I'm hearing Saudi Arabia will not be renewing the 50-year petrodollar agreement with the United States. Instead, they will be selling oil in multiple currencies, including the Chinese RMB, Euros, Yen, and Yuan.

Quote:And I feel fine



On the 6th of June 1974, the Watergate scandal was in full bloom, the global economy was in the crapper, and I was anxiously awaiting my 13th birthday to become a full-fledged teenager. President Nixon had instituted a national 55mph speed limit, which essentially pissed off everyone who lived west of the Mississippi River. Japan was the China of the day and the Vietnam war was nearing the end of its decade-long stranglehold on Merkin culture.

At that moment, Prince Fahd ibn Abdel Aziz and US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were sitting down to change the world and create an empire. The Petrodollar Pact, among other things, forced the world to buy oil and gas in US dollars, and created Saudi Aramco, the single most powerful energy company ever.

At the same time, Nixon had ended the Bretton Woods agreement and closed the gold window at the Federal Reserve Bank, thus severing US currency from its Constitutional link to precious metals. This event tied the dollar’s value to energy instead of gold and allowed the dollar to be inflated to unimaginable levels as a debt instrument.

Suddenly, the world desperately needed dollars to buy energy for economic growth, and the US had the power to hand out “aid” and loans — through the IMF created by Bretton Woods — which meant the politicians could go on an economic binge unlike anything seen before, and the inflationary consequences could be exported and amortized over the entire planet.

Fifty years later, the US has $34 trillion in public debt, not to mention the untold trillions in global private debt (namely the Eurodollar) denominated in dollars and tied intricately to US control over energy and the means to pay for it.

And it all ended on Monday.

With the US dollar no longer tied to gold and no longer needed to buy energy, Congress no longer controls global economic growth. Who will buy US Treasuries if they don’t need dollars to buy energy? How will the US be able to sanction its opposition if it cannot hold the dollar up as coercion and incentive? How will Wall Street dominate global finance if the dollar imperative is lost?

The most destructive part is what will happen when nations begin to sell off US Treasuries to diversify their foreign currency reserves and promote their own currencies on a suddenly-level playing field?

The net effect will likely be that the US will no longer be able to export its inflation, and the domestic economy will inflate like a massive balloon, as the politicians scramble to avoid anything sharp. Government spending will perforce come to an inglorious halt, as Congress’ ability to borrow funds dries up. Social safety nets will crater and the country’s socio-economic free ride of the past half century will abruptly end.

On the global stage, US Treasuries will become nearly worthless, and private debt will simply roll over into alternative currencies, such as yuan, rupee and Swiss franc. There will be some amount of turmoil as everyone scrambles to re-denominate contracts and loan agreements, but it will stabilize relatively quickly, especially with the introduction of the BRICS’ new blockchain payment system that circumvents the SWIFT system that has dominated global banking and trade since the introduction of the Petrodollar.

Gloom and doom?

Hard to say. I think life in the US, and especially for the Political Class, is going to get mighty uncomfortable. With crushing debt and waning global influence, the feds will not be able to buy loyalty from anyone, and especially folks at home. The profligate lifestyle that most Merkins have grown up with is coming to a swift (pun intended) and messy end. Certainly the Bumbledicks will no longer have any carrots with which to entice compliance.

The world, on the other hand, will undergo a recession, but it will end quickly as markets are suddenly unshackled by the Petrodollar and vast new opportunities open up for trade and finance.

It seems to me that the spread of Fascism that I’ve railed against for years will be stalled, as the vast buckets of dollars poured into the NGOs and quasi-governmental organizations dry up, along with their influence. All of these interlocking hydras have built their cages on US dominance and the universal need for dollars. This eventuality has likely been the impetus for megacorps like Vanguard and BlackRock to rapidly adopt and expand their crypto ETF holdings.

The most interesting development to watch will be how the Central Banking cabal adjusts (or doesn’t). They have been pushing their CBDCs with fear and panic behind their eyes, but the CBDC system is simply a desperate ploy to compete with blockchain systems and maintain the Petrodollar hegemony under a digitized guise. All indications are that this effort will fail miserably, and national banking systems will be freed of this monkey on their backs.

