A Visual Fisking of Cortez the Killer
Posted On: Tuesday - October 2nd 2018 8:00PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music History
(BTW, it's apparently "Cortes" with an "s" now, but how was Neil Young to know that 43 years ago when he wrote the song Cortez the Killer?) See Savage Natives and the Conquistadors and our movie review Apocalypto Now! for background for this post.
Peak Stupidity has made it policy not to repeat any youtube music. We'd like it to where the reader that comes for the kick-ass music here will not run into a repeat. Today's post will hopefully be a one-time-only exception, as this song just needs some blowback. The post The great works of the ancients ... with no Caterpillars was about the boasting in the song in question that the pre-Columbian S/Central American savages had "built up with their bare hands, what we still can't do today", a flat-out lie. We'd included the song, appropriately in that previous post, but the song just needs a good old fisking.
OK, let me explain that ancient-to-the-blog-world term. Way back in 2001, some idiot NY Times reporter (but I repeat myself), named Robert Fisk was taken to task on an article in which he defended his being stoned (via rocks, not on-the-rocks) and beaten by Afghanis. He'd be called a hard-core "cuck" nowadays, but the subsequent evisceration of Fisk's stupidity by Australian blogger Tim Blair (I remember that guy, wow!), and the use of the term "fisking" subsequently by Godfather-of-bloggers Glenn Reynolds, aka, "Instapundit" pushed the term into common blog-use. We've not heard it a lot over the last 5 years, at least, so it may be time to bring it back. Because we all have broadband (another blast-from-the-past term) now, Peak Stupidity will make this a visual fisking, i.e. w/pictures.
Please note with regard to this Neil Young classic that it's long been Peak Stupidity's contention that, as far as song-quality goes, the lyrics are very unimportant. Due to the excellent guitar playing in Cortez the Killer, arguably the best over Down by the River, Like a Hurricane, Powderfinger, Hey, Hey, My, My!*, and Southern Man (also written with extremely stupid lyrics), I think this a great song. I don't recommend paying any attention to the lyrics for best enjoyment though. If you're gonna, and not about to put up with 43 year-old PC anti-white-man stupidity, then you're gonna like this:
First, get the music going -
(Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse)
OK, now what's Neil singing about?
"He came dancing across the waterYeah, well, how many millennia would it be before the noble savages of the new world would have ever built something resembling a ship, not to mention a gun? A few centuries later, it was said "God made men, but Samuel Colt made them equal". I'd rather be equal in self-defense myself rather than subject to the whims of cruel nature.
with his galleons and guns."
"Looking for the new world
and that palace in the sun."
As if these Aztecs knew anything about sound money anyway. They were just using gold as decoration for the palace, for crying out loud. What were you people running, a Kingdom or an interior decoration business? A bunch of savage fools and their money ... etc.
"On the shore lay Montezuma
with his coca leaves and pearls.
In his halls he often wondered
of the secrets of the world."
"And his subjects gathered around him
like the leaves around a tree."
Yeah, that's a happy crowd of subjects, I tell ya'. Why don't you toss them down a fresh heart or two?
"In their clothes of many colors,OK, just stop ... STOP RIGHT HERE!
for the angry gods to see."
"And the women all were beautiful,"
Right side: Reality has a way of sapping you in the groin.
"and the men stood straight and strong.
They offered life in sacrifice,
so that others could go on."
Yeah, it's easier said than done. Sheer terror!
"Hate was just a legend
And war was never known."
Of course not! These people were just part of a "police action".
"The people worked together,
and they lifted many stones.
They carried them to the flat lands,
and they died along the way."
Now that sounds like a excellent productive way to live one's life - working your backbone to death toting 3-ton stones from point A to point B, and, yeah, dying along the way. I really hope they had a single-payer health plan.
"But they built up with their bare hands,
what we still can't do today."
Sure we can. We just don't CHOOSE to do something that stupid with our time, in this De-cade or any other. If we did, we'd use Caterpillars and Snorklifts, so people don't, like, die along the way and shit.
"And I know she's living there,
and she loves me to this day."
Look at the line-up carefully, Neil, and see if you can pick out your old sweetheart.
"I still can't remember when,Ummm, drugs?
or how I lost my way."
* Not to be confused with My, My, Hey, Hey!
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New Improved ZeroHedge website - Worse than EVAH!
Posted On: Tuesday - October 2nd 2018 7:50AM MST
In Topics: Websites
(I'd somehow lost some other screenshots of the site, but I am now too worried about ZH shutting down my browser to even go there right now!)
Hey, one of the only 4 sites on the Peak Stupidity blogroll (to the right) has been "new and improved" very recently. The use of the quote marks here is to indicate that Zerohedge has been, in actuality, "changed to suck more", if that was even possible. Why I am mentioning it, and even keeping it for now on the blogroll, is that it's site usability, not content, that this complaint is about. Yeah, I've written 5 or more times before about this, and people have told me it works fine for them. Good on ya, in that case. In my updated Firefox, it is still a 1 out of 10 on usability, with 0 meaning "DON'T GO THERE".
PLEASE NOTE: I've used adblock and tried other browsers on another of my devices - still bad! Additionally, I am not always on my own computer/device. Oftentimes, it's a work or hotel computer, and I can't exactly go downloading ad-blockers considering I may never be on that computer again.
Anyway, on one computer on which ZH was fairly usable, I noticed a new change to the site. The comments now take 30 seconds to 1 minute to load, and all cuss-words have been defaced with asterisks. That pretty much does it for me. The comments had been the BEST PART of Zerohedge.com, especially back 5 years ago. Some of these people just used the bad words when they needed them. Comments will NOT be the same without that, uh, feature.
Here at Peak Stupidity we don't have a lot of conversation yet, but we sure welcome it*. On lots of websites, though, the comments are more enjoyable than the articles. If one can write in, it changes drastically the amount of time one will spend on the site too. Think of the page view numbers for the site once people start arguing not just with the post but with each other too**. I would think the number of views would go up very non-linearly. You would think that the site-owners would understand this stuff. No, on Zerohedge now, it's all about downloading all sorts of scripts, graying-out the screen until you hit something, jerking the text back-and-forth before it settles down, and shutting down your browser. Fight Club is gone - it's Script Club now over there. I urge Tyler Durden to pick himself up, throw a few hard punches at his own head***, and do some hard thinking about whether it's all about the bucks or the ideas.
* PLEASE REMEMBER: You MUST put the two letters "PS" together at the beginning of your comment, or it WILL be just plain gone! That was a quick way to thwart THE RUSSKIES (I kid you not.) It was that or going to "Capcha", which to me is more of a pain in the ass. I apologize on behalf of lame-o would-be viagra-advertisers for the slight bit of hassle.
** To me, depending on the average length of comments (ZH used to have short, concise ones), 20 to 300 comments is an ideal range for getting me to read them. Below 20 oftentimes, there's not much interesting, and above 300 is daunting to me, as I have a sort of obsession with finishing them once I start. I guess on PeakStupidity right now, it's not daunting, so you've gotta give us that ;-}
*** That's kind of the movie, oh, ... SPOILER ALERT!
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Inflation and Chinese Imports and Exports
Posted On: Monday - October 1st 2018 12:23PM MST
In Topics: China Economics Inflation
After just having mentioned another blogger's obsession with certain topics in the introduction of the just-completed previous post, we come to one of Peak Stupidity's obsessions, inflation. As with Steve Sailer's on the intricacies of school admissions, etc, our topic also does fit in with the theme of this blog. FED-induced inflation is related to our discussion of Economics and the Global Financial Stupidity going on. However, that is not to say that some readers aren't just plain "sick of this crap". Hey, don't fret, readers, as we've got loads of various forms of stupidity just itching to be written about.
This post is coming entirely from the memory and personal experience of this blogger, but the fact is, I've been keep good track of what's been going on in the country, first as a hobby, now as a prepping-related activity. Per our commenter BernCar, and a long-distance memory for me too, the 1970's price inflation in America, though not nation-destroying hyper-inflation, was a major factor of daily life. Take 18% annual inflation, please! (That joke never gets older, nor any funnier either!) Imagine knowing that putting off buying a big-ticket item, say an appliance or a vehicle, knowing that 3 months later, the item may well be 4 or 5% higher. To put it into today's prices, because of all the inflation, that could be ANOTHER THOUSAND BUCKS! on a $22,000 small SUV with no options, were you to put it off until this Christmas. Keep in mind, it kept on going!
Though the two posts are specifically about gasoline prices, the anecdotal history here and here go hand-in-hand with a history of inflation during my lifetime. Peak Oil notwithstanding, oil, hence gasoline, have gone up in the medium term (decade-length scale) similarly to general prices. I won't go over it all again, except to state now that your blogger here had kind of an epiphany in ~ 1994. Like our renowned, apparently-newsworthy, judge-selecting psychologist problem child, I can't remember the exact date. (Of course, I'm not trying to take down a Supreme Court nominee with a felonious accusation either).
