U.K-ung Flu Cat Culling Considered
Posted On: Saturday - April 22nd 2023 8:42PM MST
In Topics: Kung Flu Stupidity Totalitarianism
It was the deepest darkest days of the Kung Flu PanicFest, sometime in '20 in the land they (ought to) call Oceania. From "LBC", aka, "Leading Britain's Conversation" (Conversation? Oh, nuts!) a couple of months ago, we read the following about some of the proposed plans of the Kung Flu Panic Totalitarians: Govt considered culling all pet cats at the start of the pandemic in bid to prevent spreading, says ex-health minister. From the short article:
Lord Bethell said the concern about pets underlined how little was known about the disease at the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020.Do you see what I mean about the Kung Flu being treated as if it were the Black Death 2.0? Whether they really believed that or just were power-hungry sickos is not clear to me.
He explained that evidence had surfaced around possible transmission so the scenario had to be "investigated and closed down".
"What we shouldn't forget is how little we understood about this disease," Lord Bethell said.
"There was a moment we were very unclear about whether domestic pets could transmit the disease.
"In fact, there was an idea at one moment that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain."
He told Channel 4 News: "Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?"
"And yet, for a moment there was a bit of evidence around that so that had to be investigated and closed down."
They "understood little about this disease". So, OK, their first reaction was to assume it was the Black Death 2.0, and, as a separate reaction from that, that Totalitarian policies were the best way to handle it ...not knowing much about "it", though...
They scared and forced the British subjects into staying in their homes. For many people, it's the pets that help make it home. Imagine authorities coming into your home to take away your pet cat to be exterminated. People have a hard enough time when their pets die of natural causes. "Can you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?", Lord Bethell asked. I would hope a few Brits would have answered these requests with shotguns in their hands.
OK, we'll lighten it up now. Was this post just an excuse to show funny cat videos? Sure... probably...
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In Bruges
Posted On: Thursday - April 20th 2023 8:43PM MST
In Topics: Humor Movies
Bruges, pronounced Broozh (one syllable) best I can do it, is a pretty, very historical city in the northwest of Belgium, about 15 miles from coast near the south end of the North Sea.* Wiki says "The medieval architecture in Bruges is mostly intact, making it one of the best-preserved medieval towns in Europe." (Hmmm, I can't detect an agenda, so far...) This fairytale-like city of 120,000 or so is the setting of one of my new favorite movies, something I hardly ever write, because "new", as in more recently made, favorites come once in a blue moon.
It's not the scenery that makes the movie, but the fun and twisting story that's set in Bruges**. I don't keep up with these people, but it's Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson that play the buddy-movie, no not cops this time, but hit-man buddies. They are Irishmen who've been sent to Bruges for a couple of weeks to lay low by their bad-ass boss after some problem back in London.
One big thing to keep in mind this whole movie. It was made in '07. There were plenty of security cameras up here and there already, maybe not so much in this old European city, but mainly no ubiquitous smart phones. This is an important part of any movie or reality in which you are to lay low and "keep out of sight". How's that possible now? COVID-19 masks help, I guess...
The older, fatter guy is the experienced and the wiser one, and he spends time trying to rein in the younger guy who wants to party and go out on dates. There's one cutie in the movie. All the while, these two are supposed to be awaiting an important phone call from the boss on the hotel land-line. That may sound boring, but all manner of fun things go on.
The big relief for me is this movie was devoid of Wokeness. It was a different time, you understand ... no, not that different - maybe it's just due to a producer, director, what-have-you with some integrity. There are no black characters in non-black roles or ass-kicking women. There is the a part of the plot involving a dwarf, which might be considered woke, but it is done distastefully enough to be honest.
Well, I won't spoil the movie either, except to tell you it's very humorous while being suspenseful, with lots of plot twists and even some serious philosophy of life stuff thrown in. Instead, I'll insert in a scene here, for something different in a movie review. There's a minor theme in the movie about Americans, and, well, when you're right, you're right, so I took it well. I think you will too. Remember that these two guys are supposed to be laying low. The older guy understands that, but the younger guy doesn't:
Oh yeah, there's a couple of lines here that remind me of the ideas, and even a "law" we read from a certain blogger. Harry, the head hitman out of London had to come to Bruges at one point to straighten things out. He walked into his arms dealer Yuri's house and saw the collection of about 50 or so guns for his selection, one of them being an Uzi. He picked it up and mused:
An Uzi? I'm not from South Central Los fucking Angeles. I didn't come here to shoot twenty black ten year olds in a drive-by. I want a normal gun for a normal hit.Flat-out Steve Sailer material, that is! Steve likes the movies a lot, so I recommended this one to him too.
Two thumbs way up for In Bruges!
* The weather in Bruges is very similar to that in Seattle, Washington - highs, lows, and precipitation
** My strong suggestion for the PS reader is to not even read the IMDB page I linked to here if you want to see the movie. It gives away WAY too much of the story.
Comments (10)
Cash is King, continued: Tipping in cash
Posted On: Thursday - April 20th 2023 9:01AM MST
In Topics: Economics US Feral Government Customer Care
Besides being a continuation of this recent post, which itself came from reader comments under others, Peak Stupidity will continue to pound in the idea of cash being King.* That is, it's a powerful force, anyway, to combat a number of ills being brought upon the populations of the world's nation by their elite "leaders". (Why governments don't require bill serial number scanners at points-of-sale and banks is another story that I sure don't want any of you spreading around. Government workers are too busy watching porn to read Peak Stupidity, so we should be good.)
OK, then, I think most of us in tipping-custom countries understand the point already. I can only write about America here, what I know. I don't write as a lawyer or economist here, but I do know that the IRS laid down rules years ago, maybe the 1980's, maybe '90s to try to collect THEIR FAIR SHARE DUE of these ancillary payments for service that customers have been providing them based on merit. It's right there on that important box on thoser W-2 forms, "Wages, tips, etc." Over the years, coming under the 2nd item, that money that has been STOLEN, STOLEN, I tell you, from the US Feral Government! This became important at the time period in which credit cards, and later debit cards, came into widespread usage, the '70s through '80s. Before that, the IRS didn't have a fighting chance.
If you know much about the restaurant business, there is an exemption from paying the minimum wage to waiters/waitresses. That was due to the knowledge that they made money via tips, sometimes, in fancy places MUCH, MUCH more than that $2.65 or whatever no-better-in-real-dollars amount it is today, to where (in that case) the wages were peanuts compared to the tips. The IRS had left them alone for a long while. As I wrote above, there wasn't that much they could do, if tips were not recorded, if they were to be fair. Well, fairness goes out the window when you're going broke, so they had schemes to use average tips in the industry, or what-have-you.
I spent a few minutes looking into that older stuff, and lo and behold, look what's new! Only 2 months ago, a new program was introduced, as The Man himself, the IRS tells us:
The Treasury Department and Internal Revenue Service today issued Notice 2023-13, which contains a proposed revenue procedure that would establish the Service Industry Tip Compliance Agreement (SITCA) program, a voluntary tip reporting program between the IRS and employers in various service industries. The IRS is issuing this guidance in proposed form to provide an opportunity for public comment.Our betters, paid the big bucks to spend our money more wisely, DO NOT LIKE IT when we take it upon ourselves to pay people what WE PEONS think is appropriate for the effort they've made. At least, they want their cut. Don't let them take it. This one is easy.
The proposed SITCA program is designed to take advantage of advancements in point-of-sale, time and attendance systems, and electronic payment settlement methods to improve tip reporting compliance. The proposed program would also decrease taxpayer and IRS administrative burdens and provide more transparency and certainty to taxpayers. The proposed program includes several features: ... ["blah, blah, blah, I hear nothink, nothink! Your lips are moving, but there's nothing coming out." - Waiters, waitresses, cab drivers, hair stylists everywhere and every one.]
Use cash for the tip, even if you don't have enough cash for the meal, haircut, taxi ride, etc. (In fact, with the Lyft and Uber drivers, this avoids not only the IRS but the take from Lyft/Uber too, however you feel about the latter aspect.) When the waitress comes out with that annoying and embarrassing tablet or other piece of iCrap, I'll let her know the tip will be cash or just give it to her directly then and there. At the counter, I'll write "table" on the receipt tip line and then leave it. It's important to note that, just in case someone else swipes it later - hopefully a rare thing still - or someone thinks she has been stiffed before figuring it out.
