Posted On: Tuesday - March 26th 2024 7:16PM MST
In Topics: Pundits alt-right Books
What I noticed a few times recently was that my 3* copies of Steve Sailer's brand new anthology, Noticing: An Essential Reader had not come. It was a relief to find out that this was just due to it not having been released yet. Today is the day of the book's release, I noticed. (Thank you, Mr. Hail, for the reminder.)
There are no ratings or reviews here on Goodreads or here on amazon yet. That makes sense, so I don't see that as nefarious... yet. However, our Peak Stupidity readers may want to add these, once they've read this book.
Peak Stupidity will review the book, but I cannot say if it will be very detailed. If most of the essays are ones I've already read on his blog (linked-to above) then there won't be that much to say more than to relate which subject matter is covered.** For someone who has not read him, I think you'll like the writing. Mr. Sailer has noticed quite a few things that others either miss or do not choose to admit to noticing.
I hope Mr. Sailer will get lots of exposure, make some good $$, and get lots of support. Even if you don't like his work, for you, your purchase of this book could be akin to my biggest reason for voting for Trump.
This must be a blurb on the back:
“If the meritocracy were real, Steve Sailer would be one of the most famous writers in the world. Someday historians will revere him. In the meantime, read this book.” — Tucker CarlsonPretty good publicity!
* 1 for me, and 2 copies for friends or LittleFreeLibraries nearby.
** You could go to his site, search for the posts on the various topics, and read loads of comments in lieu of a review.
Comments (30)
Brace, brace, brace! ... for the Climate Calamity™
Posted On: Tuesday - March 26th 2024 8:26AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Global Climate Stupidity Media Stupidity
Disclaimer: This map is a couple of days old, and it's all guesswork anyway. Peak Stupidity will not be held responsible for your roof.
Peak Stupidity has been meaning to have some interesting discussion on former Climate Calamitists* who've seen the
No, there's nothing new here. It's the same old look at the Lyin' Press and its continual attempts to make every weather story something more, something about which we need to do something... NOW! ... with your money and more rules! However, 1 to 2 feet of snow coming to a big chunk of the country is still a story. These ones would have gotten lots of views before all the Global Climate Stupidity, but then again, it's been so long already, that that time predates the www.
Per ABC News, via yahoo, via logging out of email, US braces for major storm, 16 states under winter weather alerts. This is about a week after Spring officially started, and a week before Easter. No, it's not unheard of. (Shhhsssh... if you say it is, then they'll call it that wild and crazy weather that's an integral part of the Climate Calamity™, per the new, new mathematical models.)
On Sunday, 16 states from California to Michigan were under winter alerts as the next big storm will be dropping heavy snow and causing travel delays through Tuesday.Yeah, it's colder than normal. I've noticed. The media has just got to do some "explaining":
While snowstorms in the central U.S. aren’t rare for this time of year, much of the area affected hasn’t had much winter weather in the past few months.Yes, that's called frontal activity, aka, weather. Note that the writer, one Leah Sarnoff, pointed out that warmest winter on record in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Nah, it doesn't work like that. Weather stations are in specific locations all over these States. Is this some average of all the stations or just a few records here and there in cities/towns in those 2 States? I suspect the latter. For what I think is a probably correct bit of rectal extraction, I'd have to guess that a warmest or coldest record reading is set in some location every week in the US in the winter and summer, or at least every month. It sounds like Leah has done some cherry picking - that should have been done in Michigan, in which sits, after all, the Cherry Capital of the World.
Minnesota and Wisconsin are fresh off their warmest winter on record, with snowfall less than half of normal in cities like Minneapolis.
On the southern tier of this storm, the clash of cold and warm air, among other factors, will contribute to a potential multi-day severe weather outbreak from the Southern Plains into the Deep South.
Finally:
View comments (1.1k)I didn't start because reading 1,100 comments is not something I have time for today (or any other day). However, I've looked at these occasionally before under these stories, and I would see most commenters being onto the scam.
I thought about this, and I really yearn for the days when people could just discuss the weather without politics being involved. "How are you all doing up in Buffalo?" "Well, I was worried about the roof, so I swept it off, and then I just stepped down onto the 'lawn' without a ladder." "We've still got firewood left after the mild winter. Did your kids get any sledding in? It's great here!" That kind of thing is what the internet COULD be for, but no....
* Spell-check doesn't like that - Calamitites, maybe? (It doesn't like that one either.)
Comments (9)
Peak Anarcho-Tyranny?
Posted On: Monday - March 25th 2024 7:01AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Anarcho-tyranny Big-Biz Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
I don't know who this Julian's Rum is - I got this meme either from Ann Barnhardt (she likes memes, and hates the Commie so-called Pope) or off VDare. It doesn't matter, but it was a nice job. This is the best example of layer upon layer of Anarcho-Tyranny I've seen explained, and so consisely. Those layers are put on by Big Gov and Big Biz, working hand-in-hand.
Due to obligations, Peak Stupidity posts will be short like this or nonexistent through Wednesday.
Comments (4)
The Motor Law
Posted On: Saturday - March 23rd 2024 5:45PM MST
In Topics: Music US Police State Cars The Future Zhou Bai Dien Totalitarianism
... and Congress need not worry its pretty little head about it. Biden Regime to Finalize Regulations Targeting Gas-Powered Vehicles This Week.
