PS: Agreed Mr. Corrupt...

The disregard and crushing of dissent began long before the anthropogenic climate change hoax which predated the COVID hoax by more than a decade. Both hoaxes are good examples of the thrashing of scientific norms.

PanicFest was and is being used as an excuse to dial up the censorship and to dehumanize dissenters in ways I have not seen before, even during the advent of the terror wars.

☮

PS
Adam Smith, you wrote:


“ It's disturbing how authoritarians in society have smashed scientific norms and crushed even the mildest forms of dissent in the last 18 months.”

Actually, the disregard and crushing of dissent began with the anthropogenic climate change hoax, predating the COVID hoax by a decade or more.

PS: Good afternoon everyone...

Mr. Kief, thanks for the link to the interesting John Ioannidis article. It's disturbing how authoritarians in society have smashed scientific norms and crushed even the mildest forms of dissent in the last 18 months. It's more troubling how the powerful have used this event for their gain to the detriment of everyone else. It's the second interesting article in tabletmag that someone pointed me towards in as many days. While not as significant as the Ioannidis article, the other one can be found here...

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/vaccines-konstantin-kisin

Mr. Ganderson, a madhouse indeed. Seems most colleges promote crazy people to positions of authority. I wish the insanity would stop. I hope you can enjoy the National Champion UMASS hockey team’s games in person this season. I hope you're right and that the student's opposition to Amherst's policies offer more than just a ray of hope. I truly hope this madness ends. The sooner the better.

Mr. Hail, I too am unsure when Mr. Roberts came to his senses, but it seems like he started coming around about a year ago and made the full transition a couple months back. He was pretty hardcore panic in the beginning, perhaps due to his age.(?) Fortunately he did “flip to our side”, unlike Unz and Sailer who still appear to be firmly planted on the other. Also, what's up with Australia? Is this how a “government” treats it's (s)citizens(/s) subjects once they're disarmed? It's pretty wild to see what the people masquerading as “government” have been able to get away with in the land down under.

Mr. Moderator, “I was lucky to be able to reserve "Peak Stupidity".”...

Sometimes different words in the domain name can trigger different prices. For example, peakevil.com is unregistered and available for $8.88/year at namecheap. Meanwhile, dailystupid.com is also available but namecheap and godaddy each tell me the cost would be $3895.00 for the first year and would then renew at $8.88/year and $18.99/year respectively. Godaddy calls them “premium domains”. According to godaddy “Premium Domain Names are more valuable than other domains because they are based on common words or phrases people often use in their online searches.”

I had heard of tulipmania, but the first place I read about it was in a book titled “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles Mackay. It tells a similar story as the investopedia link in my previous comment...

http://supernovae.in2p3.fr/~llg/Textes/Extraordinary-Popular-Delusions-Mackay.pdf
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24518

There is a chapter titled “TheTulipomania” starting on page 89 (page 123) of the .pdf link above. The book has quite a few different stories of mass delusions that have overcome society. I think tulipmania is an interesting (though probably not the best) case of a mass hysteria event and can be compared, at least in some ways, to what we are witnessing today. The origin and nature of the hysteriæ are very different, but by studying cases of mass delusion that have afflicted society we might gain a little perspective about popular mass delusions and they influence society today. (As always, if I write or link to something that sparks an idea for a post, please feel free to run with it.)

I'm a bit surprised that the Navajo reservation would have a curfew. As you say, the curfew may not have anything to do with the coof and instead may have been implemented to reduce the number of pedestrians under the influence getting run over at night.(?)

I hope everyone has a great evening and weekend.

☮

PS

Hey everybody - stay home as the sign in the desert says, holy cow!

- And there, you sit down please and carefully read this text. I had a vision this morning, which told me so - and I followed its imperative and - - - BANG! - I was hit full frontal (- cortex - that is in this case here, mind you) by the mental CO-19-superpower of John Ioannidis:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/science/articles/pandemic-science

PS: From Mr. Hail: "So Mr. PCR* flipped from the dark side to the good side, and in full form, with no hedging, no b.s., no remorse. It seems." Never an apology of any sort either, I'm sure. "They never do." Call it a month or so back, Mr. Hail.

RPE: Which forum do you mean in which someone name-dropped Peak Stupidity?

PS

Good news:

Paul Craig Roberts has just (Sept 7, 2021) said this:

______________________
"The 'Covid crisis' is,
from start to finish,
a manufactured crisis."
______________________

That is a direct quote from his article published that day.

This from a man who clearly positioned himself as a loyal Panic-pusher in 2020, and, as I remember it, as one who indulged in conspiracy-theory-style indulgence about vast undercounting of deaths by evil Trump officials, and slammed Sweden as crazy or evil for not locking down, and who slammed the Anti-Panic side generally.

