Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Robert Fosbury, an astrophysicist with an interest in the effect of light on biology, contends that “We made a huge unconscious mistake when we decided to change the lighting in the built environment.” In his collaborations with scientists in diverse disciplines, Fosbury reports, “What we’ve realized increasingly is that the removal of non-visible light from indoor lighting has been a catastrophe of the first order.”

Fosbury likens what he views as “infrared starvation” caused by indoor environments devoid of infrared wavelengths to scurvy, a disease caused by a vital missing nutrient. In this case, the nutrient is infrared light.

“We believe this is one of the main contributors to the gradual peaking and decline in public health that we’ve noticed over in the last decade or so,” he explains. “The increase in type 2 diabetes and obesity, in all the diseases of aging, and many of these things can be attributed to mitochondrial dysfunction.”

Jeffery notes that the effects of limiting one’s exposure to this narrow range of light build up over time. “All the damaging things that come from blue light come from longer term blue light exposure,” he says. “If I want to undermine your mitochondria with blue light, I have to expose them for quite a long time consistently.”

In November, a year after the Armistice, Frau Eisenmenger wrote that her
position was alarmingly worse, the financial situation beyond her
understanding. The krone, at 25 Swiss centimes the previous Christmas, was
now quoted at one-twelfth of a centime. Her shares, however, were going up.
Gambling on the stock exchange had become the fashion - the only way to
avoid losing all one’s money and perhaps to add to it. Many new bankers
were giving people advice, the flight from the krone governing all
transactions. ‘Meanwhile,’ Frau Eisenmenger wrote,

the large numbers of unemployed, their passions fermented by the
Communists, are seething with discontent … a mob has attempted to set the
Parliament building on fire. Mounted policemen were torn from their horses,
which were slaughtered in the Ringstrasse and the warm bleeding flesh
dragged away by the crowd … the rioters clamoured for bread and work …
Side by side with unprecedented want among the bulk of the population,
there is a striking display of luxury among those who are benefitting from the
inflation. New nightclubs are being opened. These clubs have the further
effect of greatly intensifying the class hatred of the proletariate against the
bourgeoisie.

October 1922, however, was the nadir for shareholders. From then on not
only did money find its way back into shares, but people who could obtain
cheap credit, or were unable to send their money abroad, began to realise the
advantages of buying up their own country’s industrial and other assets at a
fraction of their true value. Although in real terms the stock market began to
go up, the mark’s purchasing power continued to go down.

‘By the end of the year,’ said Erna von Pustau,
my allowance and all the money I earned were not worth one cup of coffee.
You could go to the baker in the morning and buy two rolls for 20 marks; but
go there in the afternoon and the same two rolls were 25 marks. The baker
didn’t know how it happened … His customers didn’t know … It had
somehow to do with the dollar, somehow to do with the stock exchange - and

As the old virtues of thrift, honesty and hard work lost their appeal,
everybody was out to get rich quickly, especially as speculation in currency
or shares could palpably yield far greater rewards than labour. While the
anonymous, mindless Republic in the shape of the Reichsbank was prepared
to be the dupe of borrowers, no industrialist, businessman or merchant would
have wished to let the opportunities for enrichment slip by while others were
making hay.

For the less astute, it was incentive enough, and arguably
morally defensible, to play the markets and take every advantage of the
unworkable fiscal system merely to maintain one’s financial and social
position.

As that position slid away, patriotism, social obligations and morals slid
away with it. The ethic cracked. Willingness to break the rules reflected the
common attitude. Not to be able to hold on to what one had, or what one had
saved, little as it worried those who had nothing, was a very real basis of the
human despair from which jealousy, fear and outrage were not far removed.
The air of corruption in business, politics, and the public service, then, was
general. The share capital abuses that became common as more and more
shares were concentrated in the hands of profiteers were no more than an
example, although a serious one, of the moral deterioration caused by
inflation - they largely disappeared when stable money was restored.

In an article in the New York World written in the summer of 1923, Stresemann
rather defensively suggested that ‘our whole business life has acquired the
character of dishonesty and corruption because the value of the mark in June
does not happen to be the same as the value in July’. More privately he
admitted that the substance and the shadow of improbity were the same.

The new danger was that when the peasants finally refused to deliver produce to the towns, the towns would go and fetch it. It had happened in Austria during the blockade. It had happened in the Ruhr and the Rhineland under the provocation of French militarism and enforced idleness. Now there were reports from Saxony - unoccupied Germany - that bands of several hundred townspeople at a time had taken to riding out into the countryside on bicycles to confiscate what they needed.

