This Week in the New Normal #112
Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
1. …wait, we’re going to the moon?
NASA announced they’re sending people back to the moon…next month. Artemis II is going to loop-the-loop around the moon and then comeback. They’re calling it the furthest people have ever been from Earth (but I think Apollo 13 is supposed to have done the same).
After that they plan on actually landing people on the moon next year sometime, using their special “mega rocket”:
The NASA mega-rocket set to carry four astronauts on a 10-day test trip around the moon begins its painstaking crawl towards the launch pad
Follow live on Sky News 🔽 https://t.co/rzdXv5xAbM pic.twitter.com/1nEMlhq5kr
— Sky News (@SkyNews) January 17, 2026
The whole thing is kicking off Space Race II: Electric Boogaloo, with China, Russia and even India planning their own moon missions by 2030.
The only question is “how fake is all this going to be?” and the answer is “very”.
Fake videos, fake photos, fake heroes and fake villains. Even if they could go to the moon, it’s easier to just not and say they did.
2. Speaking of space…
Speaking of space, did you know that the Bank of England has been told to game-plan for a financial crisis caused by the American government admitting aliens are real?
Yes, seriously:
I can’t believe we really have to talk about this, but if the US government says they’ve met extraterrestrial lifeforms, they are probably lying.
The financial crisis angle is hilarious though, it smacks of Jasper Carrott reading Protect and Survive: “a large-scale nuclear attack on this country would completely disrupt the banking system”.
But combine the New Space Race, the so-called moon missions and the alien preparations, and they have a chance to do something so funny.
3. Fire politicians for “lying”?
The devolved Welsh parliament is considering legislation that would make it illegal for sitting politicians to knowingly make “false or misleading statements”, on pain of forced resignation.
Which, I guess, sounds OK in theory, but in practical terms is actually insane.
Mainly because it relies on the idea that Parliament is aware of and can enforce certain objective truth at all times. Which it obviously isn’t and can’t.
In real terms, such rules would be used to enforce agenda-driven consensus by scaring low-rung or inexperienced officials into just nodding along with the majority.
After all, we all know what they mean by “false or misleading statements”, it would be climate change denial or “conspiracy theories” and the like.
BONUS: Hypocrites of the week
Always a crowded field, but the good people of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee – who have an excellent record in this category – excelled themselves this week. After Venezuelan “opposition leader” María Corina Machado handed her Peace Prize over to Donald Trump, they tweeted…
Statement from the Nobel Foundation
One of the core missions of the Nobel Foundation is to safeguard the dignity of the Nobel Prizes and their administration. The Foundation upholds Alfred Nobel’s will and its stipulations. It states that the prizes shall be awarded to those who… pic.twitter.com/WIadOBLtpD
— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) January 18, 2026
“Conferred the greatest benefit to mankind”.
How exactly did María Corina Machado “confer the greatest benefit to mankind”?
Or Al Gore?
Or Barack Obama?
Or Henry frickin’ Kissinger?
Awfulness.
*
All told a pretty hectic week for the new normal crowd, and we didn’t even mention the race to be the next country to ban social media or how AI is scaring people into “analog lifestyles”.
There’s a lot of change in the air, a lot of agendas in the works, if you see a headline, article, post or interview you think is a sign of the times, post it in the comments, email us or share it on social media and we will add it to the next edition.
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Oh fuck I’m pending again. What did I do this time? I used the word “News” which sounds a bit like ……
I can’t think of a better place to send such people (excepting Jasper Carrot). No return tickets though!
The Moon rotates on its axis once every month. ie its ‘day’ is the same amount of time that it takes to go round the earth. Every 27 days or so. It also has a minimal tilt compared to the Earth’s. So we see the same face of it. But why would that be so?
Tidal bulges I believe is the usual explanation (gravity being stronger on the side we see of the moon than on its other side), though I’ve never found that particularly convincing.
Also the moon recedes 2 inches per year (measurable via lasers) yet stays exactly the same size in the sky as the Sun (hence eclipses). But why would that be so? The sun shrinking at a fairly fixed rate and giving out a constant rate of heat.
Both evidences for Creation in my book. Random chance couldn’t produce such precision
A bear market of epic proportions and a recession rivalling the Great Depression although longer in duration is on the cards.
Perhaps, the controllers think that they can use a fake ET narrative to run cover for a financial crisis or banking panic during that time. A convenient distraction and scapegoat.
Or else they plan to front run the depression and eliminate the risk of an uncontrolled demolition of the financial system by undertaking a controlled demolition of the existing system and usher in their pre-packaged replacement using the ET narrative as the excuse.
Interestingly, the Financial Services Compensation Scheme limit in the UK was raised from £85,000 to £120,000 in December 2025. Supposedly to stay in line with inflation, yet the US limit and ECB limits were not raised. That suggests to me that the UK is at risk of banking crisis in the not too distant future and the Bank of England has made the move to bolster confidence and prevent a run on the banks if such an event were to occur. Although, most depositors do not realise that these schemes are only good in the event of a single or a few smaller institutions with problems. They are not worth the paper they are written on in the event of a systemic failure.
ICE kicking the hell out of people in the streets not get a mention.
Your apart of that guardian of not allowed to mention it.
The two space stories seem related.
Announcing moon missions boosts budgets for NASA. The next time Congress votes on them.
And a revelation of aliens existing would have a similar effect on NASA’s finances, due to its likely financial effects.
There’d be a flow of capital to space tech (to fight off pesky aliens), to the military industrial complex (for the same reason) and to Silicon valley (to use AI to fight intergalactic wars). As well as to traditional havens such as gold.
Which would make it very much in the interests of NASA, the MIC and Silicon Valley to start such a rumour. AI could even orchestrate it in the interests of its creators.
They’re actually hacking NASA to bits (see article in current Atlantic). The Moon mission will survive because its a nationalistic vanity project, its important to win the Space Race or something like that. Real science — the field where NASA has been pre-eminent — has been hacked back with programs reduced to skeleton staffing or scrubbed altogether and, with the layoffs and facilities closure — expertise lost.
NASA imho seemed to go downhill once Wernher von Braun left.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun
Although he was one of those Nazi scientists shipped over post-WWII (after having worked on Hitler’s rocket programs), he did eventually turn Christian and seemed to lead NASA in a good direction. The moon missions and probes such as Voyager 2 being under his purview. NASA seemed to lose its vision after him.
Or perhaps it just lacks a modern equivalent to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells to inspire the pioneering spirit once again
It is going to be harder to fake this time. I wonder how they will accomplish this admirable goal.
The Nobel WAR IS PEACE prize out of 1984… 😂
As for going to the moon, you would think that they would have hyped this up earlier.
It feels like they’re just desperate to keep flipping the narrative focus.
We are in end stage IDIOCRACY.