Ending 2022 Quotes

This life is a virtual simulation game where you can win or lose, you can continue playing for the rest of your life or join the club. You decide! You only have to respect one rule because your stay in the human farm will depend on that, continue playing until the end no matter how many times you are brought into this reality, so stay awake with your eyes wide open and your mouth tight shut." Welcome to the game of life, welcome to the matrix.

With the status of greentech technology in 2022, in most cases that parallel system is a boring, conventional system that runs on either natural gas or coal. Let me underline that: greentech today is so unreliable in most locations that those localities that do attempt greentech have no choice but to maintain a full conventional system for their total peak demand—at full cost.

Since the end of the twentieth century, the United States has witnessed an ominous and growing divergence among three trends that should ordinarily move together: wealth, output, and employment.

The global population growth rate – the change from one year to the next – peaked a long time ago. In the 1960s it was growing at more than 2% per year.17 Since then, this rate has more than halved, to 0.8% in 2022.

For the first time since 1860, a major American political party doesn’t believe America is a democracy. No Republican will win a contested primary in 2022 or 2024 who will assert that Biden is a legal president. The effect of this is profound and difficult to predict. But millions of Americans believe the American experiment is ending. Stuart Stevens

Boeing To Gravity by Stewart Stafford Tumbling down a hill, An upside-down idyll, No time to make a will, If prematurely killed. And as you tumble down, Slowly fades your frown, Falling ankle over crown, Rolling all the way to town. Reach the end with a bump, Sporting that fetching lump, And to your feet, you jump, As excited fists both pump. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved

Dr. Cameron is hoping to release a new digital and audio book by the end of December 2022. This book summarizes Dr. Cameron’s understanding of Lyme disease based on his first 600 Lyme disease science blogs and 35+ years of treating Lyme disease patients. The book includes over 200 published Lyme disease cases. There is also space at the end of this book to share your comments and engage with Dr. Cameron

Anger was something that long puzzled Le Guin. In her 2014 essay “About Anger,” she writes: Anger is a useful, perhaps indispensable tool in motivating resistance to injustice. But I think it is a weapon—a tool useful only in combat and self-defence….Anger points powerfully to the denial of rights, but the exercise of rights can’t live and thrive on anger. It lives and thrives on the dogged pursuit of justice….Valued as an end in itself, it loses its goal. It fuels not positive activism but regression, obsession, vengeance, self-righteousness.

Tale of the Holy Hitchhiker by Stewart Stafford A motorist drives by the Blue Church, Of left-handed compliments, And omnipresent righteous sins, Where the Holy Hitchhiker dwells. Waiting for God at the stop sign, No thumbs, he blesses passing cars, Chanting his destination's directions, Then going into silent meditation. A fated pause at the railway crossing, Purgatory train takes an eternity to go by, Time for confessional contemplation, Swift redemption with the accelerator. Thankful prayers at the journey's end, Payment made as alms for the poor, Then a smile as he vanishes into light, The driver sees the Blue Church again. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

In 2022, New York Times columnist Tish Harrison Warren decried a culture of divorcing for unhappiness, writing, “I want to normalize significant periods of confusion, exhaustion, grief and unfulfillment in marriage. There’s an older couple I know who are in their fifth decade of marriage. They are funny and kind and, by almost any standard, the picture of #relationshipgoals. Early on in our marriage they told us, ‘There are times in marriage when the Bible’s call to love your enemies and the call to love your spouse are the same call.’ ” Life is, of course, not easy, and no one is going to like their partner every day. But Warren’s column makes misery in marriage sound like a necessary evil of being partnered with a man. It’s not. I refuse to believe that it has to be that way. I have two dear friends who I have known for over twenty years; we fight sometimes and disagree. Between us we’ve had three divorces and four marriages and three children. Never once have they felt like the enemy to me. And if it is that way, if the experience of being with a man means I hate him for at least a third of our marriage and he hates me, too, I’d rather not have it. No, thank you. There is no benefit to that martyrdom. To me, columns like Warren’s sound like the mentality that enables hazing rituals and cults where they sacrifice one of their own every fortnight. I was miserable, so you should be, too. I do not want that curse. I want happiness.

