A threat we are not prepared to face
Read time: 4-5mins
In 2021 as I was finishing my Bachelor's degree, I wrote this article after the overnight shutdown of the Facebook servers - After the global outage caused by Crowdstrike and Microsoft, I decided to share it again.
Article below:
Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if the internet shuts down ?
On the 4th of October 2021, Facebook servers shut down causing the Whatsapp and Instagram Apps also to not work. So let’s ask ourselves a question : Were we prepared for that ? Well yes, people were still using platforms like Telegram, Signal and mail for texting, others were using Twitter and TikTok for scrolling etc… But if the internet suddenly stops working, what would happen to the financial markets such as real estate, stocks, cryptocurrencies ? Let us look for a way to be prepared for it.
The carrington event:
In 1859 mankind witnessed the Carrington event, named after the scientist Richard Carrington, this phenomenon is also known as a geomagnetic storm. On a calm afternoon of September, Carrington witnessed a sudden flash of increased brightness on the surface of the Sun that lasted for a few minutes while watching the observable Universe with his telescope. At that time we didn’t know what this light was but today we know that it is a solar flare. The same night a few hours later, we noticed green and blue lights travelling across the skies which are today known as the Aurora Borealis. At that time of course, people were very shocked and the solar flare caused the whole telegraph system to shut down but there was no internet or satelites so life moved on as if nothing happened. So what would happen if a Carrington event of that caliber strikes us today, specifically to financial markets ?
We are for almost two years now, the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic and we were absolutely not prepared for it even if scientists kept warning us. For weeks we did not know what we were facing and globally, most of the businesses stopped working and are still recovering from it today. Now if a virus of 100 nanometers of diameter can cause us to stay at home for 1 year, what would be the impact of a solar storm ?
Risks we face in front of a Solar Flare:
Relax, we people do not risk anything violent or apocalyptic because the earth amosphere will shield us from x-rays, gamma rays and cosmic radiations but our society and our routine will be affected. How is that ?
In former times, messages, money transfers or even news took days, sometimes months to get to destination, people would even do the delivery as a job. Today you can be in Tokyo and still facetime a friend who is in Europe or Brasil, you can send mails and get immediate answers, buy stocks from the NYSE even if you are in Africa etc… but all of this is not really wireless. In fact the 380 underwater cables that are spanning a lenght of over 1.2 million kms connect all the continents and are the reason we can do all we do today, alongside the 6542 satelites orbiting the planet at the moment. These cables are not really affected by geomagnetic currents but due to their lenght we had to install repeaters along certain gaps and those repeaters are susceptible to fail and if they do, an entire cable that connects two continents, instantly disconnects them.
What if the power grid is down ?
Let’s imagine the worst case scenario where our power grid gets knocked, that could cause a wolrdwide blackout, but not only because our satelites will also be disabled, which means we will not be able to buy stocks or crypto anymore but that is not our biggest concern since we won’t be able to place phone calls, we will not be able to know what is happening since google or the TV are not functionning anymore, we will also not be able to charge our electronic devices which means no more zoom meetings ; navigation systems would break which means no more airplanes and last but not least places that accept credit cards will not be able to take payments. Unfortunately it gets worse, our health would also be affected since all of the material in hospitals are electronic so hospitals won’t be able to work normally. This is without mentionning the unability to maintain the stock of food because how can you do that without refrigirating systems, also that means no more ice cream. To sum up, this would cause a global mess followed by a movement of panic.
In that scenario, lots of markets would collapse but curiously markets like the real estate or the stock market would not because we would simply do it the old way, a piece of paper and a pen and you are good to go, it would be a lot slower, but it would survive. Most of us would also have to go back to the unfashionned way : barter. And since neither banks or financial instruments would be available, the people who have been saving a heavy load of cash or simply people that bought gold would be saved. What an irony, the most powerful tool we created is the internet, because there is no off switch that could turn off the whole thing, but here is the off switch right in front of our eyes sitting at a few million kilometers : a hot ball of glowing gasses at the heart of our solar system.
