Posted On: Saturday - April 13th 2024 7:00PM MST
In Topics: Pundits Books
Peak Stupidity has been looking forward to this new book by Conservative pundit and Noticer Extraordinaire Steve Sailer. As we noted at the bottom of this post regarding another favorite writer of ours, the 3 copies of Noticing arrived.
This post's title says "OVERview". An actual REview will be coming, but it might be a while. I can imagine reading this book in 6 ± 2 hours straight, but I want to savor it. I also like the idea that I'll be reading it while traveling some soon, so others may just "notice" the book. "Oh, yeah, it's the book by Steve Sailer, you know." "Steve Sailer?" "Well, yeahhh.", as if everyone should know him. Maybe people do. "Oh, he's the guy who just wrote a couple of posts about O.J. Simpson recently." "O.J. who? I think it's Bart or Homer you mean."
Anyway, I'll lay out the "chapters" here. The quotes there are to explain and avoid possible confusion - these chapters are not the smallest sections. Besides some introduction and afterwords, there are 14 sections called chapters. Each is on one of Mr. Sailer's favorite, or maybe more like one of his most important, areas of expertise, with 3 to 6 of his articles from the past (this is an anthology) in each. (The average is 4.2 articles per chapter.)
There's a foreword that I think would have been better called "Background" or "My Background". This is a quick occupational, political and literary background of Mr. Sailer. I just finished it, and it's pretty interesting - I hadn't known the half of it before. However, a foreword ought to be a few pages that explain his motivation for writing this anthology and maybe relate the chapters to each other in some way. Only the the last page and a quarter has this, but, if you've got an afterword, you've got to have a foreword, I suppose. That last bit starts with:
In contrast to the new inegalitarianism, I believe in the equality of the moral worth of all individual humans to be the subject of empirical analysis. In my ethical system, everybody counts and thus everybody is fit to be counted.A few of his very good examples follow, then:
That's not a popular attitude, to say the least.
When it comes to data analysis the contemporary rules are also plain to see. You are encouraged to notice some disparities but not others.
But it's hard to think up these kind of potentially constructive approaches under the current mindset in which the only permissible response to pattern recognition is to blame the pre-defined Bad Guys: straight white men.Yes, I do! However, we do all need to keep in mind that the people making these rules are well aware of what they are doing and aim to keep the rules they way thay are. They hate us, the "Bad Guys", and want us dead. That's how Communists operate.
Not surprisingly, American intellectual culture has tended to get dumber and duller under the reigning rules.
I hope you find my anthology a refreshing contrast.
Anyway, the 59 articles come from various publications, but I'd say more than half of them were published in TakiMag. I didn't realize he'd been on there for that long - from just skimming through, it seems like it's been 12 years or so. Other articles are taken from VDare directly, and then the older ones come from National Review (a few especially well-written ones), The American Conservative, and a couple of other publications. Those were from the time before Steve Sailer was unPersoned. The Unz Review is not one of the sources cited at the beginning of any articles, though I swear I saw the site mentioned within one of them when I skimmed through earlier. No UR commenters are mentioned - sorry, guys.
I see a slight chronological progression here (not necessarily with the individual articles), but otherwise not a real pattern. That's OK. Mr. Sailer says that many of his general topics are orthogonal to each other. (How many dimensions can he think in?) Anyway, here you go. The quick notes are mine:
Chapter One: Citizenism (4 articles)
Chapter Two: Invade the World, Invite the World (6 articles)
Chapter Three: The Sailer Strategy (3 articles)
Chapter Four: Villains and Heroes (5 articles) Note: Heroes and Villains is a Beach Boys song that Mr. Sailer must know and like. I guess he didn't want to use it directy.
Chapter Five: Human Biodiversity (4 articles) Note: This is not a Sailer-coined term. I just learned that it was first the name of a book by one Jonathan Marks.
Chapter Six: The Level Playing Field (4 articles) Note: Within this chapter (3rd article, p. 183) you will find, YES, an article on Golf Course Architecture! I DID try to read it. No can do.*
Chapter Seven: The Half-Full Glass (5 articles)
Chapter Eight: The Blank Screen (3 articles) Note: These 3 are about Øb☭ma.
Chapter Nine: World War T (4 articles) Note: Great prediction, I gotta say.
Chapter Ten: Sailer's Law of Female Journalism (3 articles) Note: I wish he had a few more in here. His getting into the minds of women is very illuminating to me.
Chapter Eleven: Jews and Gentiles (4 articles) Note: It could be "Jews v Gentiles", in the Peak Stupidity style, but that would have quite a different meaning.
Chapter Twelve: The Coalition of the Fringes (5 articles)
Chapter Thirteen: Sailer's Law of Mass Shootings (4 articles)
Chapter Fourteen: The Great Awokening (5 articles)
Look for an actual review of some sort in the medium future. In the meantime, we're bogged down, what with more Climate Calamity™ stupidity, fallout from the 4 year-ago Kung Flu PanicFest with a new attempt being made, that Babylon Bee style true story, and more ... depending on just what kind of war will be ongoing come Monday ... Thanks for reading!
* It's perfectly fine with me that he's got his niche obscure topics. After all, I doubt that discussion of the erroneous physics calculations done within exercise machine computer chips are the most exciting thing for our readers either! (Ask me more! I mean, if it is...)
Comments (18)
We are all Miamians now
Posted On: Friday - April 12th 2024 5:30PM MST
In Topics: Commies Immigration Stupidity History Zhou Bai Dien
I looked back and saw that Peak Stupidity has never had a post specifically about the Mariel Boatlift of 44 years ago this Spring/Summer/Fall. We did mention this important early battle of the immigration invasion in the following posts: Said in Spanish - Allan Wall with some encouragement (Sept. of '19 with Trump in office), Governor DeSantis fights the Bai Dien/Mayorkas-run Invasion (May of '23), and Spies Like Us, starring Manuel Rocha.
The reader with no knowledge of this even may want to read a very short summary on this Britannica page, a slightly longer summary on History.com, or the much longer wiki page.
