Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[aeden]

More can’t afford a new car so doesn’t matter to me anymore about the EV implosion.
We took a few days to off and all we seen was packed Auto lots.
We know a few brokers in that segment. Slow at first and all at once.
Solvency facts. Record invaders heading in. Brandon Uniparty are lunatics.
Some push back on this as they always empty every cage to let them get in here.
The dumb money which is retail folks as we noted are past digging in.
We sold very heavy into to this. Bear do nap and rather care less since
we see no contention as they the Senate has just joined the body farm long ago.
The older crowd noted and is at the point it is not even worth the time to
regard the fools who worship these grifter lunatics.

[Higgenbotham]

Dark Age Chronicles

This post will describe my 2 days after Christmas in the new dark age.

Earlier I discussed the "free" oil changes offered by the dealer where we bought our car. My wife drives this 2 year old car and I drive a 23 year old Toyota Corolla. As mentioned earlier, about a week ago, the dealer told us the soonest appointment for the "free" oil change would be January 23. What they didn't tell us was that going past the recommended oil change interval of 7,500 miles by just 500 more miles would void the warranty or at least parts of the warranty. When questioned about this, they admitted it but didn't have a solution. We decided to take the car to Wal-Mart for an oil change. My wife left yesterday morning in the 23 year old Toyota to go to work and I left for Wal-Mart shortly thereafter. On the way to Wal-Mart I got a call from her. She said she had driven about 10 miles in the Toyota, which she hadn't driven in over 2 years, and was enjoying the drive, actually preferring that car to the one she has been driving (a Hyundai Palisade). I asked her if she felt comfortable in the car and she said yes. She suggested that we drive the Toyota and mostly park the Palisade until January 23. I said, good, let's do that, mentioning, among other things, that the Toyota would cost perhaps 60-70% less per mile to drive. We then decided that I would continue on to Wal-Mart to buy the oil and filter for the Toyota and I would change the oil in that car.

When I got to the Wal-Mart parking lot, there was a couple getting out of their car with their 4 year old daughter. Their daughter and mine greeted each other, and we struck up a conversation. I let her do most of the talking. His parents were born in Ghana and she was Mexican. Their story was that they came to Texas from California 2 years ago broke, with basically the clothes on their backs and their vehicle. They are still struggling but renting a place. They like Texas. They said their daughter has one pair of pants, the one she had on. It was dirty and full of holes. They are home schooling their 2 youngest children and those 2 kids have not been vaccinated. They professed a very strong Christian faith, making numerous references to that. Despite the hardships they have faced, their spirits were not broken. I suggested that they go on freecycle.com to get some hand me downs for their daughter. I said there's a baby bust going on and they should be able to get a lot of free clothing. Our conversation terminated when one of their older boys slammed the 4 year old girl's index finger in the car door, ripping about half of her fingernail off.

Late yesterday evening, my wife told me that one of her friends had texted her saying she needs a favor, a big favor. (Before we started moving, I said there will be people wanting to move in with us. I said the answer needs to be no, and the reason is that your mother is moving in with us next month. I said let's agree to that now before it happens, because it's going to happen. We agreed.) So I said the big favor she needs is that she wants to move into our house. That turned out to be correct. I said I was surprised they were the first, but they won't be the last. We got more details this morning. He lost his IT job, her contract job ends in a few days, and they were scammed out of all their savings. They thought they were investing in a business. More bad news this morning. Their rent is $2,300 per month, December was not paid, and they are facing eviction. My wife gave her the canned response: her mother is moving into the house next month. But she added that we have this apartment vacated and they (and their kids) can live here until the lease runs out. She rejected that offer, saying she needs to keep the kids in the same school. After she got off the phone, my wife and I noted that she hasn't yet come to terms with how much trouble she is in.

After that, another friend texted with the details of a car accident she got into on December 22. She is a nurse in a hospital and was recently part of a nurses strike for better pay and working conditions. On the way home from work, she fell asleep at the wheel and hit another car head on, totaling both cars. Fortunately, neither driver was seriously hurt.

[aeden]

We cared 11 years for Her Mother. Unlike the recent trend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CRE14m8Blc we
did what needed to be done. Not easy but looking back we will do what should be done. Emotion toll is real.
The initial geriatric assessment gave me information and was my pleasure to take Her. No one else wanted to
and it was not a issue that day with my schedule. Very helpful for the path ahead in proper measures.

[Higgenbotham]

Lottery Economy Update

My account is now 129% short and the average entry on this short is 4380. I'm prepared for a move back to the all time high and beyond.

Given the upward bias of the stock market, it's very difficult to point to any particular day and say the top can be "right here".

But 34 years after the all time high on the Nikkei, which occurred on December 29, 1989, the pervasive bullish sentiment, the look of the chart, the look of the standard indicators like the daily RSI, MACD and slow stochastics, etc., etc., today does look like it could be an important top.

