Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

I could easily explain to Tucker Carlson why Moscow is nicer than big cities in America, but something tells me he wouldn't like the answer.

aeden already explained it.

Having lived in the FSU in the late 90s, many of the author's anecdotes resonate with me. I remember being at a party when the flash batteries of my camera gave out. One of the locals took the batteries out, banged them energetically against the ground, reinserted them in the camera...and the photo-shoot continued.

Russians are undeniably more accustomed to privation and inconvenience than Americans. There's also more hopelessness in Russia than in America, and it's indirectly reflected in the alcoholism rate. I remember driving in Krasnoyarsk and watching a drunk fall face-down in a deep mud puddle. He stayed semi-submerged for what seemed like an eternity, but was likely only a few seconds. Then, covered head-to-toe in mud and excrement, he heaved himself up and stumbled on. I stared, transfixed, having never seen anything like it before. But the Russians in the car with me didn't bat an eye. They'd seen it all many times before.

[Guest]

I could easily explain to Tucker Carlson why Moscow is nicer than big cities in America, but something tells me he wouldn't like the answer.

aeden already explained it.

Having lived in the FSU in the late 90s, many of the author's anecdotes resonate with me. I remember being at a party when the flash batteries of my camera gave out. One of the locals took the batteries out, banged them energetically against the ground, reinserted them in the camera...and the photo-shoot continued.

Russians are undeniably more accustomed to privation and inconvenience than Americans. There's also more hopelessness in Russia than in America, and it's indirectly reflected in the alcoholism rate. I remember driving in Krasnoyarsk and watching a drunk fall face-down in a deep mud puddle. He stayed semi-submerged for what seemed like an eternity, but was likely only a few seconds. Then, covered head-to-toe in mud and excrement, he heaved himself up and stumbled on. I stared, transfixed, having never seen anything like it before. But the Russians in the car with me didn't bat an eye. They'd seen it all many times before.

I've lived in Singapore since 1997. I despair at what is happening in Britain. I spend alot of time in Japan and it's a place l feel at home. Little crime, polite people and clean. It rubs off on you and makes you feel proud of your country instead of ashamed.

[Higgenbotham]

https://www.longdom.org/open-access/gab ... 000131.pdf
helpful, harmless, and honest not AI.

In what might be called the mainstream American culture, which includes exposures to synthetic chemicals, childhood vaccines, standard American diet

First generation: (born around 1960 plus or minus a few years) Parents were not exposed to synthetic chemicals until they were adults. Anecdotally there seem to be a few more obese kids, geeky kids, gay kids, kids with allergies, kids needing orthodontics, etc., but nothing too alarming and kids seem to grow out of some of these problems. The birth rate for this generation falls a bit when adulthood is reached but nothing too dramatic. There may be a few years decrease in life expectancy becoming evident.
Second generation: (born around 1985 plus or minus a few years) First transgenerational effects may be seen, in other words, parents who were exposed to these things during their own fetal and childhood development start to have kids. In addition to what plagues the first generation born around 1960, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder, autism, more severe allergies, diabetes, and other disorders become more common and less curable. Some are now common enough to have names and to be screened for. This generation sees a dramatic fall in their birthrate upon reaching adulthood.
Third generation: (born around 2015 plus or minus a few more years) Now going out on a limb. Transgenerational effects are now quite noticeable and influence the culture and economy to a great extent. There are lots more lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender adults compared to generations born before World War II, so many in fact that an acronym to describe this phenomenon is thought to be needed, LGBT. It is rare for a child not to have some kind of disorder. Disorders become even more severe; for example whereas many children born in 1960 may have been a bit geeky, now many are severely autistic. The birth rate for this generation takes a dramatic fall to less than half of the birthrate of the generation born before World War II.
Fourth generation: (born around 2045 plus or minus a few more years) Now really going out on a limb. Transgenerational effects in the mainstream American culture are now so severe that fertility and lifespan are affected to the point that it is evident mainstream culture is no longer viable. In most cases, disorders are so severe as to be irreversible and in many cases untreatable.