The direct and iterative effects of the Petrodollar demise are myriad and reach into every aspect of global economic activity.

The Russians have been discussing and planning for the demise of the Western financial system since at least the late 1990s. This is likely the primary impetus behind the current Western war on Russia and its allies. Anyone who has played king of the hill knows that “when you reach the top, you’re on the bottom.” Sitting on a throne is the very definition of paranoia, and the US has become the very definition of complacency after 50 years of inhabiting the High See.

It may take as long to unwind the Petrodollar as it took to build it. There is no telling what the outcome will be, since history has a habit of being non-linear. That it represents the end of a long-standing regime is without a doubt, but how it will shake out in our daily lives belongs to future generations.

With the death of Henry Kissinger last year, everyone who created our current world order is dead, and perhaps that’s a sign that it’s time to move on. It will be a century or more before humanity has a grasp on where we are, much less on where we are going. Profound shifts in power structures have far-reaching and incomprehensible ripples through human events. Western legal systems still use Latin, after all.

What we can say with authority is that the world has irrevocably changed in a way that is and will continue affecting all of us. The severity and benefits depend heavily on our individual abilities to adapt and prosper in the midst of turbulence. Like the recent Singapore Airlines tragedy, where the plane suddenly dropped nearly 200 feet, some will die, some will be injured, and some will survive and sell the rights to their stories.

It behooves us to buckle up and try our best to read the tea leaves. We can assess the most likely scenarios and perform a cost/benefit analysis for each of them. My perspective and experience in Indonesia will likely differ widely from someone in Peoria, but we will all lose something and gain something else.

As the Mandarin proverb says, “乱中有机" (luàn zhōng yǒu jī) — in chaos there is opportunity.

It seems even the Brain dead FBI is warning of an imminent attack from some group of illegals who have been crossing the border... In just the last month at around 5000 a day there seems to be plenty of Chinese and Russians to help a general cause. I just hope when the fireworks start it starts in the Sanctuary Cities.

The Bird's name is Muppet not Albert ! You can skip most of the tedious hatching process ... Much work went into the making of this video so I do respect the guy.. It is kinda an Auaaahhh video for anyone who likes birds..

A light subject -some may say, but still an effect on people from around the world.

Sycamore Gap became semi-famous when shown in the movie 'Robin Hood, Prince Of Thieves', but brought
more attention when two bastards sneaked out at during a very windy night and took a chainsaw to the renown
tree next to Hadrian's Wall.



Here's a well-built video that shows the current status of the crime.



(Sorry about the traffic noise!)

I chose to post this in cryptozoology, one because people have been saying she's harder to get a pic of than Bigfoot, and secondly I really really wasnt sure which other forum this shoulld go in (Im new here), soo mods move this if it fits better somewhere else.

Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, has not been seen since December 28th last year, and people have been asking question, and the palace PR team are trying to construct a narrative that is acceptable to tell the public.

I have  the opinion shes dead, others say in a coma, the palace said shes not in Huston having cancer treatment, others say shes kidnaped.

A lot of commentators have the upcoming Trooping the Color event as a major issue her and the two younger kids not in attendance.

Most of us Australians dont give a fk about the royal family, but its not about them, its about a missing person whos job basically is to be photographed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/KateMiddletonMissing/new/

If this topic is covered in another thread, I apologise, and mods delete.

From our computers, smartphones and tablets, let’s all take a minute to thank Lynn Conway for without her contributions to the world of microchip design, we probably wouldn’t be where we are today? At one point she even worked for DARPA, everyone’s favorite government organization loved by conspiracy theorists everywhere.

Conway died from a heart condition at her home in Jackson, Michigan, on June 9, 2024, at the age of 86. Her husband, Charles Rogers, reported that she passed away due to a heart condition. He was by her side during her passing. “I was by her side the entire time, and was holding her hand when she passed,” he said. “I don’t know what I will do without the love of my life.”

The best comprehensive quick read of her life and accomplishments can be found at Wikipedia Lynn Conway. If you’ve never heard of this amazing person, what she accomplished and what she went through, it is well worth a read.

