BRICS Controls 41% of the Global Economy

BRICS keeps expanding, adding 9 partner countries in January 2025, after admitting 4 new members in 2024. It now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP). It’s an economic powerhouse, with top producers of key commodities like oil, gas, grains, meat, and minerals.

BRICS, the Global South-led forum for economic cooperation, continues to grow in influence, as its seeks to de-dollarize and transform the international monetary and financial system.

After admitting four new members in 2024, BRICS officially welcomes nine new nations as partner countries on January 1, 2025. 

They are:

• Belarus
• Bolivia
• Cuba
• Indonesia
• Kazakhstan
• Malaysia
• Thailand
• Uganda
• Uzbekistan

With its nine members and nine partners, BRICS now makes up roughly half of the global population and more than 41% of world GDP (PPP).     READ MORE...

Barry McGuire - Eve Of Destruction

Mr. President Elect

 We are waiting around for our next President to be sworn in and already there is much speculation and conjecture as to how horrible of a President he is going to be.  They say they cannot believe that the American public elected someone who had been found guilty of 34 felonies.

What I find curious and almost humorous about their concerns is that not once have they stepped back and looked at the bogus charges that were brought against the man, especially since the statute of limitations had expired on the misdemeanor charges that had been bootstrapped into felonies and how the jurors paid no attention to the evidence that the prosecution presented.

Instead, they say felonies are felonies and the man should be in jail...

Instead of doing a little introspection to analyze why they lost the election, they are implying that the election should be invalidated on the grounds that the voters have been manipulated into casting a misunderstood vote.

Always someone else's fault, never their own.

Now they vow to not just oppose our new President but not refer to him as Mr. President at all.

This leaves one wondering if these people are adults with childish minds...

Time will never convince them otherwise.

In The NEWS

Sports, Entertainment, & Culture
> Wicked" set to be released for rent or purchase on streaming platforms Dec. 31 (More) | "Mufasa" ($15M) tops "Nosferatu" ($11.6M) and "Sonic 3" ($10.7M) to lead Christmas Day box office (More)

> Baltimore Ravens' Lamar Jackson breaks NFL record for most career rushing yards (6,110) by a quarterback, topping the record previously held by Michael Vick (More)

> Richard Parsons, former CEO of Time Warner and Citigroup chairman, dies of bone cancer at 76 (More) | Bill Bergey, five-time NFL Pro Bowl linebacker, dies of cancer at 79 (More) | Hudson Meek, child actor known for role in "Baby Driver," dies at 16 after falling from moving vehicle (More)


Science & Technology
> UK patient successfully receives country's first double lung transplant using "lung in a box" device; technology reconditions organs from donors that may have been damaged (More)

> Archaeologists uncover 535-million-year-old fossilized embryos of roundworm-like creatures; discovery sheds light on the evolution of ancient organisms during the Cambrian period (More)

> Chimpanzee study shows individuals vary in their ability to crack open nuts using stones, suggesting a wide degree of cognitive ability within the same group (More)


Business & Markets
> US stock markets close mixed (S&P 500 -0.0%, Dow +0.1%, Nasdaq -0.1%) in thin holiday trading (More) | Apple stock notches all-time high in intraday trading as it nears $4T market cap (More)

> US holiday retail sales from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24 rose 3.8% year-over-year, up from 3.1% last year, per preliminary data from Mastercard (More)

> Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba and South Korean retailer E-mart to form online shopping joint venture in 2025, with entity valued at roughly $4B (More)


Politics & World Affairs
> Israel strikes multiple targets in Yemen, including the country's international airport, where the World Health Organization director was present, reportedly killing six people and wounding 11 more; attacks come after Houthi militants struck a Tel Aviv playground last week (More) | See war updates (More)

> India's former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh dies at age 92; the first Sikh to hold the country's highest office, Singh was known for liberalizing India's economy during his tenure from 2004 to 2014 (More)

> World marks 20 years since the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami killed an estimated 230,000 people across a dozen countries, the deadliest tsunami in history (More) | See photos from the disaster (More)

SOURCE:  1440 NEWS

Resolutions

 

With only 3 days left before NEW YEAR'S EVE, have you been doing any thinking about what your New Year's Resolutions might be?

Historically, 90% of the people who make resolutions never follow through with them 100%.  In fact, most resolutions are abandoned after the first 2-3 months of the new year.

WHY?

Good question.

• Some were not serious about the resolutions to begin with
• Some made the goals too far away to reach
• Some were serious but lost motivation and determination

When I turned 40 years old, I made the following resolutions:

• Stop smoking cigarettes
• Stop drinking alcohol
• Strop eating fried foods

All of this was done COLD TURKEY and I never looked back on the cigarettes and alcohol but do allow myself 1-2 cheeseburgers a year and 3-4 pizzas.