[Guest]

In Germany, millions of "refugees" since 2015, millions Arabs and blacks from Subsharan African countries, mostly young men. I've never experienced such a tense situation here.

Germany has a long tradition of migration: people from Turkey, Poland (second largest group), ex-Soviet Union (in the 1990s), Vietnam and China (boat people) and from Croatia and Albania (because of the war in Yugoslavia). Around 25 % of Germans have a migration background. The integration of these groups has gone more or less smoothly. But young African, Arab, Pakistani, and Iranian men are obviously of a different calibre. Crime rates have risen immeasurably, with knife murders, gang rapes, terrorist attacks, demonstrations in favour of the introduction of Sharia law, as in Hamburg, and attacks on Jews by young Muslims.

I am 58 years old and have experienced all the migration peaks since the 1980s - but what is happening here right now is unprecedented. It will change my home country forever.

[tim]

In Germany, millions of "refugees" since 2015, millions Arabs and blacks from Subsharan African countries, mostly young men. I've never experienced such a tense situation here.

Germany has a long tradition of migration: people from Turkey, Poland (second largest group), ex-Soviet Union (in the 1990s), Vietnam and China (boat people) and from Croatia and Albania (because of the war in Yugoslavia). Around 25 % of Germans have a migration background. The integration of these groups has gone more or less smoothly. But young African, Arab, Pakistani, and Iranian men are obviously of a different calibre. Crime rates have risen immeasurably, with knife murders, gang rapes, terrorist attacks, demonstrations in favour of the introduction of Sharia law, as in Hamburg, and attacks on Jews by young Muslims.

I am 58 years old and have experienced all the migration peaks since the 1980s - but what is happening here right now is unprecedented. It will change my home country forever.

When the coming conflict is finished forced population expulsion is possible. Its happened before.

https://www.thenation.com/article/archi ... s-germans/

While, after 1945, almost all Germans presented themselves as the true victims of the Nazi regime, the peace was perhaps most brutal for the more than 12 million Volksdeutsche: German speakers living outside the borders of the Reich. The vast majority of the Volksdeutsche in Eastern Europe had greeted Hitler’s conquests as a form of national “liberation.” They benefited materially from the plunder of their Jewish, Czech and Polish neighbors, and even if they sometimes resented their loss of autonomy (as when Germans from the Reich secured choice jobs and property during the Nazi occupation), they rarely protested. After the Nazi defeat, the Volksdeutsche fled or were expelled to the West, and were stripped of their citizenship, homes and property in what R.M. Douglas calls “the largest forced population transfer—and perhaps the greatest single movement of peoples—in human history.” Douglas amply demonstrates that these population transfers, which were to be carried out in an “orderly and humane” manner according to the language of the Allies’ 1945 Potsdam Agreement, counted as neither. Instead, he writes, they were nothing less than a “massive state-sponsored carnival of violence, resulting in a death toll that on the most conservative of estimates must have reached six figures.”

The so-called “wild” or spontaneous expulsions in Czechoslovakia began almost immediately after liberation, in May to June of 1945. But there was nothing “wild” about this first wave of what Czech officials referred to as národní ocista (“national cleansing”). These expulsions, which resulted in the removal of up to 2 million Germans from Eastern Europe, were planned and executed by troops, police and militia, under orders from the highest authorities, with the full knowledge and consent of the Allies. Eastern European and Allied observers alike remarked on the utter passivity of the victims, the majority of whom were women, children and the elderly (most German men had been drafted during the war and either killed or interned in POW camps). But the “wild expulsions” were justified as self-defense on the basis of exaggerated or invented reports of ongoing resistance activity by Nazi “Werewolf” units. One of the most infamous postwar pogroms was sparked by the accidental explosion of an ammunition dump in Ústí nad Labem in northwestern Bohemia in July 1945. Most of the victims of the explosion were themselves German, but local workers, Czechoslovak Army units and Soviet troops wasted no time blaming Werewolf sabotage and taking revenge. Germans were beaten, shot and thrown into the Elbe River; many observers recall a baby carriage being thrown into the river with a baby inside. The massacre resulted in at least 100 deaths.

