After a couple of years of peaceful coexistence, it’s becoming more and more clear these days that video streaming services will eventually upend DVDs and Blu-rays, or at least force them into a niche existence.

As Statista’s Felix Richter notes, while physical formats were vastly superior in terms of sound and image quality in the early days of streaming, 4K streaming with Dolby Atmos sound is no longer a problem thanks to high-bandwidth broadband and mobile connections.

Moreover, streaming services like Netflix, Disney+ or Apple TV+ offer access to vast libraries of content at the touch of a button. And thanks to smart TVs and streaming devices, it’s easier than ever to watch your favorite content on the big screen as well. While there will always be collectors who prefer physical media or people in rural areas with bad internet connections, it’s clear that the convenience and flexibility of streaming has made it the preferred method of watching video content for most people.

You will find more infographics at Statista

According to findings from Statista Consumer Insights, DVD and Blu-ray are quickly spinning out of fashion across the globe, with the share of respondents who watched video from a physical format declining, sometimes significantly, in all major markets.

Via Remix News,

Europe is changing its tune: Now the much-maligned fence on Hungary’s border is becoming an example for all…

Long-term forecasts have been expecting strong winds in Europe for months, and the persistent northerly flow that has long affected the continent has been slowly replaced by southerly and easterly currents, with occasional, yet powerful, westerly gusts. This is expected to continue until the European Parliament elections in the middle of next year and the subsequent power negotiations.

The change in wind direction has just been confirmed by the “chief meteorologist,” Manfred Weber, leader of the European People’s Party parliamentary group. The German politician, who has a keen sense of the current changes, recently said:

“If there is no other way to stop illegal immigration, we must be prepared to build fences.”

This was not always the case, as eight years ago he took a stand in the name of the “Willkommenskultur” promulgated by Angela Merkel and was so anti-borders that he even invoked “Mutti” (Merkel’s German nickname of “mother”) and directly addressed Donald Trump in a Twitter post in 2017 when he said, “We don’t build walls, we want to build bridges.”

Weber, however, was disappointed with “Mutti” because, despite being the People’s Party’s top candidate in the last European Parliament elections, he was not able to run because Viktor Orbán and Emmanuel Macron, who he often criticized, found someone else better suited to lead the European Commission.

Although the then-crowned Ursula von der Leyen has since been a disappointment, and corruption cases have not been far from her mind, the procedure of four years ago could be instructive for her: She came in first place as an almost unknown running against Weber, who had seemed to be the sure winner. He was lobbying this week for the European People’s Party coalition to include him as its top candidate next year, but it is not enough for him to be acceptable at home because Europe seems to have had enough of Germany dictating the agenda. Meloni’s Italy has already made it clear that it wants to limit migration, and French President Emmanuel Macron has been even more spectacular in his opposition to the German line in recent weeks.

Sometimes critical of the Hungarian prime minister himself, Macron has realized that he has nothing to lose, as the French constitution says he cannot be president for a third time and so far he is only remembered for his yellow vest and pension reform protests, which are hardly a great mark in terms of his place in European history.

In a bid to project a more positive image, he struck an unusually friendly tone with China and then said that Europe should look after its own interests and its leaders should work to create autonomy. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock was the loudest in her protestations; she did not recognize the shifting winds and said there was no place for such dissent in the EU. Macron, however, is not to be so easily swayed and is now going further, joining forces with the Chinese to bring the parties stuck in the quagmire of the Russia-Ukraine war to the negotiating table this year, according to Bloomberg.

All this in a single week:

• Border fences,

• the protection of European interests and a ceasefire to prevent the war from escalating are no longer the devil’s work,

• and after Meloni, Weber, and Macron have now backed Viktor Orbán.

If this continues, by next May, the mainstream will be behind the Hungarian prime minister, who had previously been dismissed by Europe’s elite as anti-human, authoritarian and pro-Putin.

In March, UK inflation continued to hover in the double-digit range as households grappled with the persistently high cost of living. Among the various expenses challenging British consumers’ wallets, the price of an English breakfast has notably soared. 

Economic data from the Office for National Statistics showed the consumer price index last month rose by an annual 10.1%, above a consensus forecast of 9.8%. This is a slight dip from 10.4% in February and still at four-decade highs. 

Diving deeper into the report, we find the ingredient costs to make a traditional English breakfast are up a whopping 23% in March from last year. This is the most significant increase since Bloomberg created the Breakfast Index, which tracks prices of sausage, bacon, eggs, bread, butter, tomatoes, mushrooms, milk, tea, and coffee last June. 

