Solar Grade Polysilicon Prices Crash Amid Global Supply Glut
Spot prices for the main ingredient in solar photovoltaic systems are crashing hard and fast, fueled by a glut in China’s solar panel supply chain. Some companies manufacturing polysilicon make solar panels at a loss, while others have shuttered production.
Bloomberg data shows the average price of solar silicon plunged 22% from last week to $9.6 per kilogram, hitting levels not seen since the summer of 2020. Prices peaked on June 2022 at $39 and have since plunged 75.5%.
The main reason for the plunge is “polysilicon production far exceeds expected global installation,” according to BloombergNEF.
Data from PV Infolink shows silicon prices fell even lower, to as low as $7.5 per kilogram. Some manufacturers are dumping polysilicon on the market to shed inventory amid a worsening glut.
Some manufacturers, such as Daqo New Energy Corp., need $7.55 per kilogram to break even. Bloomberg quoted China Silicon Industry Association, who said, “Several factories have suspended production to avoid selling at a loss.”
Citigroup wrote in a note to clients that polysilicon prices are near the industry’s average production cost after a year of declines, adding the price correction is due to increasing new capacity by most of the world’s top producers.
Citigroup analyst Pierre Lau noted that wafer, cell, and module market prices also declined, through the lower polysilicon costs, while solar glass prices were flat.
He pointed out three polysilicon producers have suspended production due to low prices, and the timeline to restart still needs to be clarified.
BloombergNEF expects polysilicon prices to stabilize in 3Q as production shutdowns will help alleviate supply.
Production has finally outpaced increasing demand as a polysilicon glut may cool solar panel prices that jumped during Covid.
‘No Chance’ Of Extending Grain Deal, Set To Expire In July: Kremlin
Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated why he is dissatisfied with the UN-brokered grain deal as it’s being implemented in practice. “Probably, for the guys who are fighting, it’s not clear why we are letting the grain through. I understand,” Putin told journalists while explaining that the deal asymmetrically benefits Ukraine and its ability to keep selling primarily to Europe. “We do it not for Ukraine, but for the friendly countries in Africa and Latin America. Because grain should go first and foremost to the poorest countries in the world.” He additionally said last Friday, “the supply of Ukrainian grain to world markets doesn’t solve the problems of African countries in need of food.”
In new comments, Putin’s press spokesman Dmitry Peskov followed up on Sunday by saying at this point the deal which allowed Ukrainian grain to be exported through the Black Sea has “no chance” of being extended.
He asserted that Russia has “shown goodwill several times, made concessions” and allowed the agreement to be extended. But what Moscow was promised in return still hasn’t been fulfilled, said Peskov.
“It’s hardly possible to predict some sort of a final decision here, but we can only state that – judging de facto by the status that we now have – this deal has no chance,” he said according to state media.
“The deal implies deeds; deeds on the part of the contracting states or organizations. And one part of this deal was done, and the second part, which related to [promises made to] Russia, was never done,” he continued.
The current extension of the deal is set to expire in just under a month, on July 17.
The UN/Turkey-brokered grain deal’s collapse would have immediate impact on the food security of literally tens of millions of people globally, but most especially in already struggling regions of North Africa and the Middle East. The UN has described the Black Sea Grain Initiative as “critical” to helping “stave off famine.”
But Putin’s complaint all along has been that grain hasn’t ultimately been going to regions most in need (in Africa and Middle East), but instead has been shipped to wealthier countries in Europe.
Are you a conspiracy theorist? If you are thoughtful and interested in public affairs, the media will say you are. And they will smear and dismiss you for it.
For more than half a century, certainly since the Kennedy assassination, anyone who notices patterns and missing pieces in public life, and attempts a possible explanation that suggests cover-ups or other nefarious dealing, is denounced as a “conspiracy theorist” and hence self-evidently wrong and probably crazy.
The trouble is that it is very difficult to make sense of public life today without some degree of speculation based on morsels of evidence. That’s because so much of the truth of things is hidden behind security walls.
