***** denotes well-worth reading in full at source (even if excerpted extensively here)
Economic and Market Fare:
The Fed has cut interest rates 100 basis points since September, and over the same period, 10-year interest rates are up 100 basis points. This is highly unusual, see charts below. Is it fiscal worries? Is it less demand from abroad? Or maybe Fed cuts were not justified? The market is telling us something, and it is very important for investors to have a view on why long rates are going up when the Fed is cutting.
Rising 10-Year Yields, VIX “Buy Signal” Update (via TheBondBeat)
… Topic #1: Why are 10-year Treasury yields rising when the Fed is cutting rates? The FOMC has reduced the Funds rate by 100 basis points since its first cut on September 18th. Over the same period, 10-year yields have increased by 100 basis points, from 3.7 to 4.7 percent.
This is not the usual course of events, as the following chart of Fed Funds (red line) and 10-year yields (black line) from 1980 to the present clearly shows. The arrows show the start of the last 10 easing cycles, and in every single case 10-year yields either stayed relatively stable or (much more often) declined.
..................... Our read is that markets are simply discounting a still-strong economy rather than either calling the Fed’s bluff or stressing over budget deficits, and the following chart explains our reasoning. It shows real (ex-inflation) 10-year Treasury yields from 2003 to the present.
......... WHY, then, are rates rising?
Not sure I know or can offer more than the right questions to ask. I know who’s opinions (which are ALL created equally, and how some are simply MORE equal than others) matters … and it’s NOT mine.
DATATREK asks / answers and so too does Dr. Ed Yardeni — both notes below.
I DO KNOW markets are like politics and now, since DJT has won, certain things seem to have become ‘OK’ to say out loud.
Same in markets. Something has happened (perhaps the very same event) and it seems ‘OK’ to think about higher for longer.
I’m NOT gratified in the least, although, talked at length last year about ‘Team Rate CUT’ in such a way to get the point across. I didn’t / don’t always agree with lower rate idea. Inflation remained a concern and the idea the Fed MIGHT have broken something (SVB?) did put this view on PAUSE.
Thinking about rates — higher for longer — is / was hard for me, a former bond geek in a seat where, for my entire career, thinking about rates going from upper left to lower right, was generally correct. .........
After 2024 finished with a thud, investors still expect stocks to sparkle in 2025
........... Breadth deterioration at the stock level is also being seen at the sector level (as well as on a global basis). The number of sectors above their 200-day averages has dropped into a range that has been inconsistent with sustained index-level strength over the past quarter-century. .............
The new year begins with economic resilience, but investors should brace for a challenging path in 2025. Key economic indicators are still “goldilocks” and signal continued growth at a sustainable pace. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracker aligns closely with major forecasts, projecting about a robust 2.5% GDP growth rate for Q4 2024. Simultaneously, jobless claims remain low, reflecting a healthy labor market. Inflation-sensitive commodities are stable, aside from minor energy fluctuations driven primarily by weather. This backdrop portrays an economy maintaining balance despite heightened interest rates.
Yet, uncertainty exists regarding the Trump administration’s forthcoming economic policies. The market expects immediate action on tariffs, though implementation will take months. In taxation, proposed corporate tax cuts lack the transformative scale of the 2017 tax overhaul when the corporate tax rates went from 35% to 21% and we had a dramatic expansion of the estate tax exemptions and lowering of capital gains taxes. Trump has discussed a further reduction to the 15% corporate tax for products made in the United States. This is a much smaller scale and impact. There has also been no discussion of changing the capital gains rate, even though Republicans would favor that. Regulatory skepticism for big tech persists, raising questions about the growth potential in this key sector.