Oh yeah, back to the subject, the epiphany in the mid-90's was that, after inflation being a factor in budgeting decision-making for my whole life to-date, inflation seemed to have really gone down toward zero. During the mid-1980's, due to, as we've written, the tough-interest rate policies of FED-chair Paul Volcker, inflation tailed off. However, it was still a significant 2-5 % in those years. Yeah, maybe 2% is not significant for the purchase of extra Halloween candy for 10 years into the future(hey, a prepper's gotta prep), but the money is still being stolen. For long-term savings, you'd better believe it still matters. At the point in time though (1994, for the record), I distinctly remember exactly where I was when I thought "Hey, inflation is really about zero now. I've gotta think differently about money." and "This is cool."
Nope, Ron Paul had not eliminated the FED, unfortunately. The big lull was due to American manufacturing might being sold off to China. It had really just started in earnest. In 1995, one could easily find lots of brands of consumer items still made in America. 20 years later, it's not possible for most items of any sort. The American companies that began outsourcing their manufacturing saved so much money from the cheap labor and cheap shipping*, that they could lower prices AND make more money. They had to lower the prices significantly to get American buyers on-board with buying Chinese goods anyway.
From my recollection, the quality was better during that 2-decade-ago era. I could go to Target or K-Mart and get the same sneakers that I bought last year or equivalent, or a bike part, and not pay more. Again, I am a noticer wrt this stuff, and that's why I'm writing this. That's what got me believing in those years that inflation was finally just plain licked (I hadn't read and thought about the real cause yet). It bears repeating that this was really something else. Imagine! You could get the same thing 2 years from now at the same price! More importantly, an account in the bank, just the least-risky thing like a CD, would at least hold onto your money, hence the value of your labor.
Well, then things slowly inexorably moved toward lower-quality (or even lower) - I've got another candidate for the Cheap China-Made Crap topic key, in fact, decaying on the back-burner, as I write. Prices have risen since. After all this Chinese near-dumping for 2 decades, not many remember that Wal-Mart had a big "Buy America" policy with flags on the walls. That didn't seem to work for their business model, which is now nothing more than "Here's your cheap China-made crap - take it or leave it. Let me see what's in the bag?!"
What's happened since 1995 is that the increases in profits had to keep coming, for the American CEOs to keep their jobs and their stock options soaring. The quality had to go down, and the prices had to start going up (I'd say by 10 years back). That's where it stands today.
There's one more thing I'd like to add, explaining the word "Exports" in the post title. Personal experience and that of Chinese people tell me that inflation has been big in China too. In 10 years, pork (a staple meat for the Chinese) at the store has gone from roughly 40-50% of American prices to parity. Inflation in China has been big for most items, causing a housing bubble there possibly bigger than our Housing Bubble 2.0, for much of the same reason, the search for a "safe" place to store the value of one's labor. Why? It's due to the fact that the Chinese government arranges to peg the currency, the Yuan, to the US Dollar, in order to keep the big advantage in prices of Chinese exports to the world. Inflation is OUR biggest export TO China. As for the currency peg, I really believe the Chinese government could cut that out, and their economy could do well without us and the Euro. market.
It's been only 25 years ago since the US elites decided to ignite the economy of China, at the expense of American industry. I don't think the Chinese have much of a memory or any gratefulness left about it either. Ask one, and you'll find him too proud or ignorant about this history. It doesn't matter at this point. They are what they are, and we are what we are, economically, in 2018.
* Think just a couple of thousand in TODAY's money, maybe down near $1500 back then, to ship > 2,500 ft3 or > 50,000 lb. of stuff across the ocean from China to an American west-coast port.
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Latent Karma hits Brooklyn, NYC - Minority-Majority hardest hit!
Posted On: Monday - October 1st 2018 10:44AM MST
In Topics: Pundits Race/Genetics ctrl-left Educational Stupidity
First, to clear this up, the downright asinine term "minority-majority" is in this post title just to illustrate said stupidity of that term and it's more-oft-used converse(?) "majority-minority". This post is partially about Educational Stupidity, but even this lowly blogger was taught the definitions of "majority" and "minority". You're either less than 1/2, or you're more than half. (I gotta put up a short post on this.) What I mean here, is that the white parents in a ritzy neighborhood called Park Slope, in Brooklyn, NYC, are a minority of the population but their whiteness makes them Majorities?, or I guess just "white people", so screw 'em, seem to be the prevailing attitude.
Let me back up. Mr. Steve Sailer, one of my favorite bloggers, for reading, learning, and getting ideas for Peak Stupidity, gets on some subjects that are not really my thing. Let's leave aside for a moment discussion about golf, golf courses, golf clubs, golf pros, amateur golf, business-relationship golf, miniature golf (no, not really ;-} ... hey every blogger's got his own obsessions, right? I'm welcome to skip what I'm not interested in. One of Mr. Sailer's big things seems to be education, or really the networking, ratings, costs, etc. involved and the efforts of upper-middle-class parents to scheme or just work for the best for their children. It's got lots to do with the discussion of race/genetics, class, and immigration, all important topics and the main point of the iSteve increasingly-read blog.
I tend to tune out, though, lots of the intricate details on which school has got lots of Orientals, which school sends 20% of the graduates to Haaavard, and all that elite crap. It's just not what my family ever really cared about. Don't get me wrong, they/we care lots about learning and education (not always synonymous). I am very grateful my Dad did not think connections and networking, as he believed in living honestly. The networking/connections business detracts from living an honest life.
Finally, we get to the point, which is a comment on Sailer's latest post on the primary education politics in NYC. In this case it's the Park Slope neighborhood schools in the borough of Brooklyn that is getting the minority-beatdown treatment by Socialist Mayor De Blasio, per Park Slope's Magic Dirt. The superintendent of NYC schools, one Richard Carranza, is planning on eliminating all screening* of kids for entry to the better schools. They are better, because they HAVE BETTER KIDS GOING THERE! (Hence the "magic dirt" terminology) You'd have to have read lots of Steve Sailer posts to get all of the sarcasm, innuendos, and whatever, to really enjoy this one. That is, along with more background on the continuing battle by parent for their kids learning, and (just as importantly) well-being in the public schools, if even possible.
I'm not excerpting anything for a specific point, though it's interesting that the NY Post writer, along with parents she quotes, seemed to have picked up on some iSteve terminology! The comments, as usual, are very good, with many personal anecdotes from the NYC area itself. As I wrote at the top, though, I don't care that much about these details of the shenanigans of how these cntl-left Park Slope parents are going to deal with the clampdown on their loophole around the system. This is the system that says the black and hispanic kids are just the same as far as abilities and will blend in nicely with the white and oriental kids. It's the "blank-slate" theory, that the ctrl-left, including a HUGE MAJORITY of these parents, supposedly believe in and espouse.
Yes, whether latent Karma fits best or not, there's gotta be a German word for this other than just simple plain-jane "schadenfreude". Seen it on the web, been there, read that. No, I need something longer, say 6 - 10 syllables, that describes not just being happy about others misfortune when they deserve it. The elite in NY City, including many with children at the schools there, seem to have an undue influence on America's politics, and they are extremely left-wing. They deserve to diversified good and hard! I need a word like:
Erfreutgleisnergroßgeschlossenermündung - n: Pleasure obtained from the learning of the struggles of others against stupid insane policies that they themselves have promoted for everyone else, that results in said people possibly shutting-the-fuck-up for once, about it.
Come on, any German readers, please write in if you've got a
See, here's what's going on, per my reading of 5 or so iSteve posts on the subject: The new guy, Superintendent Carranza, is from Miami, where the schools are already diversified to where white people have no say in the matter, at least in inner Miami, which is Latin America with more money. Up in NYC, he has not gotten with the program. The elite white people may be SAYING that they love diversity for everyone, all over the country, the more, the better. However, for their own kids in NYC public schools, the parents really NEED to have lots of white and oriental kids around theirs to have any kind of decent or better learning and discipline. The rules need to be made to enable this for their own kids, and screw the rest, 'cause of "diversity is our strength!"
The disHonarable Mr. De Blasio may really not care, as he is a Socialist down to his very core. Superintendent Carranza, however, just doesn't UNDERSTAND these parents. Richard Carranza can ask them how they feel about diversity, and they'll go all George Costanza on him (after all, this IS Brooklyn):
Superintendent Carranza: "Hey, now who wants to have some DIVERSITY?!"
Park Slope Majority-Minority parents:"I do!"
Park Slope Minority-Majority, aka, white, parents:"I do!"
Superintendent Carranza: "Now, are you just saying you want to have DIVERSITY, or do you really wanna have DIVERSITY?!!"
Park Slope Majority-Minority parents: "I really wanna have DIVERSITY."
Park Slope Minority-Majority, aka White, parents: "Nah, I'm just sayin' I wanna have some DIVERSITY."
* Except of course, as Mr. Sailer points out, screening to ensure DIVERSITY.