On that recent trip we made to that nice Conservative Florida town I hadn't brung enough cash for everything. I used cash for all tips, which added up to a decent amount. There was to be a charge for the use of my debit card, so I wrote the proprietor a check. Yeah, that charge would have been peanuts in the scheme of a vacation trip when tourists somehow just naturally throw around money in a way they wouldn't at home - see The tourist dollar and funny money for the foreign tourist version.
This new deal of charging fees on the use of cc's** - I've reported on it regarding this practice at gas stations for at least 5 years here - is a good thing! For the little bit of extra trouble, such as at the gas stations***, it's encouraging the use of cash.
If the young people doing these service jobs are still a bit clueless on it, we can teach them a thing about taxes, money handling, and economics. "Yeah, man, I don't want you to have to share this with the US Government. You know they aren't gonna spend it on you or your family, right?" Then, with more cash in hand, this guy will get used to having more than cards in his wallet to work with. Spread the cash love! Regarding the tax man, Plausible Deniability, Bitchez!
* See Chipotle - no credit, no debit, and hold the E. Coli, Cash is King - (Part 2), Cash is King - (Part 3), Credit? Forget it! You got it? You get it!, and there's more around here somewhere.
** Which is fair enough, as the merchant pays these fees to Visa, Amex, etc. I don't feel the need to support credit card users.
*** As shoddy as things are getting, half the time a receipt won't print out at the pump when you use a card, as it's out of paper. The single cashier they've got all day can't go out there to refill them. So you go inside anyway.
When you fill up using cash, then it takes 2 trips. Why not just pay enough to get it close, you ask? Well, when you have a car with no working trip odometer (that's been 2 decades) and a non-working gas gauge (gonna be a 4 hour job - gotta drop the tank to replace the float on this one), you need to know what you've got in there.
Comments (6)
Hail to You on Open Borders Virtue-Signaling
Posted On: Wednesday - April 19th 2023 9:05PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Websites Pundits
I got very busy today, so it's too late for that movie review or more on the practice of tipping. However, I noticed yesterday that Mr. E.H. Hail has a new post on this Hail to You blog. This one gives his thoughts on what was to be a serious Hoover Institute discussion of population decline in much of the world by some Establishment purported Conservatives.
As soon as the massive immigration to the West was mentioned all of these 4 supposedly serious people other than Niall Ferguson spat out words of stupidity due to their virtue-signaling reflex. Well, I'll let Mr. Hail explain here: The USA’s “Guiding Maxim on Immigration”: analysis of and commentary on a discussion between Nicolas Eberstadt, John Cochrane, H. R. McMaster, and Niall Ferguson. (There was also a Moderator, who, unlike your host here, stayed quiet - one Bill Whalen.)
I don't know any of these people and see no reason to change that now.
PS: I'll write more in the comments there, but I don't agree with the rest of the discussion, per Mr. Hail, in that these people see a problem with population decline. It's only a problem in RELATIVE terms. When you have a large immigration rate, it indeed matters that the native population is not growing or even shrinking.
For example, because they have resisted Population Replacement Programs so far, if they keep at that, Japan will be just fine with half the number of people. (That's still be more dense than California is now by a factor of nearly 2.) That discussion deserves a post here too.
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[UPDATED 04./20:] Edited to remove Niall Ferguson from the list of the panel knee-jerk virtue-signalers. I read Mr. Kief's comments, looked back at Mr. Hail's post, and agreed in the comments. I just now realized that I had written "all 4 of ..." Fixed.
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Comments (9)
Tipping for services - Part 1: Tipping Inflation
Posted On: Tuesday - April 18th 2023 7:20PM MST
In Topics: Salesmen Curmudgeonry Economics Inflation Customer Care
(Thanks to Adam Smith for the appropriate image!)
This series of posts, as it will work out to few related posts, was suggested by commenter E.H. Hail, he of the Hail to You blog - yes, the very same. His discussion, along with that of other commenters*, has pretty much delineated most of the points we'll cover.
Unless you are in some seriously foreign country, and I'm not ruling that out here, you're familiar with the custom of voluntarily tipping above the given price for some services. Which services those are for which employees generally expect tip varies widely, but if anything the roster of them has been expanding. I ought to explain just a little for those possible very-foreign readers because, tipping really isn't done generally in some countries, one of the big ones being China. This should not cause anyone consternation unless there is confusion due to this "China" being in New York City. Our humorous story on that appears here: Tips for Chinatown.
Anyway, most readers may want to skip: The idea is to give a particular service employee** - usually we think of waiter and waitresses - a small but not embarrassingly insignificant fee that we as customers decide is appropriate for good or at least not poor service. It can be a good incentive, and to me is very free-marketey. This fee is thought of as a percentage of the service paid for, usually in the 10-15% range, but the norm for different types of services varies. (For some, like service by a cashier at a store, I have never been used to tipping for and don't plan on it. Others have and do, I suppose.)
Mr. Hail suggested looking into inflation in tipping, knowing that Inflation is one of Peak Stupidity's topic keys and sub-fixations. Yes, well, this is interesting. However, I would expect survey data from neither tippers nor tippees to be of any use. The subject is subjective in that customers may think more of their generosity than is actually the case, and service employees may or may not have good attitudes about the whole thing leading to erroneous or purposefully false answers. As for long-term customer and long-term service employees, memories can be prone to error too.
One thing to put out here at the beginning is that whatever inflation may be, equal percentage tips are obviously keeping up with inflation in the service price. That doesn't mean that some waitress can afford what she could at a similar job 20 years ago, before inflation cranked back up. Tipping at 15% now vs then on meals that cost twice as much is keeping up by the customer.
I did do a couple of searches on tipping, and the blurbs of multiple articles discussed customers bitching about "standard" tips being too high due to inflation having caused the meal prices to be too high. Well, customers, how far do you think that waitress' tip on that Applebees $15 salad that was $8 in 2003 goes now compared to 20 years ago? It may hurt based on your memory of the worth of a dollar, but it's not more in real dollars for that waitress. Yes, creating currency out of thin air lowers the value of that currency. Who knew?! Don't live like you're middle class if you're simply not anymore. Instead of bitching to me, bitch to the FED or its customers.
However, as Mr. Hail mentioned first, there is now newer pressure to increase one's tipping RATE. That pressure comes for modern electronics, in the guise of making things "easier" for us. Easier? Truly, for those who understand that Cash is King and don't relish giving governments more money, it makes things just a bit harder That aside, I think this is not about ease but about pressure. Those electronic tablets that waitresses might bring around or that appear in one's face at the cashier's counter put one on the spot. The thing is right in your face, and the waitress/cashier can see just where you touched the screen. What if the waitress really was worthless and bitchy? It happens on occasion. Punching a low number - if it even allows one to - on the screen is like telling her that to her face. It was better the old way (as about everything was!).
I saw this recently when dropping by to take a pizza pie out from the restaurant. "Pick one here." Now, I had to explain that I'm not used to tipping cashiers, because it doesn't make so much sense... TO THE CASHIER. That's no fun.
That is a segue into another thing that one could say is a type of inflation in tipping. That is, it seems tips are "encouraged", to say the least, for services for which tipping didn't used to be the practice. Those big jars on counters at various stores didn't used to be there.
Mr. Hail brought up a 3rd factor, which is the increase in tip amount with the electronics in use (doesn't apply to cash tipping) due to calculations that multiply tip % by the bottom line. Here's his point and example, verbatim:
I noticed, this weekend, that the Tipping Recommendation screen at these places often calculate tip-percentages based on after-tax, after any service-fee prices. That itself is a subtle form of Tipping Inflation. "Tipping" was traditionally done on the base-price, before tax or any other fees.Good point, Mr. Hail. I wonder if perhaps a credit card fee, if used***, would be part of that final amount upon which the tip is based. Ker-ching!
Here is a common scenario:
A product or service is listed at $20. That price seems like a good price to you, and you're not thinking too much about it. Taxes add 10%. A mandatory service-fee adds a flat $3 fee to the total.
