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https://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept22/end-cheap-food9-22.html

The End of Cheap Food

Of all the modern-day miracles, the least appreciated is the incredible abundance of low cost food in the U.S. and other developed countries. The era of cheap food is ending, for a variety of mutually reinforcing reasons.

We've become so dependent on industrial-scale agriculture fueled by diesel that we've forgotten that when it comes to producing food, "every little bit helps"--even small backyards / greenhouses can provide meaningful quantities of food and satisfaction.

Virtually every temperate terroir/micro-climate is suitable for raising some plants, herbs, trees and animals. (Terroir includes everything about a specific place: the soil type, the climate variations, sun exposure, the bacteria in the soil, everything.)

We've forgotten that cities once raised much of the food consumed by residents within the city limits. Small plots of land, rooftop gardens, backyard chicken coops, etc. can add up when they are encouraged rather than discouraged.

Let's start with how disconnected the vast majority of us are from the production of the cheap food we take for granted. A great many people know virtually nothing about how food is grown, raised, harvested / slaughtered, processed and packaged.

Highly educated people cannot recognize a green bean plant because they've never seen one. They know nothing about soil or industrial farming. They've never seen the animals they eat up close or cared for any of the animals humans have tended for their milk, eggs and flesh for millennia.

Most of us take the industrial scale of agriculture and the resulting abundance and low cost for granted, as if it was a kind of birthright rather than a brief period of reckless consumption of resources that cannot be replaced.

Small-scale agriculture is financially difficult because it is competing with global industrial agriculture powered by hydrocarbons and low-cost overseas labor.

That said, it is possible to develop a niche product with local support by consumers and businesses. This is the Half-X, Half-Farmer model I've written about for years: if the household has at least one part-time gig that pays a decent wage, the household can pursue a less financially rewarding niche in agriculture/animal husbandry. Degrowth Solutions: Half-Farmer, Half-X (July 19, 2014)

Industrial agriculture includes many elements few fully understand. The shipping of fruit thousands of miles via air freight is a function of 1) absurdly cheap jet fuel and 2) global tourism, which fills airliners with passengers who subsidize the air cargo stored beneath their feet.

When global tourism dried up in the Covid lockdown, so did air cargo capacity.

I have to laugh when I read another article about some new agricultural robot that will replace human labor, as if human labor were the key cost in industrial agriculture. (Hydrocarbons, fertilizer, transport, compliance costs, land leases and taxes are all major costs.)

Left unsaid is the reliance of industrial agriculture on soil, fresh-water aquifers and rain. Irrigation is the result of rain/snow somewhere upstream.

Once the soil and aquifers are depleted and the rain become erratic, the robot will be tooling around a barren field, regardless of whatever whiz-bang sensors and other gear it carries.

Global food production rests on soil and rain. Robots don't change that. What few of us who rely on industrial agriculture understand is that it depletes soil and drains aquifers by its very nature, and these resources cannot be replaced with technology. Once they're gone, they're gone.

Soil can be rebuilt but it can't be rebuilt by industrial agricultural methods--diesel-powered tractors and fertilizers derived from natural gas.

Few people appreciate that the dirt is itself alive, and once it's dead then nothing much will grow in it. Whatever can be coaxed from depleted soil lacks the micronutrients that we all need: plants, animals and humans.

Every organism is bound by the Law of Minimums: heaping on one nutrient is useless unless all the essential nutrients are available in the right proportions.

Dumping excessive nitrogen fertilizer on a plant won't make it yield more fruit unless it has sufficient calcium, sulfur, magnesium, etc. All dumping more nitrogen fertilizer on the field does is poison waterways as the excess nitrogen runs off.

Irrigation is another miracle few understand. Over time, the natural salts in water build up in irrigated soil and the soil loses fertility. The drier the climate, the less rain there is to leach the salts from the soil. Irrigation isn't sustainable over the long run.

Plants need reliable conditions to reach maturity. Should a plant or tree be starved of water and nutrients, its immune system weakens and it is more vulnerable to diseases and insect infestations. Yields plummet if there isn't enough water and nutrients to support the fruit or grain.

Extreme weather wreaks havoc on agriculture, even industrial agriculture. A crop can grow oh-so nicely and reach maturity, and then a wind storm or pounding rain can destroy the crop in a few hours.