There's some background I won't get into (see the links) behind the reason this mass exodus of 125,000 Cubans* happened at that particular time. Instead of preventing Cubans from sailing to freedom, for those months Communist Fidel Castro decided to cast out political prisoners and ALL kinds of prisoners. Nobody will ever know how many of each type came. Americans had respected those who extricated themselves from the evils of Communism, but then the numbers from anywhere (even Vietnam, I would say) hadn't been high enough to be considered a serious immigration invasion yet. This Mariel Boatlift, enabled by President Jimmy Carter, was different, and it had a lasting effect. Oh, and, some of those "Mareilitos" were mental patients - "Why not?" would be a good point made by Castro. "They weren't sending their best", that's for sure.
Because south Florida is the nearest part of the US, as some had been doing for years, since the Commies took over Cuba in 1959, this mass of humanity consolidated in the big city of Miami. It changed the city greatly. As an slight aside, Steve Sailer did some great noticing about this. He rebutted those economists who claimed Miami had such an amazing boost to its economy due to IMMIGRATION! with the point that it was the whole drug war run by these criminal "newcomers", with the cocaine and later crack, that was the big "amazing" economic boost. (Americans before didn't do this sort of work so much. Colombians did too, though.) However, all the big money and violence was not a good thing for your average old-time Miaimian.
I find this period pretty interesting, especially the "transportation" aspects of drug importation, and a friend has urged me to watch Cocaine Cowboys, a documentary of the period.** The excesses were amazing, what with guys buying 10 Italian sports cars for their friends on a whim and, per my friend's viewing, the amount of cash money in Miami was greater than all that floating around the rest of the country!
Well, fine, but when we used to drive down to The Keys, we'd gas up in Ft. Pierce, Sebring, wherever, depending on the route, and avoid the whole Miami area like the plague. Avoiding the areas of the few lost battles of the invasion was doable 30-odd years back. One didn't have to live there, so, OK, you had south Florida and southern California, and maybe a few other places that were not-exactly-American within America.
Over the ensuing 3 decades, the high level and steady flow of illegal and legal immigrants, at 1 to 2 million yearly slowly created not-exactly-American zones all around the country. Even with the social and cultural destruction we could deal, I suppose, as it's gotten slowly worse. Dark Brandon and his handlers and minions, however, have been running a Mariel Boatlift on steroids for the last 3 years though. We're talking a factor of 100. They are not all just one nationality, but the 12 million (that'd be 100x) contain a sampling of criminality from all over the world!
With all those nationalities, I noticed something during this Bai Dien invasion surges. I'll see some story about a horrific murder by an illegal alien, one of the "newcomers", or a rape of a 7-year old girl by one of the same, etc. I'll just guess the nationality as Venezuelan, and, whaddya' know, YEP, that's what the article will say. EVERY! SINGLE! TIME! Of course, other nationalities, such as the Salvadorans with the hyper-violent MS-13 gang, get in their share too. In the long run, the current mass importation of Africans, legally*** and illegally, will result in more violence here. However, the Venezuelans seem to have taken first prize as of late.
There's a similarity with that particular contingent and the contingent of Cubans that came 44 years ago. These people have left countries that have long been Communist. In the case of the Mariel Boatlift, it was only one generation by that time. In the case of Venezuela, the former crown jewel of South America, it's been a generation and a half now.
Communism leaves a long, lasting mark. Ask me about the long-term effects on the Chinese people sometime. The countries have not been the kind of places where a straight-arrow Jose Blose can get ahead in life. Violence pays in places like this. These are the people turning America into one big Miami. We're all Miamians now. Thing is, if we don't like it, we can't just all move up north to Ocala anymore.
* Something I hadn't known till now is that some of those coming during that period were Haitians, 25,000 of them. Also from the wiki page on the boatlife, one can read that America, and the Presidents of the era, were still serious people regarding this issue. Of course, the Black! politicians were up to their usual tribal stupidity:
Before 1980, many Haitian immigrants arrived on American shores by boat. They were not granted legal protection because they were considered economic migrants, rather than political refugees, despite claims made by many Haitians that they were being persecuted by the Duvalier regime. U.S. Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford denied claims of asylum in the United States for Haitian migrants by boat. A backlash by the Congressional Black Caucus ensued, which claimed that the U.S. government was discriminating against Haitian immigrants.Yes, it sure was. So, what's your point?
** I want to watch it, but the 'brary doesn't have it, so I'm waiting for a free on-line version... Anyone, anyone, ... Smith? ;-}
*** Post to come. I'm getting so behind.
Comments (5)
O.J. Simpson - No more running...
Posted On: Thursday - April 11th 2024 8:58PM MST
In Topics: Music Bread and Circuses
Later on, O.J. Simpson didn't do much running for 9 years, instead cooling his heels in Nevada's Lovelock Correctional Facility for armed robbery. He got out in '17, but he just died, so, change is coming, no more running ... blind.
I can see how not everyone would like the voice of Kevin Cronin of 1970s -'80s rock band REO Speedwagon. (That's as with Geddy Lee of Rush.) This is not the best song off of this band's cleverly-named 1978 album You Can Tune a Piano, but You Can't Tuna Fish, as those would be Roll with the Changes and Time for Me to Fly, but it fits this post somewhat.*
* We already featured Jackson Brown's Running on Empty, but there's a Doobie Brother's song ...
Comments (10)
They're baaaackkkk... the Yellow Pages
Posted On: Thursday - April 11th 2024 9:50AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity History
I really like the slogan.
How weird! I am sure it has been 8 - 10 years (as I wrote before) since the Yellow Pages would still be delivered to our porch yearly. Now, just 3 and 2 1/2 weeks after Peak Stupidity's posts Let your fingers do the walking. and The Yellow Pages - Factoids and Fun, respectively, there came another one. It's about the time of year they used to come too.*
This one is 5/8" thick max, as compared to the old > 2" thick ones. I think I'll keep it for the times bing lets me down.
