Notes from the edge of civilization: May 11th, 2025
The US Navy's war against itself; a trade school revival meets the robot apocalypse; blackouts coming to a town near you; the housing market's fine — just don't look too closely.
The US Navy is facing some formidable foes: diversity, gravity, and incompetence.
Perhaps you’ve already heard about the $67 million F/A-18E fighter jet that “fell off” the USS Harry S. Truman last month. In case you think a swan dive off an aircraft carrier is just bad luck (hey, it could happen to anyone!), don’t worry — the crew of the Truman is here to double down. Just eight days later, they lost another during landing.
But, at least the Navy is hitting its diversity quotas.
Last week, President Trump swaggered into the Oval Office to announce a yuuuuge win: the Houthis, he claimed, have “capitulated” and will stop bombing our ships in the Red Sea. For their part, the Houthis are publicly mocking Trump’s announcement, calling it “surprising” and “a sign of US retreat.”
The Collapse Life theory is, it might have been a DOGE cost-saving strategy because, if Houthi numbers are right — 22 MQ-9 Reaper drones downed at around $30 million each, plus the two $67 million F/A-18Es — we stand to save a lot of money by declaring “mission accomplished” now and cutting our losses.
FINALLY! High schools across the country are reinvesting in teaching students skilled trades, sending young people out with marketable expertise that is being snapped up. Two dozen graduating seniors in a welding program featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article all have job offers paying at least $50,000 right out of high school. Yes, this is great news. We love seeing teens swap TikTok stardom dreams for welding masks and measuring tapes.
But leave it to us to come up with the inconvenient punchline: now that we’re teaching kids how to weld again, China is building electric car factories run entirely by robots. No humans. No wages. No pizza breaks. No drug tests. Just cold, efficient, 24/7 production lines that never unionize or take sick leave.
So while we should be celebrating the return of skilled trades, and acknowledging the fact that no robot (that we know of) can snake a toilet yet, we must also be brutally honest: these kids are being positioned as backup labor for a collapsing empire hanging on to an industrial revolution mentality. The actual future of production, and the manufacturing revolution underpinning the President’s MAGA drive to onshore production is, in actual fact, quietly being outsourced to tireless robots with zero expectation of a retirement plan or salary increase.
Remember that sudden, “unexpected” grid-down situation in Spain and Portugal last week? Well, it’s not just a European problem. America's largest grid operator, PJM, is now warning summer power shortages are on the table.
No one in charge will give you advance notice. No official will say it out loud. But we will.
So take a minute — right now — to think about what your household needs if the power goes out for 1, 3, 5, or even 30 days. Food, water, communication, medication, meet-up plans — whatever it takes to make sure you’re not caught off guard when the lights don’t come back on.
When economic journalist at ITM Trading, Daniele Cambone, spoke with European energy expert and author, Daniel Lacalle last week, Lacalle nailed what we’ve been saying all along: you can’t run a modern, industrial economy on “intermittent” energy. At least not in its current form.
Worse, the intentional shutdown of stable power sources under the banner of “climate action” is putting millions of lives at risk.
Frankly, if this isn’t a degrowth/depopulation agenda, we’d love to hear your alternate theories. Leave them in the comments below.
(Oh, and please don’t write “incompetence” — the global elite know exactly what they’re doing. You gotta do better than that.)
Collapse Life host, Zahra Sethna, had a delightful, broad topic conversation with the inimitable Peter Grandich last week. One of the topics was the still-elevated price of housing.
So it was no shock when we came across the news that homebuilders are doing everything short of selling you a house with a free puppy and a lifetime supply of Coca-Cola just to avoid dropping prices. They’re pulling every trick in the book — rate buydowns, cash incentives, mortgage gimmicks — to keep the sticker prices artificially inflated while pretending demand is still booming.
Why? Because if prices drop, the illusion breaks. And the last thing the Fed, Wall Street, and your local real estate cartel want is for average Americans to realize this whole thing is smoke, mirrors, and subsidized stucco.
Welcome to the Great Housing Denial: where the price tags don’t budge, but the incentives multiply and corners get cut. Sure, you can “own” a home. Just don’t ask what it’s actually worth. Or how much of your soul you signed over for the granite countertops.
I've just finished a book series "Neighbourhood Watch" by Isherwood, which I mention because the free sample on Amazon is quite large. Tracks a developing EMP situation not just a power outage. Make sure you know how to work a tin opener.
Howdy Zahra, loving your work, as always. As a North American, you may be unaware of this Downunder comedy duo known as Clarke and Dawe, who would simply appear as 'a journalist' and 'their interviewee' to comment on topics of the time. Relevant to your USS Harry S. Truman piece, I implore you to watch this short video entitled "The Front Fell Off" where a spokesperson defends as being "highly unusual" that the front fell off of an oil tanker that then leaked eighty thousand tons of crude oil into the ocean.
Additionally, regarding our joint NYC history in the '90s, good that you give people this timely blackout warning!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m5qxZm_JqM