Most people assume there will always be an abundance of grains (rice, wheat, corn) without realizing that the vast majority of grains come from a handful of places with the right conditions for industrial agriculture. Should any of these few places suffer erratic climate change, then exports of grains will shrink dramatically.

Once cheap grains are gone, cheap meat is also gone, because most meat depends on grain feed.

The scale required to grow an abundance of grain is other-worldly. Much of Iowa, for example, is fields of corn and soybeans, a significant percentage of which becomes animal feed.

American tourists ooh and ahh over artisanal goat cheese in France or Italy without any appreciation for the human labor that goes into the artisanal food, labor that can't be replaced by robots.

Industrial agriculture only works at vast economies and scale and high utilization rates. The 10-pound bag of chicken thighs is only $25 because tens of millions of chickens are raised in carefully engineered factory conditions and slaughtered / cleaned on an industrial scale.

Should the utilization rate and scale drop, the entire operation ceases to be economically viable.

Global industrial agriculture relies on exploiting low-cost labor forces and soil that hasn't yet been depleted. This is why clear-cutting the Amazon is so profitable: hire desperate workers with few other options to earn cash money, stripmine the soil until it's infertile and then move on.

There are many misunderstandings about industrial agriculture and the reliance on cheap hydrocarbons. Many pin their hopes on organic vegetables without realizing every organic tomato is still 5 teaspoons of diesel and 5 teaspoons of jet fuel if it's grown on an industrial scale and shipped thousands of miles via air.

Much of the planet is not conducive to high-yield agriculture. The soil is infertile or depleted, and restoring it is a multi-year or multi-decade process of patient investment that isn't profitable on an industrial scale.

As a means to make money, localized production can't compete with industrial agriculture. But that's not the goal. The goal is to replace dependence on industrial agriculture with our own much smaller, optimized-for-our-locale production, and grow a surplus that helps feed our trusted network of family, friends and neighbors.

As industrial agriculture consumes the last of its soils and aquifers, hydrocarbons and mineral fertilizers are becoming costly, and as climate change disrupts the 50+ years of relatively mild, reliable weather we've enjoyed, cheap food will vanish.

Once the scale and utilization rates decay, industrial agriculture will no longer be viable economically or environmentally. This dependence on scale and utilization rates is poorly understood. We assume that somebody will continue growing our food on a vast scale regardless of any other conditions, but any activity must be financially and environmentally viable or it goes away.

As industrial agriculture decays, food will become much more expensive: even if it doubles, it's still cheap to what it may cost in the future.

Due to our dependence on industrial agriculture, we've forgotten how productive localized (artisanal) food production can be. Small operations aligned with the terroir can produce a surprising amount of food.

The future of sustainable, affordable, nutritious food is in localized production optimized for what grows well without industrial interventions. The satisfaction and well-being this connection with the land and Nature generates is under-appreciated. It is not accidental that the long-lived healthy people among us--for example, the Blue Zones Okinawans and Greek islanders--tend their gardens and animals, and share the bounty of their labor with their families, friends and neighbors.

It's fun and rewarding to grow food. It might even become important. Those who can't grow any food would do well to befriend those who do.

The goal isn't to replace industrial agriculture. The goal is to reduce our dependency on unsustainable global systems by reinvigorating localized production.  

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/do-authoritarians-care-about-you/5793759

Forcing an Experimental Gene Therapy on Everyone: Do Authoritarians ‘Care’ About You?

Government officials, public health officials, media and a whole host of other talking heads that parrot official talking points have repeatedly lied to us. We knew this, but now — without apology — they’re all starting to “admit” it by subtly changing the narrative.

As noted by comedian Jimmy Dore in the August 3, 2022, episode of “The Jimmy Dore Show” (video above):

“This story is very close to my heart, because it exonerates me. They’ve been lying about COVID, they’ve been lying about the vaccines, they’ve been lying about herd immunity, they’ve been lying about natural immunity, they’ve been lying about masks.

They’ve been lying about children — they’ve been lying about everything! Who’d have thunk the government and Big Pharma would lie to us? For profit? I am flummoxed. I am beside myself with slack-jawedness.”