Quote:Who was Lynn Conway?

Born in White Plains, New York in 1938 , Lynn Conway’s early life was defined by crippling gender dysphoria, which she began experiencing at a young age.

She entered MIT in 1955 but ultimately dropped out over her attempt to transition between 1957-58, which was incredibly difficult due to the hostile anti-LGBTQ+ climate of the 1950s.

After living in San Francisco for several years, she enrolled at Columbia University in 1961, where she received a bachelor’s and master’s degree in electrical engineering after graduating two years later.

Conway was eventually recruited by IBM in Menlo Park California – eventually dubbed Silicon Valley – to work on various projects, including what would become the world’s fastest supercomputer at the time.

Things became sour, however, after she attempted to transition following a consultation with pioneering gender-affirming care researcher Harry Benjamin, who revolutionised trans-healthcare in the 1960s.

Despite initially being supportive of Conway’s transition, even changing her name on company records, IBM eventually made the decision to fire her based on her gender identity alone.

On the decision by IBM, Conway told the LA Times in 2020 that she was nonjudgmental about having been let go.

Far be it from being discouraged from the hiccup, Conway eventually made her way back into the computer engineering industry, completely obscuring her identity and past as a way to work in the field without judgement.

By the 1970s, Conway had quickly climbed the ranks across computer engineering and was eventually recruited by Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) in 1973.

There, she made some of her biggest contributions to microchip design and research, worked with MIT graduates on co-authoring a book on revolutionary processing research, and taught an experimental course on Very Large Scale Integrated chip design (VSLI).

With her contributions to the field continuing up to and into the 1980s, she was recruited by the Department of Defense as an assistant director for strategic computing, where she spearheaded research into machine intelligence technology.

She eventually settled into an academia job as professor emerita of electrical engineering a computer science at the University of Michigan, where she stayed until retiring in 1999.

The Appalachian region of America is old. Very old. Perhaps one of, if not THE, oldest existing mountain range in the world. Once a huge, tall mountain range exceeding even the current Himalayas in height, these mountains once rose to around 45,000 feet above sea level, although now they max out at around 6000 feet, after millions of years of erosion.

The only older mountain range I'm aware of is the bedrock remnants of some ancient mountains east of here near the Virginia - North Carolina border that now amount to mere folded hills, the remaining core of a great mountain range that has worn down to nearly nothing over time.

There is strangeness in these hills. Old family tales tell some of it, but those can always be set down as "campfire stories"... until one experiences some of the weirdness for themselves, as I have. Over a long lifetime, one may expect to encounter the occasional glitch in the matrix here, always unexpectedly. I've seen and heard things here that I can't explain. Note well that I said I can't explain them, not that there are no explanations. Just because I can't figure something out doesn't mean that it can't be figured out.

Some things I've never even heard of anywhere else. Not old legends, not shared experiences across a wide range of people, just one-off things that leave me scratching my head and wondering what the hell was that? As an example was the "clanking" noise I once heard coming from the ground at my feet. Never heard of that anywhere else but here, and it wasn't something I expected to encounter on that dark night so many years ago. It just suddenly WAS, and I've never heard it again afterwards.

Other things fit into a more universal framework, like "skyquakes", strange noises emanating from the skies with no observable source. Grace is actually the one who first detected and recorded those at this location. She couldn't explain them, either, although she has zero belief in paranormal things. That doesn't negate the fact that she has also experienced things here in the Appalachians that she has no explanation for. The skyquakes are one, and feeling... "something"... or "someone"... get into the bed at night when no one is there is another.

Note that in recent years, I've heard tales of "skinwalkers", "the rake", "chpuacabras", etc. I tend to discount most of those as "copycat" stories set in these mountains that actually belong to other areas. "Skinwalkers", for example, are a Navajo thing that have never occurred here. This isn't Navajo country. Shapeshifting witches of the Indian variety here almost always changed into owls. "The Rake", "Chupacabras", and "Slenderman" all had their start elsewhere with the development of the internet, and have never occurred here despite tales to the contrary. There is already enough native weirdness here without having to import tales from other places or brand new inventions designed for internet dispersal.

