Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
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“Like I told my last wife, I says, “Honey, I never drive faster than I can see. Besides that, it’s all in the reflexes.” – Big Trouble in Little China
I tried to buy a hamburger with cheese, but they wanted cash instead.
Yellow Freight® shut down. They had been around for 99 years, starting business way back in time when Bernie Sanders was trying to ruin Austro-Hungarian Empire or Bulgaria or wherever he came from.
Yellow Freight© was an old company and 30,000 people lost their jobs. What went on? Well, Yellow© borrowed hundreds of millions of dollars emergency ‘rona bucks. When they went bankrupt, they had an outstanding loan balance (backstopped by you and I) of $729.2 million. During the two and a half years that they’d had the loan, they’d paid down $54.8 million in interest. They’d also paid down $230 in principle.
Not $230 million. Not $230 thousand. $230, so I’m guessing their strategy was to pay it off at $10 a month, which would ensure that they’d pay off the loan in roughly the year 6,079,523.
Oddly, no one would take a risk on refinancing a company that had such powerhouse earnings, and so all of the people who used to have pensions with Yellow™ found out that their pension value would be paid out at the same rate as the loan was being paid out, and it’s pretty hard to split $10 among 30,000 people each month.
I hate to point fingers, but whatever executive thought orange was yellow just might be at fault.
Most of the 30,000 folks from Yellow Freight© will find another job – truckers are still in demand, and other companies have picked up the slack so far.
This isn’t the first. Just like the banks who had money in Treasury paper took a hit (Silicon Valley Bank®, I’d be looking at you if you were still here) because the “super-safe” bonds making 1% were worth a lot less when interest rates went up to 4%. The FDIC™ requires the banks that they insure to report data. It’s kinda scary when the FDIC© uses the X® (the social media company formerly known as Prince) to notify banks (and the American public) that banks might be in trouble again.
I guess no one is making them account for their problems?
The same thing is, perhaps, happening to the dollar itself – today lost its AAA bond rating from Fitch™ and is now producing AA bonds. Still a good rating, but it’s a big hit from “nearly perfect plus has nuclear missiles” and the first step to becoming a “drunk wine aunt country that can’t afford to take vacations”, like Uzbekistan.
As I’ve written before, it’s awesome to have “the reserve currency”, since that means you can print all the cash you want and spend it on things like iPods™ from China, Hello Kitty™ slippers from Bangladesh, and tequila from Mexico (what’s known as a “Hunter Biden Saturday Morning Special”). Losing it means a loss of that ability, and all of a sudden you have to work for all of that stuff rather than just printing cash.
Hunter Biden’s credit card company called him about suspicious activity. Seems that someone made a payment.
That’s difficult, because there’s always competition in having the reserve currency. One competitor, of course, is precious metals. Another is land. My father-in-law liked to say, “if it blows up, at least you still have the hole.” After the debt ceiling deal (translation: spend as much as you want until after the general election), the debt shot up, climbing $1.8 trillion in just two months. I mean, that’s a crazy number, we don’t even give that much to Zelenskyy in a year!
I know mortgage payments are going up, but just try telling a homeless person how lucky they are.
Eventually that has an effect on all assets. Although Darth Powell doesn’t exactly have the understanding of how home prices work, it is closer to say that at the same payment at a 7% mortgage rate, you can afford a heck of a lot less home than you can afford at 2.7%. Unless wages go up or BlackRock© decides to buy houses because they ran out of illegal aliens to import this month.
Or, if the bankers get absolute control over who uses what cash and when. That’s the goal. Will that happen if things are going well, and we’re surrounded by prosperity?
Of course not. In order to get control, the idea is chaos, uncertainty, war, and mayhem. If you’re old enough, how do the 2020s compare to the 1980s? The 1990s? The 2000s? In nearly every way that doesn’t involve ludicrously cheap televisions, each of those decades was objectively better. I’ve noted before that Peak USA probably hit somewhere before I was born to when I was a little kid.
Why do central bankers never travel together? They’re a bunch of loan wolves.
I’m normally a fan of the idea of ineptitude being responsible for at least being some contributing factor to the problems that we have, but when I look at the gross mismanagement of the economy for decades it almost seems like it’s planned.