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No post until Monday, so Listen to the Music
Posted On: Friday - September 28th 2018 8:04PM MST
In Topics: Music
It's not that I don't have ~ 10-12 posts built up in my head, but I ran out of time today. I won't have time on Saturday, and no posting on Sunday as usual. Tune in next week for a visual fisking of Neil Young's Cortez the Killer along with a number of posts involving observations on the websites in our short blogroll and more economic, immigration, and environmental stupidity. We are mired in the stuff here, and can only get if off our chest by blogging or listening to the music.
Listen to the Music is a happy song by The Doobie Brothers. This is from well before a guy named Michael McDonald single-handedly ruined the band with his jazzy sound that didn't belong. It is off the What Were Once Vices are Now Habits album from 1974*, from which Peak Stupidity posted Black Water back this summer.
Youtube commenter David Nicol says:
2 years ago
OK. So what we have here is just another example of what was normal in the 70s. What do we have? No autotune on the vocals. These guys sing pure. No timing quantization on the rhythm tracks. Pure musicians, playing pure music, without anti-human intervention. You know, MUSIC...
The Doobie Brothers:
Tom Johnston – guitars, vocals
Patrick Simmons – guitar, vocals
Tiran Porter – bass, vocals
John (Little John) Hartman – drums
Michael Hossack – drums
* Holy Moley, talk about misdirection; I searched for the album on duckduckgo to get the year, and it keeps taking me to MichaelMcDonald.com! Does the man own duckduckgo?
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Savage Natives and the Conquistadors
Posted On: Thursday - September 27th 2018 5:10PM MST
In Topics: History Geography Race/Genetics
When questioned about their opinions, no participants came forward to comment.
This started with someone bringing up "Apocalypto" again, a 10 year-old movie about American savages that Peak Stupidity discussed in our review Apocalypto Now! recently. I'd promised in that review to later post more information on the recent unearthing of bones that confirmed the old Spanish Conquistadors' reports of savagery by the natives (least at that time) of central and south America. I didn't do much of a search today, but did come across a few articles regarding the practice of human sacrifice (as seen in the movie - don't miss it!). This Guardian article is about Peru in particular and is a couple of years old, and this 6 y/o Telegraph article is about Mexico.
I was surprised to find any National Geographic articles not scrubbed from the web yet, such as this article also on Peru, possibly the heart of the heart-eating district in "meso"-America. My surprise is due to the fact, mentioned here in National Geographic, no more girly pics of the natives ...., that that magazine has gone very much downhill as far as being a source of popular science.* Usually, nothing's worth reporting by that organization anymore if white men are not somehow to blame or at least the WHOLE WORLD'S CLIMATE! is (due to, of course, white men). Wikipedia has fairly organized articles on Human sacrifice in Aztec culture - that's in Ole Mexico - and Child sacrifice in pre-Columbian cultures. Sure, sure, stuff like this happened long ago everywhere, but then most everywhere else are not places that people nowadays revere as the former idyllic lands inhabited by the noble savages ... "savages", yes, "noble", not so awful much. They may very well, in fact, be slobs in general.
Oh, I've got to excerpt this doozy of a quote from the National Geographic, 'scuse me, "NAT GEO" article:
All the dead in the newfound pit were likely willing participants from local communities engaged in a ritual that celebrated death so that "new life could emerge in the world," Klaus said in an email to National Geographic News.>Sure, "willing participants", that's the ticket.
I don't know if things back in the pre-Columbian days were that much less brutally violent in our own part of North America. Many of us do revere that Indians of the tribes in our part of North America. Some of that is simply respect for fierce warriors, not something you'd hear from a 19th-century resident though. Is it just supporting the team - "Our Indians were better than your Indians!" or something? Is that why people are proud to be 1/64th something (usually Cherokee for some reason)? Maybe it's the free stuff and
The term "Meso-America" is mentioned a lot in articles on human sacrifice in history and it means the area from central Mexico south through northern Costa Rica. Things don't change too much over just a millenium or so, as this is still the area with countries that have the highest murder rates you'll (hopefully never) run into in the world. The violent culture doesn't stop until you get down toward the cone (as in ice cream) of South America. That'd be current Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay. What's so different down there, you may ask? Maybe it's the climate, but .. oh, yeah, that's right - those places have the most Europeans living in them.
What's been much different for the post-Columbian era in the US/Canada vs. Mexico/Central America/S. America is very simple. Whatever you want to call it, planned or accidental genocide, a clash of cultures in which the one with the brains and technology therefrom was guaranteed to win out, or just overwhelming numbers in the long run, the Europeans in our country (let's just lump Canada in with this) did not mix with the Indians much at all. Until the immigration invasion disaster currently unfolding, this country consisted of 90% Europeans and the full-blooded Indians now are down to a fraction of a percent of the population. During the same 5 century period of development down in the Southern regions, the Spaniards mixed much more (OK, had sex) with the natives. They didn't so much as colonize and develop those nations so much as just conduct a continuous invasion. Look at the results. The people running the places are most as white as a Beverly HIlls golf club, while the large majority, with the exception of the cone, are dark people with a large amount of native blood.
As I'll write more about in a subsequent post that I'm really looking forward to, along with revering our Indian peoples an undue amount since the 1960's, any history of the Spanish conquests of the Aztecs, Toltecs, Incas, Mayans, what-have-you, have been tinted with a rosy view of those native people. Again, we are supposed to believe that they were living idyllic lifestyles with beneficence god-kings as rulers, until those mean, meddling Conquistadors sailed up and ruined everything! The Spaniards surely did some cruel things that should always be un-called for. They were not the enlightened English crowd that came to N. America for religious reasons, for harvesting of the massive resources, or to just have more space. Down south, the invaders treated these natives like sub-humans, but maybe there was some reason for that.
Archaelogoists are starting to learn more details that back up the stories of the Cortezes, Pizarros, and Alvarados. You've got to imagine the Spanish Conquistadors witnessing in person, or hearing current reports of, the sacrificial beheadings, the impromptu open-chest surgeries, and the eating of hearts. Perhaps they felt that those lands were ripe for CUISINE CHANGE.
* It's not just the pics of the bare-breasted natives that were exciting to young men interested in Geography and Science. The magazine showed a world of wonder for young men interested in exploration and discovery, especially if you just plain LOVE MAPS.
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Inflation Note: Utility Bills
Posted On: Thursday - September 27th 2018 9:50AM MST
In Topics: Economics Inflation
I've thought of the inflation in utility bills since keeping steady track in the early 1990's but had forgotten to put any mention in the previous Inflation posts (note new topic key). This will be a short note then, without any long-winded suspected explanation, because there's a whole lot to that.
I want to compare apples to apples here, so I am writing about the same utility district for both water and electricity. I will note the price change per ft3 of water and kW-hr of electricity, the base prices, and the change in the bills that have been received by Peak Stupidity. I have the old bills.
Back in the mid-1990's water used to cost 8 bucks on an easygoing month and $15 to $18 on a month during which we watered the lawn some. Now, we're talking $35 on a good month, > $45 on a slightly higher-use one, and forget watering the lawn - I don't really need to with the shade... got not much of a lawn! OK, that's just the payments, and I promised apples-to-apples. We use almost the same amount of water - 200 to 500 ft3 monthly. The cost per 100 ft3 has gone from $2 to $5, but the BASE CHARGE, meaning just the charge to be hooked up, has gone from $6 to $25.
Electricity bills that used to be as low as $25 and up to $80 are more like $80 on MINIMUM months to sky-high (if we don't watch it). The per-unit cost has gone from < 8¢ per kW-hr to almost 14¢ in that 22 year time period. The BASE CHARGE, however, has gone from $8 to just be hooked up, to $21 now. There are a whole bunch of taxes I didn't used to see, but I'm still paying the whole bill.
The mention of taxes brings up possible objections by the reader of "hey, they may have built a new sewer plant" or "what has changed with your electricity supply?", "Did the district grow and had to build a ton of infrastructure?", etc. Those are decent points, but this is a pretty long-term look though; call it 22 years. Lots of improvements are paid for via bond issues too, not just via the bill.
Let me just give you the numbers from this blogger's location and time frame:
**************************************
Annual percentage inflation rates for these utilities:
WATER/SEWER:
Base Fee - 6.9%
Price per ft3 - 4.2%
ELECTRICITY:
Base Fee - 4.5%
Price per kW-hr - 2.6%
**************************************
The inflation in the bills will be seen to vary due to the combination of the fixed cost (base fee) and the variable cost (amount used) monthly, so I can't give one hard number for each utility. Just look at those ANNUALIZED inflation rates though. Is the what the US Feral Gov't BLS has been telling us? I don't think so.
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Ignore the psycho-blather, just confirm Judge Kavanaugh
Posted On: Wednesday - September 26th 2018 6:12PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Feminism ctrl-left Orwellian Stupidity
You don't have to be unhappy all of the time to have gone through some major psychological trauma, but it sure would help the narrative a bit if they'd publish a picture of a freaked-out Christine Ford from sometime in the correct decade. It's just as well, as the narrative is the most ridiculously obvious made-up story that even the Hildabeast would be ashamed to be responsible for. She may lie about everything including the weather forecast, but I think even that AntiChrist runner-up would disown this story as beneath her lying ability.
