Konstantin tells us a grim story of what's going on inside Russia.

Quote:When I was a whipper snapper, my big dream was to work in Hollywood. I didn’t want to be famous or any of that. I wanted to work on big-budget films, where you had the time and money to take hours on a set-up instead of minutes. I was fascinated by the creative part of the industry, not the glitz and glamor part. I wanted to be part of a creative process that made meaningful things.

So, I went to Hollywood after high school, at the tender age of 17. I ended up fleeing for my life after six months. The drug culture there was all-encompassing—constant parties with giant smorgasbords of pills, plants and powders. I felt myself losing touch with reality amid constant sexual harassment. All the young’uns were expected to drop trou for all the old’uns if you wanted work on the Next Big Project.

I should have been clued in. My first break was in New Mexico, on the way to LA, on a film called Convoy (1978), ostensibly directed by Sam Peckinpah. What an opportunity, I naively thought. Peckinpah was never on the set, though. He was waylaid in his trailer on a twinkle trip, while James Coburn, who was supposed to be 2nd Unit director to get his DGA card, ended up doing most of the film.

I did get to hang out with Ernest Borgnine and Ali McGraw, though, so all was not lost.

All of this is to say that Hollywood has been a moral cesspool its entire existence. From the Fatty Arbuckle scandal in 1921 (he was acquitted after three trials), to the latest gossip headlines, Hollywood has been widely known as a Caligula-level bordello that single-handedly kept South American countries afloat. The amount of money that flows through that town boggles the mind, and the Olympic-scale corruption that goes with it would leaves mere mortals playing with their toe jam in padded rooms.

Over the past 10 years, however, Hollywood has pioneered all new depths of degradation and decay. Not only has its products descended to the quality of basement-made fan films with eye-watering budgets, but the denizens of doom have arrogated to themselves the role of lecturing us lowly rubes on the depravity of capitalism and the virtues of Stone-Age lifestyles, while they themselves swim in the luxuries of Inner Party Membership.

Over the last century, the arts have become democratized in ways no one could have imagined in the 1800s. The rise of garage bands over 100-piece orchestras spread access to music out of the stodgy concert halls and into the beer halls. Self-publishing killed the pulp industry, which itself fought off the exclusivity and gate-keeping of the publishing industry. The internet slayed the newspaper, and now video streaming hubs have slaughtered TeeVee networks in much the way TeeVee and video recording decapitated the studio empires.

What we are witnessing now is the looting of Hollywood. It violates all laws of economics that half-billion dollar budgets buy minor performers, grade-school level writing, and amateur production values. The products (no longer films) can’t even compete with Soviet-era agitprop. By comparison, Leni Riefenstahl’s films are masterpieces of state-worshipping propaganda. Modern Hollywood can’t even do that right.

So where is all the money going?

I suspect those huge budgets are being laundered to overseas sweat shops that spit out sub-standard computer-generated crap for pennies on the dollar, and the remainder gets funnelled into private pockets and NGO coffers. Hell, I was producing better computer graphics for corporate videos in the late 90s. Nothing else explains the rubbish shovelled in our faces 30 years later.

So, Hollywood is being dismantled and folks are carrying off anything of value. It’s like watching the innards of a melon get scooped out, waiting for the husk to deflate and rot when it can no longer support itself. The old studios and brands are being bought up by indies looking primarily to own the archives and franchise names, than anything else.

In the meantime, we rubes are subjected to sub-standard slop. The writing is less compelling than AI-generated random monkey text. The lighting is practically non-existent to hide the amateur CGI and incomplete set designs. Shooting begins before there’s even a story to tell, using a technique called “scrapbooking,” with footage that can literally be slotted into any product, and in some cases the final cut is shelved forever and written off (tax fraud too?) because the end product isn’t even worthy of the severely curtailed expectations of “modern” audiences.