But I’m sure I’ll hear Bernie lecturing us all that socialism and more government is the way out from the balcony of one of his three houses soon enough. After all, it’s worked out pretty well for him, what with him never having had an actual job and all.
You know, this costs money, but I’m just thinking of the joy of all of those people in India when they get unexpected packages.
“It’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality.” – Kill Bill, Volume 1
That’s awake, not “woke.”
Repost from 2019 . . .
Here’s a fable:
There was a little girl going to school in Japan. Near her place in the classroom there was a cocoon that the teacher had brought in to illustrate the life cycle of the butterfly, and it was hanging right next to her every day. For a whole week, nothing had happened, but then she noticed the cocoon shaking. She could see that the caterpillar had completed its transformation.
What bothered the girl so very much was that the butterfly was struggling to get out of the cocoon. Finally, exhausting all of the patience that a seven year old has, she helped the butterfly by ever so gently tearing open the cocoon so it could get free.
To her surprise, rather than flying, the butterfly fell out of the cocoon and onto the floor of the school room. She gasped.
The teacher walked over and looked at the butterfly helplessly writhing on the floor. It was clear the butterfly would never be able to fly.
“Did you help the butterfly out of the cocoon?”
The little girl, through eyes that were filling with tears, nodded.
The teacher explained, “It is only through struggling to get out of the cocoon that the butterfly gets enough strength to fly.”
This is one of my favorite stories. I can’t recall where I originally heard or read it.
I’d often tell that story to people that reported to me when they were facing a particularly difficult time at work. I’m sure it just made some of them mad – they wanted me to solve their problems. I refused, perhaps giving them hints on places they should look to find the answer.
One of my goals was to get the work done for the company, sure. But I also wanted to take the time to get the person developed – for me that was a moral imperative. My biggest goal was that everyone who reported to me became a more capable person – and I knew that didn’t happen without the struggle. Oh sure, I could have told Ted where the fire extinguisher was, but that would have deprived him of the struggle to find it. And one of his eyebrows finally did grow back.
That’s how I mostly have used the story, to show the importance of struggle. But there’s another and perhaps more central moral to this story:
misplaced compassion kills.
The Mrs. recently found an article that really, for me, answered the question about why the Left is turning so radical, so quickly. The article is by Zach Goldberg, and you can find it here (LINK), although he takes the data in a different direction than I do for his article. Goldberg has an interesting Twitter® feed (LINK) as well. The graphs in this post are mostly from either the article or his Twitter© feed.
It’s always nice when ¡Science!® is able to provide an insight on the problems of the world. I started with the story about compassion. When psychologists do studies of Leftists, they find that Leftists score higher in compassion than the norm – a lot higher. Well, some Leftists.
Karl Marx had only a very short career as a clown at children’s parties. After he was fired, he insisted that true children’s parties had never been tried.
Does that mean that people on the Right don’t care? Not at all. The data shows that people on the Right give more to charity and also volunteer more hours, so it’s clear that people on the Right care. But they don’t get all mushy and aren’t dominated by their feelings.
It turns out there are differences as well among Leftists based on race. One major bias that almost all people from all time have had is in-group preference. You like your family more than your brother’s family. You like your cousin better than you like your neighbor. You like people in your town more than people who live in the next town over – that’s why Friday night high school football games are so big in small towns.
This makes sense at almost every point in history – it’s rare for you to be living in France and think “Wow, that German flag flying the Eiffel Tower is such a neat thing to see.” In-group bias is normal. It’s why Americans rooted for team U.S.A. in the Women’s World Cup® even though soccer is a vastly inferior game to tic-tac-toe.
Thankfully I’ve reached the “Dad’s asleep in the recliner” stage when the Monopoly® board comes out.
White leftists, however, have somehow become biased against . . . white people. It’s like being born a guy and not liking that you were born a guy . . . oh. Nevermind.
As you can see, there is exactly one group that detests itself and prefers other groups.
But this isn’t the norm. And this isn’t how the Left has been for years. Data shows quite nicely that they didn’t used to be this way – as late as 2010, 20% of white Leftists thought that increasing border security was a good idea. 2018? Less than 5%.