I am low on extra time today, so this will have to be today's only post. More on books for what's become book week here, and something on the invasion to come the next couple of days.
* I believe I recall from my business that one had to get ads arranged by some deadline in February. That gave a month of more for the mass printing and distribution.
Comments (5)
Day Pass
Posted On: Wednesday - April 10th 2024 4:48PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Big-Biz Stupidity
We really ought to have a Bureaucratic Stupidity topic key here at Peak Stupidity, but back-filling in topic keys into older posts is something we are loath to do as we near 3,000 posts. This post would have such a topic key.
Overwhelming bureaucracy is a form of stupidity that has been building throughout my life, and it has even greatly affected my career path. It's gotten worse with all the Artificial Stupidity involved, that is, the computer systems that every business great or small (thinks they) simply must use. (We've noted some of this at the auto parts store, pizza joints, etc.)
This is about the YMCA, where we've been going regularly for a children's program. Since this is far from home, I end up staying for 3 hours. No problem - they've got wifi, and I'm here using it right now. They've also got a LARGE number of exercise machines, which is what I'll get to.
At the YMCA, one must have an account, see? OK, but my wife had signed up for various things, and she somehow had 4 accounts, unknowingly. They ask questions on the app, and she answers them. That's all. We didn't care about "no steeenking accounts". They did, so they spent 20 minutes with me as I was ready to take my boy home a month or so ago. That was frustrating, but I guess, we're straight now.
"You're fine" now, as they say these days, but since I'll be spending some time here, I asked about using the work-out machines. Getting a membership for this won't be worth it, but the lady suggested I use a day pass for just one time for free. That was to be the deal today. The gym entrance is 20 ft from the counter, so... "What's your full name." She looked stuff up. "OK, I'll need some form of ID." I pulled out my wallet to show her my driver's license. That wasn't going to cut it. She was deep into the software, figuring out how this all was to work and ...
"Forget it. If it's gonna be that much bureaucracy, I'll just stay over there again and get on my computer.". (I got a big bowl of fruit too - thanks, REDACTED, my wife!)
Come on, man! I see 50 to 100 machines over there, but no exercise for me... beside the typing. What in hell is wrong with just giving me a bright yellow card?! Put a date on it. She'd recognize me were I to come in next week and try to weasel in with another one-time pass. The day that (I shouldn't!) hope comes when all this software stops is the day these people will all die inside. Good! Shoulda' put in more cardio, but ... the computer won't let them.
PS: More of this: We came here mostly for the swimming. It was getting near the end of the morning, and no kids were in the pool. I came to the desk to ask. I kid you not that 2 minutes or more had already gone by with the woman checking "stuff" in the computer to tell her when the kids would go swimming, if at all! I had to say it this time. "OK, you all keep checking stuff in the computer all day. This will go on till noon, too late for swimming. Let me just get him, and then we'll go in the pool." I had to sign a tablet, and luckily I knew the right phone number, or we'd be at the YMCA all day.
PPS: O/T from the bureaucratic stupidity, yet pretty apropos here: I've mentioned there's a nurse in our family. She told us that on a recent shift, all patients on the floor had no pain medicine for about 4 hours. The computer password had been changed. See what I'm talking about, but worse?
PPPS: No, I won't embed the Village People song. Go see 'em in concert. I imagine they're still playing, like everyone else, at least the ones that haven't died from AIDS.
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Come Fly the World - Julia Cooke
Posted On: Wednesday - April 10th 2024 8:26AM MST
In Topics: Feminism History Race/Genetics Books Female Stupidity
I got this book out of one of the LittleFreeLibraries nearby over a year ago. I finally read it at least 3 months ago, so it's time to write this review before I forget everything and time to return the dang book. Even if you all don't get entertainment value out of these reviews, at least I can save you some time by explaining why you'll not like a book here and there that you may have seen.
Julia Cooke's Come Fly the World* is one such book. Note that the title is not Come Fly with Me (of which there are many books and a song**). Were it the latter, I would have expected a story of mile-high club events, and all kinds of fun on the overnights, i.e. sex, sex, sex. I really was neither looking for nor expecting that, but I figured this might be an interesting history of the aviation world of a half century ago.
What I didn't expect is that this book would be political. As I look now, I see that I should have read the back cover blurbs more carefully.
The first section of 3, The Wrong Kind of Girl is interesting enough. It goes through the motivation for young ladies for getting into a Stewardess job, the interviews, the uniform/fashion aspect of it, and the lifestyle, especially the travel benefits. This is written using the stories of 3 girls, Karen, Lynn, and Tori. The author skips around among the stories of these girls to paint a picture of this portion of the world of American commercial aviation in this long-ago era, and more specifically that of the storied Pan American Airways - Pan Am, whose last flight was operated over 32 years ago.*** Speaking of pictures, there's a very nice section of 30 annotated B&W pictures in the middle of the book. Now, THERE"S some history. (There are also 2 1968 Pan Am route maps at the beginning. I like maps!)
Well, the feminism comes in early on. The author makes sure to tell us that these women were ABSOLUTELY NOT in this business just to meet men and have sex with various crew members and whomever on layovers. They did, the latter, she admits, but not the nice ones, Karen, Lynn, and Tori, who were in this business to help the world, not so much anyway. These 3 were very intelligent and could have done other things, per the stories, but then, were they representative? I know about this business, and I know about women. They were exceptions.
Julia Cooke can't seem to handle the truth that she described herself (end of Chapter 7):
Competition snuck into the field and Pan Am had no play. "We must add to [our excellence] 'a new dimension' -- that is, emphasis on what pleases people. And I know of nothing that pleases people more," Halaby [Jajeeb, successor, after a year, to the famous Juan Trippe] said in December of 1968, "than female people".That means pretty women, who were indeed the norm at this time, well before the woke HR departments took over. Women can't appreciate these "female people" working the airplane cabins like men can, but they still would rather be in this world than today's.
The feminism in this book comes to the forefront in the 2nd section, You Can't Fly Me. There you go. The 3rd chapter within this section is titled Open Skies for Negro Girls. That's enough. I had to skip that one. As pretty as Hazel Bowie looks in the B&W picture in her cute Pan Am cap, I didn't need to read more anti-White crap.
