https://www.sott.net/editorials Signs of the Times: The World for People who Think. Featuring independent, unbiased, alternative news and commentary on world events. en-us Original content Copyright 2026 by Signs of the Times/Sott.net. For other content, see our Fair Use Policy at www.sott.net. Mon, 01 Jun 2026 11:30:13 +0000 https://www.sott.net/images/sottlogo_rss.jpg SOTT.net https://www.sott.net https://www.sott.net/article/506638-NewsReal-US-Govt-Make-Believe-as-Iran-Holds-Trump-Israel-to-Fire The US government continues dragging out terms of settlement with Iran, Israel continues invading, occupying and ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon and Gaza, and the Trump White House continues playing 'MAGA Greatest Hits' to its base. Their detachment from reality is becoming more palpable - and unsustainable, surely? - by the day... Running Time: 01:40:15 Download: MP3 — 138 MB https://www.sott.net/article/506638-NewsReal-US-Govt-Make-Believe-as-Iran-Holds-Trump-Israel-to-Fire Sun, 31 May 2026 20:14:01 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506565-Fun-with-AI-7-Grok-Meets-High-Strangeness-Ancient-Gnosis-Musks-Simulation-and-the-Cosmic-Farm When Cassiopaean cosmology collides with Plato, Paul, Langan's CTMU, and Elon Musk's transhumanist vision. What emerges is equal parts revelation and red flag In my last post, I gave my entire book, "High Strangeness", to Grok for review and analysis. At the end, I promised that my next post - this post - would be a continuation of that discussion because it did get VERY interesting. Hopefully, you have read the previous post and are now ready to see where I went with it. This conversation looks at ancient parallels with Plato's Cave, Gnostic archons, and the Apostle Paul's "principalities in high places". You will see that all three align strikingly with the Cassiopaean framework. I then compare it to Chris Langan's self-referential universe, Elon Musk's simulation hypothesis and Neuralink dreams, and even Donald Trump's pragmatic disclosure push. Surprisingly, Grok suggests that some of today's most ambitious tech visionaries may be doubling down on the very control system they... https://www.sott.net/article/506565-Fun-with-AI-7-Grok-Meets-High-Strangeness-Ancient-Gnosis-Musks-Simulation-and-the-Cosmic-Farm Wed, 27 May 2026 20:29:13 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506511-NewsReal-Trump-Says-Iran-Deal-Close-But-Can-He-Surrender-US-Hegemony Another 'TACO Tuesday' came and went... by Thursday the US military was again 'locked and loaded' for another go at Iran... and by Saturday evening Trump was dangling another peace deal - 'for realz this time'. As American diplomacy erratically yo-yo's, in the real world, some oil tankers are once more sailing the Strait of Hormuz, but now on Iran's terms. War is a cynical business, a 'racket', as US General Smedley Butler said a century ago. Wars begin because they're profitable, and only end with the promise of more profit. Is it a 'win' for the US if it makes more money selling more oil, even if that means Iran is also doing so? For Trump, perhaps, but for the 'imperial class', this constitutes 'abject surrender'. While the stand-off between the US/Israel and Iran appears to be reaching a 'conclusion' one way or another, the Russia-Ukraine/NATO War has dragged on for 4 years, and could yet enter a new phase. Drone warfare and 'low-intensity conflict' can co-exist with 'normal... https://www.sott.net/article/506511-NewsReal-Trump-Says-Iran-Deal-Close-But-Can-He-Surrender-US-Hegemony Sun, 24 May 2026 21:16:42 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506376-NewsReal-Trump-Goes-to-China Deferred due to the US-Israeli war against Iran, Trump finally visited China last week, where he received an apparently 'warm' welcome from Xi Jinping, along with a stern warning: do not mess with Taiwan, and let us work to avoid the 'Thucydides Trap', wherein a dominant power inevitably wars with a rising power. Whether Trump understood the finer points of Chinese diplomacy is unclear, but it's clear he intended to 'do big business deals' by bringing 'our finest' captains of industry in tow. Overhanging the event is the 'unfinished business' in Iran, where it's looking increasingly likely that the US and Israel will 'have another go' at 'reopening the Strait of Hormuz'. Should that be attempted, we are staring down the barrel of a gargantuan global energy crisis. Does Trump care? He certainly cares about his legacy, and even he must doubt the chances of the US 'fall-back plan' of North America supplanting the Middle East as the 'global energy spigot' in the event that the