It’s clear the Left has become more radical and the Right has (more or less) remained the same.
Republicans have stayed pretty steady on the border. Not so with white liberals.
What happened in 2010?
Twitter® and Facebook©.
Who would have thought that Leftist extremism starts with Grandma posting cat memes on Facebook®?
The user bases of these social networks took off in 2010. There is one thing that social networks want – your attention. They best way to get that attention? Show you content that creates an emotional response. Cats and babies are great – they make people laugh and go “aww.” But to a Leftist, to keep their attention – show them things that create outrage by violating their sense of compassion.
I hear her next initiative will be to forgive all the Electoral College student loan debt.
The Twitter®, Facebook©, and YouTube™ video suggestion algorithms have become the Democrat® brand. Social media is a particularly useful programming device. These algorithms are used every day to pull the Left farther Left. Why does this impact white Leftists in particular? They spend more time on social media than the rest of the Left. But they’re enough – white leftists are about 25% of the electorate. And they do have money. And they hate the Right.
Through this lens, the reasons for the bans become clear – even though the algorithm mutes voices on the Right, the most effective voices must be silenced. Arguments counter to the narrative have to be stopped. As has recently become quite clear – the Left owns social media and will clear out clear, articulate voices on the Right given any excuse. The chance is too great that these voices will interfere with the programming. An example:
Portlandia is funny, and there are more bookstore clips that are even funnier – this was just the most “safe for work” one I could find.
Portlandia was a series on IFC® for 8 seasons. It mocked (fairly gently) the Leftist culture of Portland. It’s certain that the stars and most of the writers of the show are of the Left. But the things that the show made fun of can no longer be made fun of. Feminism was often the butt of good-natured jokes, but the feminist bookstore that several skits were shot in broke ties with the show after they decided they didn’t want to be made fun of – at all. What had been funny even to the Left in 2010 was by 2016 unacceptable. Feminism could no longer be a laughing matter, nor could any other Leftist narrative.
In 2019, Portland has lost its sense of humor and replaced it with outrage. Antifa regularly assembles a mob of hundreds to shut down any speech it disagrees with through violence. Their compassion drives them to shed blood, but it doesn’t stop there. This same compassion compels the Left to want to give every illegal alien free health care, and a quick pathway to citizenship. In turn, that drives the 144,000 illegals to want to come here – and that was just in June of 2019. That’s a 10,000 person Caravan every other day.
All of this is caused by misplaced compassion, programmed by social media via algorithms. Certainly it’s all a coincidence, right? It’s not like large corporations owned and run by Leftists would have a political motive, right?
“Crazy people can be very persuasive.” – The X-Files
Do werewolves live in warehouses?
I’ve enjoyed Scott Adams for years – the first time I saw his strips were on office photocopypasta in the 1990s where his brand of humor really hit home with folks at the place I was working. So, he’s an awesome cartoonist, and very funny. We’d say things like, “Dilbert’s just like me!” but then realize that we were in color and three dimensional.
Adams also picked Trump as a walk-in winner in 2016 way ahead of the crowd, but was dead wrong on the ‘Rona and the Vaxx®, so he’s not an oracle or a cult leader. But he does have interesting thoughts and I like reading him, and his podcast, while not good as mine, seems to have attracted a slightly larger audience.
So, when he tossed these Tweets® (or are they Xeets™ now??) up I thought I’d share them. Here are the rest:
I’ll admit, I’ve been fascinated by UFOs (the old name before they got fancy and started calling them UAPs) since I was a kid. I’ve been following the unfolding story since the “Tic-Tac®” videos came out in 2017 because any version of an answer for what was observed was interesting. Either the United States had amazing tech beyond anything, .gov is faking it, or it was something that fell into that big bucket of “aliens and demons and interdimensional beings – oh, my!”
Scott presents the idea that this subject is being brought up at the very moment that lots (and I mean a record number) of other things are brewing in the news:
What’s the difference between Hunter Biden and his prostitutes? His prostitutes probably pay at least some taxes.
Is there something to distract us from? Yup.
Everything.