The smell of volatiles, gasoline to be precise, permeated my old
I'll give E.V.'s credit for being simple, but this old one is not complicated either, and guess what? I'm not turning it in to Zhou Bai Dien based on a bogus excuse of some Climate Calamity™.
Peak Stupidity embedded this great 1981 Rush song before long ago. (From Moving Pictures) Drummer Neil Peart's lyrics were Libertarian with a bent toward Science Fiction. Well, the future is now.
My uncle has a country place that no one knows about.
He says it used to be a farm, before the Motor Law.
And now on Sundays I elude the eyes, and hop the turbine freight
to far outside the wire where my white-haired uncle waits.
Jump to the ground as the turbo slows to cross the borderline.
Run like the wind as excitement shivers up and down my spine.
But down in his barn, my uncle preserved for me
an old machine for fifty-odd years.
To keep it as new has been his dearest dream.
I strip away the old debris that hides a shining car,
a brilliant Red Barchetta from a better, vanished time.
We'll fire up the willing engine, responding with a roar.
Tires spitting gravel, I commit my weekly crime.
Wind, in my hair, shifting and drifting...
Mechanical music ... adrenaline surge.
Well-oiled leather, hot metal and oil, the scented country air.
Sunlight on chrome, the blur of the landscape, every nerve aware.
Suddenly ahead of me, across the mountainside,
a gleaming alloy air-car shoots towards me two lanes wide.
Oh, I spin around with shrieking tires to run the deadly race.
Go screaming through the valley, as another joins the chase.
Ride like the wind, straining the limits of machine and man.
Laughing out loud with fear and hope, I've got a desperate plan.
At the one-lane bridge I leave the giants stranded at the riverside,
race back to the farm, to dream with my uncle at the fireside.
Well, you either like Geddy Lee's vocals or you don't. The guitar leads and the harmonics by Alex Lifeson are exquisite.
Per Neil Peart, these lyrics were inspired - he couldn't get a hold of the guy with questions - by one Richard Foster, who'd written a story of the sad future of motoring for Nov. '73 Road & Track magazine. It was called "A Nice Morning Drive".
Comments (22)
The Yellow Pages - Factoids and Fun
Posted On: Saturday - March 23rd 2024 1:33PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity TV, aka Gov't Media Humor History Americans
See, from earlier, Let your fingers do the walking and The days of the HuWhite pages.
Regular Peak Stupidity readers will know that, from the bygone days of decent TV shows, before I quit the whole TV deal a quarter century ago, The Rockford Files is our favorite. One can find about a dozen posts on the show here. I did my best to find Private Investigator Jim Rockford at a phone booth but also looking through the yellow pages, as he did in a number of scenes. Sorry, no luck yet...
That'd have been perfectly plausible. Though Jim would have had a big 2 or 2 1/2" thick Yellow Pages book back in his trailer, along with the same for the White Pages, I don't think they could have covered all of Los Angeles County (with another for Orange County.) even back in the day with half the people. As Mr. Hail discussed in the comments on both sets of books, business and other activities were generally more local in 50 years-ago America.
What'd you do when you couldn't find that specialized v-belt at the local (probably non-chain, even) auto parts store? You had to work with people, like, YES, talk to them and all and get helpful referrals and that. Maybe you'd have to drive a ways on those LA freeways, and then possibly look up the business for its address and phone # when you got nearby.
By some point, businesses that wanted to go nationwide were able to get "eight hundred numbers", as they were called, i.e. phone numbers starting with 800* in place of an Area Code. This was so that customers would call to begin with, as not many people wanted that Ker-Ching! from the phone company every minute, racking up bills for calls that might have been a waste of time. These nationwide sales companies would pay the charges instead. I assume they got volume discounts.**
Because my Dad was no early adopter of credit cards (before debit cards), or more like, very sane financially, I remember having to call up an 800 for him to order a tennis racket with my CC. Those numbers did the trick before and during the first dozen years of internet commerce, or even the present day for people like me who really just like to get a human on the phone.
There aren't many phone booths left now, but those there are can't have the phone books hanging by a piece of aircraft cable, as in Jim Rockford's day. It'd be a tremendous waste to print them. I do wish I'd accumulated a hundred or more - the neighbors would have helped - before they were a thing of the past. Those things were great for the shooting range. A .22 LR round went only 2/3 through they yellow pages from a foot away. They were great for experimentation.
Now for the couple of stories. Regarding the 1st, the background is that, well, these books came out once a year. If you had a business, you had to arrange for your ad in, say February, or nobody but existing customers, or those from word-of-mouth, were going to beat a path to your door, or at least telephone. To ensure you were serious (I guess), one had to have a "commercial" or "business" line, in order to put an ad in, whether one line, an inch on 1 of 3 columns, or half a page.
Wait, but once your ad was in 10's of thousands of Yellow Page books throughout town, what if you stopped paying? Aha, well, your phone line would be disconnected. Yeah, but some people are too clever by half ... half a page ad, that is. My friend's brother put in that huge ad that must have cost $500 or even thousands monthly back in the day. He paid one month. When he quit paying, they cut off his line... but, he'd put his sister's phone number also in that same ad, so people would do business that way. I assume she was OK with that ...
Then, as seen on The Rockford Files and real life, there were these lazy or not-so-bright people using phone booths that didn't carry writing instruments and paper, or hadn't such a good memory. Instead of writing down or memorizing the number they'd found for 20 seconds, they'd just tear out that portion of the page, White or Yellow pages. It showed a disregard for any future users of that book who might have needed info off that page or the back side. This says something about "a people". Something tells me that it's not something you'd have seen in Germany, Scandinavia, or Japan but more so in Italy or Greece... not in China just due to it being too wretched then to have phone booths, yellow pages***, or phones... yeah, and in Los Angeles, on TV, and knowing the place, in real life.
