Dispatches from The Middle Kingdom: On taking one's turn... or not
Posted On: Tuesday - August 29th 2023 5:43AM MST
In Topics:   China
Peak Stupidity is just getting started with the observations from China. I'll get to plenty of different topics: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles*, living in China, economics, etc.
On the latter, Commenter E.H. Hail had some large-scale economic discussion that doesn't put China in such a great light under the previous post. I doubt I'll be able to address all that from a big finance viewpoint (I'll leave it to ZeroHadge), as I am no finance guy, and that's not what we were up to in China. However, I can give some details on how things work at the low level and what I think is likely sustainable economically and what is subsidized.
For this post, I want to get this one thing off my chest, and I'm doing it now because it follows from the last couple of posts in this series.

I'll put it clearly and plainly: Chinese people don't get the concept of standing in line and waiting one's turn! They can't do it. In this sense, they are extremely pushy, in a way that would shock even a New Yorker**. This view of mine is not coming from just the one incident and one day as described here. I've noticed this since I first visited China over 15 years ago. In our post Chinese free market healthcare - pt. 2, Modern China Experience***, we gave one anecdote:
This being China, as we talked to the Doc, IN HER OFFICE, a Chinese Mom with her kid went right up in front of our chairs saying something in Chinese like "Hey, my kid has this, take a look over here ..." Haha, they are a pushy bunch; that's all there is to it. This was right in the office in the middle of our consultation, but the lady Doc took this in stride as she and 2 others told the Mom in Chinese something like "Hey, wait your turn; ever heard of waiting in line?!" No, it couldn't have been that, as they HAVE NEVER heard of waiting in line, I don't think!I'm telling you, if you give an inch, where there's room for someone to squeeze up next to you while you are doing business (an example was our buying of train tickets), she will (yes, mostly "she", its seems). If she can make eye contact with the counter person, then, they just get started, and YOU now have to wait.
That's one thing. OK, they don't see a reason for having to line up when you call all just push forward and clamor for attention. Far be it for me to criticize Middle Kingdom folkways. Yeah, but, sometime there IS a line, as constrained by barriers to preclude episodes of mass clamoring. Chinese people can't deal with that sanely. That was the case at the Peking Zoo.
First, why did we go to the zoo, when we were in the huge capital city of a 3,500 y/o culture, with lots of history? We have zoos at home. It's like this: In Part 2 of our long-ago (it seems) description of our visit to the now-leveled (!!) Georgia Guidestones, there was discussion in the comments about good barbeque. We had eaten at KFC, alas! Same story here - longer story, but it was not all up to me.
What they do have in the big Peking Zoo who we don't have at home is some Giant Pandas. Those are the first animals everyone wanted to see. We did the TSA-style rat maze thing, only with about 8 ft wide spacing, jammed full of Chinese tourists.

These 2 images really don't do it justice. People were stacked in both dimensions. Whaddya' gonna do? Pandas are cute. My problem with these people's behavior is that even though there's no excess room, they keep pushing. They keep trying to squeeze past everyone else! On a couple of occasions in China, I've just stopped, put my arms out and said "Hey, we're all going the same way. Just give me some room." Of course they don't understand the language, but they don't understand the concept either.
We were all going toward the same gate to see the Pandas. I pushed back once, and then it turned out I was up against a baby a lady had strapped to her. I felt bad about that, but then why'd she keep pressing. I guess it's because everyone else is, and she'd feel left out, and yes, get left behind.
As I tried to follow my party, having to keep holding my ground, I'd finally had enough. I squeezed through sideways through the masses, vaulted one barrier, squeezed through sideways some more, vaulted another barrier (one of these new scissors-style expandable metal things), and walked away from it all toward some relative peace and relative quite on a bench. That's when I wrote a comment to you Peak Stupidity readers with my phone.

Strangely, in one of the many Peking subway stations (amazing job, but that's another post) we saw an actual organized line! The problem was, we weren't in it. People were 2 abreast for well over 100 ft. I figured we were doing something wrong. Actually, it wasn't that they knew something we didn't, but they were lazier. It turns out that they were all stacked up to go up the escalator, but there was a wide set of stairs too. (No, I didn't seen anyone with luggage even, requiring the escalator.) Two of us ran up the stairs and had to wait for the rest of our party. We did a lot of running up and down stairs all over the city. Then, there was that Great Wall. Moar stares! (No typo.)
PS: Again, for those who think Peak Stupidity is here to badmouth the Chinese people and their country, that's not our point. There has been and will be plenty of praise for the people and place. This bit I discussed here is true, so any Chinese readers might want to see themselves as others do, something that may just not be a Chinese thing either.
* We already had one quick one on The TrumpChi.
** The city, that is.
*** BTW, we didn't have a reason to experience Chinese healthcare on this visit, but I have learned long after that post that the system is subsidized by Government. Still, it WORKS, because it seems to be run without much involvement by bureaucrats. We could have paid double or triple the money, and it still would have been cheaper and simpler than the convoluted American "system".
Comments (8)
Dispatches from The Middle Kingdom (and the UK): Rudeness on the Street
Posted On: Saturday - August 26th 2023 5:50PM MST
In Topics:   Music  Humor  China
In the comments under the first actual "Dispatches from China" post here on Peak Stupidity, SafeNow and I discussed the friendliness and respectfulness of people and how it correlates with population density.
As SafeNow stated, we know New Yorkers are known to be rude, probably not as much as we think, but as compared to Southerners and people all over in small towns, yeah. Regarding friendliness, well you can't say "hey" or "hello" to everyone on the crowded streets of the big city. Many people make no eye contact.
To SafeNow I wrote:
One thing I didn't mean to imply is that Chinese people on the street are all "Howdy" to a stranger, making lots of eye contact, and "No, you first." "No, go ahead please!" It's nothing like that. I believe their personality is on the opposite end from black people, with hispanic, then White, then Oriental, as far as emotional outbursts or getting upset at the drop of a hat. Therefore, they can be so close together and not get on each others nerves, at least outwardly.Let me put it this way: You won't see guys acting like Richard Ashcroft of The Verve does on the Hoxton, London sidewalks. You pull that shit in the streets of China, and you're gonna get a Bitter Sweet Kick in the Ass!
They are not necessarily polite, but they are respectful enough so that millions of people can be out and about, yet there's no big outburst, fist fight, whatever, maybe in the whole city all week. (No, I don't know the numbers, but I don't see anything even approaching that.
Did I put together this short post purely for that bolded line at the bottom? In a word, YES.
Peak Stupidity has featured this song before. I hope you like it - we've been running out of music ideas, but there've got to be thousands of songs that still ought to appear. Thank you all for reading and commenting this week! Next week, we'll have more on China, more on Leon Trotsky's advertisement for Communism*, and that other stuff that we've meant to write about and not gotten to. (Hopefully, that include thoughts on population decline.)
PS: I'd forgotten that part in the video in which lead singer Ashcroft walks over the hood of the little car. It seems like it might be a good way to meet chicks, but then, all those tattooes...
* Yes, the name of that post does indeed read like an Andrew Anglin title. I don't like the way this is headed ...
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Trotsky to America: Fisking of a historical Soviet Commie Retard - Part 1
Posted On: Saturday - August 26th 2023 9:03AM MST
In Topics:   Commies  The Russians  History  Socialism/Communism
Note: There will be plenty of China road trip posts to come, for those who like that sort of thing. I do want to keep those up before memories get lost, as I also rely on the many pictures I took to jog them. However, there are likely lots of Peak Stupidity readers who couldn't give a Year of the Rat's ass what's going on in China. We'll intersperse other posts here about 1 for 1. You don't have to read about China. Nobody's got a gun to your head, yet, or even an ice axe, for that matter... Speaking of...