Valuation levels also warrant scrutiny. The S&P 500’s forward P/E ratio near 23.5x earnings is not cheap, especially as bond yields rise. If we had another 20% gain in stocks in 2025, this would harken back to the gains in 1997, 1998, and the 1999 tech bubble that caused a painful bear market starting in 2000. History reminds us that markets can sustain high valuations temporarily, but risks grow as they deviate further from earnings fundamentals. Analysts currently expect around 17-18% earnings growth in 2025. In 2023 and 2024, two very strong years for the market, we had under 10% earnings growth each year. I wonder what can drive us to these lofty expectations for earnings and that leaves us vulnerable to disappointment.
Bonds remain under pressure, driven by a strong economy, fiscal concerns, and the specter of rising deficits. Long-term Treasury yields, currently around 4.6%, may climb further, potentially reaching the high end of a 4.5-5.5% range. This forecast reflects historical norms where long bonds trade with a premium of 100-150 basis points over Fed Funds in non-recessionary conditions. Such yield dynamics heighten competition for equities, especially those relying on high growth expectations. Dividend-paying stocks, however, retain appeal as their yields remain competitive relative to inflation adjusted bonds while offering dividend growth potential that TIPs do not.
AI and technology remain focal points for market narratives. Signs of rotation into less expensive areas or defensive sectors are still notably absent, leaving the overperformance of growth, at least for the meantime, intact. I could see a market correction in the broad market and a bear market in the Nasdaq if our long-waited market rotation occurs, but the catalyst for this rotation has yet to arrive.
DB: Mapping Markets: Why 2025 can be another great year (via TheBondBeat)
As market strategists, we spend a lot of time thinking about what might go wrong. But the last two years have also demonstrated how the macro news can surprise well on the upside.
After all, most years are normally quite good for markets. In fact since 2008, the S&P 500 has only posted a negative total return in two out of 16 years. Elsewhere, the STOXX 600 and the Nikkei don’t have quite as stellar a record, but they’ve still only posted 4 out of 16 negative years.
So as we look forward to 2025, it’s worth remembering that there's the potential for a lot to go right. After all, many of the most obvious risks are already priced in. There’s no sign of an economic downturn. Financial conditions are very accommodative. Several leading indicators of a US recession are now pointing away from one again. Even if we do get a downturn, central banks now have plenty of scope to cut rates. And whilst there are plenty of geopolitical risks right now, that hasn’t been a factor that markets have traditionally reacted much to.
So what's the upside case for 2025?
1. Starting valuations might be high and evoking comparisons to the dot com bubble, but the dot com bubble burst alongside an economic downturn, of which there’s no sign today….....
2. The current backdrop of rate cuts taking place in a soft landing (rather than a recession) has been incredibly favourable for risk assets historically…...
Can equities turn down without a recession? (via TheBondBeat)
........ Historically, the most common driver of significant losses are recessions. The huge plunges in 2020 and 2008 required an economic contraction, and the bursting of the dot com bubble also happened amidst a slowdown that ended up in a recession in 2001. But right now, there’s no sign of a slowdown, and if anything, several leading indicators are looking increasingly positive.
This got us thinking about whether there could be an equity decline without a recession. The answer is yes, but large selloffs outside a recession are pretty infrequent. Moreover, when they do happen, it’s often like 2022 as investors start to fear and price in a recession, even if one hasn’t happened yet. Another very common theme across these declines are Fed rate hikes beforehand.
So if economic growth stays robust and the Fed don’t start pivoting in a hawkish direction, it’s not implausible that elevated valuations continue for some time. However, if signs of a slowdown emerge or rate hikes move back on the table, the historic precedents show that equities are capable of a notable decline, even without a recession.
Trump has promoted a number of plans to make America strong – at other countries’ expense. Given his “we win; you lose” motto, some of his plans would produce the opposite effect of what he imagines.
That would not be much of a change in U.S. policy. But I suggest that Hudson’s Law may be peaking under Trump: Every U.S. action attacking other countries tends to backfire and end up costing American policy at least twice as much .............