They showed this sort of behavior on The Rockford Files, and that was humorous and endearing. Then too, at times, while waiting for an answer on the phone, Jim would look up his own PI ad, just to make sure it was still there. He'd see the line-drawing of his face doctored up with, what, a booger hanging from his nose, a doobie in his mouth with smoke curling up, or maybe some disparaging remarks made by one of his competing detectives? I was partial to doodling stubble on the face and John Lennon glasses, myself.
Hey, now you all have smart phones - you can put the call on speaker and surf the whole internet during the call. We had no internet. We had to make do with doodling doobies, boogers, stubble, and John Lennon glasses in the Yellow Pages. It was a different time, you understand ...
* Eventually, there were enough of these numbers assigned - could it really have been in the neighborhood of 8 million? - that the phone companies branched out to 888, 887, 877, etc. (They just couldn't match actual area codes, the number of which would soon expand greatly, what with fax machines first and then mobile phones.)
** You'll still see those numbers around. They must be for legacy land-line-only folks. Otherwise, what's the diff - there's no charge for long distance within the country.
*** I mean, who were you gonna call, the Communist Party, the feed corn ration card office, or the nearest commune?
Comments (5)
The Pretendians per Steve Sailer: Squaw or no Squaw?
Posted On: Friday - March 22nd 2024 6:41PM MST
In Topics: Humor Political Correctness Female Stupidity
Now, that we have your attention here at Peak Stupidity... Now, that we have your attention... hey, staring at female humans is toxic masculinity - please stop ... though no longer active on the site (due to time constraints only), we are not above reading some of Steve Sailer's posts on VDare. His latest of many is Life Expectancy—How To Find Where The Pretendians Live.
"Pretendians" is Mr. Sailer's clever term for pretend Indians, those White women (for the most part) who fake society - at least their colleges and/or employers - into believing that they are Indians. (That is, the Casino tribes, not the Tech Support tribes.) As with Fauxahauntas - and thank you, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Warren never fooled most of us. She fooled whom it mattered to fool, those giving away easier admissions and employment and those who could be virtue-signaled into giving out undue breaks and respect.
Regarding his post, Mr. Sailer uses his stats in a novel and clever way to try to figure out where the greater percentage of Pretendians vs REAL Indians live. He has written much more on these women before with other examples and ideas, IMO.
I'm not writing this post to argue against Mr. Sailer's method - I think it's fairly sound. I'm writing this because I swore off of writing comments on the Unz Review site, but I really wanted to so badly.
Why do this many White ladies want to pretend to be Indians? (More and more seem to be getting de-feathered as of late.) Is it all just the benefits? Mr. Sailer understands woman as well as I do, and he notes the Pretendians tend to be: ... typically left of center white women in academic or government jobs who have decided that they aren’t what they appear—regular white women—but are actually American Indian princesses who are not only glamorously attention-getting but also eligible for affirmative action.
Yes, women like to be considered glamorous. I think, deep down in their female lizard brains, these women want to be thought of by men who've never seen them as wearing loin cloths. That's all there is to it. Maybe it's cross-legged inside a private tipi or in a sweat lodge, glistening with sweat, wearing a loin cloth. That's the way I see it anyway... then I see a youtube video of Elizabeth Warren talking feminism on the Senate Floor. Ruined! The whole thing is ruined, I tells ya'!!
Oh, and the women above? They may be Pretendians, but squaw or no squaw, they are hot!
Comments (11)
Los Rooferros - such a deal!
Posted On: Friday - March 22nd 2024 5:01PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Economics Race/Genetics
As a Libertarian site, Peak Stupidity is, OK, I am, down with the economic idea of Division of Labor. That is, in a smooth-running free-market economy, whoever is best at and/or more efficient at the work is, via the magic of pricing and Supply & Demand, the one who ought to be, and ends up, doing said work. I don't extend that concept to include invasions to our country, though.
Secondly, it's a personal quirk, I guess, but I like to be able to do whatever work I can do myself, on vehicles and my house, in particular. Therefore, I've only had people do work on my house less than a full handful of times. Once, it was the city, after I'd accidentally sawn through the gas line - fixing that was not my area of expertise, my having never worked as an EOD "technician"! Then, there was our roof. I'd done 2 smaller jobs, and I found roofing pretty straightforward, but there's an economy of scale problem - I estimated a week's work, and the weather forecasts don't accurately go out nearly that far.
Roofing is one of those jobs that's been long ago relegated almost solely to illegal aliens and other Hispanic young men. Privatizing the profits, but socializing the losses works wonders, well, depending if you are on the private or public side of it. It's easily been a couple of decades since I've seen more than rare occurrences of OTM's (in border patrol parlance, but then there are Other Than Mexicans on roofing crews, from Guatemala and what-have-you). It's a pretty lucrative business too, with often the one White guy running the business and doing sales. That's too bad for those Americans replaced, both White and black.
I wasn't there, but I would guess it was probably a crew of Americans who did the roof of our house back in the mid-1980s. It was a decent job*, as I'd only done a few spot repairs since, with 30 years having gone by - an ACTUAL 30-year roof.