He's Leon Trotsky, famous Russian Communist of (most of) the 1st half of the 20th Century.* Born in 1879 to a well-off Jewish Russian family of 5 (kids), Lev Bronstein, aka, Leon Trotsky**, became an ideological radical, as did others in his family, at a young age. At 19 y/o, after a year or so flirtation with being a "Narodnikism" (revolutionary agrarian socialist populism, per wiki), Trotsky's began his love affair with Marxism. He and Lenin were co-conspirators in the massive Russian Revolution against the Czar of 1917, but they were later rivals, with competing brands of Communism. (Solidarity didn't take, I guess.)
Peak Stupidity isn't here to go over the history of Soviet Communism, though. A reply (I think, as it wasn't specifically directed) to my a question of mine about any attempts at implementing Communism in America during the Great Depression 1.0 linked me to the direct words of Leon Trotsky from a 1934 article of his.
Let me get to that question, which would be a good subject for another post. If there was any time before the recent unpleasantness of the last half century and Long March through the Institutions when Communism was considered in America, it was probably not until the desperate economic times of the 1930s. Regular Americans, fairly unified at this time - remember, wisely, immigration had been nearly cut completely off since 1921*** - likely wanted nothing to do with an ideology like Communism due to the great limited government/free-market roots of the country. Yet economic conditions were terrible, and you figure many people didn't know what to make of this. All I know of from the '30s is Woody Guthrie songs, John Steinbeck novels and, oh yeah, the 4-term President of the US, Franklin Roosevelt. He pushed Socialist programs to "cure" the depression, and if not a Communist at heart, he sure put up with a lot of them in high positions in the US Gov't. (Was that oversight, political expediency - during the war - or purposeful policy?)
Well, the reply commenter going by the handle "Cagey Beast" included a short excerpt from a Leon Trotsky article. Appearing appropriately on Marxists.org, from the Fourth International dated August '34 (Vol 12, #2, if you have the magazines in your attic), is Trotsky's article entitled If America Should Go Communist. The article title says "If", but it reads as encouragement and a how-to guide.
I spent over an hour reading about this man on Wikipedia, so I'll intersperse a few pertinent facts about Leon Trotsky, as I fisk**** his proposition to mid-1930s Americans to Go Marxist!
History is full of surprises, to me at least. I would have lost lots of money on the Jeopardy Daily Double if the question - under "Retarded Marxists in History" - had the answer "This stupid Commie spent 6 months in America 107 years ago." First off, I'd probably have forgotten to phrase my answer in the form of a question, "Who is Groucho?" No, that's not the
So, Leon Trotsky knew America, because, you know, he spent half a year in The Bronx There you go. In this post today, I'll just paste in this most stand-out piece - to me - of his long exhortation to Americans to join in the Internationale Communist merry-making. The historically famous Leon Trotsky, co-founder of the USSR, in his own words:
Here is where the American soviets can produce real miracles. "Technocracy" can come true only under communism, when the dead hands of private property rights and private profits are lifted from your industrial system. The most daring proposals of the Hoover commission on standardization and rationalization will seem childish compared to the new possibilities let loose by American communism.Actually, I don't think I need to write much on this. This stupidity speaks for itself. There's plenty more where that came from, which Peak Stupidity will make light of in posts to come.
National industry will be organized along the line of the conveyor belt in your modern continuous-production automotive factories. Scientific planning can be lifted out of the individual factory and applied to your entire economic system. The results will be stupendous.
Lev Bronstein, aka, Leon Trotsky, came from a well-to-do family and was sent to good schools. He was to be a mathematician in college until he went political. There's no excuse for this stupidity. He wrote this drivel when he was 55 years old! Suffice it to say, that with all that genetic smarts and education, Leon Trotsky could not have lost any IQ points even with an ice axe jammed into the top of his head.
* Honestly, till reading what' I'll discuss here, I'd though he'd died well before he actually did - August of 1940, but he wasn't a big factor in Soviet Communism after the end of the 1920s.
** He lifted his alias from a guard at the prison he inhabited for a couple of years, with exile to Siberia, with his wife, and then 2 daughters there to follow. He escaped in the back of a hay cart. It was no Washington FS J6 dungeon.***** "Trotsky" got married again and had 2 sons by that wife.
*** The Immigration Act of 1924, as signed by Calvin Coolidge, did it, but from what I've read, the clamp-down started in '21.
**** We explained that term 5 years back - see 3rd paragraph there.
***** In fact, Trotsky escaped multiple times from punishment. Except during his time as a military leader - akin to Commander-in-Chief, part of the time - of the Red Army during the ~ 5 year-long Russian Civil war and leader of the Red Terror, he spent a lot of his life in self- and State- imposed exile.
Comments (12)
Donald Trump Arrested, surges in polls
Posted On: Friday - August 25th 2023 8:11PM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '24  Trump  US Feral Government  Anarcho-tyranny
I had a post 80% written that will just have to wait until tomorrow. This is big news. It's not the personal damage to Trump that's the big news, but what his arrest means as far as the state of the (dis)union. I never thought in my lifetime that I"d live to see the day there'd be over 1,000 Political Prisoners held without trial in Washington, FS dungeons. I never thought in my lifetime that an ex-President or ANYBODY would be arrested for questioning the results of an election. We are very far gone here.
As regular readers would know, I am a fan of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a few things I don't like about him notwithstanding. However, I'm supporting Trump more and more for the reason shown here:

That's exactly what supporting Trump means to me now. Other than raising the kind of hell one might get thrown into Washington FS dungeons for, supporting Trump right now is the easiest and most visible way to say that one is an enemy of the Potomac Regime.
In this Reuters article, going on about the mug shot of Trump, there are a couple of good paragraphs. This is what I've expected:
Far from damaging his candidacy for the Republican Party nomination, however, the four cases filed against him have only bolstered his standing. He holds a commanding polling lead in the Republican race to challenge Democratic President Joe Biden in the November 2024 election.Yep. Where will we go from here? This is 3rd-World stuff. What happens if we can somehow prevent enough cheating, and he is elected from prison? I mean, remote work is the way now anyway, and we can limit him to one phone call and a tweet a day and no visits from Javanka - he'd get a whole lot more done.
Dozens of supporters, waving Trump banners and American flags, jostled for a glimpse as Trump arrived at the jail. Among the Trump backers gathered outside was Georgia U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the former president's most loyal congressional allies.

PS: I haven't found which commenter here linked me to this 2nd image some months ago, but thank you! Say "aye" in the comments, if you want.
PPS: I don't know if he'll surge in the polls, actually, but this concept started with the threat of indictment a few months back. How can you run a campaign against this massive movement, not so much pro-Trump as anti-Regime?
Comments (27)
Dispatches from The Middle Kingdom: The Han People
Posted On: Thursday - August 24th 2023 9:42AM MST
In Topics:   China

Street scene, of which I have many. Note that not all China is prosperous gleaming cities.
This post was the first actual one of these "dispatches", and there'll be lots more. What I already mentioned was that these reports are from personal observations in China, but I'm not writing from there. I'll add here that I was primarily in 2 locations in China. One was a "village"* of now near 1 million people somewhere in the middle of the Middle Kingdom and the other was the capital of the whole place, Peking**. I'd never done the touring thing, but we spent a few days there for that. (There didn't seem to be an easy way out of joining the tours under the guides with the pennants and clipboards - more about that when the time comes.)
We were able to spend a lot of time in said village, and I went on my own a few times. Yes, the MAGA hat got a few looks, but I'm not sure how many people there knew what all that is about. No kidding, the CCTV network feeds the people what they want to feed them. There's the internet, but more on that too.
One of the things I've read about and know about regarding the many different countries of the world with their different peoples of different types, is that not so many parts of the world are high-trust societies. The term itself is not something I'd thought that much about until reading the illustrious Steve Sailer and his uber-illustrious commenters. Denmark (oops, almost forgot a small post about LEGOs) is such a place. China is not.
The business world is one thing - well, it's really something else entirely! Personally, what I've learned about China is that corruption exists widely at the low levels of society. Family, close friends, and guanxi connections (the latter being corruption itself) are trusted, but everyone outside is not to be trusted and is fair game for those with low morals.
That's what it comes down to, as those who I've trusted to give me the real scoop complain very much about Chinese morals. My opinion is that the 30 years of hard-core Communism (1949 to 1979 is the general range) and 2 or 3 decades more of war prior to that have knocked the morals out of the population. Of course that doesn't include everyone, and it may be changing for the better right now. Religion is nearly dead there. True, there are quite a few Christians, at least nominally. It's very hard for the Chinese people to leave the materialism behind in any way though, even if supposedly Christian. Additionally, they have had to go back underground, as this is all subject to the moods of the Man in Peking. (We got to see his quarters from afar, across some lake at a park.)
However, I was impressed with the general friendliness of unacquainted Chinese people with each other. I've always found them respectful. I figure you pretty much have to be, when you are forced to live so close together in large, large masses of humanity.
I may have written this elsewhere, but let me state again that the population density of China is MUCH HIGHER than the 4x America, as many might easily reckon. 1.4 Billion people is ~ 4 x our population (who knows, right Bill H?) on roughly the same land area ... no, wait. That's the error. At a quick glance our countries - barring Alaska and whatever China wants to claim, Taiwan, Japan, I dunno... - seem to be roughly the same size. However, that western 35-40% of what you see on the map is mountainous or high desert Tibet and Xinjiang (Uighur territory), with only a very small percentage (2%) of the population of the country.
Then, of the rest, so much of it is mountainous. I've seen it. No, I couldn't cover the country, but there are maps out there. America has got it's huge prairie and the lowlands of East. China has nothing like that much land that is easy to use and build on. My educated guess is that China is effectively 15 x denser in population - in populated areas - than America is.
So, yes, the Chinse people have got to be respectful or life would be that much more of a struggle, though there is one exception to this respectfulness that deserves its own post. Beyond that, I've seen strangers being very helpful to one another. This doesn't imply that high trust, necessarily, but just an acknowledgment that "we are all the same people, in this together." Of the many instances, one of our party asked an old lady on the street for the nearest bathroom. (It was a semi-desperate situation.) The lady not only helpfully pointed, but she watched us take a wrong turn around a corner and walked closer to correct us toward the spot... which was not actually a bathroom per se, but ... that's another story.
This was not in Peking though. I figure, as it is in other lands, things are different in the big city. This was still a village, even with the huge population, of people many of whom may not ever have traveled out of the province. They speak the same dialect, when they aren't forced into Mandarin. With so many people around, you can't nod to everyone you pass, and, heaven forbid, wave someone ahead of you on the road. Still, strangers will get into conversations pretty easily. They get loud, but it turns out that usually doesn't mean anything bad. They are just loud a lot.
People smile at and admire the little ones. Without knowing Chinese, I sensed a solidarity. Why wouldn't there be? After all, instead of what's now a Tower of Babel multicultural mess in modern America, China has over a Billion*** Han people, united in a few centuries to 3 1/2 Millennia of history together.
We had something like that here, going back a half a century, even if it were only 2-3 centuries of living together AND added to that was the high-trust society that comes generally from the northwestern European peoples. There still are small towns that haven't been purposely ruined and neighborhoods in which Americans are friendly and help each other. China's got a whole country like that though. I think they aim to keep it that way - the unity anyway.
* Yes, that's the word my host used again, and argument with an Unz Review commenter on this or not, that's the word that the Chinese use.
** I will stick to the old English name throughout. I do realize that many Chinamen would not even recognize this name anymore. The International (IATA) code for the NEWER BIG (Daxing - opened in '19) airport is PKX, while the old one - still BIG and now called Capital City, has the code PEK. Case closed.
*** There are some minority groups, but these people are not as estranged, angry, and genetically different as the ones in America. More on this too. "Scores of posts ...", as I wrote before.
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Who's doin' the Human Trafficking round here?
Posted On: Wednesday - August 23rd 2023 6:52PM MST
In Topics:   Immigration Stupidity  Media Stupidity  ctrl-left

