Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

the narrative bombs
more adventures in "why you should hate the media"

there is a point where a group of people come to inhabit such a powerfully unreal hallucination that it loses contact with baseline reality and becomes a desperately dangerous place in which to live.

i want to show you somehting:

over the weekend, a small group of protesters seemingly led by (or at least in the company of) jake lang was at gracie mansion (home of the NYC mayor). the jake lang group was modest in size (12-20 based on reports) and the counter protesters who opposed this were considerably more numerous (100-125).

jake and co were protesting “islamification” of new york, prayer in public places, and similar practices. the chant was seemingly “stop the islamic takeover of NYC.” the counter protesters countered with “run the nazis out of new york” etc and this was a fairly predictable and basically peacful affair.

honestly, if a couple of groups with differing viewpoints want to have an argument over by the mayor’s house, OK, that’s protest and free speech. you can like what one or the other group has to say or find them both odious or whatever you prefer, but we’re within the social contract here:

even if you hate it, the price of free speech is allowing others to say things you do not like.

so long as it stays speech.

but then a funny thing happened (not the humorous kind of funny) and the character of the situation changed.

it was captured on clear, unmistakable video (a video that has been oddly suppressed by most media outlets) so if you have not seen it, here it is.

watch for yourself.


it happens quickly, but what you are watching is 18 year old emir balat shout “allahu ackbar” while throwing a bomb at police and anti-islamification protesters. he then runs away leaving a bunch of befuddled (and incredibly lucky) mamdani and islam supporters standing there asking braindead questions like “did he just throw an allahu ackbar bomb, bro?” and gawping like cattle as they stand within the blast radius of a weapon that could have torn them to pieces had it worked.

one guy is literally saying “nice!”

the lack of comprehension or even ability to think in the relevant frame is striking.

they think it’s a game, a fun selfie opportunity, social media gold, whatever.

they seem to have no idea how much danger they were in. (an astonishingly on the nose metaphor if you’re into that sort of thing.)

this was not a “smoke bomb” or a prop. this was a no fooling around IED style weapon that would be familiar to any soldier who served in the ME. the bomb was filled with TATP (triacetone triperoxide) commonly called “mother of satan” by the sort of people who teach others to make such things. this is a high potency explosive known for being incredibly unstable and that often does not even need a fuse to explode. this bomb was full of nuts and bolts and screws intended to act as shrapnel. had it gone off as intended, it could have killed a fair few people and injured/maimed many more. the failure to detonate was a huge stroke of luck (or, more likely, a sign of bad bomb making by our would be killers).

there was a second bomb as well that was lit and thrown at police who were chasing emir over the first bomb.

it was apparently handed to balat by ibrahim kayumi, 19, also a resident of bucks county PA.




both balat and kayumi are US citizens who are children of immigrant parents from turkey and afghanistan respectively.




both are from upper middle class or wealthy families. the balat family has a $650k home in langhorne and the kayumis have a $2.2 million home in newton. they were raised in suburban comfort but somehow became radicalized by ISIS doctrine and adopted it as their own. this radicialization appears to have mostly commenced online, but some outlets are reporting that they had traveled to turkey or other terror nexi. i am not sure if this has been confirmed as accurate.




what we do know is that after being arrested, balat both verbally and in writing pledged allegiance (bay’ah) to ISIS and the caliphate and expressed his hope that this could have been a bigger casualty event than the boston bombing in 2013 which killed 3 and injured 260.

the bombs used are the exact sorts of weapons that ISIS videos instruct on the creation of.

pretty much all of this appears to be beyond question or debate.

a couple of sons of suburban wealth radicalized the living hell out of themselves to the point where they were throwing IED’s on the streets of NYC and stand unrepentant about it. they hoped to kill a lot of people. and it was only some combo of dumb luck and bad grades in chemistry that prevented it.

now, one might think that given the clarity and extremity of the situation, the reporting and the statements here would be clarion clear and unified.

lol. you must be new here.




the barrage of “this was aimed at mamadani/mamdani’s house” was instant and relentless.

it’s really sort of dazzling how creative the creative writing teams get in these circumstances to avoid stating simple, direct facts.




everyone wants to talk about “white supremacy” and make it sound like somehow the bombs are associated therewith.

the mayor certainly got in on the act.




this is a masterwork in “not actually saying anything that was untrue while creating an overall impression that is entirely false and that utterly buries the lede.”