For my required (re-)roofing job,I made an effort to get a crew of 3 White guys. Seeing as this job had been decades coming, there was no rush, so, when I saw the guys working on a house across the road, I hired them. I wish I could, but I can't say their work was splendid. I had to point out one spot of bad wood that they were obviously otherwise not going to concern themselves with. Additionally, the lead's estimate for the materials that I bought was ridiculously off - 50% over in shingles and paper, and even the nails. This was a simple roof, so I had a much more accurate estimate from 2 minutes of
So far, so good, is the story, though, after almost a decade. In contrast, a nearby monstrosity of a house built ~ 1 1/2 decades ago has one of those high and complicated roofs. It was done by Mexicans, as was all the building of that house. Regarding the latter, that construction was not stellar. Upon the house's first sale, there were crews of various sorts - roofing, siding, HVAC, etc., there for 6 months afterwards, off and on, but mostly on, to repair all the problems discovered during the inspection. That had to be $75,000 by my rough estimate. The builder lost his ass on the project. I know this because we had a semi-heated discussion in which I twice noted that he'd lost his ass. After twice replying in a small Lebowski manner that "That's just, like, your opinion, man...", he admitted finally that "Yeah, I lost my ass."
Well, recently there was a Mexican roofing crew going up on that. same roof, working under a friendly White man who told me "you just can't do this work without illegal aliens". Yeah, well, that's just, like, his opinion, man... but, anyway, I'd thought they were going to fix some bad spots. (It IS, after all, a complicated roof.***) Nope, they redid the whole thing. Lots of the roofing could be 3rd generation, after only 1 1/2 decades!
As with Cheap China-made Crap, you may think you're getting a good deal upon the sale. After the 3rd go-around, it turns out to have not been such a deal. As for American society, as a whole, it's never been a good deal, and it can't be, no matter how good the work. Well, maybe if ICE only let in former German BMW engine mechanics....
PS: I didn't argue with the recent-day privatizing the profits guy. He even said, IIRC, that you can't do otherwise when all the competition is doing this. It was too nice a day to argue about it.
* ... in addition to the materials - the shingles and tar paper - having been of good '80s AMERICAN quality.
** Were they that bad at math or greedy for extra material for a future job? I'll never know, but I kept 4 of the extra bundles for repairs, a little tar paper, and one bucket of nails, and the rest went back to the store for a significant refund.
*** It's very nice to have a lower one with decent slopes upon which I can walk on and check out comfortably. That won't last forever, alas.
Comments (6)
Boys, we're in a tight spot
Posted On: Thursday - March 21st 2024 6:36AM MST
In Topics: Global Financial Stupidity Economics US Feral Government Taxes
That's from some guy who tweets about stuff - that's all I know about him. It doesn't take a PhD in economics or anything else to understand when one is in
A little more from the Independent Sentinel site is here:
Personal income tax is half of what the government takes in. That isn’t good.Well, it's more simple, and it gives more understanding of the situation, to just say that last month the US Gov't had to spend just under 1/3 of all money taken in on interest payments on that $34,000,000,000,000 "note".
About 50 percent of federal revenue comes from individual income taxes, 7 percent from corporate income taxes, and another 36 percent from payroll taxes that fund social insurance programs. The rest comes from a mix of sources.
Peak Stupidity has warned this nation many times. The financial stupidity will be the first one to stop, due to, what CAN'T go on, WON'T go on.* The rest of the stupidity may die with it, but, as we've also warned, that's only if the result isn't that we go Communist. In that case, as stupidity goes, the sky's the limit.
PS: This post's title comes from Oh, Brother, Where Art Thou?
* H/T due Herb Stein, from what I am told.
Comments (15)
The days of the HuWhite pages
Posted On: Wednesday - March 20th 2024 7:43PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Internets History Americans
This post is a continuation from Let your fingers do the walking.
We discussed the difference in society and the divide (per Mr. Hail) between the days of the Yellow Pages as THE way to look up businesses and the internet searching of today in that last post. We saw the change as generally an improvement - that's one of the very few! Here, let me give a summary of the use of the White Pages, used for looking up people... to like, call them, on what was simply a telephone. (Imagined younger PS readers, please don't make me put up Captain Picard again, mmmkayyy?)
Going along with what commenter E.H. Hail discussed in some detail in the comments last time, back in the long heyday of the phone books, life was more structured in this way. This book, dropped on the porches of all houses and apartments, even in the ghetto, I gotta assume involving hazard pay, was THE listing of the phone numbers of anyone one might know by name and want to call, with exceptions. It was the comprehensive listing, and the only one. The big phone company - even after being broken up into "Baby Bells" - had this information. Nobody else had it, well, besides the NSA, maybe the FBI, but no other company (OK, besides "The Company" too). "The phone company" owned those smaller insulated lines* up on the, you know, telephone poles.
Yeah, telephone, the old term for those phone apps most of us have on our.... errr, phones.
"Oh, yeah, I have that app. It seems to come installed on every phone I get. Whaddya' need that app for so bad? All it does is let you talk to people. Who needs THAT? They should call these things texters, Tik-tokers, Browsers, or something we use a lot. Or, call them Personal Computers.***
How would one get in this "phone book"? I never thought much about it then, but obviously it would go by names used for billing for the land lines. Having one's name in it meant adulthood, and it was a very big deal to some of us.
Well, after all, Steve Martin had finally gone out on his own. He'd have not been listed before, with the landline having been listed under his family name when he was a poor black child.