A couple of weeks back, Peak Stupidity posted a review of the recent movie Sound of Freedom. The review was not ours, but was written by one Mike Tre, who did a very nice job making one point especially.
Mike's, also our, point was that, even allowing for exaggerations of of the true story of Tim Ballard of Motherland Security, the guy comes off as a very brave cuckold. He left his family of 7 children to go down into a jungle full of unfriendlies, where he could easily have been killed. He'd have ruined the future for those 7 kids in an effort to save some Hispanic kids that are not his people. Who does that?
As a serious Christian, perhaps (the real) Mr. Ballard figured he was acting as Jesus would, but Jesus didn't have a family of 7. Anyway, that was the last post but also a segue-way into this addition that should have been included in the previous post, but for my not-so-great memory. Really, I don't make any effort to follow actors, directors, key grips, what-have-you, but our commenter Mr. Anon noted that the big anti-Christian push by the left - at least as I'd read a bit about it - was not due so much to this movie but to the star* Jim Caviezel having played in Mel Gibson-directed The Passion of the Christ nearly 2 decades ago. (They DO hold a grudge, those ctrl-left folks. No forgiveness for you, Jim. Next!!)
OK, now I understand more clearly why Christian groups wanted to support this movie and, yes, I gotta admit, goose up the numbers.** The excellent VDare writer Federale*** also told this back story of the movie in a post of his that I missed for a while: SOUND OF FREEDOM: Alleged Hispanic Child Sex Trafficking Is NOT A Reason To Support Open Borders! No, it's not.
Not only that, but Federale has written other posts about Human Trafficking that confirm my observation-based opinion that his is not any kind of thing when it comes to regular Americans. See "Sex Trafficking" Does Not Exist: It's Just Alien Smuggling from 4 years back. In this recent one, he states:
Yes, children are molested and even kidnapped in the United States, but there are few, if any, commercial child sexual exploitation enterprises as shown in the film in the United States. There are teenage runaway prostitutes, there are prostitutes who chose to come to the United States, there are child molesters here. The real problem in the United States, though, is mostly open and public sexual exploitation and mutilation of children, by or for homosexual men, trannies, and the parents of children who support whatever deviancy is presented to them for public consumption and virtue signaling.Ooops, but the crl-left doesn't want to talk about any of that stuff. They're all for it!
I've NEVER actually read any local story about happenings such as occurred in Sound of Freedom. I'm not sure I've read of anything in the national Lyin' Press other than the lurid stories from our Epstein Island types. Don't take that for the final word, of course, but Mr. Federale has a little more experience in this field. He says:
Sound of Freedom is not particularly accurate when dealing with real child sex trafficking into the United States. One of the early scenes is of a human trafficker bringing a child across the border at the Port-of-Entry at San Ysidro, CA, complete with a fraudulently obtained or purchased American passport—not really a common occurrence. While passport and immigration fraud are common at the border with regard to children, it is to bring children to live here with their parents or other relatives mostly living here illegally, not for sexual exploitation. Sure, it may occasionally happen, but not often: obtaining a real American passport is expensive, even to rent one from Hispanic American border residents. It certainly is not an efficient method of smuggling.The bolding was mine. This guy doesn't mince words. Here's more about who the customers are for the alleged sex trafficking, yes, in the US.****: FBI Claims 200 “Adolescent” Trafficking Victims Rescued, Traffickers “Identified”—40% Of Customers For Underage Prostitutes Were Illegals
From my 24 years professional experience with the legacy Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and with DHS, I never heard of any sex trafficking case, other than one-off cases in the news. Former colleagues, including those with long service at the land border, only know about the smuggling of minors coming to join family members here, not sex trafficking.
In fact, sex trafficking is a myth, at least in the United States. Yet the Left, seeking more immigration, and the Christian right, to virtue signal about non-whites, are in alliance here, and American border security is the real victim of this movie, though it does not directly lobby for open borders. The underlying message is clear to those who know about the obsession of the Deep State for imagined child sex trafficking.
Now maybe Jim Caviezel's somewhat-true-to-life character Tim Ballard doesn't care the minors actually being abused are Americans or not. I have all the sympathy in the world for the little ones and understand the terrible anguish for parents whose children are missing. However, and this goes to the Lyin' Press and everyone else going on about this newest campaign, It's not the Americans doing this! Lay the fuck off!
If you want Human Trafficking to stop, at least in North America, the border must be controlled so that the coyotes stop trafficking people into the US for money.
Since we're talking movies and border control here, let me point out an article from another favorite VDare writer, who goes by Former Agent because he was one. Peak Stupidity reviewed The Marksman, and now Former Agent has reviewed another movie involving illegal aliens in America, Missing in Brooks County, in his post MISSING IN BROOKS COUNTY: Illegal Alien Sob Story Film Has Federalist Conservative Writer Missing In Common Sense.
I had a little optimistic moment there at the beginning of The Marksman. It was unfounded. You're not gonna find a new movie about illegal immigration that's anything but a sob story and sympathetic to the nation-destroying idea of open borders. Sob stories are big. Happy ending can be a part of them, but there are no happy endings for the whole of the White Americans.
PS: I urge the reader to read Federale's 3 articles linked-to here in their entirety. From this latest (see what I mean about the non-mincing of words?):
Now, Ballard and OUR may be legitimate and there is a problem in the Third World. Even in the movie, the opening scenes show children being kidnapped off the streets in Third World hellholes, but those poor children are not being brought to the United States as claimed by DHS and the Blue Campaign. More likely they are being raped by African United Nations peacekeepers or perverts overseas.
* BTW, I just corrected that previous post, marking Mr. Caviezel as the star of Sound of Freedom, NOT the director, while I do remember Mel Gibson having done that '04 film, thinking he had been the star! Yeah, I can't follow all these people.
** See my comments under that previous post regarding this.
*** I know - "... we could have had him any day. We only let him slip away... out of kindness I suppose" - the Willie & Merle song comes into my head about every time I read that handle.
**** This sounds like Federale is contradicting himself, but he doesn't quite believe the story put out by (what he calls) ICE SVU. Read that post for many details.
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China and the Climate Calamity™
Posted On: Monday - August 21st 2023 8:04PM MST
In Topics:   Global Climate Stupidity  China
This post doesn't fall under the "Dispatches from China:" pre-title, as this is nothing gleaned from the Peak Stupidity Long

Yes, this is an Andrew Anglin headline off of The Unz Review. I didn't read the article and didn't even comment on this stupidity due to there already having been those 126 comments under it.
I agree with the 1st part of the title. Yes, China does. The 2nd part, bad English notwithstanding, implies that we Western Lunatic(s) - I hope he means the Potomac Regime and friends, not people like us regular Americans - are pushing the "Green" agenda to punish China. Yes, there is a push to make China more than just an economic enemy (which it simply is by nature). No, that's not what the green agenda is about.
The green agenda, most recently dubbed Global Boiling, is about CONTROL. The Climate Calamity™ is being used to push control of energy use, distribution, and production along now with control of agriculture. The thing is, China has been pretty much left out of the Global Climate Stupidity and push for control by the West.