Anyone who thinks the public has not been hoodwinked by some very powerful people is hopelessly naïve or not paying any attention. The sheer number of once-trusted institutions and individuals who have betrayed us is beyond belief. And this is true for a vast range of issues from war to economics to public health to academia and medicine generally.
In the case of COVID—by which I mean not the virus but the “whole-of-society” response—the rule-making power was transferred from public health to the intelligence community on March 13, 2020, with the emergency declaration. This is not a speculation. We have all the documents. Upon release, they were marked confidential.
It was a remarkable shift in the American system, away from representative democracy and toward rule by administrative bureaucracies. Those are the people who closed your churches and schools. They did it without a vote or polls. They somehow gained the power to do it while bypassing every institution of consent.
This wrapped the whole of the biggest mass attack on liberty in living memory in a blanket of secrecy. Even now, people are afraid to talk. You hear things but usually second-hand. The sources close to the operation keep everything under wraps because that is what they agreed to do. They live with this burden even now.
Yes, many secrets. There are still so many questions. And people are left to speculate. Was there one big plot or thousands and millions of little plots? Was this all directed toward an intended nefarious end (as so many say) or did it work more like an Ouija board, with no one in particular moving the planchette but rather reflecting the mind of the group?
Look at the word conspiracy itself. It derives from the Latin for breathe. It means to breathe together. Other words based on the same root are inspire (taking breath in, as if from God), aspire (to breathe upon with hope), and expire (to stop breathing).
To conspire doesn’t necessarily mean plotting. Or planning. Or scheming. It doesn’t even have to be driven by ill intent. It only means that the actors in the action know what it is they are supposed to do, as if breathing. They know their interests and can anticipate the actions of others without asking or being told. They gauge their own actions to coordinate with others.
In that sense, there doesn’t need to be a plot for there to be a conspiracy. There are certain things you know for sure. If tonight I attended a high-end cocktail party at an exclusive Boston country club, I know for sure that a way to scandalize the guests would be to express disgust at Pride Month. Doing that would cause people to avoid me for the duration and never be invited back. The topic doesn’t even need to come up at all. I can make a reasonable assumption—without knowing any other facts—that the people at this event are all tacitly on board with Pride Month. It’s a given. Is it a conspiracy? In a literal sense, yes.
To have a conspiracy theory is simply to speculate as to the reasons for the coordination. The theory does not have to point to a plan but rather map out the coordination of interests toward a goal. That’s not disreputable. It’s simply a matter of being smart. It indicates that you have your eyes wide open and are curious for answers. You are merely trying to figure out how it is that people come to breathe together, seemingly acting with unity of intent.
For years I conducted a choir of a special sort. We sang entirely without accompaniment and from a repertoire from the 16th century in which the beat is implicit most of the time. That meant that counting and comprehending the tempo depended entirely on an internal sense of timing. It has to be shared among the entire group. It is conveyed by the conductor in part but only as a guide and not the beat itself.
Internalizing the tempo is a much bigger hurdle than the notes themselves. If you cannot get the beat, the music simply does not happen. That beat has to come from within.
I learned over time that when I was doing a clinic with a new choir that had never sung this type of repertoire, it was best to begin with tempo exercises. I would take at least 30 minutes helping people comprehend the tempo without any sound. It needs to be built into the heart and mind. It’s the only way that one can make sense of the entrances and exits section by section. If we couldn’t get this part right, the music would never come together.
Once it does come together, the conductor can eventually become superfluous. Ideally, by the time I finished the clinic, which usually lasted a day, we could sing several large pieces without any conductor at all. I only needed to start and stop the music. In professional choirs that specialize in this music, they do not even need that. They conduct themselves with looks and glances. That’s all they need. (If you are curious as to how this works, here is a fine example.)