It was a different world. Even with the Bart Simpson style pranksters and some annoying human sales calls of the day, people did not feel the need to get away from others by hiding their info, as now. One could indeed have an "unlisted number", but it seemed really weird, and, as I recall, one had to pay extra for that each year. (Once the books came out, it was a done deal, one way or another. There were no daily "updates".) Women had a reason to keep their man's name in the book for security - it was a White Pagiarchy, I tell ya'. Addresses were in there too, right alongside the phone numbers.
Nowadays, with various cell phone companies around, one encompassing big book or website of numbers would be hard to come by. Either way, a big difference in life now is the lack of societal trust. We are very careful what information we give out and to whom. If you want to reach someone the old-fashioned way, even knowing his name, you must make contact with some other method, including meeting him in person. of course, in order to be able to call him. That seems normal now. It was not normal back in the day of the White Pages. The way it was: Got a name? Look him up and call. Simple. He, possibly she, really didn't want to hear from you? He, or she, could hang up in style. That's really hard on phones that are no longer made of bakelite plastic.
* They weren't all small either. In the big city, as this one crew was digging up an old big line (probably to replace with fiber optics), they let me have one piece, about a yard long, that was about 1 1/2" O.D. Inside that black insulation, I couldn't count, but estimated, over 1,000 conductors, each non-stranded copper surrounded by its own color-coded insulation.** I had 0.6 miles of wire for projects, this back when I could strip the ends with my teeth. I don't do that anymore.
** A cool job for a math or crypto guy would have been figuring out the best scheme for the color-coding.
*** Aren't these things the real personal computers, more than those IBM AT desktops were?
Comments (9)
Let your fingers do the walking.
Posted On: Tuesday - March 19th 2024 10:04PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Internets Humor History Americans
We're running into Peak Stupidity mission creep here. This is one of these deals by which one potential post has quickly turned into four in my head. The original is about what I think is somewhat of a scam on-line - partly my bad search capabilities, I'll admit - but I needed some background that would make it go on too long. Therefore, here I'll give that background, and it's kind of a fun look at the recent past. The Curmudgeonry tag won't even appear this time, as I believe this change is generally for the better.
For those PS readers under 30 y/o, maybe even 35, if there are any, this may be an interesting revelation and for the rest, hopefully it'll be some nostalgia. For the former, let me explain that the internet has not always been "there".
"When you needed to know something, what did you do then?"
We might have asked someone who knew, or failing that, would have had to go get a book. One might have had to buy one or perhaps find one at the library.
"Yeah, your phones were these old "brick" things, right?"
No, they were on the wall or on a desk.
"OK, so you couldn't use them for this, but you could just sit down and search it up..."
No, I mean there was no internet.
"Surely, you could go to the library to use the computers and ..."
No, I mean there was no internet, and don't call me Shirley.
"Hah, that's a new one! Anyway, what the... well I guess you'd just have had to look up an expert on LinkedIn or, well, no, then email a bunch of people who might be able to help ..."
See that guy - his name is Jean Luc Picard. His predecessor in the 1960s Star Fleet didn't have the internet either, and neither did this guy, in the 1980s.
"Yeah, well, sure, when you're thousands of parsecs away, the signal can be pretty weak, and ..."
Do you want me to have to paste this picture in again?
No, see, to look up the phone numbers for people and businesses there were these big books we'd get from the phone company every year called "the White Pages" and "the Yellow Pages", respectively. (In case you're wondering, no, there were no Black! pages for residences and people of the ghettos, and the Yellow pages didn't just cover Chinatown. We were all integrated, phone book wise.).
In a small town, the white and yellow pages might be combined into one book 1/2" or 3/4" thick, while in a medium sized city each of them could be up to 2 1/2" or so thick. They'd get delivered to one's house every year around the same time. Though the white pages had the names that appeared on residents' phone bills in alphabetical order, the yellow pages had business names and bigger ads categorized, then in alphabetical order within. I imagine categories would come and go. Buggy and Buggy Accessories might have been taken out in the 1940s or '50s, while Internet Companies* may have been added in either 1995 or '96, by my best guess.
Speaking of internet companies, it took a few years before there was enough information on the internet to make a search for people or businesses worthwhile. Of course, there were websites made based on the old white pages and yellow pages information, such as, well, yeah, whitepages.com and yellowpages.com. At this point the latter don't work worth a damn for the finding of phone numbers. Those land lines for which information used to be (at least) readily available are almost a thing of the past, and people are loath to give out their cell numbers due to the robo and other junk calls.
I'm no early adopter of "Tech", but by the turn of the century it was usually easier to sit down and try a search for a business before going to the yellow pages. Something we are used to now is that we can find out information for places out of town. Well, no, it was NOT easy back with the phone books! To get information on businesses out of town one might have to go, yes, to the library, where they'd have at least phone books for around the State. Being able to search nation- and world-wide for stuff is something we take for granted, but it has been thus for only one quarter of a century.
There was a long lag, when the phone books kept coming, and they were good for the shooting range only, for most of us. Interestingly, at one point, we got more than one, maybe even three different, yellow page books. There was competition, but this was late in the game. I don't know exactly, but I will say it's been 8 to 10 years since the phone books stopped coming. The web had been more useful for a decade prior already.
That was a lot of paper being used and a big effort with the yearly delivery of these millions of 5 lb books. Peak Stupidity has noticed that Green is the new cheap-ass, meaning not so much that becoming more efficient and saving on materials and energy makes one a cheap-ass. It's just that this being economical is usually advertised as "going green" because "we care about the carbon", rather than what it is, good economics.