(There ya' go with that "emissions" word again!)
You don't see Greta Thunberg sailing a junk over to China and taking the podium in Tienanmen Square to admonish Pooh Bear Xi and the Cadres:
China was let to skate when the Paris Accords were drawn up, you know, it being a developing country and all ... that has poured more concrete in the last 3 years than America poured in the 20th Century.* Thankfully, President Trump came through for Americans and didn't sign that POS.** (PS will give the man credit where it's due.) Zhou Bai Dien is gunning for making it law.
No, the Western countries, as masochistic as they wanna be, are only punishing themselves. China can go ahead and blow smoke and emit that nasty atmospheric component called Carbon Dioxide - the one that plants crave - and they will be left alone.
Why? Why is China being left alone when it comes to Global Boiling matters? Because it's China, that's why. Nobody wants to get on the bad side of China at this point. (See our minor example from 5 years ago regarding the airlines here along with a prequel.) The Globalists are also glad to let the place create the ACTUAL pollution (more on this in a post to come) and to keep the West clean as we all make do by serving each other craft beer and hamburgers.
Per capita, yeah, in '20 Americans still "emitted" 14 tons a piece.
Fourteen tons, and whatddya' get?Dah-dum, dah-dum, da ... and the Chinese only let loose about 1/2 as much, 7.6 metric-shit tons each. Look at the trend though. The Chinese apparently don't really care about "THE PLANET" - Anglin's headline is right on that.
One more footprint and deeper carbon debt.
Hey, St. Peter, see this notarized letta.
I sold my soul to a retard named Greta.
Now, if Mr. Xi would just come out and say that "this Climate Calamity™ is a load of high-falutin Giant Panda shit, and we high-IQ Chinese people know that there's no working model of the Earth's Climate. Take your treaties and shove 'em. I mean, yeah, we'll sign one, but it better not say China anywhere in it!" and "Suckers!", I'd have some serious respect for the guy.
No, the Chinese leadership really doesn't care that awful much about actual pollution of the environment. However, as per the Adam Smith-linked video on the excess EV's (here), they still seem to want to make a show of going green. I doubt they'll let it seriously get in the way of the growing GDP.
Even after all these years of our letting them infiltrate university research departments and American factories, the Chinese leadership may still think there's something to learn from the West. That would be another method of gaining control of the population. That Covid~Zero thing had a good run, but eventually "we lost them". A Climate Calamity™ or Global Boiling? Yeah, that's working in the West, so couldn't we fool the Chinese people using this same scam? "Surely, you can't be serious, Mr. Xi." "I AM serious, and stop calling me Shi Li!"
* One could come up with some others even more amazing.
** Article II, Section 2, 2nd paragraph:
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;...
Comments (10)
Charlie Brown and Peanuts reunion
Posted On: Saturday - August 19th 2023 4:47PM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media  Humor
From the good Unz Review commenter Herbert R. Tarlik, Jr (a handle name which will ring a bell for late 1970s TV viewers), I just watched this hilarious Charlie Brown and Peanuts reunion clip:
Stick with it for a couple of minutes. It's got a happy ending. Thank you, Herb Tarlek, for this one!
OK, that's the blog-week, Peakers. Thank you so much for reading and writing. We'll have more, much more, on China, but there are about 10 topics I've hinted about but never got to, so Peak Stupidity will forge on ...
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Feral Budget snapshot of interest
Posted On: Saturday - August 19th 2023 11:42AM MST
In Topics:   Global Financial Stupidity  Economics  US Feral Government  The Future  Taxes
It's staaaartingggg! [points finger at the screen like little Heather O'Rourke in Poltergeist]

Peak Stupidity has pointed out the US budget financial doom coming as soon as interest rates rise out of the
The snapshot is above isn't in the pie chart form. I don't know what you call this kind of graph. It's easily interpretable, as was a similar type we showed in this post about having perspective on slavery, used to show spatial relationships too.
It was not me but one Daniel Horowitz of The Blaze who circled and pointed out that $67 Billion monthly net interest payment in his article Record Debt and Inflation from the Rich Men North of Richmond. This was the July US national budget picture.
What looks really horrible is the difference between tax receipts and outlays, with only 58% of the outlays being covered. I am not sure if that is a somewhat seasonal artifact though. Income tax withholding is very regular, and then there are quarterly payments made by the more well-off and by corporations - there are deadlines, but the payment periods cover the year evenly. The period of mid-January through mid-April is one in which there must be a lot of money going both directions as far as individual taxpayers (and taxeaters) are concerned.
That aside, one can calculate that July's net interest paid out was 13.5% of the monetary outlays. From the looks of the categories, special Ukraine payments due aside, the rest doesn't look very seasonal. July may not be anything special as far as interest payments go - they are going up as rates go up. Even so, that $67 Billion monthly payment on a debt of $32 Trillion is still at an average annual rate of only 2.5%! (I didn't count compounding.) As the article states among its many personal-level economic doom bullet points later on in the article*, home interest rates are averaging 7.5% now. Even low, low Treasury bond rates must be generally increasing from that 2.5%. I was just going to present this graph, but Mr. Horowitz is scarier than a poltergeist here:
According to the Treasury Department, for the first time ever, spending on interest on the debt not only surpassed military spending in July but tied the cost of our health care leviathan! At $67 billion, the cost of servicing our debt was eclipsed only by Social Security and education (because of student loans) and was 20% costlier than national defense. Put another way, more than 50% of all tax revenue collected from all payroll taxes of all U.S. workers went toward interest on the debt. Headed forward, assuming interest rates aren’t forced up even higher, we will pay an annualized rate of $1 trillion in interest on the debt of government programs and functions that shouldn’t exist even if they were free.That's what I've been saying was coming. It's here!
* ... which are probably a subject for another post.
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Dispatches from the Middle Kingdom: Oh, the cars you'll see!
Posted On: Friday - August 18th 2023 8:48AM MST
In Topics:   Cars  China
Peak Stupidity's field trip to the Middle Kingdom has ended, but I like this kind of title. It sounds kind of old-time-China-hand-reportery, so it stays, dammit.
Also, the following applies to all of the dispatches to come too: We were in one "village" - that term was used by our host - of nearly a million people (only about half that a decade ago), and then a few days in the biggest city, Peking, doing the tourist thing. So, I have observations from 2 quite different areas of the country.
Let's talk cars. I've read elsewhere that, besides producing for a YUGE domestic market, Chinese automakers are exporting 2 or 3 million vehicles a year now. Let me just say right here that Peak Stupidity is not an economic reporting site or a place for statistical data. You can look up this stuff elsewhere (glad to read of your findings in the comments, though). I don't have the time for that, as these posts are just observations of my own Lyin' Eyes* with some thoughts and insight gathered from dealing with Chinese people who can speak to me and whom I can trust.
As compared to 6 years ago, the preponderance of Chinese "Make" vehicles is much larger now. I wrote "Make" to be specific that these are from Chinese-based manufacturers as opposed to being made by foreign companies IN China - Volkswagon (all over), Ford (in Chongqing, aka ChongKing), and others. Since the raised emblems are in Chinese characters, I can't tell you all the brand names, but we did see this make:

Yes, Trumpchi is the make, not the model. Per wiki:
Trumpchi is an automotive marque owned by the Chinese automaker GAC Group. It was launched in December 2010.The first cars were sedans and were unveiled in Guangzhou.
I took this picture in the small "village". There's no way that's a Chinese word that just happens to match a former President and party-crasher of the Global elite is it? The "chi" doesn't even seem like normal PinYin. But then, there are a LOT of "s", soft-"c", "ch" and "sh" sounds, more than I can write in this way. Was this meant to be a play on Trump and Xi, but not so blatant as to name the manufacturer TrumpXi? Xi wasn't Dear Leader until '12 or so though, and Trump wasn't well known to so many people beyond TV watchers and New Yorkers until '15.
That's not a joke or one-off either. We saw at least a dozen more on the road without playing any kid road-trip games. I can't remember seeing any sedans - I just remember seeing this small "crossover" model. Then, of all things, we saw a Trumpchi dealership off the side of the highway as we hauled ass on the north side of Peking up toward the Great Wall.
Drivers in Peking had nicer cars and more actually foreign cars, such as BMW's, Audi's, more VW's, and such, as compared to in the smaller locale. American labels are thin on the ground there, both places. I seem to recall more of them in the past. America is not necessarily "the cool thing", the place to emulate, anymore, and I totally understand that. The American ideas that the Chinese OUGHT TO emulate are likely beyond their understanding.
It was great to see these Trumpchi cars in China though. I wonder if The Donald knows about this brand.
PS: Car ownership seems way up. The people we dealt with had a higher proportion of their own cars than was the case a few years back. All of them were Chinese made. Quality was not something I could determine, unfortunately as, well, we didn't break down, and I couldn't talk cars to any of these people.
* City bloggers just seem to find out early, how to open doors with just a
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More on Heat Indices and Wind Chills
Posted On: Thursday - August 17th 2023 9:51PM MST
In Topics:   Global Climate Stupidity  Science
This post is sort of a continuation of our post Feels Like .. a bunch of more lies. That one was more about just one more type of lying seen in the weather reports as part of the push for the narrative of what's now dubbed Global Boiling. Here, rather than rail on those lying via the use of "Real Feel" or "Feels like" for false comparisons in weather reports, we'll expound more on the legitimate science behind the Heat Indices for hot weather and Wind Chills for cold.
Both the charts in this post come from the National Weather Service. I'm sure there are areas of Wokeness within this Feral Gov't department, but I assume there are normal working people trying to disseminate good weather data too.