Yesterday, the hard-working VDare reporter specializing in the human tragedy of our immigration invasion, Mrs. Brenda Walker, chimed in on some psychological issues regarding repressed and often self-generated memories of trauma.* In Psychologists - Heal Thyselves! Peak Stupidity got into the worthlessness of most of the field of psychology and most of the people in it. Mrs. Walker's article gets into some tragic outcomes caused by the various psychoanalytical trends. There've been many lives ruined, such as fathers estranged from their daughters for 20 years based on some wacky-assed repressed "memories" of molestation that never happened. Many times, by the time the lady realizes her mistake, her Dad is gone from the world. The article links to information regarding men who've been falsely accused and put in jail for years based on these witch hunts.
Anyway, I hardly ever disagree with anything Brenda Walker writes (aside from that she often doesn't rebut her last excerpts of others in her articles). I'll make an exception here on this paragraph:
We need to know what techniques were used in the therapist’s office to “recover” (or create) Ford’s repressed memory of assault, but inquiry into that important subject has been slim, and the Senators who will question the alleged victim on Thursday appear ignorant on the psychological malfeasance of therapists.NO! We don't need to do anything to delve into this story! It's not mystery. This story has been put up to delay or even block the appointment of a decent man for Supreme Court justice, and this lame story is the best they've got. We know they're lying. They know they're lying. They even know that we know they're lying. The ctrl-let these days are just so used to Lyin' Press support that they figure they have the power to take down anyone, at least easily a white man, with any lies they want.
The good news is even such GOPe cucks as Miss Lindsey Grahamnesty seem to be on our side. I think the reason is as follows:
Even though I know they want to cuck-out (most of the R-squad of The Party), I wonder if these guys are thinking “hey, if that made-up ridiculous story ends up derailing this nomination, imagine what will happen if the press learns one little inkling of my past at college… or, uhhh, last year, for that matter.” Lots of the anti-Trump GOPe may be trying to work in cahoots with the D-squad, but they could be smart enought to realize that, NO, they are not safe, come election time.
This same stuff can be trotted out against any one of them, just to get a ctrl-left, or non-white of any kind, in office 2 or 4 years from now. Ask not for whom the bell tolls, white members of Congress. They would be wise to put a stop to this business, even if only out of self-interest. Miss Lindsey is probably the best example of this, and Miss Grahamnesty’s position has been a SURPRISE! SURPRISE! SURPRISE!
Let's just get 'er done.
* VDare is all about the immigration problem. This stuff affects immigration tangentially as Judge Kavanaugh has a VERY GOOD record on immigration decisions. We need him on the Supreme Court for that, even if nothing else.
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Search "Engines" vs. Real Experts
Posted On: Tuesday - September 25th 2018 6:16PM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites Humor
... or 2 futile hours on the Goolag?
Since I've been on this topic of search "engines"*, and I've been looking for answers to a pernicious problem that's holding me up from doing work on Peak Stupidity's usability, I asked the question above. Can you really find answers quicker on the internet? How about regarding the meaning of life ... no, not a query about the current lives of the actors in the Monty Python movie (there's that IMDB again - good people .... gooood people)? That right there is an example though. Were one really deluded enough to try to find the meaning of life off the internet, he'd end up spending 5 minutes of this search learning about Monty Python, and then the next silly thing, and the next one ....
It's not just the questions with no easy answers that can be hard to get satisfaction from via computer searches of the web. (I'm not particularly picking on Google in this post... uhhh, so far.) Since it's the computer guys that were the early adopters of the www, for obvious reasons, the software and computer hardware questions were always the ones with the most readily available website information available on-line. There have been great sites out there for many years, such as our favorite, Stack Overflow that should have answers for about everything "TECH!"-related. Some are just web pages written to help others or show off, others weren't written particularly to answer questions, but may very well have your answer.
Then there are the forums. As a daily user of some type of software language, environment, plug-ins, or what-have-you, you may be one that comes on every day or week to help out or get help. More power to these people. Other times, you will get to these forums via an on-line search. That brings up something kind of humorous. I've found answers to questions on a forum that nobody has posted/commented on for 10 years! The thing there is, one of them hopefully has your exact answer. There can be no follow-up questions. Sure, I mean, go ahead and sign up, but how much patience do you have? Maybe a geek will come on-line in 2023 and give you an exact answer: "We're on a new version now. Your functions have been deprecated. That's why they're not functional" "Did this answer your question? Rate your answer here - [] Not Helpful, [] Helpful, [] Helpful, but > 1 Decade late, so I am Deceased". It may not be very satisfying to give an answer on a forum as an expert either, as possibly the next reader will come on a few years later when you are on to a new field of endeavor.
Youtube videos are such a great help with various car maintenance tasks. I am very grateful for the guys that take the time to put these up, along with those who help out of the goodness of their hearts (sometimes they hope to make a few bucks) to explain millions other tasks. That's great user-created content, but you won't find all the answers.
Sometimes, spending just 15 minutes or 1/2 an hour with an expert in some small area of endeavor can save many hours of wasted time on the best search sites on-line. This is the case for the software questions I've got. I've spent fruitless hours so far, but if I come across the right guy who "knows his stuff", I can get it all figured out quickly. I may find out how to troubleshoot and fix a part on one of my vehicles. However, the why of the problem and all the experience of a 40-years-running mechanic friend could save me hours or days of sorting through information that is often conflicting.
Therefore, I don't feel the internet search sites, with the Goolag presiding, are the be-all-to-end-all for the acquiring of knowledge. Then, of course, for anything slightly political in nature, one can't be at all sure they aren't purposefully providing disinformation. Take, for example, I dunno, a quick search for "the truth about everything". Per an almost forgotten long-ago post, this is what you're going to come up with:
Note that the Goolag censorship scripts must have been written by cheaply-paid H-1B visa dot-Indian programmers, as they didn't quite do the job. ;-}
*You get so used to these geek-stolen terms that you don't even notice anymore. "Engines"? Really? How does this software convert one form of energy to another? Just asking.
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The F.A.G.S. space and new competition
Posted On: Tuesday - September 25th 2018 6:58AM MST
In Topics: Websites Media Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity
(continued from two posts back.)
The discussion in that last post was leading to: why is it very difficult for other players to seriously compete with these on-line Big-Net monopolies?
Even without resistance and internet sabotage by the monopoly players, it's very difficult to make a competing site. It's not hard to START it, but just to make it grow via user-input, because, well, you start off with few users. I'll now give an example.
Let's say you want to make a competing matchmaking website to OK-Cupid, or even make OK-Cupid to begin with, actually. This is another idea is which the useful content is user made. How do you get started? You've got this multi-million dollar investment money to make a visually-pleasing, highly-functional website, with a big database and tons of storage. You've got advertisement money. You've got the payment methods set-up and secure. Wait, but who's gonna pay?! Why would you join up unless there are many 100's or thousands of girls to pick from? If you are a girl, it's the same. Even if you are a BLTG-QWERTY type, you're really gonna want to see a whole lot of BLTG-QWERTs to choose from (somehow).
Do you see the catch? Without lots of users already on this dating site, the site is worthless and you won't get people to join. One thing one can do is be really crooked and put in lots of random pictures of hot chicks that are really unknown-to-us Ukrainian movie stars and see the guys sign up and just not get very lucky. Then, when lots of guys have been suckered on, actual available girls will sign up, and things could take off. A more legitimate way would be to advertise for girls to join for free (nothing to lose, but no men on there yet, so ....) You may have to PAY THEM to join to get the ball rolling, or give out free stuff to either sex who signs up.
It's just hard to get something like this going. However, the example of Facebook IS the 2nd networking site like this after MySpace, come to think of it. How'd they pull that off? Did people just get over MySpace? In the search "space" (sorry, for this meaning I can't write the word without using the
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My Own Space
Posted On: Monday - September 24th 2018 8:45PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Music
Nope, we don't mean MySpace from the previous post, but My Own Space by the Steve Miller band.
As expained in A tale of two countries (for picking blackberries), regarding space in America vs. China, having fewer people per space available just makes for better place to live (other things equal). In the Peak Stupidity post More on the Destruction of California, we pointed out that immigration-invasion enthusiasts have, for 2-3 decades now, had this wilful blindspot in their understanding of the bad effects of a larger population in our same-sized land.
When Mr. Steve Miller wrote this song off his spacey Book of Dreams album back in 1977, the American population was 220 million, less than 2/3 of the population today (not documenting those undocumented people). That makes a big difference, and the Steve Miller band had a lot more of their Own Space then than they can now, even in the San Francisco Bay area, where they hailed from.
No, this is not President Trump's Steven Miller, but as one of the last loyal patriots in his administration, we like him too. Peak Stupidity recommends both Steve Millers, bigly.
Whoa ho ho ho-oh, oh-oh-ohh,
I eye-eye-eye feel free,
Whoa ho ho ho-oh, oh-oh-ohh,
where I can have my own space.