Now, about the post title here. That was an ad on TV - "Let your fingers do the walking". I got the clever line, but I didn't get the point. The yellow pages were the yellow pages, with no competition then. Who were they selling this service to? By this time, even contemporary oldsters would not have found walking all around to shop useful. The small Mayberry downtowns were gone, and the walkable White inner cities were LONG gone.
That's some background for people under 30-35. I want to relate some humor about the yellow pages, then write a short post about how the white pages worked, and finally get to my point about internet business searches.
* "Providers" was the term used later on.
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20th Century Mike Pence
Posted On: Tuesday - March 19th 2024 7:14AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 US Police State US Feral Government The Neocons
Peak Stupidity has had it with Mike Pence. He is of absolutely no use to this country! (His use by the Potomac Regime - that's a different story.) We rightly railed on this Indianan, and former Vice President last summer - see GOPer Mike Pence - Another dumb Trump hire - - The stupidity of Mike Pence and More on Alleged Mike Pence Stupidity. Note that the "More" post was a rethinking of my disparagement of Mr. Pence from one interview, based on comments by E.H. Hail. From what you too can see, below, I think I'm reverting to thinking this guy's not just slow but well-meaning. He's not on our side.
First of all, yeah, he was a stupid hire by Mr. Trump, as I explained in that 1st post. My thinking now is that Trump wanted to make sure he had someone bland who would not get in the way of the spotlight on Trump. The latter's ego is so big, that this is more important than having someone more intelligent and capable than a Mike Pence, and, most importantly, loyally on, if not the side of Donald Trump, the side of Americans. This is why he will not pick the splendid Marjorie Taylor Greene for VP candidate. She's smart as a whip and truly on the side of Trump and Americans. However, she will gladly and competently do the disparagement of the ctrl-left Regime, especially its media arm, that Trump
I came across the following video from Face the Nation. I had NO IDEA that was still on TV, and therefore no idea who the woman is. I'm including just a minute of this, in which Pence says that Trump should not call the J6 Political Prisoners "hostages". (Oh, yeah, he explains himself more, and one can watch the whole 11 minutes. It doesn't get any better.)
Now, look, I could quibble with the use of the word "hostages" too, based on dictionary definitions. Because there are no demands being made by the Communists holding them in return for their release, the word hostage is not really accurate. I explained this already here.
No, the over 1,000 J6 prisoners are being held to discourage anyone else from even trying to hold a big protest against the Regime again. We also all know that their sentencing and treatment is much, much harsher than the consequences were for the Black! thugs of BLM and the Commies of antifa, for much more serious destruction, looting and burning. Almost all of the latter were never even arrested. Those on one side of a political divide are being held for visibly being in opposition to the other side, the ruling Potomac Regime. The proper term is "Political Prisoner".
However, Mike Pence didn't quibble about that definition. He deflected the question toward some American hostages being held in Gaza. The Peak Stupidity reader may note that WE DON'T CARE here so much about anything going on there. We want the American military and American taxpayer money to stay out, that's all. Yet Mike Pence obviously cares more about a conflict 1/3 the way around the world than he does about a very obvious Communist takeover right here at home. He has no idea how far this has gone already and how far it is going. The dude is living in the last century! That's my most generous take on the man.
A less generous take on Mike Pence is that he is playing his part in the politics of the Potomac Regime. American patriots should have nothing to do with him.
PS: At the beginning, there is a clip of Trump speaking to a crowd about the J6 Political Prisoners. He's soft. He never said clearly that he will pardon them. In that previous post, Hostages or Political Prisoners, I wrote "Finally, if Donald Trump gets elected this November and then doesn't pardon these people on January 20th of '25, then he is just the tool I often think of him as."
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Kung Flu PanicFest retrospective: Common Sense
Posted On: Monday - March 18th 2024 8:33PM MST
In Topics: Educational Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
"Common sense is not so common", they'll tell you. I agree. It's not something you're born with or not, IMO. Common sense comes from getting out and about, and with using what one's learned from all that getting out and about.
After finishing that 4-year retrospective on Peak Stupidity's stance on the PanicFest at the time, I felt I should add more explanation of this stance at the time based on common sense. I mentioned the school closings as that was the thing going on right at 4 years back.
This Kung Flu Infotainment had been going on already a month and a half when the various States closed the schools. You'd have to have been in permanent RTC - - Responsible Thinking Center, aka Detention*, to have not heard about the Covid 19 ("the Corona" being the phrase most used at the time, IIRC) by that date, Yet, out of a few hundred kids, we did not hear of ANY of them being hospitalized by this disease. Had one been, we would have heard - that's my common sense. Had one child DIED from it, believe me, there would have been no need for a mandated closure of the school. Every parent would have said "fuck this shit, absence warnings or not!" and kept the kids inside the house for a long while.
Yet, this is what the park/playground we hung out at our 2 hour recesses looked like for the next month or more:
"Well, maybe they're worried about the kids spreading this virus more quickly than it would if everyone stays home", I thought of. But, no. Most of the parents are young and in good health, and I'd not heard of any parent who'd gotten hospitalized or died from the Corona either. We would have heard, if so, and all those the kids would probably have not been out in the sunshine at the park either.
It was just common sense. This was an Infotainment PanicFest - good for governments and good for the media.