The Great Carouser by Stewart Stafford The Great Carouser approaches, His belly as stacked cheddar rolls, Used as a springboard for lust, And a battering ram for tavern doors. Shrieks of terror and welcome, Greet his arrival with ale demands, Tankards clank and merriment begins, Lewd ditties and jokes by the bar. Balancing acts on tables, With tongues held hostage, By braggadocio squatters, In an intoxicated stranglehold. Slurred speech and equilibrium loss, Signal festivities end for the gang, Staggering out into the starlit street, Partners on each arm for shady exertions. Then waking as if mauled by a bear, A quick drink and a greasy feast initiated, For the strange girls snoring in his bed, The Great Carouser has struck again. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

This Butterfly Stings by Stewart Stafford The gold of my eye dances on stage for me, Her wings wafting behind her in the chorus, Yet none glimpsed that girl's beauty as I did, This butterfly flew solo in my mind's eye. For two years hence, I concealed my interest, Yet I gazed at her endlessly, so close yet apart, Places of learning changed, but she did not, I foolishly let fly Cupid's token to my inamorata. Seeing my love in a looking glass reflected, Shadow feelings illuminated St Valentine's Eve, My butterfly became a sullen stinging bee, Crushing my tender rose in pieces at my feet. Nor would her wicked scorn end there, She told her friends who joined in my shaming, For years after, turning my last shreds of adoration, Into contemptuous hatred of her existence. Truly no one can take away our memories, Where my former crush still dances on occasion, O sweet butterfly of my youth, one last wish, Never fly away from these fond recollections. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

They say the world will end soon. They say that the nuclear weapons made, Due to fearing ‘the other’, Have become a curse, a plague, a scourge On those who made them Even more than those they were made to scare... And I wonder: Will the nuclear weapons be the cause of the world’s end? Or will the world’s end be caused by humanity’s fear, complicity, and submission? And if what they say is true, Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to drink one last cup of cardamom-flavored tea Taste one last fig, peach, or apricot, Smell a quince, Dip one last piece of bread In Palestinian thyme and olive oil… Before the world ends, I wish to smell a few pine needles, To breathe the smell of the first rain shower After a long, hot, and dry summer… Before the world ends and before I die, I wish to read one more book Out of the thousands of books that I still want to read… Before the world ends and before I die, I ask for one more spring To smell bunches of Iraqi narcissus flowers. I want to live one more autumn, To enjoy the magical colors Of the dying leaves on the trees As they challenge death with beauty Right before falling on the grounds of indifference… But my biggest wish before I die is For my death not to be the end of the world… [Original poem published in Arabic by ahewar.org on October 13, 2022]

How big is the “men without work” problem today? Consider a single fact: in 2015, the work rate (or employment-to-population ratio) for American males ages twenty-five–to–fifty-four was slightly lower than it had been in 1940, which was at the tail end of the Great Depression.

My imagination just defeated my sight I race in my heart Laughter got me laughing Smile broke my broken teeth into pieces Peace married my emotions Happiness invaded my anger Misery missed my footsteps Worrying waved my mind with joy Mixed with strawberry of hope in a fruit-salad Je suis malade Je suis parles Français Aujour'hui je suis très heureux When the truth is told, lies end with shame Copyright © Modou Lamin Age-Almusaf Sowe, 23rd May 2022.

A Phantom Banquet by Stewart Stafford Forego the seminal salad, Lest it retraces your lips, As ambushing vomitus with, Greasy, peccant aftertaste. It is not willing regurgitation, For the young's sustenance, But spitting of venom, I say, Rendering venting of spleen. Savour secret ingredients, All shall emerge in the end, A reading of the entrails, And of potted plots afoul. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved

Do you think patterns always repeat themselves? like we're all stuck in some dysfunctional cycle, and you always end up right back where you started?

Date: 10/03/2022 So, this is the book that she's been hiding all this time? How disappointing. I was expecting more... Anyways, my name is Gemma. I am a Minecraft player who loves a challenge. Aaaand I think before I act...I really didn't want to admit it! But ya, this is me. Sorry for the weird intro. My friend Lizzy has become really strange recently. I figured that there was something wrong with her. She was hiding something from me, but I never knew what. I decided to find out the truth. So, one day, after she logged off from Minecraft, I crept into her house and peeked into her chest. I found a book named Codex of Seeds. It wasn't there before. Naturally curious, I took the book and started to read it. I found out that my best friend was keeping a diary for more than a month! She had met Herobrine, the white-eyed ghost, and he gave Lizzy the Codex. He told him to safekeep the Codex and not let anyone else know about it, or else he would hack her. My friend agreed, but she didn't really do a very good job about keeping a secret. I then flipped through the book and found many amazing stories. This is the same book that you are reading right now. Wait, what? Why are my hearts dropping...oh no. He is here. Run for your life. It is too late. He killed me. He shook his head, picked up the Codex and teleported away. THE END

Then there was the case against Sun Zhengcai. Sun had been in the running to succeed Xi Jinping after Xi’s second term as China’s president and Party boss ended in 2022–2023.