Anna Eisenmenger’s diary included a first-hand account of the plunder of Linz and its neighbourhood in Austria - the place which Hitler regarded as his home town. She transcribed a letter from her daughter who had been staying there for a few weeks with cousins who ran a small farm with eight cows, two horses, twelve pigs and the usual poultry:

I had driven with Uncle and Aunt to church at Linz. The nearer we approached the more crowded became the usually deserted high road. All kinds of odd-looking individuals met us. One man wearing three hats, one set on top of the other, and at least two coats, excited our amusement ... We met people drawing carts piled high with tinned foods of every description ... A man and a woman were seated in a ditch by the side of the road and, without the least embarrassment, were changing their very ragged garments for quite new ones. ‘Hurry up,’ the woman shouted to us, ‘or there’!l be nothing left!’ We did not understand this remark until we passed the first plundered shops.

Peaceful Linz looked as if it had been visited by an earthquake. Furniture smashed beyond recognition littered the pavements. But not only provision shops, inns, cafés, and drapers’ shops had been looted. Jewellers and watchmakers, too, had been unable to defend their wares. We saw that the inn at which Uncle and Aunt usually stopped after Mass was completely devastated. The old innkeeper caught sight of us and hurried up, almost in tears. He could not open his inn because all the furniture had been smashed and all the provisions stolen; and he strongly advised my uncle to drive home, since the ringleaders of the mob were inciting their followers to ransack the neighbourhood ...

My uncle urged on the horse ... In the lane which winds to my uncle’s farm ... we noticed a troop of about 80 or 100 men and and women. They were bawling and singing and driving in their midst a cart harnessed with a brown horse. Uncle exclaimed: ‘They’re driving away Hansl and our cart!’ Without another word he leapt to the ground, but could only advance slowly with his stiff leg across the field towards the road where he meant to intercept the troop.

A lorry load of gendarmes turned up at that moment. A few shots were fired, and the mob dispersed into the hills, the horse and cart left behind.

In the cart I saw three slaughtered pigs. In addition, some pieces of slaughtered cows and pigs and a few dead hens were lying in an untidy heap. ‘My God, my God,’ wailed my aunt. ‘What will things be like at home?’ ... Two gendarmes accompanied us in order to ascertain the damage. ‘If only they didn’t always destroy everything,’ said one of them. ‘As for their being hungry, that’s not surprising.’ We were prepared for the worst. The gates of the farmyard were wide open. There was not a sign of the servant girls. A pig seriously injured but still living was lying in its own blood in the yard. The other pigs had run out into the road. The cow-shed was drenched in blood. One cow had been slaughtered where it stood and the meat torn from its bones. The monsters had slit up the udder of the finest milch cow, so that she had to be put out of her misery immediately. In the granary the store of grain and fodder were in a state of wild confusion ... a rag soaked with petrol was still smouldering to show what these beasts had intended. In the kitchen-living room of which my aunt was so proud not a thing had been left whole. Uncle estimates the damage at 100,000 peace kronen, and no insurance company will pay him any compensation for his loss.

The towns were starving. The countryside had had a bumper harvest, but there it remained because of the farmers’ steadfast refusal to take paper for it at any price. Something had to be done to shift it. On September 18 were published the plans for the new Boden Credit Bank, later to be known as the Rentenbank, a bank of issue backed not by gold (it was too late for that) but by mortgages on both agricultural land and industry. It was fundamentally an expedient to induce the farmers to co-operate in feeding the nation: and the Bodenmark was by way of a solid form of Kontomark - the units of account worth ten cents each which the Reichsbank was now using to express the real values of current accounts: at last the old fiction of Mark gleich Mark had been formally abandoned.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Aug 23, 2025 7:21 pmBut the way I see it is the Indians are the Jews of the new dark age. They will play an appropriate role as we collapse versus the Jews played an appropriate role pre-collapse.

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Aug 23, 2025 9:08 pm In a dark age, Indians are a "good fit" for some of these positions.

‘Self-termination is most likely’: the history and future of societal collapse

An epic analysis of 5,000 years of civilisation argues that a global collapse is coming unless inequality is vanquished

“Our corporations and, increasingly, our algorithms, also resemble these kinds of people,” he says. “They’re basically amplifying the worst of us.”

Kemp points to these “agents of doom” as the source of the current trajectory towards societal collapse. “These are the large, psychopathic corporations and groups which produce global catastrophic risk,” he says. “Nuclear weapons, climate change, AI, are only produced by a very small number of secretive, highly wealthy, powerful groups, like the military-industrial complex, big tech and the fossil fuel industry.

“The key thing is this is not about all of humanity creating these threats. It is not about human nature. It is about small groups who bring out the worst in us, competing for profit and power and covering all [the risks] up.”

He also has a message for individuals: “Collapse isn’t just caused by structures, but also people. If you want to save the world then the first step is to stop destroying it. In other words: don’t be a dick. Don’t work for big tech, arms manufacturers or the fossil fuel industry. Don’t accept relationships based on domination and share power whenever you can.”

Despite the possibility of avoiding collapse, Kemp remains pessimistic about our prospects. “I think it’s unlikely,” he says. “We’re dealing with a 5,000-year process that is going to be incredibly difficult to reverse, as we have increasing levels of inequality and of elite capture of our politics.