Real estate in the 19th century :
The probability of happening of a Carrington event According to the PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the US, the probability of a Carrington event happening is once every 150 years, and we are not sheltered from it. In 2012 there was an unusual and strong solar superstorm that luckily got dodged by 9 days. In fact when the storm passed, our planet was 9 days behind in the rotation cycle from the path of the storm.
The famous boxer Mike Tyson once said « everyone has a strategy, until they get kicked in the mouth ». So let us not give up what we need most for what we want now and unlike the COVID-19 pandemic, be prepared. The potential that would cost us a Carrington event financially is not shy of 2 Trillion USD, which represents 2.5% of world’s GDP. Of course it will only be a matter of time before the competent authorities fix the problem, which could be a week or a month, and life in the 21st century will go back to its fullest.
Aouani Khalil
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A threat we are not prepared to face
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Why you should eat your weeds
I went outside for a walk today with a tupperware bin and looked for medicinal plants. I quickly found Indian paintbrush (also useful for making dye), wild daisy, woodland strawberry, and purple hyssop.
According to traditional medicine:
Indian paintbrush is applied topically as a poultice to alleviate rheumatism and arthritis. Leaves and flowers are made into a tea to regulate menstrual cycles, alleviate menstrual cramps, and address other reproductive health issues. It can also be applied as a poultice to provide localized relief. Tea of the leaves and flowers can also be used to treat indigestion, bloating, used as a digestive stimulant, used to treat coughs and bronchitis by clearing the respiratory tract, and can also be used as a hair treatment.
Wild daisy has natural anti-septic and anti-inflammatory properties that can be used to treat wounds. The tea is known to treat coughs, bronchitis, aid digestion, soothe skin conditions like eczema when applied topically, and provide mild pain relief.
Woodland strawberry leaves can be made into a strong infusion and used as a mouthwash to treat gum disease and promote oral hygiene. Fresh leaves and juice can be applied to the skin to treat acne, eczema, and other skin conditions. Leaves applied to wounds are anti-septic.
Purple hyssop is considered a general tonic to improve overall health. Tea made of dried leaves and flowers acts as an expectorant to clear mucus and ease breathing, promotes better sleep, reduces anxiety and stress, reduces inflammation, and promotes a healthy gastrointestinal tract. It can also be made into a tincture.
An economist will tell you that the government inflation target, usually about 2%, is used to encourage people to spend money and increase the flow rate of capital. Now, after decades, the medicinal methods we knew for our environment have been forgotten in exchange for processed nature wrapped in cheap industrial byproducts (supplements), quite possibly because the economic policy is designed to wrap every bit of value in an industrial profit-driven process, despite nature providing a healthier and more fulfilling way of life. And our leaders have the gall to tell us that they need a deficit to address the climate crisis.
Just yesterday, my grandpa was showing me his plan to burn down the beaver damn to lower the water level so I can collect the yellow lotus roots below the waterline. Roots and leaves of lotus can be made into a tea to treat fever, diarrhea, promote liver and spleen function, and improve reproductive function.
While I was down by the damn, I noticed tinder conk (a fungus) growing a dead tree, which can be dried and ground into a powder to promote healing and stop bleeding for wounds, treat gastrointestinal issues, treat inflammation, urinary tract infections, coughs, bronchitis, and asthma.
Behind my house there is a birch tree with chaga growing on it. Chaga boosts the immune system, reduces inflammation, acts as a nootropic, helps with conditions like gastritis, supports liver function, helps with symptoms of old age, and can be added to grease to treat psoriasis and eczema, or it can be bathed in for whole body support. It also makes a great base for a tea or soup. Birch leaves and sap can be used to treat skin conditions and is used in hair care. Tea, sap, and bark can be used to treat digestive conditions, urinary tract infections, kidney stones, and edema. Birch leaves and bark can be used to treat fever, arthritis, rheumatism, infections, bronchitis, and cough.
