Old Man Labs here is planning another project. This one gets into the realms of the really weird.  But trust me, it will sound like fun (interesting?) when I walk you through it.

For those who haven’t been around as long as this site – which will be 25-years in September (basis UrbanSurvival.com web domain) or December (basis the first Achive.org retrievable page), a waltz down memory lane is in order.

We have partnered with some impressive people in our pursuits.  Such was the work on the 93-year economic cycle which is now due.  And there was tinkering around the edges of word frequency (on the net) associated with a changing future.

All those projects can be “sewed up in a rag” and labeled “Beat the Future.”

When it became clear that wasn’t the real problem beating future – living long enough to see it was – we turned our attention to the Light Crown idea (2016) and then the Speed Crown (2017-18) because there looked to be much promise to the use of coherent light for age reduction when used in combination with other (less sketchy) pharmaceutical notions.

Wife Elaine will pass 80 in just over 3-weeks.  And my next odometer rollover will be to 75. But even out here, Excellence of Thought matters. And although we both carry the Alzheimer APOE ε4  allele, we’re trying to put the brains to as much use as possible and keep them in well-tuned condition.

Interestingly, as much as 15-25 percent of U.S. adults may have this condition and it’s interesting because it literally makes aging more painful.  Since APOE ε4 allele elevates the expressions of inflammatory factors and promotes Alzheimer’s disease progression: A comparative study based on Han and She populations in the Wenzhou area – PubMed (nih.gov).

Bottom line of the lead-in to this morning’s report?

Lot of important shit to do if we’re going to avoid some pain as aging seniors who are bent on “living life to the max.”

Which we get into after the ChartPack and a close inspection of why a particular trade made this week worked out well. We made a little lunch money, so a use case in the Charts.

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No question, Price is the big factor in day trading.  But when comes to Futuring, prepping, and staying the hell out of harm’s way, time signals in the market are where it’s at.

Paradoxically, higher price prediction confidence rises, the lower time confidence drops.  This incestuous relationship buggers up everything from military intelligence assessments to simple lunch money trading.  Precision is one domain decrements precision in another.

So, today after a few headlines in passing, we’ll ponder deeper in this part of the pond in our weekend ChartPack.

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Life Extension has a hard limit defined by personal income over time. Wife Elaine nailed it at breakfast Monday when she said “You can’t have one without the Other.” Life extension mainly costs money and investments usually cost time.

Today, we’ll look at this balancing problem.  And begin to draw an odd kind of outlook in a   Financial demography sense.

While the mental/spiritual aspects of extended lives is touted everywhere from Biblical passages to modern religious groups, the underlying fiscal support gets lesser play.  Comes down to “How long can you afford to Live?” With the secondary question “How much time can you buy?”

Some frame working of both on tap today, after a look at markets for the week (so far) and our latest dart toss at the FOMC whose announcement is (as of press time) about five-hours distant.

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Between Banking (and “special treatment for the rich”) along with one war hot, one brewing, a former president facing a possible perp-walk, and rampant inflation in hard assets, it’s a hard weekend not to have the jitters.

Sorry to say:  We can’t alleviate too many.  But, our steely-eyed view of things will remind you that it all “works out in the end.”  Only question is “Whose end?”

Of special interest today is the ChartPack – which promises an even-more interesting week just ahead.

The Biggest of Big Deals, then, will be the Federal Reserve FOMC meeting which begins Tuesday and will release a rate decision Wednesday afternoon during an otherwise very quiet week ahead.  Unless you’re Zelensky, Xi, Trump, Biden, or maybe even you.

Our first item on the agenda today, however, is not the world’s most delicately balanced forecast of what’s ahead.  Because we have zero control over that.

Instead, we focus on personal time management because, when the news gets turned off, We the People are the ones “For whom the clock ticks.”

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I was wrong when I thought my book Packing to Die: Suitcase between your ears” was done.  It turns out that upon reflection, there is still a chapter missing. Maybe even a missing “next book.”

Which we will rectify today with an additional chapter that will be added to the book (on Kindle) in the coming week, or two.

So in addition to threats to the banking system, Ukraine being on a short (and soon glowing?) fuse, political wonkyspeak of politicians without clue but beyond number, we do keep our focus on things that really matter in today’s report.

A next chapter of Packing to Die.  Which hopefully won’t be too relevant or too soon.

Along with market and other sorts of fallout, too. Can the lid stay on until Easter?

We apologize in advance for a 28-page report of >5,700 words.  But there’s trouble afoot and much to cover.

