Timmah! Timmah! Livin' the Lie.
Posted On: Wednesday - October 9th 2024 1:25PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 General Stupidity Humor
As I wrote in that last - previous, not LAST last - post, a few memes ought to be OK. I haven't seen anyone make this connection, which comes from the TV cartoon show South Park.
What I have seen is the point made that the ctrl-left Presidential candidates do seem to all go along with the idea that the President must pick a VP too stupid to out-stage him, hence someone dumber. This process is politically dysgenic, as if these people weren't already inherently missing a few key genes.
Øb☭ma, no genius himself, picked the dumber Zhou Bai Dien
Bai Dien picked the even dumber Kamala Kamelion.
Kamala picked the even dumber (see above) (Tampon) Timmah! Walz.
My son asked me what's next. "Simple. It's 'tardles all the way down."
Comments (4)
A long goodbye
Posted On: Thursday - September 5th 2024 5:22AM MST
In Topics: Commies General Stupidity Websites Humor Global Financial Stupidity The Future Bible/Religion Healthcare Stupidity Inflation Guns Totalitarianism Karmakarma Kameleon
I've been putting off this post for a couple of days. Normally Peak Stupidity has been known, at least by me, to have posts with overly long introductions. This time I'll get to the point right away, with details after that.
I'll have to quit writing here. It may be for good, but, the way I think I'll miss it, perhaps it'll be a hiatus only. This is not due to my being tired of documenting stupidity but due to a promise I made. I made a promise to God, well Jesus in particular. The deadline was end-o-August-bidness-month.
Why? Well, see, over a decade ago I had a major health problem that I'd gotten fixed. There were and are no guarantees though, and last month I felt the symptoms coming back just as they felt years ago. I'm not sure this could have been fixed this time around either.
Readers know that Peak Stupidity only touches the subject of religion lightly, but I'll state here that I prayed about this problem and promised I'd lay off things that distracted me from appreciating life itself. (More on this re: the blog shortly.) I then recovered from this problem miraculously within a couple of weeks. I kid you not, it was from as bad as it was right before I got treated years ago to back to normal. Note that there were no doctors involved in any of this recent deal, but this is the kind of thing I can measure very easily. Feels good, man! I need to STAY thankful
You'd think this post would be unnecessary, and I should keep on keeping on, blogging.
Why is this blog a problem for me to continue, to where I must unburden myself from the posts that might have been... cackle, cackle... -[Please stop! - Executive Editor]? It's not that I spend any effort finding stupidity to write about. I have at least 10 in mind since I passed my deadline, exasperatingly. It's not the writing. It's the keeping up with the world's, and more particularly, America's, problems in order to write posts on stupidity that is somewhat current. Were I to stick to the Curmudgeonry stuff, (see the very 1st post*), of which there is plenty to be found to post on, the reader would be bored in no time. I don't want to come across as a literary Abe Simpson.
I WANT to keep up with the stupidity, as it WILL be coming to a head soon. (As I stated in a humorous fashion on our "About" page, the Financial Stupidity will be the first to peak, hopefully putting the kibosh on much of the rest of it.) It's stressful to keep up with the politics though.
I may have mentioned that I've been following American politics since early on. My Dad, a true Conservative, used to have us watch the 6:30P national news during dinner. (A post on the sheer boredom of the Summer of Watergate (hearings) right at half a century ago was to be coming.**) There was about one decade in there in which I had enough going on but also didn't feel any necessity to keep up with the politics. That was nice. In the long-ago post When did the Feral Government get OUT OF CONTROL? (Part 2)***, I pinned down the year I realized things were headed inexorably in the wrong direction to 1995.
Therefore, that's been almost 30 years now since I've been continuously paying attention to all this. One reason to keep paying attention is that, whether it'll be a real SHTF situation or not, we need to get ready for the near future. However, I've got to let it go for now. I will not be able to quit reading political sites on the web completely, but I'll try my best to get out of this world and think differently.
This is difficult. From the small but great group of commenters here, I know people enjoy reading. It's been steady for some years - my marketing methods slim (don't want to explain this right now - maybe later) to none - but the steady 3-5 thousand unique visitors, 8-15 thousand visits, and 30-45 thousand page views monthly mean that there are lots more people who like reading here. (Some of the visits and page views may solitary hits, but, from what I've seen with referrals and such, I believe most are by regulars.)
I wanted to have a lot more fun with Kameleon and her Commie 1st mate, Mr. Walz. Whatever I can do for the election would make me feel better, such as writing here****. Of those 10 or more new posts already in mind, 3 might have been Curmudgeonry ones, 3 or 4 on current political stupidity, and the rest general polemic rants. Examples:
1) Is some of the retail decay due to about everything moving on-line, and can one get used to buying that way? I cannot see how it's better. (I was glad just to find a female-to-female coax connector - would have been easy 10 years ago.)
2) I got off the Gateway Pundit after only 1/2 a year due to this, but it's ubiquitous. There are articles all over the web telling us that so-and-so "destroyed" so-and-so, like this is big news, but it was all nothing but TV talking-head talks or clever tweets. (That'll show 'em! Now, the problem is fix ... uhhhh.) Talk is not action. Young people don't seem to get this.
Well, there's no point if I'm not going to write them, but more of this keeps coming to mind. The reason Peak Stupidity had a dozen posts last week is just this: More than half were posts I'd been meaning to write for a while - this list is long - and others popped up, and, hey, it's nice I have a place to rant about it all.
I regret not having gotten to the gist of my reasoning that, African caveat notwithstanding, the fertility "crisis" is not a crisis. It's something that would (were there REAL borders around our lands) solve itself and produce a better equilibrium of population very nicely. This opinion seems to be contrary to that of most pundits. Next, I wanted to review Strauss & Howe's 2 books (they really go together) Generations and The Fourth Turning. Then there were the posts in mind regarding party election results over the last 100 years. For 6 or 7 years now, I've meant to write about Biblical references in Grateful Dead lyrics. There's loads more I'm forgetting at the moment, including thousands of good songs that ought to have been on the site.
I don't like this at all, but a deal is indeed a deal, especially with this guy. Let me paste in a few items that would have been posts, for the road, and afterwards I'll write something about the fate of this site.
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I was responsible for arranging the Customs & Immigration inspection for a small plane arriving into Victoria, BC, Canada*****. Before the internet was big, the phone-based system was called CanPass. The lady on the other end sounded nice. I gave her the full names and birth dates of the passengers. Then, the conversation went this way (exact phrasing):
"OK, do you have any tobacco?"
"No."
"Do you have any alcohol?"
"No."
"Do you have any guns?"
"Oh yeah, I have a lot of guns... but I won't bring any to Canada."
You'd think I'd proclaimed full-out Jihad against the City of Victoria there. She went on and on! I made it clear that, no, I wouldn't bring any guns, so what's the problem?
Keep in mind, as per our post Build the Wall! Employ assholes in the Customs Hall!, it's the immigration people that should be tough. I guess this lady was both that and customs together. This went on until "Hey, look, you're running me out of my roaming minutes." (If you don't understand that, you're a younger reader or maybe you're Ted Kaczynski.)
When we arrived in Victoria, there she met us - I assumed it was the same lady - to start searching all over the plane. She was looking back behind a bulkhead where cables and the battery are. Finally, I said, "Listen, we've got guns in America because we're a free country, OK?" "Hey Canada's a free country too!" "Whatever, we gotta go to dinner." That was about it for the evening with Miss Victoria Customs and Immigration.
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After most of a decade of being sick of the site, due to on-screen advertising mayhem, I've been reading ZeroHedge fairly frequently, for about a month. ZH linked to the CNBC article with the headline shown above.
I'm not really into the ZeroHedge type writing about "the quarterly conference call didn't go well" and "they missed on these targets", etc. I don't need that. When I see that Dollar store customers are "financially constrained", well, if I were a finance man, working in one of those tall buildings in which the windows still open... there'd be no small chance I'd resemble a Head East album title when found in the morning.
I mean, I remember a decade ago on ZH that either Mr. "Durden" or his commenters noted that the dollar stores are for Americans who can't afford to go to Wal-Mart. In fact, Dollar General customers see Wal-Mart as Target customers see Neiman Marcus. They get dressed up special to go to Wal-Mart, as has been well documented.
How financially constrained must one be to have been cutting back on trips to Dollar General? A lot, and that goes for a lot of Americans!
Somewhat related, I just today received a piece of junk mail that said on the outside "SURVIVING RETIREMENT". Uhhh, no, I hate to be the one to break it to you, but it doesn't work like that.
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This O/T ZeroHedge comment gave me a good laugh. It's fitting, what with Inflation being one our niche topics here. By one AsAbove, it appeared under an article of a few days ago, "Not The Type Of Character You Want" In High Office - Tim Walz's Brother Slams VP Candidate.
Inflation is already so bad that...Thank you, thank you. They'll be there all week. Sadly, I gotta quit for some time....
How bad is it?! [my addition there]
My neighbor got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.
CEOs are now playing miniature golf.
Exxon-Mobil laid off 25 Congressmen.
I saw a Mormon with only one wife.
McDonald's is selling the 1/4 ouncer.
Angelina Jolie adopted a child from America.
Parents in Beverly Hills fired their nannies and learned their children's names.
A truckload of Americans was caught sneaking into Mexico.
A picture is now only worth 200 words.
When Bill and Hillary travel together, they now have to share a room.
The Treasure Island casino in Las Vegas is now managed by Somali pirates.
Called to get Blue Book Value on my car. They asked if the gas tank was full or empty.
I was so depressed last night thinking about the economy, wars, jobs, my savings, Social Security, retirement funds, etc, I called the Suicide Hotline. I got a call center in Afghanistan, and when I told them I was suicidal, they got all excited, and asked if I could drive a truck.
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OK, look, it's been a great ride, on the ramp up to Peak Stupidity. The "fun" part of this coaster is to come.
As per my writing above, I didn't stop posting just now due to a well-defined peak in stupidity that would obviate the need for PeakStupidity.com. However, you've seen the piece of work shown here on video. They, the Regime Establishment, that would be, do try hard to keep her from being required (for some odd reason) to open her mouth.
Shit happens though. Look, Affirmative Action, as wrong as it is, was based on good intentions. While screwing the White man, it did help lift up some Black! folk here and there. This allegedly-Black! lady shown below has received WAY WAY too big a dose of the D.I.E. initiative that is AA on steroids. I could see if she'd gotten up to lead of the Title Renewal Dept., maybe even at the big office in downtown San Francisco, albeit, that would still be a stretch.
This is 1 of 2 of the major candidates for the US Presidential election of 2024 though. Look at this, and tell me we are not very very close to Peak Stupidity:
We just gotta be! Even scientific notation won't cover it now.
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Let's get serious in this section. If I don't get back on here, I hope everyone else does not need any advice from me on how to get ready for what's coming. I'm not the best prepper in the world, but we are getting better (the family). I would have also liked to have reported on Uruguay and another location, but then, I really think we'll make our stand here. We've got our own shooting range, something that would be probably impossible most other countries in the world. It's time to get more self-sufficient, especially financially.
People have a reason to scoff at Americans and their 25 y/o keyboard warrior cries of "MOLON LABE!" For example, nothing much has happened after thousands of Political Prisoners have been taken. However, I think Americans will get their 2nd-Amendment footings when both things get financially worse and Totalitarianism gets even more in our faces. Our enemies in/from the Regime are no longer concerned that we may see them as Communists, Globalist, Orwellian Totalitarians, or some combination thereof. They think they have us licked. I believe they will be proven wrong.
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Within a few months, some money will be due - the hosting costs much more than the URL (yeah, a rip-off at this point, IMO), but I'm pretty sure I'll renew to keep the site up. Perhaps I'll put up a meme now and then. When one comes to you, you can't just waste it, right?
I thank all of the regular Peak Stupidity readers. It's been over 7 1/2 years (cranked up just after Thanksgiving of '16). It's made me happy to know I've informed, but hopefully at least entertained, a few thousand people regularly. I want to thank the regular commenters above and beyond that for letting me see this in writing.
These are in generally an order of posting frequency:
Adam Smith
The Alarmist
Hail
MBlanc46
Dieter Kief
M
J1234
Possumman
Old Soldier
Ganderson
Bill H.
Mr. Anon
Robert
70sTarheel
SafeNow
Fred the Gator
Rex Little
Al Corrupt
Sam J
PeterIke
Stretch23
Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
usNthem
Jack Russell
CloudBuster
Tim Berline
Buck Turgidson
Dtbb
KnownFact
RadicalCenter
Bern Car (he goes WAY back - the 1st regular commenter other than "Moderator" - me.)