Where this book gets really political, though not really one-sided about it, is with the story of Vietnam. This is part of the story of these years of Pan Am, as that airline did quite a big of flying to that country during the war, flying American soldiers there and home. The story of the Nixon-arranged baby-lift is told here. All this is indeed a story worth telling, but it encroached deeply into the main story. That might be a good story in its own right, but it takes the book way off track.
The Vietnam story goes on into the last section, Women's Work. More Women's Vietnam memorial, civil rites, racism, etc. Ugghh... I got through it just because I'd gotten this far, well beyond the point of diversion back to the origin.
Come Fly the World is not the book you might think you're picking up. It helps to read ALL the blurbs!
* The subtitle is "The Jet-Age Story of the Women of Pan Am".
** ... which is played in one fun scene in the the movie Catch Me If You Can, one of my favorites.
*** It was Boeing 727-200 service from Barbados to Miami, Florida.
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New books!
Posted On: Tuesday - April 9th 2024 8:42PM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Books
In my digesting of VDare daily - before the big hiatus that is coming - I will read most of the Steve Sailer posts. I can't help it. I try not to get over to unz.com, but in this case - Lionel Shriver's Novel ”Mania”—Alternate History Of The Great Awokening Era - well, come on!*
Even though she is the only author I come close to following in any sense, I didn't keep up enough to know that Lionel Shriver had a new novel out. In his quick post, Mr. Sailer excerpts a bit of a review from the Washington Post** and provides a few remarks. I am excited, and the book is on the way already!
I'm a big fan of Mrs. Shriver. Peak Stupidity has written about her in other contexts - her political talks, her bugging out of England, to Portugal, and some of her articles (such as one good one in particular against the Kung Flu PanicFest) before. It's her novels though, that we have written the most about: I wrote a 6-part review of her prepper novel, The Mandibles: Introduction - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - Part 4 - - Part 5 - - and Conclusion.
We featured a review of her dark suspense/drama novel of "kids gone wrong" called We Need to Talk About Kevin. Then, we featured a review of the movie too, with comparisons to the book. We also reviewed The Motion of the Body Through Space. It's from the latter that I will provide a long excerpt here. That is due to the fact that Mrs. Shriver's newest novel is about Political Correctness' successor-on-steroids, Wokeness. From what I can tell from Mr. Sailer's quick take, it's a parody of the most stupid example possible, the cancelling of the idea of stupidity itself. Of course, it's very hard to do parody now, due its very limited shelf life.
In the Motion of the Body ... novel from a few years back, I really thought Lionel Shriver was going in that same direction, but let me just excerpt 3 paragraphs of my review:
Now, let me discuss a really interesting part of this recent novel for us Conservatives, but, unfortunately, a theme that plays only a fleeting part in this story. Likely it's her childhood background from old-timey North Carolina, but Miss Shriver brought up a topic in The Motion of the Body Through Space that could really put her on the outs with any of the NYC or London (her current residence) woke crowd. In the story of why Remington Alabaster, the narrator's exercise freak husband, is retired with time to do any of this to begin with, we learn it's due to the most extreme Affirmative Action, immigration-driven, feminist wokeness that even a Conservative could think of! Oh, yeah, this author goes there. It turns out that Mr. Alabaster's nice and somewhat rewarding city government engineering career got canceled by one sub-standard African immigrant lady. There are a few pages about this, then later some racial discussion in the form of conversation, as usual, between husband and wife. That latter conversation (pages 205 - 207) could have easily been part of a Steve Sailer HBD comment thread.In hindsight, I may have been too harsh. The author had her story, and AA couldn't be a big separate story in the same novel for the sake of ... something I can't explain because I'm not a writer. However, that last bit of back-tracking completely from the point on anti-Whiteness was NOT OK. Really, I wonder if some editor threatened her with the withholding of publishing of the book if she didn't insert that last AA conversation.
To add more anti-woke goodness to the pot, we find out toward the end of the MettleMan exercise madness saga that Serenata's voice-over-artist job is being slowly and surely cancelled, as it has now become NOT OK to appropriate foreigners' or non-anyone-plainly-normal's voices. That puts the kibosh on her part-time, but lucrative, gigs, basically. Though the narrator does mention financial worries, after that anti-White damage to the couple, I honestly don't see how the family was planning on staying in the black - the numbers just don't seem to add up.
It was disappointing to me that this amazingly honest White-people-getting-screwed (twice) background story became nothing more than that, a small sub-plot. The author went nowhere with it. In fact, she reverted at one point. At some point Serenata noted that the MettleMan competition, the business of it, and the family and fans too, were predominantly White. She didn't make anything of that, until one paragraph that I couldn't find right now, in which she seemed to see that as a problem. OK, that was the book character, but was this an effort at plausible deniability by Mrs. Shriver? I don't know why she brought it up in the first case then.
I look forward very much to Mania. Then, I was getting worried again, but finally my 3 copies of Mr. Sailer's Noticing came to the porch. We've been anxiously awaiting this one too. I skimmed through it for 1/2 an hour and learned that I will later definitely be reading this rather than skimming*** it. I'll write both an introductory post on the sections and chapters and then a review of some sort.
There's also a review Peak Stupidity has been meaning to post for some months on a totally different book. Luckily the LittleFreeLibrary I got it from a year back does not levy LittleFreeFines that result in LittleFreeLiens on my LittleFreeHouse.
* I've kept up with the comments for this special case. I really wanted to chime in, but I won't.
** Upon reading Mr. Sailer's title, I first thought, "Hey, why didn't John Derbyshire alert me to this book?! He's the guy who turned me on to Lionel Shriver a few years ago with her The Mandibles. I get it. John Derbyshire reads the New York Post, while Steve Sailer reads the Washington Post (along with The New York Times, The Atlantic, and what-have-you).
*** The latter was anticipated only if this book was a collection of short columns of which I'd already read the majority of. That's not the case.