Why? Because that list above isn’t even close to being complete.
This is the danger. Scott describes it as a secret war, but I’m not sure that there are even two sides, since the FBI, CIA, and most other (but not all) organizations are tied back to supporting the Left.
I bought my ex a big diamond ring. She said, “Thanks, but we really need a new car.” Me: “But they don’t sell fake cars.”
So, is all this fake, the biggest and fakest thing ever?
I don’t know. It would make sense that it was. The Soviets Russians seem to have their “it’s all a lie” face on and China’s doing, well, whatever it is that China does when no one’s watching. Maybe hate-eating a box of Twinkies®?
And as we see all of the shiny, sparkly news going on, keep in mind the important things – your faith, your family, and your friends. There’s a lot of news that we get that we simply cannot do anything with, that for many of us is nothing more than a signal of what’s going on in the greater world.
We need to come together, find like-minded folks who share your values, and be ready for the changes that are coming in the world, because if they’re using aliens to distract us, well, they must be very scared indeed.
I’m glad that Hillary didn’t win, because then so many people would have moved to Benghazi, because at least there she’d leave them alone.
Don’t let it make you fret, and certainly don’t let it control your mood.
Because Scott is right from the standpoint that we have to keep living our lives, yet keep an eye out for the real story.
So enjoy that kitten while you can – they grow up so fast.
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“Some actually value wealth of knowledge over material wealth, Harper.” – Andromeda
My butler just quit his job here at my stately home. He said he refused to be ordered around in that manor.
I find it sort of hilarious that economists spend a lot of time fretting about what causes poverty. I love economics, but often think that they create pocket universes to study that have no real connection to the here and now. I think that’s called sniffing their own . . . uh . . . emissions.
But sometimes it’s not just economists who ask the wrong question. As bad as they are, the worst offenders are politicians. Let’s start with the dumbest question that has been asked in my lifetime (at least in the United States):
“What causes poverty?”
That’s letting Whoopi Goldberg loose in a chocolate factory stupid. It doesn’t help the chocolate and leaves Whoopi sticky and needing an insulin shot.
But why is that a stupid question?
Because poverty is the dominant condition of humanity everywhere since we didn’t have two rocks to fight over. People throughout history have been devastatingly, living in mud hut, sleeping in straw beds filled with more bedbugs than straw. Mary and Joseph had to walk uphill, both ways, to get to the manger.
That’s a joke that keeps you coming back for myrrh.
Only in rare times, and only for a small percentage of the population of the world have some humans felt prosperity. Fewer still have felt prosperity for most of their lives. Fewer still experienced enough wealth in their society for them to think that wealth was normal, and poverty was the exception. We call them Pampered Coastal Elite Leftists.
Why? Because every farmer in the Midwest, every rancher in the High Plains, and every shrimper in the Gulf (among many, many others) knows how close they are to failure, and how close poverty is, especially if a free-range Whoopi Goldberg is free to eat and trample their crops.
Ma Wilder was impacted by the Depression (she was a lot older than my biological Mom, I was adopted) to the point that, living up on Wilder Mountain she’d save aluminum foil and old pickle jars and have enough food for six months because, “You just never know when you’ll need it.” It was kinda cute until she made us re-use Q-Tips®.
The Wolf is always at the door.
I couldn’t find the wolf, which I guess makes it a where-wolf.
So, the question to ask isn’t “what makes people poor”. We can see that as all the systems around us break down like they are now when morons are at the helm.
We should ask the important question: “What makes us wealthy?”
That’s a much better question to ask, since LBJ’s War on Poverty has just subsidized being poor and created a permanent underclass of voters for Leftists to farm, dependent on the Left for a constant stream of handouts. If you were late to Leftist language class, that’s their word for “compassion”.
So, what makes us wealthy? I can only go from history in those places where the world has deviated from the “nasty, brutish, and short” version of life to that “shining city on the hill”. What matters?
The first thing that comes to mind is Liberty, tempered with Virtue.
When a kangaroo gets hurt, it requires a hop-eration.
Liberty is important, but Virtue tempers Liberty and creates a boundary, otherwise Opium and Fentanyl Den™ would be the new Waffle House®. Or is that the existing Waffle House© after 2am?
