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A TERRIBLE YEAR ANALYSIS

This year will go down as one of the most chaotic in American and history.

In the midst of Tariff Wars, federal instigated clashes in US cities leading to multitudes of illegal arrests, district court judges writing scathing rulings on illegal behavior of the executive branch including violation of constitutional rights and separation of powers, an AI bubble lifting the stock market to new highs, the flood of fake news and videos killing social media platforms, endless on-line scams, gambling scandals in pro sports, the lack of civility in public issues; there is the myopic Presidentâ his crazed revenge tour and his self-glorification legacy being the gaudy wet dream for a narcissist world.

As the Ukraine War drags on, the President wants to have his own Ukrainian power play by attacking Venezuela. It seems he wants to sit at the Big Boy table, alongside world aggressors China (Xi) and Russian (Putin). We guess his city ICE raids are enough violence to satisfy his taste for retribution and abuse of power. Recent reports that his Secretary of Defense allegedly ordered troops to kill survivors of boat attacks (to have no witnesses) gives the administration serial killer vibes.

But it seems as long as middle America's 401k balances are growing, they are content to be apathetic to the news. But the stock market growth has been fueled by rampant AI speculation. The growth of building power hungry AI server farms, building servers with high tech chips, and those companies stock price skyrocketing to the moon creates one of the biggest financial bubbles in two decades. When it bursts, and it will, the fallout will be harsh.

This administration's love for crypto remains unabated. From pardoning financial schemers to touting worthless bitcoin memes, the national motto should be changed into IN GRIFT WE TRUST. Trump's alleged dealmaking has the “government” taking minority stakes in tech companies in order for them to export their technology. Does that sound like a street shakedown?

But Trump's diplomatic dealmaking is a rigged ring toss game for his foaming-at-the-mouth desire for a Peace Prize. His Gaza peace plan only became a cease-fire because there was nothing else to blow up. His Urkraine-Russia peace deal is his unilateral plan being forced on the combatants. He tries to bully Ukraine because he gets no where with Putin.

The economy was trashed by year-long tariffs. The tariffs burdened US importers and consumers by more than $195 billion in hidden taxes and increases in cost of consumer products. Every time one goes to the grocery store, the cart expense goes up by double digits.

The government shutdown shut off reliable economic data (masking the real problem in Washington: transparency and competence.) Yahoo News reports overall, tariffs cost the average American family between $2,300 and $3,800 per household due to higher prices on everyday goods.

The top five areas are tariff inflation growth:

1. Clothing & Footwear. If you bought new clothing, shoes, leather goods or textiles in 2025, you probably noticed price hikes, said Kyle Peacock, founder of Peacock Tariff Consulting and an international trade and supply chain expert. Tariffs on imports from China, Vietnam and Bangladesh drove clothing and footwear prices up 10% to 20%, while wool, silk and leather products rose up to 36%,â he explained.

2. New Cars & Car Parts. If you were in the market for a new vehicle in 2025, you probably felt the pinch at the dealership, too, as prices climbed more than 8%, Peacock noted, especially for models that rely on foreign components.

3. Imported Food. Most people do not realize that a great deal of US agricultural products are exported while more US groceries are imported. Americans have also seen higher grocery bills on staples such as peanut butter, pizza, dairy products and alcohol, Peacock said, largely âdue to retaliatory tariffs from Canada and the EU. He also pointed out that beef prices have jumped as exporters pull back from selling into the U.S. market.

4. Personal Care. Non-food items people buy regularly, such as shampoos, soaps and toothpaste, have also become more expensive. These categories were hit hardest due to their reliance on global supply chains, Peacock explained.

5. Energy. People were already dealing with higher energy costs before 2025, but Chris Motola, a financial analyst with NationalBusinessCapital.com, said that energy has seen some of the highest inflation in 2025 so far. He said this may be more attributable to updates to aging infrastructure, as well as higher demand abroad than to tariffs, but it is hard to parse out. There is also prior growth in cloud data centers that pull large volume of local electricity and the proposed AI server construction boom that will put more stress on the power grid and increases.

2025 went by so fast that people may not realize how much chaos is happening in their own country. And there is no sign that this will change in 2026.

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BEAR AND GRIND IT NEWS

The Korean media outlet, chosen.com, reported on a unique agricultural farm that is going under.

