Quote from: RE on Jan 10, 2026, 06:41 PMPersonally, I think our low readership numbers have little to do with politics and much more to do with the fact Forums have gone out of style, in favor of the short attention span text of Social Media and no text at all video.

Could be.But you got into video quite substantially there for awhile, luring in Gail and Ugo and like minded folks. Didn't seem to increase readership or participation much, and ultimately led to where we are now.

Quote from: REWe're also more difficult to find nowadays as Google's search engine prioritizes for pay websites that pay a fee for placement.  In fact the whole newz oriented web has become almost entirely subscription paywall, most of the time I  see only headlines and what I can read briefly before the link flips to a subscription sign up offer.

That has been quite a web disappointment for me as well. I've signed up for some free ones with a throwaway email. 

Quote from: REAnyhow, regardless of readership numbers or interest, the Diner mission remains the same, which is to track and record the progress of the collapse of industrial civilization.

As opposed to personal political preferences and whatnot? Because there hasn't been any more collapsing from various peak oils claimed or occurred than a bunch of dumbass political horseshit. Politicians still being politicians, little guys still get screwed, the oligarches continuing to do what they do.  Which certainly can screw over Americans, but hey haven't collapsed yet.

Quote from: REThe fact is that collapse has now moved into a heavily politically driven phase as the world realigns itself to operate in the new reality of resource scarcity and the consequential resource wars.

The same one's Matt claimed were going to happen with all the other peak oils that didn't happen? Or do we now take peak oil-like ideas and apply it to critical minerals and whatnot?

Quote from: REIf you wanna discuss Peak Oil, I suggest finding another website concerned with that.

They all died off. Some disappeared entirely....some are just as empty as this place. It isn't even mentioned in the governmental or scientific world much anymore, except for a few folks who managed to discredit themselves going back to the turn of the century and keep throwing out a publication without having learned much,

Quote from: REHere now, the rampant spread of fascist imperialism is the topic of greatest concern.  Peak Oil is yesterday's newz.
RE

Indeed. World peak looks to have been 8 years back now according to EIA data, but idiot politicians are all the rage. They are hard to ignore. How about pollution and global warming and melting glaciers? Didn't K-Dog keep the CO2 levels posted on the main page?

Is it possible that the reason why there is no one around is because us "no longer spring chickens" set aren't going to be around for all the cool collapses and todays idiot politicians are just the best we might be alive to watch play out?

Peak oil is still very much a real thing but existential issues dominate.



Late stage capitalism, where money makes kings the way horses and iron used to.  And the prosperity of the social middle collapses on a return to a new middle age.

QuoteDidn't K-Dog keep the CO2 levels posted on the main page?

December 2025      427.49 ppm
December 2024      425.40 ppm
Annual change:  +0.49%

Every year is another nail in the coffin.

In this story imagine suburbia survives until 2052.  It won't, but considering an extreme case brings clarity.

Quote"What is it now?" he asked the houses, noticing his wrist watch. "Eight-thirty pm? Time for a dozen assorted murders? A  quiz? A revue? A comedian falling off the stage?"

Everything went on in the tomblike houses at night now, he thought, continuing his fancy. The tombs, ill-lit by television light, where the people sat like the dead, the gray or multicoloured lights touching their faces, but never really touching them.

Was that a murmur of laughter from within the moon-white house? He hesitated, but went on when nothing happened. He stumbled over a particularly uneven section of sidewalk. The cement was vanishing under flowers and grass. In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not once in all that time.

America homogenized by banality.  Plastic like American cheese.  No character.  Currently walking late at night unplugged is not a crime.  Yet authoritarian America with its tombs, ill-lit by television light has the same Kraft cheese sameness. 

Quote"Your hands up! Or we'll shoot!" The police, of course, but what a rare, incredible thing; in a city of three million, there was only one police car left, wasn't that correct? Ever since a year ago, 2052, the election year, the force had been cut down from three cars to one. Crime was ebbing; there was no need now for the police, save for this one lone car wandering and wandering the empty streets.