So this thread is intended as a collection point for strange but true tales from the Appalachians. I'll try to add some of my personal experiences here over time, but also more general stories are welcome to it. "Feral people", "Moon-eyed People", strange disappearances, cryptids and the like are all fair game.

To kick things off, here is a video that covers most of the mountain range, north to south, with some of the strangeness that radiates from these mountains. It's a pretty fair overview of what goes on here.




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I was sent a link to here and signed up, Ill prolly just lurk for a bit. 

Looking forward to reading some interesting posts.

You wouldn’t know it though from my latest crazy dangerous invention.

With the success of my last rustic farmhouse style furniture build, I’ve begun another although somewhat more ambitious and complicated. This time though, rather than using fence pickets and 2x4s I actually bought some nice wood (which is an oxymoron) from the Homo Depot. The problem is it looks too new and therefore needed to be distressed to look old to get the look I was going for.

There’s about a million videos on YouTube on how to distress wood, each with different techniques. Some just a combination of stains and paints with others involving a more hardcore approach which is a lot more authentic looking and since hardcore and danger are my middle name, this is the route I took. I spent  five hours in 110+ degree heat today distressing my main pieces (legs and cross-members) and ended up with something I am good with

I started out with a 4” holesaw used by hand down the length of each board to rough up and dig into the grain. The two-sided legs are 6 foot tall.  I then beat everything with a hammer, slammed it with a heavy rusty old chain and poked about 10,000 holes with a punch and screwdriver. I still didn’t have quite the rough sawn look I wanted and wondered what else I could use to give it for that came out of an old sawmill look.

Maybe it was the heat or maybe just the lack of good common sense? I am normally very safety conscious when using my power tools but after rigging my device together, with visions of gutting myself and watching my intestines splooge out of my body, I smiled at myself for my inventiveness.

Taking a buffer/sander thing and removing the rubber pad, I affixed a very old and dead but still damn sharp 10” tablesaw blade.  To my credit, I did point the leading edge of the teeth so they rotated in a backward direction.

May I present the tool I’ve called “Death Wish”!





I imagined if this was battery powered, it would be handy in a zombie apocalypse. I imagined myself as Ash in the Evil Dead but then came back to reality.

Again to my credit, I didn’t rev the thing up to full speed and only put it to wood gently after releasing the trigger on the spin down and it was still scary AF but kind of fun anyway and gave me enough of the crosshatch look I wanted. In a few places I cut it a little deeper than in the below pic.



On the left is the after and on the right is the virgin wood. (please, no jokes about virgin wood!) Combined with the other wood I am using in this project which is already rough cut, I think this is going to look great but the whole process was a lot of hot long hard work. (what's wrong with me tonight?)

When I finished, I dismantled my implement of mass destruction, thanked my lucky stars I wasn’t dead or on the way to the hospital and told myself never to do stupid shit like this again! My arms are going to be sore tomorrow.

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This never happens, well, only reported when it involves Democratic candidates cheating each other. 


https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/06...ion-fraud/

https://ctmirror.org/2024/06/11/bridgepo...ee-ballot/

Quote:It took several years to finally arrest the Democrats who engaged in election fraud in 2019.

Wanda Geter-Pataky, one of the bad actors involved in the 2019 fraud continued her illegal ballot dumps in the 2023 primary mayoral race.


The election fraud in Bridgeport was so bad in 2023 that a judge overturned the mayoral primary results
Last November Superior Court Judge William Clark ordered a new election to be held, citing bombshell video evidence of election fraud as the basis for his decision.


The Gateway Pundit reported in September that mayoral candidate John Gomes’ campaign released a damning video showing evidence of election fraud in the Bridgeport Democratic primary. The video has prompted an investigation by the Bridgeport Police Department for “possible misconduct.”


The video on the Gomes campaign’s Facebook page shows a woman dropping stacks of ‘illegal’ ballots into an absentee ballot box outside the Bridgeport government center, where the city’s Registrar of Voters office is located.