Gulf... https://www.sott.net/article/506376-NewsReal-Trump-Goes-to-China Sun, 17 May 2026 20:47:40 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506346-SOTT-Earth-Changes-Summary-April-2026-Extreme-Weather-Planetary-Upheaval-Meteor-Fireballs April 2026 closed with the Sun once again reminding us who runs the show. On the 23rd and 24th, Active Region 4419 fired off two back-to-back X-class flares, an X2.4 followed hours later by an X2.5, flanked by a string of M-class events and several coronal mass ejections. Earth's sunlit side took the hit in the form of shortwave radio blackouts, and forecasters watched for at least minor G1 geomagnetic storming in the days that followed. The monthly sunspot mean came in around 79, modest for Cycle 25 on paper, yet these late, high-energy outbursts make the same point we've been making for years: the cycle's "decline" looks nothing like the textbook curve, and the Sun continues to drive what we see on the ground. Given recent patterns, we should expect more of the same through the coming months. That solar context is also why it's worth highlighting the ongoing Super Niño, which mainstream climatology continues to file under "symptom of warming" while missing the deeper signal.... https://www.sott.net/article/506346-SOTT-Earth-Changes-Summary-April-2026-Extreme-Weather-Planetary-Upheaval-Meteor-Fireballs Sat, 16 May 2026 04:03:13 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506313-Fun-With-AI-6-Grok-Reads-High-Strangeness-and-Delivers-a-Surprisingly-Sharp-Review Why the Cassiopaean synthesis rattles materialists, religionists, and New Agers alike — and why it looks more rational than the "UFOs are demons, return to church" narrative In my last article, I announced that it was the finale in my "Fun With AI" series. I think I spoke too soon. There's probably no end to the fun a person can have with AI even if the topics discussed in that little series were rather serious and possibly depression inducing. Today, I'm going to make it worse. If you think those subjects were depressing, hold my beer! There's a little backstory to the fun we are going to have with AI today. A month or more ago I noticed that there was a significant uptick in the number of people searching my name and work on google. I know this because I have an academia.edu account and they notify me when someone is searching my name on google and lands on their site. The uptick wasn't like overwhelming, just significant enough to get my attention. Instead of a few searches... https://www.sott.net/article/506313-Fun-With-AI-6-Grok-Reads-High-Strangeness-and-Delivers-a-Surprisingly-Sharp-Review Thu, 14 May 2026 20:17:16 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506305-Fun-With-AI-5-Epistemologically-Inept-Ontologically-Ignorant Why Today's AI Can Mirror Human Thought Without Ever Knowing or Being — And Why That Distinction Matters More Than the Hype In the finale of the "Fun With AI" series, Mandatory Intellectomy probes the philosophical core of large language models through live conversations with DeepSeek, Claude Sonnet, and especially MiniMax. The result is a stark diagnosis: current AI is epistemologically inept and ontologically ignorant — a sophisticated pattern-matcher that perfectly imitates understanding while possessing none. The piece connects these limitations to broader questions of consciousness, the AGI illusion, and the materialist hubris driving the industry, closing the series with a warning that we are playing with forces we refuse to understand. This is the last of the series "Fun With AI" (links at the end) and it ends, appropriately, with two of my favorite topics: Epistemology and Ontology. Remember from my earlier mini-series (links at the end) how I was just going on and on about... https://www.sott.net/article/506305-Fun-With-AI-5-Epistemologically-Inept-Ontologically-Ignorant Thu, 14 May 2026 19:11:43 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506245-Irans-Strikes-Rewrite-Washingtons-West-Asia-Doctrine-US-Bases-Are-Not-Coming-Back Iran's dismantling of the US base shield exposes the central weakness of Washington's regional order: its occupation infrastructure can no longer protect itself. To riff on Bruce Springsteen's My Hometown: "Tehran says 'These bases are going, boys / And they ain't coming back / To your hometown'." The Washington Post's 6 May 2026 article, 'Iran has hit far more US military assets than reported, satellite images show,' was an overdue admission - based on leaks from the US Department of Defense (DOD) and Washington's intelligence community - that Iran had inflicted significant damage to US assets. However, The Post