Count down starts now and ends by April 2 2022, before April 2 2022, I will have decided which Institution, so after April 2 I need to prepare things to be done, like entrance preparation, loan arrangements if required, project proposal planning, Required skills updates, Further plans on biological research with SDGs that focuses on society benefits, acclimatization and extreme fitness for astronaut dream and etc. And April 2 is special day too, 10 years before April 2 2012, I made a wrong decision - Right decision on wrong time - 23 April 2 2011, I made a love proposal to one of my professors and got funny reactions from her, April 2 2010, someone knocked me out Just memories

From The Darkest Depths by Stewart Stafford Salvation swallowed in a bleak abyss, Of impossibly lost and betrayed souls, Swarming screams of frantic contrition, Clawing collisions in a drowning grip. Drops of reason cascade down the vortex, Falling infinitely through the fallen infamy, Snaking doubt constructing every delusion, Of false idols, prophets, and graven images. Scaling its putrescent and lacerating walls, Is a repentant struggle beyond endurance, Then distant dawn appears, growing nearer, Darkness fades and a basking reign forms. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved

Champagne Sheets by Stewart Stafford The little girl who swam with sharks, Receiver clutched in her dead hand, A naked, lonely death in a sterile room, Pill bottles silent witnesses to her end. Did she jump, or did others push her? Tabloid gossip for the masses to echo, Livid without make-up in the mortuary, Stripped of her last vestiges of privacy. Her disturbed mother was never there, She had no siblings or a nurturing father, True love and children evaded her grasp, A fragile shell, now a luminary immortal. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

THE END OF THE YEAR PRAYER This is the month of December, the last month of the year 2021 and I can’t be grateful enough to my Heavenly Father for His priceless mercy and grace throughout the twists and turns of the entire year in the name of Jesus. Father God thank you for being my unshakable pillar and the father that I could crawl to when I am drowning in the pool of trails and tribulations. Thank you Lord Jesus for your faithfulness and your unfailing love. Hold us with your gentle hand and walk us through the last lap of the year 2021, fill us with peace, joy and strength as we are plodding slowly towards the coming new year and help us to make the right decisions and help us to serve you like never before in the mighty name of Jesus. King of glory, remember those who are lying in the sickbeds and heal them with your blood in the mighty name of Jesus. Remember those who are feeling alone, scared, discouraged, abandoned, tortured, and disappointed. I ask you the God of hope to fill them with all joy and peace, again and again(Romans 15:13) in Jesus name. Heavenly Father remember those who are feeling misjudged, mistreated and labelled by others. I ask you Lord to bless them with love, peace, joy and favour in the name of Jesus. King Jesus, remember those who have no place to live, cushion them under your wings of protection. Remember those who have nothing to eat and those who have no clothes to wear. I ask you Jehovah Jireh to make a way where it seems to be no way and provide for every need. Put smiles on their faces and help them to keep their faith in you Jehovah. Remember those who have lost their loved ones and give them comfort, strength and joy. Thank you Lord for your mercies, your mercies are new every morning. Father God, we ask you to take control of our lives and help us to overcome this ugly monster(corona virus) which keeps raising its head up in different forms of evilness. Heal and deliver every single individual who is infected or affected by it in the mighty name of Jesus. You are our only hope and our lives depend on you Jehovah and our future is in your hands, help us to talk the talk and walk the walk and help us to finish this year stronger than ever before and help us to enter the year 2022 with clear minds and wise decision making. I thank you in advance King of glory and I will be forever grateful in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.

