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Camouflage is an art.Everybody can learn this skill which often go hand-in-hand with prepping and survival.We camouflage if we want to avoid detection by other people as much as possible. Your survival may depend on remaining undetected and unseen. Thats the importance of camouflage which has been continually refined since time immemorial.

Unlike animals, humans lack a keen sense of smell and will rely on vision to see their predators. Without camouflage, you will be easy to stop. An average person can easily detect you against the backdrop of nature or a cityscape.

Camouflage can change this. In good times or bad ones, there are activities that call for camouflage. It will ensure your success, especially if youre hunting.

Even the most simple camouflage can elude a sloppy and bumbling hunter. Blending into your surroundings can help with reconnaissance. Camo can spell the difference between success and failure.

Breaking up the shape is one of the simplest and most fundamental aspects of camouflage. The human form is one of the easiest shapes to recognize. A variety of means can disrupt the shape of an object by using obstructions, or even local vegetation.

The silhouette is closely linked to shape and is the outline of an object against a background.Even if youre covered from head to toe in camouflage, the silhouette of the camouflage blob moving against the background will say human.

The most fundamental element of camouflage is color. You want to be in browns if you’re in the woods. If youre in the snow, white and perhaps some black is your best bet. If youre in the jungle, wear green.

A light reflecting off any shiny surface can spoil your camouflage. Metal is a common culprit, as are glossy plastics. Human skin can also be glossier compared to the surrounding environment. You want to cover exposed skin with something that is not reflective, like mud or dirt, or camouflage grease paint to tone down any shine. Camouflage is a big business

Camouflage is a big business. Simply put, hunters are on the lookout for the next best pattern to improve their hunt, while the military has a huge interest to increase the safety of its forces.

Blending is an option that defeats and counteracts silhouettes and the outline of shapes. Blending depends on color. Blend into a forest floor by relying on the same fallen leaves all around you to mask your own shape and color. Men, materials and vehicles can be blended by using colors combined with foliage.

Countershadingis a process by which camouflage defeats the shadow signature of an object against another background, encouraging the eye to ignore it or slide past it. It is an easily done and popular form of camouflage.

Mimicry can be technical or simple. It is camouflage by way of looking like something else. Hunters fool waterfowl into ignoring them by using duck blinds with the appearance of reeds printed on them and synthetic reeds attached all around them.

Think rupture when you think of ruption which is an odd word that simply means to break up the shape of something. The classic United States Army Woodland camo pattern is a great example of ruption because of its use of high contrast disruptive colors with irregular markings.

Camouflaging a vehicle is obviously a much larger undertaking than camouflaging yourself and all your gear. You can use many of the same techniques, but they must be scaled up significantly to work on vehicles. Camouflage your vehicle by applying paint specific to the environment. To conceal your vehicle while parked, use natural vegetation.

Unless you’re abandoning your home,shelter must also be camouflaged. But it depends entirely on what kind of shelter youre talking about. A tent or lean-to wont be much of a problem. Fixed structures are another story. (Related: How to make an invisible shelter looters can’t find.)

Use local vegetation to break up the silhouette of the tent. It will be expensive, but for larger structures you can do what the military does and make extensive use of that shredded-looking camo netting, along with painting any exposed surface a low profile color. For total concealment, bury it.

How do you camouflage when youre in an urban environment or a rural or a rural or wilderness setting?

The principles are the same and the colors are not much different either. A dusty sepia-colored tan is workable, but avoid all-too-common white, gray and black urban camos so widely available. You can’t go wrong by adopting camo patterns used by militaries and law enforcement agencies around the world.

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Urban environments offer challenges for all kinds of camouflage. Most urban camouflage technology has derived from vehicle camouflage research, and youve probably seen those on the internet; large, blocky, pixilated, so-called dazzle patterns.

While they work okay for making the type of vehicle hard to identify at a distance, those patterns are often worse than useless on a human scale.

Address your exposed skin. Wear gloves for your hands or a gaiter for your face and neck. The hat will also work for covering up the bulk of your head. Camouflage grease paint can also be used for covering exposed skin.

Tan is always the best in most environments, but a combination of grays and greens can work too. Consider even buying or building a ghillie suit if you’re going to be in one place for a long time.