Now, They’re Eating Their Own Words

He goes on to review specific examples, such as President Biden claiming “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations.” Or Dr. Anthony Fauci, who said “When they are vaccinated, they can feel safe they are not going to get infected.”

Or Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who stated, “If you’ve done the right thing and gotten vaccinated, you deserve the freedom to be safe from COVID-19.” (Word salad aside — can you “deserve freedom to be safe” from an infection? — nevertheless, he makes the point that you supposedly won’t get COVID if you got the jab.)

Vice President Kamala Harris said, “If you are vaccinated, you are protected.” Daniel Andrews, premier in Victoria, Australia, claimed that with three doses, you would be “prevented not only from serious illness, but from getting this virus, this Omicron variant, and therefore giving it to others.”

Victoria chief health officer professor Brett Sutton, who got the AstraZeneca jab, insisted it was a “very effective vaccine” that reduced “risk of transmission.” Every one of these officials has now contracted COVID, some two or three times.

We Knew the Shots Were Leaky

A primary objection to vaccine mandates was, as Dore points out, that a leaky “vaccine” — one that doesn’t actually prevent infection and spread — cannot protect anyone other than the one getting the shot. So, the argument that COVID jab refusers were killing people was false. The notion that getting the jab would protect people around you was rubbish.

“These were lies,” Dore says, “they were not making a mistake. They were lying.” What’s the incentive for lying about an injection that clearly cannot do what you say it can? Dore suggests they were lying on behalf of their donors — Pfizer, Moderna, et. al. Of course, the National Institutes of Health,^1,2 for example, also owns patents related to these jabs, so they make money from them directly.

So, with the truth now being self-evident, why aren’t media asking why Fauci, Biden, Harris, Trudeau and the rest were spreading misinformation? Where’s the follow-up? And where are the apologies? Rachel Maddow, would you like to revise this proven-untrue statement, made on “The Rachel Maddow Show?”

“Instead of the virus being able to hop from person to person to person, spreading and spreading … now we KNOW that the vaccines work well enough; that the virus STOPS with every vaccinated person.

A vaccinated person gets exposed to the virus, the virus does not infect them, the virus can then not use that person to go anywhere else. It cannot use a vaccination person as a host to get more people. That means the vaccines will get us to the end of this.”

This propaganda did not age well, and that’s putting it mildly. Now, they’re trying to sidestep the landmines of truth — real-world realities — and claim that the shots were never intended to prevent infection, it was always about preventing serious illness and keeping you out of the hospital. But the statements quoted above, which is just a small sampling, prove otherwise.

The very basis and justification for forcing an experimental gene therapy on everyone was that it would end the pandemic by preventing infection and spread. People lost their jobs over that fraudulent justification. Friendships have been lost and family ties broken because people believed the propaganda that said if you don’t get the shot, you don’t care about others. Your very presence could be lethal to them. So, if you care about others, you will get the shot.

Do Authoritarians Care About You?

That brings us to a more important question, and that is, do these authoritarians actually care about any of us? They claim the reason for their actions is their deep concern for public health and the good of society. But is that really the case? Or is it just a PR strategy?

After all, coming out and saying you want to reduce the population by some percentage, or eliminate the financial drain by the elderly and the handicapped, isn’t going to encourage compliance with the strategies intended to bring about those effects, is it. It would make more sense to tell people to comply “for their own good, and the good of others.” Then, the intended effect — depopulation — is brought about by voluntary sacrifice.

Totalitarianism as ‘Care’

In “Totalitarianism as ‘Care,'”³ political commentator Elena Louisa Lange dissects the biomedical regime’s moral imperative to “protect the vulnerable,” which in 2020, for the first time, came to mean that everyone, regardless of personal risk, had to isolate, wear a mask and get an experimental gene therapy, “regardless of the price in bodily integrity and autonomy.”

In a show of solidarity never before seen, hundreds of companies changed their logos and brand slogans to promote the COVID jabs. Political parties, schools, media, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) also told us to just get the jab — or else. The following extract from Lange’s article is a bit longer than usual, but the expanded context is what makes Lange’s point clear. Beyond this, I recommend reading her article in its entirety:⁴

“The rhetoric of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘care’ bullied the masses into accepting a string of human- and civil-rights violations, such as being imprisoned in our own homes, the oxymoronic ‘social distancing,’ masking, and, above all, mandated vaccinations unprecedented in their severity and global scale.

