Thursday, February 5, 2026

MASSIMO: The uphill effort recruits far more muscle fibers—especially in the glutes, hamstrings, quads, and core—as your body fights gravity with every step


If silver created empires, why did the empire with the most silver collapse first?  And how did a country with almost no silver mines build the largest empire in history?  Spain owned the silver.  Britain controlled the system.  This is the part of history that rarely gets taught.  Britain did not conquer the world by digging precious metals out of the ground.  It did not possess silver reserves like Spain, Mexico, or Peru.  In fact, Britain entered the global economy with a serious disadvantage.  It needed silver to trade but had almost none of its own. And yet by the 19th century, Britain had positioned itself at the center of global Commerce.  Trade flowed through its ships.  Payments passed through its institutions.  Markets moved according to its rules.  Silver passed through British hands even when it was mined elsewhere.  Meanwhile, China, the world's largest consumer economy at the time, demanded silver for nearly everything it's sold: tea, silk, porcelain; all paid for in bullion.  Silver drained Eastward threatening to bankrupt European powers. This should have ended Britain's rise.  Instead, it forced Britain to invent a new kind of power.  Rather than chasing silver mines, Britain learned how to control silver's movement.  It reshaped trade, finance, shipping, and settlement, so that silver flowed where Britain needed it to flow. Ownership became irrelevant.  Access became everything.  This is not a story about resources.  It's a story about systems because once you control how money moves you no longer need to own it and that is how Britain control the world silver without ever owning it.  To understand how Britain controlled the world silver, we first have to understand what silver actually was in the 18th and 19th centuries.  It was not an investment asset.  It was not a store of value competing with gold.  Silver was money itself.  Gold existed but it did not circulate widely.  It was too concentrated, too scarce, and too disconnected from everyday economic life.  Silver by contrast moved constantly.  It paid soldiers.  It collected taxes.  It settled trade between nations.  If gold represented wealth, silver represented function.  Across Europe and Asia, governments relied on silver to operate.  Armies were paid in silver coin. Bureaucrats were salaried in silver.  Trade balances were settled in silver bullion.  Without it, states could not fight Wars, administered territory, or maintain stability.  Losing silver did not just reduce wealth, it reduced the ability to function.

STEPHEN COUGHLIN: "Negotiated Settlements" are insurgency victories

The diagram in the image is an adapted version of the SORO (Special Operations Research Office) Resistance Pyramid, a model originally developed in the 1960s to illustrate the progression of insurgency or resistance activities from clandestine beginnings to overt actions. The title emphasizes the perspective that "Negotiated Settlements" represent victories for insurgencies, framing the pyramid's objective as achieving such a settlement through escalating dialectical events (discussions or conflicts).

Negotiated Settlement

Large Scale Military and Paramilitary Actions

Minor Military and Paramilitary Actions

Shadow government activities 

Increased political violence, terror, and sabotage

Negotiations with government representatives.

Intense sapping of government, administration, police, and military.

Increased underground activities to demonstrate strength of revolutionary organization. 

Sabotage and terror to demonstrate weakness of government.

Overt and covert pressures against government; strikes, riots, and disorders.  

Intensification of propaganda, increase in disaffection, psychological preparation for revolt.

Expansion of and coordination among resistance networks.

Establishment of formalized resistance elements; appeal to extraterritorial support infrastructure.  

Spreading subversive organizations into all sectors of life in a country/region.

Penetration into professional, social, and political organizations and into all parts of society.

Recruitment of like-minded individuals and others; indoctrination and use of these for organizational purposes. 

Infiltration of foreign agents and agitators, and foreign propaganda material, money, weapons, and equipment.

Increased agitation, unrest, and disaffection, infiltration of administration, police, and military and national organizations, and slowdowns and strikes.

Assassination, forming favorable public opinion (advocating national cause), creation of atmosphere of wider discontent through propaganda, likes, and political.

Creation of atmosphere of wider discontent through propaganda, lies, and political and psychological effort: discerning government, police, and military authorities.

Dissatisfaction with political, economic, social, administrative, and/or other conditions; national aspiration  (independence) or desire for ideological and  other changes. 

SORO Pyramid: Special Operations Research Office [1966 version] Special Warfare Center and School, Fort Bragg

 

SAMA HOOLE: >Mongols lived to 60-70 with zero chronic disease >Modern nutritionist eats balanced diet with whole grains >Develops type 2 diabetes at 45 >Clearly the Mongols were just lucky

>Be Mongol cavalry >Ride 60 miles daily >Eat nothing but dried meat and fermented mare's milk >Zero vegetables, zero grains, zero "balanced diet" >Conquer largest land empire in human history >Terrify civilisations from Korea to Hungary >Modern nutritionist studies your diet "This should have killed them by age 30" >Mongols lived to 60-70 with zero chronic disease >Modern nutritionist eats balanced diet with whole grains 

>Develops type 2 diabetes at 45 >Clearly the Mongols were just lucky