"Wait, now, but maybe others, with no kids in the schools didn't know wha you did. You can't blame them, right?" Perhaps they should have gotten out more themselves, so they wouldn't have been fixated on the Lyin' Press on TV and the internet. Then too, nobody, not even the fairly large number of old people around, was heard of dying from the Corona.
Well, was this some exceptionally good or lucky area? We weren't in Wuhan or New York City, but no, we had the big circles of "cases of Corona" covering our area too on those thematic maps that came up for every search on the news. Common sense would have helped a lot of people from getting sucked into the Panic vortex.
Back to the kids, even on this totally bogus bar graph - due to cases of the disease being defined as only people hospitalized with positive tests - the kids' numbers were small.
Why'd they close the schools, then? Exercise of Totalitarian tendencies, for the most part, is what I came up with.
* RTC is what they called it at the local school. They're not fooling
Comments (13)
The Pretenders - Thumbelina
Posted On: Saturday - March 16th 2024 7:30PM MST
In Topics: Music Peak Stupidity Roadshow
Tonight we will continue* our Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders music from their excellent early 1980s Learning to Crawl album with Thumbelina. Thumbelina is a little girl whose Mom, the song lyricist narrator**, is taking across this country on a road trip from somewhere in the northeast on the way to Tucson, Arizona... where her Mama's waiting, wearing a low-necked sweater, ... and the cat was cool and he never said a mumblin' word ... or something ... sorry, confusing my music here.
No, but there's no doubt what this song is about, going along with the concept of this album. I'll put all the lyrics here:
Hush little baby. Don't you cry.
When we get to Tucson, you'll see why
we left the snowstorms and the thunder and rain
for the desert sun. We're gonna be born again!
What's important in this world -
a little boy, a little girl.
Hush little darling. Go to sleep.
Look out the window, and count the sheep
that dot the hillsides and the fields of wheat
across America, as we cross America.
What's important and here today -
the broken line on the highway.
All the love in the world for you, girl.
Thumbelina, in a great, big scary world.
All the love in the world for you, girl.
Take my hand, and we'll make it through this world.
Hush little baby, my poor little thing.
You've been shuffled about like a pawned wedding ring.
It must seem strange. Love was here then gone,
and the Oklahoma sunrise becomes the Amarillo dawn.
What's important in this life -
Ask the man who's lost his wife.
Even MORE IMPORTANT, to us listeners, is that this song has a great Carter/Cash style flat-picking sound. Even that fade ending sounds like a country song by Johnny Cash, this one, which is about not one road trip, but many road trips. I've been everywhere in this here land.
What a fantastic song! (... though it's only my 2nd favorite on the album.)
I want to again thank the illustrious and ebullient Peak Stupidity commenters and all the other readers whose mood I have no idea of, since they don't write. We've got something different about the yellow pages and hotel reservations scams, a story out of Harvard good enough for the Babylon Bee, were it not unfortunately real, something about Mexican quality roofing, and plenty of stuff I'll remember next week. Happy Sunday, all!
* The first 3 songs we featured were Middle of the Road - - Back on the Chain Gang and Time the Avenger.
** It's written by Chrissie Hynde.
Comments (5)
SCROTUS Case: Missouri v Dark Brandon
Posted On: Saturday - March 16th 2024 7:41AM MST
In Topics: Websites Pundits US Feral Government Orwellian Stupidity Legal Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity Zhou Bai Dien Anti-Social Media
That one is no humorous title, (in PS's opinion) as we use here on many posts written to compare and contrast, as the old English teacher would say. No, State of Missouri v. Biden is an actual court case that has made it up to the SCROTUS, with oral arguments to be made there the day after tomorrow - Monday, the 18th.
Peak Stupidity can't cover every Supreme Court case, even those that do concern the material we write about. However, it so happens that Mr. Jim Hoft, owner/operator of The Gateway Pundit, is one of the 7 plaintiffs. He is one of 5 individuals, while the other 2 are the States of Missouri and Louisiana.*
Jim Hoft has really made the big time with this, and I am glad for him for that. Regarding Jim Hoft's site, our review of Gateway Pundit noted that he/it is a force for good - we just hate a couple of minor things about the site, the sick and overwhelming ads and the hype.
This case is about censorship and violation of Amendment I of the US Constitution by the Dark Brandon Administration. It's not just the big "TECH" Anti-Social Media "platforms" that are being accused of wrongdoing. Were it these companies doing it on their own, that gets into the discussion Peak Stupidity joined in October '20 with Big-"Tech" censorship and Section 230. (That was just before the election, and President Trump had just gotten around to thinking hard about this! "Oh, yeah, I was busy tweeting last year ... guess I dropped the ball on this one ...") In this case, as per the accusations, the Bai Dien (switching back-and-forth at will here) Administration was involved. They'd been directing these companies to censor information. From the Justia Law site linked-to above:
The Plaintiffs—three doctors, a news website, a healthcare activist, and two states —had posts and stories removed or downgraded by the platforms. Their content touched on a host of divisive topics like the COVID-19 lab-leak theory. Plaintiffs maintain that although the platforms stifled their speech, the government officials were the ones pulling the strings. They sued the officials for First Amendment violations and asked the district court to enjoin the officials’ conduct.The Feral Gov't official defendants claimed that no,
... they only “sought to mitigate the hazards of online misinformation” by “calling attention to content” that violated the “platforms’ policies,” a form of permissible government speech.Yes, just calling attention, as they happened to be following it all, and enjoy reading the legal disclaimer pages in their spare time, and were just trying to make sure the platforms' policies are being followed, like a good nosy neighbor ... sure, that's the ticket.