I may have missed a few very irregular commenters (sorry - there's medicine for that), but anyway, thank you so much for composing a great comment section!
What about the Peak Stupidity Book Club that Adam Smith has been so helpful with (along with lots of other help to me and other commenters)? It wouldn't be hard for me to at least get the posts under that "name" and put the book titles and URLs in a table. I may still do that.
The site will stay up for a good long while. It won't be current, but for anyone who wants to read, we've got 3129 posts, including this one. New readers, click on "Topic Keys", find a few you might like, and you could be here for hours on end. Enjoy!
Whewwww! Heckuva post there, but I didn't want this to end. We'll see.
PS: [Added 09/06] Also, thanks to all the readers over the years for putting up the workings, and lacks-thereof, of this site. That there's no search feature is probably the worst, but also the need for scrolling, and the "keep it simple but stupid(?)" comment area. I could see where new readers might have just clicked on away immediately - I would do the same, probably. I explained more here very recently. If I were to get back, a big revamp of the software would have to come first. Anyway, again, goodbye and good wishes!
* BTW, I am even more certain at this point that, no, it's not that I'm a curmudgeon by the common definition, just sick of new stuff. New stuff is really getting stupider by the version.
** My Dad was great in keeping us off the TV until well into our teens. That early-on Summer of
*** Part 1
**** To keep my writing skills up, at least I've got about 8 Donald Trump, Lara Trump, and RN Committee junk mailings with their postage-paid envelopes, and I'm having fun composing letters telling them all what Trump better do if he wants a red cent from me - I think I'll be keeping that extra cash, the way it's been going. I'd have loved to publish these here too!
***** To clear up possible confusion here, that small city is on Vancouver Island, to the west, but mostly south, across the water from the mainland of British Columbia, where the big city of
Comments (56)
The People's Revolt of ... when, exactly?
Posted On: Saturday - August 31st 2024 8:00PM MST
In Topics: The Future Anarcho-tyranny People's Revolt
Peak Stupidity had added the topic key People's Revolt of '22 in February of that year. We thought the Canadian trucker's strike against mandatory gene therapy "vaccinations" would be the spark that ignited a whole lot more. Well, we can't be right all the time, or even close, so the topic key was changed to simply "People's Revolt" to cover more later on.
The anti-Globalist run Population Replacement Programme has finally resulted in a spot of revolting there in the UK. We were pretty excited about the rioting, but either it has tailed off or the media has suppressed it enough to make us think that (you never know). It's a real shame the sparks that have been finally igniting active anger in the population have had to involve murders* of Europeans, including little children.
It's an old story already, but it was a Syrian in this case, who stabbed to death 3 Germans at, of all things, a Diversity Festival, in the city of Solingen. First of all, it's a shame that the Germans are forced to use D.I.E. as an excuse for drinking lots of good beer, eating bratwurst, and admiring busty Frauleins when they should have been celebrating the 600-odd year anniversary of that German city. To add to the tragic irony, though, Solingen is known to be a center of quality knife manufacturing. The push now is to ban knives... rather than the more obvious and wiser solution, banning Syrians.
I don't know what mayhem patriotic Germans will start from this spark - maybe there'll be nothing. With the exception of a very few places (Denmark?), the Globalists running Western European lands these days have clamped down hard on the remaining Europeans to keep them from objecting to their replacement. As much as our US Constitution is treated like an old parking ticket these days, there are those of us here who still remember the reasons for Amendment I (and II). Euro Globalists don't need to even give lip service to such a thing.
Just to show yet again the Anarcho-Tyranny of it all ("Two-tier policing" is the British watered-down term), here's info from one Peter Lloyd about the annual Notting Hill Carnival of violent Caribbean imports:
Final #NottingHillCarnival stats:Were the instigators of, HELL, an acid attack even!, White people, they'd have been hauled off within the day for multi-decade prison sentences.
320 arrests
5 stabbings
1 acid attack
2 in life-threatening condition
35 police injured
67 knife arrests
12 sex assaults
94 drug offenses
47 emergency workers attacks
Yet no condemnation from @UKLabour ‘cos it’s a black event. #TwoTierKeir
The Totalitarianism is total now, and the Orwellianism is, whoosh, flying right past the book. I just imagine myself, or anyone, opening some novel in the 1970s that predicted the evil that European governments (and, yes, the American Feral gov't too) were up to in the far-off 2020s. I'd have thought it kind of unimaginable but made a mental note that we sure shouldn't ever let it get nearly THAT far. We're there now. Free speech, one of the most basic freedoms is under attack everywhere.
After the British riots a few weeks back, a UK Police Commissioner threatened to extradite people in foreign countries for anti-Regime-policy speech violations. I think he may even be including Americans... but didn't we fight a war about this sort of thing a quarter millennium ago?
To paraphrase and butcher out of context a famous line from the movie Gallipoli:
We will come after you.
Not if we come after you first.
See, this is the way it's going. Globalist scum are pushing the White man into a corner. Maybe they've never done this to a raccoon and seen what happens. They may be positive that they will lock down the world into a tower-of-Babel-like middle-classless Latin American style oligarchy before we can fight.
The boiling frog method has been working pretty well. Here in America, we are still a little too prosperous to fight over "slight" sleights. A thousand people in jail for doing things that wouldn't have gotten BLM thug looters and antifa arsonists a day in prison, well, we try to rationalize... they shouldn't have broken stuff, so... well, yeah, a bunch of them in jail were just there, but don't be around when other people are breaking some stuff and trespassing. Next time, we have to be more polite ...
How long will it be before there are enough people that realize, OK, so you'll come after me for just speaking or standing around? I may as well do a whole lot more than that, if it's all the same to you. All that's missing right now is the momentum.
Here, I was hoping that Federalism might prove to be the answer. My State may tell the Feds to piss up a rope. Some violence may occur but nothing like that from a real civil war**. It could be terrible, but that may still be better than the result of doing nothing.
Well, that was a deep dark post for end-o-blogweek, but I'll explain why next week. In the meantime, we should keep Alex Solzhenitsyn's words in mind:
And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat.
Good night, Peakers. Sleep tight... after this??
* ... and thousands of rapes too, especially when you tally up Rotherham. Beyond that atrocity, generally it's an ongoing series of violence that has changed Western Europe from the reasonably safe place it had been.
** There are the ideological points too regarding the name of the "late unpleasantness" of the first half of the 1860's, but one reason people like "War Between the States" as opposed to "Civil War", is that the former is a better description.
Comments (9)
Running out of Competent Old White Guys
Posted On: Saturday - August 31st 2024 5:51AM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Curmudgeonry The Future Customer Care
Cow-g's, pronounced "coe gees"? There are competent young White guys and competent Oriental guys too, but they are not as big in numbers as the contingent that is going away.
It won't be so easy to get your car fixed by a "shade-tree" non-dealer (@ $200/hr) mechanic or find a plumber who does the job right. I refer the reader here to the great 1980s movie Brazil. (It's not that Brazil.) This increasing incompetence is just one of the costs of the Population Replacement Programme. For some of us, there's no getting used to this.
Our mailman retired last Christmas.* He was an Oriental guy - been on this route through our neighborhood and to our house for 20 years. Lately I've seen a new guy who walks half the speed as the previous postman. The new diverse guy or lady - hard to tell because
The late water bill deal was interesting. The 1st time I went in was when the bill just arrived on the due date. Then, another time, they never got my payment, so this was more about the outgoing mail problem. The office is not that far, so I've been twice to pay bills in person. (I know, I should probably get on-line but ... probably won't). The lady in the water dept. office was quite aware of the mail problems. The 2nd time around I did mention that "well, the other outgoing bill I left there the same day DID make it, so... maybe you've got problems here." Diversity is everywhere, so it's a tough call.
I now consider outgoing mail service unreliable, so anything half-way important goes to the local P.O. when I'm on the way somewhere.
A missing bank statement - gotta reconcile the transactions - prompted me to go to a new bank branch I'd never been in. This place has the thick - I'd say 1 1/4" - plexiglas all over, unlike the wide open usual place. The black lady behind all that seemed distracted and possibly worthless at first, but she turned out pretty competent in getting me a couple of months worth of printouts.
I explained to her that I needed this because our mailman had retired and "the mail sucks now". I couldn't help myself: "You know, affirmative action and all..." I don't have any idea how that went back and forth through the 1 1/4" plexiglas!
PS: I imagine this is part of the reason that people go online for their transactions and lots else now. Then too, software is getting diversified too. I've seen this - we've all seen this. See the picture above? My auto mechanic friend orders on-line a lot and has been getting too many wrong parts lately. Is it software, the data itself that's been entered wrong, or the people who pull the parts off the shelves? It's incompetence any which way.
* He told me he was retiring early due to the extra load of the Amazon packages, which he didn't sign up for when he started this as a young man. Their blue-gray vans used to come into this area but don't now.
Comments (9)
No longer the time for a peacetime consigliere?
Posted On: Friday - August 30th 2024 8:29PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music Movies Pundits The Future Bible/Religion
After our post SO WHAT, if you're right! and this one, we'll lay off one of favorite writer/pundits, Mr. Steve Sailer. We do think a whole lot of him, and yes, he has been right on the many topics in his wheelhouse.
Mr. Sailer likes the movies. IMHO, he thinks too much of the Hollywood people (everyone is a good person, right?) and the "industry", but then he does live in Los Angeles. Peak Stupidity readers will know that we have disdain for most of that, but then... why do we quote so many movie lines in posts, often to the point of being inside jokes? The reason is that we like OLD movies. I think of a thick band, maybe as wide as from the late 1980s to the late '90s, that separates the ones we appreciate from the ones we detest.
On this side of that line are movies almost all of which have PC, now woke, aspects, often entire agendas of the plot, whether intentional or just part of "the business" nowadays.*. I've turned them off 2 minutes into them to as long as an hour in. Enough is enough. On the other side of that line are movies that can be enjoyed with no worries about blood-pressure-raising agendas. I think of funny John Hughes movies - man, you could do whatever you wanted!
Going back way, way on the other side of that line, we'd get to The Godfather and its sequels. I liked these a lot more long after I saw them on TV when I was young. I imagine Mr. Sailer likes these ones too.
The guy on the right up top is the Godfather movie character Tom Hayden. He's not Italian, having been adopted by the Corleone family, and has been the family lawyer and consigliere, Italian for a close advisor, through the 1st movie or so. He's a calm, reasonable, rational, civil guy like the guy on the left up top. However, in the movie things get rough for the Corleones. At one point, Sonny tells him that he is just not a good wartime consigliere, before Sonny gets shot by about 100 rounds of Tommy gun fire at a New Jersey toll booth. (There's something to say for those e-passes, I suppose...) Later on, Michael, who has taken over for his Dad Vito, also tells Mr. Hayden that he's been a good peacetime consigliere. At this point, they need a wartime consigliere.
This is the analogy I am making with Steve Sailer. He's been not the only, by any means, but a great consigliere to American Conservatives who have been losing a mostly non-violent fight to the ctrl-left, Globalist, Commies for half a century. Mr. Sailer has advised us how we got here, what coalition is arrayed against us, how to argue our case, and even how to think about it all.
The problem is, unfortunately, this fight will not stay peaceful, as in non-violent. The other side will not let us make a bit of headway peacefully. If it hasn't dawned on everyone yet, a thousand Political Prisoners being held for years in Washington dungeons for a protest against obvious election fraud, the complete negation of the rule of law regarding the selection of the Regime candidate, while the anti-Regime candidate has been persecuted with lawfare, and an on-going major onslaught against free speech ought to clue the rest in. President John Kennedy said:
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable."I can't see where he was wrong in that.
Very soon, patriotic Conservatives will need to heed more advice from the Alex Joneses, the Tommy Robinsons (of America), and others who've already been put through the ringer by the Regime. People like Kyle Rittenhouse, a true hero, must be emulated. We need more Dwight Schrutes and fewer Jim Halperts. A peacetime consigliere cannot understand the fire in the belly of the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, the Matt Gaetzes**, or, as an example for now, those British rioters.
At the end of Mr. Sailer's interview by Tucker Carlson interview Tucker praised him for not being one of those obvious "haters". Indeed, Mr. Sailer does not come across that way. He sees the good in everyone, whether it's there or not. I'm sure he feels good about that. That's a Christian attitude, though Mr. Sailer is not one. However, "Hate the sin, not the sinner" cannot be found within the Bible, as much as it is a well-worn phrase out of modern preachers. There IS evil in the world, and the hating of the evil ones is correct at the top level, at least, Beelzebubba and his minions. A wartime consigliere must see the evil out there and advise accordingly. It's time to listen to those who have their eyes wide open and understand that the ctrl-left who completely own the Establishment and the Regime really want us all dead in ditches.