The Breakfast Index provides insight into shoppers’ hardships at the grocery store.

“Overall prices are still increasing at their highest level for over a decade, as manufacturers continue to pass on their costs through the supply chain to end customers,” said Lisa Hooker, the industry leader for consumer markets at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. 

There is good news for consumers. Monthly changes some components in the Breakfast Index are decelerating. 

“With food price inflation likely to slow in the coming months as we enter the UK growing season, we expect wider inflation will continue to ease,” said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium.

Meanwhile, the former chief economist of the Bank of England, Andy Haldane, who left the Bank in 2021 to lead the Royal Society of Arts think tank, forecasted that inflation would fall rapidly in the coming months. 

The bad news is that persistently high food inflation might cause further labor actions by unions in the UK and other European countries throughout the summer. 

Authored by Kyle Anzalone via The Libertarian Institute, 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has approved two new laws intended to erase Ukraine’s Russian culture. The statutes will rename places in Ukraine which stem from the country’s Russian influence.

Additionally, local authorities will be mandated to “free public space from the symbols of the Russian world.”

The laws will prohibit names that “perpetuate, promote or symbolize the occupying state or its notable, memorable, historical and cultural places, cities, dates, events,” and “its figures who carried out military aggression against Ukraine.”

The new statute was signed on Friday and will take effect in 30 days. Local officials will then have six months to completely scrub public places of Russian culture. A board will be established to determine what names must be purged.

Since 2014, Kiev has waged a culture war against Russian influence in Ukraine. After a coup overthrew Viktor Yanukovych that year, new language laws were imposed that sought to marginalize the Russian language.

Zelensky, who at the time was a comedian, had one of his movies – Love in the Big City 2 – censored because it was in Russian. Roughly a fifth of Ukrainians identify as ethnic Russians.

In April 2019, Ukraine’s parliament approved a new law restricting the use of the Russian language despite Russian being the most commonly used language in southern and eastern Ukraine.

Human Rights Watch warned that the law failed to protect the linguistic rights of Russian… pic.twitter.com/vJoL736PuD

— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) April 10, 2023

After Moscow ordered its troops to invade Ukraine last year, Zelensky has furthered the process called “de-Russification.” Kiev has nationalized the media, outlawed Zelensky’s political opposition, targeted branches of the Orthodox church it claims has ties to Moscow, and torn down monuments that represent the historical Russian influence in Ukraine.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

The collective cognitive dissonance displayed by the pack of hyenas with polished faces driving U.S. foreign policy should never be underestimated.

And yet those Straussian neo-con psychos have been able to pull off a tactical success.

Europe is a ship of fools heading for Scylla and Charybdis – with quislings such as France’s Le Petit Roi and Germany’s Liver Sausage Chancellor cooperating in the debacle, complete with the galleries drowning in a maelstrom of  hysterical moralism.

It’s those driving the Hegemon that are destroying Europe. Not Russia.

But then there’s The Big Picture of The New Great Game 2.0.

Two Russian analysts, by different means, have come up with an astonishing, quite complementary, and quite realistic road map.

General Andrei Gurulyov, retired, is now a member of the Duma. He considers that the NATO vs. Russia war on Ukrainian soil will end only by 2030 – when Ukraine would basically have ceased to exist.

His deadline is 2027-2030 – something that no one so far has dared to predict. And “ceasing to exist”, per Gurulyov, means actually disappearing from any map. Implied is the logical conclusion of the Special Military Operation – reiterated over and over again by the Kremlin and the Security Council: the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine; neutral status; no NATO membership; and “indivisibility of security”, equally, for Europe and the post-Soviet space.

So until we have these facts on the ground, Gurulyov is essentially saying that the Kremlin and the Russian General Staff will make no concessions. No Beltway-imposed “frozen conflict” or fake ceasefire, which everyone knows will not be respected, just like the Minsk agreements were never respected.

And yet Moscow, we got a problem. As much as the Kremlin may always insist this is not a war against the Slavic Ukrainian brothers and cousins – which translates into no American-style Shock’n Awe pulverizing everything in sight – Gurulyov’s verdict implies the destruction of the current, cancerous, corrupt Ukrainian state is a must.