So Mr. PCR* flipped from the dark side to the good side, and in full form, with no hedging, no b.s., no remorse. It seems. If he spent any long length of time on the fence, he's off it now.

I haven't followed enough of PCR's evolution over the past 20 months since early Jan 2020 (i.e., when a conspiracy-fringe first started spreading word of a possible flu-virus apocalypse, being wrong about it from the start but operating under a fog-of-war in early weeks/months), so I don't know when or why PCR* flipped, but he has now.

(* --- PCR = Paul Craig Roberts. Sadly, I don't know that this acronym, based on his initials, works anymore given that the Pro-Panic side has forced the obscure medical term "polymerase-chain-reaction test" into the public lexicon, calling it a PCR test, a form of ongoing tribute to the Corona God.)

PS
Mr. Smith- what you describe about Amherst College is true, but today’s ray of hope is that the students forced the administration to back off somewhat.. The president of the college is crazy, I think.

2 outdoor fairs this weekend have been cancelled, and rumor has it that tailgating is banned from the UMASS football game Saturday. I’d go down and set up my own tailgate , except I'll be out of town.

I'm worried that they’re not going to allow spectators at the National Champion UMASS hockey team’s games- they open the first weekend in October. As the great Chuck Heston observed “It’s a madhouse…a madhouse…”

PS I love the story out of the glorious people's republic of Michigan where some leftoids got offended over a Norwegian flag that they thought was a Confederacy flag.
Another welcome to Costco I love you moment are the Wal-Mart (CCP) signs with three hand outlines saying you can have 15 items in this lane.
A glorious egalitarian utopia awaits, yes we can!

BTW-a commenter name dropped Peak Stupidity the other day in the comments forum regarding a study on the stupid it burns!

PS

PEAK STUPIDITY main entry Sept 8, 2021: "Guys, the whole business model of hotels, including yours, is that people have got to leave the freaking house! Keep it (strike)classy(/strike) hysterical, fellows."

Moderator wrote: "I took a picture of that Hampton Inn sign while traveling through the Navajo Indian reservation."

Approximately when did you take the picture?

I would have otherwise guessed it might be Australia, which seems to be the craziest country of all, like a Flu Virus version of Jim Jones devotees took over and somehow pulled off mass-conversions of the population.

If you ever find an Australian nightly news broadcast, it's still today dominated by wacko flu-virus hysteria reminiscent of USA in late March and April 2020, just nonstop panic drumbeating for the first twenty minutes of an hourly broadcast, terror over discovery of even ONE so-called "case."

The reason I'd have guessed this "Follow the Curfew" sign would be Australia is they do run a now-quasi-permanent curfew--no one allowed outside after sundown--and of course indefinite bans on any foreign travel in OR out, and more.

PS

GAnderson wrote: "Here in New England the panic is ramping up again- most towns in Western Mass now have reinstituted indoor mask mandates. I have been going to the globo-gym the next town over, as it didn’t have a mandate, but now that domino has fallen- almost every town in the Pioneer Valley is masked up..."

And all that *before* traditional flu season begins in those climates.

PS: Adam, that Dutch tulip mania story (of course I've heard about it, but not in detail) ought to be in its own post, with a comparison, as you make, to what's been going on. I guess the difference is money-speculation hysteria vs. hysteria over fear.

I took a picture of that Hampton Inn sign while traveling through the Navajo Indian reservation. I guess they had a curfew, but it'd do more good in keeping drunk center-line-walking Indians from getting run down vs. stopping the Kung Flu.

PS: Mr. Ganderson, I had thought this whole time that you just either coached or just watched hockey. Good on you, playing too! I have only ice skated a couple of times. They told me it was NOT easy if you have roller-bladed a lot, but it was indeed - that might mean I was doing it wrong.

I cannot believe the masking crap you tell me about up there. As far as swimming goes, I think there'd be a drowning in no time, or at least lots of people being fished out, coughing out water. It'd be a lawyers dream. Were I a partner, I'd direct my subordinates to spend their working days at the swimming pools. No need to spend all that time chasing ambulances - gas is getting expensive ... OK, sorry, back on with the lawyer-bashing here.

I am so sorry you cannot play hockey right now. I think I'd be the same way. I also find it amazing that the teams don't just throw them off. How 'bout at least Maskless Mondays ... those are my fun days ...

PS: Alarmist, a friend who used to spend lots of time on-line and was familiar with the workings of the web told me that I was lucky to be able to reserved "Peak Stupidity". Do you mean the stupidity is asymptotically approaching a horizontal line that represents what, the stupidity singularity? (I never did get that higher-level small-scale physics much.)

Does that Staten Island Ferry go to the statue too? I was wondering why so many tourists. I know we visited the Statue of Immigration, errr, Liberty, long ago. I went up to the top of one of the two towers of the WTC.