The back door of the police car sprang wide. "Get in."
"Wait a minute, I haven't done anything!"
"Get in."
"I protest!"
"Mr. Mead."
He walked like a man suddenly drunk. As he passed the front window of the car he looked in. As he had expected, there was no one in the front seat, no one in the car at all.
"Get in."
He put his hand to the door and peered into the back seat, which was a little cell, a little black jail with bars. It smelled of riveted steel. It smelled of harsh antiseptic; it smelled too clean and hard and metallic. There was nothing soft there. 

"Where are you taking me?"
"To the Psychiatric Centre for Research on Regressive Tendencies."

America became a land of cosplay, everyone is chasing a manufactured fantasy.  Few want to manufacture their own.  Once there was more of a need to find your own.  But consumption of someone else's fantasy became easy, seductive and patriotic.  Fantasy is monetized, and refined.  Real life itself became a fantasy.  The end result of advanced consumerism.  The experience of living itself becomes a commodity to buy.  The act of breathing by necessity needs to be a side gig.

Consumers do no think, they only make choices and America has entered an intellectual dark age.  Not only that, the choices narrow.

Newzflash.  War IS collapse.  Ask the people in Gaza or Caracas or Kiev or Somalia or Nigeria or Nicaragua whether collapse has arrived.  Ask the follks in Havana and San Juan who can't make ice because the electricity is only on a couple of hours a couple of days a week.  Ask the FSoA citizens who have found themselves deported to El Salvador without so much as a hearing.  Ask the folks in Portland and Minneapolis mowed down by ICE thugs.  Ask the people of Greenland waiting for Marines to come strolling up the beaches.



Since it hasn't yet reached your doorstep, it's not collapsy enough for you.  You live in the belly of the beast, a member of a highly privileged minority.  The collapse works its way inward from the periphery of the civilization to the core.  Compare the state of the world and the disorder growing today to just 5 years ago, and you can see how rapidly it is moving.  It won't stay out on the periphery forever.

Go to any major city in the FSoA and check out the Trumpvilles.   They won''t be peaceful forever either.





RE

Quote from: RE on Jan 10, 2026, 11:44 PMNewzflash.  War IS collapse.
RE

That cheapens the entire concept of collapse across the board. Because now, humans have been, are, did it yesterday, collapsing since soon after Adam and Eve came along. Collapse in your scenario then isn't even "collapse", it is just a state of humanity. And the other giveaway is we don't talk about war much at all. If war is collapse then from the beginning of your posting back at peakoil.com you would have been talking about that. I don't recall that in your early hisory at all, Israeli's and Palestinians, endless wars of Africa, or anyone else. Not even nuke war as liklihood collapse. You talked about growing food, shooting it or fishing for it. Not because Anchorage was going to fight Wasilla for some contrived religious reason, or a dispute over where the border between the two political entities was, but because of "collapse" that involved lack of energy, or no more imported food supplies and MZBs trying to overrun those who had food, and people needing to cooperate and work as group to offset the more basic needs to survive as modern life came to an end for lack of something or another.

Environmentala collapse I get, makes sense. Peak oil was a poor idea, but had delightful near instant consequences. War is just.....war. Always has been, always will be. If you had said "global thermonuclear war" that would be different, because post global apocalyptic nuke stuff makes sense and is a distinct event. As would be a continental sized flood basalt or so, maybe even a Yellostone detonation as a US collapse trigger.

But war? Nope...humans have happily been doing that since Biblical times, it is just something we have been doing since the beginning of time and will probably keep doing. Until a REAL "collapse" comes along.

Quote from: K-Dog on Jan 10, 2026, 08:26 PMPeak oil is still very much a real thing but existential issues dominate.

Late stage capitalism, where money makes kings the way horses and iron used to.  And the prosperity of the social middle collapses on a return to a new middle age.

Your picture imagery was interesting. So in your "collapse" scenario, how far along are we, and when is the expected arrival at your imagery? Because everything burning to the ground seems more like the absolute end of things, as opposed to late stage capitalism....which could have begun turn of the century with the neocon resurgence. And in the quarter century since it began (presuming turn of the century and age of the NeoCons is a good start)....everything burning to ground (other than the usual natural disasters which cause such things) doesn't appear to be what is going on.