An illustration drawn from the COVID years came from a Trump press conference in which Fauci was standing behind him. Trump was saying something particularly strange. Fauci strained to keep from laughing and so covered his face. Now, he is a man of some discipline. Why did he do this? It was a signal to his friends in the media, pharma, and the whole gang that he was not on board with the Trump administration. He was showing them that he can be counted on to manage a response contrary to what the president wanted.
In the same way, the CDC and FDA did not need to get together with Pfizer and Moderna to map out a plan. They all knew each others’ interests and could anticipate each others’ actions. They are part of the same tribe. And that tribe is based on experience and trust. It was the same with media and tech. They joined in based on interest and class rank. The signals and instructions don’t need to be written down or negotiated. They are in the air and discernible by the most minor signs all around us.
In that sense, they “breathed together” like a high-end professional choir. No percussionist is necessary because the beat is already known and understood by all the singers.
In the same way, we saw remarkable coordination between the federal government’s planning and that of the states. The public health departments are all on the same email chains and attend the same annual conventions. They know how each other thinks. They were all waiting for the great pandemic. They had gamed it all out many times in the past and for at least a decade and a half. The only question was when to begin the exercise in real time—the moment when the piece of music was to begin.
Vast resources are being expended today to document everything that was happening behind the scenes via emails, texts, classified documents, and much more. We are discovering remarkable truths. And yet, in the end, the real conspiracy is not something one can ever fully document. It happens as if by autopilot or magic as an extension of a shared culture, sociology, and interest. The power elite know what to believe and even what to do without the necessity of any external plotting or direction.
We live in a society where we have been trained not to ask the hard questions.
Instead, we are just supposed to relax and let others do our thinking for us. If you do insist on asking pesky questions, you are likely to be labeled a “conspiracy theorist” or something even worse. And even those labels are a form of control. Very few of us are eager to be labeled “one of those people”, and so most of us just go along with the program. You see, the truth is that those in power do not want us to be independent thinkers. They want us to be sheep. But the good news is that more people than ever are waking up to the fact that the elitists that are running things are rotten to the core.
There is so much going on in our world right now, and the pace of change just keeps getting faster and faster.
I tend to write a lot about our ongoing economic problems, but I am going to take a break from that today and focus on some of the other things that are happening. The following are 10 very important questions that I believe we should all be asking right now…
#1 Why is the mainstream media so quiet about the fact that Joe Biden and his family received tens of millions of dollars from foreign nationals in an influence-peddling scheme that went on for many years while Biden was vice-president…
James Comer expects to uncover $20-30 million in illicit payments made to the Biden Crime Family:
“This is going to be hard to Biden to explain, this is not going to go away, and I think eventually the mainstream media is going to start asking the real questions.”
Several US federal government agencies have been hit in a global cyberattack that exploits a vulnerability in widely used software, according to a top US cybersecurity agency.
The US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency “is providing support to several federal agencies that have experienced intrusions affecting their MOVEit applications,” Eric Goldstein, the agency’s executive assistant director for cybersecurity, said in a statement on Thursday to CNN, referring to the software impacted. “We are working urgently to understand impacts and ensure timely remediation.”
#3 Should we be concerned that hail “the size of baseballs” is hammering some areas in the middle of the country?…
Much of Oklahoma was under a “moderate” risk for severe storms Thursday. That’s level 4 out of 5 on the severe storm risk scale. The National Weather Service in Norman, Oklahoma, warned of a “significant severe weather” outbreak.
People “should be prepared for hail up to the size of baseballs and winds up to 80 mph with the stronger storms,” the weather service said.
#4 Why is New York City introducing vending machines where addicts can get crack pipes for free?…
First, we had Joe Biden sending out free “safe smoking kits” AKA crack pipes and accessories, and now New York is placing these same types of “safe” smoking kits in their “public health” vending machines.
The machine also has Narcan, an overdose rescue drug, condoms, nicotine gum, and other “health” related items.