There you are, the customer, having seen the $20 base-price, not thinking too hard about numbers, and of cheerful goodwill to all. A screen prompts you to "tip." It gives you a 15% option and higher options. How much is the "15%"? It would seem like it'd be $3.00 ($20*.15). Actually it is suggesting you add $3.75, a 15% on the grand total after tax and fees ($20+$2+$3=25; $25*.15). Not looking too closely, you press the 15% button.
The final grand-grand total you pay, on the $20-listed thing, is $27.75. That after choosing the "15% tip" button while someone glares at you. The $3.60 actually-extracted "tip" is --19%-- when compared to be the base-price (the $3.75 extracted-tip over the $20 listed-base-price = 18.75%), not the --15%-- you thought you were paying.
One more theory of inflation in tipping from Mr. Hail:
Theory: Virtue-Signaling is an arms race, and that arms race in part defines Wokeness or the social power of Wokeness. As the custom of tipping is also a kind of virtue-signal, the advance of Wokeness may also have --directly-- affected "tipping" rates, boosting a around-10% "round-up"-type tipping custom of earlier years to this aggressive 25%, 30%, or even higher rate you hear people talk about now.I guess that depends on the situation, dinner with the family vs a date, or a salesman's dinner vs a bunch of engineers having lunch.
Now, I've been plenty generous at times, and this post is not about generosity, just the changes in the way things are done that bring in more tip money.
Next on tipping: Cash is King (of course) and also tipping as corruption (large scale and small scale)
* This discussion started here with more here, under the Waylon and Willie music post.
** Though it can get more complicated with tip sharing, something that involves the IRS and other factors.
*** This is becoming a more widespread practice from what I've seen, and I'm not against it either. It encourages the use of cash.
Comments (8)
Segregation Now! Segregation Tomorrow! Segregation Forever!
Posted On: Monday - April 17th 2023 7:21PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Student and other Snowflakes University Race/Genetics
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The Instapundit likes to quote that old demand of the Southern White people who wanted to keep their world safe and sane. Let's note, BTW, that the old Southerners had nothing against voluntary integration at that. That's a point that doesn't get noted too often: Forced integration of the races was what the Civil Rites laws enforced, when it could have been a more sane (though still quite unConstitutional) policy of overriding any State laws that did involve mandatory segregation.
The Insta-man used this headline the other day to introduce an article from Campus Reform - one of Professor Reynold's many favorite sites - about some racial goings-on at Syracuse University. The article reports Students demand ability to select roommate based on race during days-long sit-in. It used to be "a man named Vito" that you didn't say no to, but now it's Black! people in general, but especially on campus, because the administrators are big cowards.
The Chancellor at Syracuse University has stated that he will actively work with a group of students who have issued several demands meant to address a racism issue at the school, including the institution of a new policy that would require students be offered an option to choose that their roommate share the same race.I see no problem with that. The associated canteens or cafeterias could plan their sales items and menus accordingly. Well, I mean, unless you are some sort of newly-categorized race, as decided by the Feral Gov't, and there is no match on the whole campus. What then? Oh, I got it, go home!
The policy demanded by these activists at the sit-in has a catch though... always a catch with these people:
The demand to allow "students of color" to elect not to room with students of other races was one of several such demands issued by a group of protesting students who aired their concerns about racism on campus during an ongoing sit-in. Syracuse Chancellor Kent Syverud spoke at the sit-in in a live-streamed exchange.Oh, White people can't elect to not room with students of other races? The gist of this one-sided demand is that it's only Black! people that have something to be scared of:
“The general consensus is that black students, and we’re talking specifically on behalf of Black students, may feel safer and better rooming with other Black students rather than... [some weird-ass terminology that I don't get... A snowflake thing... I wouldn't understand.]Well, I grant you, it's true on today's campus that a White student no longer has to be afraid of a black roommate trashing his expensive $450 stereo with the Nakamichi speakers. Neither of them knows what is this "stereo" and speakers of which I speak. Still, there's other theft, rape, and knifings... It'd be racist for a White person to use those tired old excuses to demand segregation though.
The Black! students and their White fool followers (on behalf of the Black! cause) have been there since last November for this cause! Classes can wait, apparently.
Now, I don't expect everyone to read the whole article, but the last half has a slice of modern campus life, not all particularly to do with this sit-in. As you read, many people are paying taxes on their labor to pay for this:
The protestors enjoyed a visit from an emotional support dog and were provided with pizza by the university. Someone even brought toy blocks for students to play with. Protesters continue to shout-down university administrators when they try to field their questions.This is not your Grandfather's 1960's sit-in here. My bolding is there to highlight Peak Campus Stupidity, or I sure as hell hope so ...
“Let’s talk about spending $23,000 to have Sean Spicer come here,” one student yelled, referring to the university funding the College Republicans' hosting Sean Spicer this coming spring. “That’s gonna make me uncomfortable.”
“This university has stolen my mental health,” she added. “You want me to pay full tuition that those white students are paying, for what? For a university that stole my mental health? I hate it here.”
Another student yelled “I hate it here,” and protesters joined him in chanting these words.
“My girlfriend could tell you how many times I sat down and cried in her f*cking arms,” he shouted.
A third student sitting in the crowd complained that she was supposed to be taught a course on “Critical Whiteness," but that “all [her] white professor did was make microaggressions to [her].”
It may start small, like this, with and one-sided college roommate selection, but allowable voluntary segregation could make a comeback: Segregation now! Segregation next semester! Segregation through Graduation!
Comments (11)
Waylon and Willie - Good Hearted Woman
Posted On: Saturday - April 15th 2023 5:40PM MST
In Topics: Music
I referred to the 1970s country singer Johnny Paycheck with a link in the previous post. That got me thinking of some good country music from the time. This is a Waylon song, but Willie helps him out on it in my favorite versions. In this version, instead of switching off vocals within the verses, they switch off verse by verse.
I don't think we've featured Waylon Jennings here since very early on, with Are You Sure Hank Done it this Way?.
I noticed that 60% of this week's 5 posts (not counting this one) were just personal anecdotes with commentary. They are, after all, easier and quicker to write. Next week will be pretty busy for me too, but I'll get in those posts on that UK Kung Flu business, inflation and tipping, maybe that solar radiation v man-dissipated energy calculation, a movie review, and whatever stupidity just walks by, just asking to be Shanghaied and put on display. Good Sunday to you all! Thanks for reading and writing in.
Comments (16)
Kids eating goldfish and doing taxes
Posted On: Saturday - April 15th 2023 3:55PM MST
In Topics: Humor US Feral Government Taxes
Well, he doesn't have a bookkeeper to do the arithmetic for him, as in the picture, but my 11 y/o is now taking up the the White Man's, errr, taxpayer's burden. That is, at least in doing the extra work to figure out how just much the US Feral Gov't will end up confiscating from our family due to our labor throughout the year '22.
Look, he started it! He didn't exactly volunteer, but after I asked him to watch me and let me explain how it worked, he asked me why I didn't fill out the downloaded .pdf's right there on the computer. It would be much more readable than my handwriting. He had a point on that, and since he likes to use the other computer - for chess, Prodigy (a video game in the guise of a learning program), and Breaking Cat News comic strips, for the most part - I told him: "Tell you what. You do 'em."
Our taxes are very easy, not on the budget but as far as the workload goes. Itemizing wouldn't get us 10% up to the Married-Filing-Jointly standard deduction of $25,900. I explained that to him. I explained how/why a tax credit is much larger, hence better, than a deduction. For the one credit, I explained how, just because the worksheet is so roundabout and confusing at the bottom, resulting in a 0, I believe we will get the $2,000 child credit nonetheless, and no
He got started, using numbers to the penny, while, normally, at least over the last 20 years, I've rounded numbers to the nearest 10 or 100 bucks, excepting the ones that need to sound like I actually added stuff up.*
With W-2's, bank end-o-year statements, copies of last year's forms in hand, and the right web-sites up for forms and instructions. I let him loose with it. He's got envelopes (doing the State forms too), checks, and stamps too. I wash my hands of the whole thing.