Yet the left’s pretense of ‘protecting the vulnerable’ is not only politically and socially corrosive. It also rests, philosophically, on an indefensible and authoritarian rationale.

The exclusive attention given to the abstract framework of ‘vulnerability’ and ‘solidarity,’ ‘community’ and ‘care’ — always ‘for others,’ never for oneself — served to disguise the loss of income and psychological damage caused by large-scale civil-rights suspensions …

The idea of vulnerability as a guiding political principle of the left goes back to the birth of social-democratic and labor parties in the early 20th century. It was the working class that needed protection from the cruel vicissitudes of the market …

But since the emergence of the neoliberal consensus in the 1970s, a remarkable shift has taken place … It is no longer the working class … but specific identity groups, the racially marginalized and the sexually excluded, who became ‘vulnerable subjects’ …

What really cemented the PMC [professional-managerial class] left’s rise to power, however, was a more fundamental epistemic shift. The left … usually busy declaring everything to be a ‘social construct,’ suddenly proclaimed the novel coronavirus to be a ‘natural phenomenon,’ a ‘challenge by uncontrollable natural forces’ … the virus was to be seen as a self-acting agent with its own subjective intent, motives, even political agenda.

This fetishistic inversion — ascribing autonomous powers to a lifeless thing — legitimated technocratic solutions like lockdowns and the feverishly promoted mass vaccinations, no matter the social costs. Moreover, turning the virus into an intentional agent shifted the blame for suicides and domestic violence, the loss of income, and extreme police violence against protesters, away from the politicians and bureaucrats, and onto ‘nature.’

A pathogen … is only as severe as the social response to it. If the response, justified as an ‘objective constraint’ of the virus, is more lethal than the cause, then we are dealing with a disastrous fallacy …

‘[V]ulnerability’ in the PMC’s imagination had to be shifted from vulnerable groups in the precise sense (the elderly, children, precarious service workers, etc.) to an undifferentiated whole under constant attack from the enemies of civil society, which happened to be the professionals’ own political enemies.

This move conveniently enabled the identification of the ‘fight against the virus’ with the ‘fight against fascism,’ conflating questions of medical hygiene with those of ‘social hygiene.’

The vocal denunciation of critics of the biopolitical security state as ‘right-wingers,’ conspiracy theorists, anti-vaxxers, and so on was only legible, and consequential, against the backdrop of this conflation, for it put the question of the defeat of the virus on par with the victory of the left.”

Transhistorical Rationale of Civil-Rights Violations

How are “vulnerable” people “protected” by the destruction of lives and livelihoods, and the removal of basic civil rights and Constitutional freedoms? Our authoritarian leaders have yet to explain this self-defeating rationale. All we get is Orwellian double-speak, where war is peace and slavery is freedom.

Lange points out that once you go beyond political motives, the argument against forced vaccinations tells us a lot about the transhistorical rationale of civil-rights violations by the state.

Throughout history, the driving objective of power-hungry elites is the disenfranchisement of ordinary citizens. And how do you disenfranchise people? By taking away basic rights, such as the right to drink a cup of coffee or eat a meal you’re willing and able to pay for in a restaurant, lest you first submit to medical experimentation.

And how do you get people to submit to medical experimentation? By shaming them as egotists who care nothing for society. In a fiery speech, 23-year-old Green Member of the German Bundestag, Emilia Fester (quoted in full by Lange), argued that:

“It is not mandated vaccination that is the imposition, but no mandated vaccination — an imposition for the solidarity-based majority … Getting vaccinated can no longer be an individual decision!”⁵

Violation of Physical Boundaries Protects No One

Throughout the pandemic, governments, employers, NGOs and media have argued that the social responsibility to “protect others” is so paramount that it negates all other considerations. According to them, one individual’s freedom and bodily autonomy ends where the freedom and autonomy of another begins.

Rather than being sovereign individuals who make decisions for ourselves, we are to view ourselves as links in a never-ending chain, where every decision you make will impact the people around you, and if your decision has even so much as the potential to restrict their freedom and autonomy — such as, for example, if you make them sick so they can’t work or socialize — then you “don’t have the right” to make that decision.