#5 One recent survey found that 42 percent of U.S. CEOs believe that AI “has the potential to destroy humanity five to ten years from now”. Why aren’t more people sounding the alarm about the danger that AI poses to our society?…
Many top business leaders are seriously worried that artificial intelligence could pose an existential threat to humanity in the not-too-distant future.
Forty-two percent of CEOs surveyed at the Yale CEO Summit this week say AI has the potential to destroy humanity five to ten years from now, according to survey results shared exclusively with CNN.
“It’s pretty dark and alarming,” Yale professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld said in a phone interview, referring to the findings.
#6 Why has the U.S. government been “secretly stockpiling dirt” on American citizens by purchasing it from data brokers? Isn’t that sort of thing supposed to be illegal?…
The United States government has been secretly amassing a “large amount” of “sensitive and intimate information” on its own citizens, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, more than a year ago.
The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans’ lives are described soberly and at length by the director’s own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members.
#7 Scientists are creating “synthetic human embryos” without using human eggs or human sperm. Why is this being allowed, and what are the dangers if this sort of “research” is not stopped?…
Scientists have created synthetic human embryos using stem cells, in a groundbreaking advance that sidesteps the need for eggs or sperm.
Scientists say these model embryos, which resemble those in the earliest stages of human development, could provide a crucial window on the impact of genetic disorders and the biological causes of recurrent miscarriage.
However, the work also raises serious ethical and legal issues as the lab-grown entities fall outside current legislation in the UK and most other countries.
#8 Why is a Republican member of the California legislature named Scott Wilk telling parents to flee the state if they love their children?…
“In the past when we’ve had these discussions and I’ve seen parental rights atrophied—I’ve encouraged people to keep fighting,” the senator added. “I’ve changed my mind on that.”
“If you love your children, you need to flee California. You need to flee,” he said.
#9 Why are Americans so depressed? According to a brand new report from the CDC, nearly 20 percent of all Americans have been formally diagnosed with depression during their lifetimes…
The proportion of US adults who have ever been diagnosed with depression ranges greatly depending on where they live.
A new report published Thursday by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds that in 2020, 18.4% of US adults reported having ever been diagnosed with depression in their lifetimes – but, state by state, that percentage of adults ranged from an estimated 12.7% in Hawaii to 27.5% in West Virginia.
#10 Why is there an “epidemic” of cancer among our young people…
This “early-onset cancer epidemic,” as one recent study published in Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology dubbed it, comprises a surge in the incidence of over a dozen different cancers in younger people since the 1990s in countries around the world.
In the U.S., the rate of early-onset cases rose by almost 18 percent between 2000 and 2019, even as cancer declined slightly in older adults, according to data from the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Among Americans between 15 and 39 years old, an age group cancer researchers refer to as adolescents and young adults (AYAs), the surge was more pronounced still, topping 20 percent.
If you want to be successful in life, you can’t be afraid to ask questions.
Because good questions often lead to good solutions.
Unfortunately, much of the population has been trained to no longer think for themselves, and so we all need to try to do what we can to wake them back up.
* * *
Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Tourist Sub Vanishes At Titanic Wreck Site As Search Mission Underway
A search and rescue mission was launched Monday after a submersible went missing while maneuvering around the Titanic wreckage off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
Rear Adm. John Mauger, US Coast Guard 1st District Commander, told Fox News the submersible belongs to deep sea exploring company OceanGate and was overdue in returning to the surface.
The vessel has enough oxygen for 96 hours, which “gives us some time to continue searching and continue to using all our means to try and locate the crew members,” Mauger said.
“This is on the site of a wreckage, the wreckage of the Titanic, and so there’s a lot of debris on the bottom, and locating an object on the bottom will be difficult.
“We have lives that are potentially at risk,” he said.
OceanGate Expeditions, the submersible operator that charges $250k per seat, confirmed that it had lost radio communications with the submersible. It’s noted on the company’s website that it has five-person submersibles. There was no word on how many were onboard the vessel.
“We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely. Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families.
“We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers,” OceanGate said in a statement.