As I get older, no cheeseburgers at all and pizzas have dropped down to 1-2 annually.

My resolutions that I have been considering are:

• think before I speak
• try not to get angry
• Try not to raise my voice

There is a lifetime of doing things and many of us have programmed ourselves and in order to reach these goals one must first de-program oneself...  and this, my friend, is not all that easy.

Somewhat Political

 

Quantum Entanglement

Quantum technology has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years thanks to computers that exploit atomic properties, hard drives that hold information in unusual states, and now engines that break free from the old rules.

These strange engines do not rely on burning anything, nor do they feed on heat. Instead, they gain their push from the unusual behavior of tiny particles.

Quantum mechanics sets the stage for all of this. It is not concerned with big objects, but with what happens at the smallest scales.

It looks at atoms, molecules, and subatomic bits of matter that do not follow everyday rules. It has sparked new gadgets that tackle problems we never knew we could solve.

The paper describing these results is co-authored by researchers Keerthy Menon, Dr. Eloisa Cuestas, Dr. Thomas Fogarty and Prof. Thomas Busch and has been published in the journal Nature.     READ MORE...

Crosby Stills and Nash - Suite: Judy Blue Eyes - Live 2012

Never

 

United Kingdom

 

Deported

 

Lose

 

Opted Out

 

Take Off

 

Censorship

 

I enrolled into college in 1966 and at the time, one would have probably pegged me as a LIBERAL.  It was all about saving the world, no wars, peace and love and the government should take care of us all.

However, and I cannot explain why, I wanted to hear ALL OPPOSING VIEWS and every time there was a conservative speaker on campus, I would attend the lecture.

Those speakers never changed my mind, but I still wanted to hear them.

Today, most all college and university campuses are liberal minded except for the Business Schools or Departments.  Most of the time, these school prevent conservative views from taking place on campus, so the students are hardly ever exposed to the other side.

To me, that is a form of censorship that is now extended itself out into the news media platforms.

It is not that they are censoring the conservative news, it is just that they are not broadcasting it - to some, this might be a form of censorship.

We should publish or broadcast both sides of everything and then let the viewer or consumer of the news decide for themselves what they want to believe and what they chose not to believe.

Somewhat Political

 

Shrinking Quantum Computer Components

Researchers have developed a revolutionary method to produce entangled photon pairs using much thinner materials, drastically reducing the size of quantum computing components.

This breakthrough enables simpler, more compact setups for quantum technologies, potentially transforming fields from climate science to pharmaceuticals.

Breakthrough in Quantum Computing
Researchers have made a discovery that could make quantum computing more compact, potentially shrinking essential components 1,000 times while also requiring less equipment.

A class of quantum computers being developed now relies on light particles, or photons, created in pairs linked or “entangled” in quantum physics parlance. One way to produce these photons is to shine a laser on millimeter-thick crystals and use optical equipment to ensure the photons become linked. A drawback to this approach is that it is too big to integrate into a computer chip.     READ MORE...

The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down - The Band - The Last Waltz

The Next Generation

 

During my time off, I have been spending time on the social media platform, BLUESKY...  It is mainly populated by Liberals who are kids in their 20's and 30's who have no better integrity than to insult and use profanity towards anyone who does not agree with them.

They are convinced that Trump and Musk are fascists and are going to turn the USA into something resembling Hitler's Germany with the ultimate goal of destroying Democracy and turning the country into a dictatorship, controlled by Trump.

But aside from that fantasy, I talked with an older gentleman today who had convinced himself that all western governments were profit making businesses with stockholders and that all the companies worked for the government.

There were Democratic Socialists who did not want to destroy capitalism or the companies participating in capitalism, they just wanted to control businesses through regulations that prevented them from doing things that the government did not want to them do, like relocating overseas, sending work to foreign countries for cheaper wage rates, or paying their employees less that the government wanted them to pay.

Unfortunately, they did not think this would be ownership of capitalism, even though they government would not let anyone file for bankruptcy, report to a board of directors, or pay their shareholders a dividend unless it was approved by the government.

This is the generation that will soon be in control of the USA...

 

 

Morality

Safety

Being Afraid

Space, the Final Frontier

Phones

 

Owl

 

Word Meanings

 

In some places of the country, areas have already been impacted with snow and while they might be good for some, it cannot be good for everyone.

"What is one man's ceiling is another man's floor...."  Paul Simon

What does that mean exactly?

It could be speaking about abilities and achievements with the ceiling indicating a high achievement and the floor indicating a low achievement.

It could also mean that what some people consider to be trash, others consider to be treasure.

It could also mean importance versus not that important.

What words and phrases mean to one person, to another person, those same words and phrases could have an entirely different meaning.

Do we take into consideration how other might interpret our words when we talk or do we just start blurting out what we think or feel?

Something to think about perhaps...

Somewhat Political