If nothing else we should listen more to the off-the-grid homeschooling (or non-government-schooling) crowd and the preppers of all sorts. If we're not going to be in the midst of the coming fight, we don't want to be caught in the maelstrom.
Though I've thought about it for 10-15 years, I don't relish what's coming. We've got to be honest with ourselves though. Americans have had it so good for so long, most can't imagine that things that have happened in the rest of the world in recent history could happen here. We need a wartime consigliere.
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around.
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey.
I ain't got time for that now.
* I'm not even mentioning here another "feature", no pun intended, of the newer movies, which is the lack of creativity and novelty. From the titles I hear about, I mean, c'mon guys, whaddya' need a refresher film course - It's all sequels and prequels nowadays! (See?)
** I can't be sure, but I don't think Mr. Sailer thinks much of these types. Are they too lowbrow? They do tend to get into more conspiracy theories than are factual on occasion, is a slight criticism of mine.
Comments (10)
Remember the days when dropping a tranny wasn’t a hate crime ?
Posted On: Friday - August 30th 2024 11:25AM MST
In Topics: Political Correctness Cars Bread and Circuses
Before commenter Alarmist chimed in, the original title was Get woke, blow a tranny, go broke. Anyway that wasn't what you might have thought. Our post titles can sometimes be misleading.
My wife wanted us to take a trip to Disney Land, World, whatever, about 8 years ago. Our boy was the right age, so you just gotta go, right, as an American? No. I was adamant. "Screw that. You two can go. I'm staying home!" At that point, Disney's woke stupidity was not something I was completely aware of, so it wasn't that.
I'd been a few times, all on free tickets from work and that. You stand around most of the day in lines. The junk food costs a lot. After decades of inflation, even 8 years ago, I could not make any kind of estimate from when I'd been there, so I just figured, without transportation, for 2 days we were talking something approaching 1,000 bucks.
Why, then? If you really like rides that would make me puke my guts out now, there's a place 100 miles down the road that has steep hairy rides galore. (In our teenage years, my brother and I found a way to get off the roller-coaster a different way and went on it 27 times in a row. You pay by the day. Getcher' money's worth!!)
Our family trip to Disney didn't happen. My wife got wise to the woke world around her by the years '17 to '20 (the PanicFest really did a number on her).
Lately, we've been acquainted with a Christian family with 3 girls, for whom my wife helped find a rental house.. My friend is the landlord - that helped - and he is also a, and now THEIR - car mechanic... it's a van actually.
I was really surprised when, in this day and age of blatantly anti-White, anti-Christian Woke Disney, this Dad told my friend that the family was heading to Disney World (Land! Whatever!) Oh, and just before that, he'd arranged a $100/month reduction in rent for the 2nd year because decent people are hard to keep, the only reason too.
Hey, it's his money, and it's officially part of the American Bread & Circuses. I wouldn't have brought up this stupidity even if I'd run into him - it's not quite my business. Still! WTH, man? Why would you, on an obviously tight budget, put out a couple of thousand to support those who hate your kind? Plus, the steep, hairy roller coasters are right down the road!
Going back a bit, my friend did what he could to the family's Honda van's transmission a year or so ago, getting it to shift better, but he'd told the guy that these were a bad bunch of trannies (on the car, not at the theme park), and it'd probably been failing already when the man bought it used as a "good deal". He was driving on borrowed time.
Well, there ya' go! The family could get away with driving literally (which I literally mean) 10-20 miles a week, because they are very close to work and school*. But their trip to visit Woke Mouse Land was a whole lot longer than that - a year or two's worth of very easygoing driving. They got woke, blew the tranny, and are now (kinda) broke. A new tranny will be about $3,500. (The van is in otherwise decent shape, to that's the plan.)
Those slogans Conservatives use - take them seriously, people.
PS: It's not just this guy... well, obviously, or the place might be broke itself. I've run into families on airline flights - Conservative from the looks of them and any remarks out of them - yet, they just gotta participate in the Bread & Circuses... Oh, but they voted, so, it's all good ...
* Hence, the rental of my friend's place specifically.
Comments (15)
SO WHAT, if you're right!
Posted On: Thursday - August 29th 2024 7:25PM MST
In Topics: Commies Genderbenders General Stupidity Feminism Pundits Globalists Race/Genetics Female Stupidity
This post has been a long time coming. The reader will see that Peak Stupidity respects pundit Steve Sailer's work immensely - he's probably mentioned in 2 to 4 hundred of our > 3,100 posts.*. This and the next post on the subject must be said, though. It's all about one major point that, in my opinion, he misses with all his writing.
Our title today comes from one of Mr. Sailer's biggest lines lately (of many). The Afterword of his book Noticing has the title What if I'm right?. That was also the title of his 2nd, goodbye speech at the VDare conference this year.** In addition, Mr. Sailer didn't use that phrase explicitly at the conclusion of his interview by Tucker Carlson, but he talked along these lines at the ending. I'll paste in this part of the transcript, doctored up to show the one speaker only, Mr. Sailer:
Steve Sailer: We we live with it every day in sports that there are racial differences and performance on average. And nobody cares that much... and you know, God bless them.What if he's right? We just go back to normal, as if it's 1985 (or as iSteve would like even better, 1970 Los Angeles)... with some different people... a lot of ... very different people.
We love sports. So yeah, there are... there is hope for the country that we can go back.
Mr. Sailer has covered hundreds of American social trends and much social history, with a dozen or more specialties, and generally*** he's just plain right. He knows he's right, I know he's right too, and all his readers, admitted ones or not, know he's right. His oft-used summary question though is "What if I'm right?" In other words, why be afraid of discussing the topics Mr. Sailer explains? Why be afraid of agreeing with his conclusions? If all of America agrees with him, the country is not going to turn into a Totalitarian White Supremacist Patriarchal Police State (though some of that - in the middle - would be readily welcomed!)
Sure, black people will have to admit they shouldn't be hired to fly airplanes and do Air Traffic Control or heart surgery in proportionate numbers, because they generally aren't up to it. White people already admit that black people are better at basketball. I don't have to watch it, but Mr. Sailer touts their abilities in sports and entertainment. Let us all be left to do what we are best at and be glad for it. That sounds eminently reasonable.
Mr. Sailer brings out the question after his latest black death investigations. Most of his book afterword is on that subject, but I don't think he means the question to apply to just that one area of his Social Studies.
Let's also all agree that (now I've got his voice in my head), ahhh, I mean, women maybe shouldn't be leading organizations so much or writing op-eds that end up being arguments from their feelings and worries about not being hot. We could admit that men are better leaders and thinkers. We could convince woman that, ahhhh, I mean, it wasn't so bad for them when family formation was affordable, and they really do like being Mothers and wives. That seems pretty reasonable, right, and not really like The Handmaid's Tale?
The Jews of the highly-influential hard-left, well, they could read a couple of chapters in my book and see that the Golf-o-caust was really not so bad. They had their own country clubs, and, yeaaaahhh, I mean, the White population of America has been very welcoming over the last century and a half, and they could, I don't know, be more grateful maybe. It's not wholly unreasonable that they become more Conservative rather than working to destroy society and all...
And the homos, I mean the gays, who are very different from lesbians, BTW****, couldn't they, like, ahhhh, just be gay but not blame AIDS on President Reagan and not, I dunno, force us to like their pride flag? It wouldn't be unreasonable to ask, would it, that they don't have banners at the library that the little kids see. Then the transgender business that I predicted 10 years ahead (a nice guess(?)), it's just silly, I mean, so we could just all let the girls play sports with the girls and realize that this was a stupid fad pushed by autogynephilicacs (? whatever!) and other weirdos, of which there just aren't that many.
As for the massive number of very foreign immigrants, we should change policies so that they assimilate more. They're here due to mistakes being made, so we've got to live with this deal. We can work out a way for college admissions to be fair to all, and put up with like, loud-ass prayers on P/A systems 5 times a day in places like Dearborn, Michigan and whatever else comes our way. If we stop invading the world, our politicians and the Lutherans and Hebrew Aid Society won't have to keep inviting the world.*****
In other words, if people were would just listen to, and, better yet, GET, what Mr. Sailer is saying, our troubles would be over. Some people are ignorant of all he knows, others are just so stupid it takes a lot of explaining, but if we can just ... NO!
He really doesn't get this. It's a shame a site with the name Peak Stupidity should have to explain this, but it's not that most of the people you are arguing with are STUPID. Many are EVIL.
There are various kinds of evil people running the show. There are the guys like George Soros who, while making the big bucks doing it, really seem bent on destroying the world for the flying hell of it, the purely greedy ones who don't care what happens, so long as they get rich off it all, the idealogical types who push the stupidity (The Climate Calamity™, the Population Replacement Programme, Feminism, the Genderbender nonsense, and all the rest) in order to fulfill their wants. What do they want? Some are truly Communists, if not in pure Marxist ideology, with that great resentment they harbor taken out on the rest of us via destruction of traditional society.
The useful idiots of these destructive evil ones are stupid, by definition, but those with power pushing it are not. I would say that most of them are smart enough to understand Steve Sailer's arguments, would they deign to read them, and they'd probably have to agree based on ... yeah, sounds pretty reasonable.
What Steve Sailer just won't ever get is that THEY DON'T CARE. They don't care that your arguments are quite civil and reasonable, and that it won't do people any harm to listen, agree, and follow the advice. Thing is, THEY! WANT! HARM! GET IT? They want the destruction of our society. They are not stupid - they are evil. Their thoughts in response to your point elucidated here is simple: So what?! So what, if you're right! We don't care.
* I'll do a database search for "Sailer" and "iSteve" later and see if I'm in the ballpark here.
** ... his first being the coverage mostly of his findings on Black! "deaths of exuberance", from car crashes and shootings of each other.
*** Let's not talk about the Covid one-niner.
**** That was a great chapter in his book, which came from a splendid National Review article from way back.
***** I don't mean to re-interpret Mr. Sailer's phrasing here. Peak Stupidity discussed here the cause & effect or lack thereof. I just maintain that Mr. Sailer puts too much faith in people's goodness, as in those politicians and NGOs involved. For the record, I'm strongly against invading the world.
Comments (11)
Amendment XXVIII
Posted On: Wednesday - August 28th 2024 7:54PM MST
In Topics: Commies Music US Feral Government Morning Constitutional Taxes
(That's 28 for our readers in La Placenta.)
I've had this idea in mind for 15 years probably. I uploaded the image here 3 years back finally, and now, after reading something about the dream tax plans of Libertarian/Tax Resistor Irvin Schiff, I will finally get to this.
Look, Peak Stupidity's got NO representation in Congress. The local guy's a useless DIEveristy hire, and the 2 Senators are worthless. So, we'll have to just bring up our proposal for Amendment XXVIII ourselves here today. We've been very disappointed in the post-Bill-o'-Rights Amendment series so far. This one could make up for all that in one fell swoop. Then, State ratifiers gonna ratify, and all that ...
Using the "We the People" font* with the Founder's style misspellings would probably help get this thing ratified were we a nation still consisting of Founders-adjacent men.
Yeah, it got stupid near the end there, but the benefits are as follows:
1) Power would greatly devolve to the States. As it stands now, the FLOW of the money - from individuals to the Feds, then down to the States with strings attached and depending on moods - is the WORST evil of the Feral income tax. The flow of the money would be changed completely and for the better.
2) We all have taxes we hate more than others. Personally, I think property tax is the worst. It involves paying permanent rent to the State to keep one's earned property. Sales tax, though a burden on small business, is one I don't detest. The more self-reliant we each are, the less we mass consume, so the less of this tax we pay. Tax types could be regigered.
3) The States should be "experiments in democracy". If we don't like the way they do it here, we can move there. For all I care, California could start taxing the air that you breath. (Actually, CO2 exhalation would be better, both easier to accomplish, as an Exercise Science professor would tell you, and also easier to defend - you bastards and your poisonous CO2! You deserve to have the living taxed out of you!) And to help fit in with my Hollies song below, they could levy a tax on ejaculation. Porn industry insiders (insiders, haha) might agree to disagree.
4) Another important benefit here would be that the States would not have that big incentive to count up a big population, aliens included. It's good to increase representation. With Amendment XXVIII ratified, if they increase their population, they'll have to pony up more money to match.