I'm still short with an average entry now of 4420, and my account is down 1.6% on the year with the S&P up 24.6% this year.

[aeden]

It has been a brutal year H. The Texas trade triangle is all that matters for these worthless transfer cost retrogrades.
As posted we went 95 percent cash and will filter all inputs for positive cash flow.
The ability to organize supply chains is past hyper critical the next three years.
Fines of a steel company for 500k since someone's feeling got hurt is the abject stupidity of these
marxist lawfare fools also. The red bead facts from Deming were a warning they still cannot fathom.
consider: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0tWW6fV4XI Areas of non-retrogrades.
Even when they get their heads kicked like a soccer ball or slapped bloody these bone heads .gov looters still do not get it.

[Guest]

Dark Age Chronicles

This post will describe my 2 days after Christmas in the new dark age.

After she got off the phone, my wife and I noted that she hasn't yet come to terms with how much trouble she is in.

These types never see it coming...

Please keep us posted on her.

[aeden]

Lottery Economy Update

Given the upward bias of the stock market, it's very difficult to point to any particular day and say the top can be "right here".

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inli ... k=5V_H45MM Price channel explains the waste steams as yea corruption matters.

[Higgenbotham]

Dark Age Chronicles

This post will describe my 2 days after Christmas in the new dark age.

After she got off the phone, my wife and I noted that she hasn't yet come to terms with how much trouble she is in.

These types never see it coming...

Please keep us posted on her.

Nothing more yet.

As mentioned above, her December rent was not paid. A few days before that rent was due, in late November, she came over with her kids. She had to have known at that time that the rent might not be paid. I noticed she didn't seem with it. While she was over, she went out and got a huge bag from McDonald's. My kid is almost 4 and we have never purchased anything from McDonald's for her, or any other fast food. Around that same time, somebody else came over with her kids and also purchased a huge bag from McDonald's. Two years ago, when her husband came home from traveling for his IT job, I mentioned that the Federal Reserve creates money out of thin air and that stimulates the US economy because the US can use that money to purchase things from around the world while the dollars end up in foreign countries. He said something to the effect of, well, that's the system and to take advantage of it. I said you can do that but keep in mind that it will come to an end someday. Normally, I don't mention things like that to people but, because he was working in IT, I did privately while we were away from everyone else.

[aeden]

sticky https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KzfYlCihw4 lag

[Higgenbotham]

Second, I know you don’t watch TV but I am a very visual person. Even though the idea of watching congressional hearings on CSPAN for 3 1/2 hours seemed dauntingly mind-numbing, I went ahead and started to watch the infamous hearings of 5 December about the abrupt and disturbing increase in Antisemitism particularly on campuses since the butchery of 7 October and the subsequent war began. This hearing has spurred a dozen lengthy commentaries in the paper and memes online. It was like a car wreck. I just couldn’t look away. 5-minute segments of the representatives of the best and brightest of the Clerisy fumbling their way through sharp questioning which, to my mind, highlighted the inevitable splintering of victimhood culture. The softball questions from the Democrats tried to focus how they would “solve the problem” that has arisen but, of course, there is no plan because that would mean smacking down one of the sacred “marginalized” groups for their misbehaviour, as they effectively call for genocide of the Jewish people. Whereas the Republicans had their sharpened knives out and gleefully sliced away at the overt hypocrisy that, as I said many years ago, results from the fundamental incompatibility of most of the agendas contained within the social justice movement, but without having any real plan of their own to sort anything out. It became clear that these Presidents of these gold-standard universities were not chosen primarily for their abilities, but because they can tick off boxes on the social justice criteria for “fairness”.
What was also clear is the degree to which the U.S. education system has become a pale and useless shadow of it’s former glory, as they have gradually embraced an increasingly extreme ideology that has been tearing away at Western culture and values since the 1970s based on the unconstrained vision (see “Conflict of Visions” by Thomas Sowell) that claims that all problems are solvable and all people can live in love and harmony… And here we have absolute empirical evidence that just ain’t so, Joe.
Finally, I reflected on just how exactly this demonstrates the ongoing crumbling of the American Empire and the twilight of Western Culture. This is what it looks like when an empire is so powerful that it cannot come under direct assault from external forces, but decays intellectually and morally from within. In your books and writings, you have, along with quite a few others, observed that the Clerisy who run things become corrupt, devoid of new ideas, and psychologically live in a vibrant fantasy of times past, in this case, the vital time during the 19th Century when we – the West – effectively abolished slavery and they are now desperately attempt to portray themselves as bold, as valiant, and as heroic fighters akin to Hancock’s II Corps at Gettysburg in their “struggle” against “racism”. I use quotes here, because in order to maintain this self-image, they must continually redefine the term out of all meaning.
I think that future historians of Meriga may well reference the events of this past quarter as major turning points in the collapse of the world we currently enjoy.

https://www.ecosophia.net/december-2023 ... ent-106223