Hollywood is dead. Sure, the carcass is twitching and writhing, but it can not be revived. Putrefaction has set in. Content production (I don’t use the word film here) is being democratized, with once-exclusive and wildly expensive tools now widely available, the way synthesized harmonics (I don’t use the word music here) have made high-quality concert instruments into collectors’ items.

I’m not really sorry to see Hollywood go. It had the septic seeds of its own destruction sewn into the industry’s fabric. Sure, it produced films that defined genres and generations, but those days are long gone. Where once we got filet mignon, we now get highly processed lab-grown protein slime. The system itself stifles creativity in the name of gutting the corporate coffers. It’s become so toxic that no life can take hold in what has become an artistic superfund site.

The future lies elsewhere. The performers are digital masks that have never drawn a breath. The writers are phantom marionettes that have never felt a heart beat. There are no grips or gaffers or carpenters, no directors, cinematographers or designers. Just a few prompting lines, and POOF, product minutes later. The new stars will never age, but can assume any visage required. Millions (maybe billions) of “channels” will compete for clicks. No more audience catharsis; no more striving for perfection; no more collaborative inspiration.


Andy Warhol was famous for saying, “In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes,” yet he often denied creating the phrase while often repeating it. Warhol was the prototype of today’s culture—famous for being famous without a shred of talent.

Is it hopeless? Not at all.

In the future (this is my own creation), our time will be known as the Neo-Tenebric Age, or even the Tenebricene Epoch (see Latin word for “darkness”). It will be followed by the Neo-Chóngshēng and the Neo-Vozrozhdéniye, basically the Sino-Russian counterparts to the French and Italian Renaissance.

Human creativity can not be suppressed forever. The history of our species, and even the Neaderthal is littered with artistic endeavors, from handprints to fat female figurines. It won’t be long before “guaranteed human” becomes a selling point. Mark my words.

So, Hollywood is dying and that’s just fine. It’s best years are long past. Let the corpse lay to rest. The time has come to focus on new outlets for human creativity, away from corporate corruption, demographic pandering, and moral decay. We don’t need movie stars lecturing us and large-scale agitprop. Art is the pinnacle of human endeavor, and should elevate mind and spirt, not track mud all over them. Time for commentators like Nerdrotic and Doomcock to stop fretting over the collapse of the old and rotted, and start looking for the new and uplifting.

Stop looking at the building that collapsed, and start looking at the empty lot waiting to be filled.

=====

The early 1980s saw a rash of films on the topic of mass media gone foul, in which I include Sidney Lumet’s masterpiece Network (1976), but for today’s rant I think a double-feature of David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983), with Michael Crichton’s Looker (1981) is just the ticket. Not only are these well-crafted stories from master storytellers, they feature excellent performances (including James Coburn) by real humans, with great practical effects—guaranteed human (no CGI). Enjoy!

A couple of questions as I wonder how much seed money is being supplied by some 3 letter agency from the states or if this is truly an organic self awareness by the people ? I wish them well but alas other than a few lives ruined and a few heads cracked not much other than words will come of this... Call me, "Ye of little faith"!

Thunderbirds is 60 ! , yeah let that sink in.

Quote:To celebrate the launch of our brand new Thunderbirds at 60 show, sit back and enjoy 24/7 Thunderbirds!!

Is there any government program where the crooks do not have their greedy fingers in the 'cookie jar' meant for others ?
https://lists.theepochtimes.com/links/DQ...Bjv9pUyekj

Quote:5,000 Dead People Getting SNAP, 500,000 Receiving Benefits Twice: Rollins

She also said that if some SNAP benefits were cut off, more illegal immigrants would self-deport.