This album really deserves to be listened to in its entirety. It's got lots of cool synthesizers, great guitars, and lots of songs that have probably never been heard by anyone but real Steve Miller fans. This band has been featured on Peak Stupidity only once before with Take the Money and Run from the previous album Fly Like an Eagle.
The Steve Miller Band:
Steve Miller – vocals, guitar, synthesizer, sitar, producer
David Denny – guitar
Greg Douglass – slide guitar
Byron Allred – piano, synthesizer
Lonnie Turner – bass guitar
Gary Mallaber – drums, percussion
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The F.A.G.S. space and user-generated content
Posted On: Monday - September 24th 2018 8:12PM MST
In Topics: Websites Media Stupidity Orwellian Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity
... along with Apple, Google, and Spotify*
This is somewhat of a continuation of the topic of the Orwellian control of ideas via the 4 Horseman of the Apocalypse, more widely known as the 4 F.A.G.S. of the Social Media. Peak Stupidity previously discussed the topic in relation to the un-personing of Alex Jones (more here) by these companies with monopolies on their "spaces"** in the internet social media realm.
These companies have been in the news of late due to leakage of news of their use of their massive media power (due to wide usage) to slant search results and other internet page-views by naive users who think they are completely impartial due to "it's a computer, man." VDare has a post by Mrs. Brenda Walker on the great amazingly-still-on-the-air Tucker Carlson regarding emails out of Google that reveal their devious deeds. One realizes how Orwellian this stuff is only after imagining the types of things that can be programmed to happen with an understanding of how almost all users expect fairness in search results.
The talk by the President about controlling these organizations has brought to the forefront of public consciousness questions of the 1st Amendment being not applicable to private business, the breaking up of monopolies, etc. However, it's not the goal of this post to discuss that stuff.
In this post, I simply want to point out a major reason that these companies can monopolize their respective spaces. I had talked about this to a friend and decided maybe this wasn't obvious to everyone. Let me first bring up Amazon.com though, which is not the "A" in F.A.G.S., BTW, and not part of the un-personing of conservatives/patriot yet. That's not to say it couldn't very easily be part of these nefarious efforts with regard to it's book sales and anything else political, if it wanted. This leads toward my point, and Amazon is perhaps the best, first example. I'd heard of the company in 1997, when they sold nothing but books. It was a few years later, though, when someone explained to me the perhaps not-intentionally genius idea of having the users make most of the website content. That's what the reviews are - user-generated content. Amazon made the excellent "platform" (another buzzword, but a decent one), but the site-viewers were, and are, glad to add reviews of (now) any product, basically to help their fellow consumers. (That is, unless they are ringers, and I do see quite a bit of that.) Put the ability to communicate and be seen out there, and the users will fill the site with useful information. It's genius (not in the invention of the transistor sort of way, but for these guys, yeah, it's genius).
The Internet Movie DataBase, one of my favorites for many years, is a great example of a user-generated content site, though it is a site that I think was made purely for the love of the data (movies and everything about movies). That was more the way of the web back in the 1990's. Peak Stupidity makes a habit of linking to IMDB for all references to movies, over Amazon.com, and in fact, Amazon bought the IMDB back when they started selling movies (on VHS tapes!). (I'm not sure whether Amazon still owns IMDB.)
Let me now turn to Facebook. It's the same there. All the billions of valuation of that company represent the usefulness of the site to 100's of millions (or billions?) of people, that somehow will make lots of money for the company. Yes, that last part is very questionable, but not the apparent usefulness of the site to many. It's the users that generate almost all of the site content, as Facebook just provided the platform. In the case of the dominant search engine Google, it's the billions of searches done by the users that THEMSELVES help make the subsequent searches more powerful and accurate (if they're not made deliberately biased, that is).
Google's youtube, BTW, is another example, better than Google-search itself, of a site for which the content is generated by the users, per the Amazon model. Once the platform was made, and they were the 1st for all knowledge of this blogger, it was all about letting the users fill it up. Do you remember when videos were limited to 10 min. length? It wasn't that long ago, what 5 years, maybe? Man, you couldn't even listen to the full Steve Miller Book of Dreams for free back then. I mean, WTF, man?!
Now, I'd like to dicuss why it's very difficult to break these Big-Net monopolies, but this has been shifted into a subsequent post - see two posts later.
* Full disclosure: Peak Stupidity has no earthly idea what Spotify does, nor does Peak Stupidity give a rat's ass if we never ever know.
** "Space" has been a big, big, corporate-buzzword for many years in the "TECH!" (another buzzword) world. Facebook works in the networking "space", while Google works in the search "space", etc. I'd like to be in space myself that has none of these people, and that'd probably have to take me into outer space.
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[Updated 9/25, morning: ] Added more about user-generated content with examples of IMDB and youtube. This made this post too long. I've cut off the 2nd part and put it in the post 2 subsequent to this one and changed the title.
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We're not one of those "We told you so" sites, ...
Posted On: Saturday - September 22nd 2018 7:29PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity
... but, dammit, we told you so!
That is hopefully no slur on Peak Stupidity's loyal readers, just the 329,999,971 other Americans who get their stupidity off the Lyin' Press. It's been 2 DECADES now, that we've been hearing there are 11 million, oh +- a half million, per somebody's rectally-extracted value, from that time. (I.E. it wasn't necessarily near the mark in 1998 either, but definitely lower than now. I quote Peak Stupidity here from 1 2/3 years back, in Illegal Aliens effect on Election '16:
Let's be realistic about the numbers also - this 11 million number is total bull, as that number of illegal aliens was claimed back at the turn of the century, and it was rectal extraction-based, just as my 30 million right now is. I could see there being 5 million illegals just in California, and yes, I have spent time there.Ann Coulter has used a working number of 30 million illegal aliens living in America since at least this column, from 2013, but I have no idea if she had written that earlier (she writes A LOT about this subject!). Her numbers, as I recall fairly well, but from a different article, were from estimates from financial firms.
Now, this new study* from Yale university, "models" numbers about 1.5 to > 2 x the old undocumented 11.5 million value, coming up with "oh, somewhere between 16 and 29 millions [sic]", per:
After running 1,000,000 simulations of the model, the researchers’ 95% probability range is 16 million to 29 million, with 22.1 million as the mean.Do you see first why I had the quote marks around "models". Monte-Carlo simulation? 1 million simulations? Give me a break, researchers. That's for physics. This estimation of illegal aliens doesn't require "modeling". Just find a good way to obtain your raw data. There are probably many ways to go about it this estimation, but you don't make a model of it all together. You try different methods, compare, try to find flaws in the ones that are outliers, and come up with a number with a tolerance band. I'll give them credit for not giving a number with a precision of 1 million, but this sounds like it's not much more accurate than my rectal-extraction figure that matches Ann Coulter's.
Most numerate people with common sense (they don't always go together) know that the number of illegal aliens is nothing like 11 million. Instead of this article being named "Yale Study Finds Twice as Many Undocumented Immigrants as Previous Estimates", I'd have named it "No shit, Sherlock".
* See VDare take on this by Steve Sailer with comments here on unz.com.
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New, conservative sources of caffeine
Posted On: Saturday - September 22nd 2018 6:19AM MST
In Topics: Economics Big-Biz Stupidity
There is an article up on VDare by one Hubert Collins that hits on a couple of Peak Stupidity core competencies (picked that term up from "Josh" at the all-hands meeting) at one time. The first is the idea and usefulness of boycotts/buycotts, per our 3-part series on "Boycotts, Buycotts, and CEOs who should shut their mouths more." ( Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 ) A quick take is that these actions can indeed hit the Big-Biz people who want to ruin our world. where it counts, in their profits and stock prices. However, boycotts and buycotts can get complicated, confusing, and even conflicting, but please read the 3 articles for Peak Stupidity's entire take on the subject.
The second interest in the article is the hard-left attitudes of Big Biz in modern America, which is due to our crony capitalist system. Big-Biz must stay in the good graces of Fed-Gov, so must act accordingly ctrl-left. VDare's sole priority is immigration. Since any individual or entity who is not a real conservative these days is pro-immigration-invasion, Mr. Collins writes in favor of the Austrian company that is conservative, or at least not actively ctrl-left, in Boycott Starbucks (They Hate You!) Drink Red Bull Instead.
Mr. Collins gives lots of details of the left-wing, politically-correct, anti-Christian, anti-white, perfidy of the huge Starbucks coffee chain and its owner and CEOs, going back 20 years. He suggests drinking a can or two of the Red Bull energy drink instead of getting Starbucks coffee as a daily habit.
Well, I've gotta correct that term "energy drink". In the actual physical sense, I'd have to say hot chocolate, cokes, and craft beer are the real energy drinks. The energy is locked up in the sugar and carbs, and can be used by the imbiber at a later time. Red Bull and the like have lots of caffeine, a drug like lots of others people get hooked on, which lights up the brain. It's not physical energy itself, but it sure makes it easier to make use of your physical energy. That said, this blogger does not need any new drug, so with this boycott idea, or switcharoo of caffeine sources, I would not personally make much of a difference to the economy of caffeine.
