and Troubles
Drone attacks and air space violations of NATO countries are intensifying. Involved parties: at least Poland, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, and, of course, Russia and Ukraine. I probably have missed countries – these days the news come too fast for me to follow. Also who did what to whom is unclear, including to many of the targets. Meanwhile, I am more worried about cyber attacks and domestic terrorists.
As mentioned in the previous Restless Times posting, France just changed their prime minister.
But so did Nepal. Their parliament burned, and the prime minister fled on helicopter. People were teed off by the government decision to shut down all social media because the companies refused to censor content that Nepalese government did not like (no, I don’t have any details) and then the pro-social media demonstrators were met with a hail of bullets, and then it turned out that the number of teed off citizens exceeded the government firepower and willingness to use it. Some people are suspicious about the social media companies’ unwillingness to censor in Nepal, after all, the social media have been over the years been weaponized for color revolutions and some interests may have wanted the Nepalese government out. However, the people of Nepal have probably been thoroughly disgusted by their leaders and corruption so I think the uprising was organically powered, with social media companies merely allowing the people to egg each other on.
In Qatar, Israeli airstrike is claimed to have taken out Hamas leadership. There are dissenting reports. The news have within the last decade become a fun-house mirror maze, where people hear what they are supposed to think and then are left to figure out if anything happened let alone in the manner the news present the events.
Gold prices are shooting up. I am waiting to get some money to buy gold and silver. The physical metals, not the futures. Currently, as I type, I read that each silver ounce in the COMEX vaults has been overbooked by 36 times, i.e., there are 36 paper contract ounces to each physical ounce, which means that in case of a panic, the first / strongest to assert their claim will get the nuggets. Whether the rest will get even the cash value of their paper metals will depend on whether the vault on which you have claims has money to cover the debts. In other words, the same logic as in Resolution Weekend.
Europeans are busy with military exercises. There were at least six simultaneous ones within Finnish territory, including joint force exercises and urban warfare exercises, and Finland also participated in the CBNR exercise in Sweden. Poland had massive exercises, and aside from Quadriga exercise, Germany has moved a panzer brigade to Baltics. The French and UK orders regarding hospital readiness in case of mass casualty event I may have already mentioned earlier. I had so hoped that the United States 2024 election results would have brought peace, but depressingly it looks like this will not happen.
Also Belarus says they shot down stray drones (either Ukrainian or Russian) and warned Poland about the arriving drones. However, there are too many reports for me to follow but it sure looks bad.
In Vilnius, there were LNG rail car explosions. In the report I read, they were attributed to OHSA violations, but the cause is still being investigated.
Secretary of War Hegseth gave a speech to military in Puerto Rico telling the soldiers that this was not training but to end poisoning of the American people.
Economy will not improve, either. Layoffs are increasing, but the hirings (at least in the USA) keep getting revised down. On Tuesday, I saw in LinkedIn feed a discussion about even recruiters finding new careers (sorry no link or screenshot.) I have been actively looking for a job since last year, and based on my job listing feeds the job market has been getting crazier by month.
Needless to say, I am doubtful about the idea of getting a job. At least a job matching my skills and work experience. Why I get advertisements for ‘CDL-A drivers needed’ is anyone’s guess, I don’t have a commercial trucking license, but based on recent news, maybe that is not a hard barrier in California.
Crude claims that USA just wants Venezuelan oil again, just like in the past 20+ years of regime change attempts, seem somewhat plausible.
It might be the Venezuelan threats against Guyanan oil fields in Essequibo that are currently exploited ExxonMobil that triggered the latest action.
An infographic shown by X user placed Canada among the high oil resource countries – most of which were either destabilized, contested, under hybrid warfare / influence campaigns, or Western sock puppets. Kazakhstan may have been the only exception in the list, but that may be just US being more remote than Russia and China. Bouts of sanity, like recognizing the limits of former ‘hyperpower’ are extremely rare, rarer than pacifism, in Washington DC.
But a grim fact is that the Western technocivilization is running out of energy, among other resources. Whether for AI powered surveillance dystopia or utopistic popst-scarcity dream, reality is reasserting itself crushing them all with resource scarcity.
Looks like the oil wars (including hybrid warfare), this time north and south, are back on menu. With War on Drugs joining hands with War on Terror as casus belli.
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.
Our current proxy war in Ukraine is not going well, and we are pulling our weapons help away (every other day, it seems, on the other days we are giving them more). European part of NATO is upset but considering the state of their economies and especially theirarmies (with a couple of exceptions), I doubt their help will be decisive in any manner. If it would be, this war would have been over years ago.
PlanktonPunkt 