A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.
That's a very good explanation of why gas prices are different from state to state and region to region in the U.S., although it captures only part of the reason. The other is increased demand in the face of lower supply, something I've worried about for a while, most recently in Oil falls below $0.00 for the first time ever, when I wrote "the collapse in oil prices will lead to oil company bankruptcies, which will decrease competition and lead to higher prices in the future." Those higher prices because of decreased competition and restrained supply have arrived and I think they will last at least until next year. Get used to them.
Why have gas prices increased so dramatically, and why does it seem so hard to fix this issue? Find out in another edition of Getting Back to Normal-ish.
That's pretty much it. The U.S. is unable to pump as much oil now as before the pandemic, in part because it's going to take a while to reopen the old wells that will still yield oil and drill new wells to replace those that can't. In addition, I predicted that oil production would start decreasing about now in The tax bill and the U.S. economy in 2018 and beyond.
Beginning in 2020, it's predicted to decline. That will cause oil prices to increase from 2021 to 2029 unless more oil is imported, which will reduce GDP as the money leaves the country, or Americans decrease their consumption.
Oil and gasoline prices are increasing as I predicted four years ago, more or less on schedule. Speaking of my predictions, I remarked on another in my comment to What We Can Still Accomplish at Ecosophia in July.
As for the upcoming oil price spike, that's been associated with recessions in the U.S. since the country hit peak conventional production in 1971. At first, the current recession seemed to have severed that link, but now we are going to get it as a result of supply destruction because of lowered demand and prices (even negative prices for oil futures last year) followed by a spike in demand because of recovery. The causation between high oil prices and hard times may be reversed, but the correlation will survive. Now let's see if it takes another six years like it did between 2008 and 2014 for high prices to prompt more supply coming online or if supply of petroleum and natural gas liquids finally has peaked.
I suspect it may take even less time for oil prices to fall, but not to where they were during or before the pandemic. That may not happen until the next recession, which I still think will happen around 2027. As I wrote about high and increasing prices for gas and other goods, get used to them.
After I found out yesterday that Trump had finally collected a majority of delegates to the Republican convention, so he is now officially the presumptive nominee, I searched YouTube for an appropriately comedic reaction. I found one in Stephen Colbert's Here's What Put Donald Trump Over The Top, although I've always thought Trump was over the top.
Hearing the news that Donald Trump has clinched the Republican nomination puts Stephen in the fetal position.
Yeah, Stephen, I wanted to lie down on hearing the news, too.
As viewers can see and hear, Trump's earning the nomination may have had top billing in the monologue, but it wasn't alone on stage. The possibility of Sanders debating Trump shared the limelight and showed even more comedic potential.
Senator Sanders talks about the possibility of debating Donald Trump and competing against Secretary Hillary Clinton in California.
Jimmy even has an idea of what a Trump-Sanders debate would look and sound like.
Recently we showed what it looks like if you play Donald Trump at half-speed. We tried it with Bernie too, but it wasn’t as good. Then we slowed Trump down and sped Bernie up and Jimmy thinks that if they end up debating, he’d love it to go something like this.
Bernie Sanders (James Adomian) and Donald Trump (Anthony Atamanuik) debate their likeness to Jesus and launch attack ads in the @midnight presidential debate.
A real debate would be more substantive, but it wouldn't be as funny.
As for whether it's a good idea, I'm not sure. If it's bad for Clinton, she should debate Sanders one last time instead. If it's good for Clinton, she should continue what she's doing, which is ignoring Sanders. On the other hand, it would make for great TV. Stay tuned.
U.S. and British intelligence agencies have worked to infiltrate networks of violence-prone individuals who might unite for a common cause. And in some cases, the spies are also targeting networks that aren't regional terrorist cells -- they're online gaming communities, according to the latest revelation from documents given to the media by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
"Exploiting Terrorist Use of Games & Virtual Environments" is the name of a 2008 NSA document being cited in coordinated reports out Monday from The Guardian, ProPublica and The New York Times.
The reports describe spy agencies' push to infiltrate systems that allow millions of people to closely collaborate and even exchange money -- all through a veil of alternate identities.
The project involved spies creating identities in networks that include Second Life and World of Warcraft, according to the reports. Another arm of the work is said to have collected massive amounts of data from Microsoft's Xbox Live network and elsewhere.
The effort was not a small one, the news agencies report. In fact, so much anti-terrorism work was being conducted in the virtual worlds that a separate "deconfliction" group was tasked with monitoring spies from the CIA, Pentagon, and FBI so that they wouldn't interfere with -- or waste time spying on -- one another, according to Pro Publica.
This is a silly project for various reasons. The more serious objections were raised in the New York Times story, summarized here by two reporters having a chat on WOW in character, pun intended. Follow over the jump for the video.
Over at Kunstler's blog last week, I riffed on the environmental impact equation* by noting that "fracking is a perfect example of technology in the service of population and affluence increasing impact." That reminded me that I had been sitting on several stories on the subject of fracking besides Discovery News reviews 'Gasland'. Follow over the jump for more on this hot topic.