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Silicon Valley Bank is likely not to be the only bank in this period to go down. Because in our work in long wave economics, for more than 20-years, the severity of economic recessions (and “depressions”) the number of failing banks in a period is a good (early) indicator as to severity.

For example, in the Dot Com Bust, less than three dozen banks failed.  The Housing Bust saw more than 500 folded.

And now we see the “Leading Edge of Tainter” – the urge to walk out and away from a failing economy – with the takeover this week of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB).

In addition, the break becomes even more stark when we roll out this weeks update (in our ChartPack) to the long-running Replaying 1929 charts.  The next few weeks could be a 24-karat bitch.

But no point in getting upset about it.  Economic agnostics (like us) are usually well positioned to make money in fair weather, or foul.  Certainly, the case again this week.

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We won’t even pretend to explain this to non-subscribers in a paragraph. But we will hint that when mushrooms appear, anything less than a ELE will be a final prepping opportunity.  And we are getting ready for the Final Clicks to fulfill that.

A lot of this has been covered elsewhere, such as in our Building Your Own Home Intelligence Platform, and such.  Plus, if you have the power, modernity is only a passing fad between famines.

So, a couple of happy-pills and you should be ready for some serious “thinking the unthinkable” today as we venture into a dandy question raised by WTHS and WmoRR this week in Monday comments.

Will “The End” be worth attending? It will likely depend on how your preps are now, what you’ve got ready for Final Clicks, and matters like those 2nd A. support tools…

But we need to begin with the bursting of the Global Confidence Bubble.  We pick up, in a sense, from where we left it with the Leading Edge of Tainter – that we covered last week.

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Software mirrors psychology, as we figure it.  And important consideration when trying not just to sort out what the ChartPack hints at, but a whole field of research in and of itself.

You see, we don’t get much training in how to use the components of mind:  There’s a graphics layer, a data table view…all kinds of delicious ways to slice and dice human thinking.

Which we will dabble a toe in today.  Because whether you’re looking at the change of “war tempo,” the sudden furious rise in markets, or just the general way forward for humans, the answers are all defined by wetware and software between the ears.

The morning nootropic stack, coffee, and some interesting speculation, then…

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While in the shower Monday morning, one of those “Doh!” moments hit me. I won’t spoil the (deep) thought, but it explains nearly 100 percent of what’s going on both socially and economically around the world today. If you want to understand news headlines, read Joseph Tainter.

Which we will lay out – vastly simplified – after we get through some “wake me up” headlines to fire “first neurons” and then ponder what the tea leaves have dropped into the ChartPack this week.

But then – our main event – is short, simple, and to the point.  Offering mind-bending outlooks into the future.

It’s the “Leading Edge of Tainter.”

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You could almost hear the ice breaking under the weight of bloated markets this week.  But the REAL trouble is apparent in this morning’s ChartPack where our rhymes with 1929 work says things are likely to go polyphonic.

Plus, we’ll kick off with a “woo-woo” commentary – first person – and tell you about one of Ure’s odd dreams. Which, if woo-woo means anything, the rest of the weekend in Ukraine is about to go to crap.

We’ll this on these points, but whatever “Future, actual” turns into, the results could be life changing.

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Wherein we put on our Casino hat (which looks suspiciously like green eyeshades) and take a whack at beating the House. Because there are times when crossing trends do matter. Even though we botch specific bets badly (don’t ask about being stopped out Tuesday) we still love matching wits with the Odds.

Of course, more follow-on to the coming War(s) and the usual for this holiday-squeezed week.

Bean up – we’re into it.

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It has taken a little longer than expected for Wave 3 down to begin clarifying.  Even so, the bearish case into collapse, a second depression and global war is not fully “locked and loaded” yet.

But we are getting close.

Because it’s a three day weekend, our focus today is mainly on the charts.  Evens in southeast Europe will run and they will.

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As the Global brinksmanship continues, some useful thinking about Warstyles is due. While it’s said that “generals fight the last war over again” we see with the recent Party Favors War (PFW) that the guests in the Next War will have a considerably different UX (user-experience) than previous encounters.

So much has changed, and more changes are coming.

This is a worthy topic from an investment standpoint, as well.  Because not only will larger civilian populations be held captive using many of the new warstyles, but in addition many of the impacts can be gamed ahead of time and evasive actions mapped.

We are living, to put it in Gamer context” in the “first-look, first-shoot” world we fear so much.

Be of good humor, though.  The market is still likely to open this morning.  And the start of Spring in America is just over a month away.

What could go wrong?

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