57 Comments

1. Catherine;
   To continue the Asian farmer not planting because it’s too costly: 7 out of 10 farmers in the USA can’t afford to grow food. Suttons Daze is a youtube canner and pantry prepper. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVZmSMMMvg8. She’s bringing a lot of attention to her viewers on this issue.
   I called the owner of FarmersStorehouse the other day to confirm wheat prices up 27% and he said yep. I also asked for confirmation on farmers thinking about not harvesting, he said correct.
   So word is moving fast on the famine and food price spikes. Now it’s up to viewers/shoppers to believe it.
   Suttons Daze is helping people prepare their pantry, learn how to can, etc. What to buy, how to slowly stock it. It’s good reference, especially since she is always saying: We’re not going into panic mode, we’re just going to slowly stock our pantries in a manner that also allows others to stock their pantry.

2. About the founding of Palantir – https://x.com/gothburz/status/2058269366932721943

   Also about Polymarket, Trumps investments, Lutnick and his family neck deep in stablecoins etc. Not sure what this account is, and the way it writes smacks of AI but if it is, it is a smart AI. https://x.com/gothburz/status/2057809598627610948 “The president is volatility. The son’s equity appreciates on the father’s unpredictability.” The grift is FAR worse that people could have imagined, if this accounts’ posts are true. That said, a lot of what it writes are true things that are publicly declared, if you know how and where to look. But most people gloss over them.

3. Not Even a Little Bit – well said: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DYHpgZiCOkV/

4. Also an interesting perspective if true. But a lot of salient points. I have no idea who the author is supposed to be but the text is sickening and likely very valid. Our Congressman is an AIPAC stooge.
   https://x.com/gothburz/status/2057071197397848253

   Twenty-four years ago. I was that man. The man who shook pressing a button because the button meant something. Because pressing it was a sentence you were saying out loud to 761,000 people: I disagree and here is why.

   The word was “conscience.”
   I didn’t notice when I stopped walking. You don’t notice a word leaving your vocabulary. You reach for it one morning and find empty space where the concept was.

   Massie held the word. Thirteen years. Every omnibus. Every continuing resolution. Every debt ceiling increase. Every foreign aid package. He pressed the red button and his chest filled with whatever mine used to fill with in 2003 and he called it the same thing I used to call it and he meant it the way I used to mean it.
   He was replaced by a man whose family operates a 1,200-acre agritourism birthday party venue in Shelbyville.
   I don’t say this as mockery. I say it as a specification sheet. You don’t want a replacement congressman with an MIT engineering degree and patents in haptic robotics. Patents indicate thinking. Thinking introduces variance. Variance is risk. You want a compliance product.

   Nobody in Congress said a word about the deepfake. I need you to sit with that. A foreign-interest lobby ran AI-generated sexual imagery of a sitting United States congressman, pornographic, funded by three billionaires who have never visited his district, distributed during the evening news, targeted at elderly voters. And 434 of his colleagues watched it happen and said nothing.

   A colleague drafted a co-sponsorship for Massie’s AIPAC Act on Tuesday afternoon. FARA reform. He deleted it Wednesday morning. Nobody called him. Nobody threatened him. He deleted it the way you delete an unsent text at 2 AM. The self-preservation is automated now. You don’t need to be threatened. You threaten yourself. The overhead is zero.

   If the legislative branch always votes with the president, we have a king.

   Nobody will ask again [for the Epstein files]. I won’t ask. The files will remain redacted. Not because they’re classified. Because the last man who demanded them in a hearing was made into a price tag, and the price tag is now mounted on the wall of every congressional office in the building.

   Elon Musk promised to support Massie. “I will.” Two words. Ten months of silence. Zero dollars. The world’s richest man decided one endorsement was priced too high.

   1. The post matches the dead eyes of the Congressman who go with the flow.

5. Catherine and John, thank you so much as ever.

   Is the story about Lake Tahoe surrendering its power to AI definitely real? Lake Tahoe is where the late CA Senator Diane Feinstein (amongst other mega wealthy folks) kept a home.

   We’re talking some serious wealth-I’m sure the local residents are politically engaged and won’t allow this to happen.

   I agree with you on the importance of living in a decent jurisdiction, but could this simply be scaremongering?

   1. The story is solid. The utility’s contract is renewing in 2027. It is not renewing because of the peak loads expected from the data centers it is serving. See the original Fortune story https://fortune.com/2026/05/12/lake-tahoe-data-center-49000-residents-power-source/

6. Thanks for another great episode.

   The recent pushback on the ground in DRC is interesting to see. They know the Ebola scam by now. The narrative is used to scare us here with stereotype-driven narrative, as Catherine points out and any resistance there drums up the same stereotype of desperate, ignorant people. Interesting quote in this article from the ground: https://www.wptv.com/health/armed-violence-skepticism-threaten-congos-fight-against-deadly-ebola-strain
   ““These people should stop bothering us. They just want to get rich. Let’s not forget that Ebola is a white man’s invention,” declared Pierre Basola, a 56-year-old resident of Bunia, who added: “Stop talking to me anyway.”‘

   The New Orleans levies were blown to direct flood waters away from higher value properties by flooding the poorer wards. I believe the first couple of times it happened it was an explicit policy that they didn’t hide (in the early 20th century). In 1965 the levees “collapsed” and again for Katrina. If you talk to people in the Lower Ninth and other wards that were flooded, it’s common knowledge that this has been policy in city.

   1. Thanks, Drew. I believe Katrina was engineered and there was a real effort to clean people out and for corporations to take more power. I never looked carefully at what happened. All I know is that before hand all the ATMs in the French Quarter that I used were Hibernia and afterwards they were Chase. Before lots of small businesses were thriving. Afterwards, many gone.

      1. There is an interesting little place called the Lower Ninth Living Museum that tells a lot of the hurricane stories from that community’s perspective. They say the levee destruction was to flood the poor areas and “save” the French Quarter and more expensive areas, but as you point out that’s only the lowest-level of the multi-level theft operation. The properties in the French Quarter may have been “saved” in the physical sense, but ownership and control moved upwards, as always.

7. Great links this week to share with a broader audience. REALLY highlights so much of the garbage right now. Thank you.

   The Tahoe story linked with the Corpus Christi story (no water for residents, but gotta let industry have their water) are illustrative. Not usually a fan of the Texas Observer, but this article was interesting. https://www.texasobserver.org/corpus-christi-water-crisis-tesla-industrial-expansion/

   1. Thanks for this link! I have been sharing some clips from youtube and news outlets.
      Unanswered questions- why after a decade of impending water crisis in Corpus is it becoming basically forefront news? The data center builders here in my area had to submit to a couple of town hall meetings in our county and we had a lot of push back- which did not bear fruit, but we got to share our input. The former County Judge made deals with the solar. Our County Judge now has been trying to ameliorate the damage and slow down the solar and data centers. They sure ugly up our beautiful region of “Post Oak Savannah” and edge of “Blackland Prairie” – some of the most fertile land for farming anywhere.
      Nice to see your post. Hello to you from Central Texas.

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