The table is simple. Only the relative humidity is used with (dry-bulb, aka, standard) temperature values to come up with heat index values. Relative humidity = the amount of water in the air / the amount of water the air could hold when saturated at that temp. Note some numbers: At 80F, a RH change from 50% to 100%, twice the amount of water in the air (at 80F) only results in a "feel" of 6F higher. At 90F, that same change results in a "feel" of 37F higher. What a difference! How did the NWS actually come up with these values for comparison of how it "feels" outside?
Remember, our bodies' feel of temperature is more based on the rate of heat transfer to/from it than on the temperature itself. In warm temperatures, humans sweat as one way to transfer heat. (Otherwise we'd have to pant like dogs - kind of embarrassing.). How we sweat explains the heat index. In dry air, the moisture out of our pores evaporates quickly, cooling us but not staying long on our skin.* In humid air, the moisture will be absorbed more slowly, and that layer of sweat on our skin makes us miserable just by being there, and it also impedes heat transfer with resistance to transfer from the skin to the sweat layer, through the sweat layer, and from the outside of it to the air.
How exactly the numbers here are determined is unknown to me. (I'm sure someone can look it up.). Each of our bodies is different however, and I think there's no way this chart applies to each of us equally. It's a rough guide, but it's missing other factors.

Note the formula on the bottom that is obviously empirical, what with that 0.16 exponent and all.
The Wind Chill values are only factors of dry bulb temperature and the wind speed. Well, yeah, convection heat transfer from our skin, as from any other surface, goes way up with the speed of the fluid flow around it. Analysis of "natural", or "free" convection, meaning convection only due to natural buoyancy effects of warmer air vs colder, uses completely different empirical formulae than those used for "forced" convection. The physics that result in the wind chill values are somewhat simpler than that which results in the sweaty Heat Index values.
Still, is there not a humidity factor in the cold too and a forced convection factor in the heat? Yes. Commenter Jimbobla brought up the heating effect felt in the wind on very hot days. "Very hot" in his case means temperatures higher than skin temperature, which I'd read is around 92F. Above that, the forced convection will transfer more heat TO the body. It's not THAT simple, as our skin temperature will rise and various equilibria will be reached.
As for humidity effects in the cold weather, we may have all experienced the more miserable weather in the wet fairly cold climates that seems worse than 10F lower in the dry air. It's not about sweat here, as we're bundled up, and it's only the face and hands exposed. What is the factor that gives the damp place a "real feel" of "sucky"? Mr. Anon gave an explanation:
It's also important because a very large fraction of the heat capacity, and a significant fraction of the thermal conductivity, of air is due to the water vapor. That's why low thirties (but above 32 deg. F) can feel a lot colder than high twenties. Above freezing the air has some water vapor in it that can more effectively pull heat out of you (hence the "bone-chilling" damp cold). Below freezing, the air is dry and is a relatively good insulator (if it's not blowing on you).The amount of water the air can hold is a continuous function, down below freezing too. It's not just about the freezing point, but about the humidity the air can hold. Check out this psychrometric chart with F temps., along with this rougher version with C temps, the latter having the Absolute Humidity (sometimes appropriately called "Humidity Ratio") in better units, lb/lb. Note that below 40 F (4C) saturated (100% RH) air only holds 0.5% water, while 85 F air (30C) can hold over 3% water on a mass basis.**
The importance of water vapor in the air is significant at cold temperatures, but we don't have as much skin exposed and the air can't hold nearly the amount of water it does on the days during which we worry about the Heat Index. Should it not be taken into account, though, requiring a 3-D chart for a "Cold Index" dependent on 3 variables? That's just as the "Heat Index" could use the same, with wind speed as another independent variable.
Yeah, it's complicated. Actually, it's more complicated. After all, another reason Denver, Colorado (elevation not even taken into account) on a 20F day may feel lots nicer than Boston, Mass on a 35F day is the sunshine and lack thereof, respectively. The difference in radiation heat transfer is significant. "Sunshine on my shoulder makes me happy", said John Denver, a promoter of Rocky Mountain high Colorado. Maybe some dope had something to do with this too, but for "feels like" readings, well, we're running out of dimensions here!
So, whaddya' do, take readings of all these climate factors, leaving the pot intake out of it, and then come up with some conglomeration variable called "True Feel"? Sunshine may change hourly and is not that predictable. Wind speed is more predictable, but it varies over the day too almost as much as sunshine. This True Feel would not be some solid number for the day.
Forget it. Just give me a decent temperature and precip forecast, so we can dress in layers, go outside, and enjoy the planet before Global Boiling starts in earnest.
* Commenter Jimbobla had a good point on this in the comments under that previous post:
Hot dry air (high 90’s) will have similar, if opposite, heat index effect on your body. Pulling moisture off your skin before it can perform its cooling function through evaporative cooling.** That left side boundary curve represents saturated air, or the 100% relative humidity curve.
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Is China the Future?
Posted On: Wednesday - August 16th 2023 6:41PM MST
In Topics:   China  The Future

Upon a few week trip to the Middle Kingdom, I don't see how an observer wouldn't conclude that China is the future for the World. As Peak Stupidity noted in our pre-Intro. this past Saturday, there will be lots to say about China on this blog in the near future.
This post and the ones to come will not be written in the style of Fred Reed or any wild-eyed tourist on a 3 week excursion. There's a lot to be impressed with by the modern Chinese infrastructure. However, there's not that much that I hadn't seen 6 years back, though it's been built out quite a bit more since then.
That front-car* of one of the fast trains we rode in (I snapped that picture in violation of some yellow line on the platform and got mildly admonished) is futuristic looking, sure enough. These trains hold a steady 200 mph on most of the runs, and they are filled with ~1,000 people each. The route map I had pulled up on my phone had connections to all the big cities in China, of which there are A LOT.
I won't get into these details on the trains here. The main thing I noticed in a couple of weeks in China, as I have before, is that China is a "can-do country". It's full of a unified and generally intelligent Han population** who are not encumbered at this point in general by heavy regulation and large nuisance populations that are not only not helpful but actively harmful to progress. A new subway line that would be a proud 10-year accomplishment if ever finished in an American city is just a normal yearly project in China. Shit simply gets done there. That's very impressive as compared to America in this day and age.

It's one - the longest - of 15-20 tunnels on this one superhighway, 1:45 or so drive that 10 years ago was a 4 hour drive and 20 years ago was an all day journey on a hairy road through the steep mountains. This road is in a province far from the 1st tier cities.
Is this feeling a big change of heart by Peak Stupidity after our talk of dashed high hopes for China? (See also Part 2.) No, that's not exactly the case. Again, we've seen this amazing civil engineering work 6 years ago and prior. The dashed high hopes had to do with our vision from 15 years back of freedom in China. China is no longer the Wild, Wild, East, if it indeed ever really was. (It seemed to come close though, back in '07.)
Along with much else that was written about by Kai Strittmatter in his book We Have Been Harmonized*** of the electronic/AI enabled Orwellian society being developed, it's the phone-based payments, using We Chat and the social credit and health scoring system that has detracted from any hope I had for a gleaming Chinese future. That future might be physically gleaming, but not gleaming in any abstract sense.
The phone payments are ubiquitous, no doubt - we used them for big items - but they are not part of the kind of mandatory system I had expected. (I'll get to that in another post too.) However, the Chinese government, with the near absolute power of the CCP, one guy presiding, can use the systems in place to clamp down on any kind of behavior it wants very easily and at any time. Well, actually, it has already, with the downright ridiculous 9 month-long Covid~Zero program of '22 that Peak Stupidity reported on regularly.
But, yes, they've got their act together over there in the Middle Kingdom at this point. These infrastructure improvements allow for greater efficiency for other endeavors.
When told and shown pictures of what I'd seen, Americans have still given me the pooh-pooh type reply of "yeah, that's all using slave labor". Nobody meant actual slavery but they meant massive low-wage labor by Chinamen. No, that's not the case. Things are still inexpensive and wages are set accordingly, but massive Cheap Chinese labor is a thing of the past. That one child policy, taken fairly seriously by most, started in 1979. The youngest of those raised in large families are in their mid-40s now. They can't work like 20 y/o's.
Menial labor is done in Vietnam, Bangladesh etc, but managed by Chinese companies. For manufacturing in China and these amazing infrastructure improvements, they have stolen lot of IP, trade secrets, engineering knowledge, over the years, but they HAVE IT now. They don't need much help at this point.
Economically, China sure looks to be where the future lies. Politically, well, I'm hoping that America does not have to be a part of the future they're making over there. We've got more than our share of stupidity to put an end to first, but I don't think it's hopeless that we can't create our own, better future, right here.
That's my big overall impression from our trip there. There's plenty more to come on interesting aspects of life in China, with plenty of compliments and criticisms.
* I'm not sure one could call it a locomotive per se, as I figure all the cars are powered (via the scissors-style brush mechanisms on top of all the cars). The driver works in there, with just a few plush first-class seats behind him.
** We did get to some "minority people" areas. We'll have a post with pictures. One wouldn't know things were any different due to a) their looking the same to me as any other Chinese people, and b) their having been assimilated with not much left but the tourist sites.
*** Peak Stupidity reviewed it in 4 posts: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3, and Part 4.
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Feels Like .. a bunch of more lies
Posted On: Monday - August 14th 2023 6:40AM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media  Global Climate Stupidity  Media Stupidity