I have lately had a habit of buying a hot chocolate at the Starbucks chain weekly or so while hanging out with friends that do like their coffee. No, I'm not gonna turn them on to Red Bull. That's not just because they won't listen, but because this is more a social thing for us than a drug-delivery mechanism. I buy the hot chocolate, also as a social thing, and because the other locally-owned coffee shop is just a complete rip-off and, knowing the place, I'd bet much money that the ownership is as left-wing as it gets.
That last bit was all personal taste, but if you do partake in the caffeine, Hubert Collins' suggestion is a good one. We seem to have no say at all, as of yet, on the cultural stupidity going on in America. Big-Biz seems to be a leader in this, so hitting them in the top line is the best way to let them know, beating letters to the CEO and that sort of thing. It's just a good feeling too, to be able to do even one little thing. Mr. Collins seems to be a young guy, just judging from the Red Bull habit, and it's good to hear from guys like him with simple, practical suggestions:
So the next time you need to get some writing done, buy some Red Bulls and head to Starbucks. Buy nothing there, but use the free wi-fi and comfortable seating. You will need to bring some headphones though, as the music played at Starbucks is indeed unfailingly awful.Now, at first take, that seems kind of rude, but (see the rest of his article) it is nothing more than another application of one of one of Alinsky's rules, now used by Conservative radicals. Yeah, I know, Red Bull doesn't warm you up in the wintertime, and you can't get whipped cream on top - such is the life of a radical.
This may, or may not, describe what I am doing right now.
(More on the coffee shops here and here.)
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You know I read it in a magazeye-eee-eee-een...
Posted On: Thursday - September 20th 2018 6:52PM MST
In Topics: Music China Artificial Stupidity Female Stupidity
As promised, Peak Stupidity presents more of/about sexy "cyborg" Naomi Wu of Guangdong Province, China. (No, the sexy does not need the quotes, just "cyborg", I'm sure we'd all agree. Are you reading yet?) The information in that first post indeed came from a magazine, an on-line one called medium.com. Miss Wu's opinions in the interview presented there are of no consequence. They should be taken with a grain of salt (or perhaps a few hundred grains on the lip of a large margarita glass), as they should for pretty much any female under the age of Margaret Thatcher* deigning to discuss politics.
That wasn't the point of my presenting Miss Wu to the Western world though. I explained the two reasons in the last post, but I will re-titerate them here, just due to one particular excellent Elton John song, a real prescient blast from the past. Though she envisions herself as some computer-software-tech (just "TECH", they call it now) wizard, Miss Wu has a mighty youtube following due simply to her mighty artificial mammary glands and a scantily-clad hot body. She's under some kind of mistaken impression that it's her soldering and wire-stripping abilities, skill at following a schematic, and possible dexterity with Dremel tools that have been getting her the up-votes. Yeah, see, this is what I mean by post-menopausal only, for anything more than city water department clerk.
One may find these videos on youtube easily**, so I won't recommend a specific one, though they are better enjoyed with the sound off. You're not going to be watching them for technical content, as the fact is that nowadays there is nothing hard about making any project that uses computer logic and LEDs. These are what Miss Wu seems to enjoy as clothing enhancements, to bring attention to herself, which aids in the struggle for women to be judged by their words not their, well, "electric boobs". Did you say ... yeah that's from 40 years ago:
"Say, Candy and Ronnie, have you seen them yet?Now, hold on a minute! Granted, when you're new to rock-and-roll, you're bound to start out with mild lyricosis. It seemed slightly possible that I was wrong on the bolded lyric when I first heard the classic live version of Elton John song from his best album ever, the 18-song Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. It's possible ... I mean, because I couldn't quite envision these "electric boobs" that Bernie Taupin, Elton's lyricist, mentioned. This was before cheap digital electronics and anything but red LEDs, keep in mind.
Oh, but they're so spaced out,
'B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets'.
Oh but they're weird and they're wonderful.
Oh Bennie she's really keen.
She's got electric boobs, a mohair suit,
you know I read it in a magazeye-eee-eee-een,
'B-B-B-Bennie and the Jets'."
Could I have been wrong? Now, 45 years after Bennie and the Jets, this Naomi Wu could indeed manufacture her own set of electric boobs, I'm sure (did I mention that she's in TECH!?), but then I came upon another youtube video:
... you know I read it in a magazeye-eee-eee-een.
Oooohhh, electric BOOTS! (I guess that makes more sense??)
Yes, that is one of the latest projects by this female TECH pioneer, electric boots. One wonders what the purpose of inserting a TV set, or idiot box (OK, OK, a smart screen) in the 8" high heel of these boots was, aside from making Miss Wu's ass look that much better. I guess I answered my own question, but that's a lot of "engineering" time there. We're not gonna be watching the screen, young Cyborg Wu.
You're gonna hear electric music, solid walls of sound:
This has Elton's great piano playing, but don't forget that this was a real rock band, not just the one guy. Check out the rest from Goodbye Yellow Brick Road sometime.
The band:
Elton John – piano, organ, vocals
Davey Johnstone – acoustic and electric guitars
Dee Murray – bass
Nigel Olsson – drums
* Pro-rated to the Falkland War era, of course.
** Look up "sexy cyborg" and "electronic boots"
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The Plantation Mentality and Misogyny of the Engineers and Technicians
Posted On: Thursday - September 20th 2018 12:37PM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders Humor Political Correctness Race/Genetics
Here at Peak Stupidity, rather than write all about politics, politics, politics, we need to spend more time on posts that should be our bread and butter, just everyday examples of stupidity and how high a level it's gotten to. Right now, it's not like things are getting any saner, so the material is endless. This will be one such post, in this case, on the continuing rise of political correctness to new highs, and most of the time, rather than getting upset, we should just enjoy the humor.
Political correctness is ostensibly about not offending the very small minority of people who may be easily offended, not even by purposefully offensive speech. I say "ostensibly", one, because it's a new big word for me (!), but also because I mean that there is evil intention behind PC on the part of the real instigators. They want to control thought via speech per the methods George Orwell presciently described in 1984. There are lots of ways to accidentally offend somebody, somewhere, and well, "let's just not take that risk" seems what's causing new PC trends. What's trending right now?
Any words that imply anything about slavery, that's one. Let's forget that just about everyone alive has some long-ago ancestors who were enslaved somewhere. Most of us don't dwell on it. Some certain people do. They don't want the words "Master" and "Slave" to be uttered, unless ... I dunno, slavery comes back, I guess. In technical endeavors, however, there is a problem. Many mechanical and electrical devices use these terms to describe the function of the system. Do you remember assembling a computer? It wasn't exactly a blast, to me anyway, but it'd save some bucks. There was the Master drive and the Slave drive, as I recall.
Now, in the mechanical realm, there are the non-powered hydraulic systems. In automobiles and small airplanes, you've got your muscle-powered hydraulic brakes, along with your clutch systems in cars too. The smaller-diameter cylinder, that one loads with human power moves a longer distance under a human-level force than the larger-diameter (but much-shorter-traveling) one that moves the brake pads or lever on the clutch with a much larger (leveraged, one might say) force. Without much movement, or significant elevation change, the pressure at the 2 cylinders is the same, meaning the larger one generates much more force than is put on the smaller one. There's your physics for the day, but notice I never used the terms one may need to specify or buy the parts. Why? PC! The cylinder that is moved by foot is the Master cylinder, while the cylinder that is moved, via fluid flow, to activate the high-force-requiring device, is called the Slave cylinder. OMG! Can they think of another term, these raciss engineers?!
Oh, your average engineer or car mechanic may say some bullcrap like "Hey, lighten up, people, it's not like whips and chains are involved, just DOT-3 or Mil-5606 spec hydraulic fluids." But see, it's the words that matter. That whole sticks-and-stones boomer excuse is not cool anymore, bro. You can't go around talking like that.
Next on the PC-enforcement docket, you've your electrical connectors, something mostly mechanical engineers, with a bit of electrical engineering involvement, are responsible for. Here's a set:
This gets pretty involved. If you've been to Radio Shack, you may have asked the guys for some male or female connectors for your power or data conducting needs. You've probably been told "I don't know what you're talking about," due to the fact that Radio Shack mostly has unknowledgeable idiots nowadays that just want to get commissions selling phones. Or, maybe they really never have been taught about the birds and the bees, ya think? Retarded Radio Shack personnel notwithstanding, the terms "male" and "female" seem pretty obvious to most, hence their being used by technical guys for perhaps a century to specify. One goes inside the other, kinda like, well, this is, after all, a family blog.