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Peak Oil Price
Posted On: Tuesday - April 9th 2024 6:06AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Trump Economics Inflation Zhou Bai Dien
"Peak Oil" is a theory and phrase that has not been heard of much in the last 10 - 15 years. It IS the impetus for our site name and URL, Peak Stupidity, as the idea of "peak oil" was still more in internet pundit's and readers' memories when this site started.
I have a post in mind about the demise of the peak oil idea, but that's not what this post is. I'm talking peak oil prices and really only a local maximum is what I'm hoping for.
The image above is from a nearly 2 y/o post of ours, You didn't inflate that! We went through the argument that, no, Zhou Bai Dien wasn't a whole lot more responsible for the increasing price of gas than Trump and the Feral Gov't in general. It's not the gas, it's the Dollar.
As we noted at the bottom of 2 posts already here and here, 2 silver dimes will get you about a gallon of gas... as they did in 1964 when they could have been newly minted dimes. Gas is gas, and silver is silver, but fiat is funny money.
There have been the usual lefty stupid moves by Dark Brandon, killing pipeline projects, draining down the Strategic Petroleum Reserve*, working against Fossil Fuels** using the fairly new Climate Calamity™ excuse instead of just Peak Oil. (We've got to scrimp - we're running out!)
However, the public is not so wonky and knowledgable about these behind-the-scenes economic factors. When their big Lincoln Navigators and monster pick-ups take $150 to fill up, they start thinking very simply that "This President sucks!" That's true, he does, but they don't know the half of it. Anyway, though, as a follow-up to this past Friday's post Trump v Bai Dien and 2020s v 1980s, I'd just like to add one big hope and dream of mine.
I would really, really, like to see a local maximum, a Peak Oil Price, of $5 a gallon, nation-wide average, around, let's see, 6 months and 3 weeks from now. I want to see $150/bbl on November 4th, or some number that can beat 2,000 mules. Let's go, Brandon!
* In the short term, that may have kept prices slightly down, but there never was enough in there for this to be good long-term policy. I will add that Bai Dien (this is one thing that IS directly under the President's control legally) brought the reserves up very slightly, from 346 to 358 Billion barrels, since that post. (The data on this good site is 3 months old, so this is from end-o'-July '23 to end-o'-Jan '24.) In case you're interested, we wrote a lot about the SPR - more here - - here and here.
** That brings me to a video interview on Tucker Carlson's site, to be mentioned in the post on Peak Oil to come.
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Peak Totality v Peak Totalitarianism
Posted On: Monday - April 8th 2024 10:57AM MST
In Topics: Science Totalitarianism
Our family got to see the total solar eclipse of August 21st of '17. For me, my son, and 2 friends, it was worth traveling a little ways last minute to get to an area of "few" rather than "scattered" (or worse) cloud cover, one cloud of which could have ruined the whole thing. My wife didn't care so much, but she got lucky.
It was fantastic, and a great time was had by all. However, nobody here (my family) seems to care enough this time, so we'll miss this one.*
Peak Stupidity was less than a year old that last total solar eclipse with a good path across America.. That afternoon we posted Eclipses in History: Learn some science - it may save your ass some day.. We also linked to a great book by one Duncan Steel - Eclipse.
We hope some Peak Stupidity readers will find the right spot weather-wise and enjoy this amazing** astronomical phenomenon this afternoon. Because the moon is closer to Earth than it was during the eclipse in '17, the path of totality is wider, and, in the transverse direction, the duration of totality will be 4 minutes instead of just over 2.
Peak Totality is one thing, but we will continue to focus more on Peak Totalitarianism here. You don't need special glasses*** to see the latter.
* For you would-be doxxers, this is a tough, challenging puzzle. "So, he's not IN the path today, meaning he doesn't live along this 110 mile-wide curve here. In '17 he DID see it, so he was right about here .." Yeah, but what if we'd traveled a ways .. both times. Yeah, but it's about the weather too. Keeping an eye on the TAFs, are you? Gotcha! (Being paranoid can be fun at times.)
** It is really miraculous, as what are the chances of the moon in your world being this close to the same apparent diameter as your sun? (30 minutes of arc = 1/2 degree)
*** They're for viewing the phases of the eclipse around totality, not during. You won't be harmed looking at the moon during totality with the naked eye.
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Act Designation and Peak Tampon Dispensation(?)
Posted On: Monday - April 8th 2024 7:00AM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Humor Movies Educational Stupidity
Honestly, this is not something I relish discussing. Unlike, say, exercise machine display stupidity, The Office, or inflation, the use of feminine hygiene products is NOT one of Peak Stupidity's niche topics. As hard as the genderbending tranny nonsense is being pushed, even high schoolers with 10 years of Big Ed attempted brainwashing behind them see the stupidity of it all. Also, for a man of any age, but especially a teenager, being taught about various feminine products is insulting. It's bad enough being called one!
From John Derbyshire on VDare, we read In Brookfield, CT, Normal Boys Smash Legally Required Tampon Dispenser In Men’s Room. Good on 'em! I won't get into the story here, as Mr. Derbyshire can explain and ridicule better than the next man.
This post is about the law, or Act, passed by that retarded Connecticut State Legislature back in '20. Act-ually, it's just about the name. State Bill 140 (that must mean the 140th bill of the year '20, as the lawmaking of these people stops for no man... or woman) became an Act after passage, with the name An Act Requiring Free Feminine Hygiene Products in Middle and High School Student Bathrooms.. Well, that's descriptive enough - hell, that title may as well BE the law. However, it's not an acronym, is it? AARFFHPiMaHSSB. Johnny, what can you make out of this?
A tampon? (I just bet he could!) Anyway, that's one cumbersome Act name. This naming style is not the norm. It seems like the trend the last couple of decades has been naming via 1 of 2 ways:
1) Using an acronym that matches the idea of the Act, usually done with a real stretch on the wording to make it work.
2) Using the name of a person egregiously harmed or killed, with the Act's intention being that it will prevent this from happening in this way to the next (usually) girl.