During the “wild” expulsions, lucky expellees were given a few hours’ notice and taken on foot by force to the closest border with only the clothes on their back. The unlucky were interned in concentration and forced labor camps organized explicitly on the Nazi model. At least 180,000 ethnic Germans were interned in Czechoslovakia as of November 1945; another 170,000 were interned in Yugoslavia. The internees included many women, children and even several thousand German-speaking Jews. In many cases, former Nazi concentration camps and detention centers like Terezín/Theresienstadt were converted overnight into camps for ethnic Germans. At Linzervorstadt, a camp administered by a former Czech internee of Dachau, the motto “Eye for Eye, Tooth for Tooth” replaced Arbeit macht frei on the camp gates. Inmates were stripped naked and shorn of their hair upon arrival at the camp, forced to run a gantlet while being beaten with rubber truncheons and then, during their stay in the camp, systematically flogged, tortured and made to stand at attention in all-night roll calls. Interned women throughout Czechoslovakia and Poland were subject to rampant sexual abuse, rape and torture. Germans were also forced to wear armbands or patches marked with the letter “N” for Nemec (German)—collective payback for the humiliation that the Nazis had inflicted on populations in the East. When they were finally transported west, the expellees traveled by cattle car, sometimes going with barely any food or water for up to two weeks. One victim recalled that each morning, “one or more dead bodies greeted us…they just had to be abandoned on the embankments.”

[Higgenbotham]

A 2016 study published in the journal Obesity Research & Clinical Practice found that it’s harder for adults today to maintain the same weight as those 20 to 30 years ago did, even at the same levels of food intake and exercise.

The authors examined the dietary data of 36,400 Americans between 1971 and 2008 and the physical activity data of 14,419 people between 1988 and 2006. They grouped the data sets together by the amount of food and activity, age, and BMI.

They found a very surprising correlation: A given person, in 2006, eating the same amount of calories, taking in the same quantities of macronutrients like protein and fat, and exercising the same amount as a person of the same age did in 1988 would have a BMI that was about 2.3 points higher. In other words, people today are about 10 percent heavier than people were in the 1980s, even if they follow the exact same diet and exercise plans.

“Our study results suggest that if you are 25, you’d have to eat even less and exercise more than those older, to prevent gaining weight,” Jennifer Kuk, a professor of kinesiology and health science at Toronto’s York University, said in a statement. “However, it also indicates there may be other specific changes contributing to the rise in obesity beyond just diet and exercise.”

Just what those other changes might be, though, are still a matter of hypothesis. In an interview, Kuk proffered three different factors that might be making harder for adults today to stay thin.

First, people are exposed to more chemicals that might be weight-gain inducing. Pesticides, flame retardants, and the substances in food packaging might all be altering our hormonal processes and tweaking the way our bodies put on and maintain weight.

Second, the use of prescription drugs has risen dramatically since the ‘70s and ‘80s. Prozac, the first blockbuster SSRI, came out in 1988. Antidepressants are now one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in the U.S., and many of them have been linked to weight gain.

Finally, Kuk and the other study authors think that the microbiomes of Americans might have somehow changed between the 1980s and now. It’s well known that some types of gut bacteria make a person more prone to weight gain and obesity. Americans are eating more meat than they were a few decades ago, and many animal products are treated with hormones and antibiotics in order to promote growth. All that meat might be changing gut bacteria in ways that are subtle, at first, but add up over time. Kuk believes the proliferation of artificial sweeteners could also be playing a role.

The fact that the body weights of Americans today are influenced by factors beyond their control is a sign, Kuk says, that society should be kinder to people of all body types.