The use of obvious gender or sex terminology with electrical connectors can be not only fun, but also pretty descriptive of parts that otherwise may be difficult to explain. If you've got one female end of a coax cable that needs be connected to a female part on the box, well you need a gender-transfer connector! Yes, people use the terms. Sure, one still must specify male-to-male or female-to-female. Hey isn't that kinda homophobic right there? Why CAN'T one plug the male end into the male end? Ummm, ask a homosexual, I guess. Come to think of it (and yes, maybe we're branching away from our family-friendly core value here), there'd need to be SOME OTHER HOLE, no two ways about it. Should we start describing these special pass-through connectors as "gay" and "lesbian" connectors? I'm fine with that.
The set in the picture above is more complicated in terms of description (and manufacturing). See the ones with pins (male because they stick out, if you really haven't heard about the birds/bees) are contained in an overall housing one would call female. That housing surrounds the other connector's housing, provided there is enough moisture and foreplay ... uhhh, yeah, so one connector is male at the large level and female at the small level, while the other is the reverse of this. They still can get together and conduct beautiful current. I've called these connectors hermaphroditic myself. That can specify the idea of what's required, but not which is which part of the set. I think we can take heart in one possible benefit from all the new 72-flavors of gender business. We may get just the right terms to describe any configuration in electrical connectors an engineer could need. Of course, we'd have to know and understand the human instantiation first. Nah, let's just use part numbers.
The ironic thing about the Political Correctness stupidity as applied to this hardware is that the engineers, technicians, and mechanics are about the last bastion of the un-PC environment. They DON'T CARE about your worries about offensiveness. They've got a job to do. (Hmmm, is it possible those last two sentences go hand-in-hand?) Even at the auto parts store, there may be some retards, but nobody who will have a problem looking up a slave cylinder or a male wiring harness connector. I don't know how far this is going to get before Peak Stupidity.
Speaking of that, when will the level of silliness decrease, or at least plateau? Well, I can tell you that there are no plans to shut the site down in the near future, if that's any hint. However, as I've done a few times each year, let me point the reader to our "about" page, What is Peek Stoopiditee?. All of the facetiousness of that page aside, its point is that stupidity will not peak due to some inherent property, such as that of a power or torque curve of an IC engine. No, Peak Stupidity's working theory is that the general stupidity will peak following a peak in Global Financial Stupidity, which is the cause of an imminent economic crash. At SHTF-type times, even the high-level stupidity the Western world is experiencing will be cast off like a fur coat in the Sonora desert (and then not found again after nightfall occurs and the concept of radiant cooling is observed, speaking of stupidity.) When things get real, the stupid, all of it - feminism, economics, PC, Big-Biz - it all stops.
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Psychologists - Heal Thyselves!
Posted On: Wednesday - September 19th 2018 8:47PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Music Humor Feminism ctrl-left
The previous Peak Stupidity post on the Judge Kavanaugh nomination saga was about the politics of it. Here's a little more about the woman who made this ridiculous accusation regarding a 35-38 year ago (she can't seem to pin it down) drunken groping by the then-teenaged Brett Kavanaugh. The last of the 4 links to Steve Sailer in the previous post, Kavanaugh Accuser Wants FBI to Figure Out What Happened Before She Testifies Under Oath, has his usual NY Times excerpts (well, someone has to read it, I guess?) plus excellent comments, about this Christine Blasey, excuse me, Dr. Blasey. That's last is what I want to write about.
Mrs. Blasey has a doctorate in psychology, and that does not impress me one single bit. It's not just that it's one of the easiest majors in college (down there with journalism), its classes meant mostly for engineering majors requiring a few easy humanities electives to make time for the study of Thermodynamics. That's fine. Another reason a young man might take a psyche course is to meet the many (maybe 90%, whoo-hoo!) women who may be in there to fulfill an MRS degree requirement.
Some of the women, and a few men, in there, especially the ones that take it to the max, Piled higher and Deeper, are in it for another reason. They've got, let's just say, some problems. Nowadays, they'd be on some kind of spectrum, and I don't mean the vitamins. They go into the field to try to figure out their own problems. I've personally known two. This Mrs. Blasey seems to be one of these types. She's been in therapy herself and even worse, marriage counseling. This Sailer comment (and don't miss them) made this blogger LOL at the stupidity of this lady's understanding of just how much BS people are going to believe:
As I’ve been pointing out, so far nobody has come forward to stay that Ms. Blasey-Ford accused Kavanaugh by name before he became famous in late 2011 voting against Obamacare and then got talked up in early 2012 as a Supreme Court nominee. Her husband says she was worried about Kavanaugh getting on the Supreme Court when she they went to marriage counseling (although Kavanaugh’s name doesn’t appear in the therapist’s notes).You're killing me Sal, I mean, Steve, or really Mrs Blasey. Let me get this straight. A Supreme Court nominee was discussed during marriage counseling. Really? It wasn't stuff like:
"Yeah, she takes stuff out of the cabinet and never puts it back in the same place!" "So, if you'd find another place for your Harley besides in the living room ..." "You're just jealous of my Harley; it's sexier than you, since you've gained ..." "You take me for granted.... I clean, I cook, and what do I ge..." "Hell, she uses the smoke alarm as a timer, you call that cooking!"See, that's the kind of thing that goes on in marriage counseling (I can only assume, as I'M NOT GOING!). We are however, expected to believe it went more like this:
"Sex is not fun anymore, especially with her." "It's not my fault. Right when he was anally penetrating me, a couple a weeks back, no maybe it was in the eighties, I started really worrying that America was gonna get screwed if that Kavanaugh nomination was going to proceed out of committee..."Besides that point of mine that about psychologists needed to heal themselves, first, which I'd thought about for years, there was another somewhat relevant point I'm getting straight from a commenter. The feminist artist/icon of the 1970's, Mrs. Helen Reddy, sung a bunch of hits about people who were somewhat "off", if I may. Three of her hits were about that sort of thing, and I'd never thought of this before. Guess what, I read Mrs. Reddy's interesting bio on Wiki, and she wasn't a psychologist but did study a bit of parapsychology, as if psychology isn't fake enough for us.
I would not post these 3 songs if the tunes weren't good. I'd never though much about the lyrics until now, but the songs bring back memories. These were hit songs by Helen Reddy:
Angie Baby:
Delta Dawn (Great country song, not written by Mrs. Reddy):
Ruby Red Dress (leave me alone):
Is there any way Helen Reddy could be called up for the Senate hearing to come? She would make a great expert witness, just based on her song lyrics.
BTW, Ann Coulter (NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST!) nails the hypocisy in her latest article, with a lot of other ideas that appeared first in the Steve Sailer posts.
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Kavanaugh nomination - a man's got to know his
Posted On: Wednesday - September 19th 2018 7:29PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Feminism Media Stupidity US Feral Government ctrl-left Orwellian Stupidity
I really couldn't come up with a better title than Steve Sailer's Supreme Court Nominee Accused of Something Sometime in Distant Past, the first of 4 (so far!) posts of his on the Supreme Court nomination Senate-level stupidity (see here, here, and here for more good stuff).
Once in a while, Peak Stupidity WILL try to keep up with current events, otherwise usually known as fake news. This one IS really a doozy, as far as unadulterated fake-news stupidity goes. It's not the ctrl-left/Democrats' strategy of playing dirty game using Alinsky's (or one of those American Commie's) playbook that's the stupid part. We know those people are evil. Everyone on all sides of this Brett Kavanaugh nomination circus knows that the D's in the Senate want to derail the nomination process one way or another to drag it out past the 2018 election.
The stupidity lies with the naive, though maybe Deep-stated Senate Republicans. Many of them seem to be following along with this sham of taking seriously a possible, distant vague memory by some left-wing psychologist who supposedly is bent out of shape about something Mr. Kavananugh did as a teenager on or about, uhh, the early '80's. They could just state "this is nonsense. The vote is going to be Monday. Be there, or be square." Lots of them act like they must take this obvious plant of an accuser at her word, cause, you know, justice and shit. There are a few possibilities to explain this stupidity:
1) These Senators think this accusation deserves an investigation by the full weight of the law(men). Let me rephrase that - no, they don't really care that "we must be fair." They just stupidly think that their voters believe that. Yeah, right, that's why playboy Donald Trump got elected by the real conservatives. Do they think this is still the 1980's? Nobody wants Robert's Rules of Order from our side, while the ctrl-left follows Castro's rules of Order. We wouldn't have elected President Trump if we still wanted to play fair per the Marquis de Queensbury*.
2) More likely these Senators are not really on our side at all. They might not be in active collusion with the D's, but the last thing they want is for the Constitution to be enforced. They are going to try to run out the clock, but again, they figure their R voters will figure "well, he's nothing if not diligent and honest. It was his duty to get to the bottom of this. It's too bad it didn't work out."
3) They think the public is still gullible enough to feel sorry for some two-bit psychologist who may have not been treated quite like a lady, or a sober lady at least, when she attended a party she can't quite remember, by a coupla drunk 17 year olds. They figure most of their voters have never been teenagers, or drunk, or horny, I suppose.