The secretary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said in a recent interview that the department found that 500,000 people are registered twice for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, while more than 5,000 deceased people have also been receiving the benefits.
In an interview on Nov. 12 with Fox News, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins said that SNAP is one of the “most corrupt, dysfunctional programs” in U.S. history, adding that 80 percent of people using the program are able to work. After an investigation, the secretary said that 5,000 dead people were getting SNAP, while another 500,000 people were getting SNAP twice under the same name.
“They choose not to work” because taxpayers are footing the bill, she added, saying that “very big announcements” will be coming in the next week.
Her comment was made as SNAP benefits, known as food stamps, saw setbacks and legal wrangling during the government shutdown that was ended on Wednesday evening.
Rollins also suggested that if some SNAP benefits are cut off, more illegal immigrants will self-deport, which she said would change the outcome of the Census.
Earlier in the month, as SNAP benefits were suspended, Rollins described “massive fraud” in the system, noting that the fraud was discovered only in states that had cooperated with a prior investigation. She said that 21 states refused to hand over their SNAP data to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was established by the Trump administration earlier this year.

After the shutdown ended, the USDA, which runs the program, issued new guidance on Nov. 13 saying that “state agencies must take immediate steps to ensure households receive their full November allotments promptly.”
“The reduction in maximum allotments for November is no longer in effect,” it added. “State agencies should immediately resume issuing combined allotments for November and December for newly certified applicants who apply after the 15th of the month.”
Officials with USDA said that because households that receive SNAP didn’t get a full month of benefits and saw uncertainty, the department sent instructions to states “to not issue countable months for time limited participants for November 2025” and that states “should resume normal procedures for countable months beginning in December 2025.”
The federal food program is used by about 42 million people, or around one in eight Americans, namely in lower-income households. They receive an average of $190 monthly per person.
In some states where SNAP recipients received nothing in November, officials said they are working to load money onto people’s electronic benefit cards by Friday, if not sooner.
The Arkansas Department of Human Services said on Nov. 13 that full November SNAP benefits are expected to be available at midnight for people to buy groceries.
“This has been difficult for our beneficiaries, and we are incredibly appreciative to our partners across the state who helped bridge the gap through food pantries, donation drives, and other assistance efforts,” Department Secretary Janet Mann said in a statement.
Officials in West Virginia, which also had not issued November benefits, said the full monthly amount should be available by Nov. 14. And Alabama said full SNAP benefits should be issued on Nov. 13.
The shutdown ended as President Donald Trump signed a continuing resolution to fund the federal government until late January, coming after the Senate and House passed a funding package.

My trust level just keeps falling lower & lower.

Quote:November 12, 2025 / Joseph P. Farrell

Well, we were warned, by none other than the former Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Catherine Austin Fitts: "There is no cyber-system that is secure," an aphorism that, with time, I expect to find in collections of such aphorisms like the Analects of Confucius: priceless wisdom for the times. My philosophical turn of mind is prompted by the following important article that was shared by M.D. (with our gratitude):

India's biggest data breach? Hacking gang claims to have stolen 815 million people's personal information

Now, in case you did not know, India is one of those countries more or less on board with the moves toward an all-digital society, including for things like personal documentation, and money (in the form of so-called "digital currency", which, as Fitts, I, and many others have noted, is not a currency at all, but a corporate coupon whose "value" can be adjusted to your "social performance", i.e., your conformity to the wishes, desires, and agendas of oligarchs and plutocrats).

So when India, whose population is a little over one billion has the personal information of 815 million of that billion - a substantial majority - stolen, then you know you have a teensy-tiny little problem on your hands:

Quote:The news of what is claimed to be such a significant data leak couldn't come at a worse time for the Indian authorities.

In September, security researcher Sourajeet Majumder uncovered a vulnerability on an Indian government website that had unwittingly leaked documents which included Aadhaar numbers, identity card details and even copies of residents' fingerprints.

By mid-October the website flaw had been fixed, thanks to Majumder's responsible disclosure. But it is, of course, possible that fraudsters and online criminals had been able to exploit it for nefarious purposes beforehand.

If data breaches like these keep happening, it's understandable why many people will feel increasingly reluctant to trust the authorities with their personally identifiable and biometric data.

You can change a password, and you can change your bank account. Hey, you can even change your name if you really feel you have to. But good luck changing your fingerprints.