5) Within the Congress, the Reps and Senators will have to be kind of careful about spending money for a change. "Oh, that new airport terminal you're earmarking $300 million for in Grand Forks? Yeah, well, your North Dakota constituents might love it, but we in Missouri will have to raise $6 million more via taxes for our share of your terminal. Screw you. Hell with your fancy glass, stainless steel, and moving walkways. Cinder block is gpnna have to do!"**
That's my proposal. It won't get anywhere in a country that doesn't follow the Law of the Land anymore, but perhaps this could be part of the main body of a new Constitutional Republican remnant, after we extract ourselves out of Banana Republicanism. A couple of the current taxation methods were taken straight outta Commieton... errr the Communist Manifesto. (Thank you Adam Smith.)
It's just a thought....
That CCR song is from the album Pendulum in which the band left the hard-rockin' guitar sound behind for the keyboards on many of the songs. This one is kind of mesmerizing...
* What a nice idea, created by a guy named Kieth Bates about 3 years back. Guys the can can do this sort of thing would probably be good counterfeiters or anti-counterfeiters.
** It would really help with this aspect of it if Amendment XVII were repealed along with XVI. It would force the Senators to take heed of their States' legislators who have to answer for that money going to the Feds.
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[UPDATED 08/31:] Added reference to Communists and their favorite taxes (at least Karl Marx's) per Adam Smith. While I was at it, I realized there'd been 2 #3's in the list of benefits of Amendment XXVIII. So, there are 5, not 4.
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Comments (9)
Give it up already, NY Times!
Posted On: Wednesday - August 28th 2024 10:48AM MST
In Topics: Media Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
Seriously?!
I do not willingly read the NY Times! Yet, I realized after clicking that link on yahoo, that that's where this re-panic-pushing story came from. Why'd I click at all then? Good question. Girls in bikinis.
This reminds me of something that I SWEAR I wrote a post on during that first (late) Spring of the Kung Flu PanicFest, which I couldn't find myself! (Perhaps, I just wrote about it in Unz Review comments.) I discussed the fact that the local university chicks in very skimpy outfits, some making Daisy Duke look like a shy Amish woman, were featured in what became a nationwide news photo. The point was: Look at them all milling around! No social distancing. Exposed faces, partial breast exposure, partial rear end exposure, partial EVERYTHING! This must stop!... but, look!
"So LOOK, people! You're gonna get sick doing that! (But look at the bod there, the one with the red shorts!)" Wait, what were they talking about? Around that time, Peak Stupidity compared Kung Flu vs. VD.
OK, Peak Stupidity readers, I don't want to make you click on panic-pushing yahoo stories, much less to the NY Times Therefore I present a zoomed up version to help you out:
No, that picture does NOT appear in the fuller NY Times-lifted yahoo story. It's Kung Flu porn... yeah, pretty much.
Comments (12)
Boeing doesn't make tires!
Posted On: Wednesday - August 28th 2024 10:21AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Media Stupidity Science
There's a tragic story from yesterday about 2 Delta mechanics who got killed (and another seriously injured) when a 737 tire exploded at one of their big facilities at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport. That headline above pissed me off. It's just the site of the Fredericksburg Free Lance Star*, filled with people who don't know squat about squat. Other headlines that came up don't mention Boeing other than that the airplane these tires go on was a B-737.
However, this has been a mindless narrative thing. I do realize Boeing's non-engineering-based culture of the last few decades, along with the D.I.E. programs, have brought their quality down. They don't freaking make tires though, and these tires weren't even on an airplane!
The tires are made by Michelin or Dunlop, or Bridgestone, etc., some of which may come from China, along with Quintao made brand Sentury.
The guys were doing some work on wheels (probably a specialty, as there are a LOT of them there), maybe replacing brake rotors, etc. Those tires are pressurized to around 200 psi. Weirdly, I was walking around an airplane a couple of days ago and thought of how much energy is contained in those things.
Anyway, hopefully some sharp engineers from the tire manufacturer - NOT BOEING - and from the shop will figure out how this happened. It was tragic, but one doesn't have to make the story into something it's not, another Boeing quality issue.
PS: Then some other article mentioned the pressurized tires as "1 million pound-feet of force". Freaking idiots. Let me do the math for fun then. Filled up, they are at 185 psi gage pressure (above atm), and the Nitrogen can be considered an ideal gas. The 737 main gear tires are 27 x 7.5R x 15. That's 27" O.D., 7.5" wide and with a 15" rim diameter.** Let me approximate this torus shape as having a volume of ~ 3,500 in3. I get only ~ 625,000 ft-lb in PV work to fill the thing up. (There's some expansion that may bring the volume up more.) The problem I have with the article is not the value, and it's not the units this time, but with their getting the term wrong. It's not a force. That doesn't make sense That's the potential energy of the nitrogen from compression. If it's hot, there's a bit more...
* The local newspaper websites are really bad about not saying where in the hell they are in the country. It could have been another Fredericksburg, so I had to go to the "Contact" page to find out this is the Virginia Fredericksburg.
** At least they're not weirdly mixed units as with car tires. They use inches for the I.D., mm for the width, and then % for the sidewall height (% of width, that is).
Comments (6)
Gold v Bitcoin: Peak Stupidity discussion
Posted On: Tuesday - August 27th 2024 8:17PM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity Preppers and Prepping Economics
Note first that, of course, one really can't take a picture of a bitcoin, so these ones looks like, well, gold coins..
After being disappointed by the 2 hour debate by 4 Big-Finance guys discussed earlier, I'd like to present some of the arguments of Gold v Bitcoin here. I hope this, and the comments that flow forth, are more elucidating, and it will only take you 10 minutes!
Firstly, my disclaimer is that I don't hold any Bitcoin or any crypto currency at all, but I can't say the same for gold and/or silver. The former is NOT, mind you, due to any solid, absolute opinion about crypto. I am not one of those early adopters of anything - hell, I just found out that Redbox is out of business, yet I never got around to getting a video out of one of them red boxes yet. That woulda' been cool...
I'm not a mathematician, and neither are those 4 finance guys, most readers here, I'd guess, and 99.something % of crypto holders (the latter just based on number of mathematicians in the population). Therefore, I can't claim to understand the Blockchain algorithm/technology that underlies all crypto. Is it hackable? I'm sure all businessmen involved and avid adherents would tell you "hell no", but do they know? The math guys may have their proofs that would prove nothing to me because admittedly, I couldn't understand it. Could there be something missing in the understanding of the brightest of them, to where some other bright math guy will, or has already cracked the blockchain? That'd be like finding some alchemy that worked, transforming used beer cans into gold.
Said mathematician, if he were wise as much as he's bright, would probably "let it ride" for a while - if really savvy, he'd convert his new"found" crypto slowly into assets that couldn't be "recovered" by courts or the Government, then, well, he'd be just bursting with pride, you know, so sometime he'd let it out and get on Tucker Carlson. Your "money" would evaporate.
So, let's just "let this ride" ourselves and go with the assumption that the Blockchain algorithm is as immutable as Newton's Laws of Motion. Let's talk about the similarities and differences of gold v bitcoin in their value as money. There are a handful or even a dozen properties that must be fulfilled to give something worth as REAL MONEY. I've read a book on that, but I don't want to write one now. We'll touch on some of them.
To be a store of value a currency must not be easily reproducible. The way the blockchain algorithm works, for every additional Bitcoin made, many calculations must be done by computer. (With modern computing power as fast as it is, this must be A LOT.) It takes more and more computations for each additional coin, meaning that one cannot just buy a bigger computer and make millions. The process of number-crunching to make more bitcoin is called "mining"*.
Though, no, it's not physical mining, there's a parallel between this property of not-easily-reproducible gold and bitcoin. It takes energy to physically mine gold, what with large earthmoving machines, drilling for placement of dynamite, pumps and transportation of chemicals, etc. Energy costs may go up or down a little, but you must expend a lot to get "the precious" (gold or bitcoin). What else could change the costs for each, something which would lower the value of the currency? For gold, a new, simpler chemical process maybe, but for bitcoin, well, what about quantum computing? It's even more likely for bitcoin that "mining" costs could take a jump down, because faster computing power is not something just developed for bitcoin. It's important for other uses.
I'll say here that, were little Greta to complain about this energy wastage, I couldn't really argue. It does seem silly to run computers to where they'll heat up Adam Smith's house in the north Georgia winter just to get some algorithm to spit out a virtual "coin". Real mining, notwithstanding the actual environmental damage involved (and gold requires a lot), seems less silly. Still, after all, we're pulling tiny bits of one element out of massive amounts of rock to allow us to store the value of our labor. If I think of it that way... but what else is there? (To please Greta, I'd at least locate my computer racks directly under my windmill.)
Let me digress just a bit to another property of money, its LACK of practical value. I was very surprised to hear Peter Schiff get this wrong, but he was just in the midst of trying to badmouth bitcoin I guess. "But gold has industrial uses!" he shouted over the din of the argument. Whaaat?? No, that's not a good thing. Silver, for example, has more industrial uses. Back when cameras used film, with silver as one component, it was worth something based on that alone. As industrial uses change, the demand goes up or down, changing the value of, say, silver, as a currency. Bitcoin has no other practical value - do you need a piece of blockchain to scrape the ice off your walkway? That's a point in its favor.
Back to the property of irreproducibility, what about a new source? With gold, I do wonder about the eventual mining of it from asteroids. Instapundit recently had a link to a story, but I haven't read it. Also, Peak Stupidity discussed this possibility 4 years ago in Gold found on an asteroid? Should I buy, sell, or hold? What about a new source of bitcoin blockchain, if one even puts it that way? All I could see is that hacking of the whole mathematical concept, as discussed at the beginning here. Otherwise, I don't see how.
One thing that's not much a factor with precious metals - there are gold, silver, and a few others that are all known and established - is the various and sundry other cryptocurrencies besides bitcoin. In general, what I write here is with the understanding it applies to all of them. However, if you do put lots of your savings into one of them, say, bitcoin, will others take over the market in currency, as VHS beat out Betamax? There are lots of them. Mr. Voorhees stated that competition in currencies is good, but does that apply to Joe Blow who doesn't have the time or inclination to watch this stuff day-in/day-out? Personally, I'm fiscally Conservative, so I'd feel more comfortable myself knowing there was one major crytpo-currency accepted all over, and the speculation phase in it was over. There' s no worry about this factor with gold.
Divisibility is another property of real money. I've heard something written about gold which I simply think is flat wrong. "Gold is no good because there's not enough of it. To back all the currency out there we'd need..." making this up because I don't know the money supply (Which money supply? There are a bunch of them!) " ... gold would have to be $95,000 an ounce. My responses to that are:
1) Zippedy doo da! My, oh, my, it's a wonderful day!
AND
2) So what? Who says we'd have to stick to troy ounce coins? In the made-up case above, gram coins would be worth $3,050 a piece. Well, that's a lot to be carrying around too! Why not make an alloy of 5% gold in other metal, so the coins could be bigger for a smaller value? That would require some trust though.
That's an interesting thought about divisibility with gold, but it sure IS divisible. What about bitcoin? I am really not sure about this. A coin is a coin, but can there be small fractions of coins in software, or does this have to be done within the purview of a bank of some sort? The crytpo banks have introduced some bad publicity for these currencies, as hacking of these banks cost people their savings, and many people may confuse that with the hacking of the crypto concept itself. OTOH, banks used to get robbed pretty regularly, especially when one thinks back to the days when there was real money in them!
Privacy in buying and selling was not so much a property of money, as described years ago in books, as we didn't have so many organizations prying into our business. It's surely important now, and in fact, much of the impetus for the gold AND bitcoin proponents. Bitcoin however, from what I've read, is NOT private in that the blockchain contains info. on every transaction that's. been made. OTOH, they all tell me, as Mr. Roubini got all worried about, that it's hard for an entity like Government to get involved. This has to do with the lack of banking required to use it. Gold, of course, has the same benefits, at least if it is used ACTUALLY as a currency, not as an investment measured in dollars, to be taxed if bought and sold within the CC and banking systems.
The real worry about all money is its suitability as a "store of value". One may work for years and see his savings get eaten alive by inflation. 20 ounces of gold is still 20 ounces of gold, 5, 10, 50, 100 years later.** It is easily recognizable, possibly with some inexpensive test methods required, depending...
For bitcoin, that's the big bugaboo. Is it a good store of value, if we can't really see it, or know we have it, without a computer and the internet? The 4 debaters didn't get into that, but with all but one being financial doomers and a couple seemingly prepper types, a discussion on a SHTF situation would have been helpful. With the caveat of a working internet or at least electrical power, bitcoin's use as a currency is better than gold for payments to far-away places. That was Mr. Voorhee's major point in favor of bitcoin. One can buy and sell away from Government and banking systems that make one subject to regulation and taxation. Gold is good for this too but only for local transactions. When the SHTF, well, that's all there'll be. We can talk about .22LR rounds and cans of Campbell soup another time. (Show me the man who can't use another milk carton of .22LR and doesn't like Campbell's Bean & Bacon?)