As noted by Lange, the moral imposition can be summarized as: “Give up your bodily integrity to protect the bodily integrity of others.” But rather than protecting others, the end result is the opposite, because it creates “infinite regress.”

In other words, if I give up my bodily integrity for you, then you have to give up yours for others, who also have to give up theirs, and so on. So, in the end, no one has the right to, ever, say no to anything, even if what’s asked might cause injury or death.

Since there’s no backstop, and everyone has to sacrifice themselves for others, no one is actually protected. Instead, everyone’s at risk. Everyone’s autonomy has been violated — including that of the most vulnerable. The COVID vaccination campaign is a glaring example of this.

Many who got the shots are still getting sick, many have been injured or died from the side effects, while those who refused to comply lost their jobs and, in some areas, can’t even enter a store. Everyone has lost rather than gained, and in more ways than one.

Bodily Integrity for All Is the Best Protection

Not only does the demand of self-sacrifice for others put the most vulnerable at risk of injury and death, since they too must roll the dice with risky medical interventions in order to “protect others,” but it also eliminates our moral ability to defend and protect the physical autonomy of others. If we cannot defend our own boundaries, how can we defend the boundaries of others?

Sadly, we now have real-world examples of where this all leads. Children and adults in need of organ transplants, for example, are being denied life-saving procedures for lack of COVID injection, even though the shot is more likely to kill them than protect anyone around them (supposedly the already COVID-jabbed and boosted hospital staff). We’ve entered a state of such massive moral degradation that it hardly seems human anymore.

The only way to actually protect people and minimize harm is by allowing everyone to do what they think is best for themselves. As noted by Lange:⁶

“In consequence, either there is general physical autonomy for each and every single individual, implying mutual respect for one’s physical boundaries, or there is none. The violation of physical boundaries … is never in the interest of the ‘vulnerable,’ because the protection of bodily integrity itself is already the best guarantee for the protection of ‘others,’ as well as oneself: It is, in fact, the only guarantee of physical protection for everyone.

This becomes even more apparent in the COVID case when we consider that the vaccinated can be infected and can infect others, and, therefore, potentially hurt them. In this sense, the logical framework for COVID mass vaccinations in the name of ‘vulnerability’ is self-defeating.”

‘Social Care’ Narrative Is About Consolidation of Power

One of the key take-home messages in Lange’s article is that this “social care” and “responsibility for others” paradigm is a ploy used to consolidate power. In her words:⁷

“In sum, the claim to ‘protect the vulnerable’ is the more or less direct demand to yield to political disenfranchisement under the guise of the honorable project of care … The left’s political project of ‘protecting the vulnerable’ is nothing short of window-dressing authoritarianism.”

The authoritarians don’t actually care about people and their health. Anyone can realize this simply by analyzing their actions, rather than their words. They care about controlling people as a means to gain more power. Of course, the more power they get, the more they need to control you, lest you rise up and strip them of that power.

The hallmark call of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes is to “serve the greater good” by sacrificing selfhood. Everything is about the collective. There’s no room for individuality. In my interview with psychologist Mattias Desmet, he explains the psychology of totalitarianism, and the conditions that precede the rise of totalitarian systems....

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http://endoftheamericandream.com/americans-are-increasingly-turning-to-credit-card-debt-and-short-term-loans-as-the-cost-of-living-becomes-extremely-painful/

Americans Are Increasingly Turning To Credit Card Debt And Short-Term Loans As The Cost Of Living Becomes Extremely Painful

The “American Dream” is not as affordable as it once was.  In fact, tens of millions of Americans are having a really difficult time even affording the basics these days.  As you will see below, an increasing number of people are turning to credit cards and high interest short-term loans just to pay for essentials such as food.  Thanks to a very long series of exceedingly foolish decisions by our leaders, we are now facing a historic inflation crisis.  As a result, the cost of living has been absolutely soaring in recent months.  Of course the vast majority of Americans have not also seen their incomes soar, and so our collective standard of living has been steadily diminishing.  Unfortunately, this crisis isn’t going to be over any time soon, and so that means that American families are going to be squeezed tighter and tighter as we head into 2023.

When you are barely scraping by from month to month, it can be really tempting to turn to credit cards for relief.

And that is precisely what has been taking place.