The New York Times said a military aircraft and a Coast Guard ship from Canada had been deployed. Vessel-tracking website Marine Traffic shows ships are headed to the Titanic wreck site.
3 tugs seem headed to site of Titanic wreck, where a small submersible that takes paying tourists to view wreck has gone missing
AIS shows 3 tugs left 🇨🇦port St Johns, listing destination as Titanic wreck site & SAR.
3 vessels are Polar Prince, Kopit Hobson 1752, Horizon Arctic pic.twitter.com/TSO45EplMZ
One of the passengers was Hamish Harding, the chairman of a Dubai-based sales and air operations company, Action Aviation, according to his own Facebook page.
It’s still unclear how many people were on board and the condition of the crew and vessel.
Most people agree that we are closer to nuclear war than at any time since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Some would even argue that we are closer now than we were in those fateful days, when Soviet missiles in Cuba almost triggered a nuclear war between the US and the USSR.
In those days we were told that we were in a life-or-death struggle with Communism and thus could not cede a square foot of territory or the dominoes would fall one-by-one until the “Reds” ruled over us.
That crisis was very real to me, as I was drafted into the military in the middle of the US/USSR standoff over Cuba and we could all feel how close we were to annihilation.
Fortunately, we had a president in the White House at the time who understood the dangers of nuclear brinkmanship. Even though he was surrounded by hawks who could never forgive him for aborting the idiotic Bay of Pigs Cuba invasion, President John F. Kennedy picked up the telephone for a discussion with his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, which eventually saved the world.
Historians now tell us that President Kennedy agreed to remove US missiles from Turkey in exchange for the Soviets removing missiles from Cuba. It was a classic case of how diplomacy can work if properly employed.
It is all too clear that we do not have a John F. Kennedy in the White House today. Although we no longer face a Soviet empire and communist ideology as justification for taking a confrontational tone toward Russia, the Biden Administration is still dragging the US toward a nuclear conflict. Why are they putting us all at risk? The same old “domino theory” that was discredited in the Cold War: If we don’t fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian, Putin will soon be marching through Berlin.
This all started with Biden promising to only send uniforms and medical supplies to Ukraine for fear of sparking a Russian retaliation. From there we went to anti-tank missiles, multiple-rocket launchers, Patriot missiles, Bradley fighting vehicles, and millions of rounds of ammunition. The Biden Administration announced last week that it would send depleted uranium ammunition to Ukraine, which poisons the earth for millennia to come. Rumors are that long-range ATACMs missiles are to be delivered soon, which could strike deep into Russia.
Apparently, F-16 fighter jets are also on the way.
The escalation rationale from Washington, we are told, is that since the Russians have not directly retaliated against NATO for NATO’s direct support of Ukraine’s war machine, we can be sure they never will respond.
Is that really a wise bet? It is clear to many that US-built F-16 fighters taking off from NATO bases with NATO pilots attacking Russians in Ukraine – or even Russia itself – would be a declaration of war on Russia.
That means World War III – something we managed to avoid for the whole Cold War.
Congress is silent – or compliant – as we lurch forward toward disaster for no discernable US strategic goal. Biden – or whoever is actually running the show – is forging straight ahead.
As we move into the US presidential election cycle one thing is clear: we desperately need a peace president to do for us what JFK did for the US during the Cuba crisis. Hopefully it won’t be too late!
Trump ‘Needs To Be Shot’: Democratic Lawmaker Quickly Backpedals During On-Air Tirade
The Ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government (Jim Jordan’s panel) said on Sunday that former President Donald Trump should be “shot” for “having the classified information for Americans” at Mar-a-Lago.
Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), who in April threatened journalist Matt Taibbi with imprisonment over his “Twitter Files” testimony, was speaking to MSNBC about Trump’s classified records case when she let the comment slip. She quickly corrected herself with “stopped,” adding that Trump will “have his day in court.”
Plaskett, who also called accusations that the Biden DOJ targeted concerned parents a “conspiracy theory,” called the notion that Biden’s FBI and DOJ follow a two-tiered system of justice nothing more than “propaganda.”