PS: Good afternoon everyone...
How to succeed in Marketing...

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/5C5ctjRYslw?color=white

Mr. Moderator, if you don't mind me asking, where in America is there a curfew?

Mr. Alarmist, Asymptotic Stupidity is Forever?

Mr. Ganderson, sorry to hear you're still dealing with this insanity. Playing hockey in a face diaper? Crazy. I'm a little surprised to hear they're letting people swim while showing their face. (What about all that breathing? Do they want people to die?)

I've read that Amherst College currently has an outdoor diaper edict, a double mask commandment for everyone indoors (even though all the students are “required” to be fully vaxxed), that students are not permitted to visit restaurants or bars and that any off campus travel must be approved by Amherst’s Office of Student Affairs.

Is this true? Since when can a college tell students what they can and cannot do off campus? Since when can a college decide if a student can travel or not?

Will the world ever recover from this madness???

Once upon a time, it was deemed a proof of bad taste in any man of fortune to be without a collection of tulips.

Tulips were introduced to Holland in 1593 with the bubble occurring primarily from 1634 to 1637. At the height of the bubble, tulips sold for approximately 10,000 guilders, equal to the value of a mansion on the Amsterdam Grand Canal.

In 1634, tulipmania swept through Holland. The rage among the Dutch to possess tulip bulbs was so great that the ordinary industry of the country was neglected, and the population, even to its lowest dregs, embarked in the tulip trade. A single bulb could be worth as much as 5,500 florins. (As a comparison 4 tuns of beer cost ~ 32 florins at the time. That's around 1,008 gallons of beer, or 65 kegs of beer. A half barrel keg (15.5 gallons) of Coors Light costs around $90, so 4 tuns of beer ≈ $5,850 making 1 florin ≈ $182. That means that the best tulips cost ~ $1,000,000 in today's currency, with many lesser bulbs trading in the $50,000 - $150,000 range).

By 1636, the demand for the tulip trade was so large that regular marts for their sale were established on the Stock Exchange of Amsterdam, in Rotterdam, Haarlem, and other towns.

It was at that time that professional traders got in on the action, and everybody appeared to be making money simply by possessing some rare tulip bulbs. Indeed, it seemed at the time that the price could only go up; that “the passion for tulips would last forever”. People began buying tulips with leverage, using margined derivatives contracts to buy more than they could afford. But as quickly as it began, confidence was dashed. By the end of the year 1637, prices began to fall.

A large part of this rapid decline was driven by the fact that people had purchased bulbs on credit, hoping to repay their loans when they sold their bulbs for a profit. But once prices started their decline, holders were forced to liquidate. By 1638, tulip bulb prices had bottomed out.

I don't know how true the story is...

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market_bubble.asp

Some people dispute the prices attached to the bulbs. Perhaps some details of this tale are more folklore and less fact.(?)
Perhaps tulipmania is not the best historical comparison for PanicFest, but...

I fear this insanity will not subside soon.
Tulipmania apparently lasted almost four years.

I hope everyone has a great day.

☮

PS I’m amused by the fact that power utilities run ads telling you to use less of their product. And that’s been the case for a long time.

Kinda like I always thought dentists should advise us to smear chocolate on our choppers before retiring for the night- more decay, more business!

Here in New England the panic is ramping up again- most towns in Western Mass now have reinstituted indoor mask mandates. I have been going to the globo-gym the next town over, as it didn’t have a mandate, but now that domino has fallen- almost every town in the Pioneer Valley is masked up. All public schools have mask requirements, indoor sports, which in the fall means volleyball and swimming must be masked up while they play, although the swimmers don’t have to mask up when they are in the water. Wow, a sliver of sunshine.
My Wednesday night hockey group restarted play after a year and a half off (presumably to flatten the curve), sadly without me, as I refuse to wear a mask while I play hockey. A long and tremendously undistinguished hockey career may be coming to an end.

PS

Yes, that is approaching Peak Stupidity, though I worry our country ... and the Western world for that matter ... are actually on a trajectory for Asymptotic Stupidity (believe it or not, Infinitestupidity.com is already registered).

But it’s even funnier when the people add to the stupidity. In NYC, on the #1 IRT train, the stop at South Ferry loops so the downtown trains can go on to because me uptown trains. As it is a loop, there are large gaps as the chain of rectangular cars navigate through the loop, so they play a recording to tell people to watch the gaps as trains enter and leave the station. Well, one day they cut the announcement after “and”, so the next thing you heard as a train was entering the station was “ LEAVE THE STATION.” The Staten Island Ferry was a large tourist draw, so I watched somewhat bemused as several dozen misled tourists rushed for the exits upon hearing that “dire warning” for the first time.