Peak Stupidity, Unz Review (at least) commenter Mr. Anon brought up another good point regarding the subterfuge and underhanded agenda-driven "journalism" being done in the name of the Climate Calamity™, aka, Global Boiling now. (Ha! I just wonder if the many fence-sitters on this issue will be able to utter this new term with a straight face. I've written before that I think it was a mistake by the Totalitarians to come up with that, i.e., a Bridge too Far.)
In this comment of his under one of the few Steve Sailer posts on this highly-political issue, Mr. Anon brought up the fact that TV weather maps - not climate maps, mind you, were showing lots more "Heat Index" values instead of plain old dry-bulb temperature readings. This is their way of scaring the more gullible of the TV viewers into believing the narrative on Global Boiling*.
I get the purpose of the Heat Index along with its counterpart for cold weather, the Wind Chill. The idea is to get across the effect of the conditions - temperature and humidity for the former / temperature and wind speed for the latter - on the human body. There'll be another post on the physical principles involved in this, as I want to show some numbers in tabular form for both indices and also explain why the Heat Index is not quite the counterpart to the Wind Chill, with wind not being a factor in the former, and humidity not being a factor in the latter. For now, suffice it to say that our "real feel" is about heat transfer from our bodies, that being what is actually being felt by our nerves (with the possible exception of actual burning) rather than temperature itself.**
Our post title refers to the fact that both of these 2 derived factors are often called the "Real Feel". I'm sure they were originally published and displayed to be helpful. "Hey, viewers, it's gonna really suck out there today ..." or "The high will be 95F today, but it'll be dry with relative humidity way down. It's not the heat, it's ..." and all that. Sure.
Yet, let's not be alarmed by things that we've experienced our whole lives, at least in the time we've lived wherever we do. If you've moved to anywhere in Florida, well congrats, and I hope you appreciate the good Governor... but, anyway, yes, it's in the mid 80s to low 90s with high relative humidity a lot - much of the year. Without a sea breeze, the weather is often considered miserable. The climate can be considered miserable for half the year. It always has been, explaining why Florida was not the retirement/resort destination it is today before air conditioning. You're the guy who moved there, dumbass!***
These indices serve a purpose, but that purpose is not as comparison between daily or yearly highs, lows, or records. There are 2 values that go into the Heat Index, taking it as an example first. "The Heat Index is the highest we've seen since the summer of 1935!" Yeah, well, warm moist are from the Gulf came up, and before the thunderboomers broke loose later in the day, it was hot and humid. Yesterday it was hotter, but the air was dryer. Tomorrow, it'll cool off by 5 degrees with the same humidity. So you've got your sweet spot for the deep red map on the news tonight. Was this all predicted by your Global Climate model, is that what you're telling us? Nah, it's just the weather.

Taking the counterpart as an example now, "The wind chill is the lowest we've seen since 1885!" Well, it was very windy and pretty cold today. Yesterday, it was colder, but the wind hadn't picked up yet. Tomorrow, it'll be even windier, but it's going to be 10 degrees warmer. So, you've got that Deep Purple on the map that's you'd been waiting for... smoke on the water and fire in the freaking sky. Was all this too predicted by the models? Nah, it's just the weather.
This is no good. I just want to know the temperature, what it was, and what it's supposed to be, if your app isn't based on bad forecasting. I can figure how it's gonna feel outside, in the sun, in the rain, while standing like a dumbass with no shelter at 20F with 25 knots wind, etc.
When it comes to climate analysis, temperatures can be compared readily. Humidity by itself can too. Wind speeds can too. "Real Feels" can't, at least if the goal is to compare observation to modeling, as the 3 factors alone can't even be predicted worth a damn. It's a bridge WAY TOO FAR to predict what Real Feels will average in even some broad location 20 years from now.
So why are they displaying these when discussing the coming Global Boiling? People who are unaware of the change will see numbers like 108 degrees in Atlanta! and think "heck, yeah, I don't remember it ever being THAT hot." It Real-Feels-Like more lies. It's who they are.
No, it's not the heat (index), it's the stupidity! Man I'll be so glad when we reach The Point of No Return, so we can all (wind) chillax.
PS: When I was young, I too, was suckered into the misunderstanding - as one song (of a bunch of them) goes, "It's 110 in the shade ...". That's supposed to mean, imagine how hot it is under the sun?! Why don't they measure it there and give us a real feel?
Well, that's because engineers who develop the gauges want accurate and comparable values. Radiation heat transfer from the sun not only causes erroneous values of air temperature just by the added factor, but the effect would not be consistent, and it affects different temperature instruments differently. That's why the T and dew point**** gauges are inside wooden boxes with louvers to keep air flow going but only lightly... in the midst of recently paved parking lots sometimes ...
* "Not only does the Earth have a fever, but it's going through a phase change!"
** To understand this very quickly, just picture the difference between getting dunked into 50F lake water vs going outside in shirtsleeves when it's 50F. I can tell you which guy will live longer if it keeps up...
*** This is not directed at THE Alarmist, who does spend time in Florida. I too, appreciate the weather there, but it just takes some getting used to. I'd rather be hot than cold. It's a matter of not complaining and not being surprised about it. Mosquitoes, OTOH, yes, I've got complaints ...
**** T and dew point together will get us to absolute or relative humidity (the latter one is the one normally given in weather reports), as will T (i.e., dry-bulb T) and wet-bulb T, or, if you wish, dew point and wet-bulb T. Any 2 define the state. Word to the wise: The sling psychrometers that are used to get dry/wet bulb T's together can give you a headache if you don't sling them right.
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EXTRA! EXTRA! Peak Stupidity reveals
Posted On: Saturday - August 12th 2023 4:38PM MST
In Topics:   Websites  China

As I noted in the comments the other day, I made what will likely be my last trip to Cathay, the place they're calling China these days. I didn't HAVE to go on this trip - I'd have made a good bit of money by staying home. However, in service of Peak Stupidity and my own curiosity, I went to observe, due to my having read and heard about the new Orwellian controls on the population by a Totalitarian named Xi.
I won't get started this afternoon, so this post is here just to let the reader be ready for a whole slew of "Dispatches from the Middle Kingdom". (Middle of what, exactly, is what I've always wondered. Got maps?)
Yes, that's the Great Wall there, and the hat should have more rightly been labelled MAGW, for Make America's Great Wall... instead of spending your time tweeting your fingers off, you buffoon!
It was not so tricky to blog over there, depending on what I was SUPPOSED to be doing instead, and there were a few problems with pulling up sites. Peak Stupidity worked fine - nobody cares* - and we'll have a follow-up post to The internet from China, circa 2017.
That doesn't mean we won't get to some of the standard stupidity or that promised last Saturday and most weeks - interspersed with China posts. Thanks for reading and commenting this week as low-energy as it was here.
PS: I left my Peak Stupidity banner at home, or I'd have had a couple of nice Chinamen hold it there on the wall. We did see the long-haired friendly cat who lives on the outside of the wall but comes up for human companionship.
* "Nobody cares" was written on the cap of a Chinese toddler, but I can't find the picture now. They like English words on their clothes but don't seem to mind if it reads as nonsense or not.
Comments (5)
Fun with URLs
Posted On: Saturday - August 12th 2023 5:56AM MST
In Topics:   Internets  Humor  Media Stupidity
Those are Univeral Resource Locaters. The term sounds kind of vague, but I'm sure it has a very specific meaning... if you're a geek... and it's 1995. Another name it a "web address". Like the Chinese way of Country, Province, Town, in that order, the URL goes from big to small. It starts with the internet protocol, hence "https" hyper text transfer protocol secure (They've mostly all gone to that "s" for "secure" over the last 5 years.* Peak Stupidity has had more than our share of drama on that score.), then has the server name as resolved by DNS (Domain Name Servers) - redundancy alert - servers that convert IP numbers to word addresses, then the directory ("folder", if you will) trees and file name.

While reading the New York Post for our recent post here Good things come to those who wait .... I noticed a slight difference between the URL and the article title. This is the "fast one" mentioned in the 2nd footnote of our previous post. The long ending of the address, which is the web page file name, goes by the common practice of putting lots of words in, separated by dashes, that pretty much describe the article.**
NY Post article title: Black, Hispanic NYers who failed teacher's test strike $1.8B in NYC settlement.
File name part of the URL: nyc-bias-suit-black-hispanic-teachers-and-ex-teachers-rich
Heh! They are slightly different. A little bit of resentment of the racial grievance money distribution, above and beyond that already in the article, got into the URL. Good.
Lots of people stick in the URL as is, into web sites like The Unz Review, that is, without making them the cleaner style links (for which the link tags surround the proper text). Readers see the URL as the working page title.
We feel your pain, article writers Rich Calder, Susan Edelman, and Deirdre Bardoff. Yes, I'm surprised, given the last 2 writer's names. You never know.
* Is that nothing but a money-making scam? I don't think so, but I'm no geek at this point.
** That's probably for search engine use, in current times and for archives. Peak Stupidity doesn't do it this way, which might very well be stupid. As with many other news sites, the directories are a year directory, a month one under that, and a date one under that.
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Sound of Freedom: Movie Review by Mike Tre
Posted On: Friday - August 11th 2023 6:07PM MST
In Topics:   Movies  Race/Genetics  Bible/Religion