This week, we learned that credit card debt surged at the fastest pace in 20 years during the second quarter of this year…

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York reported that credit card debt held by U.S. households surged by 13% on an annualized basis in the second quarter, representing the sharpest climb in over 20 years. A recent study by Wells Fargo found that Americans also rely on credit card rewards to offset everyday expenses.

“When it comes to credit card spending over the past couple of years, we have seen categories shift on where people are spending their money and right now our top categories are grocery and gas,” said Krista Phillips, Wells Fargo executive vice president and head of branded cards and markets.

It is a really bad idea to pile up credit card debt just as the U.S. economy is entering a major downturn.

But most people are not interested in such warnings.

High interest “buy now pay later” loans are even worse, but their popularity is absolutely exploding right now…

But when credit cards are maxed out, some consumers go to BNPL loans as a way to bridge the gap, according to a Harvard study from earlier this year showing that the industry is booming with a particular draw to consumers earning less than $50,000 annually and those with sub-prime credit scores.

According to the New York Times, “buy now pay later” transactions are triple what they were just two years ago, and food purchases are an area of “significant growth” for the industry…

The New York Times reported that $45.9 billion in BNPL transactions were made in the U.S. last year, which is a three-fold increase from 2020. While food only accounted for 6% of those purchases in 2021, stats provided by the companies indicate significant growth in that arena.

When economic conditions turn really sour, those that have gotten deep into this type of debt will be really sorry.

But I can understand why they are doing it.

All of us have to feed our families, and a single cart of food can now cost as much as a really cheap used vehicle did in the old days.

Earlier today, I came across an article on Zero Hedge that really caught my attention…

However, in actuality, inflation and the budgetary issues it is causing in U.S. households, is resulting in “infighting” amongst families, according to the Wall Street Journal.

35 year old Leibel Sternbach, a financial adviser, told the Journal: “If I buy more of my milk before the one in the fridge is empty, there’s going to be hell to pay.” He said his wife double checks the fridge after every shopping trip and tells him of all the things he didn’t need to buy.

The couple spends about $350 per week in groceries – a bill that is up from $220 a year prior. They are cutting back on items like pre-cut vegetables and oven ready meals to try and cut additional costs from their bill.

Millions of other Americans are having similar discussions in their own households.

In the old days, I can remember paying 25 dollars for everything that I needed at the grocery store for an entire week.

And that even included an entire cake.

These days, an entire shopping cart full of food will run you hundreds of dollars.

For years, economic pundits such as Peter Schiff and myself have been warning that nightmarish inflation would be coming.

Now it is here, and Schiff insists that what the Federal Reserve is doing to fight inflation is “not going to work”…

“I don’t know why everybody continues to be surprised when the inflation numbers come out worse than expected. They assume that what the Fed is doing is going to work. It’s not going to work. The people who think it is don’t understand the nature of the problem.”

Schiff believes that in order to defeat inflation we are going to need to see interest rates hiked until they are “higher than the CPI”…

The numbers indicate that Fed can’t win this inflation fight. Part of the solution is positive real interest rates. If you look at all of the Fed tightening cycles since 1973, the central bank has never stopped tightening before the Fed funds rate was higher than the CPI.

If the Fed really did hike interest rates to 8 or 9 percent, that would plunge us into an extremely bitter economic depression.

But that wouldn’t totally solve the inflation crisis either.

There are two fundamental factors that make this crisis different from any other crisis we have faced.

First of all, there is simply way too much money floating around.  Our politicians borrowed and spent trillions of dollars that we did not have over the past few years, and the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars that it created out of thin air into the financial system.

Hiking interest rates cannot erase all of that money.

Secondly, rising prices are not just being caused by changes in demand.

We have a major global supply problem now, and I believe that it will only get worse in the years ahead.

So the Fed can try to crush demand as much as it wants, but that won’t alter our supply issues.

That will be particularly true for categories that have relatively inelastic demand such as food.

No matter how high interest rates go, people will still need to buy food for their families.

But as global food shortages grow more severe in 2023 and beyond, the total supply of food available is just going to get tighter and tighter.

As a result, I believe that food prices will continue to go up no matter how high the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates.

And every month that prices rise faster than our paychecks do, our standard of living goes down.

This has been happening for quite some time now, and our leaders in Washington should take full responsibility for this.