it is, frankly, despicable. “what followed?” seriously?

this led to a wild lockstep of “no one will actually tell you what happened” wrapped up inside of “everyone is lying by content adjacency and omission.” remember this every time you read history. if you cannot even trust the present, imagine what a propogandistic rat bag the past is.




if you got your information from most of mainstream media, you basically live in “smollettown” USA with made up villains and plotlines.

i’m amazed none of them tried to run with this:




“we stand with jussie!”
in these tribal times, it appears that the increasing bet is one of reality fracture and that “our readers read nothing but us, so it doesn’t matter how much we lie, they get no other information.”

this tactic 100% works so long as you can keep the sheep in the fold and monopolize their informational inputs.

in no small irony, it’s kind of amazing how the fact that gen Z (esp. leftist/protest gen Z) feels a need to be running video pretty much at all times is creating primary source material about history the likes of which we have never seen or had access to before and how it keeps wrecking the narratives of their tribal media mavens.

there is no possible way that it is a coincidence that every single reference to jake lang in the propaganda industrial complex piles on the “white supremicist” angle but every single reference to “bombs built to ISIS spec and thrown by islamic radicals in hopes of killing jake, his pals, and some NYC cops” gets downgraded to “devices” hurled by some nameless ne’er do well affiliated with nothing (but associated by adjacency with white supremacy, itself an absurdly hackneyed rubric)




but the truth is not obscure here. it’s not debatable, uncertain, or yet to be determined.

bombs made from an ISIS terrorist manual were thrown at anti-islamic protesters by islamic radicals shouting “allahu ackbar” and hoping to kill and injure hundreds.

the perps have said so in their own words.

this was a religious attack of islamic radicals against those they deemed enemies of their faith.

again, they said so themselves.

“Both admitted to cops after getting busted at a rowdy demonstration outside the mayor’s residence on Saturday that they also watch ISIS videos and tossed the bomb at right-wing agitators because they felt they insulted their religion, the sources said.” link

“All praise is due to Allah lord of all worlds! I pledge my allegience [sic] to the Islamic State. Die in your rage yu [sic] kuffar!”

“this isn’t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet . . We take action!”

these comments and written statements were caught on NYPD body cameras.

so let’s not mince words: large swathes of the media are lying about this with great deliberation and intent.

they are not looking to illuminate but to occlude.

and it embeds a clear, predictable, tribal bias. had a bomb been thrown by jake, imagine the stark clarity of the headlines and accusations, the braying for blood, the demand for laws and crackdowns.

instead “mistakes were made” and “devices were found.”

i legitimately have no idea how anyone who reads the NYT, bloomberg, CNN, and NBC could possibly still consider themselves informed. the depth and extremity of the falsity beggars beleif. 1960’s soviets would be awestruck at the brazenness. mao would weep.

it seems to be the great paradox of our time:

in a time of unparalleled and unprecedented access to information, particularly primary source information, so few people choose to use it.

we devlove into tribes with “their own facts” to justify increasingly reality divorced opinions.

helluva time to be alive.

A former deep-sea treasure hunter who made one of the greatest shipwreck discoveries in American history and spent the past decade in prison after refusing to disclose the whereabouts of some of its missing gold coins is now free, federal records show.

Dwight Manley, a California coin dealer who bought and sold nearly the entire fortune, said Monday that Thompson paid a heavy price over what he described as a business dispute.

"Going to prison for 10 years over a business dispute is not America," Manley said. "People kill people and get out in half the time."

Sentences in civil contempt cases are somewhat indefinite, but they shouldn't go on forever, said Ryan Scott, a University of Florida law professor who researches contempt law and worked to secure Thompson's release.

“Belief in the end of the world is surprisingly common across North America, and it’s significantly influencing how people interpret and respond to the most pressing threats facing humanity,” said paper author and social psychologist Matthew I. Billet of the University of California, Irvine in a statement.

Drawing on a survey of more than 3,400 people across the U.S. and Canada, Billet and colleagues found that apocalyptic beliefs are far from rare.

In fact, in a U.S. national sample of 1,409 respondents, nearly one‑third said they believe the world will end within their lifetime.