Back to the 7 plaintiffs, just below is the list of them. For 3 of the other 4 individual plaintiffs, seeing as he has his website, Mr. Hoft has interviewed these doctors, one by one. (There are videos and transcriptions.) The name-links go to his GP pages on these three, from today and last week.
* Dr. Aaron Kheriaty
* Dr. Martin Kulldorff
* Dr. Jayanta Bhattacharya
* Jim Hoft
* Jill Hines
* The State of Missouri
* The State of Louisiana
The 5th individual, Jill Hines, is a Conservative healthcare policy activist out of Ruston, Louisiana, Without going to facebook (a no-go site in these parts), the best short bio on Mrs. Hines is here on the Citizens for a New Lousiana site - she is 4th one down, just below Tiffany with the big ta-tas.
I am familiar with the location of the States of Missouri and Louisiana. I assume the reader is too.
This case is about big violations of Amendment I by the Feral Gov't. That the Fed have been violating most of the Bill of Rights for arguably half a century is nothing new. I like that this one has gotten to the SCROTUS, but also, this one heavily involves the Kung Flu PanicFest. One can see another process by which the narrative was formed. Because I'm not at all an Anti-Social Media guy, I might now have missed anything blocked via the censorship anyway. I'd been avoiding the mass Lyin' Press TV and websites for years already, so I'd find my own material on the PanicFest. However, I've chalked up the narrative control to American's proclivities to still follow TV and other big media. After seeing the complaints made by Jim Hoft, Missouri, et al, we can suppose that during the PanicFest many Americans would have gotten more truthful news off of these platforms and not been so... damned panicked.
Will the SCROTUS show integrity? We need 5 black-robed people with integrity. I think that's a lot to ask. I'm sure we'll be hearing plenty more from The Gateway Pundit on Monday, and then, IIRC, a few weeks later, when the SCROTUS decision is excreted.
* I don't know why Missouri gets top billing. Did they start the lawsuit up?
** We also posted an Addendum.
Comments (6)
4 years later, and still...
Posted On: Friday - March 15th 2024 5:20PM MST
In Topics: Humor Kung Flu Stupidity
I took this screenshot off of yahoo a few weeks back. 4 years after the start of the Kung Flu PanicFest, I'm not miffed by the advice given by yahoo, that after being sick with fever, we should return to our normal schedules. I'm miffed that someone at yahoo thinks there's anyone left on the internet who gives a rat's ass about CDC guidelines.
I looked at the Peak Stupidity posts that appear with the Kung Flu Stupidity topic key on or about the middle of March of '20.
Yesterday, 4 years ago, found Peak Stupidity somewhat miffed but also glad that that School's out For Ever! OK, too optimistic, but I saw the silver lining in this cloud of stupidity:
One really cool result of this Wuhan-Willies infotainment panic-fest may be what happens after the kids are at home for a month or more in a large number of school districts all around the country. The parents may get hip the to idea that these schools have served as not much more than social gathering places, welfare distribution facilities and expensive playgrounds. I think they would realize there's a better way.3 days from today (still 4 years back), Peak Stupidity officially borrowed the name Kung Flu, naming the topic key and giving this plenty of use over the next 2 1/2 years. (I later regretted not using "Flu Manchu", which I'd first seen in an Allan Wall - VDare writer - column, a couple of years later.) In that post, Beware the Kung Flu!, I was wrong though, not on the location of origin, but on the origin process:
Why are they mostly from Asia? We all know that people over there have more exotic tastes, eating animals that we wouldn't even have as pets here. Some we would. I guess these animals are closer in some biological sense to humans, as we never seem to get anything viral from our best friends here, the cats and dogs. Also, the fact that there is just no damn extra room in most livable parts of Asia so people have to live quite a bit more like bats has got to be a contributing factor, allowing for a quick initial spread of these new strains.Either way, by this date I was not worried about the disease itself, only the PanicFest. The question asked the next day was The Kung Flu - SHTF or Infotainment Panic-Fest? I affirmed it was the latter here:
Listen, I've been around. I remember quite a few of these viruses coming over from Asia over the last couple of decades. People died then too, mixed in with plenty of other people that were fairly old and/or susceptible to disease a lot more than your healthy < 60 y/o's down to babies**. I'm of the pretty solid opinion right now that this Kung Flu is truly an Infotainment Panic-Fest.However, what I was more worried about was the effect of this PanicFest, if it kept going long, on the economies of the world. Hence, at the end of the post, I changed my reply to "BOTH", explaining:
In answer to the question posed by this post's title: BOTH. The Kung Flu Infotainment Panic-Fest has triggered a financial crisis, bound to happen someday anyway, that may lead to a SHTF situation, if the media and governments keep pressing their luck and don't leave the people the hell alone for a while to get things done.The SHTF hasn't happened here yet, because, as the other Adam Smith said, "There's a lot of ruin in a nation.".*
That was 4 years ago. Yet that yahoo headline reads as if the average American is still falling for this garbage. I don't want to read about it, unless it's about admissions of wrongdoing, apologies or stories of mass hari-kari by government officials worldwide.
Now, to lighten things up, Peak Stupidity has posted many of the funny videos and (a few) memes that ridiculed the PanicFest. You may want to look for them. I did just find this one from 4 years ago. It may bring back some bad memories though...
* See also Part 2 and Part 3.
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