The anecdote from wiki I pasted in last post illustrates one more thing: Sorry, but with this REAL MONEY, you do have to watch your money - don't lose it! There was a news story about a guy whose bitcoin password got accidentally thrown in the trash, with the money behind it being worth millions in dollars. He went to the dump, and last I heard from a friend, BOUGHT the dump, to be on the safe side. Well, one could hide some gold really well, too well, and never find it again. Them's the breaks. Or, be on the "safe side". It's either keep real value or take one's chances with the old system, the solid chance that the value of one's money in the bank steadily declines from inflation*** and the less solid one that this bank will not be too big to fail, so bye, bye, bye... Oh, the FDIC right, that works if it's just a few banks.
And don't put that bitcoin PW OR your PMs in one of those "safety" deposit boxes. If that bank closes or the government gets a wild hair up its ass, again, buh bye!
I tell ya. My money don't get no respect... no respect at all in country that doesn't keep a sound currency.
* I personally HATE the use of physical terms by the computer types to represent things that should have their own computer lingo, as mentioned within this post.
** It takes a change in mindset to really get this. "Man, I could have bought these 20 oz at $325 20 years ago, but I paid $1,100 apiece! Now they are worth $2400 each. I could have made more money." Money, what exactly is the money of which you speak? Nope, that's not the point. One could rightly bemoan "I could have gotten 60 something oz 20 years ago and had 60 oz now, rather than 20!" Yes. Just don't look at precious metals as "an investment". Think of how many of those approaching-worthless pieces of green paper or bits on a bank computer they'll take for an ounce ... of MONEY.
*** BTW, in addition, even with the lousy 4% interest they're throwing us now, that gets taxed as income at your highest marginal rate, I found out that the penalties for early withdrawal are more severe than they used to be. For me, it was 6 months of interest, and for a new CD, they go back and take out principal to get it too! They didn't used to be like this.
Comments (8)
Gold v Bitcoin: ZeroHedge Debate
Posted On: Tuesday - August 27th 2024 9:26AM MST
In Topics: Pundits Global Financial Stupidity Preppers and Prepping Economics
The following debate among these 4 well-known "respected"* financial figures is 2 hours long. It's entertainment for some of us, but please read my general review below before spending that time for not very much real elucidation on the subject. As with a lot of things, especially in these days of Peak Stupidity, if you want it done right, you've got to do it yourself. That'll be next post.
ZeroHedge and 2 advertisers, one for gold and one for bitcoin, of course, sponsored this discussion/debate/argument among 2 gold investment proponents and 2 bitcoin investment proponents. The former are Turkish born Jewish "Iranian-American (wheww!) Nouriel Roubini and the more well-known-to-me Peter Schiff (also Jewish, but actually American). The latter are one Anthony Scaramucci and a guy named Erik Voorhees.
The links here are all to wiki pages. I'll say here that, in my discussion below, I will remain unbiased as I was before reading these biographies (with the appropriate grains of salt due to wiki) just now. I've read and watched Peter Schiff before, having known his opinions for 20 years. Mr. Roubini and Mr. Scaramucci are names I recall from my time of reading ZeroHedge over a decade ago, but the names were almost all I remembered. I'd never heard of Eric Voorhees until now.
Let me introduce these 4, plus the narrator, one by one. Then, I'll discuss their personalities and ideologies as evidenced in this debate along with their general financial opinions. I'll then cover what discussion of gold v bitcoin there was among these guys not necessarily in order.
The moderator is (obviously "subcontinental-American" - no, why would you think he's a guy from the Yucatan or Baja?, no actually "sub-S. African"**) Ran Neuner of Crypto Banter. Well, this financial figure who's done very well for himself has obviously got a stake in seeing crypto currencies remain around, but he stayed completely neutral in this debate.
I swear I recall Nouriel Roubini being discussed favorably on ZH years back. That may have just been his having been right on some calls. That's all it takes for finance people to like someone. I will not be discussing Noureil Roubini favorably. To introduce him anyway here, he's a big academician and political advisor from way back, having attended the "best" of schools, worked for President Clinton for year, and advised the IMF and the World Bank. He has something in common with the other gold proponent, in that he predicted the '08 crash and is also a "Dr. Doom". (Now, I see why the ZH folks liked him.) His proposed solutions to our financial problems are as Statist as can be. In '09, he said the US Gov't should sieze and nationalize all the banks. As it's been with any doomer, he's been wrong a whole lot... so far. "The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent" and all that. The best move is not to play. ZH'ers never got that last part.
Peter Schiff, another financial doomer with also a proponent of personal and national fiscal responsibility, is very unlike Mr. Roubini. Mr. Schiff's Dad Irwin was a hard-core Libertarian (having run for office) and a serious Feral Income tax resistor. He remained in jail for something like the last decade of his life. Out of spite - I remember this - they would not let him go home for his last dying days, something his son Peter remains angry about.
I've watched videos by Mr. Schiff, including the famous compilation showing his prescience in calling out the financial BS in the lead up to the popping of the early-00's housing bubble. As a good Libertarian, he sees precious metals as currency that the fed can't screw with, hence a good thing.
I'd only heard the name of Anthony Scaramucci before this debate and my perusal of his wiki page. He's another finance big-wig. I think you just have to make a few smart or lucky big trades and get reasonably rich, and they you're the bomb to all the folks wanting to make make money off of money, i.e., get rich quick. Mr. Scaramucci has got SOME history, with a very amusing part involving his 10-day stint working in a high position for President Trump. I just have to paste this in:
On January 23, he told New York magazine: "the thing I have learned about these people in Washington is they have no money. So what happens when they have no fucking money is they write about what seat they are in and what the title is. Fucking congressmen act like that. They are fucking jackasses.I'm not there, so I'm not sure about much of that besides that they are fucking jackasses. Anthony Scaramucci, however, if not a jackass, has been very stupid regarding his country. He's been for gun control, for gay marriage, and he opposed Trump's anti-invasion proposals back in '15, and then after the falling out, took things that were personal against Trump to a political level. Scaramucci supported Zhou Bai Dien even. It's been unfortunate finding this out after watching the video, as you'll see that I enjoyed watching him as the most civil of debaters. This goes to show that a few smart/lucky financial moves may make one rich but not necessarily a bit smarter.
Erik Voorhees, as I suspected after watching the video, is a true Libertarian's Libertarian. He was involved in the New Hampshire Free State project as a young man nearly 15 years ago. He was involved in the blockchain/cryptocurrency idea early on after being introduced to it by a friend from his college days in Tacoma, Washington. He was involved at a very good time, and "cashed out" of his stake in Satoshi Dice, a crypto-gambling company he'd founded after only a year or two with $11 million. By "cashed out", his money was still in crypto, as he does really believe in the idea.
Mr. Voorhees attitude on Big Governments and money is exactly the opposite of Mr. Roubini's. This has not much to do with the gold v bitcoin debate, as Eric Voorhees naturally likes the idea of both as forms of currency that governments can's screw with.
Now, let's go around again with these guys and the 2 hour, 9 minute debate. I'll start from the gold guys, from our right to left, the moderator Ran Neuner's left to right.
On the right, I'll say right now that Mr. Roubini is simply the worst, by far, of these guys in his appearance in this, what for him, is an argument. He's a loud mouth know-it-all. He knows enough to discuss the various qualities of money, of which he thinks bitcoin is lacking. However, gold, bitcoin, or whatever, Roubini is a Statist Regime sycophant through and through. Oh, as for bitcoin, he can send money home to Israel just as "Swift"ly as Mr. Voorhees can send money, yes, using the US Gov't system. "Oh, but you can't send money to Russia that way? Sure, but that's an evil regime that jails its opponents..." He's not only a NeoCon, but a true Globalist. He had no problem with a CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency***), so you know, we wouldn't have competing crypto currencies and all...
When it came to what other assets besides gold he does like, in the name of fighting inflation, Roubini came across very elitist. His bringing up of land as an investment is not wrong. I am doing this. However, the average Joe Blow (like me) can't just have his finance guy take care of all this, with 20 properties, on whole a good deal. They get you coming and going (mostly going) and while holding - real estate cuts and property taxes. With other financial "instruments', the system gets you coming and going too. So, if bitcoin can keep up out of the clutches of governments and their taxes, that (AND some precious metals) is something Joe Blow CAN get into.
Both of the gold guys, unfortunately for a proper debate, seemed to spend too much time talking over the other guys. Peter Schiff was pretty bad, but Roubini was even worse. After this I wish he'd remained a rug merchant as his Dad had wanted him to be - I will not willingly read anything from him or watch or listen to him in the future.
Next. Peter Schiff is a stubborn guy. Though I agree with him regarding precious metals as real money, and I'm not so sure about crypto myself, I don't think he gave the other guys a good listen. He's not that old, but as per the only one of Mr. Scaramucci's personal arguments, he does come across as the old man on The Simpsons (he means Abe Simpson). He didn't even want to try to understand any of the concepts about crypto.
Since watching, I came across this gem of an anecdote off of Mr. Schiff's wiki page:
On January 19, 2020, Schiff claimed that his Bitcoin wallet got 'corrupted' and that he had therefore lost all the bitcoin he ever owned, through no fault of his own. "My wallet got corrupted somehow and my password is no longer valid. So now not only is my Bitcoin intrinsically worthless; it has no market value either. I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was this bad." This claim turned out to be false as later explained by Erik Voorhees, as he confirmed that he had, indeed, helped Schiff to set up his Bitcoin wallet, and wrote that Schiff "forgot (the) pw, and never recorded (his recovery) phrase". "If I gave him an ounce of gold and he dropped it on the sidewalk would he similarly condemn the precious metal as a foolish monetary system?Ha! and Ahaaa! That explains a lot. Oftentimes when we think men are debating things on principle, there may be something small (or big) personal thing behind it.
To our left some more, and directly to moderator Neuner's right, Anthony Scaramucci came across very well here. He talked calmly and didn't do too much of the interrupting. (Just as a guess, I'd say he talked 15% of the time, Mr. Voorhees talked only 5% of it, with Roubini at 45% and Schiff at 35%) Mr. Scaramucci would have been a better moderator than the moderator. Though pleasant and fair, Ran Neuner should have drawn the line at times to stop the loud instances of 3 people talking at once, occasionally all 4.
At one point, it was Mr. Scaramucci rather than the moderator who calmly asked "What would change your mind?" to the gold side guys. Each of them would not even consider thinking about it, while Mr. Scaramucci gave a great example of what it would take for he to change his mind, something Erik Voorhees agreed with.
About the only thing keeping me even more favorable toward Anthony Scaramucci (and this was BEFORE I read anything about him) is that he seems also very establishment-oriented. My take was that he's not a guy that thinks it's all going down, as the other 3 are. Thankfully, he's not a NeoCon and/or Gov't sychophant like Roubini.
Finally, Erik Voorhees was the most calm and least talkative there. He tried to make his points very simply, and he did not object to one of the 2 more loud-mouthed gold guys interrupting almost immediately. Though his points were good ones, it's important to try to head off arguments at the pass. I think Mr. Voorhees would have been better of claiming his time - "give me a minute please, to finish" - and providing more detail. Mr. Voorhees got rich quick from crypto-currencies, so of course he's got a vested interest in supporting them. Not only is it about keeping these currencies alive but also about proving he's not just one lucky bastard but more a smart and prescient one.
He came across well, especially in the arguments with Mr. Roubini over government control of currencies. That's a big ideological argument. As for the topic supposedly at hand, I note that Mr. Voorhees told the gold guys directly that he'd be very glad if gold became a more important currency too.
Well, that all was a long treatise on these 4 financial guys, but what about gold v bitcoin? Unfortunately, in that over 2 hour period, not enough of the nitty-gritty of it was discussed. The properties of money, ease of use, store of value, etc. were mentioned, but they weren't discussed properly, not enough to convince anyone of anything.
The confusion that took most of the time was the difference between bitcoin's use as a currency and its life as a vehicle for financial gains and gaming. For the latter purposes, one side would argue that the whole crypto deal is just the latest tulip bulb scam while the other that, sure, it's been bid up and down like crazy but it's more like the first few guys seeing oil bubble up through the ground and wondering what it could be used for.****
Oh, but you're cherry-picking your time scale. No, you are. How many people are in it for the gambling (they didn't use that word) vs for their use of it as a currency?***** There are 300 million users of (or speculators in) bitcoin, it was stated. Will that go up to most of the world's population or dive down when the "fad" is over?