If one could quantify it, the amount of respect Peak Stupidity has for the IRS would come out so minuscule as to need scientific notation. Also, as I wrote in the most ridiculous but true story of IRS stupidity** last summer in Me and the IRS, I will not buy TurboTax, and I will not pay money to a "preparer". It's not the money itself, but I highly resent the idea that I should pay more of my money to determine how much money the IRS will get from me. This time, I only have to spring for some Goldfish™, preferably Super Flavor Blaster ones.
The IRS can't call me, and they can't email me. They can write letters. I can call them back, if I got time.
"What, this didn't add up? That wasn't me. That was my tax First Responder, I mean, Preparer."
"No, I don't have a phone number for him."
"Well, see, he doesn't HAVE a phone. He's too young for that. He's a dependent."
"Oh, the phone would be deductible?"
... [/Newhart]
* There is no more up to $600 charitable contributions field anymore on the main 1040 (I don't mean on the itemizing "schedules") - though we gave nearly 10x that, but there is this one number that I came up with a $271 on the State form for. I have no idea how I got it now and won't spend the time to look it up. "Should I just put the same thing then?", he asked. "Nah, that sounds too fishy. Make it $275 this time." Haha, no respect, no respect I tell ya'! (This ain't even the Feds.)
I read a bit, and that charitable contribution line was put on during the PanicFest. You may not believe this, but apparently, some taxpayers could go unlimited on that one!
** Sure enough, BTW, I never heard back. The IRS must have rummaged through the recycling bins and found my forms.
Comments (2)
Fun Folks in Free Florida
Posted On: Friday - April 14th 2023 8:26PM MST
In Topics: Liberty/Libertarianism Holiday from Stupidity President DeSantis
It's not like it's divided into Vichy Florida and Free Florida, though it would be interesting to speculate on where a divide might be. There's only one Florida, and I'm lovin' it as they say - not just the state of that State, but the sudden interest in Federalism by the people (whether they know it or have ever heard that term or not). That Kung Flu PanicFest with the varying degrees of Totalitarianism seen among the various States may have gotten Americans deciding that they may want to actually change residency based on politics.
It helps a lot that Ron DeSantis is the Governor.
(I am surprised that I have never heard this slogan before.*)
I just don't ever see tourist stores so overtly political, especially in the direction of Conservatism. They had the usual funny signs about fishing - "Old fisherman never die - they just smell that way", etc., but this was but one of only a couple of such stores, and there were no political items pointing in the other direction in either. So, that was refreshing!
The B&B place we stayed in is owned and run by a lady who came down from the northeast a few decades back. It didn't take long to figure she was cool enough to talk to about a few things. Not just that, but she was steering ME to Michelle Bachmann Globalist China-run W.H.O. videos by the next morning. I had to ask, rather than speculate later, "Were you Conservative before you moved down to the South?" Yes, she was. I try to get myself to remember, no matter how "blue", or more like Totalitarian, any of the States are (yes, even California), there is a big percentage 30% 45% even, of the population that is Conservative and "didn't want ANY of this shit." Some end up in Florida.
I want to soon write that post on tipping, and then another about cash being King, the latter being brought into my mind on this trip. As we figured the bill, though I had a CC on file, I was offered a better deal - simply, no CC fee, was all - if I paid with check or cash. I didn't have quite the cash to spare (nothing like the amount in the image was required!), so I used a check. I ventured that, "yes cash is a good way to go", and she volunteered "yeah, why give the Government any more than you have to?" A woman after my own heart, she is. I'll write more on this in another post.
The guests of the B&B are all on this same page, politically, I was told, but this proprietor didn't know about the same regarding the Snowbirds in the town. I sure hope they don't screw up this nice neck of the woods, errr swamp. Our time was made that much nicer there by the like-minded people.
PS: I wish I could tell you where, but this is a very small spot and that wouldn't be keeping OpsSec, as the ex-military preppers will tell you.
* In the comments, I wrote "making American Florida", but that doesn't make sense ... yet.
Comments (7)
Hey, hey, GT(EE)T, how many kids did you depress today!
Posted On: Thursday - April 13th 2023 6:55PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity California Global Climate Stupidity Scams Muh Generation
The chant I'm trying to use here is an oldey, one that went "Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" back in the Vietnam War time. That's 60 years old, but these things get re-used. My problem was that Greta Thunberg, whom I tried to refer to, has 3 damned middle names. She is actually Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg, per a duckduckgo blurb, that search results page being interesting in and of itself. (See below.)
I'm glad to see little Greta having a good time bicycling. California, formerly a near Paradise, now lost is still a beautiful place, landscape-wise. It doesn't look like Greta is riding any kind of serious bike for exercise, but hopefully Arnold can "pump her up" - double entendre neither intended nor desired here. Exercise is very good for the mental as well as physical health. Greta has been in DIRE NEED of this.
I'd seen the picture a few days ago on Instapundit, but upon searching for it, I got to the DW site (Deutsche Welle, said - by DW themselves - to be "Germany's international broadcaster") with their article Climate summit draws calls for emergency action. Climate Summit and Emergency Action! - don'tcha' know?! Yet, these 2 are out riding bikes in the sunshine of Kallyfornyah... no, no, I've got no problem with that. It is mentally healthful, while being duped by Globalist control freaks into spending one's days being scared and scaring the BeJesus out of the gullible of the world is NOT.
Mr. Schwarzenegger organized this big Climate Summit in Vienna, in his original homeland. Greta said there:
"You cannot rely on people reading between the lines or searching for the information themselves" about detailed climate change issues, Thunberg said, calling for a complete change in the way society deals with the issue.As is her thing, she berated the Big Shots at the conference - "op officials, businesses, investors, civil society and climate experts as well as representatives of regions and cities from around the world" - because they talk but they haven't done anything. Oh, the Globalist elites would like to change whole economies, but there has been some resistance. The Globalists, unlike little Greta, realize that this is a scam and there's no big Emergency. Greta can't understand this yet.
The climate crisis is an emergency, and should be treated as such, not discussed as a way to generate green jobs and economic growth, she said.
"For too long, the people in power have gotten away with basically not doing anything to stop the climate and ecological breakdown. They have gotten away with stealing our future and selling it for profit."
I don't know how involved and actually scared muscle man Arnold Schwarzenegger is, but I know the deal with young Greta. Here is a Death Metal version of her alarmism for your enjoyment to give you an idea of the fear she introduces. (I know I was scared... Death Metal, I mean ...)
As per a few comments here, this constant Climate Calamity℠ cacophony can't be very good for the young people who are subjected to it. That may be the case for them daily, in school, on the internet, and, in the worst cases, by the ctrl-left parents too. They're being told that the "Planet will die" and very soon - in their lifetimes. To stop this, things that take widespread action to change whole economies must be done, NOW!, before it's too late. OTOH, Peak Stupidity happens to be looking forward to that Point of Know Return.)
Sure, during the 40 year long Cold War, young people were told, rightly for the most part, that a nuclear war might happen any time, if someone screwed up, or if we lost ground to the Soviets. It wouldn't kill the planet, but it'd sure kill a bunch of us. However, this was something that the US military and millions of engineers and technicians were working on preventing continuously - "Peace through Strength". Or else, the politicians would have talks and relieve the tensions (you know, what with the high-class hookers that hang out at Reykjavik and places like that). We did have to ramp up the military budget to "keep up", but it wasn't like our whole way of life had to change, for the worse.
Then, you've got Peak Stupidity over here telling the world that economic doom is coming. Yes, it is, but an individual can get prepared for it, and there's always an other side to it after the financial pain. (We worry more about the turmoil causing an in for the Globalists and Commies who are ready to complete their goals any time now.) Young people mostly don't care - many are Socialists and want to see it burn.
I could see a youngster getting scared shitless over this Emergency in which the Earth's Climate will be "out of balance" and "out of control!" That'd be the end, Greta's only friend, the end, besides Arnold Schwarzenegger. Even if not on-board with the BS, parents may not know how to explain this program of the elites using a scientific scam to try to gain greater control of the economies of the world. It takes a lot of effort.
If that effort is not spent, or the kids aren't taken away from the Government Indoc Camps and other sources of this barrage, kids can get mentally unhealthy. Greta has been a victim of this, but she is also a perpetrator. Arnold, he's got no excuse - he's freaking 75 years old and should not be falling for scams.