Watch:
Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-Virgin Islands): “[Trump] needs to be shot— stopped.” pic.twitter.com/E2nIzVJuwY
A former school principal who grew frustrated with the school system quit her job and instead chose to homeschool her three kids on a 10-acre (4.05-hectare) homestead. Merging her children’s learning with their land and home, she has created an immersive “real world” educational experience based on her kids’ unique needs.
Mandy Davis, 37, lives in Central Oregon with her husband, Josh, 38, and their children Emma, 11, Clara, 9, and Cruz, 1. For Mandy, who was adopted from Seoul, South Korea, and who later grew up in Nebraska, her own public school experience was “not all roses.” Neither was Texas native Josh’s since he moved often as a child and suffered from huge learning gaps as he moved between state education systems.
Wanting to be a positive change and advocate for all students, Mandy got into the education field right after college. However, after struggling with having little control over what she was so passionate about, Mandy, who has a Master’s in Education and Instruction Design and has worked in both public and private schools, felt called to take full control of her children’s education.
“Schools today are tough,” she told The Epoch Times. “I couldn’t be the change I wanted to be in our school system, but more so, I couldn’t leave my children in it to suffer.”
Mandy cited teacher shortages and unfit applicants, a lack of child-led learning, wasted time, outdated curriculums, political agenda curriculum, lack of autonomy of learning, and a rise of problematic student behavior as major chronic issues in the system.
“Schools are a tricky beast,” Mandy said, adding that as a parent and educator, there is very little control.
“I remember as an educator, wanting more control over how I was teaching curriculum,” she said. “But then I would have to have it approved by my admin—the school—the district—the state … and ultimately the answer was always NO.
“Education and educational change are complex—outside of the fault of a singular group but multifaceted. This makes change difficult and slow.”
Thus, after a discussion with her husband and daughters, she left her job in June 2022 as a principal at her kids’ private Christian school in Oregon and turned to homeschooling for answers.
The transition to homeschooling came in August 2022 and this made the family believe that they could finally chase their slow lifestyle dreams.
“I wanted my children to not sit at a desk for 7-plus hours each day,” Mandy said. “I wanted to be able to provide my children with a life of enriching learning. I wanted my children to focus on progress and not perfection. I wanted to raise thinkers and leaders, not followers and workers.”
Not new to the homeschooling journey since she had already tried it in their daughters’ early years and for two years during the pandemic, Mandy felt this time, as they made the change, her husband and children transitioned much more easily than she did—she had to unschool herself and consciously work to avoid mirroring a typical classroom environment.
Today, Mandy and her kids’ school for anywhere between 90 minutes to four hours a day to meet their weekly goals. The rest of the day is led by what Mandy calls “home culture.” She has removed timetables in favor of routines and has placed the focus on communal living and her children’s unique strengths and interests.
“One of the most popular questions I receive is, ‘What is your daily homeschool schedule?’ Answer: We don’t have one,” Mandy said. “In our home culture, it was important for my children to understand that learning is a joy that never has to end. When we are reading a good book, we don’t need to stop because the clock is telling us it’s time for a math lesson; if we find a praying mantis in the garden, we don’t need to take a photo and run because we have language arts to get to.”
Wild and Free
Besides learning from books, Emma, Clara, and Cruz spend time gardening, baking, doing crafts, and taking care of the animals on their homestead. The family has four goats, 16 chickens, four dogs, two cats, and a beautiful garden. They are considering cows for the future.
As year-round learners, the kids’ lessons reflect the seasons, and they work hard or take breaks as needed.
Mandy believes that, because of homeschooling, her children are “wild and free” and have confidence in who they are. Their daily challenges are the same as other families, including waking up grumpy and sibling rivalry. However, the difference, according to Mandy, is that their homeschooling life allows time to address these issues.