In other words, if one can hack the unhackable "wallets" behind klepto-currencies (as has been done), and any digital database whatsoever, one can hack those digital IDs as well. (And, bad news, there are ways of concealing or even "changing" your fingerprints, too.)

And of course, if one can hack those things, then one can hack bank accounts, particularly if those accounts are full of nothing but digital currency.

And all of that introduces a measure of risk and instability into the financial markets (it's called volatility by the finance wonks, but perhaps a better analogy would be "California brush fire").

But the article raises an intriguing possibility for high octane speculation, and regular readers here know all-too-well that I simply cannot resist a run to the end of the speculation twig and a Wile E. Coyote nosedive into the canyon of speculation below. That possibility was raised in my mind by the following statement, italicized in the quotation above: "If data breaches like these keep happening, it's understandable why many people will feel increasingly reluctant to trust the authorities with their personally identifiable and biometric data."

Ya think?

Seriously, though, the speculation is simple: what if there is a group of computer nerds spread around the world, who see the looming crisis that this move to an all-digital financial-surveillance system entails, and are trying to wake people up, and simultaneously, fight "delaying actions" by such means? It may not be as goofy as it sounds. After all, the idea of such "cyber-warfare" has been around for a long time, even being popularized by the 1984 fiction novel Softwar. It became a reality during the infamous "Farewell" spy case, when a French government mole inside the KGB helped the Soviet Union "steal" software that had a back door planted into it by Western intelligence and software experts, who used it to create a gas pipeline explosion in the Soviet Union,  critically wounding the Soviet economy. (The resulting explosion was visible from space.) More recently, we have seen the computer hacking group Anonymous, and now a similar group active in India. Finally, we know various nations - China, Russia, and the USA among them - have whole covert divisions of government working on cyber warfare. And in countries pondering moves to more and more digital "currency", "equities" and so on, those cyber warfare departments can quickly become economic warfare components, as nations compete to develop various nasty means of disrupting their adversaries' economies, including outright theft and distribution of assets before the victim has time to react.

We'll know when we wake up to the headlines "Bank of International Settlements Accounts Hacked; Authorities in Search for Culprits."

Permit me to utter those four wonderful words: "We told you so!"

Time to butter the popcorn... Sleep well, Mr. Carstens...

See you on the flip side...

Quote:Ross Coulthart and constitutional lawyer Daniel Sheehan discuss the release of the John F. Kennedy assassination files. Sheehan alleges former CIA director Allen Dulles greenlit the assassination over Kennedy’s covert attempts to disassemble the country’s nuclear arsenal. Sheehan also alleges that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the only shooter, that mafia hitmen were there to fire additional shots, and that, before the assassination, Kennedy asked to explore the topic of UAPs.

Looks like a flat spin with no tail section to me

3 email excerpts have been released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee relating to Donald Trump , they are as follows.

Quote:In the first exchange of emails, between Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, dated 2 April 2011, Epstein wrote:

Quote:i want you to realize that that dog that hasn't barked is trump.. [REDACTED NAME] spent hours at my house with him ,, he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75% there

Maxwell responded:

Quote:I have been thinking about that...

In the second exchange of emails, between Epstein and Michael Wolff, a journalist who has written several books about the Trump administration, dated 31 January 2019, Epstein wrote:

Quote:[REDACTED NAME] mara lago. [REDACTED] . trump said he asked me to resign, never a member ever. . of course he knew about the girls as he asked ghislaine to stop

The third email exchange, between Epstein and Wolff, dated between 15 and 16 December 2015 shows that Wolff wrote:

Quote:I hear CNN planning to ask Trump tonight about his relationship with you--either on air or in scrum afterwards.

Epstein replied:

Quote:if we were able to craft an answer for him, what do you think it should be?

Wolff responded:

Quote:I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on the plane or the house, then that gives you a valuable PR and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or, if it really looks like he could win, you could save him, generating a debt. Of course, it is possible that, when asked, he'll say Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime.

https://news.sky.com/story/trump-epstein...n-13468686