A movie titled Sound of Freedom came out on or about the 4th of July this year. Our family being far from avid movie-goers, I had not heard of the movie but perhaps once in reference in the iSteve threads and then maybe a headline or two somewhere.
Our track record in support of Hollywood as a family had heretofore been Angry Birds* ~ 7 years ago and First Man** ~ 5 years back.
My wife dragged me to this one due to a) her hearing of the Woke left trying to squash the movie because of the overt Christianity in it and b) 2 (out of 3) tickets being free ones burning a hole in her purse - not as big a hole that a $10 bucket of popcorn couldn't fill. I'd completely forgotten to write anything about either the controversy or the movie itself. Then I came upon Mike Tre's review in the comments under a Steve Sailer post. This was very much along the lines of what I would have written too.
Let me introduce Mike Tre, paste in his review of Sound of Freedom, and then provide a few comments.
Unz Review commenter Mike Tre is a guy that TUR, Peak Stupidity, and the Hail to You blog had as an occasional commenter with the handle MikeAtMikeDotMike. Mike, with that older handle, was very much with us in our arguments against the Kung Flu PanicFest back 3 years ago (a tad more). IIRC, he even had anti-Panic comments deleted or not published by the usually free-speech stalwart Ron Unz. (Or was it Mr. Sailer too?), hence the handle change. Mike seems to be a solid Conservative and race realist.
Here's Mike Tre's review (Caviezel is the star of the movie.***):
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It’s interesting that Steve has yet to mention the movie Sound of Freedom, which is an important movie for not just the obvious ones, but for the reasons not explained.
The topic of SoF is legitimate. From a technical standpoint, the movie itself really isn’t that good. Caviezel is a weird guy, and that has worked to his advantage in past roles (JC, a homeless man, and Edmund Dantes) but for playing a straight like Tim Ballard, at times he comes across as creepy as the perps he is chasing. The movie tries too hard to pull on the viewer’s heartstrings, with Caviezel tearing up at every predictable opportunity. The climactic scene is clunky, forced, and wildly difficult to believe regardless of how loyal it is to the true events. It’s almost a rip off of the final act of Apocalypse Now.
IMO, the most significant underlying message of this movie is that it advocates the white replacement theory, as well as the “anti-racist” theory. The two children that Ballard, a US DHS agent (a fact that is completely omitted in his wikipedia bio), is attempting to rescue are Honduran. According to the movie, he quits his job at the DHS so he can continue searching for one of them in Columbia. Ballard abandons his family, which consists of his wife and SEVEN children, for several months while he searches for this girl.
So in my mind, the fact that a HOMELAND security agent is given tax dollars (he does eventually quit when those tax dollars dry up and receives funds from a foreign millionaire) to search for foreign children in foreign nations is an absurdity. Further, the fact that this man leaves his 7 biological children fatherless for however many months to rescue one Honduran child is, if not wildly reckless and misguided, downright evil. The movie goes through lengths to illustrate the dangers Ballard faced, so this is a man who was willing to make his wife a widow and leave his 7 children fatherless over the fate of a foreign child in a foreign country. That is literally insane. The absurdity is driven home when during the movie, Ballard receives a text from his wife saying “I feel like she is one of our children.” Is there a word for this type of suicidal self marginalizing? How does this man’s children feel about being set aside for some stranger? Ballard is a religious fanatic, and that fanaticism has translated into casting his own family aside in order to seek some twisted sense of justice and divine recognition. It’s pure narcissism.
The film makes sure to show that all but one of the pedophile johns who solicit these children are white men (The final boss is a Colombian rebel), because rich white men apparently solicit underage children in Central American slums, and a reference is made to how a large majority of Central American children are trafficked into the US to be used by the 1% (read: rich white men).
Caviezel then delivers a monologue at the end of the credits referencing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and how the Civil War was fought to end slavery, and blah bl,blah blah blah. It’s basically a massive helping of white guilt followed by asking for donations by scanning the QR code on the screen so that someone else might see the movie “who can’t afford it”. So he really does take that pay it forward crap seriously. No mention of the Pakistani rape games in Rotherham, or any other place where young white women are exploited for sexual abuse throughout the world.
All in all I lost a lot of respect I once had for Caviezel, as this is a man who does not understand nor stand up for the freedom of his own kind.
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Here are some remarks, one quick one first that's the only one about the movie itself, rather than the story:

The emphasis of Motherland Security as The Good Guys doesn't sit well with me. It's the name, and it's the TSA, I guess. The organization has enveloped the old ICE, Customs and Immigration, all that, so, some actually appropriate US Gov't functions do lie within.
Another style of human trafficking, that done under orders of the Bai Dien administration****, is more of what Peak Stupidity cares about. The odious sex Trafficking is another story, one that I would like to get some more numbers on to put in in perspective. Along with Mike's point regarding the scenes with the White man sex pervert in the movie, Peak Stupidity did note a more realistic PIC poster - I've seen it many times now, not just in Kentucky - in our post Truth in Trafficking Triumph.
Regarding some perspective, I've never heard of any instance of this horrific crime from any source other than the government and big media. That doesn't mean it doesn't happen, but, of course, the Government/Lyin' Press finger points at the White man. Before watching Sound of Freedom, I was under the impression that the Super-Elite "PizzaGate", Epstein Island "touring" people were whom this movie is pointing a finger at. That was a partial draw for me, besides the rare push from my wife. After seeing it, that didn't seem like the case.
OTOH, I did not see that whole monologue by Mr. Ballard at the end. I recall some words on the screen about Uncle Tom's Cabin, which just drove home the fact that I really did need to head out to the lobby to take a piss very badly. The thoughts that I was going to miss preaching of the sort I was not really up for were something my bladder was perhaps in tune with. Brain-Bladder-Barrier-Breach, Bitchez!
Finally the key point Mike made about Ballard's leaving his big family in limbo to save (first 2, then) one Honduran child, no matter how terrible her situation, is a very good one. These thoughts were in my head as I watched. I could have written something similar but not better than this Mike Tre review. Thank you, Mike.
* Besides that the characters were semi-famous to small kids at the time, Angry Birds had come somewhat recommended by Steve Sailer - big movie-goer and critic he - due to its Camp of the Saints-like theme.
** This movie had the story of Neil Armstrong and the Apollo XI mission to the moon. Albeit with perhaps a few more non-White-male faces in Houston Mission Control than in reality in 1969, this was no Woke flick by any means.
*** Regular readers here will know that, though I like plenty of movies, especially older ones (less chance of PC/Wokeness), Peak Stupidity doesn't do Hollywood worship. I know the director is important, but I honestly don't care who makes what, acts in what, or is the Key Grip. It's just entertainment, they are just movies, and those jobs are just jobs. (Key Grip, well, I never have gone and looked that up. Don't care, see.)
**** More in the post This Human Trafficking is HUGE. We're gonna need a bigger
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[UPDATED 08/23:] Ooops, Mr. Caviezel was NOT the director - he was the star, playing Tim Ballard. One Alejandro Monteverde was the director.
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Comments (16)
Good things come to those who wait ..
Posted On: Wednesday - August 9th 2023 6:40AM MST
In Topics:   Race/Genetics  Educational Stupidity
...from the working man's money.
A week ago Saturday, I'd indicated there'd be a post about those who make bank on tax money after writing about taxes. This isn't the same exact bundle of confiscated money. The former post was about Feral Income Taxes, while this one is about a big payoff of NY City tax money - NYC collects taxes in any kind of way, shape, or form one could imagine. Either way, this is redistribution of money from those who earn it to those who don't. Some might call this a form of reparations among others the White Man has been paying for years. We are those some people.