So I think that Trump is living in a past world – especially given the right-wing Republican “hard money” crowd pining for the old gold-exchange standard, insisting that government money creation is inherently inflationary (as if bank credit is not at all). I guess that’s what makes him a genius: He’s able to hold two opposing views at the same time, each with its own logic that contradicts his other view. ..........................
Stated another way: How long will debtor countries agree to remain in a system that had promised to help them grow, when all it has done is leave them further in debt and forced them to sell off mineral rights, infrastructure and public enterprise to raise the money to pay these debts in order to maintain their exchange rates? The system is rigged against them. ...............
The long stagnation that began in the mid- to late 1970s and continues to the present day is evidenced by a long-term secular decline in the growth rate of output, the growth rate of new investment, and capacity utilization. This stagnation has been one with a half-century of real wage flattening for nonsupervisory workers and a dramatic increase in the wealth holdings of the upper classes and managerial elites.1
Associated with this stagnation has been an increasing concentration of firms across a whole panoply of industrial and financial settings. In addition to numerous manufacturing industries, we might list: oil, banking, food production, distribution and retailing, legacy airlines, credit cards, high-tech services (inclusive of search engines and computer facilities), music delivery, phone services, and internet retailing.2 This increasing concentration has solidified monopoly power across the economy and, in accordance with the tendency of monopoly power to slow down investment growth, helps explain the general slowdown of growth over the last fifty years.3
It is the purpose of this article to relate how this creeping stagnation has added its own force in contributing to the monopoly power associated with consolidation and to current wealth disparities. The argument runs along two lines. The first concerns how the imperative for corporate growth channels monies into mergers when the prospects for new investment slow up. The second (and related aspect) concerns the generation of corporate monies in excess of new investment (termed free cash) that, together with debt, funds mergers. Free cash results from federal deficits derivable in large part from: (1) tax rate reductions on the rich and (2) efforts to counter stagnation and episodes of financial unraveling. Free cash funds mergers and acquisitions, but has not been limited to such.4 Free cash has acted as flow collateral for the expansion of corporate debt to provide mega-funds for spillage into equity markets. In addition to mergers, this spillage consists of expanded dividends and stock buybacks. Amounting to trillions of dollars, this disgorging of cash has been a major force for expanding the wealth positions of the rich. .......................
Bubble Fare:
Trump will usher in a speculative frenzy.
........................................ Other catastrophes are easy to imagine: bank failures, exchange collapses, giant Ponzi schemes faltering. Still, the biggest risk with crypto has little to do with crypto at all.
If Congress passes FIT21 or a similar bill, it would invent a novel asset class called “digital commodities”—in essence, any financial asset managed on a decentralized blockchain. Digital commodities would be exempted from SEC oversight, as would “decentralized finance” firms. In the FIT21 bill, any firm or person can self-certify a financial product as a digital commodity, and the SEC would have only 60 days to object.
This is a loophole big enough to fit an investment bank through. ...............................
...... As we enter 2025, the financial markets are optimistic. That optimism is fueled by strong market performance over the last two years and analyst’s projections for continued growth. However, as “Curb Your Enthusiasm” often demonstrates, even the best-laid plans can unravel when overlooked details come to light. Here are five reasons why a more cautious approach to investing might be warranted in 2025.
........ Current valuations suggest that stocks are priced for perfection as investors bid up asset prices ahead of what a declining economic growth rate can deliver. This leaves little room for error. In other words, investors are essentially betting on corporations’ flawless execution in a year when macroeconomic uncertainties loom large.
Marks: On Bubble Watch
Hussman: Pressing for Yet More
That the free-enterprise economy is given to recurrent episodes of speculation will be agreed. There is protection only in a clear perception of the characteristics common to these flights… There are, however, few matters on which such a warning is less welcomed. Those involved with the speculation are experiencing an increase in wealth – getting rich or being further enriched. No one wishes to believe that this is fortuitous or undeserved; all wish to think that it is the result of their own superior insight or intuition. Speculation buys up, in a very practical way, the intelligence of those involved. As long as they are in, they have a strong pecuniary commitment to belief in the unique personal intelligence that tells them that there will be yet more.”– John Kenneth Galbraith, A Short History of Financial Euphoria
On December 6, the S&P 500 set the most extreme level of valuations on record, exceeding both the 1929 and 2000 market peaks on measures that we find best-correlated with actual, subsequent 10-12 year S&P 500 total returns across a century of market cycles.