There WAS some discussion on bitcoin's use as a currency, making transfers of money to anywhere in the world quick and easy. That was Erik Voorhees' main point. Mr. Roubini didn't like that the crypto-currencies could not be taxed - one must do one's duty and pay tax to the good people of the Government, Mr. Roubini argued - while Mr. Voorhee's rightly saw this as a good thing. In the meantime, I think Anthony Scaramucci doesn't have so much Libertarian, free-market ideology in him, but just figures bitcoin is doing well and here to stay, so go with it...
Again, Peter Schiff can't see, to paraphrase, how this made-up currency means anything, and if you lose the password... well, I see he knows about that! He made fun of that it can be "mined" on a computer - what is THAT all about? - without seeing that there is a parallel to the energy required to (actually) mine gold and silver out of the ground. Roubini says CBDCs are better, cause, the Government.
It went like that. Given short shrift was more actual discussion of the details. Could anyone break the blockchain? How do you know no one could? Is storing bitcoin safe? With all the speculation, will it eventually become steady in value and become store of value? What about competing cryptocurrencies to bitcoin? Erik Voorhees had no problem with that. Roubini figures that's rebellious and anti-Government. Peter Schiff thinks it's all junk. Anthony Scaramucci figures if one can make money on it, it can't be bad.
What about gold? There really wasn't much discussion on it, as one thing I think all 4 guys agree on is that gold is money. Some (2 out of 4) of them agree for practical investment reasons and the other 2 (Mr. Schiff and Mr. Voorhees) for ideological anti-Government control reasons.
Let me wrap this up. You may be entertained, but don't waste your time thinking this video will help you much. At the end, Moderator Neuner boasted that this was the biggest and best gold v bitcoin debate. NO! Unfortunately for those of us with not all the time in the world to waste, there were 4 supposed finance experts taking 2 hours on this, yet they did a poor job.
With the exception of Erik Voorhees (and Mr. Scaramucci would make a better moderator), I wouldn't want any of these guys back for another. The way this went, with the off-topic arguments, I'd think we'd learn more about gold v bitcoin from a debate between a mathematician and a coin collector.
So, leave it for Peak Stupidity, with no financial experts at all on staff, to do a hopefully better job in at least laying out the important arguments about each, gold and/or bitcoin, as forms of money. Hopefully, that'll be later tonight.
* 2 or 3 still are - I'll explain...
** I should have recognized that accent before reading his wiki page just now. I've always like the S. African accent.
*** This one took me a while to figure out too. I'd though it was some kind of marijuana at first.
**** I'd rather use gold or silver for this analogy, but they've been around so long in history that the discovery of them may be hard to describe.
***** I have a friend who did pretty well gambling in it, for a while. I think he's still ahead. He has the extra money to do so. I don't know - will ask - how much he has used it to buy and sell, though.
Comments (8)
The Niagara (Falls) Indians
Posted On: Monday - August 26th 2024 6:41PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Environmental Stupidity Peak Stupidity Roadshow
I gotta say, it was worth the money for the view and the micro-thin blue rain ponchos. My shoes are still soaked, as I write!
In the comments under this post of the past spring, Adam Smith had given us some info on Niagara Falls. Besides the story of the pollution of various sorts, Mr. Smith presented some videos of some "polluted" neighborhoods. I'd mentioned that we'd never been there, but now we have. Of a goodly number of family trips, this one worked out pretty well, transport-wise, budget-wise, and with little, errr, "friction". We were all miffed about one particular thing though.
That'd be all the Indians. Wait, sure, they've got their deal with the gambling, errr, gaming, I'm sorry, now. It's a strange deal that's not really fair to guys like Donald Trump. However, Americans really don't know how to help these people who a century and a half after being savages or close to it, still don't fit in well.
We came to Niagara Falls for the beautiful spectacle and not at all for the gambling, as we are not the type to partake in it. With Adam Smith's advice about the area in mind, I did take a walk underneath the huge Seneca Casino roof* though to get somewhere.
That road went to a 7-11 on the very edge of the demographically-polluted part of town. As a total digression here, I found it impossible to get a couple of plastic** bags there for the half gallon of chocolate milk and nearly a gallon of water. Paper is not made for jostling around this stuff for a half mile or so. I found out later this was due to a New York State law from March of '20, predating Governor Hul Chi Minh***. I made it back before nightfall, intact in my person, the milk, and the water.
Niagara is yet another Indian name for that river. Yeah, though not in great numbers, Indians were all around America back in the day. Most of the rivers are named after them. People get the Indian State name concept wrong too. As Indian tribes claimed their rivers as their lands, the river took the name of the tribe. Many States took the names of these rivers, hence are only indirectly named after Indians.
So, dumb laws in States run by Commies, bad neighborhoods in downtowns, Indian casinos, none of that was unexpected. What was unexpected by us was the •Indians in Niagara Falls. I guessed at first that the time of our trip (we were there for 2 1/2 days) must have been some kind of big holiday in India, explaining a big tourist influx from the "subcontinent"****. I mean, half the people at the viewpoints, on the boats, on the crazy stairways off the cliff where you got soaked to the bone, wherever, were these Indians. They didn't look like no warriors... OK, like no casino operators, to me.
It wasn't until we walked back to the hotel the 1st day that we realized that the town's tourist business area itself leans •Indian. We got some Chinese food for the one meal out that day - go figure, but the girl did pile on the food - but we noticed the curry smell that came out of established businesses and even the "roach coaches". Here's a screenshot of google maps close to the parks by the falls:
When it was time for a lunch meal the 2nd day, well, there was that buffet restaurant we'd passed by going back and forth. We stepped in and ... it was an Indian restaurant - not the Niagaras or Senecas either - no buffalo in this place.
We couldn't tell from the outside. IIRC, it just was't clear. I guess it was expected - "Of course, we're an Indian buffet. I mean, this is Niagara Falls" "OK, and we're supposed to know that how again? I don't recall reading about a treaty."
Alrighty, we settled on some chain Moe's half-assed Mexican food. Since we were the only customers, I had time to ask the lady working there a question: "What's the deal with all the Indians around here?"
Of course she got offended. You HAVE to, don't you? "I'm married to an Indian guy." OK... but that didn't answer the question. I still don't have the answer.
Having your lands invaded and "enriched" like this makes a White man feel for the other Indians, those Niagara rather than Niagara Falls Indians. Within a century or two of the first arrival of the invaders the former were greatly outgunned and outnumbered. In our case, we still outgun the invaders, even if simply via the application of the law. Our fighting back, as we've been keeping up with over in the UK, results in our own "Chiefs" silencing and arresting us. Those other Indians way back weren't THAT stupid. Are they laughing at us at there in the casinos or do they sympathize?
PS: This should have been in the post. It's something I thought about since I started looking up "Indians Niagara Falls" to get info. We did not get to the Canadian side. (Someone forgot his or her passport.) The web shows all kinds of •Indian joints on the Canadian side too. Did some or most of these people come in from Canada, legally or not? It's a thing, immigrating to Canada first, because it's easier at the legal level, and then coming here. That's what the Nimarata (aka Nicky) Haley family did, and the same with the Commie Harris Klan. Canada's Population Replacement Programme is larger on a relative scale than even America's!
* Were I a few decades younger, I know I'd have climbed up, over, and down that roof. It was the perfect shape for that. Alas, it's not that I can't do it, but wives and cops both frown upon people my age... I could have said I was homeless, I guess... very tempting.
** Digression from the digression: A friend of mine lives near lots of students who don't have so much a reason to keep their trash orderly. Plastic bags were blowing around the neighborhood during high winds. He should know better, but exclaimed "they should ban them!" Me: "Or, like, they could ban littering..."
*** Though she has her hands in everything now. Just one of the important Acts touted in her "Environmental Protection Package: Prohibits Hotels from Using Small Wasteful Plastic Bottles for Shampoo and Other Personal Care Products. Whaaaa? You mean I'll have to start buying this stuff from, like, the store?!
**** I HATE that term, as illustrated here.
Comments (8)
Covid, mosquitoes, and Faucis, oh my!
Posted On: Monday - August 26th 2024 1:14PM MST
In Topics: Humor Healthcare Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
This story from ZeroHedge is pretty funny... not really "haha" funny, cause a guy got really sick and went to the hospital, but ... I'm sorry, hahahaaaas! You'll see. Here's the headline/link: Giga-Vaxxed Fauci Somehow Contracts Ultra-Rare West Nile Virus On Heels Of COVID-19 Infection.
Alright, Tyler Durden*, you tend to exaggerate sometimes. "Giga" means a billion. Kung Flu health guru Anthony Fauci had only been sextuply boosted, you know, plus the regular vax jabs, of course. (But, of course.) He has contracted the Kung Flu 3 times, proving that this virus can... well, we need to update wikipedia and change the definition of "vaccine", first of all.
Lately, though, ex Covid Tsar** Fauci has had a real run of bad luck. He contracted the West Nile Virus and was hospitalized for nearly a week. His is 1 out of 216 cases in the US so far this year. What are the odds that this virus would infect a guy with his virology background and expertise?!.
According to the report, Fauci has no idea how he got West Nile - a mosquito-borne illness that can cause fever, body aches, diarrhea and rash - and for which there is no vaccine or treatment.No freaking idea... could it be mosquitoes along with a half century of un-controlled immigration bringing in bedbugs, smaller bugs, and all sorts of nasty germs that had been wiped out by the advanced 1st World, when it was still such? Some people are in de Nile about this, trying to wash off more germs than they are taking on... and bringing in.
Would it matter if there were a vaccine? Could Fauci himself, after all, he's America's Doctor, have developed a West Nile treatment plan for himself and us all, with his great expertise as demonstrated 4 years back during that Great Pandemic? Regarding that late unpleasantness, Tyler Durden nicely and concisely summed up Mr. Fauci's "role" if I may, in it with his first phrase here:
Former NAIAD Director Anthony Fauci - who outsourced risky COVID gain-of-function research to a shoddy Chinese lab, and was then put in charge of handling a COVID pandemic that broke out down the street from said lab -BTW, I know he's heavily invested via time in his "America did it!" theory, but without anything but speculation, can Ron Unz not see Occam's Razor here? What happened was well publicized and follows common sense very well. The HANDLING of this disease and massive effort to take advantage of it by Totalitarians around the world is the real story.
Anyway, Peak Stupidity has a lot more concern about mosquitoes, bearing gifts from the cradle of civilization or not, than we do the Kung Flu virus. We'd have said the same by mid-March of '20. I HATE, HATE, HATE mosquitoes and really wonder why they'd been put on God's green earth. We at Peak Stupidity headquarters have even rescinded our Sanctuary Yard policy. Back 25 years ago, the local government had a spray program, with trucks coming around once or twice a month in the summer. The spray may have had some DDT in it. I don't care - it worked! Bring back the DC-3s!!
As expected, the ZH comments were a hoot. This one guy has an avatar that's the Monopoly™ guy with the top hat. I wonder if he (no, not the Monopoly guy) was commenting back when I used to read through all the ZH posts and comments back in '11...
itstippyAlso, from the same guy:
1 day ago. (Edited)
He took his mask off for three minutes to brush his teeth, and BAM! West Nile Virus, Zika, Covid, Monkey Pox, Bird Flu, Ebola, Emerald Ash Borer, Peanut Allergy, Erectile Dysfunction, The Heartbreak Of Psori...
He should ask his Doctor if Hydroxychloroquine is right for him.iSteve commenters may find these ones a little immature, but I see it as a good thing. OK, one more:
Immortal Mountain Wizard Assoc:In descending order, I fear most mosquitos, then Fauci (cause he's 83 and gets sick a lot), and then the oft-dreaded Covid-one-niner dead last.
1 day ago
I wish him a very speedy recovery. One should always feel their best before being strung up from a lamp post.
* The ZeroHedge posts that are not taken from other sources are attributed to one Tyler Durden (some say there are more than one), the character in one of Peak Stupidity's least favorite movies. See Movie Review - "Fight Club" still sucks.
** I had no idea we still had American Czars until Kamelion and her implausibly-denied Border Czar position, and now I learn that Fauci had been a Czar too. Do they still shoot
Comments (9)
Jim v Dwight @ The Office
Posted On: Saturday - August 24th 2024 7:32PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media
Regular Peak Stupidity readers have likely seen more than one humorous clip from the very early 21st century 9-year-running TV show The Office on this site. I've got lots of praise for this best of TV shows ever, IMO - that'll appear at the end. Those years, '05-'13, were already well into my now 25-year long hiatus from the idiot plate.