Using style (2), I suggest to the Connecticut legislature the renaming of former House Bill 140, the Act Requiring Free Feminine Hygiene Products in Middle and High School Student Bathrooms. to....
As much as I didn't completely get it at the time of the movie, I did truly feel for the plight of the girl Carrie and the hell that High School can be for some kids, especially girls. However, this joke was a must.
Will the following be the result of this genderbending stupidity?
OK, enough of that. It's good to get some of this humor down, what with some problems at home and all. I'm writing this from the sidewalk in front of a Starbucks for the free wifi.
See, my wife just told me that she's long suspected me of being a Tranny,...
... so, I packed her stuff and left.
Thank you, thank, you! We'll be here all week. Try the exercise machine posts.
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[UPDATED 04/09:] Changed the title.
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Comments (12)
Charley Pride
Posted On: Saturday - April 6th 2024 7:25PM MST
In Topics: Music Race/Genetics
The impetus for this music post tonight, instead of (of course!) something from Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, is a headline I recently read about one Beyonce saying she is the first Black! country singer. Truly I have never knowingly heard a song by this woman, was not sure if her name is pronounced with 2 syllables or 3, and had no idea what she looked like till I saw the thumbnail picture. I will say, black or not, most women look cute in cowboy hats. That doesn't make them country.
Beyonce may or may not be a country singer, but she surely wasn't the first black one. Alarmist, in the comments, mentioned Darius Rucker, former singer of Hootie and the Blowfish ("Hey, you Hootie?") making country music. OK, that's already one point in rebuttal. Maybe the Beyonce fans and internet writers don't know that the 1st famous black country singer was a guy named Charlie Pride. Unlike this Beyonce, who I imagine is all blackety-black in outlook, Charlie Pride came up a regular hard-working guy in White America. He worked in a lead smelter and played pro baseball in the Negro League in highly White 1960s Montana, You had to fit in in Helena and Great Falls, Montana, and Charlie Pride did.
His musical talents led him to a very successful career singing country music. I don't know about Beyonce's music, but Charlie Pride sounds like any other White country singer. Without looking at an album cover, you wouldn't know he was black.
Though Kiss an Angel Good Morning is his most known hit song, I like, and am more familiar with, his cover of Please Help Me I'm Falling, recorded in 1967. It was written by by Don Robertson and Hal Blair in 1960.
Here's a little bit more about Charlie Pride: Per wiki, from his time in the baseball leagues (as a pitcher),
Later that season [1953], while in the Negro leagues with the Louisville Clippers, two players – Pride and Jesse Mitchell – were traded to the Birmingham Black Barons for a team bus. "Jesse and I may have the distinction of being the only players in history to be traded for a used motor vehicle," Pride mused in his 1994 autobiography.That sounds like something one might write about in a country song. Regarding his making music in this particular genre:
According to a news item by the Associated Press, Pride made this comment in a 1992 interview: "They used to ask me how it feels to be the 'first colored country singer' ... Then it was 'first Negro country singer;' then 'first black country singer.' Now I'm the 'first African-American country singer.' That's about the only thing that's changed"Till Beyonce, of course.
... he was booked for his first large show, in Detroit's Olympia Stadium. Since no biographical information had been included with those singles, few of the 10,000 country fans who came to the show knew Pride was Black and discovered the fact only when he walked onto the stage, at which point the applause trickled off to silence. "I knew I'd have to get it over with sooner or later," Pride later remembered. "I told the audience: 'Friends, I realize it's a little unique, me coming out here – with a permanent suntan – to sing country and western to you. But that's the way it is.' "Haha, and yes, they liked both kinds of music at Detroit's Country Bunker, Country AND Western!
The songs sung by Charlie Pride, such as the above example, were pure country, what with the cheating song, the steel guitar, and his voice. Let's face it, Charlie Pride was an honorary White Man.
Thanks for reading and writing in this week, Peakers! Have a restful Sunday.
Comments (6)
Disposable Cameras: Explanations by Erin and James
Posted On: Saturday - April 6th 2024 3:35PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Humor
We've got plenty of serious posts cooking on the front burner, more on the Invasion, the Climate Calamity™, the evil more than stupid out of the Regime, etc. However, we'll insert some humor here that will be familiar to The Office fans (a group I belong to). It will also be familiar to all who have seen the changes in technology (hence, society) of all sorts over the decades, as we've recently written about wrt the old phone books here - - here and here.
Let's talk disposable cameras. The use of these camera occurred during a fairly narrow window at the end of the film camera era. Those of us over 45, I'd say, will remember the day when pictures weren't free. The age of free digital photograph, high-resolution as now or not, has been a good thing and a bad thing. Waiting a week for pictures to come back (or just negatives first, for those without the money for all the prints - some may not have been good ones, so another week) took patience. One bad thing with "infinite photography", and video now, is that those, cough, cough, Oriental cough, camera-crazy tourists no longer are limited by the number of 36 exposure rolls of Kodachrome they can pack. It's much worse now.
Next-day developing (!!) came along sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, a hell of a thing in its time. However, if one wasn't a serious photograph, the Wal-Mart (and drug-store chain) plants that did the mass developing could use this capability to sell you disposable cameras. They were set up with one roll of film in them. This way, one didn't have to worry about screwing up and letting light in during loading/unloading film. One just bought this plastic thing (with a cheesy lens, of course, so not for pros) for not too much more than a roll of film and sent the thing in for quick developing. No, you didn't get the camera back - you got your photo prints. IIRC these were in use from the mid to late '90s
Well, there's a video of the later-era Office secretary named Erin. She was a ditz, but looked really nice in shorts playing volleyball, so... but the humor is great stuff, as good as seen from the rest of the characters. Here's Erin's take on the use of disposable cameras.
That's funny! However, one of the commenters on the youtube page cracked me up even more. He (James) thought he understood the concept and use of these disposable cameras, so he explained it to a Gen-Z'er thusly:
@kuhnhan
7 months ago:
"The disposable camera thing is hilarious."