There is never a better time than the present to improve your state of being, to walk into the best of what you & that potential of yours have to offer. Darling listen, you possess limitless potential. You can be & do anything you want. Remind yourself this now & everyday – “There is always more of me to call upon.” I want you to enter in 2022 with a positive & fearless attitude. Let you resolve to co-create & lead your life from front allowing it to bring a fresh bout of excellence to your life. I am praying for a better 2022 for you & the world. I sincerely wish & hope for an end to covid & some of our other difficulties in the New Year. Wishing you more happiness, wellness, prosperity & fulfilment in the coming year & always. Blessings!

We can't all be perfect, and I honestly don't think that I want to be. All that I would like is to see greed end and man's bigotry come to an end. It's a tall order, but if we all don't try, then where will our children's dreams be?

Ironically, the only two “relevan[t]” metrics that the Court does identify are “how and why” a gun control regulation “burden[s the] right to armed self-defense.” In other words, the Court believes that the most relevant metrics of comparison are a regulation’s means (how) and ends (why)—even as it rejects the utility of means-end scrutiny.

Human's" are the Worst creation of the Creator/s or GOD '**if Exists'. The only reason behind all the effects & destruction in this planet. i.e Earth without, only 3 Generation of single Homosapiens life can be come to it's normal place, is enough for Mother Nature.

Darkened Light by Stewart Stafford Ephemeral life fading, As a ground shadow, The cat in the shade, The sun's arm draped. Pose for a photograph, Thousand-yard stare, In denial of expiration, That bodily eviction. Take a breather inside, Too drained for more, Crash and burn out, Let quietus wash over. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

With what they did with their mouths, which they call Mund in German, at the end of the day, we all will say that the Germans were truly at the MUNDial at Qatar 2022.

success is a triad: 1) money making, 2) wealth preservation and building, and 3) health. Part One is just the front end of the system.

That is not to say there were not negative consequences to the Trump era. In 2018, according to the Ronald Reagan Institute, 70 percent of Americans had “a great deal of trust and confidence” in the military. By the end of Trump’s term the number had fallen to 56 percent. At the same time, Trump’s decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine while providing political cover for Vladimir Putin’s aggression against it, and seeking to weaken NATO, looks very different and much more reckless in light of Russia’s February 2022 attack on its neighbor. But as each chapter of this book illustrates, the principled, constitutionally based resistance Trump encountered from within his administration to his most dangerous ideas limited the negative consequences of his recklessness.

We are nearing the end of this phase of the #tech boom. The next phase is starting - heterogeneous compute, infrastructure plasticity, etc. and that doesn't even include quantum. Tom Golway 2022

The Feminine Enigma by Stewart Stafford Even lying in repose in her casket, Her aura still a billowing haze, A coffin lid no barrier to new facts, She came back on her funeral day. Creeping sentinels of perspective, Building up new memory mosaics, A spider's web of word and deed, Descending Prozac of the prosaic. The labyrinthine riddle is female, Females are perennially arcane, Puzzles that don't beg solutions, Evening stars of the astral plane. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

Thoughts On My End by Stewart Stafford My last moments slip away, On which day, at what time? Snow chilling bones faster? Sweat in blinding sunshine? Halloween, Xmas or Easter? Evening or just after dawn? Pass away on my birthday? Gifts, mass cards all drawn? Will it be in long, slow agony? Or mercifully fast and painless? What will my drug of choice be? Will I be conscious or brainless? Who will be at my bedside? Many or no one, who can say? Kind words or total silence? I’ll hear and be on my way. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

A life seeking values other than God ends up being meaningless.

One by Stewart Stafford Death riding a pale horse, Warned it was time to leave, No hiding place as dice rolled, I sank to my knees to grieve. Six hundred and sixty-six morticians, Greeted the thing from the sea, Scuttling sideways down the road, It headed for Washington D.C. Navel-gazing, not my thing at all, But the Day of Judgement came by, Grabbing my phone lightning-fast, A dying breath to scream goodbye. Firestorms, tsunamis, the dead resurrecting, The sun shattered into nine, Winds that flayed skin from bone, Jester bells at dawn's last shine. © Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.

In an ideal world, Two would be two letters, I wouldn’t have to make small talk, And we could all survive without a liver. In an ideal world, Love would not have a past tense, Home would be anywhere you want, And there’d be no such phrase as ‘On the fence’. In an ideal world, We would only need water to live, Wars would end after the first gunshot, And stammering would be the only disease. In an ideal world, There’d be no such thing as ‘meat’, We would have no need for education, And caring for nature would be our only responsibility. In an ideal world, Wealth would be synonymous with Health, Time and space would not be a continuum, And we would never be able to forget! Poem - In an Ideal World, from Respectful Ideation. July 26, 2022.