The New Jews? Why hatred against Indians is exploding across the world

Nirmalya Dutta / TIMESOFINDIA.COM / Updated: Aug 21, 2025, 19:58 IST

So when you read about assaults against Indians today — online, offline, in the workplace, on the streets of Dublin, Melbourne, or California — it feels less like an aberration and more like a revert to an old system where politesse had merely deemed that one not be openly racist. Bubbling under the surface, WENA (Western Europe and North America) folks never quite got over their antagonist Lagaan inner Captain Russell maxim: “Tum ghulam log jooti ke neeche rahega.” Except now the “ghulam log” are running tech companies, topping global exams, dictating terms in boardrooms and even becoming prime ministers or vice presidents.

The New Jews? Why hatred against Indians is exploding across the world

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s not surprising to see the recent spate of attacks on diaspora Indians, NRIs or people of Indian origin across the globe.

Except now the “ghulam log” are running tech companies...

00:03:00 [Barry Ritholtz] I read a quote from you way back when you said your parents were pushing you to be either an engineer or a doctor. Is this true? I mean, it’s such a cliche. Indian parents, Jewish parents, go to school, become a doctor.
Savita Subramanian: Well, I mean, there’s a reason it’s a cliche. It’s pretty much the norm. I mean, it happened to, like me and everybody I know who’s a, you know, child of a, an immigrant from India. So it’s kind of, I mean, I think it was, you know, it was the seventies. It was unclear how anybody was gonna make their living. My parents were both in high tech. My dad was an engineer and my mom was a software person, so...
Oh, really?
Yeah. They were both steeped in technology. We
00:03:42 [Speaker Changed] Lived in Silicon Valley.
00:03:43 [Speaker Changed] In Silicon Valley. They were, you know, early, early days in Mountain View before it was, you know, Google
00:03:50 [Speaker Changed] Crowded and, and just
00:03:52 [Speaker Changed] Exactly before there was traffic. But it was, it was, I think that my parents,
you know, they came here for us to have a better life to make some money, you know, not, you know,
to to, to basically live the American dream. And I think that the only legitimate careers were really in the
sciences or, you know, kind of practical applications today. They’ve completely accepted me for who I
am as the dark, you know, dark art of finance person. But, but back then,
00:04:23 [Speaker Changed] You’re the black sheep in the family. You didn’t become a doctor.
00:04:26 [Speaker Changed] I’m black sheep in the family. Exactly. You know,
00:04:27 [Speaker Changed] My, see, see, for Jewish parents, if you go to law school, they’ll put up with
that. It’s like the, the, the old joke
00:04:34 [Speaker Changed] Law school is just barely accepted.
00:04:35 [Speaker Changed] Right. It’s all right, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll allow it. It’s three years. We’ll allow it.
Right, right. But really, medical school is our first choice.
00:04:42 [Speaker Changed] Exactly, yes. You know, the drill. So yeah, so I was a rebel...

Higgenbotham wrote: Sun Jan 05, 2025 4:02 pm Mentioning Von Neumann reminded me that Roosevelt had his "Dollar a Year Men" and the immigrant Jewish Manhattan Project scientists, while Trump is in the process of assembling the likes of Elon Musk and the H1-B Indian "Tech Bros" around him. It's already been discussed that, while Trump fits the correct mold to be the Gray Champion (Obama did not), it's an open question as to whether he has the temperament and resources to successfully pull it off. Some quotes from Strauss and Howe were reproduced to support that notion.

Khanna, a House Democrat who represents Silicon Valley and a potential future presidential candidate, has known Musk for more than 10 years. In an interview, he called Musk an “an extraordinary entrepreneur” and said that he fits the mold of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “dollar-a-year men,” the corporate executives who were paid a symbolic salary of $1 annually to help the federal government mobilize for WWII.

Khanna said he has “exchanged texts” with Musk since Trump tapped him to head DOGE. He declined to “go into private exchanges” but said they have discussed “the places where we can collaborate.”

“We have a candid conversation. He also knows where I disagree with him,” he said. “We need to engage these technologists and builders to be part of our coalition, but without compromising our values.”

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/12/1 ... hip-000579

There are a lot of reasons to think that this is not an apt comparison. But first it would behoove me to further investigate who Roosevelt's dollar a year men were and what they accomplished. Also, Trump's recent appointments and support of the Indian "Tech Bros" and H1-B has caused a backlash from MAGA voters who feel they have been betrayed. I don't see that anybody has attempted to compare the Indian "Tech Bros" to the eminent Jewish Manhattan Project scientists, but there's still plenty of time for that. There are a lot of reasons to think that, in the event that comparison is attempted, it is not apt either.

Higgenbotham wrote: Tue Aug 19, 2025 6:16 pm

People sun tan on the Lakefront Trail on the North Side as a haze of Canadian wildfire smoke blankets the Chicago area and creates poor air quality, Thursday, July 31, 2025. Credit: Ashlee Rezin/Chicago Sun-Times via AP

https://phys.org/news/2025-08-canadian- ... large.html