You need to camouflage your gear the same way you do your body. Purchase gear that’s already camouflaged in some pattern suitable will for your environment. Black is often thought of as a sneaky color, and especially good for nighttime use, but this is not always true as black appears very rarely in nature except as deep shadow. All gear, including guns, should be camouflaged

Any gear that is hand-carried like firearms should likewise be camouflaged. Painting your stockpile of guns camo patterns that help blend them in to avoid detection. Remember that metal and lenses are two of your biggest violators when it comes to shine and light reflection.

Changing your clothing to something suitably low profile is the first step towards attaining camouflage, but its not the last. Buy a set of camouflage jacket or shirt and trousers that are specific to the environment and season youre in.

Consider also your footwear. Dont wear sneakers or trail shoes that have reflectors.

Good camo can easily be achieved with a good eye for color and careful assessment of the environment you are moving through or hiding in.

Use vegetation in various forms to aid your camouflage efforts, The type of vegetation makes a big difference as does the condition of the surrounding vegetation where you are. Living vegetation, though will die as soon as you cut it or pull it up and it will need replacement. Dead vegetation like dead plants, things like dry grass, fallen branches, dead leaves, hay, straw, etc. work great for texturing and can work well for blending if the surrounding environment is also similarly dead.

Watch this video reviewing the Arcturus Ghost ghillie suit.

This video is from AlexHammer on Brighteon.com. More related stories:

Prepping tips: How to stay camouflaged in an urban environment?

What is a spider-hole and what are its survival uses?

How do you keep yourself well-hidden in a SHTF scenario?

Prepper essentials: A guide to camouflaging your property.

Prepping tip: How to hide your valuables in plain sight.

Sources included:

Modernsurvivalonline.com 1

Modernsurvivalonline.com 2

Brighteon.com
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Environment

White House crypto czar David Sacks says stablecoin bill will unlock ‘trillions’ for U.S. Treasury

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White House crypto czar David Sacks says stablecoin bill will unlock 'trillions' for U.S. Treasury

U.S. President Donald Trump sits next to Crypto czar David Sacks at the White House Crypto Summit at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 7, 2025.

Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters

President Donald Trump‘s top crypto and AI advisor David Sacks said Wednesday that the administration expects the stablecoin legislation moving through the Senate to pass with “significant bipartisan support,” and claimed it could unlock demand for U.S. Treasuries.

“We already have over $200 billion in stablecoins — it’s just unregulated,” Sacks told CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime.” “If we provide the legal clarity and legal framework for this, I think we could create trillions of dollars of demand for our Treasuries practically overnight, very quickly.”

The GENIUS Act — a bill to regulate stablecoins — cleared a key procedural vote in the Senate. With 15 Democrats voting for the bill to pass the cloture threshold this week, the proponents have the votes necessary to avoid a filibuster.

“We have every expectation now that it’s going to pass,” added Sacks, though he didn’t answer a question about concerns from Democrats that there aren’t sufficient safeguards in place to keep the president and his family from profiting from legislation.

Read more about tech and crypto from CNBC Pro

Democrats previously rejected the GENIUS Act in part on concern that President Trump’s personal cryptocurrency ventures, including his own meme coin and a stablecoin from his family’s crypto business, created an unprecedented conflict of interest.

Unlike digital assets such as bitcoin, which can trade wildly, stablecoins are a subset of cryptocurrencies whose value is tied to that of a real-world asset, like the U.S. dollar. Bitcoin hit a new record on Wednesday, nearing $110,000.

Tether, which is banked by Cantor Fitzgerald in the U.S., controls more than 60% of the stablecoin market. Deutsche Bank found that stablecoin transactions hit $28 trillion last year, surpassing that of Mastercard and Visa, combined.

Sacks, who has emerged as a powerful policy voice inside Trump’s inner circle, framed the GENIUS Act not just as a crypto breakthrough but as a national economic strategy.

“Stablecoins offer a new, more efficient, cheaper, smoother payment system — new payment rails for the U.S. economy,” he said. “It also extends the dominance of the dollar online.”

The White House has aggressively backed the effort, even as concerns mount over the president’s potential conflicts.

While Sacks sold $200 million in crypto-related holdings before taking his White House job according to a disclosure filing, Trump and his family have been leaning into building a crypto empire.

The Trumps are financial backers of World Liberty Financial, which just launched its own stablecoin — USD1 — backed by Treasuries and dollar deposits.