A comprehensive sitrep of the crucial crossroads, as it stands, correctly argues that if Russia was in Afghanistan for 10 years, and in Chechnya, all periods combined, for another 10 years, the current SMO – otherwise described by some very powerful people in Moscow as an “almost war” – and on top of it against the full force of NATO, could well last another 7 years.

The sitrep also correctly argues that for Russia the kinetic aspect of the “almost war” is not even the most relevant.

In what for all practical purposes is a war to the death against Western neoliberalism, what really matters is a Russian Great Awakening – already in effect: “Russia’s goal is to emerge in 2027-2030 not as a mere ‘victor’ standing over the ruins of some already-forgotten country, but as a state that has re-connected with its historic arc, has found itself, re-established its principles, its courage in defending its vision of the world.”

Yes, this is a civilizational war, as Alexander Dugin has masterfully argued. And this is about a civilizational rebirth.

And yet, for the Straussian neo-con psychos, that’s just another racket towards plunging Russia into chaos, installing a puppet and stealing its natural resources.

Fire in the hole

The analysis by Andrei Bezrukov neatly complements Gurulyov’s (here, in Russian). Bezrukov is a former colonel in the SVR (Russian foreign intel) and now a Professor of the Chair of Applied Analysis of International Problems at MGIMO and the chairman of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy think tank.

Bezrukov knows that the Empire will not take the incoming, massive NATO humiliation in Ukraine lying down. And even before the possible 2027-2030 timeline proposed by Gurulyov, he argues, it is bound to set fire to southern Eurasia – from Turkey to China.

President Xi Jinping, in his memorable visit to the Kremlin last month, told President Putin the world is now undergoing changes “not seen in 100 years”.

Bezrukov, appropriately, reminds us of the state of things then: “In the years from 1914 to 1945, the world was in the same intermediate state that it is in now. Those thirty years changed the world completely: from empires and horses to the emergence of two nuclear powers, the UN, and transatlantic flight. We are entering a similar period, which this time will last about twenty years.”

Europe, predictably, will “whither away”, as “it is no longer the absolute center of the universe.” Amidst this redistribution of power, Bezrukov goes back to one of the key points of a seminal analysis developed in the recent past by Andre Gunder Frank: “200-250 years ago, 70 percent of manufacturing was in China and India. We are going back to about there, which will also correspond to population size.”

So it’s no wonder that the fastest-developing region – which Bezrukov characterizes as “southern Eurasia” – may become a “risk zone”, potentially converted by the Hegemon into a massive power keg.

He outlines how southern Eurasia is peppered by conflicting borders – as in Kashmir, Armenia-Azerbaijan, Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan. The Hegemon is bound to invest in a flare-up of military conflicts over disputed borders as well as separatist tendencies (for instance in Balochistan). CIA black ops galore.

Still Russia will be able to get by, according to Bezrukov: “Russia has very big advantages, because we are the biggest producer of food and supplier of energy. And without cheap energy there will be no progress and digitalization. Also, we are the link between East and West, without which the continent cannot live, because the continent has to trade. And if the South burns, the main routes will not be through the oceans in the South, but in the North, mainly overland.”

The biggest challenge for Russia will be to keep internal stability: “All states will divide into two groups at this historic turning point: those that can maintain internal stability and move reasonably, bloodlessly into the next technological cycle – and then those that are unable to do so, that slip off the path, that bloom a bloody internal showdown like we had a hundred years ago. The latter will be set back ten to twenty years, will subsequently lick their wounds and try to catch up with everyone else. So our job is to maintain internal stability.”

And that’s where the Great Awakening hinted at by Gurulyov, or Russia reconnecting with its true civilizational ethos, as Dugin would argue, will play its unifying role.

There’s still a long way to go – and a war against NATO to win.

Meanwhile, in other news, Hegemon hacks are spinning that the North Atlantic has relocated to South China. Goodnight, and good luck.

The biggest threat to the US economy is a credit crunch in regional banks with the possibility of spillover into commercial real estate. This issue is exacerbated by the Federal Reserve’s aggressive monetary tightening to tame the hottest inflation in four decades, increasing the likelihood of an economic downturn. Consequently, due to the mounting uncertainty, one job recruitment firm warns the layoff cycle is far from over. 

On Monday morning, Yahoo Finance Live’s Julie Hyman asked RecruitGyan Founder and CEO Neha Naik, “Where do you think we are in the layoff cycle?” 

Naik responded, “We are definitely not done yet. I definitely think there is more to come, and it’s primarily because – not just recession – but there was overstocking of workers during the pandemic.” 