Actually, hiatus is the wrong word - I ain't going back. I didn't miss it after 3 months even. Why the praise then, and how'd I watch The Office? It's like this: This young lady was ripping and burning DVDs on the streets of Canton, China about 15 years ago. My companion decided to buy about 1 1/2" of these disks (no thick covers there, just the very thin plastic ones) for me, well, with my money, 10 bucks, as I recall. Most of it was garbage, but I watched this particular show when I got home on my computer.
The 1st disk was the 1st season of the British show starring Ricky Gervais. It was funny enough, but then the rest were the American version with Steve Carell as the office manager Michael Scott. Sorry, but I have a hard time believing even a Brit would find the British version funnier that the latter.* No, I'm sure the young lady back in the Middle Kingdom making a living stealing Hollywood IP had no clue of the difference between the shows. They were all those same White people, so what's your problem?
No problem. Anyway, rather than this being a fairly frivolous post here, comparing 2 of the main characters of the American show, I do have a bigger point to make, one that will carry over to a couple of other posts I've been wanting to write. Kind of as with a Ginger v Mary Ann comparison, but no, not really like that at all, this is about, were this real life, who of the 2 characters, Jim Halpert or Dwight Schrute, is a better person, the one we'd rather emulate, and who would we rather have really in charge... of more than just the Scranton Branch of Dunder Mifflin Paper Company.
Jim Halpert is played by John Krasinsky, and Dwight Schrute is played by Rainn Wilson.
It's obvious, at least early on in the show, who the writers, directors, and such SEE as the better person. That'd be the more handsome, more easygoing, more quick-witted, capable salesman Jim Halpert. In contrast, Dwight Schrute is a kiss-ass to the boss Michael Scott (there's that running joke "Assistant Regional Manager, no, Assistant TO the Regional Manager), a non-cosmopolitan country boy, a weapon-crazy redneck and high-strung to boot. (He's also a good salesman though.). Though American politics outside Dunder Mifflin is not any part of The Office as opposed to in the old All in the Family, I can see a parallel with Dwight and old Archie Bunker. Each is a character that the show makers figured the viewer should dislike.
It doesn't always work that way. First, though, how could one, especially the woman viewers, not like Jim Halpert though? Yeah, he doesn't get ruffled. He does his job competently and snarkily or otherwise puts up with and often enjoys the antics of politically incorrect (though, of course, Jim isn't), time-wasting, goofy manager Michael Scott. Oh, and he plays clever tricks on socially Conservative but awkward annoying office mate Dwight and flirts with the nicest cute receptionist Pam Beasley. Jim goes along to get along, and is an overall nice guy.
Nobody admires a kiss ass as Dwight Schrute is, though only early on in the show, maybe through the 1st 3 or 4 seasons. However, whatever he does, as silly as it may be, he does his best. While Jim takes the whole office thing with a grain of salt, Dwight is gung ho about it all. The writers painted Dwight as a wanna-be authoritarian figure to be disliked, but I figure the actor told them he wanted to be less one-dimensional by some point. The character "grew" in later episodes, becoming better with the ladies, no longer in thrall to the whims of Michael Scott, and even funnier.
I like that Dwight is a self-reliant, prepper type, while I don't think Jim is ready for anything but the middle-class American life that he doesn't know might not last for long.
As usual, one has to suspend disbelief a bit for both these characters. Jim, for example, would likely get angry on occasion in real life and show it. Additionally, that niceness of his would probably have not gotten him the girl, Pam, in real life. As much as it would have been a mistake on her part, she'd have been gone. As for Dwight, nobody has the time to run a beet farm - mostly by himself, work his 8-5 sales job, and be a Sheriff's Deputy too. Maybe it's just that I don't have that much energy.
OK, Jim v Dwight, which is it?. It's not just a matter of taste as with liking Mary Ann better than Ginger (or vice versa). I see the difference in personalities as translating to people in real life. Because I'm still working up a post about Steve Sailer and the worth of his type of personality in the times to come, I think of the very last part of his interview with Tucker Carlson. Tucker noted that Steve is such a nice and reasonable guy. He's not a "hater", someone who rants and jumps up and down.
Regarding that last bit, Alex Jones comes to mind. How about this analogy? When it comes to pundits and existential political issues, as compared to office politics, can we say that Jim Halpert is to Dwight Schrute as Steve Sailer is to Alex Jones. Often you'd rather talk to, and rather be around, the civil, calm reasonable guy. He might not have strict principles, but he's generally right and, yeah, reasonable. Sometimes, however, things get to the point which require someone who DOES really hate the way things are going. He sticks to his principles, because getting away from them is what got us into the messes we're in. He knows how to handle real trouble. Yeah, he's angry, but when it's time to get loud and rowdy, he does, because it's necessary.
Well, that'll be that other post coming, with references to The Godfather. As for me, I admire the character Dwight more than I do Jim. I would rather BE Dwight Schrute than be Jim Halpert. Likely a big majority of The Office fans would disagree.
OK, have a great Sunday, Peakers. This was a weird post, but it IS leading to something I'll write about this coming week.
PS: I don't intend to write a review of The Office. "Watching TV" can have different meanings these days, with your streaming and such, but we sure don't encourage TV here at Peak Stupidity. However, I'll admit that The Office was great entertainment. The political incorrectness**, even when it was, in show reality, embarrassing to the characters, was great to see. It's just my kind of humor.
As the show went along, the writers eventually got off track - say season 6, about the time I quit watching (not even sure where I got seasons 5 and 6 from). For example, Ed Helm, the guy who played Andy Barnard, could sing well, one could tell. He must have pushed for that episode in which he was in a musical play. No, sorry, that's not The Office. Then, to keep the women viewers, besides the office romances, the show had to have complete wedding shows, I believe for all the main characters, after I'd quit watching.
PPS: There are plenty of video compilations of Jim funny scenes and Dwight funny scenes. I may paste them in tomorrow. However, I think if you aren't a fan of this show, you wouldn't get enough out of them, and if you are, you don't need that to know all I refer to here.
* That's not throwing any shade on Ricky Gervais there either. He's a funny guy. Check out the obscure '08 movie Ghost Town sometime.
** The show about Mexican accountant Oscar being "outed" as gay was a hilarious example of this. The kissing scene explains why the show is seen as cringeworthy on occasion. Yeah, I had a hard time watching that, but you just had to! "I don't celebrate Oscar's gayness - this is about his Mexicanity" or something like that is what Michael said at one point.
Comments (8)
Blacks against the invasion... cause, MY free stuff, not yours
Posted On: Friday - August 23rd 2024 10:58AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Immigration Stupidity Trump Hildabeast Race/Genetics Karmakarma Kameleon
Via Instapundit, I came upon this Daily Caller article reporting on Black! men's opinion from the barbershop. It Hurts Black People’: Chicago Barbershop Voters Unload On Democrats Over Immigration Policy. Oh sure, there are always a few good guys, occasionally women even, that DO understand the big picture and have told the rest so for years.
“All the immigrants came in and … the stuff they have for the Americans, they’re giving it to the immigrants that’s coming in,” one voter said while receiving a haircut. “Trump was trying to keep them out, so to speak, as much as he could. But Biden just like let the gate open.”That's one guy, but I guess there are a lot of black voters out there who are sporting large movie-goer antagonizing Afros then, because they surely are not spending any time at the barber shops. Pew Research's data on '16 "validated"* voters shows their support, or lack thereof, for Trump in '16.**
It's hard to read, but that's an 81% Hildabeast vote from black men, and 98% from the women. I guess votes from the latter for Trump came to such a small number, there are statistical problems, hence the asterisk of which I haven't found the other end.***. (That right column of numbers is percentage of the total electorate.)
So, no, I am not excited about the black vote because, hey, they get it on immigration! That's not the case. Generally, they don't. In '16, they voted for the one more likely to supply the free shit, which is always the ctrl-left There was also the big black church lady turnout, as directed by James Clyburne and the various fried chicken outlets.
The reason black people in Chicago may be a little more up in arms about the invasion recently is because it's become personal. That's the only time they care. There's never been any concern out of them for the general cultural changes for the worse and the Population Replacement Programme directed against the White people who built the place. No, see, these "newcomers" to Chicagoland are getting the free shit paid for by the working White man that is supposed to go to the black man only. Note the quote above about "the stuff".
Even when they do look at the slightly larger picture, well:
“It hurts black people more than anything,” another voter said. “Black men particularly like to work with their hands, they like to drive trucks. Those are jobs that an illegal can come in and underbid him with third world prices and put him out of work.”[My bolding.] It's not "what's in it for legacy (Steve Sailer idea) Americans", but what's in it for US, the black people. I know that some White men drive trucks too. Trucking wages have taken a big hit (think REAL money) since the time of the Snowman in Smokey and the Bandit. That's 60 years of an unrelenting push for cheap labor that has been decreasing pay and job prospects for American men.
“Blacks are struggling more than any other demographic,” the voter said. “We got the highest prison rate, highest high school dropout rate. Highest murder rate. What’s in it for us?”
Oh, and Jason Cohen, the Daily Caller writer here, talked to a few guys before he got the heck out of that part of town, but for the one guy,
Despite his belief about former President Donald Trump handling illegal immigration better, the voter told Jones he plans to vote for Harris because she’s a woman.Whaaaa? That doesn't even sound right. It's more likely because she's black, or so she says...
As for the women:
“I’m going for Trump. I feel like every time they don’t want somebody who is good for us to win, they throw somebody black in our face thinking that’s going to make us vote for the black person,” a black woman told Lemon [Don, a black TV talking head].Yeah, well, you will anyway. Talk to me after your vote's been validated.
* The Pew article does a good job explaining what they mean by "validated". They use the term "verified" and then switch to "validated" part way down.
** To me, support for Trump was a pretty good proxy for caring about the immigration invasion. His bringing up that issue bigly WAS, after all, what got him into the race. In '20, well, there should be one big-assed asterisk, so I won't use those numbers.
*** No, these aren't them - I just want to note that I did check through page 3 of the article.
Comments (24)
Gradations of Stupidity - 3 items
Posted On: Thursday - August 22nd 2024 8:47PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity US Feral Government Female Stupidity Dead/Ex- Presidents Kung Flu Stupidity
None of these is worth putting in a separate post, I guess.
Did any readers see T-Shirts like the above during the PanicFest? I'm very glad I didn't run into anyone that hard-core about it.
It's been 4 years since what Peak Stupidity (see the many posts here) the Summer re-Panic. I really thought the thing had run its course - not the virus, but the PanicFest - by May of '20, so the Summer resurgence was seen by us as Season 2* of the infotainment.
Well, from the time our local nurse was given T-shirts, you know, to support the team, 4 years back, to now, this particular bright red shirt hasn't gotten much use. It has all the important stuff, the 6 ft rule, the "clean the hell out of EVERYTHING" strongly worded advice, the hand washing, the coughing into your sleeve wisdom,, and generally says "stay safe". The hospital has its logo to show it cares, all 50,000 employees of the huge conglomerate.
My other T-shirts wear out, so I figured I'd start wearing this one around. I'm guessing people don't know what to think. So far, though I forget what I'm wearing anyway, I've had neither compliments on my facetiousness nor any to praise me for still practicing "the lessons we've all learned". Otherwise, when I've brought up the PanicFest in discussing 4 years ago in context at work, I start right off calling it nonsense. Out of 20 people perhaps, nobody has seen fit to disagree.
This has nothing to do with the Kung Flu. This anecdote is possibly not stupid at all, though it came unnervingly close. I was the only guy at the hotel swimming pool among 2 moms and about 5 kids. The kids, looking half-black or so, were well behaved. Something tells me they were military families. I was just out there to get in the water a few minutes and then get my Vitamin D in the sunshine. (The picture doesn't do the sunshine justice!)
I wasn't trying to listen, but I heard something about going upstairs and "what's your room number?" Nobody said anything back, so I looked and saw the one Mom was giving hand signal numbers to the other. OK, perhaps that's good practice. I could see a military Dad insisting on this.
However, I'm this Middle-Age to older guy, and we're talking one Big Bertha and the other (giving the number via her hands) needing to lose 25 lb. and a big tattoo to be at that point reasonably attractive. This White guy laying out might hear the room number and bust in to rape you, is that the deal? Please don't flatter yourselves, ladies.
This has nothing to do with the Kung Flu or fat Moms in hotel swimming pools, and it's from a time when stupidity levels were still very low. It's about the ex-1880s-President shown here, Chester A. Arthur. Mr. Smith linked to (on the Citizendium site) on the man during a discussion on natural-born citizen compliance under our Phyllis Schlafley memorial post. Vice President Arthur became President after President James Garfield was assassinated.