Reliable valuation measures are enormously informative about both long-term investment returns and the potential depth of market losses over the completion of any given market cycle. At the same time, valuations are of strikingly little use in projecting market outcomes over shorter segments of the market cycle. Investor psychology – the desire to speculate, or the aversion to risk – has a much stronger impact, which is why we also have to attend to factors including market internals, sentiment, short-term overextension / compression, and monetary policy (while unfavorable market internals dominate monetary easing, favorable internals amplify it).
Amid the untethered enthusiasm about artificial intelligence, and prospects for deregulation and lower corporate taxes, it’s worth repeating that despite all the society-changing innovations of the past 20-30 years, both GDP and S&P 500 Index revenues (which include the impact of stock buybacks) have grown at an average rate of only about 4.5% annually. That’s slower, not faster, than the growth rate during the preceding half-century.
Yes, the largest companies are very profitable, but that’s nearly always true at speculative extremes. That cohort of mega-cap companies is constantly changing, and except on their approach to extremes like 1929, 1972, 2000, and today, the companies with the largest market capitalizations have historically gone on to lag the S&P 500 over time .............
Having priced the stock market at elevated multiples of record earnings, investors now require profit margins to sustain record highs permanently – simply for growth in earnings and payouts to match the 4.5% revenue growth rate of recent decades, and they require the S&P 500 price/revenue ratio to remain at a permanently high plateau, three times its historical norm.
Given our own 4-year baseline expectation for real GDP growth of just 1.5% (see The Turtle and the Pendulum), even 4.5% nominal growth would require either a 3% inflation rate in the coming years, or a 2% inflation rate coupled with a jump in productivity that fully restores the 1948-2000 average.
One might hope for higher inflation, imagining that it might produce higher nominal growth and accompanying market returns, but that would require valuations to remain at record extremes. Unfortunately, valuations are the first casualty of persistent inflation. In fact, except when valuations have been at least 25% below historical norms, the S&P 500 has lagged Treasury bills, on average, when consumer price inflation has been anything over 4%.
There’s no question that investors are eager to justify record valuation multiples by appealing to the growing share of technology companies in the S&P 500. Yet the technology sector itself is trading at the highest multiple to revenues on record. Meanwhile, the growth rate of overall S&P 500 revenues, which include the technology sector, is below historical norms while the S&P 500 price/revenue multiple is three times its historical norm, easily eclipsing the 1929 and 2000 peaks.
Still, for the moment, neither valuations nor arithmetic matter to investors. As Galbraith observed, “As long as they are in, they have a strong pecuniary commitment to belief in the unique personal intelligence that tells them that there will be yet more.”
Hence the sort of magazine cover Barron’s ran only a week after the S&P 500 set its recent record high – “Embrace the bubble.” ..........................
Put simply, these so-called “errors” contain information. It’s enormously tempting to imagine, at bubble highs, that glorious backward-looking returns, far greater than those previously implied by valuations, demonstrate that historical standards of value are outdated and obsolete. In their 1934 classic, Security Analysis, Benjamin Graham and David Dodd described the mood surrounding the 1929 market peak, observing that investors had abandoned their attention to valuations because “the records of the past were proving an undependable guide to investment.”
In truth, there was an enormous warning in the “error” between the returns investors were enjoying and the returns suggested by valuations. Presently, that same kind of “error” offers the same warning as those that misled investors to ignore valuations in 1929 and 2000. ................
Vid Fare:
Quotes of the Week:
Mauboussin: Our probability assessments shift based on how others present information to us.