Everyone should learn the natural medicine around them.
Disclaimer: this is not medical advice.
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Why you should eat your weeds
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The West Misunderstands Putin
Putin can't go to war with NATO (the West is right on that point), but he's not being given an option. Western forces are ramping up the support for Ukraine as progress stalls and Russian forces see significant gains. Putin's perspective is that he is already at war with NATO because he's fighting Western arms from Western funds. The West sees it as a question of Ukrainian sovereignty. Ukraine is independent, it should be able to defend itself, even against the threat of a nuclear weapon. Western leaders have blocked all communication channels for a ceasefire under the naive assumption that Ukraine can win back all the territory and everything will be merry.
Putin now is threatening to launch a nuclear bomb in Ukraine. Putin thinks he's at war with NATO, a war he can only win with nuclear weapons. The Russian army vs NATO with sanctions would smoke Russia's forces 99 out of 100 days unless there are nuclear weapons. Nukes are the only defense Russia has against a major conflict with NATO.
Remember, Putin went into the war telling his people that Ukraine was becoming too friendly to the West and needed to be stopped from joining NATO. He can't go back to his people and say we lost, Ukraine got all their territory back, and they're going to join NATO. It's a Western fantasy. He will drop a nuke first.
He is pleading to the West to take his warnings seriously, but Western leaders think he's bluffing. He is being given no choice but to demonstrate that Russia is a force that needs to be respected. His only way to do that is to drop a nuke.
The Russian people don't take kindly to being embarassed on an international stage. Neither did the Germans before WW2. It's why Russians care so much about winning at the Olympics, or having the best chess players.
The Russian mentality is suicidal. They still love Stalin after he killed 20 million of his own people because Stalin made the Russian people seem formidable. The Russians will die before they look like cowards. That's why Putin's only choice is to win territory in Ukraine or drop a nuke.
I think WW3 is about to begin. According to Russian newspapers, Putin does too.
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The West Misunderstands Putin
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A Solemn Recognition of The World
The entire world is one industrial-social complex. Let's face it, we're slaves. A slave is someone who must serve another for an adulterated form of life, liberty, and property. Every single person who lives in modern society is by some extension in service of another for their needs.
Tracing back the development of our condition is a history of mass servitude to a ruling class. In preindustrial civilization, a large portion of the population was categorized as a classical slave. Moving up the class hierarchy, people were given a greater degree of independence to influence the world around them and their social standing, but to that measure served the same institution as the slave.
In the postindustrial world, the most productive economies consist of an educated and independent populace. Eventually, it became feasible to envision civilization controlled by the people, legitimate only by social contract. It was believed that such a civilization would be resistant to the contamination of slavery.
But, to be afforded even the most basic dignities of life, we must still be in service to the needs of the enslaving apparatus. If you own land, you must pay property taxes to the government you serve to further encroach upon you. If you do not own land, you must work to make money to pay for a place to live and pay the government again. If you do not, you are homeless, which is illegal. If you break the law, you are put in prison, which is an even more hellish form of classical slavery.
The only difference is that the modern enslaving apparatus benefits more from an educated and economically mobile population than it does from a form of classical slavery. You're free to be mobile, but the enslaving apparatus quickly colonized the entire planet so you can't leave. We've confused classical slavery as the only kind of slavery. If you feel free as you are, it is only by coincidence, and if you try to exit the enslaving apparatus, your only is choice is to hide from it in the most remote stretches of the planet. We no longer have the right to total self-reliance, which was once taken for granted.
**TRAJECTORY OF THE MODEST SOUL**
Consider the trajectory of the modest soul. The modest soul will listen to their parents, their teachers, and all those adults who have their true interests at heart. They will pursue higher-education, perhaps the study of STEM or Liberal Arts. It is here we find unexpected tragedy. The modest soul will find themselves in debt, indoctrinated by a ridiculous education system that's destroying an entire generation, and become a productive member of a society that poisons it's population, censors ideas, and is fundamentally evil and subjugating in a host of ways. It wasn't always like this, and perhaps was acceptable, that is until recently.