Who ever heard of farmed bears? A revision of the South Korean Wildlife Protection Act has banned bear farming nationwide after 45 years. In January, 2026, raising or owning bears will be prohibited. Mankind has domesticated many livestock and animal species, from dogs to cattle, but it is mind blowing to think one can farm a large, wild beast. They are not domesticated but caged on farms.

With less than a month remaining, 242 bears remain across 17 farms nationwide. Farmers are protesting, saying, “The government told us to farm bears and now says to stopâ” Park Sang-hee, 69, who has operated a bear farm for 30 years, said, “I started with four bears and raised up to 30 at my peak. The government called it a profitable industry for farmers, but now it is illegal. This is unfair.”

Bear farming was a government-led industry. In 1981, it was permitted to support farm income. Farms nationwide began raising bears for bile extraction. However, after South Korea joined the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) in 1993, the export market collapsed, causing the industry to decline rapidly. The remaining bears were raised as living machines for bile extraction and illegal trade. Bears were confined to cramped cages for life.

Animal rights groups reported that bile was extracted without anesthesia using metal tubes and needles. Many farmers demand compensation of over 10 million Korean won per bear stating that without compensation, they will slaughter them all and sell the bile.

Until the end of 2025, slaughtering farmed bears and extracting bile remains legal. Some animal groups have raised funds to buy bears for 5 million Korean won each and relocate them to sanctuaries. However, most farmers argue Bile is worth far more how can we sell for 5 million won. Feed costs millions annually so farmers state they can not afford losses. One farmer said, “A bear yields up to 150cc of bile. At market rates, that at least 45 million Korean won. Five million (sell sell a bear) is too cheap.” Another added, A bear once cost an apartment. Without fair compensation, we will slaughter them.”

Limited space for relocation is another issue. Even combining public sanctuaries in Gurye and Seocheon, only 119 bears can be accommodated less than half of the 242 total.

Why did this start in the first place?

Bear bile is used in traditional Chinese medicine. Bear bile's active compound, UDCA (also known as ursodiol), has been synthetically produced since the 1950s and is a safe, government-approved pharmaceutical drug in many countries for the management of chronic cholestatic liver diseases (like primary biliary cholangitis) and the dissolution of cholesterol gallstones. But traditional medicine still holds favor in many cultures.

iToons

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ARTIFICIAL RELIGION TRENDS

When the internet first took root, we mused that someone would found an Internet religion. Our guess at the time it would be based on the Gospel songs of Elvis Presley. An avid fan base could easily be recruited into a virtual flock of followers. But followers became a nebulous concept in social media world. Individuals parsing their viewing time surpassed the idea of community, the gathering of individuals into one place at the same time. The only “live community events” are live sports contests, but even those can be experienced jointly between distant fans texting or posting their thoughts on social media instead of gathering around one screen.

The Korea Herald newspaper recently reported that various religions have gone digital in order to reach out to younger followers.

Gen Z is gravitating toward virtual monks leading online sermons to Christian pastors preaching in former nightclubs. Korea's religious communities are reinventing tradition to resonate with a generation raised on memes, K-pop and social media.

A young Buddhist nun, Catholic priest and Protestant pastor recently appeared on tvNs popular variety show You Quiz on the Block. Between laughter, filming social media challenges and dancing to the viral KPop Demon Hunters song “Soda Pop,” they spoke about how hard it is to avoid K-pop. Their cheerful appearance contrasted sharply with an earlier episode, in which senior clerics discussed doctrine and inter-religious dialogue in hushed tones.

More young South Koreans are identifying as atheist or unaffiliated, prompting religious groups to reinvent themselves: from virtual Buddhist monks and K-pop-inspired rituals to churches that blend in with Seoul's nightlife. According to a 2024 survey by Hankook Research, 69 percent of Koreans in their 20s said they have no religious affiliation, the highest rate among any generation. Faced with shrinking congregations, many faith communities are racing to prove their relevance in a culture shaped by digital media, individualism and Internet subcultures.

The virtual monk uses live technology that recognizes motion and facial expressions in real time. He hosts regular Sunday sermons and Thursday chat sessions online, and even organizes tongue-in-cheek ceremonies such as a Cheondo ritual, a Buddhist memorial service for fictional celebrity figures. The monk said he first got the idea in July after watching Netflix's animated film KPop Demon Hunters. Though unconventional, his approach reflects a broader shift in Korean Buddhism toward blending the sacred with the familiar, introducing events such as temple-stay surfing lessons or dating events hosted at temples for young singles.