How many young people have actually killed themselves due to depression, with this Climate Scam having been a major factor? Has Greta sent them to Valhalla?
For a humorous ending here, this was the beginning of the search results for "Greta Thunberg middle name" on duckduckgo:
I don't know what kind of spectrum Greta is on, but I don't think it's Asperger's. Is there a name for the disorder that involves being a big dupe during one's entire childhood?
Comments (15)
A not-so-Great Clips experience
Posted On: Tuesday - April 11th 2023 5:53PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity Customer Care
Peak Stupidity readers should be well versed in the stories of a big pet peeve of mine (hence, the curmudgeonry topic key) about retail establishments and the entering of customer data. A phone number is all they want most of the time, likely just to keep a record of your particular transactions without a CC number involved. (Or, yeah, they want to sell a list of them to some marketing company.)
My 1990s land line number works fine for this - I probably have it memorized better than when it was my actual phone #! This has worked fine, except when I'm just not in the mood, and I tell 'em, "I'm just paying cash for these battery terminals, don't worry about it.", "No thanks, I'm just getting this box of candy is all", or "Just getting a haircut. Is that OK?" It helps if I tell them to "Just put in any number you want to.", especially for the Millennial types who are not aware that you can get stuff done without computers.
I reported on the hair-cut place, Great Clips, back during the early part of the Kung Flu PanicFest, in mid-June of '20. The gory details of in On the charges of Kung Flu rebellion - I plead Immunity.. That time, they were SERIOUS! They absolutely had to have a real actual number to track me in case someone came down with the sniffles and they'd have to... what? bring the fancy chair that'd I been sitting in to a biohazard site and burn it? Who knows? It was the Black Death 2.0, so I needed to get with the Panic! OK, OK, I broke down and gave them the REAL NUMBER of my friend's old 1990s landline.
That was not the case during my recent, very brief visit. I figured I might need a professional job, or I'd have asked my wife to cut it. I hadn't been there in half a year, and it's not enjoyable in the least. The place has 3 to 4 fat black ladies, some friendly, but even then, there's nothing to talk about. Didn't these places used to have friendly hot chicks at least?
A I walked in and as usual, it was the usual "what's your phone number"" I don't know - again, just being sick of this crap, I guess, I told the lady "just came to get my hair cut, you don't need the computer." There was no discussion - she just glared. 10 seconds later: "Do you want to cut my hair, or you have to do something on the computer?" She did, and a switch flipped in me. I walked out with no plans to ever come back. My wife is getting better at it too!
It's just another way to get both out of the rat race of Artificial Stupidity and off the grid a tad. Oh, and the place would have made $12 with 2 or 3 bucks to the lady for a tip, in a total of ~10 minutes. Speaking of off the grid, that'll get us 10 more pounds of beans and the mylar bags to put 'em in.
Comments (26)
Non-Governmental Tax-supported Red Cross encourages the Invasion
Posted On: Monday - April 10th 2023 8:39PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Scams
Americans who have been around awhile, during that later stage of real, not-so-corrupt, high-trust America may think of the Red Cross as that wonderful volunteer group that has helped the wounded during wartime since the middle of the 1800s, collects and distributes blood (about 45% of the "market" in the US), and teaches water rescue. One may think of of famous nurse Clara Barton.
The beginning of the international Red Cross was in the Summer of 1859, as an idea of Swiss businessman Jean-Henri Dunant and later a few others, but starting from the publicity he spread based on his experience. He had been on a business trip to Italy to talk to Napoleon III about problems in Algeria (a country that the French were involved for a long time). From Wiki:
When he arrived in the small Italian town of Solferino on the evening of 24 June, he witnessed the aftermath of the Battle of Solferino, an engagement in the Second Italian War of Independence. In a single day, about 40,000 soldiers on both sides died or were left wounded on the field. Henry Dunant was shocked by the terrible aftermath of the battle, the suffering of the wounded soldiers, and the near-total lack of medical attendance and basic care. He completely abandoned the original intent of his trip and for several days he devoted himself to helping with the treatment and care for the wounded. In 1876, the committee adopted the name "International Committee of the Red Cross" (ICRC), which is still its official designation today. Five years later, the American Red Cross was founded through the efforts of Clara Barton.There you go. For a century and a half, Red Cross personnel have had a special arrangement with (most) warring powers, to be able to help the wounded without getting shot at. It's been a noble cause.
Then comes mission creep, and the leftward or Globalist creep of most large organizations whose founders and early backers are long gone. The prolific and informative VDare writer A.W. Morgan reported about a month back: Great Replacement Update: American Red Cross Joins Treason Lobby, Helps Illegals Across Border. That isn't the idea that motivated the noble John Henri-Dunant and Clara Barton. Mr. Morgan says:
We should have expected it: The American Red Cross is helping the Great Replacement by giving maps and safety tips to illegal aliens who are trying to invade the United States, and the organization isn’t just helping them once they get here. The outfit provides guidance for traveling through dangerous regions of Mexico, instead of discouraging the dangerous trip.I haven't given blood but maybe once in my life, but I respect those who do. I guess I don't yet suggest they boycott the organization, but who knows what you can trust about the modern, partially government-supported "NGO" called the Red Cross. Per Mr. Morgan:
As with other non-governmental organizations, the Red Cross uses tax dollars. That figure is $350 million. So, again, white Americans are paying for their own genocide by demographic conquest.They are giving away American treasure. Maybe it'll be American blood and treasure soon. Read the whole article if you want a lot more details.
Comments (5)
AlGore and the Calamity Doomers: The Point of Know Return
Posted On: Saturday - April 8th 2023 8:09PM MST
In Topics: Music Global Climate Stupidity Environmental Stupidity
This week has turned into AlGore week and another week* of Climate Calamity™ discussion. Maybe it will all be behind us sooner than you probably think, but I'll get to that later.
I hope you watched the very short video of a ranting AlGore making the prediction about the seas boiling. Well, while trying to dig out some of his old standards, errr, predictions, on the near-future climate of the Earth, I came across one that had 2 of them. (That "Snows of Kilimanjaro" - great name for a movie, BTW - prediction was one already mentioned, but I somehow have this memory of this Professional Alarmist predicting a more general forecast about snow: We in America would not see snow falling after a few years.)
Until this recent rant at the WEF, I recall these predictions from the man mostly from the '00s, 15 or more years back. They were short-term predictions, with deadlines already past. Now, look, the climate of a planet shaped like a sphere** and with an atmosphere is a complicated thing. I wouldn't be on the case of this guy, if he were making these predictions in the Farmer's Goremanac. No, he has been berating us for 2 decades with these dire warnings to scare the 'tards and politicians (but I repeat myself) and enable the Globalists to enact plans based on this utter bullshit. So, yes, we will gloatingly point out the now-proven-wrong predictions.
From the Natural News site*** we can see Al Gore’s climate change predictions IMPLODE as everybody realizes the North Pole didn’t completely melt. That article is from over 5 years ago. Here are just a couple of these predictions:
... we found it prudent to remind our readers that roughly nine years ago today, Gore predicted that many of you were going to be swallowed up by rising sea waters caused from tons of melting ice.That means he said this 14 years ago, so in '09. I don't know who he meant by "you", but he had to be alive and strong enough to put up with an AlGore rant. Let's say that's 20 years old in '09, so, with an average lifespan, but your perhaps not being a good swimmer, this will happen to YOU - that 20 y/o in the audience - before 2070. We should see something by now though, right? If it's a linear process, we should have seen a foot or two rise, otherwise, he's only talking to the "you"'s that reside in prisons at lower than 10' above sea level. (Let's see, "not a good swimmer" and "in prison", who might that be? "That ice cap be raciss, man!!") The rest of us would be able to do a gradual 10 or 20 year evacuation, precluding even the costs of U-Haul rental.
Again in 2009, Gore told an audience in Copenhagen, Denmark, that there was a “75 percent chance” that during “some summer months” the “polar ice cap” would disappear completely within “five years.”OK, like with the weather forecast more than occasionally (and more than 25% of the time!) we got lucky on the 25% side. Yeah, but the ice in the Arctic has not nearly disappeared, and it's also been 180% longer a period of time that's passed. Wildly wrong again!