“There's a huge weight bias against people with obesity,” she said. “They're judged as lazy and self-indulgent. That's really not the case. If our research is correct, you need to eat even less and exercise even more” just to be same weight as your parents were at your age.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/why- ... wtab-en-us

[tim]

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/0 ... nt-points/

A North Carolina County has banned fluoride from being used in the county’s water supply.

Union County commissioners in a 3-2 voted to stop using fluoride in its water supply after residents were concerned about its possible side effects on children.

Before the Union County commissioners voted, several community members gave their thoughts on fluoride being used in the water supply.

Dr. Meg Lochary favored fluoride remaining in the water supply and argued that the chemical reduces tooth decay for those who rarely see a dentist.

Leader of the Union County Chapter of Moms for Liberty, Abigal Prado, had a different take and stated: “Millions of pregnant women are currently being exposed to levels of fluoride that have the potential to lower their children’s IQ by at least four to six points.”

Prado added, “The loss of a single IQ point translates into a 2% reduction in lifetime economic productivity.”

The Moms of Liberty chapter leader referenced a 2019 study published in JAMA Pediatrics that revealed: “Fluoride exposure during pregnancy may be associated with adverse effects on child intellectual development, indicating the possible need to reduce fluoride intake during pregnancy.”

[guest]

In Germany, millions of "refugees" since 2015, millions Arabs and blacks from Subsharan African countries, mostly young men. I've never experienced such a tense situation here.

Germany has a long tradition of migration: people from Turkey, Poland (second largest group), ex-Soviet Union (in the 1990s), Vietnam and China (boat people) and from Croatia and Albania (because of the war in Yugoslavia). Around 25 % of Germans have a migration background. The integration of these groups has gone more or less smoothly. But young African, Arab, Pakistani, and Iranian men are obviously of a different calibre. Crime rates have risen immeasurably, with knife murders, gang rapes, terrorist attacks, demonstrations in favour of the introduction of Sharia law, as in Hamburg, and attacks on Jews by young Muslims.

I am 58 years old and have experienced all the migration peaks since the 1980s - but what is happening here right now is unprecedented. It will change my home country forever.

The problem is that the people getting government freebies outnumber us honest working people. These entitlement people have grown up with to government freebies as their way of life. When supplies especially food run low, it's gonna get ugly for the self supporting people. And with millions of illegals using up food and money, that's gonna drain our social security. Unless the illegals are rounded up and deported, and the entitlement people are forced to be responsible, us workers supporting all this unfairness and laziness will get the worst of it. Our government backs them and not us.

[aeden]

Holy Synod Of The Greek Orthodox Church came to the defense of his position.
The ruling body of the Greek Orthodox Church echoed his message with more diplomatically by succinctly stating
"Our position is well known, we are against such things."

We never left anyone behind.
We even buried your frozen dead when you collapsed.
We need no lecture to your values.
Suffered, died and the third day the new covenant began in Him for Us.

Argentine government in January saw its first monthly budget surplus in nearly 12 years, as new President Javier Milei continues to push for strong spending cuts, the Economy Ministry announced.
January was the first full month in office for Mr Milei, a far-right libertarian who took office in December, and it ended with a positive balance for public-sector finances of US$589 million (S$800 million) at the official exchange rate, the government said late on Feb 16.
The figure includes payment of interest on the public debt.

[Higgenbotham]

Thursday, January 5th, 2023.

no, I'm the charlatan who took their work and built generational dynamics and modern generational theory on top of it. their books were quite brilliant, and came out in the 80s and '90s. to my knowledge, nobody seriously recognized the 80-year cycle until they did. furthermore, absolutely nobody recognized the four generational eras until they did , although they're very contains some serious errors. Strauss was definitely the brains of the out fit, but he's passed away. today, the brains of the fourth turning theory are in the far left Democrat. David Kaiser.

From David Kaiser.