She said, “All the companies are getting rid of employees they overstocked in the last two years — and obviously with the upcoming recession — tech companies have a couple of choices: first is to increase prices, second is to sell more services, and or third is to layoff employees to maintain profit margins.” 

Naik pointed out that founders and officers of tech companies are paring down risks amid “the upcoming recession.”

Watch the full interview.

“Tech companies are making it their goal to not let [layoffs] affect their DEI strategies,” RecruitGyan CEO Neha Naik says. “On the other hand, there still remains to be interview bias, pre-screen bias, and just bias in terms of how people will perform based on backgrounds…” pic.twitter.com/cVzbHJpck9

— Yahoo Finance (@YahooFinance) April 24, 2023

So far this year, 608 tech companies have laid off 173,880 employees. And judging by Naik’s interview with Yahoo, that number might steadily increase through the year’s second half. 

Naik noted her firm can still place tech workers from top firms in 6 to 9 weeks. 

While the economic storm clouds gather, expect even more tech layoffs in the months ahead. 

Real estate mogul Sam Zell told an audience of New York University graduate students that remote work is a “bunch of bullshit” and they should dismiss the idea of working from home, according to commercial real estate news website GlobeSt. 

“One of the biggest lies in the world is that people working from home are more productive than people working in the office,” Zell told the audience at NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate’s annual REIT Symposium, held at NYC’s Pierre Hotel on Fifth Avenue, on Wednesday. 

“You have much less productivity if you’re working from home in your pajamas with three little kids running around than if you’re in an office,” he continued. 

When asked about the current state of the office market and the impact of work, Zell provided this answer: 

“I wouldn’t want to be an owner of a lot of Class B offices right now.” 

The billionaire made it clear that remote work trends are temporary: 

 “On the first day of Covid, nobody was in our office. Six months later, everyone was in our office—and they have been for over two years.” 

He said many professional skills critical for young people are developed in office environments, and working from home stymies that. 

“There’s an enormous difference between a Zoom board meeting and a meeting in person.

“A Zoom board meeting is a board meeting where everyone sits and listens to recitations. An in-person meeting is where the real discussion takes place.”

Zell’s view on remote work is biased, considering he’s made much of his fortune in the CRE space, and remote work has led to rising vacancy rates and sliding property value.

The gold-standard measure of office occupancy trends is the card-swipe data provided by Kastle Systems. The average office occupancy nationwide is around 46%, still well off the highs from pre-pandemic levels. 

We have cited the regional bank turmoil as likely going to have spillover effects in the CRE space — especially the office sector. JPM, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs have all joined the gloom parade, warning about impending CRE turmoil.  

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A transgender lawmaker from Montana has been censured in the House after the individual made “hateful rhetoric” while debating a bill ending transgender procedures for minors.

The SB 99 bill, also known as the “Youth Health Protection Act,” bans minors in the state from receiving surgical procedures, puberty blockers, and hormones.

“The only thing I will say is if you vote yes on this bill and yes on these amendments I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands,” state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, a Democrat, said during the House debate on Tuesday, referring to the chamber’s opening prayer. Zephyr is the first transgender lawmaker in the history of the Montana Legislature.

House Majority Leader Sue Vinton called Zephyr’s comments disrespectful. In the evening, the Montana Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers, demanded that Zephyr be censured for “attempting to shame the Montana legislative body and by using inappropriate and uncalled-for language during a floor debate.”

“This kind of hateful rhetoric from an elected official is exactly why tragedies such as the Covenant Christian School shooting in Nashville occurred,” the caucus said in an April 18 press release.

“Combined with former Montana Supreme Court Justice Jim Nelson’s recent calls for ‘jihad’ and a ‘fight to the death’, there is unmistakable evidence of a desire for some to engage in violence over political beliefs. This must stop.”

On Thursday, Speaker Matt Regier did not allow Zephyr to speak against a bill that sought to define male and female in binary terms in the state code. On Friday, Zephyr was once more prevented from speaking on a bill that sought to block minors from seeing porn online.

Regier’s decision to prohibit Zephyr from speaking was taken after consultation with other lawmakers, according to The Associated Press. Though Democrats raised objections, the decision was eventually upheld in party-line votes.

Protecting Minors

SB 99 seeks to “prohibit certain medical and surgical treatments to treat minors with gender dysphoria.” A person is prohibited from “knowingly” offering medical treatments to a minor to address the child’s perception that their gender or sex is different from their birth gender or sex. Such treatments include surgical procedures, puberty blockers, and doses of testosterone or other androgens.