As far as the prosperity of the social middle class....how you doing K-Dog? You out on a street corner with a cup? Me neither. And as you have insisted that folks like you and I are in the middle, it seems like a fair question as to how we are faring this late stage capitalism world.

For some reason, those holding out cups and offering to wash my car window for a pittance don't seem to know much English. Seems like the social middle as you and I sit in is doing okay compared to the NON social middle some of us can find on street corners. 

Which begs the question....Rome had beggars and poor as well, and collapsed mightily at the end of the day. Which is why the picture was cool, even if late stage capitalism ain't quite represented by it yet.

Quotethe absolute end of things

Comes for all of us in it's own time.  The collapse of industrial civilization is a process which does not affect all equally.  While some collapse others prosper.  As industrial civilization falls, parasites do prosper as Mar-A-Lago shows.

I think I am smart enough so that I could have monetized collapse into personal prosperity Chris Martenson  style had wanted to.  But holding out a tin cup for that is something my life is simply too short for.  Monetizing smarts never seemed right to me.  Doing so participates in collapse.  I put a tin cup on the main page more to be 'normal' than to actually get any money.

I ignored the social bottom.  The poor ye always have with you, and for purposes of this post, about the middle falling the bottom only gets bigger.  Tthe bottom already has maximum misery.  Only the numbers change.  Is it 20% or 80% who are miserable today.  Is misery a feature of the system.

QuoteWhich is why the picture was cool, even if late stage capitalism ain't quite represented by it yet.

Cool because they were cruel.  Like other civilizations of the past.  And leave our collapse to Trump and we will be too.

Rome blinded people at the end of their run.  No loss.  Chattel slavery was tolerated in the Ottoman Empire into the twentieth century, despite formal declarations of abolition. The slave trade continued in various forms until the empire fell.  No loss.

The burning to the ground is a relative thing.

QuoteSeems like the social middle as you and I sit in is doing okay compared to the NON social middle some of us can find on street corners.

The median savings account balance for Americans is approximately $8,000, with the average balance significantly higher at around $62,410, largely due to a few individuals with very high savings skewing the average.

I'll guess at your financial status to make this statement.  I really do not know or care.

Most people are about thirty days from a tin cup but, you and I are a few months from a tin cup.  Whoop-de-do. (from a personal point of view having the larger number does feel good I admit.  but seriously. ->)  If you are part of the very small group that creates the average number, fuck you.  You are part of the problem^*.  If you are part of the very small number that actually is on the average number then the vast majority of people are above or below you.  You are a rare normal solid citizen.  This is not a bell shaped curve.

^* those who hasten collapse

Age

Average Savings

Median Savings

Under 35	$20,540	$5,400
35-44	$40,000	$8,700
45-54	$72,520	$10,000
55-64	$100,250	$13,400
65-74	$100,250	$13,400
75 and over	$100,000	$10,000

Very few are actually on the average.

And in America, leaving out the lizard people - health care can make paupers of us all.

Clearly you didn't follow my blog very closely, evidenced by the fact also you didn't even know who Steve was or what he wrote about.  I discussed war as an outcome and as a vector, civil war vs international war, conventional vs nuclear, proxy wars vs direct conflict, asymmetric warfare etc.  War comes in many flavors, religious, economic, resource...hell even love and family disputes can cause wars.  The really BIG wars however always center around empire building or empire destruction.  WWII encompassed the restructuring of the Anglo-Aerican empire and the destruction of the 3rd Reich and empire of Japan.  WWI was the end of the British colonial empire, Austro-Hungarian empire and Ottoman empire.

The last civilization ending warfare came with the collapse of the Roman Empire and lasted 100s of years.  I doubt it will take so long this time around.  It also was possible to rebuild and supercede that civilization latr since earth was still loaded with a vast untapped energy resource.  Far less likely after this collapse finishes that anything on the scale of global industrial civilization will ever succeed it.