It is now a liberal commonplace that slavery, segregation, and discriminatory policies have caused income inequality between the races in the United States. That would imply that those factors are the reason that about 11 million black Americans live in households with no assets and 34.5 million black Americans have less than $200,000 in assets (and 80 percent of them have less than $100,000). That interpretation, however, leads us to another question: why then do 14.9 million white Americans find themselves with negative or 0 net worth, and another 83.6 million have less than $200,000? Slavery and discrimination cannot be the cause of that. I can imagine two possible explanations for this.

The first is essentially a riff on the common conservative explanation for minority poverty--that it is a matter of culture. One could argue that while slavery, segregation, and public policies are what have made black and Hispanic people poor, poor white people must suffer from serious cultural deficiencies. Actually there is good evidence that poor people of all races now suffer from the same social pathologies. Charles Murray has been attacked for some of his writings about black people, and at times, I think, with good reason--but I was very impressed by his book Coming Apart, which is about poor white people, not poor black people, around metropolitan areas. He found that in the last decades of the last century their attitudes, values, and ways of living had become increasingly dysfunctional, including breakdowns of family life, drug use, and aversion to work among many young males. The illegitimacy rate among white people is now higher than the rate among black people when Moynihan wrote his famous report in 1965, and there are more white single parents now than black. It doesn't make any sense, in my opinion, to racialize these problems. Millions of blacks and Hispanics are not suffering from them, while millions of white people are.

My preferred explanation for the presence of 50 percent of the population with no or very little net worth, however, is simply the evolution of the American capitalist economy since the 1970s. This is laid out very clearly in a series of charts at this remarkable web site, showing what has happened to income and wealth distribution in the last 53 years, since 1971. I am going to reproduce one of its most interesting charts, one which deals specifically with race.

The chart shows, remarkably, that average black income as a percentage of average white income rose from 50 percent in 1948 to about 68 percent in 1971--even though for most of that period at least half of black Americans were living under legal segregation. From then until 2018, however, that progress slowed. So did the progress of the whole lower half of the US population, as other charts in the web site show. Thanks in particular to very high top-bracket tax rates, the strength of labor unions, and a massive housing boom--which helped everyone by increasing the stock of housing so much--GDP gains went in large measure to the lower deciles of the population. In the last half century they have gone mostly to the very top. That--not slavery from 1619 to 1865 or segregation from then until the 1960s--is the reason for the tremendous economic inequality that we all face today.

The insistence that began, I think, with Lyndon Johnson, that poverty is mainly a minority problem and that therefore solutions to it must focus on helping minorities, has not only failed to address our real economic problems, but has also had disastrous political consequences. The whole lower half of our population is very unhappy, and rightly so, with the state of our economy, the life it offers them, and the shrinking chances of improving their position. Most minority voters blame discrimination for their lot, apparently, and vote Democratic. But the white voters in the lower 50 percent can't blame discrimination, and they understand how public policies having nothing to do with race--such as free trade agreements and rollbacks of union rights--have hurt their position. They apparently blame Democrats more than Republicans for this, perhaps because Democrats still claim to be the party of the working class, without doing very much about its plight. The whites in the lower half of our wealth distribution now vote heavily Republican--and there are far more of them than there are blacks and Hispanics, as we have seen. In addition, recent elections and polling show blacks and Hispanics trending Republican.

The diversity movement in all our major institutions has, I am sure, increased minority representation within those institutions significantly--but it has done little or nothing for the lower half of the population because it is not attacking the real causes of its problems. In fact, we all stand or fall together, economically, politically, and the world at large. We desperately need leaders who can return to that simple creed.

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/20 ... s-and.html

He also seems to be predicting a Trump victory.

Polls show that Donald Trump's decisive victory in the Iowa caucuses will be followed next week by a big victory in New Hampshire as well. Other polling suggests that his legal problems have broadened and deepened his Republican support, and since any possible conviction over the next ten months will surely be appealed, I don't see how legal processes will stop him from winning the election. I have written repeatedly that Trump's nomination and election in 2016 reflected a collapse of American politics, since neither party could find a candidate who could beat hm. The collapse has continued, and I want to talk about its causes.

http://historyunfolding.blogspot.com/20 ... lehem.html