In case the reader is wondering what's the point of this post, much less of "know return", or if this is post of no return, let me get to it. This one is not about the AlGore being spectacularly wrong in his predictions of climate change. Let me paste in this excerpt from the same article, out of order.
In January 2006, Al Gore claimed that “within the next 10 years, the world will reach a point of no return” and “a true planetary emergency” due to human-caused global warming.It's not just this particular alarmist that's been saying "point of no return", "it'll be too late", "beyond fixing", etc. Most of them give out some kind of deadline like that as a warning. We need to DO SOMETHING! By "we", we mean the governments of the world, with your tax money, and you need to comply! Otherwise the Earth will be beyond the point of no return. (I don't think they mean some perturbation that takes us completely out of orbit.)
Instead of worrying, though, some of us Climate Deniers™ - yes, I DENY any existence of any kind of atmosphere, hence climate, on this planet - I'll pay for my own O2, thank you very much - where was I? Instead of worrying, I am really looking forward to the point of no return. Will the AlGore, the rest of the WEF, and little Greta, give up and go home on that date? They could then spew all the CO2 they like out the exhausts of those large-cabin BizJets with no hidden guilt. It'll be over! We'd have lost. Nothing left to do then for the elites but go home and hunker down at the beach house with sand bags handy until... no, there will BE no next conference, right?
At that point, we deniers can run our economies with no interference. There'd be no point in controlling the production and use of energy. They said it would be too late. Watt would be the point? It's all over, 4-leaf clover. The fat lady done sung. I, for one, will welcome the Climate Calamity™. Hopefully this song will help us understand.
Nope, it didn't . It's a great sound though, anyway. If you like that guitar riff, well, that's due to REM guitarist Peter Buck having taught the Decemberist guitarist a thing or two. Unlike most REM songs (especially the early ones), you CAN make out the lyrics, but these ones don't make too much sense either. It doesn't matter. Also,there is an official video from the band, but the thing is distractingly stupid.
Finally, for an understanding of the homohone-error-looking title, we refer to a song from 3 1/2 decades earlier, the band Kansas. It's The Point of Know Return, the title song of an album released by this band in 1977.
The band Kansas was from, yes, Topeka, Kansas. There was thing back then about naming bands after places. Boston was another, and I know there were more. I guess people were proud of where they were from then. The Decemberists, from Portland, Oregon, named themselves after revolutionaries in 1825 Russia.
Thanks for reading and commenting another week, Peakers. We'll do some catching up with articles I've got in some of the 100 browser tabs open here (no kidding either) next week. There's also the comparison calculation of solar influx to the Earth vs. man-dissipated energy, from commenter M's suggestion. Also (and thank you, Mr. Hail):
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[UPDATED: 04/09:] Yes, it Easter today. On a minor note, I fixed "self-titled" vs "title song" ("cut", they used to say), the latter being correct, obviously, for that Kansas album.
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* The most recent time was over a weekend, really, when we discussed Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder and The Greenhouse Effect and Beyond: Part 1 - - Part 2 and Part 3.
** Yeah, I know they all are and pretty much gotta be by the physics. However, within the very definition of the cause of weather (not the climate, but they symptoms of it) is that it is due to "unequal heating of the Earth's surface". You need Ringworld or Discworld (the latter not being a Sci-Fi title even) to avoid this. The tilt of the axis sure doesn't help matters, dammit!
*** I've been on that site before, and haven't seen anything I've disagreed with.
Comments (26)
MTG v AOC, Afterword: Women in politics
Posted On: Friday - April 7th 2023 3:01PM MST
In Topics: Trump US Feral Government alt-right/MAGA ctrl-left Female Stupidity
The comparison between these 2 US Congressladies we made on Peak Stupidity last time was about the political ramifications of geography and demographics more than anything else. As per some of the comments, along with my own thoughts, the question that arises is "Do we want women in politics in America?"
I have said NO, many times. Sure, we could watch the drama on youtube clips as the huge difference in ideology, the high spirits of these 2, and then there's AOC's rack, have us hoping for a good old cat fight. That's not the kind of serious politics that would help our country though.
Regarding these specific ladies, AOC is an avowed Socialist, too young to know a damn thing other than about dressing sexy and serving mixed drinks. MTG's politics are right up our alley here, in contrast. She first brought up the phrase (not the idea, of course) of "national divorce". I've seen more recent tweets or quotes from her that are to my liking beyond anything I've seen from the rest of the actual Conservatives in FS, the few there are there. It's great stuff!
However, are these tweets and in-person squabbles going to change anything or even help anyone attempt to? MTG and AOC probably both believe in the ideologies, but this is a lot of drama that is not part of any plan to actually get change done. Hmmmm, who does this remind me of? It's coming to me ... lots of tweeting drama ... lots of talk instead of planning ... constant squabbling... Got it! Donald Trump was the first Woman President.
Say what you want about (some of his) backers and his big mistakes*, but Ronald Reagan is an example of how you get things done politically. He had men working with him (yeah, on HIS side) developing strategies to get what he wanted - the end of the USSR was the big one. That's men's work, making plans and carrying them out. Where are these men though, nowadays? Are they also spending too much time on the internet... like your blogger here?
* See also, 1986 Illegal Amnesty - Ronald Reagan's regrets.
Comments (11)
Hail to You and "A Tale of Two Garlands"
Posted On: Thursday - April 6th 2023 7:35PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Websites Pundits Anarcho-tyranny
(Image off of Mr. Hail's site.)
Peak Stupidity has a serious amount of hatred of men like Merrick Garland. It probably wouldn't be there if he weren't in a position of great power as the US Attorney General. We've pretty much said our piece on this man a couple of weeks ago in Merrick Garland - The Potomac Regime's Lavrentiy Beria.
It's the complete Anarcho-Tyranny of the arresting and holding of the J6 Political Prisoners that has me seeing this man as no better than a henchman of some tin-pot Latin American Commie dictator. As Mr. Hail added in the comments under yesterday's post:
...I just happened to hear a news report today, few hours ago, in which they gave the names of three or four more arrested January Six'ers. They read the names and alleged these people had "damaged barricades" or something, which helped allow the Insurrectionists to assault police. At least two of the names were women. The news-man announced "the arrests keep coming"...Someone pinch me, please. I'm still in this silly nightmare in which I'm stuck in Venezuela!
It turns out that Mr. Hail has been spending lots of time researching and writing his latest post - A tale of two Garlands: A study of U.S. political development through the contrast of two U.S. attorneys general, 1880s vs. 2020s. The other Garland in the article is Augustus Garland, a politician from Arkansas, who was also the US Attorney General, but way back in the free America of the late 1800s.
I've read about 1/2 of it, but I'm not up to the good part in which E.H. Hail discusses (I sure hope), how this henchman of Anarcho-Tyranny got to be who his is today. Please check it out. We may not have time for other than 1 or 2 posts here through the end of the week. Good night.
Comments (3)
Epic AlGore Climate Calamity™ Rant: Boiling the Oceans with A-Bombs
Posted On: Wednesday - April 5th 2023 7:31PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Globalists Environmental Stupidity Science
It'll take me a while to get sick of this one:
Let's take it from (near) the top:
The accumulated amount is now trapping as much extra heat as would be released by six hundred thousand Hiroshima class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the Earth! That's what's boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers [great for innnertubing! .. in a lawnchair, BTW], and creating these rain bombs!No, that's not rain, that's spittle.
The exploding of 600,000 atomic bombs a day sounds like a lot of energy released. As Peak Stupidity has noted along with commenter M (under the previous post) and others, the solution to pollution is dilution. Well, energy is not pollution, but the idea is still that the Earth is BIG, and we are small, even with our atomic bombs.
Let's do the math. The internet says that the world's oceans take up 325 million cubic miles.* That times 5,280 ft/mile cubed gives us 4.78 x 1019 ft3 of water. At 64 lb/ft3 for seawater, we get 3.06 x 1021 lb. I want to go SI now, so that's about 1.4 x 1021 kg of seawater.