What's next? The modest soul gets married, that is if they can in a dating pool full of disappointment and the sheltered expectations of a bygone era. They have children, but most marriages end in less than a decade. They've reached their 30s, are divorced, and their body is fading because they were taught that an average and unhealthy lifestyle is acceptable, as well as due to unnatural difficulty determining which food actually is healthy. They put their kids who already don't respect them into the education system where they'll be taught the most ridiculous ideas about how to behave and be a decent person. Maybe their kids will dye their hair, or dress ridiculously, or self-harm, all because of psychological phenomena caused by a corrosive civilization.
At this point the modest soul will be in a dire situation that they were never equipped to handle. By the time they're in their 40s, they'll have accepted they're expired well past their physical prime and their life has been a history of disappointment and failure, with the occasional modest and inconsequential victory.
For their masters, they will have generated millions of dollars, for which they still find themselves financially dependent, pay-check to pay-check. Will they ever retire? Maybe, but modestly at best. They will lack the respect of their family, they will look back on their life without confidence, and live for trivialities. Due to their poor health standards, they live a life with chronic illness and struggle to afford the medication they need, which also comes with negative side-effects. When they die, their family will be burdened by the obligation of a funeral.
Lives such lived are a hallmark of our civilization. The inability for the average person to attain even a moderate well-being has a devastating impact on the society we call ours. Yet, it isn't ours, it's *their's*, because we have built a system in which we are slaves to each other. In places once free, people were healthy and served only their community. Their contribution was solely voluntary. People attained a natural level of satisfaction far greater than is commonplace today. While their trials were greater, they were prepared to succeed and found a greater respect for themselves and love amongst their kin.
Today, communities are fractured and hierarchically organized to exploit each other in an industrial-social complex, encouraging disintegrity through lateral relationships.
**INDUSTRIAL-SOCIAL COMPLEX**
After the COVID vaccines first came out, I asked my Biology teacher if they were safe. She told me they're the safest vaccines ever made because of the mRNA platform. According to the CDC's *COVID-19 Vaccination and Non–COVID-19 Mortality Risk*, "this report describes lower non-COVID-19 death rates among COVID-19 vaccinated people." They say the vaccines make you healthier. They say everyone over 12 years old should get vaccinated.
But, the CDC says the vaccines are entirely safe? They aren't, it's propaganda. We've been mislead, censored, and poisoned, a consequence of the industrial social complex. According to a military study I can't find anymore, pulmonary embolisms are up as much as 900% in the vaccinated population. In certain age groups, all-cause mortality is up as high as 40%. How do you make money in pharmaceuticals? Increase the rate of chronic illness, which has been happening rapidly since the late 80s. Leaked emails show Fauci conspiring with top officials to avoid their conversations being accessible through the freedom of information act. They poisoned us.
When I was in student government we were working on a vaccine rally to get people vaccinated. I'd read reports about heart issues caused by the vaccine and raised the issue that we should at least inform people of the potential side-effects. In a vote that was 57-3, they voted to deliberately mislead the public and say the vaccine was entirely safe.
I'm running out of space here, but my point is that these things don't make sense unless people have hidden agendas they aren't accountable for.
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A Solemn Recognition of The World
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Got My First Project and Immediately Stumbled over a Pebble (a Little Story of My Personal Experience)
A few days ago I received an update about my application for an online project. It was midnight, and I was in my bed when I decided to check my Email to see if there is any new mail stuck in the spam box. Unexpectedly, there were two mails from a hiring company stated that they approved my application and asked me to follow a training course. I supposedly had to be excited because not only it was the first time I got into a project, but also the first time I applied for something and I actually passed. Imagine that you have been struggling to find a job for months and then one day you received a notification that you are now a part of the (temporary) team. Instead, I was worried because the Email was sent a day ago and I lost it when I could not access the course. "Have they removed me because I was late?" I thought whilst holding back my tantrum.