And that’s true even if everything’s gone crazy—even if it seems like anyone with half a pitch deck is getting funded. Like how it was in 1999. Or how it is right now in 2022. The world of investment is cyclical. The funding environment is always shifting back and forth from a founder-friendly environment to an investor-friendly environment. It’s like the housing market—sometimes it’s good for sellers, sometimes for buyers. In a founder-friendly environment, there’s so much money flowing into the marketplace that investors will fund just about anything because they don’t want to miss out on any deals. In an investor-friendly market, there’s a lot less capital to go around, investors are pickier, and founders get worse terms. And then sometimes there’s a crazy market when it feels like cash is raining from the sky, all the rules have been thrown out, and it’s never going to end. But it will end. Just like it ended in 2000. There’s always a reversion to the mean.

I had a dream where the world went to sleep while God was talking. But we vibrated at His first vowel so we ended up sh#tting for life! Poem - We are the Second. December 14, 2022.

If the altered demographic profile of the two parties in the 2016 election—almost perfectly replicated in the 2018, 2020, and 2022 elections—is signaling America’s newest political realignment, it would be the first since the Nixon-Reagan elections of 1968 to 1980, roughly forty to fifty years earlier. By Walter Dean Burnham’s count (as we saw in Chapter 4), that would suggest America is now moving into its seventh party system.

Regarding the importance of injuries and their effect on overall team performance, here’s a great example from the NFL: Tampa Bay’s offensive tackle Tristan Wirfs usually wouldn’t be considered a high-impact player. But when Tampa Bay met the Los Angeles Rams in the 2022 playoffs, Wirfs was injured and, because of the unique set of circumstances involving that game, his absence had a major impact. The Rams, led by all-world defensive tackle Aaron Donald, had a ferocious pass rush, and Tom Brady was not the most mobile of quarterbacks. Wirfs, who we normally graded at 1.3 points or so in the regular season, suddenly became a lot more valuable because of his injury—maybe worth as many as 6 points. Here’s why. With Wirfs out, his backup (normally worth 0.3 points) was also injured, but playing. Therefore, with an injury, he was worth no points. We knew the cumulative totals of that injury, along with Wirfs’s absence, were going to have a significant impact on the Bucs’ performance and the outcome of the game. Add the disappearance of wide receiver Antonio Brown, who had left the team weeks earlier, the loss of wide receiver Chris Godwin, and, therefore, the need for tight end Rob Gronkowski to stay inside to help block the pass rush, and I knew the Bucs were in trouble. I wagered accordingly and won the bet, largely because I knew that an injured offensive line was going to change the dynamics of this game. I would have acted differently in the same scenario if the team had a more mobile quarterback or a stronger running attack. Again, these are the special situations in which you have to understand the value of each player, the quality of the opponent, and the overall impact on the score of the game.

Blue Wolf was a smaller version of the Wolf Pack database, which contained the personal details of virtually every Palestinian in the West Bank, including educational status, photos, security level, and family history. Soldiers in the West Bank were instructed in 2022 to enter the details and photos of at least fifty Palestinians into the Blue Wolf system every shift and were not allowed to end their shift until they did so.49 There was no security rationale for these actions. This is a similar set-up to what China does against the Uighurs in its Xinjiang province, using surveillance and technology to both track and intimidate the residents, though Beijing receives far more international condemnation than the Jewish state.

In 2022, Israel installed a remote-controlled system for crowd control in Hebron, a tool with the ability to fire tear gas, sponge-tipped bullets, and stun grenades. It was created by the Israeli company Smart Shooter, which claims to successfully use artificial intelligence when finding targets. Smart Shooter is a regular presence on the international defense show circuit and has sold its equipment to more than a dozen countries. Blue Wolf was a smaller version of the Wolf Pack database, which contained the personal details of virtually every Palestinian in the West Bank, including educational status, photos, security level, and family history. Soldiers in the West Bank were instructed in 2022 to enter the details and photos of at least fifty Palestinians into the Blue Wolf system every shift and were not allowed to end their shift until they did so.49 There was no security rationale for these actions. This is a similar set-up to what China does against the Uighurs in its Xinjiang province, using surveillance and technology to both track and intimidate the residents, though Beijing receives far more international condemnation than the Jewish state.