OK, it's a mixture of stupid and evil then. Everyone involved must know how utterly ridiculous the accusation is, and the even-more-obvious timing of this. (There are rumors that the dishonorable Mrs. Feinstein, of California has another letter of accusation by the same "lady" against the previous Trump-appointed Supreme Court justice, Mr. Gorsuch!) If you're in the US Senate and care about this important nomination at all, you've got to just end the stupidity. You guys (the R-squad) supposedly run the place, for cryin' out loud. Are you all being pushovers on purpose? WWTCLD? What Would The Ctrl-Left Do? You all know damn well that the D-squad would just ignore this whole thing (that probably wouldn't even be known of course, as the Lyin' Press is on their side). Just have the vote. (I am surprised that the fake-conservative neocon Miss Lindsey of S. Carolina is on-board with going to a vote. It makes me wonder if the votes have already been counted, and Miss Lindsey will vote on principle - of "the man is always wrong".)
Judge Kavanaugh should have already told anyone who has asked that the accusation is false, period. Get yourself on the Supreme Court and don't fall for this stupidity. No matter what the real story was, even if you do remember something, a Judge's gotta know his limitations. The statute of limitations, that is, even if it's non-statutory rape.
In all this confusion (and the drunkenness), I can't remember if I groped one breast or two, or if was nineteen eighty- one or two. Miss Blasey, you've got to ask yourself one question: "Did you get lucky that day?" Well, DID YA, PUNK?!
* Don't quote me on this Queensbury guy. I just read this expression every week or so on the internet, so I figure the reader will get the point. It's like a friend that would always say "yeah, it's six and a half dozen or the other thing..." or something like that. I couldn't really understand the guy, but I got the idea after a while.
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Josh at Corporate and the All-Hands Meeting
Posted On: Tuesday - September 18th 2018 8:46AM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Big-Biz Stupidity
It doesn't have to be "Josh" for this post, but who's going to pin me down from that anyway? That's my beef today, in fact. These corporate guys think that we are supposed to know them by their first names only. I don't mean on CNBC or in the Wall Street Journal but to their employees. I get emails from Bill and "State of the Company" ones from Josh, some with corresponding youtube videos (yeah, that's real secure). Nah, not Bill Taylor or Josh Connor, but just "Bill" or "Josh".*
Sure, it'd be one thing if they could sing, play guitar, or show their tits-and-asses, like Cher, Prince, or Madonna respectively. (Bono and Sting are just a couple of more that come to mind, having been discussed on Peak Stupidity for other reasons.) These are members of management, mostly the Master Bullshit Artists. Yes, I have a problem with this.
For one thing, who do you people think you are? Most of us have 2 or 3 names to help people keep track of who we are. Do you think you are the only VP of corporate relations in the world? Do you believe people think that is a more important job than building the product, writing the code, or actually conducting the service that is your company's business? Secondly, I really don't know who the hell you are! You say, Bill ____, that you are glad to have taken this new position and here's our new goals and let me give you a pep talk. I say "Who are you? Bill who? I've never heard of you, I didn't know who the last guy was in this high position, I didn't know he left, and I don't really care who you are and what your plans are." I'm gonna' just do my job as best I can and be very, very thankful that I don't have to know who you are. That's the best kind of job.
I am lucky not to have to attend any All-Hand meetings, as I got burned out on that from raising my hand a few times and given an answer that was nothing but a blow-off. "Yes, you over there in the ball cap and blue jeans." "Yeah, hey, Bill, uh, I want to bring up this idea ...." "Yeah, what's the name again (like he's gonna remember)? We don't really need to do anything like that right now, but I raise that to Josh going forward ..." "Josh who?" "Our CFO, Josh, you all should have gotten his .pdf on the State of the Company." "Okay, I'll check my SPAM folder when the meeting's over." "Uhhh, yeah, see those .pdfs are really import..." "Oh, pager's going off, gotta go."
* In the future, it'll be tweets from Tanner, Connor, etc., but that'll be their first names. I won't be at that company.
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Sexy Cyborg - Miss Naomi Wu
Posted On: Saturday - September 15th 2018 8:15PM MST
In Topics: Music China Female Stupidity
"Maker" is on of those new terms people use for those who tinker with 3-D manufacturing and other new manufacturing processes, including even some real engineers, who don't know enough terminology to say anything less stupid. The woman above is one Miss Naomi Wu, a self-proclaimed "DIY and tech enthusiast" living in Shenzhen*, China. That's pretty reasonable a self-description there, but then Miss Wu is also a self-proclaimed "sexy cyborg". Sexy is correct, but she is no cyborg, unless I've been watching the wrong science fiction movies. A cyborg could not come up with much of the silliness I've read and seen of this woman, even if it were a were 24 years old with huge fake tits.
Peak Stupidity has only come upon Miss Wu and her videos and "makings" via a connection of this girl to the American-born Korean lady, Sarah Jeong, the anti-white-people NY Times head twitterer, that we discussed in a post last week. Apparently, Miss Wu was in some continent-to-continent, Oriental-on-Oriental, spat with Miss Jeong, and there was the usual tit-for-tat (or tit-for-much-bigger-tit). Please do not get excited yet, readers. There are no plans as of yet for any type of youtube-televised cage match, though I would sure want a part of it, and would suggest the half-way point of Hawaii, if anyone reading can make this happen. (First rule of Oriental-girl fight club - No sucking below the belt.)
I came upon this interview with the young Miss Wu, and it confirms my opinion that girls of that age and +/- 25 years or so don't have any opinions on life worth reading about. There may be some translation problems, but the flakiness and stupidity of this sexy cyborg are something else. I didn't get out of the long article what the spat is really about, but did learn that social justice, feminist, ctrl-left stupidity is not something contained only on the N. American and European continents and tectonic plates.
Miss Wu has a lot of followers on youtube, and is some kind of sensation. I believe she is under the impression that her political opinions and her ability to solder and follow a circuit schematic are the reason for her big following. The plain fact is, that this woman is famous on youtube for only 2 good reasons - the left one and the right one (OK, as we are viewing her, her right one and her left one.) You don't see this kind of endowment on very many Oriental girls at all, and that's not a big deal to me. They do, however, keep the eyes fixated on the whole nearly-naked package (it's got to be a little risky to solder like that, but they don't have OSHA over in China, luckily for the Chinese.)
That's what this spat between the rabid twitterer and the sexy cyborg is about, really, their attractiveness and love-lives. You won't read that in the interview, because I doubt these two really know themselves what their problems are:
No one will tell you I am a typical Chinese girl. I have a difficult background. I have had to fight for everything my whole life. When I became a tech enthusiast, due to my strange appearance I had to fight to be allowed to speak at events, and then fight for other Chinese women to be allowed to speak as well. In the West powerful men declared there was no way a Chinese girl could do what I do. I beat them and proved them wrong also. Still, if needed I will show up with my soldering iron and my kit anywhere if anyone doubts me. I am no coward to be easily bullied. My mother taught me that one day a man will beat you, and you should keep getting up until his hand is broken to teach him the lesson that it will never be easy. I live by that.Ancient Chinese secret huh? Yeah, sure, that'll work ... and, no, it's not that they want to hear you speak, do you wonder why they ask you to turn around and love it when you drop the pointer?
For the past few years, I’ve fought for my right to participate in my field as an equal- because I’m qualified not through some charity or quota. I fight in the tradition of the hacker community- with tech. I have engineered and deployed WiFi hacking drones to send messages and built and worn LCD clothing to attract a crowd to listen to me speak about letting Chinese women participate in tech events as more than just decoration. Why else do we encourage young women to learn STEM if not to empower them with new tech for a new age?Nope, you are not an engineer, young lady (more about this in a follow-up post). Haha, more attractive doo-dads on your body were "engineered" for "... letting Chinese women participate in tech events as more than just decoration."? Not exactly engineer-level logic there.
I’m Guangdong born and bred, daughter of the Ten Tigers, my ancestral home is Foshan- the same soil as Wong Fei-hung and Ip Man- you can’t come to our place and bully a local girl. Even if I die you can’t do that.Again the logic is not strong in this one. I don't care if it you come from the ancestral home of Wang Chung, you are a 90 lb 24 y/o girl. Talking like Braveheart is not cutting it - you would be best to find one of your favorite followers and settle down. You know you want that:
Like all Chinese I love children very much, since we have had so few under the one-child system. I am already twenty-four and I have no baby.You see those upvotes on youtube, Miss Wu? 95% of them are from guys who would like to help you make this baby.
I don't know why I got into this about these 2 girls, as this is not People Magazine. I've just never seen this type of stupidity at this level. Of course these two are exceptions, but it's definitely not what you'd expect out of the Orient. Both of them are nuts in their own way. There WILL be a follow-up of this young lady, not just for the pictures, but also because I have a song in mind that is so appropriate that ... coming next week.
Again, the lady above is no engineer, much less a Doctor, but Dr. Wu by Steely Dan comes to mind:
"Katy Lied" is the name of the 1975 album this song is from. There were so many musicians that played with these two guys in the studio that it was difficult to do live shows with them all, but it was Donald Fagan and the late Walter Becker who were Steely Dan.
*In Shenzhen they have
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