The U.S.-Iran war is the biggest oil supply disruption in history
Published Mon, Mar 9 2026 9:43 AM EDT

Higgenbotham wrote: Thu Mar 05, 2026 11:33 pm Related to the above, over at my daughter's school there is a professor who picks his granddaughter up every day. I don't know his age, but some of the dates he mentioned recently would give someone a clue. His hair and beard are snow white and decades of stress shows on his face. He mentioned some months ago that he is a professor at Texas State.

This week I began having more detailed conversations with him. He said the quality of University level education has been declining since 1989 when he started teaching, as well as the quality of the students. He is a business professor. Then he brought up something that only fully got my attention later. He said that in the late 1990s he had been a professor at Rice University. There was a student there from a wealthy and politically connected family in Argentina who he had failed in his class. After posting the failed grade, he was called into the office of the Chancellor (I think I have the term right as he told it to me). The Chancellor told the professor that he was going to change this student's grade and pass him. He told the Chancellor that he would not do it. The Chancellor then told him that if he didn't change the grade, his contract wouldn't be renewed. He told him again that he would not change the grade.

It took me a day or so to realize the full impact of what he told me. Rice University is a very elite private institution. It's not on the level of, say, Yale or Stanford, but probably close. On the other hand, in Texas public universities, there is the University of Texas system, Texas A&M, and at the bottom of the list, Texas State.

So today I said to him, "You know, I was thinking more about what you told me. You were at Rice University. When you wouldn't change the grade for that student, that really hurt your career, didn't it?" He said, "Torpedoed it." Then he went on to say something to the effect that the most important thing is to do the right thing regardless of the consequences. The only thing I have to say about that is that as a new dark age gets ready to take hold and everything gets turned upside down in preparation, the consequences for doing the right thing can be very high indeed.

Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Dec 13, 2024 1:17 pm

James Woods
@RealJamesWoods
When the world is upside down, shit floats to the top…

https://x.com/RealJamesWoods/status/180 ... 55?lang=en

Fullmoonn wrote: Sat Feb 28, 2026 11:59 pm

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Feb 28, 2026 5:26 am The US and Israel have attacked Iran, just as a Puetz crash window is opening up early next week.

aeden wrote: Sun Jul 28, 2019 6:07 am As we know H we cover it all, well we try, and really this is simply a gut check to what others could care less about or basically cannot.
Several years back, a cycle watcher named Steve Puetz attempted to see if eclipses and market crashes were somehow related.
He studied eight of the greatest crashes in financial history, from the Holland Tulip Mania of 1637 to the Nikkei of 1990. He found that market crashes tend to occur near full moons, and that the greatest number of crashes start after the first full moon after a solar eclipse, when that full moon is also a lunar eclipse. Puetz found that all eight crashes occurred six days before to three days after a full moon that occurred within six weeks of a solar eclipse. The odds of that being a coincidence, Puetz calculated, are less than 1 in 127,000. Puetz was not saying that so-called "Puetz windows" always lead to crashes, but that if a crash is going to occur, a Puetz window would be the likely time frame in which it would happen.

The brunt of the crash happens after the lunar eclipse passes. The coming lunar eclipse is March 3.

It's almost as though some people already know about this and are timing/front running/trying to control it. As they pretty obviously are. Haha

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Dec 31, 2016 10:24 pm https://www.arthurdemarest.com/collapse ... s-today-2/

So, you know, we're collapsing. But I'm not just a grumpy old man, we're collapsing. Although it sounds like it. I'm an expert on the collapse of 18 civilizations and we're collapsing. We've got everything. We've got every single fucking cause of collapse you could want except radical climate change and that's beginning. So, but as I've told you, don't worry about global warming. We won't make it far enough for that to be a problem. I think the wars are going to be the end of everything but only because the infrastructure's so vulnerable because of hypercoherence and technology it's also fragile.

Do some think AI is being used as an excuse to reduce the size of unaffordable and excessive corporate, nonprofit and government bureaucracy?

Yes, many analysts, business leaders, and critics believe that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used as a convenient justification—or "excuse"—to reduce the size of, and cut costs within, large corporate, nonprofit, and government bureaucracies.

While AI holds the potential to genuinely improve efficiency by automating routine tasks, it is frequently cited as the reason for layoffs and restructuring, allowing organizations to trim staff under the guise of technological advancement.

Here is a breakdown of how AI is being used to address bureaucratic bloat across different sectors:

1. Corporate Sector: "Efficiency" as a Cover for Downsizing

Layoffs and Restructuring: Companies are utilizing AI as a rationale for restructuring, often aimed at reducing payroll and increasing margins.