The natural born citizen issue in question aside here, I was struck by a couple of things in the biography that shows the stark difference between the Federal Gov't of the mid-1880s and our FERAL Gov't of 140 years later. Congress may have had plenty of other issues, but the President was concerned with the fairness of Civil Service, aka, gov't worker hiring. He is after all, simply the Administrator of the Executive Branch. There was no AA then, just party machine politics. All told, the site quotes one Alexander K. McClure:
[This publisher] recalled, "No man ever entered the Presidency so profoundly and widely distrusted, and no one ever retired ... more generally respected."You don't seem to run into that nowadays. Here's the thing part was really striking to me:
Acting independently of party dogma, Arthur also tried to lower tariff rates so that the government would not be embarrassed by annual surpluses of revenue.(Without the evil income taxes being allowed, tariffs were a big source of Gov't revenue.) Can you imagine this?! It's not just that nobody, but nobody, would be embarrassed to grab and spend that extra taxpayer money today. It's that word "surplus". It's so... weird... Oh, while I'm at it, one more excerpt:
The Arthur administration enacted the first general federal immigration law. In 1882, Arthur approved a measure excluding paupers, criminals, and lunatics.See? That part of the Act must have been overridden by Congress. Shouldn't we try to at the very least pass a new law prohibiting paupers, criminals, and lunatics from immigrating? Oh, yeah, that's right - that damn plaque!
* Then, there was our "March ['21] Mask Madness" series and then we asked that following July Seriously, there's gonna be a Season 3?!
Comments (2)
Ctrl-Left Projection, pun assuredly intended
Posted On: Thursday - August 22nd 2024 12:20PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Media Stupidity Orwellian Stupidity Karmakarma Kameleon
I want to thank Peak Stupidity's always helpful commenter Adam Smith for posting this video on his youtube channel to help us embed it here. From Mark Jeftovic of The Daily Bell, via ZeroHedge, comes this video taken by bystanders of a strange, weird sight, playing for our bemusement outside the Democrat National Convention.
"Grotesque" is what one Arjun Singh* of The Epoch Times calls it, as ZeroHedge calls it an Orwellian "Two Minute Hate". (Commenter Alarmist notes that it's actually a Three Minute, Seven Seconds Hate, due, as per Mr. Smith, inflation, I suppose. Never you mind.) To be fair, at least we don't have to sit in chairs, watch the screen and rant and throw stuff as if it were a more serious version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Then again, Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, didn't envision an endless loop projected onto the side of a building.
The 3:07 Hate this week is against Ingsoc, errr, DNC enemies of the week Elon Musk, Matt Goetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene (our all time FAVORITE non-UniParty member of Congress), and some Fox News people. I have no idea who the woman doing that particular calisthenic is nor do I the 2 men in the B&W footage near the end are.
The video was made, as seen by the logo which flashes occasionally, by an entity called Vjay Bombs. By their language against the Billionaires, most of whom are leftist (including a number of richies who spoke at the convention), their bringing up pedophiles, their use of that term "weird" again, and other phrasing, the video is a projection in more ways than one.
I'd never put much stock in the psychological phenomenon of Projection before, but I ran into a a pure form of it in a TV clip last year. It's really a thing. How does it work? I didn't answer that last time.
I would be glad if part-time psychoanalyst and German literary expert Dieter Kief could chime in on this. I'll take a stab at it. The ctrl-left is far out there these days. They have a real hatred for anyone who defends traditional society. Because the people they hate are traditional and don't do very many really weird or socially very out of the ordinary things, the ctrl-left people have to search for lies about us. You don't get any good material for lies by reading the facts, so they must search within themselves. They can be a very weird crowd, both the high-level Billionaire types and the lower-level perpetual university student blue-haired tattooed types.
Therefore, they search for evil behavior found within themselves and/or their peers and project this - on the wall this time - as behavior of the sane rest of us. The ones who make this stuff up aren't so stupid as to believe we are like them. They are lying. To blatantly lie, slander, and libel like this does take a personality with some problems... psychopathy comes to mind.
Even that very last part about hatred is a lie. Peak Stupidity, for example - we don't secretly hate these people. We OPENLY hate them, because they are evil lying sacks of shit. Project that up on the wall next time DNC!
OK, I got work to do. I don't always have time for these 45 minute hate posts.
* He may be of the Epoch Times and may be the guy that took the video for us. I don't freakin' know - X, ex-Twitter, doesn't make any of that info. clear to me. They've got @ signs and #'s out the ass, though, if that helps you any.
Comments (9)
The Olympics, where a boy IS allowed to hit a girl
Posted On: Tuesday - August 20th 2024 8:34PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Bread and Circuses
I mean, if the International Olympic Ccommittee, the legacy of a 2 Millennial tradition handed down from ancient Greece, says so....
I'd almost forgotten this one. As with the other Circuses (often watched while eating unlimited breadsticks, soup, and salad), such as the RNC and DNC this summer, I was not willing or even capable of watching the '24 da-da-daaah!, Olympiad! (Actually, were I willing, I might have found a way, yeah, maybe at the Olive Garden.)
However, I imagine even our readers who also didn't watch it would have heard of the Genderbender nonsense that went on, especially this boxing story. I'm sure I missed a lot after this story, but all I got here is something I read saying Angela Carini abandons Olympic fight after 46 seconds against Imane Khelif.
The beauty here is that the whole article is a veritably Olympiad of Stupidity. I'll just go bit by bit:
[Caption below the quick video:] 'Testosterone is not the perfect test': IOC on boxer Khelif gender test controversyDid they even attempt the "pull down his shorts in the locker room and check for certain stuff" test? Maybe the guy did get THE OPERATION, but you'd see scars where the "trim" should be. Pretty obvious, but then, I'm not a biologist.
The Italian boxer Angela Carini broke down in tears after she abandoned her bout against the Algerian Imane Khelif after 46 seconds in a fight that sparked huge controversy at the Olympics.Women should not be doing boxing. I don't particularly like men's boxing, but I don't see how people appreciate women's. Is it just some Title IX thing?
[SNIP]
In highly charged scenes at the North Paris Arena, a first punch from Khelif dislodged Carini’s chinstrap and a second smashed against her chin and bloodied her shorts. After multiple punches Carini returned to her corner and raised her hand. She fell to her knees sobbing and refused to shake Khelif’s hand after the Algerian was declared the winner.
Carini said she had pulled out after being hit harder than she had ever been hit and feared her nose was broken. “I am heartbroken,” Carini said. “I went to the ring to honour my father.Seriously, by fighting in a ring? I think her father would have been more honored had she married well in a big fat
I was told a lot of times that I was a warrior but I preferred to stop for my health. I have never felt a punch like this.You were told wrong. You're not a warrior. Warriors don't stop fighting for their health and go into the corner weeping. Oh, and warriors are not women, practically by definition. Just sayin'...
The 25-year-old, from Naples, added: “I got into the ring to fight. I didn’t give up, but one punch hurt too much and so I said enough. I’m going out with my head held high.You did give up. Head held hi... OK, forget it.
“It’s not a defeat for me – for me if you go in the ring you have already won, regardless of everything else. I’m not here to judge.I guess because I've watched something like one hour in the last 25 years, I must have missed that they now have "Participation" platinum medals. No, the refs are there to judge. You lost. I see that Miss Carini meant "to judge" in reference to the masculinity of her opponent Mr. Khelif. Too scared to say anything? Some warrior there!
But these punches to the nose hurt, I said enough.”Saying enough is not giving in, see, or not... She's a bundle of contradictions, this Angela Carini.
Khelif stopped briefly to speak to the BBC: “I am here for gold,” the Algerian said. “I will fight anybody, I will fight them all.”Hey, if they're stupid enough to let you, sure, knock
Reem Alsalem, the UN special rapporteur on violence against women and girls, expressed her concern about what had happened. “Angela Carini rightly followed her instincts and prioritised her physical safety, but she and other female athletes should not have been exposed to this physical and psychological violence based on their sex,” she tweeted.Well, I mean, like, it's boxing. The idea IS to beat the hell out of people. But, I guess women are NOT as strong as men, is that what you're on record as saying, Mr. or Miss Alsalem? That sounds hateful and inciting. Better be careful... there's that British Police Commissioner. Can one extradite a UN special rapporteur, or do they have hypocritic immunity?
Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, weighed in [What weight class?], saying: “I think that athletes who have male genetic characteristics should not be admitted to women’s competitions …If you won't say the word "man" either, this stupidity will stand.
Before the fight The International Olympic Committee (IOC) came under fire for permitting Khelif and Lin Yu‑ting of Taiwan to compete in the women’s category at these Games. Lin is due to face Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova in a featherweight bout in Paris on Friday.Turdibekova, seriously? Granted, Lin and Sitora could be girls names, who knows, but they were both found to have XY chromosomes. OTOH:
“As with previous Olympic boxing competitions, the gender and age of the athletes are based on their passport,” it [the IOC] added.OIC. It's easy to forge chromosomes for each of our cells, but passports are impossible to forge - special invisible ink and stuff. Never been done.
The IOC also accused the IBA of changing its gender rules in the middle of the 2023 world championships. “The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision,...This aggression will not stand, man...
Comments (23)
Update on 6 Million Dollar Flower Pot Road
Posted On: Monday - August 19th 2024 8:31AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Student and other Snowflakes Economics ctrl-left
Sounds like a story from Old Shanghai, doesn't it?
(Thanks to Adam Smith for the meme.)
It may or may not have been a boring post to the average Peak Stupidity reader- no comments appear underneath - but I will still update our post Delivering the 6 million dollar flower pots of ~ 2 months back due to an interesting conversation with 2 guys that must be involved.
From Unz Reveiw comments, readers may know I ride a bicycle. It's not a sport for me, and I wouldn't even say it's a "recreational" thing. I've always liked to ride, and there are places easier to get to and park by on a bike, so I'll ride. I don't see myself as a fanatic, but I'll state for the record 2 things:
1) I'll break any damn laws on the books when it comes down to safety over the law.*
2) I try my best to get along with drivers, but yes, I did have a hockey-style air horn on my front fork for a few years. The propellant ran out eventually.
Anyway, 2 younger guys at the coffee shop recently admired my classic old bike as I tied it down to a tree. I had to tell them about buying it used long ago and "they made things to last."**, etc. It's like older guys talking about classic cars - beats trying to argue about the weather and whose fault that is ...
While with my friends, I heard these 2 guys chatting about that particular street being narrowed from 4 lanes to 2. I wonder (still, as I never found out) who the guys are, as they know some numbers about traffic flows. "ABC Street [the one in question] has 26,000 cars per day, and they're making it 2 lanes, while DEF Road has fewer, and they're widening that one to 4 [maybe they said 6]." Interesting.
An hour or so later, when leaving, I went to talk to these guys. I brought up, with no regard for possible tact required, the dumb $6 Million project they'd mentioned. "That's about 'delivering' State taxpayers' money here for what, paying Mexicans for 6 months?***". Surprisingly, the guys didn't get into the foreigner, OMG!, racial angle. Instead the one told me how very pleased I will be when this project is done.
"You'll be much safer riding. With only 2 lanes, the traffic will all slow down from 40 mph to 25, and there will be fewer cars. It'll be so nice for you!" Really? Will it be better on a jammed up street full of drivers frustrated due to having a tough time even getting on the road? What about the fact that I might be going somewhere, myself sometime, in a CAR, or maybe my wife, or other people?! This one is an important route for that direction, so traffic will have to divert to neighborhood streets with the stop signs nearly every block.
The guys were so happy for me, while I had absolutely no reason to be happy or to change my mind about what a total screw up this whole thing is. Who were they? I wondered if they work for that legislator that pushed this thing. I only remembered after getting home that they themselves had wondered about the narrowing of this road vs. the other one. The whole thing is really intriguing, and I hope I'll run into them again... if they don't get stuck in traffic and divert to another coffee shop...
* Hah, one of the dozen or so times I've gotten pulled over by Johnny Law on a bicycle involved the cop telling me about one law I'd broken. No. When I think back on that 1/2 mile I'd ridden till he blared out on his P/A, I'd broken 6 laws! What did I learn from this? What I learned was that these same 6 violations on that route are important for my safety, so, the main thing is, look for that cop car in that spot next time. That's all.
** Yep, American made, and I think I recall changing the "bottom bracket" once though. BTW, "bottom bracket" is one of the stupidest terms around. It's a bearing set for the crank, and it is in NO WAY a bracket of any sort. Pre-peak stupidity...
*** It's STILL not done.
Comments (21)