Let me take that number from yesterday of the energy released from 600 thousand of those measly old 15 kTon A-bombs. It's 3.8 x 1016 kJ. The assumption here, to be give all credit we possibly can to Mr. Gore, that ALL the energy from these bombs is transferred to, and stays in, the oceans. It'd be better if we detonated those 600,000 A-bombs underwater come to think of it, as in some of that old Cold War era testing. Al Gore would probably want it this way.
The specific heat of water is 4.2 kJ/kg-K ( It varies a tad with chemistry, P, and T, but I'd be happy with just one significant digit for this sort of thing.) ΔT = E/mc gives us a temperature change of 0.0000056 C or 6 1/2 millionths of a degree C daily.
I don't know the average temperature of the oceans, but in Al Gore's favor again, we'll use value on the high side, say 25 C. It's a 75 C rise to get to 100C. That'd take, let's see now ... hmmmm... oh, about 32 thousand years, but remember, that's assuming NO heat transfer to the atmosphere is occurring, an utter impossibility. Wait, but even that wouldn't get the ocean boiling. The energy during all those 32 thousand years of exploding 600,000 A-bombs daily being transferred to the seawater is what's called "sensible heat". That's energy input to raise the temperature of a substance, not to change its phase. The "latent heat" is the latter. For water, this latent heat of vaporization (liquid to gas) is 2,200 kJ/kg. To take the oceans from 100C liquid to 100C vapor (at atm. pressure) would take another 3.1 x 1024 kJ. 1.2 x 10-8 of the ocean would be boiled daily, so there's another 222 thousand years we've got, or about 1/4 million years in all, before the oceans boil. Whewww...
Or, we could stop the economy, so's we wouldn't do that 600 thousand A-bombs worth of energy damage to the Earth each day. I mean, come on, you don't want your great (x 10,000) grandchildren, down from Traverse City to St. Pete, to not be able enjoy a day at the beach, do you? "The water is boiling! There are no hockey games on, they've got Krispy Kreme instead of Duncan Donuts, and I'm sitting here talking to these rednecks about college football at the Early Bird Special gummin' down my creamed corn and drinkin' sweet tea!"
Preacher Gore, we appreciate your enthusiasm for the Religion of Climate Calamity™ so much. However, I don't think we need to worry about the boiling of the oceans right now. The Earth abides... same as it ever was... same as it ever was... same as it ever was!
* This does not include the 3% of the rest of the water on Earth that's not in the oceans. The AlGore didn't mention the Great Lakes, so I believe our readers in Duluth, Chicago, Muskegon, Marquette, Detroit, Buffalo, Rochester, and Traverse City can rest easy at this point.
Comments (34)
Epic AlGore Climate Calamity™ Rant: Heating up the Atmosphere with A-Bombs
Posted On: Tuesday - April 4th 2023 9:50PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Globalists Environmental Stupidity Science
We haven't heard from Climate Calamity™ alarmist Al Gore in years. That's because we make that extra effort not to. This video I came upon, though, was like looking at a slow-motion carbon-neutral train wreck. I couldn't look away. This is from the WEF at Davos, as former Vice President and proto-Greta Al Gore hung out pontificating with the carbon-positive jet-setting Globalists.
I'd like to comment on every stupid thing Mr. Gore said in this rant but there's no time... from what they tell me. The end of the planet is nigh.
Now, I did a a quick look on Wiki for info on Al Gore just to see if he was this drop-out I'd read about. Really, the facts of the bio give not so bad a picture of the man. Of course, he was a silver-spoon politician's son brought up in Washington, FS and placed in the St. Albans School for the rich and pampered. He could have been one of those "Fortunate Sons", but he enlisted in the army and went to Vietnam - as a journalist - in order to avoid the stigma, knowing already he was going to be a politician.
Al Gore did finish his school at Harvard, but had done poorly (C's and/or D's) in his science classes, hated math, and graduated with a degree in... what else?: Government. Per Wiki, "In his senior year, he took a class with oceanographer and global warming theorist Roger Revelle, who sparked Gore's interest in global warming and other environmental issues." How could this one class make the man into the raving, ranting deluded lunatic he is today?
It wasn't like he was in a seminar class with Greta Thunberg. Professor Roger Revelle was a real scientist, a pioneering oceanographer before, through, and after, the WWII years. Dr. Revelle's work in Oceanography had him studying this "Global Warming" THEORY (mind you - they were more honest then) from the standpoint of the oceans, of course. His idea was that the oceans can absorb this CO2 that was being worried about. Eventually, after the increasing saturation of it (remember partial vapor pressure, etc?) the ocean water would absorb CO2 less readily. Yet, Dr. Revelle was called the "Father of the Greenhouse Effect", and seems to have been the Climate Crisis guru that Al Gore needed to back him up for his Earth in the Balance book. Revelle died in '91, just before Al Gore's VP campaign with Bill Clinton.
Gore's alarmism worked for a while, but it wasn't so alarming to me and thinking Americans yet, as the Globalists and Communists had not gotten ahold of it as a weapon to ruin economies with yet. For Al Gore to still show his face in among the ranks of the Climate Calamity™ Crowd really takes a lot of gall at this point, due to his (D in) Science predictions being shown to be, to put it nicely, unsound. HIs most precise one (precision is not accuracy), from his Inconvenient Truth movie of '06 said that within the decade there would be no more snows of Kilimanjaro. No, it still snows there. More broadly, there was a 75% chance (in '06) that within 5 years - by '11, then - that during "some summer months" the polar ice cap would disappear completely. You can't get a good model out of that guy.
Let me discuss the money-rant from the video here though:
The accumulated amount [of CO2] is now trapping as much extra heat [ENERGY, damn you!] as would be released by six hundred thousand Hiroshima class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the Earth!I'm not really sure when this accumulated amount started, but let's go with the statement as is. I looked up the kilo-tonnage* of the "Little Boy" atomic bomb. It was a measly 15 kTon bomb. There are nuclear bombs that release 60 Megatons, 4,000 times as much, via a fusion reaction, as those Hiroshima ones. (Hell, you can't even GET those old fission bombs anymore. ebay might have a few old aftermarket ones, but do you really know if they're gonna work?)
[Cannot find the proper Alt key for spittle - Ed]
Exploding 600,000 old fission bombs of questionable shelf-life every day is a lot of work. Why not explode 150 of those big ones? Exploding 150 of these "Tsar Bombas" each day would be easier, and we could pummel certain blue cities with them daily in the process. Either way, for alarmist Al Gore calculations' sake, the energy released by those 600,000 15 kTon bombs is 3.8 x 1016 kJ.
I was pleased with myself for having calculated the mass of the atmosphere by using the surface pressure (15 lb/in2) times the surface area of the earth (there's a g in there), and its matching within 10% the number I later found on line - ~ 5 x 1018 kg. The simple energy accumulation of "sensible heat" is E = mcΔT, rearranged as ΔT = E/mc**, so I get a temperature increase of 0.0076 C.
I didn't do this just for the fun of it, but to show that this whole comparison is not what Mr. Gore thinks it is. Did he think he was comparing a steady input of energy (the daily bombs) to some rate of energy accumulation in the atmosphere? He says "accumulated amount" referring to CO2 which has supposedly warmed up the Earth a tad to a new equilibrium. I think he means to say those 600,000 Little Boy A-bombs are adding energy to the atmosphere at this daily rate, thinking this means "the Earth", however that control volume is described, will heat up daily. If that's the case, that 0.0075 C/day = 2 3/4 C yearly. Not hardly! Even the most extreme Climate Calamity™ scaremongers don't use that number. We are not adding the accumulated amount of CO2 every day anew, and even if we were (we guys with large-cabin BizJets to take us to places like Davos, that is), there wouldn't be a continuous linear effect.
Assuming this 600,000 daily A-Bombs worth of energy - that 3.8 x 1016kJ/daily - was calculated by someone who knows his ass from a smoking A-bomb crater in the ground, the accumulated CO2 has raised the T of the Earth by 0.0076C. That's not worrisome enough for the Globalists and Communists. Should we be using the Tsar Bombas instead. Right now we have a Climate Gap? I don't really know what to do about that... really... other than... OH. We need money!
