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Why Complex Systems Collapse Faster

Why Complex Systems Collapse Faster All civilizations collapse. The challenge is how to slow it down enough to prolong our happiness. Temple of the Great Jaguar, GuatemalaDENNIS JARVIS During the first century of our era, the Roman philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca wrote to his friend Lucilius that life would be much happier if things would […]

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Destroyed by its own Propaganda: How Italy Lost World War II

Destroyed by its own Propaganda: How Italy Lost World War II Someday, someone will write a history of the covert psyops of the 20th and 21st centuries. It will surely be a difficult story to unravel, because they are, indeed “covert operations.” Yet, it is not impossible to detect certain patterns that repeat all over […]

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All the World is a Stage: How the Global Drama is Being Played Out

All the World is a Stage: How the Global Drama is Being Played Out The “Commedia dell’Arte” was a form of popular theatre, often played without a script. The masked actors would improvise according to the characteristics of their “persona”, their mask. There are many ways of predicting the future, and my remote ancestors, the […]

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Back to Reality: We are All Children of Oil

February 28, 2022

Back to Reality: We are All Children of Oil Colin Campbell, founder of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), speaks in Pisa in 2006. Officially, the Powers that Be (PTB) ignored the ASPO message, but it could be that they understood it all too well. That would explain many things about the […]

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How we Became What we Despised. Turning the West into a New Soviet Union

February 13, 2022

How we Became What we Despised. Turning the West into a New Soviet Union For everything that happens, there is a reason for it to happen. Even for turning the former Free World into something that looks very much like the old “Evil Empire,” the Soviet Union. I understand that this series of reflections […]

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The Greatest Holobiont on Earth: Old-Growth Forests

February 12, 2022

The Greatest Holobiont on Earth: Old-Growth Forests A “holobiont” is a living creature formed of independent, but cooperating, organisms. It is a wide-ranging concept that can explain many things not just about the ecosystem of our planet, but also about human society, and even more than that. Photo courtesy of Chuck Pezeshky. This post was […]

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How much does it cost to buy a scientist? Less than you would imagine, and it is perfectly legal

January 31, 2022

How much does it cost to buy a scientist? Less than you would imagine, and it is perfectly legal Not a long, long time ago, in a region not so far, far away, a private company decided to set up a CO2 extraction plant. The idea was to extract carbon dioxide from the ground and […]

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The Secret of Propaganda: Teaching Obedience

January 26, 2022

The Secret of Propaganda: Teaching Obedience A classic example of modern propaganda. It dates from the 1940s and it shamelessly exploits the principle of authority. Note that there is no proof or evidence that a majority of doctors smoked Camels more than any other cigarettes. And there is no proof or evidence that, even if […]

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The Saga of Crude Oil. An Epic Story told by Douglas Reynolds

January 20, 2022

The Saga of Crude Oil. An Epic Story told by Douglas Reynolds The “bell curve” of oil production has been popularized together with the concept of “peak oil,” the point of the curve where the global crude oil production reaches its maximum, just before starting its irreversible decline. There is something universal in this curve […]

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How to keep gasoline prices low by bombing your gas station

January 10, 2022

How to keep gasoline prices low by bombing your gas station An Italian fighter plane (note the “fasci” symbols on the wings) shot down in England in November 1940 during the bombing campaign mounted by the Italian Air Force during WW2 (source). Sending obsolete biplanes with open cockpits against the modern British Spitfires is one […]

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Collapsing by Doubling Down: How Leaders Create Their Own Ruin

January 7, 2022

Collapsing by Doubling Down: How Leaders Create Their Own Ruin Napoleon won all the battles he engaged in, up to Borodino (1812), which was a non-victory, equivalent to a loss. From then, on it was all downhill from him. Napoleon had engaged in a task too big even for him: invading Russia. It is typical […]

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The Rise and Fall of Scientism. Do we Need a new Religion?

December 27, 2021

The Rise and Fall of Scientism. Do we Need a new Religion? What is religion, exactly? Hieratic monks singing their hymns? Fanatics performing human sacrifices? Old ladies praying the rosary? Pentecostals speaking in tongues? It is all that and more. And it is not something we can ignore. Religions are not old superstitions, but part […]

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Lessons from the USSR Crisis – What brought down the second largest empire of modern times?

December 13, 2021

Lessons from the USSR Crisis – What brought down the second largest empire of modern times? The collapse of the Soviet Union, in 1991, was seen in the West as a demonstration of the superiority of the Western economical and political system. In reality, the story was much more complex and the Soviet Union fell […]

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Propaganda: the Doom of the Western Empire

December 7, 2021

Propaganda: the Doom of the Western Empire This painting by Konstantin Vasiliev (1942-1976) celebrates the great patriotic war of 1941-1945 (Вели́кая Оте́чественная война́). It is a good example of Soviet propaganda at its best. But, on average, propaganda in the Soviet Union was primitive and heavily based on censorship, eventually turning out to be unable […]

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The Coming Global Food Crisis: Learning from the Great Irish Famine

November 17, 2021

The Coming Global Food Crisis: Learning from the Great Irish Famine A 19th century “soup kitchen” providing emergency relief for people without food. These kitchens could have saved millions in Ireland during the great famine of 1945-1850, but the British government refused to keep them open long enough. The main lesson we can learn from […]

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