Buddhism is not alone in its transformation. Across Seoul, Christian communities are also re-imagining how to speak to a generation that values authenticity over authority. In 2017, Pastor Nam Been opened Newsong Church in Hongdae, one of Seoul's busiest nightlife districts. The building was once a club complete with neon lights, a sound system and a bar counter before Nam turned it into a place of worship. The area is just inside the commercial zone of the city. It is not even a residential area, Nam told The Korea Herald. “I wanted to build my church in a place that could reach the next generation, and Hongdae came to mind. Amid the hundreds of bars here, we exist as a church that not many people know about. There appears to be a pilot light of interest in community between human beings. Social interaction is hard wired into our species. It is just how to re-ignite that spark is the real question.”

Indeed, how does one spark the social interaction in tech savvy human beings that use technology for most of what they do in their daily lives? Religion, faith and spiritualism are concepts to understand one's relationship with one's self, nature and the universe. It seeks purpose and hope, especially in hard times. However, some Gen Z people use aspects of religion-spiritualism such as shaman rituals and tarot readings as entertainment and not a personal journey to enlightenment.

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POD PEOPLE CYBERCULTURE

Perhaps, global youth just want to express themselves in the worlds they do not fully understand or want to be a part.

Self publishing is returning in a land that values education, libraries and reading books.

Korean Joongang Daily newspaper interviewed an author, Cha, who just published her book through POD, or print-on-demand, service.

Its business model prints books only after an order is placed instead of producing batches in advance. Unlike traditional publishing, which requires authors to secure a contract, work with editors to alter the writing, print hundreds of copies upfront and rely on a publisher for distribution, POD services eliminate inventory risk and give authors full control over the book's content. “Near the end of my teenage years, I simply wanted to turn the writing that had been part of me for half my life into a single book. Since I wanted the whole book and process to be personal, I chose to self-publish,” said Cha.

Sixteen-year-old Baek Eun-byeol, already a best-selling author of four books, also used a POD service to publish her 2024 work Growing Pains. It is no longer surprising that self-published authors can find mainstream success. Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass (1855), Beatrix Potter's The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1901), E.L. James' Fifty Shades of Grey (2011) and Baek Se-hee's I Want to Die but I Want to Eat Tteokbokki (2018) all began as self-published works.

Today, more writers are turning to POD. Even retail giants like Amazon provide services for e-book and print publishing. The POD model has drastically reduced costs and lowered the barriers for any one with a manuscript. On most platforms offering POD, publishing a hard-copy book is free authors only have to cover the printing cost, which can start with just a single copy. According to Kyobo Book Centre, the number of its POD users has consistently surged in Korea. In 2021, 620 authors used its self-publishing service. Between January and October this year, that figure jumped to 2,985 and is expected to surpass 3,500 by year's end. Bookk, another POD service, is expected to reach a cumulative print count of 50,000 titles from its founding in 2014 to 2025. It also reports an average annual revenue growth rate of over 25 percent, and roughly 3,000 new authors joining in the past six months alone, per the platform.

These POD services, paired with AI and social media, are expanding accessibility to one of the most traditionally inaccessible fields: print publishing. The prestige once tied to being “a published author,” chosen and validated by another is fading, broadening the title to include everyone from YouTubers to teenagers. “It may look like a minor, fleeting trend, but this rising number of self-publishers is symbolically significant within the broader context of the publishing industry,” book critic Kim Seong-shin said. “The conceptual boundaries of what we call publishing need timely expansion â and self-publishing is one clear sign of that change.”

A new chapter in an old industry because in the past self-publishing remained possible but prohibitively expensive. Vanity publishers were printers who would publish your book for large set-up and printing fees. The author had to pay all the hard costs of publishing, then had to go out and sell their books on their own. Breaking into a traditional bookstore was was impossible. Only until the 1990s and early 2000s, when POD technology transformed this model. By allowing authors to print books only after an order was placed, POD eliminated the need for costly upfront runs. The rise of e-books and digital readers further expanded access. Now, once a book is finished, it can be listed digitally on major domestic retailers as well as the platforms own online store. For Cha, the biggest appeal of POD was being able to create a book exactly the way she wanted from start to finish. It can even be distributed in bookstores, she added.