only tells part of the story. The Post examined 109 of the hundreds of satellite images published by Iranian media, whose authenticity could be verified "by comparing them with lower-resolution imagery from the European Union's satellite system, Copernicus, as well as high-resolution images from Planet where available." https://www.sott.net/article/506245-Irans-Strikes-Rewrite-Washingtons-West-Asia-Doctrine-US-Bases-Are-Not-Coming-Back Mon, 11 May 2026 20:03:28 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506226-NewsReal-The-Madness-of-King-Donald Caught in a trap by Iran, the gulf between what US president Trump wishes were true, and what is actually real, continues to grow. While the Strait of Hormuz remains impassable to the US Navy, its distant "blockade of Iran's blockade" is apparently taking effect, with billions of dollars' worth of oil shipments failing to leave Iran and thus reducing the country's cash flows. Iranian officials remain steadfast, however, denying dodgy Washington outlet Axios' repeated claims that a peace deal is 'ready any day now', and stressing that it's prepared to ride out Trump's attempt at economic siege in the belief that the American president will blink first when actual oil shortages kick in, globally, sometime between now and September. The rest of us are left with little choice but to watch Trump learn the hard way that there are some things he cannot 'will' into existence... Running Time: 01:22:03 Download: MP3 — 75.1 MB https://www.sott.net/article/506226-NewsReal-The-Madness-of-King-Donald Sun, 10 May 2026 19:51:57 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506082-NewsReal-Energy-Wars-on-the-High-Seas-Trump-Admits-US-Navy-Like-Pirates Typically, the American president has blurted out 'the plain truth' about what his government is doing around the world - from the Caribbean to the Arctic to the Black Sea and Indian Ocean: behaving like pirates. This week we review, taking into account Richard Medhurst's excellent dot-connecting in his documentary 'The Petrogas-Dollar: The Secret US Strategy Behind the Iran War', the string of US and Israeli government moves this year to effectively 'ring-fence' the global flow of oil and gas. As we've been warning for over a decade, the US was never going to just roll over in the face of Russian defiance regarding Crimea, Iranian resistance against Israeli expansionism, and Chinese 'win-win' geoeconomic strategy towards a multipolar world. They hatched a 'counter-attack', and Trump is playing his part to 'make America great again', which is really just to do whatever the US can to forestall or prevent the end of its currency's status as 'global reserve currency'. Running Time:... https://www.sott.net/article/506082-NewsReal-Energy-Wars-on-the-High-Seas-Trump-Admits-US-Navy-Like-Pirates Sun, 03 May 2026 18:17:15 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506079-How-the-US-Pulled-off-an-Armed-Robbery-of-the-Worlds-Energy-Supply-and-Created-the-Petrogas-Dollar A forensic investigation into how Washington leveraged the war in Iran to replace Nord Stream, save the dollar, and establish total command over the world's fuel from the Arctic to the Indian Ocean. It's tempting to believe that the US war machine is finished. Militarily, Iran has indeed dealt the US its worst humiliation in modern history — one I covered in clinical detail. But in the background, Washington has quietly been carrying out an armed robbery of the world's oil and gas supply. All of it. https://www.sott.net/article/506079-How-the-US-Pulled-off-an-Armed-Robbery-of-the-Worlds-Energy-Supply-and-Created-the-Petrogas-Dollar Sun, 03 May 2026 12:03:27 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/506004-The-Technate-Was-Always-Coming And what you can do about it (besides complaining). Palantir dropped a manifesto last weekend. 22 bullet points distilled from Alex Karp's book The Technological Republic, posted to X with the casual framing of "because we get asked a lot." I haven't seen a reaction so widespread, unanimously opposed and viscerally aghast since James Damore's infamous "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber". The usual suspects lost their shit. Engadget called it "the ramblings of a comic book villain." TechCrunch clutched its pearls at the bits about "regressive" cultures and "vacant and hollow pluralism." Bellingcat's Eliot Higgins observed, (via Bluesky, of course), that these aren't philosophical musings floating in the ether: they're the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating. He's not wrong, Palantir sells to ICE, DoD, NYPD, and the intelligence community. It may be a