Mauboussin: Our probability assessments shift based on how others present information to us.
JPM: For as long as retail investors continue to pour money into the AI theme, the AI led boom in stock markets is likely to continue.
&: Deviations from fair value persistent in equities. Deviations from fair value more mean reverting in rates.
&: Do not overemphasize risk scenarios when investing.
Noland: For better or worse, the Trump administration will force momentous change both at home and abroad. From the perspective of my analytical framework, it’s not coincidental that our President returns to the White House with the world at the brink – with manias and acutely vulnerable speculative Bubbles; with a deeply maladjusted U.S. economy and associated inequality and acute societal strain; with political dysfunction and corruption; with escalating trade and military wars at risk of spiraling out of control; with an antagonistic world and precarious geopolitics. For the foreseeable future, there may be a need for CBB warning labels: “Some readers may find the following content offensive and disturbing.”
............ &: "I would repeat a critical maxim: Bubbles inflate or burst. Importantly, last year’s spectacular “terminal phase excess” creates quite a predicament. Manic speculative excesses and leveraged speculation ensure market fragility, as well as systemic frailty that significantly elevates crash risk. Last year’s only looser financial conditions fueled deeper economic structural maladjustment."
Charts:
1:
(not just) for the ESG crowd:
Global warming is moving faster than the best models can keep a handle on.
Fifty years into the project of modeling Earth’s future climate, we still don’t really know what’s coming. Some places are warming with more ferocity than expected. Extreme events are taking scientists by surprise. Right now, as the bald reality of climate change bears down on human life, scientists are seeing more clearly the limits of our ability to predict the exact future we face. The coming decades may be far worse, and far weirder, than the best models anticipated. ...........
*** Short Takes - 05
The signal that the ENDGAME has started.
..... 2025 is starting off with the global ocean about +0.25°C HOTTER than 2023. It takes a MASSIVE amount of energy to warm up the oceans that much.
............................. CO2 levels surged in 2023 because the Terrestrial Land Carbon Sinks failed almost completely.
........ Hansen estimates that the dimming of the ALBEDO has increased the Energy Flow into the Climate System an amount equivalent to a jump of +100ppm in CO2 levels.
........................... BUT the mainstream models cannot account for 2024’s sustained warmth and GMST of +1.6°C over baseline.
A sustained JUMP in the GMST like +0.4°C in 4 years (2020–2024) implies that either a new forcing has been added to the Climate System OR that warming was being “masked” by a cooling effect which suddenly stopped.
That's a BIG problem for the Moderate faction in climate science. They have decided what “mainstream” climate science WAS for the last 40 years. A big JUMP in the GMST like this implies the mainstream climate models are WRONG.
2025 will tell us just HOW BAD things actually are.
............. In The March of Folly (1985), Barbara Tuchman described the self-destructive habit of leaders repeatedly pushing failed policies against their own interests. She highlighted glaring historical blunders: the Trojans dragging the wooden horse into Troy, corrupt Renaissance Popes fueling the Protestant Reformation, Britain’s bungled handling of the American colonies sparking revolution, and the U.S. sinking deeper into Vietnam despite obvious failure.
Most of today’s energy policies could easily join Tuchman’s list of follies—chasing unsustainable strategies, ignoring hard limits, and favoring short-term gains over long-term stability. The same arrogance and denial that led past empires to collapse are driving modern energy decisions straight into failure.
Radical Acceptance, Part Three
.......... "Moreover, Hayhoe’s solution of talking is beyond hypocritical. Hayhoe is a Christian climate scientist preaching the gospel of talking to others while blocking nearly everyone on social media who dares to disagree with her message of hope and optimism by discussing worse-case scenarios. When Hayhoe blocks those who bring up the scary parts, she is perpetuating the very silence she claims to be fighting against."