When it formed at the end of 2022, Israel’s new far-right government called not just for continued occupation of the West Bank but for its annexation, explicitly stating in its coalition agreement that “the Jewish people has an exclusive and unquestionable right to all areas of the Land of Israel. The government will promote and develop settlement in all parts of the Land of Israel—in the Galilee, the Negev, the Golan, Judea and Samaria.” The frontier was moving, as all frontiers do.

don’t know what my kids’ lives will look like, but I think that at least I’ve offered them glimpses at new ways of seeing themselves. I threw a party in the spring of 2022. It had been a long, cold pandemic. But my children were finally vaccinated and I wanted to have people over. I made a vat of spiked cider and filled mugs for my friends. The very same mugs my ex had hidden away in the basement of our home so many years ago. Now they were filled with booze and joy. I tried to match mugs with personalities. The house was full, and people were shouting. Cheese and crackers were stacked in platters on top of the long table that I had paid for with a story I’d written about my divorce. I thought about how hard I’d worked to get here. To a house filled with friends and wine and happiness. The song “Crowded Table” by the Highwomen is one that always makes me cry; it speaks of community and love and filling our homes. “If it’s love that we give,” they sing, “it’s love that we reap.” “This is going in the book,” I told my friends, shouting over the din of conversations. “It’s going in the end. Because this is my happily ever after.” And maybe it was too earnest, but I thought of all the different kinds of love there are in the world. And I knew that when the party was over someone would help me with the dishes and wiping the counters, and I wouldn’t have to ask.

When black people are on the short end of a black-white health disparity, it automatically gets attributed to systemic racism. But when white people are on the short end of a black-white health disparity, few even notice the disparity and label it as such, much less attribute it to racism. White Americans are more likely than black Americans to die of chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, liver disease, and eight different types of cancer. The same thinking that automatically attributes the racial disparity in COVID-19 deaths to systemic racism against blacks could be applied equally to argue the existence of systemic racism against whites with respect to all of those diseases. A fitting end for the saga of racialized COVID medicine: By late 2022, the racial profile of COVID-19 victims had switched. More whites were dying of it than blacks. Did systemic racism change its direction?

We experienced some relief from this ruling in 2022 when the Supreme Court heard the case of Coach Joe Kennedy from the state of Washington. Kennedy was fired by the school for kneeling to pray privately and silently for a few seconds at the end of the games. The school told him that he was not allowed to pray in public, where someone might see him. Kneeling before a game to dishonor the country has been deemed free speech. Kneeling after a game to honor God has been deemed a federal crime—a violation of separation of church and state.

In June of 2022, the Supreme Court heard Kennedy’s case and ruled in his favor. Personal prayer at the end of a football game is now protected under the First Amendment, both as private speech and religious exercise, and is free from government censorship.

In an October 2022 interview, Lai Mohammed, Nigeria’s culture minister, said, “These are not just objects of beauty who have aesthetics. These are artefacts that speak to who we are and that speak to our history, our religion, our values and ethics.”17 If that’s the case, the Benin bronzes speak to a set of values and ethics that the government of Nigeria might not want to embrace openly. Whatever one thinks of Britain’s colonial ventures in Africa, there can be no gainsaying the good the empire did in ending the oba’s reign of terror and eradicating the paganism practiced under his rule. The extent of human sacrifice discovered by the British at Benin City was unusual even for pagan, sub-Saharan African peoples at that time.

Andy put the note in his pocket. “Much to think about,” he said out loud. This was a thing that one of their TAs had liked to say at the end of every class, back in undergrad. There’d been a certain intonation, and it had cracked Hannah and Andy up all semester. They’d said it to each other all the time. It had been the working title of Hannah’s dissertation.

Instead of creating and enforcing the laws, government workers will serve as mediators or facilitators between the law and the democratic demands of the general public. An end to ruling with an iron fist will emerge no later than 2022 in the United States, and no later than 2030 for all other nations.