Abu Dhabi’s MGX investment fund recently pledged $2 billion in USD1 to Binance, the world’s largest digital assets exchange. It’s the company’s largest-ever investment made in crypto.

Still, the path to passage isn’t entirely smooth. Senator Josh Hawley, R-Mo., added a controversial rider to the bill that would cap credit card late fees — what’s seen as a poison pill that could alienate banking allies and stall final approval.

WATCH: Trump’s growing crypto empire raising conflict of interest concerns

Trump's growing crypto empire raising conflict of interest concerns

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Trump wants to kill ENERGY STAR – here’s how that impacts you

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Trump wants to kill ENERGY STAR – here's how that impacts you

The Trump administration wants to pull the plug on ENERGY STAR, the federal program behind those familiar blue labels on energy-efficient appliances, homes, and buildings. Launched in 1992, ENERGY STAR has saved Americans more than $500 billion in energy costs while slashing greenhouse gas emissions.

To dig into what this means for everyday Americans, we spoke with Rebecca Foster, CEO of clean energy nonprofit Vermont Energy Investment Corporation (VEIC), which has spent decades working to make homes, schools, and businesses more energy efficient.

Electrek: What is the ENERGY STAR program, and what are the benefits for consumers?

Rebecca Foster: It’s simple: ENERGY STAR helps customers and businesses save energy and reduce costs. The program does this by clearly labeling which products are energy-efficient options. It’s a certification of confidence – it does not dictate efficiency standards. The program was created in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush and has enjoyed decades of bipartisan support. 

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The brand has become the backbone of energy efficiency across the country. ENERGY STAR is a recognized and reliable mark of efficient appliances and electronics that lower costs and improve indoor air quality. The ENERGY STAR label has also expanded to include efficiency standards for weatherizing homes and certifying when new buildings are constructed to high efficiency standards. Utilities benefit from ENERGY STAR, too – with more efficient appliances and systems plugged in, they are better able to manage the grid and decrease costs for customers.

The main benefit to consumers is significant savings through energy efficiency. A typical home can save around $450 a year on their energy bills by choosing ENERGY STAR-certified products, according to a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimate. Lower-income households spend a greater proportion of their budget on energy, so losing that savings will be felt especially hard by these families. Energy efficiency programs that VEIC administers, including Efficiency Vermont, Efficiency Smart, and the DC Sustainable Energy Utility, have incorporated ENERGY STAR certifications into their rebates and educational materials for decades. The ENERGY STAR certification is an easy way to let people know which products are eligible for rebates and encourage folks to choose the more efficient option by making it more affordable with incentives. Combined, these programs have delivered more than $694 million in customer incentives since 2000, resulting in over $5.6 billion in lifetime customer savings. 

Evaluations of the ENERGY STAR program show it saves US households about $40 billion a year nationwide – and has delivered about $500 billion in savings since it began. All for a program that costs the government just $30 million annually. According to the Consortium for Energy Efficiency‘s 2022 survey, where I worked for over a decade prior to joining VEIC, nearly 90% of US households report recognizing the ENERGY STAR label and almost half (45%) report knowingly purchasing an ENERGY STAR-certified product or home within the last 12 months.

Electrek: How would ending the ENERGY STAR program hurt consumers at a national and regional level?

Rebecca Foster: Efficiency labels and education from ENERGY STAR leads to more affordable energy bills for customers. Ending the program means less clarity and guidance for how to choose the more efficient option, which means higher costs month after month. Households are increasingly opting for more efficient, all-electric clean technologies like cold climate heat pumps for heating/cooling and EVs for their transportation needs. That means efficiency will become even more important for households to maintain lower electricity use. So, losing ENERGY STAR now will really cost Americans more in the short and long term.

Regionally and on a local level, getting rid of ENERGY STAR could disrupt energy efficiency programs run by states, utilities, and third-party administrators that rely on the ENERGY STAR label for rebates. It could also hurt manufacturers, distributors, and contractors who have built their businesses around providing and installing more efficient equipment. Existing lists of qualified products will quickly become out of date as new models and new technology enter the market. We could see programs in different states or run by different entities come up with confusing or competing standards for their rebates, making it more difficult for people to save energy. 

All of these impacts hurt consumers, especially at a time when families and businesses are already struggling to keep up with rising costs. 

Electrek: What sort of impact would ending this program have on the grid?