"AI Excuse": Some argue that AI is used as a cover for cutting costs after years of overspending on infrastructure or overhiring. Data indicates that while AI is cited in many job cuts, it accounts for a smaller percentage of total layoffs compared to general economic conditions, suggesting it is a "convenient" justification for cost-cutting.

Flattening Hierarchies: AI is being used to automate middle-management tasks, leading to flatter organizational structures where fewer managers are needed.

2. Government Bureaucracy: The "Demand Machine" vs. Cost Cutting

The "DOGE" Effect: Internal, anecdotal reports suggest that in some government contexts, particularly those influenced by initiatives like the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), AI is being deployed with the specific aim of reducing staff in administrative roles.

Streamlining Processes: AI is being used to tackle massive bureaucratic tasks, such as analyzing millions of lines of regulations, identifying outdated, redundant, or inefficient reporting requirements, and accelerating permit processing (e.g., in San Francisco and Honolulu).

The Counter-Argument: Some researchers argue that AI is more of a "demand machine" in government—it makes it easier for residents to request services, which increases workload rather than reducing it, despite the promise of smaller bureaucracy.

3. Nonprofit Sector: Doing More with Less

Mitigating Resource Scarcity: Nonprofits are increasingly using AI to handle mundane tasks, allowing them to maintain, or reduce, staffing levels while still meeting the demands of their missions.

Efficiency vs. Capability: There is a debate about whether AI truly helps nonprofits, as it can, in some cases, shift the focus from genuine impact to increasing the speed of output, which can lead to a "hollowed-out" organization that is faster but less effective.

Perspectives on the Trend

Proponents: Argue that AI allows for the elimination of tedious, routine, and bureaucratic work, ultimately making institutions more agile and productive.

Critics: Argue that it is a "scam" by private equity and leadership to "torchy" employee populations, leaving organizations "a shadow of themselves". Others argue that AI does not actually reduce bureaucracy, but rather makes it more "persecuting" by increasing surveillance and reducing human accountability.

In summary, AI is being used as a tool to justify reducing the size of bureaucracy. Whether this leads to necessary "right-sizing" or, as some fear, to the dismantling of necessary, human-centered services, remains a subject of intense debate.

Higgenbotham wrote: Fri Jan 02, 2026 4:33 pm

Chemical production outpacing world’s ability to understand the risk, study warns
Feb 16, 2022

With global chemical production increasing 50-fold since 1950 — and projected to triple again by 2050 compared to 2010 — its aggressive pace may outstrip society’s ability to adequately assess and monitor the risk, pushing the planet to the brink, a new study suggests.

There are an estimated 350,000 chemicals or mixtures on the global market, with nearly 70,000 registered in the past decade, and another 30,000 that have only been registered in emerging economies where chemical production has jumped beyond adequate disposal capacity, warns a team of 14 international researchers in the study published by the American Chemical Society.

The emergence of more and more new chemicals that aren’t fully understood puts humanity out of a “safe operating space,” the authors say.

“Chemical pollution has the potential to cause severe ecosystem and human health problems at different scales, (but also to alter vital Earth system processes on which human life depends),” begins the study’s introduction in the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology.

Plastic production alone increased 79% between 2000 and 2015, the team found.

The range of manufactured chemicals, from plastics to pesticides, industrial chemicals, antibiotics and other pharmaceuticals, has pushed Earth beyond one of what scientists interpret as nine planetary boundaries that act as markers for the Earth’s health. These boundaries include greenhouse gas emissions, the ozone layer, forests, freshwater and biodiversity. However, chemical pollution may have breached the boundary referred to as “novel entities,” or things made by humans and introduced into the environment.

The new study, in part, reviews the evolution of the scientific discussion related to the planetary boundary for novel entities. The scientists acknowledged the data was sparse in many areas, but said the weight of evidence indicated a breach of the planetary boundary.

https://esemag.com/hazardous-materials/ ... boundaries

Novel entities: Technological developments introduce novel synthetic chemicals into the environment, mobilize materials in wholly new ways, modify the genetics of living organisms, and otherwise intervene in evolutionary processes and change the functioning of the Earth system. The amount of synthetic substances released into the environment without adequate safety testing places novel entities in the high-risk zone.