"A curious use for fire among some Indians was in giving signals. A place visible from a great distance was selected. Upon it a little fire was built with fuel which gave a dense smoke. Sometimes the signal depended upon the number of fires kindled side by side. Thus when Pima Indians returned from a war-party against Apaches, they gave smoke signals if they had been successful... Sometimes messages were given by puffs of smoke. When the fire had been kindled, a blanket was so held as to prevent the smoke rising. When a lot of smoke had been imprisoned beneath it, the blanket was suddenly raised so as to let it escape... Such signaling by smoke puffs was common among Plains tribes."

Frederick Starr (1898). American Indians.

The Incredible Shrinking NATO

The author speculates on the reasons why Ukraine's President Zelensky has fallen out of favor with NATO and has not been invited to join the organization. The author suggests that the reason may be that Ukraine has demonstrated that NATO's weapons are ineffective, particularly in the ongoing conflict with Russia. The author argues that NATO is essentially a buyers' club for US-made weapons, and the failure of these weapons in Ukraine is damaging the reputation of US defense contractors. The article also discusses NATO's real purpose and the geopolitical rationales for military conflicts.

👉 Read full

Synchron's brilliant Stentrode device: a simple, safe, reliable brain-computer interface that doesn't need chunks of skull cut out

One of the greatest journalists in the world.

https://jermwarfare.com/conversations/whitney-webb

"Why does Putin specifically call it a terrorist attack? Because, as he states, the Kerch Bridge is actually no longer used for military supplies and has not been for many months, and is therefore exclusively a civilian corridor. This is an interesting admission on his behalf because it appears to possibly point to a secret agreement with the West/Kiev, perhaps as part of the Grain Deal and other such backdoor handshakes that go on all the time, both explicit and implicit.

"Ukrainian foreign minister Kuleba disagrees."

https://simplicius76.substack.com/p/kerch-bridge-deja-vu-breakdown?publication_id=1351274&post_id=135130121&isFreemail=true

Run away!

"It really pisses me off because we are spending $80,000 on this wedding and he keeps saying that we should spend less. UH, HELLO, NO. This is MY WEDDING I have been dreaming of since I was little and I REFUSE to have anything but my dream wedding. How can I convince him to work a second job to pay for this? What happened to “happy wife, happy life”???????????"

https://voxday.net/2023/07/18/red-flags-waving/

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum; even encourage the more critical and dissident views.

That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

- Noam Chomsky, The Common Good, 1998

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@QuiteInterestingInformation

The bank plans to enable users to make phone payments by integrating its digital yuan app with specialized “super SIM cards” with near-field communication capabilities. 📲 https://cointelegraph.com/news/cbdc-digital-yuan-bank-of-china-trials-offline-payments-for-digital-yuan-via-sim-cards

🇨🇭 Switzerland to test its digital currency

Swiss National Bank Chairman Thomas Jordan said Monday that the institution will soon issue a central bank digital currency (CBDC) for wholesale payments on the SIX Digital Exchange, Switzerland's financial market infrastructure provider.

The experimental Swiss CBDC is designed for use by large financial institutions and will be part of a pilot program.

"This is not just an experiment, it will be real money equivalent to bank reserves," Jordan said. "The objective is to test real transactions with market participants."

That said, Switzerland's central bank said it is not yet ready to create a retail-facing digital franc.

18 countries across the globe are currently conducting CBDC pilot programs, according to the Atlantic Council’s Central Bank Digital Currency Tracker.

International Monetary Fund Chief Kristalina Georgieva said a week ago the IMF is working on a global platform to make the CBDCs launched by governments around the world more interoperable.

It seems that the basis for a new global single currency, this time digital, is being set up right now.