‘Give Yourself Grace’
For Mandy, her Christian faith plays a huge role in her homeschooling journey and parenting philosophy, with the unyielding support of her husband, Josh, who works full-time as the owner of More Roof Life roofing company in Central Oregon.
Mandy said: “I’ve been in enough schools to know that teachers’ natural bias, religion, and politics come out. It’s not an intentional thing, it’s a human nature thing. I feel blessed to be that teacher for my children and set a moral compass from the heart of our family.”
Since sharing her radical career shift and snippets of daily homeschool and homesteading life on Instagram, Mandy has received overwhelming support. She often gets messages from other former educators, new homeschool moms, and adults who were homeschooled in the past with similar stories. She has been able to build a rich, invaluable community.
However, apart from the support, Mandy has also received a fair share of “negative comments.”
“Some come from a place of not understanding, or simply lacking the education of what homeschooling is, and others from a place of frustration or just toxic negativity,” she said.
Meanwhile, the biggest misconception amongst people about homeschooling, according to Mandy, is that people think there is a lack of socialization.
“This is so wrong,” she said. “How is sitting at a desk surrounded by 25-plus peers your exact same age, while your teacher tells you not to talk, socialization? We are out every day, having real-world experiences with all walks of life!”
Most importantly, Mandy’s family talks about everything and strongly believes there is nothing that they can’t solve together.
“I always want to be there for my children for the little things, so they know, later in life, that they can come to me for the big things,” she said.
Mandy compares herself to a “greenhouse.”
“I don’t believe we need to place kids in a bubble, but I love that comparison to a greenhouse,” she said. “I am not cutting my children off from the world, but know the importance of cutting certain parts of the world off from my children. Allowing the light to flood in while keeping the storms and locusts out, what a blessing it is to give our children this head start in life!”
She believes that in the future when she releases her children into the world, they will be able to withstand any storm.
For Mandy, her mission is simple.
“The best way to be an educational activist is to talk about it,” she said. “I think that because of my background in education, I have a unique voice in the space, and I feel the duty to use that voice to help as many as I can.”
To advocate for homeschooling, Mandy appeared as a guest on two podcasts: Education Evolution Podcast, and Homeschool Sister Podcast. She is also speaking at the sold-out Wild & Free Conference in Tennessee in the fall of 2023.
Mandy strongly believes that school choice is an important freedom and needs to become a regular and integral part of parenting.
“Here’s the thing: no matter what school choice you make for your family, your children’s education will always be your responsibility,” Mandy said. “Homeschool has been exactly what our family needed … and it won’t be for everyone, but I do encourage you to find that school choice that sings to your heart.”
For those families looking at transitioning to a homeschooling lifestyle, the mom of three advised: “Give yourself a lot of grace. There will never be a point in time where you know everything or you feel completely confident in your skills. Similar to a first-year teacher coming in the classroom with no prior teaching experience, it is something you learn as you go, and you have a community surrounding you ready to support you.”
Black Americans Support, US Majority Reject Reparations
Reparations for slavery in the U.S. have been discussed contentiously, not only in the lead-up to this Monday’s Juneteenth holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the country. A survey carried out by Pew Research Center in 2021 shows that two-thirds in the U.S. reject the idea of slavery reparations.
However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, the picture is different among Black Americans, of whom three-quarters support reparations. Support is also higher among Hispanics – where almost 40 percent are in favor – and Asians – one third is for reparations – than among white Americans. Only 18 percent in the group supported them, the survey showed.
A timeline of reparations in the U.S. put together by the University of Massachusetts Amherst shows that payments to African-Americans as reparations for slavery are few and far between. While a few former slaves have actually won compensation in court cases – in the 18th-19th centuries – amounts varied and were sometimes quite low. In the 20th century, especially its first half, reparation payments centered on Native American tribes, which were compensated for their land being taken away.
In the case of Native Americans, the federal government was easily identifiable as the party that should be responsible for reparations as it had acquired the Native American lands in question.