Rebecca Foster: A stable electric grid is more important than ever as we see growing electricity demand due to data centers and AI and an increasing reliance on electricity to meet more of our daily needs. ENERGY STAR has been the backbone of energy efficiency across the country for decades, and it’s delivered the more efficient lighting, appliances, and heating systems that are in use today in countless homes. Efficiency is a major reason why US electricity demand has been flat for the last two decades, according to the EIA.

As we see the electrification of our transportation and heating sectors, we’re also going to see unprecedented growth in electricity demand – an 11% increase in New England alone over the next decade, according to ISO New England. That’s part of a 50% increase in demand nationally by 2050, according to the National Electrical Manufacturers Association.

Losing ENERGY STAR would slow down and complicate management of the grid because efficiency contributes to a stable and optimized grid. It also helps avoid the costly expansion of transmission projects by reducing demand without asking customers to make large behavioral changes. 

A more efficient grid can also avoid investing in new fossil fuel power generation, like natural gas power plants, helping meet state and regional goals for clean energy and emissions reductions. ENERGY STAR is a great tool for realizing an efficient, electrified future. Ending the program will put a greater burden on grid operators and utilities by taking away one of the most effective tools in the toolbox for addressing rising energy demand: customer participation.

Rebecca Foster is VEIC’s CEO. Heading up the executive leadership team, Rebecca guides the nonprofit’s strategic planning, business development, and performance across its contracts nationwide. With nearly 25 years of experience in the clean energy industry, Rebecca is a seasoned leader dedicated to the organization’s mission of generating the energy solutions the world needs.

VEIC is a national clean energy nonprofit that delivers high-impact energy solutions focused on equity and innovation. Since 1986, VEIC has been recognized as a leader in decarbonization strategies, working with governments, utilities, foundations, and businesses to reduce GHG emissions and create a sustainable energy system that benefits everyone.


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Politics

VanEck to launch Avalanche ecosystem fund

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VanEck to launch Avalanche ecosystem fund

VanEck to launch Avalanche ecosystem fund

VanEck plans to launch a private digital assets fund in June targeting tokenized Web3 projects built on the Avalanche blockchain network, the asset manager said in a statement shared with Cointelegraph.

The VanEck PurposeBuilt Fund, available only to accredited investors, aims to invest in liquid tokens and venture-backed projects across Web3 sectors, including gaming, financial services, payments, and artificial intelligence. 

Idle capital will be deployed into Avalanche (AVAX) real-world asset (RWA) products, including tokenized money market funds, VanEck said.

The fund will be managed by the team behind VanEck’s Digital Assets Alpha Fund (DAAF), which oversees more than $100 million in net assets as of May 21. 

“The next wave of value in crypto will come from real businesses, not more infrastructure,” Pranav Kanade, portfolio manager for DAAF, said in a statement.

VanEck to launch Avalanche ecosystem fund
RWAs are among crypto’s fastest-growing segments. Source: RWA.xyz

Related: Tokenized stocks could top $1T in market cap — Execs

Thematic crypto funds

VanEck’s PurposeBuilt Fund is the latest in a series of funds from the asset manager and rivals designed to offer exposure to projects and companies in fast-growing segments of Web3. 

On May 14, VanEck launched a new actively managed exchange-traded fund (ETF) to invest in stocks and financial instruments providing exposure to the digital economy.

In April, VanEck launched another ETF investing in a passive index of companies operating in the crypto space. 

Asset managers such as VanEck are requesting the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) permission to list upward of 70 crypto ETFs. 

The wave of ETF filings is in response to US President Donald Trump softening the agency’s regulatory stance toward crypto after Trump took office in January.

VanEck to launch Avalanche ecosystem fund
Avalanche TVL as of May 21. Source: DefiLlama

Avalanche RWA ecosystem

Avalanche has emerged as a hub for real-world assets (RWAs) and other institutional-oriented crypto projects.

Its interrelated networks, called subnets, allow institutions to run Ethereum-style smart contracts in a controlled environment. On May 16, Solv Protocol launched a yield-bearing Bitcoin token on the Avalanche blockchain, targeting institutional investors

Avalanche has around $1.5 billion in total value locked (TVL) as of May 21, according to data from DefiLlama. 

“We’re seeing a shift away from speculative hype toward real utility and sustainable token economies,” John Nahas, chief business officer at Ava Labs, said in a statement.

Magazine: Danger signs for Bitcoin as retail abandons it to institutions — Sky Wee

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