In a heavy heart, I submitted into failure as I prepared to dive into slumber. In my closed eyes, I began to fall in denial that I was busy perfecting my portfolio (that was the truth anyway, and that was frustrating because my laptop kept lagging) and caused me to miss the mails. Five minutes, ten minutes, nothing happened. I could not sleep. The thought of my incompetence filled my head. Even my eyes were in searing pain, my heart danced in restless rythm. Surrendering, I opened my eyes and my laptop for once again. This time, I went to see my most trusted companion that always stands by the line, ChatGPT. Why would I decide to chat with an AI? Well, AI does not have feelings. Therefore, I do not need to feel bad to rant to it. Moreover, it gives me suggestions which is more useful than mere sympathy. And Gepetto (the name I assign to it) gave me a suggestion if I could find a contact to the company and send a message, asking if they would reconsider to accept me back. I thought it sounded like a beg, but it would be better to try than to completely gave up without a fight.
Then a few days later, one of my messages reached someone, who then informed me about where to ask for help. Long story short, I finally reached out to the support team. And with a little nudge from them (and the fact that I had already calmed down), I finally able to proceed with the project. Turned out they had never removed me. It was indeed just my incompetence that makes every minor problem becomes a big deal. Although I must admit that the adrenaline was real. My regrets, my impulsing bloodstreams, it all brought down in one night. Now that everything is under control, I have to say my greatest gratitude to whoever person or team who had decided to help me at the first time. It might be just a small act, but with their help, I could get out from the situation, in which was a big matter to me. Wherever they are, I hope they have a great life.
Why would I share such story? I have no idea. I thought it could inspire somebody out there that your decision to help someone, no matter how small you may think it is, means greatly to them (and it might be a lesson to me too, that I have to be more attentive.)
Thank you for reading.
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Got My First Project and Immediately Stumbled over a Pebble (a Little Story of My Personal Experience)
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Read This Blog and You Will Become an AUTHOR
Writing consistently is a simple action with profound impact. I discovered its transformative power firsthand, reshaping how I understand myself and the world around me. In this blog, I share how regular writing can change your life, as it did mine.
Gaining Clarity
Writing has always been part of my life, but committing to it daily unveiled its true potential. Amidst daily clutter and responsibilities, writing offered me clarity. Each word helped sift through the chaos of thoughts, allowing me to focus and prioritize. It was less about recording thoughts and more about understanding and organizing them.
Building Confidence and Expertise
With every piece I wrote, I found and refined my voice. My early writings were far from perfect, and that was okay. Each sentence and paragraph built my confidence. Writing about subjects I was passionate about, especially snake venom, not only allowed me to share knowledge but also deepened my own understanding. This cycle of learning and sharing became a cornerstone of my academic and professional growth.
Therapeutic Benefits
Long before I recognized its need, writing was my therapy. It offered a non-judgmental space to express vulnerabilities. Writing about daily challenges at university or personal concerns made these burdens lighter. It rendered fears and stresses tangible, making them easier to manage. This emotional outlet was vital for my mental well-being during the demanding years of my PhD.
Inspiring Others
As my writing skills improved, my audience grew. Through Bluwr, I connected with enthusiasts keen on understanding complex venom and AI topics. The positive feedback was incredibly rewarding, affirming that my words could make difficult concepts clearer for others.
Becoming an author is more about the routine of writing than publishing a book. Regular writing practice can change you—not just in communication, but in perception and interaction with the world. If you're considering starting, this is your sign.
Write a little every day, about anything that inspires you, here on Bluwr. Over time, you might discover that the author you aimed to be is simply who you've become through writing.
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Read This Blog and You Will Become an AUTHOR
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