Yet again, VDare's John Derbyshire has written about this too, but I'd already grabbed the image a few weeks back and we're stickin' to the plan. Mr. Derbyshire writes very well, and you'd probably want to read his Race Denialism—The Evil, Poisonous, Scientifically Illiterate Doctrine Of “Disparate Impact” Strikes Again on the $1,800,000,000 lawsuit payout to ~5,000 NY City teachers by the NY City taxpayers.
What happened see, is that too many White people passed this teachers' certification test, so there just HAD to be something wrong and discriminatory about it. That's what Disparate Impact "theory" says. If there is not equality in outcome, not just opportunity, then someone discriminated against someone, unless, basketball. No, it's always the White Man. We've been through this for over half a century, and we'll see what that SCROTUS ruling does, if anything.*
The NY Post reports Black, Hispanic NYers who failed teacher's test strike $1.8B in NYC settlement.** There are details such as that this money grab started with a lawsuit in 1996 by 4 trod-upon would-be school teachers in a case called Gulino v. Board of Education. - got a lawsuit name to pull on those heart strings, don't it? That started with 4 potential plaintiffs and has ballooned, with different lawsuits that followed to about 5,200.
That's a bit over 1/3 million, but some of the plaintiffs are getting 1 to 2 million bucks out of their efforts. What efforts, besides failing a test? Good question - more on that.
Other top winners include Andrea Durant, 62, of Center Moriches on Long Island, who scored $1,976,787, and the estate of the late Kathy Faye Bailey of Queens, who was awarded $1,975,119.My bolding, cause, well, I am starting to like these NY Post writers more and more - this is by Rich Calder, Susan Edelman, and Deirdre Bardoff. Also, I guess that estate would require a "that was awarded" rather than "who was", but that's just adding to the stupidity. The benefactors from the probate process of the Bailey "estate" - the rest of it is probably the tinted-windowed high-milage BMW with the low-profile tires and 2 cases of MD 20-20 - will get to split $1.975 million because their Mother failed a teacher's certification test in the 1990s.
This suit was settled by agreement during the Communist Mayor de Blasio's last weeks in office in '21. Redistribution, bitchez! What do expect from a Communist? Remember that thing about the scorpion?
OK, look, to be fair here, let's hear from one of those redistrbutionees, shall we? From one Herman Grim, the now-64 y/o winner of $2.06 million:
When contacted Thursday, Grim said he was unaware he struck gold but confirmed the award the following day with his lawyer.You're tryin' ta pay your bills and keep the man off your back, but every day you go to the mailbox, lots and lots of times, cause you don't have a job, that settlement is never in there. 27 years, Mama! Nuthin' but the EBT cards. Whaddya' do? Gotta eat and keep a roof over your head. Maybe there'l be a new mayor, a Communist, if I'm lucky.
Grim said he's in disbelief but the money can't come soon enough because he's racked up serious debt on his Queens home and credit cards.
Further on:
He couldn't recite examples of why the test was biased.
But [former potential Jaime Escalante] Germ recalled hiring private tutor and studying for it during the early 1990s, before failing many times.Haha, I don't want to actually BE Steve Sailer here, but I coulda' come up with something good here too...
I get a feeling from this that those NY City taxpayers who have 25-40 y/o grown up kids but never had the means as the upper class folks did to get them the hell out of government schooling in the 1990s have come out ahead on this whole thing, sudden $1,800,000,000 or not. The guy got tutoring for a freaking standardized test, failed many times, and he wanted to teach our kids? Nah, I'll pay my share, thank you very much.
"I can't tell you how many times I took them. A lot! A lot!" he said.That was Herman Grim yet again, a Grim taste of what we're dealing with. He took the test a lot!, so he's entitled to be a school teacher. See? Desperate impact [typos not intended, but sustained without objection, your Honor]. That's what we're dealing with now. $1.8 Billion ain't the half of it. Money ain't even the half of it. Still:
But the cost to taxpayers is expected to be significantly higher because they’ll also be footing the bill for many of the plaintiffs to collect pension checks based on time never worked after they reach retirement age, plus their health insurance.Don't forget the lawyers, please. Someone, please, think of the lawyers! (OK, I found it - the lawyers are getting $43 million.)
As of Friday, 225 people who failed the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test used for teacher liscensing from 1994 to 2014 had already been notified they're getting settlements of at least $2 million, according to an analysis of Manhattan federal court records.I'm a math type. If by "award" he means each as a single payout to an individual, or yes, estate, then we're just talking in the range of another Billion. NY City sounds like it's got plenty of $ to spare. If each is a payout to another group of 225 or 5,200, well, "Peak Stupidity to New York: Drop Dead!"
Court rulings found the exam violated civil-rights laws, allowing far more White candidates to pass.
The case is expected to generate hundreds of other future million dollar awards.
The funniest part of this story, as John Derbyshire emphasized, was the 27 years ago. What the heck have these people been doing for this whole time? I might have spent just one year out of those 27... errr, wait for it, studying harder?! Starting another career, perhaps? Just plain getting a job at some point? Doesn't daytime TV get old after a while? Congratulations, disparate impact victims! Victims of redistribution by Communist New York? GTFO. We've told you over and over ...
PS: The New York Post, which is closer to any kind of "newspaper of record"*, has this story, but my "hosting country" does not seem to like this publication. My quote are short because I had to transcribe them from a telephone.
* College admissions is a beachhead, I guess, but that specific instance of AA doesn't concern me very much. It's the enhanced version of AA, Wokeness, (the enhanced AA being just a part of Wokeness) that is bringing this country toward 3rd World competency.
** The NY Post pulled "a fast one", as the NY'ers put it, with their on-line story, haha. That's nothing to do with the facts, though. I will make a very short post on this.
*** One of Instapundit Glenn Reynold's bits is to refer to The Babylon Bee as such.
Comments (8)
Global Boiling explained
Posted On: Monday - August 7th 2023 7:07AM MST
In Topics:   Humor  Global Climate Stupidity
This meme comes from long-term steady commenter Alarmist.

He doesn't get around to writing very much about the long-term Climate Calamity™ deal that's gone from a scientific discussion to a massive political issue and Totalitarian control effort over the last 35 years, but Steve Sailer has a good short and sweet post up on it: NYT: "When the Novelty of Skiing in California in August Wears Off, the Terror Sinks In".
Not to criticize too harshly at all, as his attitude is heartening to me, but 2 things:
1) He seems a little late on that NOTICING of his that "Global Warming" has become "Climate Change", as he does give the right reason why. My recollection on the change of terminology is more like Global Cooling (1970s) – Global Warming – Climate Change (been that for 10-15 years, I’d guess) – The Climate Crisis (time of Peak Greta ~ 19) – Global Boiling (couple of weeks ago).
2) I don't know that Mr. Sailer realizes the 2nd part of the big picture - the use of this "issue" as a way to implement more Totalitarian control - control of energy production, distribution, and use, moving on to agriculture... by definition, it doesn't end. Mr. Sailer has noticed how the Lyin' Press - his favorite, of course, for purposes of example, being the NY Times, uses weather phenomenon to push the agenda, that's all.
Thank you, Steve Sailer, and thank you, Alarmist!
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[UPDATED 8/11:] Fixed last sentence of (2) which was missing pretty much most parts of speech.
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Comments (9)
Brother Jukebox
Posted On: Saturday - August 5th 2023 3:17PM MST
In Topics:   Music
This is the other song by Paul Craft, that I alluded to on Tuesday. I previously had no idea it was written by the same songwriter who wrote Midnight Flyer (done by the Osborne Brothers and then The Eagles).
When it comes to sappy-lyricked country music, you can't do better than Brother Jukebox, as performed by Mark Chestnutt. I still have the one album on CD by Mark Chestnutt Too Cold at Home that I bought about the time it was released in 1991. I like it but haven't listened to the album in almost 3 decades.
Sounds good. Maybe "sappy" is not the word for it, but that's a country music thing, whatever you call it, this analogy that he has in the chorus:
Brother jukebox, sister wine,
mother freedom, father time.
Since she left me by myself
you're the only family I've got left.
Good songwriting by Paul Craft!
That's the blogweek, Peakers, and I again thank you for reading and commenting. It was about 1/2 entertainment this week and half serious stupidity. (Taxes could count as both, I guess.) More seriously, next week, we'll get to the population implosion, some of the other topics mentioned last Saturday, a movie review by Mike Tre, aka Mike@Mike.Mike, Global Boiling memes, and something more on South Africa and S. Africans, the White ones. Have a wonderful Sunday!
PS: This song was also recorded by Don Everly of the former Everly Brothers back in 1977.
Comments (12)
Last year's tax (preparation) burden
Posted On: Saturday - August 5th 2023 8:16AM MST
In Topics:   US Feral Government  Dead/Ex- Presidents  Taxes
This was to be part of the previous post, but it was already too long. This image below is of another graphic that appears yearly in the IRS 1040 Instruction book .pdfs. This one is in there one page prior (107):

In case it's hard to read, this is the "Estimated Average Taxpayer Burden for Individuals by Activity". Haha, well, doing the taxes is not exactly what makes us beasts of burden owned by the IRS. It's the money - though that's only #2 in the top-5 list of the evils of the Feral Income Tax, per Part 3 on Amendment XVI, in our Peak Constitutional Amendment series.
We've done this post before, in '22 - Peak Stupidity beats national time-wasting averages.
In that previous post I mentioned that this tax-burden information is something that came out of the Reagan Administration, I'm pretty sure. Old Ronnie really did want to cut government, whether people today believe that or not. What those people might want to "search up" is that President Reagan dealt with a D-controlled Congress the whole 8 years, so it's not like he could actually implement everything he wanted.
I remember that President Reagan was bent on simplifying the Income Tax system, if he couldn't eliminate it. A little bit changed for the better on the former, and the latter was of course out of the question. Reagan also wanted Feral regulation paperwork in general cut, especially as it burdened the individual or small business. Hence, this chart, as at least now we know how much of our time this paperwork is to take. (Well, nobody figured on the internet. Turbotax, though, had started up in 1984.)
I see that I, were I average, per the IRS, I am supposed to have spent 3 hours completing the forms, but also another 5 hours on other tasks, planning and record-keeping. Nah, the plan is to get this crap done sometime in mid-April as quickly as I can. The record-keeping is shove all the stuff the comes in late January into a file in a drawer.
Then, I delegate the paperwork to the kid.. [Wipes hands of whole matter.]
Then, he screws up 2 things on the State form, so I re-delegate the paperwork in the form of an amended return.
Interestingly, the 2 numbers in that previous post (from the Washington Examiner), average time spent, and opportunity cost, are way different from what the IRS says. For the average of all taxpayers - gotta assume they're not counting Big Biz corps - the IRS says 13 hrs, of work, while the W.E. study says 24.9 hrs. The IRS says $250 in opportunity cost, while the W.E. study says $800. Note the income the IRS takes as average: $19/hr. The W.E. study uses $32/hr. The IRS ought to know average income, right? Or is it that nobody has updated this table in years. That's probably the case.
The IRS 1040 Instruction booklet: Bring it to the beach this Labor Day weekend. Two thumbs up!
Comments (2)