Since the platform handles tedious processes like ISBN registration, all the writer needs is the manuscript and the cover, which really takes a lot of pressure off. An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, is a unique ID number for publications that allows publishers, booksellers, and libraries to efficiently track, manage sales and manage inventory.

A tangent model is true for cartoonists. There was a surge of youth publishing their webtoons on free platforms with the hope of gaining enough attention to be picked up and syndicated in a platform's subscription tier. The rise of the popularity of webtoons, shown by people going to work on the subway Saturday mornings intensely scrolling their midnight downloads, is a staple in Seoul. The popularity of webtoons spawned more interest as several titles were turned into k-dramas. However, webtoon creators have gone down in the last few years as it is difficult to make money publishing a weekly cartoon.

People do want to be seen and heard, and their viewpoints understood and acknowledged. Many people feel trapped by the business aspects of publishing, but the Internet allows anyone to be a publisher. But the problem is that since everyone can do it, there is unlimited supply of content, an overload of information and entertainment, that is hard to turn into a full time job.

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QUICK BYTES CYBERCULTURE

OVERLOAD EXCITEMENT . Reason Magazine reports that a Swiss study has found “People Like Having Too Much Content.” The Swiss study on Information Abundance shows that appreciation for abundance was about twice as common as overload in a new paper published in the Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media. Information abundance “is characterized by a vast, readily accessible supply of information available through various sources (e.g., apps, channels) and devices (e.g., smartphones, radios),” per the paper. Sometimes people do not perceive an abundance of information. When they do, it may spur feelings of overloadâ a state in which the amount of available information exceeds human information processing capacities âbut also of appreciation, “where an individual values the availability of abundant information and perceives it as helpful, stimulating, or exciting.” So, just the thought of having everything at your fingertips is more satisfying than learning the information?

PUBLISH OR PERISH. Engadget reviews a new game about running 1930s newspaper. From publisher Twin Sails Interactive and the four-strong team at Sparrow Night comes News Tower. This is a management sim that tasks you with running your own newspaper in 1930s New York. Starting in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash and mobsters smashing up the newsroom, you will try to turn around a struggling publication that you inherit from your family. You will construct offices and set up printing presses; hire and manage reporters and other staff; assemble your weekly newspaper; and deal with various groups that are jostling for power and trying to influence your coverage. It sounds more like a documentary than a video game!

VIDEO KILLED THE VIDEO STARS. AI generated videos have outpaced image generation fakes on social media. More than half of videos in feed are animal fights, babies and animals, animals giving humans their injured babies for care, etc. which are all AI generated without a disclaimer. From the comments, most people fall for these videos. Question: why? Is any money be made by fake videos on IG or Facebook? Brand deals, sponsorships, or selling content, maybe.

AMERICANS STILL AGREE ON THINGS. A recent Gallup Poll found Americans agree on many Democratic principles:

80% Political leaders should compromise with the other party to get things done, even if they do not like some parts of the compromise.

83% It is never OK for people to use violence to achieve a political goal.

83% Wealthy individuals and businesses should be limited in how much they can advance political candidates or causes they support.

84% The US is stronger as a nation because it has people from different races, religions and cultures.

88% There are facts and then there are opinions.

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FOUND BUT NOT LOST ON THE INTERNET

Tesla Anti Aging Machine hit the social media rounds. Many people were fooled because it was a four-photo sequence of one alleged event. Slap a well known tech brand on sci-fi fantasy you get another flavor of snake oil marketing.

Source: Instagram

The headline made it seem that a clever camping idea would solve a major metro problem of homelessness. A German startup developed a pop-up shelter backpack. It spread around the net. But the problem with the articles attached to the post was sparse. We looked to find that actual German company but found none existed. No company claimed this invention. It was totally AI.

Source: facebook and other webpages

Coca Cola getting reamed for using AI Christmas ad for second year in a row. The company used to make well received holiday advertisements but for some unexplained reason, it left traditional ad creation for AI slop. Viewers cringe at the rendering of the trucks, the lightning and the scenes. It lacks any human element. It is a distraction.

Source: various media outlets

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THE WHETHER REPORT

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STATUS

Question: Whether Democratic wins in special federal and state elections in November is clear signal against Trump's agenda?

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

Question: Whether the economy will rebound if US Tariff orders are reversed?

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

Question: Whether corporate push for AI in business plans, consumer services and account management will backfire?

* Educated Guess

* Possible

* Probable

* Beyond a Reasonable Doubt

* Doubtful

* Vapor Dream

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