Physicians or health care professionals who violate these rules will be deemed as having engaged in “unprofessional conduct.”

Read more here…

According to a new poll, 60% of US voters say it’s likely that ‘cheating’ affected the outcome of the 2022 midterm elections, while 35% of voters don’t think cheating was a factor in some races, Rasmussen reports in a Thursday poll.

Of the 60% who said yes, 37% of them said it was ‘very likely’ the case.

Good Morning !

60% of all Likely U.S. voters think it is likely that cheating affected the outcomes of some races in last year’s midterm elections and 62% say it is likely that state and federal officials are ignoring evidence of widespread election fraud. https://t.co/guF7GCiewp pic.twitter.com/rPrIoGxy61

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) April 23, 2023

By party, 48% of Democrats think cheating was a factor in the 2022 midterms, compared to 78% of Republicans.

62% of those polled also say they think the government is likely “ignoring evidence of widespread election fraud.”

The survey of 915 likely US voters was conducted on April 17-19, 2023 by Rasmussen Reports, and has a margin of error of +/- 3%, with a 95% level of confidence.

Authored by Sumaya Hazarika via The Epoch Times,

“Truly the universe is full of ghosts, not sheeted churchyards specters, but the inextinguishable elements of individual life, which having once been, can never die, though they blend and change, and change again forever.”

– H. Rider Haggard

When we think about the universe, it simply seems vast with boundless space filled with large and minute particles unknown to human beings. Undoubtedly, there is a lot that we have come to understand about our planet, the universe, and also ourselves, but what if everything we know is only a fraction of the vastness that is the universe?

The study of “ghost particles,” or neutrinos, must make scientists feel the same way. We know everything and nothing at the same time. The ultimate paradox.

A neutrino, as the name suggests, is electrically neutral and a fundamental particle, which means it is not composed of other particles like electrons, quarks, antiquarks, etc. Because of its small mass (earlier considered to be zero), neutrinos have a very weak gravitational interaction making it able to pass through normal matter unimpeded and undetected.

Multi-wavelength compilation image of Kepler’s supernova remnant, SN 1604. (NASA/wikimedia)

They are the most abundant particles in the universe that least interact with any other matter.

To think about it, we are living in a world of countless trillions of neutrinos that can pass through us like we don’t exist. The combination of this ghostly presence and the important role they play in our universe is what’s captivating our physicists.

Proposed in 1930 and later verified in 1950, a neutrino is a cosmic mystery to scientists (pdf) even decades after its discovery, as to:

How much mass do they have? How many varieties of neutrinos exist? Do they have any magnetic properties? Are neutrinos their own antiparticles (antimatter)?

In their latest book, physicist Alan Chodos and science journalist James Riordon explore this perplexing particle.

“Ghost Particle: in search of the elusive and mysterious Neutrino” (2023) discusses the particle’s past and current discoveries, while they suggest it’s not just physicists who await those answers.

Riordon says “neutrinos are incredibly important both for understanding the universe and our existence in it.” In simpler words, neutrinos can reveal how matter evolved from simple particles into more complex ones, creating everything around us.

Are Neutrinos Their Own Antiparticles?

Every single property discovery of neutrinos has been baffling and also intriguing for our researchers, the biggest being, whether the ghost particle is its own antimatter.

If we are to believe in the Big Bang theory, the explosion should have created equal amounts of matter and antimatter, i.e the counterparts of electrons, protons and so on. Essentially, when matter and antimatter come into contact, they annihilate each other suggesting that our universe should be empty, but, evidently, that’s not the case. In contrast, the universe is filled with a lot of matter and a little antimatter, for reasons unknown.

Physicists are still trying to understand the manner in which neutrinos interact with other particles, which is a challenge, as the particle has neutral charge with very low mass.

Why Are Ghost Particles a Topic of Interest?

The same property of neutrinos that makes them difficult to detect, i.e their weak interaction with surrounding particles, interests physicists, as this feature can be useful in probing environments that other radiations such as light or radio waves cannot penetrate.

Another important role of a neutrino is in observation of supernovas, a luminous explosion of massive stars.

The core collapse phase of a supernova is highly energetic, and so dense that no known particle is able to escape its core front, except for neutrinos.

Neutrinos also have a crucial part to play in the research of “dark matter.” Its significance in probing cosmological phenomena is considered exceptional, and is thus a major focus of research in astrophysics.