As for restitutions for slavery, 75 percent of Pew respondents in favor of reparations also saw the U.S. government as carrying all or most of the responsibility for them (as its laws upheld slavery). 65 percent and 53 percent also saw a lot of responsibility with businesses and banks as well as colleges and universities which had benefited from slavery, respectively. Fewer respondents – 44 percent – said descendants of those active in the slave trade should pay.
Around the turn of the 20th century, the attention of courts and governments refocused on restitutions for African-Americans. Settlements, laws and other resolutions on the topic often focused on reparations for specific events – the discrimination of Black farmers in Department of Agriculture loans, the historical underfunding of Historically Black Colleges and Universities, the victimization of Black Americans in medical experiments and police torture, among others, with voluntarily adopted measures often converting reparations into scholarships, independent of whether the event triggering compensation had anything to do with education discrimination.
Only recently, more cases of reparation payments have addressed descendants of slaves or Black Americans in general. Direct payments have been rare, however, and include reparations by the Virginia Theological Seminary, which used slave labor on its campus, and those paid since 2022 by the city of Evanston, Ill., to its Black residents for home repairs and down payments on property. Several other cities and the state of California are currently exploring similar possibilities while on a federal level, a bill that would create a commission to study reparations by the U.S. government passed a house committee vote in 2021 – which was considered a major milestone despite it not going any further. The bill in question, H.B. 40, was named after the Civil War-era promise of 40 acres and a mule for Black Americas, which as the most well-know reparations promise in American history has remained unfulfilled.
“No one’s going short here,” said Biggie Too. “You need the technical to turn first, things to roll over. Or more conclusive evidence that shows people are fully committed again,” continued the Chief Global Strategist for one of Wall Street’s Too-Big-To-Fail affairs.
“It’s unclear whether the asset allocation crowd has reloaded (ZH: actually it is clear, they have). But if they’re coming in now, at these levels, then they’re aiming for new highs,” barked Biggie. “And you know, if they haven’t come back in force yet, why now?” he asked, obviously not waiting for an answer.
“Back in 2020, when the market started climbing, and people couldn’t quite believe it, Biggie was talking to this guy who asks good questions,” said Biggie Too, sliding effortlessly into 3rd person. “The guy asked Biggie whether maybe the market knew we were gonna get a vaccine?” said Too. “And the market kept going straight up, and the guy had got it right,” he said.
“So, this week, the same guy asked Biggie if maybe the market knows this war between Russia and Ukraine is gonna come to an end?” said Biggie.
“And Biggie was like, hmmm.”
Machinistan:
“Take any application, add AI, and you need 7x-50x the compute power,” said the entrepreneur. “AI is a black hole, it’ll suck money out of everything else and into its vortex,” he said. “The arms race between industry giants is a 20 on a scale of 1-10.” He’s building data centers for tech giants. “The whole industry is priced off of power – megawatts – that’s how we price our projects,” he said. “Data centers are really just selling power, and there are tens and tens of billions of dollars of demand for it. The cost of entry is staggering. It’s a big boy game.”
“Our clients tell us they’ll take as much power as we can deliver,” he said. “If we have 500 megawatts of data center capacity coming, they say get us a gigawatt.” AI requires a limited number of people, Nividia chips and a massive amount of electricity. The projected consumption curves are breathtaking. “The firms with the clearest advantage had the largest data center capacity coming into this.” Microsoft, Google, Amazon. “Who else wins? It’s kind of hard to see China win. Killing Alibaba wasn’t the smartest move. And Europe is far behind.”
“If anything in world history could aggregate economic power into a small number of hands, it is unambiguously AI,” he said. “If you got into the game now, you’d need $100bln, maybe $200bln, and your odds of winning would be no better than 20%.” Winners will keep sucking earnings from the economy. “Adapt your business to this trend. In real estate, build beds for machines. That’s what a data center is. Get short humans, long machines. People say buy Austin real estate, buy Miami, but that misses the opportunity. Find ways to buy Machinistan.”