The only major cycle pointing up is the 500-year cycle, and that’s why I don’t see the deep economic and financial crisis ahead as the end of the world as we know it, as some of my bearish colleagues would have us believe. It’s criminal that the president and his men and women (and, in fact, all world leaders and their “support staff” and their economists) can’t see what’s right in front of their faces! The worst years for these Four Fundamentals will be between late 2017 and early 2020. Period! There will be aftershocks into at least late 2022, before three of my four cycles turn back up again together. The demographic cycle turns up around 2023. The Geopolitical Cycle and the Boom/Bust Cycle turn up again after early 2020. Only the Innovation Cycle continues to move sideways until 2032–33.

Boomers, the more than 76 million people born between 1946 and 1964, began turning 65 three years ago and all will have reached that age by 2030. All Millennials, the 82 million people born between 1981 and 2000, will have entered prime-working years - the age group from 25 to 55 - by the end of 2025. The group sandwiched in between, Generation X, is just 57 million people. The result: 25- to 34-year-olds will make up 22.5 percent of the workforce by 2022, compared with 21.6 percent in 2012, the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates. The share of America's oldest employees, those over 55, will expand even faster - to 25.6 percent from 20.9 percent, led by people 65 and older.

As a result, tax revenues and state budgets shrink, at least in relative terms per capita. National debt inevitably grows in order to at least partially cover the shortfall. Of course, it grew enormously after governments bailed out the banks in the wake of the financial crash. The British government did so to the tune of 136.6bn and has admitted that it will never recoup at least £27bn of that amount. In the US the bailout cost at least $14.4 trillion.[56] At the start of of 2019, the US’s national debt stood at nearly $22 trillion, having increased by 10% since Trump took office two years earlier. Under his predecessor Barack Obama, the national debt increased 100%, from $10 trillion to $20 trillion. National debt has to be repaid to the government’s creditors: bondholders, ie people, companies and foreign governments; international organisations such as the World Bank; and private financial institutions. If debt is not or cannot be repaid it becomes increasingly difficult to attract creditors. US national debt when the Great Depression kicked off stood at 16% of GDP and rose to 44% when the depression ended at the end of World War Two. Before the The Great Recession it stood at 65% and by 2013 had exploded to over 100%.[57] Gross national debt and household debt have been at record highs at the same time for the first time ever. Austerity, the socialisation of national debt, therefore becomes an economic necessity, not simply an unfair and immoral ‘political choice’, as is claimed by democratic socialists. That public spending as a share of national income in Britain in 2017 (39.6%) was at the same level as in 2007 (39.6%) after seven years of debt servicing via savage cuts to state welfare and public services suggests national income must have fallen per capita. Indeed, official forecasts suggest that GDP per adult in 2022 will be 18% lower than it would have been had it grown by 2% a year since 2008 – it has averaged 1.1% – broadly the expected rate of growth at that time.

The temptation of what is sometimes called realism—the belief that nations are solely motivated by a struggle for power, that they have eternal interests and permanent geopolitical orientations—is as strong as that of isolationism, and can be equally misleading, not least because it appeals to the indifferent. If nations never change, then of course we don’t need to exert the effort to make them change. If nations have permanent orientations, then all we need to do is discover what those are and get used to them. If nothing else, the Ukraine war showed us that nations are not pieces in a game of Risk. Their behavior can be altered by acts of cowardice or bravery, by wise leaders and cruel ones, and above all by good ideas and bad ones. Their interactions are not inevitable; their alliances and enmities are not permanent. There was no coalition to aid Ukraine until February 2022, and then there was. That coalition then made what had appeared to be the inevitable, rapid conquest of Ukraine impossible. By the same token, a different kind of Russian leader, with a different set of ideas, could now end the war quickly.

If words are dead ends, then metaphors are doors that I can try to open up. When you compare pain to another thing, those that are listening can fill in the abstraction with their own interpretations. My friend’s pain was a bowling ball and mine is something like a tarantula who’s using my body as her nest. I can feel her pulling up my oesophagus, the lump of her body balancing at the edge of my throat. I swallow her down, but eight legs means she works her way back up again quickly. Fighting the pain is tiring, so eventually I fall asleep and when I wake up there are a few delicious seconds of quiet when I’ve forgotten what’s happened. But then I feel the bristle of her legs scraping against the pink smoothness of my gut and I remember. It seems like a fault of nature that my unconscious mind could be so cruel. Maybe now that I can explain the pain a bit more, those who hear me will share in that feeling? Take some of it away with them?” Excerpt From Notes on Heartbreak: The must-read book of 2022 Annie Lord This material may be protected by copyright.