manifesto, but it's also product literature. https://www.sott.net/article/506004-The-Technate-Was-Always-Coming Wed, 29 Apr 2026 14:56:44 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/505962-NewsReal-Assassination-Attempt-Farce-in-DC-as-US-Prepares-Second-Shot-at-Defeating-Iran Three aircraft carriers in the Arabian Sea for the first time since March 2003 suggests another 'shock and awe' campaign is being considered. The 'ceasefire' between the US and Iran is holding, but for how much longer? Trump talks up his 'blockade of their blockade', but it's clear what is suffering most from Iranian defiance - Trump's reputation and American 'prestige', which the Americans are itching to salvage. Meanwhile an armed nutcase attempted to barge his way into the annual White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Hilton Hotel in Washington DC, apparently with a view to 'taking out the Trump administration', most of which was in attendance. The buffoon got nowhere but the dramatic scenes did nothing to bolster Washington's self-image as a place where 'important global business' takes place. Running Time: 01:37:53 Download: MP3 — 89.6 MB https://www.sott.net/article/505962-NewsReal-Assassination-Attempt-Farce-in-DC-as-US-Prepares-Second-Shot-at-Defeating-Iran Sun, 26 Apr 2026 20:56:59 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/505817-NewsReal-Dire-Strait-Deciphering-Trumps-Crazy-Messaging-on-Tense-Iran-Situation It's not easy to do, and it's tempting to just 'turn it off', but we're all unfortunately doomed to have to endure Trump's erratic statements on Iran and wider geopolitics for the duration of this crisis (which he himself caused). For now a tentative ceasefire is holding, and further talks are scheduled in Pakistan this week, but from one hour to the next no one can tell which way things will go: towards a 'deal', or back towards hot war? Trump, though manifestly not presidential material, really is the quintessential American to be 'saving America' at the end of empire. Decades ago, the 'quiet American' would covertly 'fix' things abroad, all in service of maximizing American power and wealth. Now a distinctly LOUD American is blurting out loud what we've long suspected the Washington elite think privately: "let's just go take all their stuff and kill them if they refuse..." Running Time: 01:43:26 Download: MP3 — 94.7 MB https://www.sott.net/article/505817-NewsReal-Dire-Strait-Deciphering-Trumps-Crazy-Messaging-on-Tense-Iran-Situation Sun, 19 Apr 2026 17:00:12 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/505790-Fun-With-AI-4-Trillions-Into-the-Void-The-Black-Budget-Black-Hole-Thats-Hiding-in-Plain-Sight What if the real conspiracy isn't secret plots — but the openly insane way "democracy" funnels taxpayer money into unaccountable black projects? Just a reminder of the premise of this little series of articles: AI cannot inject its own "ideas". It can only recombine what's in existing texts through predefined language patterns. To some extent, that can provide insights that look "new" (but hey, maybe they just look new to you because you haven't seen them before - doesn't mean that nobody has - the AI was trained on more texts than any of us can ever read), but it's not on the same level as what humans can come up with. There is clear limitation: the source material. Any AI output has to be based on that. Human thinking can go beyond that. So how "new" anything from AI is is basically a matter of semantics. The more important metric, IMO, is whether it's useful. And I'd say it certainly can be. Many of the answers are brilliant and capture the inner workings of the system we live... https://www.sott.net/article/505790-Fun-With-AI-4-Trillions-Into-the-Void-The-Black-Budget-Black-Hole-Thats-Hiding-in-Plain-Sight Fri, 17 Apr 2026 19:58:05 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/505701-SOTT-Earth-Changes-Summary-March-2026-Extreme-Weather-Planetary-Upheaval-Meteor-Fireballs Solar Cycle 25 continued to defy expectations in March, with activity ramping up in the "post-peak phase". On March 16, Active Region 4392 produced an M2.7 flare, triggering an R1 radio blackout over the Atlantic, Africa, and southern Europe, and a vivid auroral display visible at mid-latitudes. On March 26, the AR4403 unleashed an M3.9 flare, and the month closed with a dramatic exclamation point: an X1.4 flare from AR4405 on March 30, the strongest event of the month. The eruption prompted forecasters to issue watches for G3 (strong) to G4 (severe) geomagnetic storms - a development that also raised concerns for NASA's Artemis 2 mission, scheduled to launch just days later. March 2026 