U.S. B.S.:
.......... "Moreover, Hayhoe’s solution of talking is beyond hypocritical. Hayhoe is a Christian climate scientist preaching the gospel of talking to others while blocking nearly everyone on social media who dares to disagree with her message of hope and optimism by discussing worse-case scenarios. When Hayhoe blocks those who bring up the scary parts, she is perpetuating the very silence she claims to be fighting against."
U.S. B.S.:
Yves here. This piece sets out the plight of what next for Democrats in class warfare terms, which is a useful frame. I am not even sure, however, that many who are in positions of influence relative to the party are even able to swallow the idea that the path for the Team Blue to recover is to embrace much derided populism, which has come to be equated with anti-intellectualism and bigotry, contrary to its historical tradition.
Les Leopold also points out, as a step in restoring some semblance of cred, that elite Dems would also have to admit where they made policy errors. But this again seems impossible; I can envision key figures recoiling, as if presented with a raw roadkilled squirrel carcass on a fine china in a fancy restaurant. Most members of our soi-disant leadership have deeply internalized that their status depends on never admitting they were wrong, much the less apologizing. That is why Democrats never fail but can only be failed by their feckless voters.
Mind you, even though this is a US issue, the repudiation of PMC elite politicians may be moving a bit faster in Europe due to worsening economic conditions on top of mainstream leaders being all on board with cutting social spending to fund military spending, which voters soundly and roundly oppose. ..................
Canadian leaders are falling over themselves to placate the incoming Trump administration. It doesn’t have to be this way
Welsh: Smart CEOs Suck Up to Trump
........ The FTC is planning to take Meta to court over anti-trust violations this year. Want to bet they change their minds?
Amazon is nothing but a giant sucking anti-trust violation.
Olds will remember that Microsoft was almost broken up by an anti-trust suit. The government was clearly winning its case in 2000, but when Bush Jr. took power, the government suddenly decided to drop the case. Saved Gates billions and billions.
Trump’s tariff plans are going to hit a lot of companies hard, but some will likely get waivers, as Apple did. Wouldn’t you pay a million dollars, or ten million, to predispose Trump to make sure you get a waive that will save you billions?
Sure you would.
Wearing kneepads for the President and other important political figures is part of the CEO’s job .............
Hague fugitive Joe Biden has awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to U2 singer Bono, because that’s the sort of thing that happens in a society where everything is fake and we are led by the least among us. Other recipients of the medal this year include Hillary Rodham Clinton and George Soros. ...........
Geopolitical Fare:
............. As always, the international media segments the information and explains each event to us by certain local factors, sometimes correct, sometimes false. While we are struggling with this mixture, we fail to perceive that all these events belong to a larger plan and that it is not possible to win on a front if we do not know how far it extends.
What we are witnessing is the third stage of the plan developed by Donald Rumsfeld and Admiral Arthur Cebrowski in 2000 [1]. In the American tradition, which General Smedley Butler summarized in his famous 1933 speech “War Is a Racket” [2], the Pentagon has set itself the mission of destroying all political institutions in the “Greater Middle East” (i.e., an area from Algeria to Kazakhstan to Somalia, with the exception of Israel and possibly Morocco) ............
An assessment of the Trudeau government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The last two years of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s tenure have been marked by a massive escalation of several interconnected geopolitical crises. Canada remains a feeble and largely irrelevant ‘middle power,’ but is nonetheless actively complicit in worsening these already catastrophic crises. This article will focus on one important example: Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
The Trudeau government’s complicity in Israel’s genocide highlights both its legacy as a pro-war vassal regime that is fundamentally subservient to American foreign policy, and its consistent appeasement of the Israel lobby. It is a government rank with hypocrisy on human rights and international law, and one whose record ought to finally put to rest the myth that Canada is a “peacekeeping” nation. ......
......... Sometimes all you can do is stare wordlessly at the absolute gall of these freaks.
.................... So the US is indirectly backing the genocidal atrocities it now denounces in Sudan, while aggressively defending the genocidal atrocities it is directly backing in Gaza.