All you have ever wanted to discuss here are Peak Oil topics, you don't even bother to participate in many others.  I even recall making a special rule for you that you had to contribute on at least 3 other topics before you could post again about oil.  So it's not surprising you manage to miss the other conversations.  Your tunnel vision is so laser focused it doesn't leave room for anything besides your area of expertiese.  I've never looked at collapse that way.  The energy problem underpins it, but the tentacles and manifestations are many.  War is one of the most important of them.

RE

The dunes are changed by the wind, but the desert never changes.



It seems to  go on without end for the end is not seen.  Most travelers die crossing the vast wasteland never seeing the edge.  Never knowing.  But given time like an ant falling off a table edge the physics of depletion will remind man where in the universe mankind actually resides.  Mother nature will help with the lesson.

UNICORNRIOT.NINJA • 2026-01-11

Large Noise Demo Against ICE Crashed by Police Who Arrest 30

Over a thousand protesters visited two hotels in downtown Minneapolis on Friday night, equipped with loud noise makers, in an attempt to disrupt the sleep of any ICE officers who may be staying in the hotels.

The full version is on YT.  Link below.  I clipped it for the version we host here. 


Are You a Crappy Person?






The Johnathan Ross crew is in both clips.  The second is from today.


This clip shows the same crew that Johnathan Ross was a member of. 

I believe Ross was transferred.










More Trump trouble.  Another part of town.

I caught this as it was published on YT and snagged it.  It was live so I had to wait for it to finish so I 'chatted' with MAGA idiots in the YT chat.  Some were bots, but the one who said 'Fuck off Keith' must have been real.  Nice.

They were taking the point of view that the protesters are lazy unemployed loosers.  I was taking the point of view that the ICE agents do not have a real job because causing people misery is not a real job.  Yes they have money.  But does being paid define a job?  The protesters are serving the community and clearly working.  That they work without pay shows that just getting money can't define a job because you can work for free.

Q.E.D.    - The lazy fucks are actually the ICE agents.







Here is some sense talking.

Not bad for spontaneous pop ups. There should be protests every weekend until he resigns.  A National Strike wouldn't hurt either.

https://www.nydailynews.com/2026/01/11/thousands-turn-out-for-spontaneous-no-kings-protest-in-midtown-manhattan/

Thousands turn out for spontaneous 'No Kings' protest in Midtown Manhattan

Quote from: RE on Jan 11, 2026, 11:59 AMClearly you didn't follow my blog very closely, evidenced by the fact also you didn't even know who Steve was or what he wrote about.

You place a high value on whatever Steve said or wrote.....me not being aware of him means he wasn't even a blip on my radar. That usually meant, back then, that he didn't have much in the way of credibility at all. Or lacked any technical angle....drawing a straight line on data that doesn't lend itself to such analysis being a dead giveaway.

Quote from: REAll you have ever wanted to discuss here are Peak Oil topics, you don't even bother to participate in many others.

Not quite accurate. I PARTICIPATED on the peak oil side, said participation being based in original professional interest, and continuing to this day. I WATCHED the others when it became obvious peak oil wasn't really about peak oil. It was just this group of people shotgunning their hopes and dreams of collapse into every idea, good or bad, ridiculous or not. You have Planet X fans on your very site! Yellowstone was going to explode! We know it to be true! Here is a website proving it! Peak oil was just one of topics with website enthusiasts. The topic had more history, less looney tunes, and could be configured within a pseudo science backdrop. And had a logical hook.....no oil.....OMG LOOK AT ALL THE THINGS THAT GO AWAY!!! Which is a good hook.

Quote from: REYour tunnel vision is so laser focused it doesn't leave room for anything besides your area of expertiese.  I've never looked at collapse that way.  The energy problem underpins it, but the tentacles and manifestations are many.  War is one of the most important of them.

RE

I stand by my original comment on war. I don't object to it being important. Just being insufficient when applied to a species that has been doing it since time immemorial. And while it has been a part of some collapse here or there, it is incidental to, not a requirement of. 

Quote from: TDoS on Jan 12, 2026, 05:17 PMYou place a high value on whatever Steve said or wrote.....me not being aware of him means he wasn't even a blip on my radar. That usually meant, back then, that he didn't have much in the way of credibility at all.

So WTF am I a blip on the radar?    I don't have  anything in the way of credibility either. lol.

RE