Reply @squishy-tomato
7 months ago (edited):
"hilarious, but wasteful. A shame we don't get to see the result."
Reply @gymnasticsgirlie0647
1 month ago:
"Genuinely, can you please explain it to this confused Gen Zer? I looked it up and it said that you can only use the camera once, so why is everyone freaking out about her throwing the camera away?"
Reply @jamess2664
1 month ago:
"She was throwing the camera away before taking the film out."
Reply @gymnasticsgirlie0647
1 month ago:
"Oh, thank you."
Once again, I yield the floor to Captain Jean Luc Picard:
Comments (4)
Trump v Bai Dien and 2020s v 1980s
Posted On: Friday - April 5th 2024 7:17AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 History Trump Americans ctrl-left Zhou Bai Dien
Peak Stupidity has a running theme of X v Y, be they mad wild beasts, politicians, but I repeat myself, or whatever. In this case, the 1st match-up in the title here is a "no duh!", well, for the most part. The Presidential election is 7 months from today, and these two are the purported selected candidates. OTOH, one of them could be in jail by November, and the other could be so mentally incognizant, he'd have to be replaced - whether the public would be let in on the latter fact is another story.
It's the 2nd match-up in the title that this post is really about, the difference in America and "the most important" elections ever between the 1980s* and the 2020s. As somewhat of a digression here, this post is about what I believe IS the most important election, which will get to my point later.
However, if I were personally to pick an American Presidential election that was the most important in HINDSIGHT, it'd be the Goldwater v Johnson election of 1964. Truly, the evil that came out of the Johnson administration put the ruination of America on the fast track. That is, the racial spoils systems, the Welfare State, and most importantly, the Immigration Invasion disaster, ALL were implemented during those 4 years. Goldwater would not have signed off on ANY of that. I'm not saying he'd have single-handedly saved the country, but he may have gotten us another 2 decades free of the madness.
OK, the subject here is the difference in the civility, the rule of law, and the general faith in the system in the elections between this decade and 4 decades ago.
Let's go back to the 1980s. If you will or can recall, with the Cold War being a part of it, the US Gov't felt it important to ensure fair*** elections in the various and sundry Banana Republics of Latin America from way back. Peak Stupidity noted here how the countries in that part of the world would go from Commie to Totalitarian Right (Can you say "military junta"**? I
We were, after all, the experts, living in a country in which political changes happened smoothly and as per the US Constitution, no matter how big the rancor of the politics was. True, there was talk of election cheating back in '60, probably correct, and the ctrl-left got even better at it over the years. However, even had a Dukakis or a Mondale gotten in office, I didn't see that as being a country-changing thing, at least in the short run. Of course, as with Johnson, policies from the ctrl-left had long-term ruinous consequences, but there was hope that it could be stopped and reversed via the normal political process.****
American elections had been going on fairly smoothly, with no major changes in their immediate aftermaths - there was that trouble in 1860*****, a few guys were shot to death and that - for right about 200 years! This was indeed something to be proud of. Well-intentioned people like Jimmah figured we needed to spread this expertise on fair and violence-free elections (and their aftermaths) around the world.
Perhaps if you were one of the 95% poor peons down there in the Banana Republics, the results of said elections wouldn't change too much, unless the place went full-on Commie for too long, as in Cuba and later Venezuela. However, the politics and the government itself were subject to big changes come election day. It wasn't just another guy administering the government.
What was the norm 4 decades ago in the Banana Republics is now the norm here in America in the present decade. One might go back to '16 and remember how the ctrl-left behaved after the UNPOSSIBLE! happened. (Unpossible, as in a non-UniParty candidate was elected, somehow!) By '20, much of the right had rightly lost faith in the election process. We realize now that rather than send anybody to Central America, WE need a guy like a Jaime Cartero out of Argentina to arrange for monitoring of US elections UP HERE.
There's more to the current state of affairs than the cheating. After some questioning, protesting, and peaceful rioting about the '20 election, the ctrl-left "winners" have taken over a thousand Political Prisoners. (This sounds very Banana Republican.) The ctrl-left has been trying to normalize and expand the cheating process. They've been personalizing the law to persecute the candidate of The Right. (This ALSO sounds very Banana Republican.) Is it time to bring back the term "Junta" to be used to describe the Potomac Regime here? Face it, we're really gonna need to learn how to pronounce that one!
I don't understand the Black Swan hullabaloo about the coming total solar eclipse. (We really enjoyed the '17 one.) The coming Presidential election, on November 5th of this year, is another story. I will be surprised if there is NOT some big trouble in the aftermath. Peak Stupidity is not a prepper site, per se, but let's say I've been reading those type sites regularly lately. Here we are in the 2020s, and America has finally become 1980s Latin America, in which elections have upheaval-of-society style consequences. That's what Peak Stupidity expects anyway. Read us in early '25. We'll be happy to have been wrong.
* I could have picked a decade later, possibly, and definitely any decade earlier since the 1860s, but I was aware and remember the 1980s.
** It's not pronounced like the name of Dark Brandon's crack-head son without the "r", but that's the best I can do.
*** Yeah, I know, some of the time, "fair" meant an election that got OUR guy elected.
**** I pin down my realization that the normal political process would not save us to 1995 - see When did the Feral Government get OUT OF CONTROL?
***** Really, the election result itself did NOT directly affect the near future unpleasantness - it was the refusal of the new President Lincoln to get Federal troops out of S. Carolina territory that was the spark.
Comments (8)
Caitlin Clark: You go, grrrll!
Posted On: Thursday - April 4th 2024 5:59PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Race/Genetics Female Stupidity Bread and Circuses
Look, I don't care how many times the internet wants to throw some name from the latest in Infotainment at me, I'm not going to make any effort to care. I'd seen this name Caitlin Somebody a number of times over the last few weeks. It couldn't be Bruce Jenner, the guy from the Wheaties box, could it? Nah, but because of that dude alone, I think of Caitlin now as the name of a transsexual from, well, it sounds like some leafy neighborhood in Trans-sexual Transylvania.