I believe ranting Crazy AlGore erroneously means the former, a rise of 2 3/4 C yearly, so that's why he's worried about the oceans coming to a boil. We'll do the boiling oceans calculation tomorrow. This is kinda fun!
* It's a weird measurement unit alright, but it means the amount of TNT exploded that would release the equivalent energy. A kTon "yield" = 4.18 x 109 kJ.
** c is the specific heat. I'm simplifying, as there are 2 variants and I'm just taking it for Nitrogen gas. It doesn't vary much, and it is a nice round 1 kJ/kg-K. (K could be C too, as we're talking temperature differences.)
Comments (7)
The internet from China, circa 2017
Posted On: Monday - April 3rd 2023 10:42AM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites China
Peak Stupidity has strayed from our mission lately, wading through the weeds of geekland. This has involved the recent posts about the growth of various websites and the internet itself (at least the www portion), as per Graphical history of the most visited web sites and It's all page views nowaday. I wrote those 2 to expand on some thoughts in the curmudgeonry post Peak Search Results. No, the internet is not stupid. Is it making people stupid? Yes. So, we're not totally off mission here, and getting back to it.
In the comment thread under the post linked-to above, Mr. Hail brought up a few questions about the access to American (foreign, in general, I guess) websites in China. I can vouch only from 2017 and back a decade, but I will start with a quick discussion of the situation from '07-'09.
It was 3 in the morning in Manchuria, meaning I was wide awake. China is about half a day off from America, time-wise, depending on your time zone and daylight/standard time. The young lady was slumped over the counter asleep. I had to nudge her to get service. Doubting correctly that a White guy would know any Mandarin, the girl held up 2 figures, and we both understood for an hour. Whoa, whoa, wait, it's not THAT kind of story and Peak Stupidity is not THAT kind of site! This was an internet cafe, and she meant 2 元 - equivalent to 30¢*, for an hour on-line.
I could get to any site I wanted to, such as my yahoo mail accounts and my favorite political blogs at the time - The American Spectator, VDare, Gun Owners of America, etc.
This was anonymous too. I'd just handed the girl coins or bills for the 2 . Flash forward only 2 years, and these same places wanted to see an ID, which they took and made a copy of. That means for me, a driver's license that nobody in '09 would know what to to with. For Chinese people, that meant one's National ID Card - motto: Don't leave home without it.
I realized that I've already discussed this to a lesser extent in Dashed high-hopes for China - Part 2. (See also Part 1.) Let me get to Mr. Hail's comment.
The year 2017 was the last time I was in China. The connection on this regular old desktop computer was not great, but I spent time going to my decade-later normal websites. yahoo.com (for email): No problem. gunowners.org: No problem. vdare.com: No problem. unz.com: No problem. google.com to search for peakstupidity.com (but of course!) and write posts (didn't have the commenters then): No problem. youtube.com: Bzzzzzt!! That means embedded videos and all else too. One cannot view youtube videos in China.** This was either before bitchute and rumble or at least before this blogger had heard of them. I would guess they are blocked too.
Actually, I don't remember if any message came to the browser, but the browser window or frame was blank. This was a shame too, as I wanted to share some favorite music of mine with a guy there, while in the country and from back at home. Also, as I noted, he could have read Peak Stupidity, but without the videos, you can't get the point of 1/3 the posts.
Here's my take on the whole deal there. The CCP can control Chinese content from China. It can probably control Chinese content from the rest of the world pretty well. These people, though, even with some real English ploficiency, are not going to understand the snarky humor, and subtle and even overt points that Steve Sailer makes. It's beyond them. Why not block Gun Owners due to "the People don't have the guns.", then? Maybe they figure that most Chinese people can't read English, so it's not worth the trouble to go through all these sites.
Ironically, I've been on occasional hotel lobby computers that had certain pages of Steve Sailer's and other Unz Review writers blocked. It was weird, as one blog post of Sailer's, for example, would be OK, but another not, and I didn't see the point. Someone "called" them in? Yet in China, I could go all over the site. Now, had I posted not so nice remarks about Winnie the Pooh-for-life or the CCP FROM China, who knows?
* It still is, approximately, as the government pegs the Yuan to the Dollar.
** That is, unless it's changed since '17. Maybe the CCP has new censorship software that can handle youtube now..
Comments (11)
It's all page views nowadays
Posted On: Saturday - April 1st 2023 10:25PM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites
C'mon guys! Whaddya' need a refresher course?
In case the reader is wondering, yes, Peak Stupidity will keep using that bit from airplane mechanic Fletch right on through the life if this blog!
Anyway, when listing the various metrics that can be used to rate the popularity of websites in yesterday's post Graphical history of the most visited web site, I neglected to give one other standard metric - that would be "page views", meaning the number of times visitors' browsers requested any of the pages of the site in question. A "visit" could include many page views by the same IP # within a certain time frame.
Commenter Hail had a long interesting listing of some of the things he noticed in the video. One of the caveats I would bring up relating to number of site visits is that that metric is not always a great measure of web site popularity or use when you compare, say, google to yahoo. The latter being what they called a "portal", someone may have gone there, read 4 news stories, then logged in and read his email, then used the search feature to find another site. Later, on google he may have pulled up that front page and did one search. The reading and use of those dozens of yahoo pages comprised one visit, as did the one page on google.
I will answer Mr. Hail's post in the comments tomorrow. For now, we've got to sign off for the week. Thanks for reading and writing in. Those posts to to come that we keep referring to, more on MTG v AOC, that post on (actual) greenhouse heat transfer, the UK PanicFest unrealized story, and others will come eventually. Have a good night!
Comments (23)
The latest Papal Bull from So-Called Pope Francis
Posted On: Saturday - April 1st 2023 7:47PM MST
In Topics: Bible/Religion So-called Pope Francis
(Graphic lifted as is from VDare.)
Peak Stupidity has been blessed to have not read a thing in quite a while about so-called Pope Francis. His name came up again today though in an Allan Wall post on VDare. Of all the writers on the VDare site, Mr. Wall is the one who comes across to me as the most low-keyed. If he sounds pissed, well... A couple of days ago, he posted Vatican Document Repudiates The "Doctrine Of Discovery" Are All Western Hemisphere Nation-States (Including The U.S.) Illegitimate?. He excerpted some writing from the Associated Press:
The Vatican on Thursday [March 30] responded to Indigenous demands and formally repudiated the “Doctrine of Discovery,” the theories backed by 15th-century “papal bulls” that legitimized the colonial-era seizure of Native lands and form the basis of some property laws today.Writes Mr. Wall:
A Vatican statement said the papal bulls, or decrees, “did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of Indigenous peoples” and have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith.
Papal bulls ”have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith”? Really?Not being Catholic, I wouldn't know. It's nice not to have to pretend the so-called Pope has some divine right to put out a (bunch of) bull. More from the AP:
On Thursday [March 30], these Indigenous leaders welcomed the statement as a first good step, even though it didn’t address the rescinding of the bulls themselves and continued to take distance from acknowledging actual Vatican culpability in abuses. The statement said the papal documents had been “manipulated” for political purposes by competing colonial powers “to justify immoral acts against Indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesial authorities.”Mr. Wall again:
It said it was right to “recognize these errors,” acknowledge the terrible effects of colonial-era assimilation policies on Indigenous peoples and ask for their forgiveness.
Is the Vatican saying that all post-1492 Western-founded colonies which became nation states of the Western Hemisphere are illegitimate?Any bishops or cardinals reading the blog today? (I haven't gotten around to checking for Vatican IP numbers.) Listen, please learn this now, and learn it good: YOU! DO! NOT! HIRE! LATIN AMERICANS! FOR! THE! POSITION! OF! POPE! Most religious leaders there are Liberation Theologists, which means they are Communists. If you're having a hard time recruiting, get Vatican HR to interview in Eastern Europe again, Africa, Newfoundland, whatever, but just don't go Latin American.
So-called Pope Francis has been stupidity working against Christianity by encouraging mass immigration. Now he wants to cancel the history of and pride in everything Western civilization accomplished over the last 4 1/3 centuries. Now there's some papal bull from a real papal bullshitter.
Comments (4)