brought catastrophic flooding and severe storm activity spanning nearly every continent: https://www.sott.net/article/505701-SOTT-Earth-Changes-Summary-March-2026-Extreme-Weather-Planetary-Upheaval-Meteor-Fireballs Mon, 13 Apr 2026 02:56:45 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/505700-NewsReal-Trump-Card-US-Blockades-Irans-Blockade-to-Unblock-Strait-of-Hormuz If you were writing this for a Hollywood script, it would be rejected for being unrealistic. Trump's latest scheme to 'unblock the Strait of Hormuz' is almost certainly not going to work, but more importantly, what is the likelihood that hostilities will recommence between the US and Iran? Also, what really happened during that so-called 'rescue mission' south of Isfahan last week? And should we have sympathy for Trump? He seems to be at the mercy of forces he can neither placate nor out-maneuver... Running Time: 01:49:21 Download: MP3 — 100 MB https://www.sott.net/article/505700-NewsReal-Trump-Card-US-Blockades-Irans-Blockade-to-Unblock-Strait-of-Hormuz Sun, 12 Apr 2026 20:48:35 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/505577-Fun-With-AI-3-Learned-Helplessness-The-Architecture-of-Self-Disabling Learned helplessness isn't just a psychological quirk — it's one of the most elegant control mechanisms ever engineered. In this installment, Mandatory Intellectomy dissects how modern institutions (from schools to healthcare to finance) systematically train people to doubt their own capabilities, defer to 'experts,' and collaborate in their own disempowerment. Properly prompted AI cuts through the noise to reveal the pattern: the System doesn't need constant brute force when people police themselves from the inside. Today, we present another fun discussion between Mandatory Intellectomy and his friendly AI sidekicks. But, before we dive in, I'd just like to remind the reader of a few salient facts about using AI. Knowledge isn't mere accumulation of data but a navigation of perceptions, biases, and justifications toward ontological alignment (what is). Consider two books: "Thinking: Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman and "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. Yes, we humans can make mistakes... https://www.sott.net/article/505577-Fun-With-AI-3-Learned-Helplessness-The-Architecture-of-Self-Disabling Mon, 06 Apr 2026 12:25:08 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/505451-NewsReal-Trumps-D-Day-Do-or-Die A month into his "little excursion" in Iran, Trump's campaign of sustained airstrikes is yielding preposterous results: significant damage in Iran, but also in America's regional client-states, and also in key global supply chains. Every Monday he calms 'the markets' with assurances that the war is won and "very nearly over," and every Friday, when markets close, he threatens "TOTAL DEATH AND DESTRUCTION!" In the meantime, non-stop rumors of American troop movements suggest Trump is seriously considering a ground invasion of Iran, ostensibly to "reopen the Strait of Hormuz." Which actually is open, just now on Iran's terms. The US president apparently seeks to return shipping there to the status quo ante. But can he do it with a small landing force? And would such a move even work? It's D-Day for the West as we knew it: do, or die. Running Time: 01:37:39 Download: MP3 — 89.4 MB https://www.sott.net/article/505451-NewsReal-Trumps-D-Day-Do-or-Die Mon, 30 Mar 2026 20:37:09 +0000 https://www.sott.net/article/505274-NewsReal-Iran-War-Winding-Down-or-Escalating-Israel-Leading-Trump-Towards-Quagmire Trump's "short-term excursion" in Iran is going from bad to worse. And so are his incoherent positions on the situation and what to do about it. With gas prices jumping the world over, humanity is staring down the barrel of global food shortages and severe energy disruptions, while the US military is seriously considering direct military confrontation with Iranian forces to "free the Strait of Hormuz." In the midst of all this, rumors are flying about Netanyahu's whereabouts, and 'someone' is carrying out missile strikes, in Iran's name, against high-profile military sites like the US-UK military base on Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, against energy infrastructure targets in neutral countries, and against important cultural sites like Jerusalem's Old City. 'They' seem determined to cause global FUBAR. Can Trump do anything to stop them? Or has he become their hostage? Running Time: 01:38:24 Download: MP3 — 90.1 MB https://www.sott.net/article/505274-NewsReal-Iran-War-Winding-Down-or-Escalating-Israel-Leading-Trump-Towards-Quagmire Sun, 22 Mar 2026 20:52:59 +0000