Caitlin used to be a name that brought up a very cute girl in my mind, likely because the first Caitlin I ever saw was cute. (That's not to say I remember who it might have been. Anyway, the name wasn't around when I was young.) But, it's not Bruce Jenner the media has been talking about, and I finally did find out who this was, just today - see the image above. Ahhh, women's basketball. No wonder I'd never heard of her and didn't particularly want to.
Here's the Gateway Pundit article* that goes with the picture above: Lib Journalist Throws Race Tantrum Over Caitlin Clark’s Success, Furious About Coverage Compared to Black Players. Oh, now this may be interesting after all.
I didn't need to find out who that Lib journalist is and what kind of tantrum he or she** threw. That is some of the Gateway Pundit National Enquirer-style nonsense that I try to avoid - "Mr. ABC says this - social media ERUPTS!" Sorry, but that's not a story. The story is that White basketball player Caitlin Clarke has apparently garnered lots of attention and brought many new fans to enjoy(?) women's basketball. It's possible that women's basketball fandom could even reach outside of the lesbian market.
They aren't reaching your Peak Stupidity blogger though. If I cared the least about basketball enough to watch it on TV to begin with, I surely would want to see the very best players, who would be men. Back to the genderbender business for a bit, I notice that transgenders who think they are men aren't well represented in men's sports. That's odd.
That, in turn, brings up the point that this sport WOULD reach more men were it played by hot women wearing bikinis. That's probably the only way. (At least someone in the volleyball sector read the freaking memo!) If not bikinis, well, see, I can't tell if it's that this Caitlin Clarke doesn't look like a goon that has her attracting the attention. One can't tell everything from the picture above - the uniform purchasing department might want to go on a college campus to consider shorts that are more butt-cheek adjacent.
Here is Johnathan Jone's take:
If you guessed Hill’s indignation was in any way related to Clark’s skin pigmentation, then you’ve been paying attention to sports media.She IS overshadowing Black! athletes. It IS likely that she's "leading women's basketball to new heights" because she is White and prettier than what I think of as a women basketball player. Mr. Jones seems to be a "Democrats are the Real Racists" adherent. Now, this Hill character is given equal time, per the Stupidity Fairness Act:
Hill, a social justice warrior posing as a journalist and who currently writes for The Atlantic, ranted in an interview with Uproxx this past week that Clark is overshadowing black athletes.
Per Hill, Clark is leading women’s basketball to new heights because she is white and she is not solely responsible for elevating basketball for women.
Everything about this sport has been trending up for years now. It did not just start with Caitlin Clark, but they’re treating it like it did,” she said of sports media.Uhhh, no, there's no proof these new spectators enjoy the sport. Remember, hot women in bikinis! We know why they're coming out, to support a White woman in a world of blackety-black. Caitlin is the Great White Hope, as if anybody has hopes about women's basketball other than... in meeting a fellow carpet-m ... [Censored
She added, “And so it’s already creating a false narrative that is doing the public a disservice.”
The raving racist continued: [DRR!]
“If you look at WNBA ratings or women’s college basketball ratings, they have been exploding for at least the last seven to (10) years — or I would even say five to seven if you want a shorter window. And so, it’s been proven that people really enjoy the sport.
Race is THE STORY here. Anarcho-tyranny has put the average White person in a position of no power and not many options. One option he's still got is to spend his money per his politics. That's obviously what's been going on with this Caitlin Clarke story. As for these 2 clowns discussing the story, I suppose it shouldn't be unexpected in this age of near-Peak Stupidity for both of them to be wrong.
* This article is originally from one Johnathan Jones of The Western Journal.
** The name happens to start the first sentence of the article, but then it's "Far-left former ESPN host Jemele Hill". What is a Jemele, or is it NOT OK to ask that?
Comments (12)
Oh say, does that blue and yellow banner yet wave...?
Posted On: Wednesday - April 3rd 2024 6:28PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity The Neocons
"... o'er the yard with all the leaves, and the home of some stupid broad?"
See the post-postscript for the explanation of why this post is "about nothing" first, but anyway, this post describes a bit of a coincidence.
It's been over 2 years since this Russia/Ukraine war because a the next Infotainment and the next big cause for the American Neocons. I can remember seeing the blue and yellow flags all over the place on St. Patrick's Day in '22, including on many of the parade vehicles. Plenty of neighbors had the flags flying o'er their yards for a year or so, but one nearby has been a real stalwart - perhaps she'll be the subject of a Francis Scott Keylenski song.
If they're trying to start WWIII with this, that IS a big story, I guess THE big story. Otherwise, Peak Stupidity has stayed out of this and noted occasionally that America should be staying out of this. I'm with MTG on this, along with about everything else!
The coincidence is that I had just written in the postscript of this post yesterday the following: "...and the Ukraine flags flying in American neighborhoods, with most of the latter down now besides one nearby. " That's the one in question. I looked this afternoon, and her flag was NOT still there! This was the first time I looked and didn't see it, but it could have been down a week or two, max. Did the Ukraine surrender? Did this lefty neighbor surrender to the comments from other neighbors that "Yeah, OK, you've done your part. Stop. This is getting stupid."?
It might have just blown down because it's been pretty windy. The answer to your question, Francis Scott Keylenski is that NO, flying or not, it doesn't fly o'er the yards of the free or the homes of the brave. It flies o'er the yards of the Totalitarians and the homes of the stupid.
PS: Sorry about the commercials you've got to skip through (5 sec each) on rumble. I don't know how to get rid of that. At least they've got this whole interview up.
PPS: I had a much better post in mind for the evening, to be named "Geography for Preppers". Yet, my browser lost the tab with the interesting article*, and I've spent over an hour searching for that article. It had a series of US county base maps and progressive weeding out of counties that are not prepper country. I'm pissed about this, because it would be a good post, and I wanted to look it over some more. Finding exact stuff on the internet without some exact wording is HARD!
* Yes, I checked the history, tried to get it to tab-complete-me, etc. No joy.
Comments (5)