This announcement comes as Biden and his handlers push through one last $8 billion weapons shipment to Israel in the last days of his term, a final blood-soaked punctuation mark on an ugly legacy of mass murder throughout Biden’s far-too-long political career. ..............
The Washington Post editors have long argued for prolonging the war in Ukraine. .........
Putinism at 25, US Truth and Reconciliation Committee for 2025, The End of the Liberal Era?, Stewart Lee The Little Shit, My Life With Penguins in the Antarctic
........................ I am not Russian, I do not want to be Russian, I don’t even want Russia in the EU (it’s far too big and too foreign). However, I cannot but admire the man and his efforts to resurrect Russia from the disastrous Yeltsin era. Any objective analysis of his time in office has to conclude that he has done a very good job with respect to politics, society, economy, and even defense (especially when you factor into it how the USA has been chipping away at Russia the entire time). Ben Aris reflects on 25 years of Volodya, and he too can’t help but possess a grudging admiration from the man ...........
............ Much of this is either forgotten, ignored, and hand-waved away, as these overtures to the West complicate the narrative in which Putin is an imperialist bent on domination. ............
We believe what we want to believe. This is especially true if we find that what might, horribly, actually be true is just too much to bear. Safer, easier, more comforting to believe a falsehood that is simpler, happier, more consistent with everything else we were always taught (conditioned) to believe.
So, instead of acknowledging that we are the mass murderers, the genociders, the oppressors, the liars, the propagandists, the war-mongers, we much prefer to believe that it was someone else at fault. We were just defending ourselves, protecting our ‘democracy’, our ‘freedom’, and our way of life. The real villains are savages, animals, evil and insane.
And instead of realizing our gullibility in believing for years the carefully honed lies, distortions, manipulations and propaganda of the information sources we always trusted — the media, our teachers, our parents, our friends, the people we looked up to — it’s so much easier and more tempting to believe that what the whistleblowers are saying, what the investigative reporters are saying, what the demonstrators in the streets are saying, is just fake news, rabble-rousing, stories planted and activities organized by ‘foreign state’ propagandists to confuse and undermine us.
Surely ‘our side’ would never blow up a pipeline essential to the well-being of millions, and create the largest environmental disaster in history in the process. Surely the people we voted for would never brutally overthrow an elected foreign government and replace it with a puppet government that would then unleash a reign of terror on its citizens. Surely our ‘defence’ forces would never deliberately, indiscriminately cause mass civilian casualties, destroy infrastructure, and displace millions of people, to purposefully wreck a country so we can steal its land and resources. Only ‘bad guys’ do that.
There can come a point at which it is no longer possible to reconcile what we believe — and desperately want to believe — with what is obviously actually true. ...........
Sci Fare:
Studies reveal how risky play can benefit child development. But encouraging it can be a challenge for parents.
Renowned neurologist Richard Cytowic exposes the dangers of multitasking in the digital age.
Related Fare:
Is it Possible to Read Walden When You Own a Smartphone?
....................... Reading Walden and other books that operate at those lower, crunchier gears is an autological experience – the act of reading it all but compels you to adopt the mindset it describes. Whether this was on purpose or was just the way Thoreau’s mind worked, he knew something we need reminding of these days: Doing the right thing slowly and with difficulty will always be better than doing the wrong thing quickly and effortlessly.
....................... Reading Walden and other books that operate at those lower, crunchier gears is an autological experience – the act of reading it all but compels you to adopt the mindset it describes. Whether this was on purpose or was just the way Thoreau’s mind worked, he knew something we need reminding of these days: Doing the right thing slowly and with difficulty will always be better than doing the wrong thing quickly and effortlessly.
Fun Fare:
Pics of the Week:
The state of the world..... pic.twitter.com/lheXihlVnh
— Dr. William J. Ripple (@WilliamJRipple) January 6, 2025
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