What Liberty does is provides options, for millions of people to make individual decisions on how to better serve fellow citizens. Virtue means that they shouldn’t destroy their fellow citizens in the process, since that’s generally bad for business. I guess that cigarette companies have found that it’s okay if you kill them slowly after decades.
Not only that, it’s regulation. Who loves regulation? Big companies. Regulations make it hard for small companies to start, make it hard for them to compete, but increases their profit margin. I mean, I would have loved to compete with Pfizer® with my “Super Saline Covid Injection” that didn’t cause myocarditis, but they would probably want to make sure mine was entirely WD-40® free.
Which would still likely have been better for people than the mRNA Vaxx. But who is counting? Not the CDC®.
What else?
I hear Senator Mitch McConnell stole my rabbit. Mitch better have my bunny.
Intelligence. If you ask ChatGPT® about the correlation between intelligence and national prosperity it blows a fuse. Bing™ chimes right in: “There is a correlation between IQ and economic prosperity. A one point increase in IQ is associate with a 4% increase in welfare for the average country. High IQ is associated with high per-capita GDP and fast economic growth, as well as more equal income distribution.”
Ouch! That’ a truth bomb that most folks don’t want to hear. IQ is not really something that anyone can change for the better. Sure, I can drink a few shots of Jim Beam® and take mine down, but what I’ve got, is what I’ve got, from birth.
But smart people in an economy can keep a more stable economy, and can better grow a complex economy than a group of people who don’t know what vowels are. Sure, I’d like to think that groups of dumb people could get together and solve the nuclear fusion problem, but I’ve met dumb people – they can’t figure out how to split a restaurant tab without a knife fight then a follow-up sacrifice of a live chicken to Gorto the Destructor god.
Or I could have just said, “Imagine Haiti” and everyone would know what I meant.
Why is Haiti spelled without an “e”? Simple. They hate e.
Again, I’m not blaming Haitians for making Haiti, well, Haiti, but if you want to cry, go look over the difference in income between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I’ll save you the time – the Dominican Republic has nine times the per capita income, despite being on the same exact island. The data I found (on the ‘net, mind you) has the Dominican Republic has an average IQ of 80. Haiti has an average IQ of 67.
Haiti has an average intellectual capacity (if this data is correct) at the level where Social Security would consider them disabled (on average).
Having great resources? That doesn’t appear to help. It’s the System. It’s the People. If Hong Kong and Singapore can create wealth out of zero resources in a location that almost anyone in the United States would consider so crowded they’d have to make an appointment to change their mind, it’s not space, it’s not stuff.
We can change our laws to allow more Liberty and increase Virtue and reverse the trends away from the nonsense of the last fifty years that encourage large corporate growth at the expense of the People.
But if we change out our People?
Who are we? Will we see the continuation of turning our cities into Haiti on the half shell?
Studies of the genetics of dead Romans (LINK) showed that “intelligence increased from the Neolithic Era (Z= -0.77) to the Iron Age (Z= 0.86), declines after the Republic Period and during the Imperial Period (Z= -0.27).”
Why did Rome fall? Many reasons. It lost Liberty, it lost Virtue, and it replaced Romans with people who weren’t Romans.
Wonder if we’ll learn this time around?
“We’re gonna need some more FBI guys, I guess.” – Die Hard
The Mrs. is a lot like an FBI agent. She never asks a question she doesn’t already know the answer to.
When I was just a wee Wilder, I began to doubt the government.
I was fairly young when I heard about the secret files that J. Edgar kept on powerful people in order so that he could maintain his perch atop the FBI® that he had created. Hoover had spent decades developing not only a United States Police Force, but the aptly-named Hoover sucked up all the data on people that he could. Hoover likely gave favors to hundreds of people by not sharing their dirty secrets so that he could maintain his perch. It was so bad that I think Hoover even invented the Memory Foam® mattress so he could blackmail people.
Hoover also was a genius at self-promotion. He made the “G-Men” a meme in the 1930s, trying to set up a propaganda campaign to convince the American public that the FBI®, instead of being an unnecessary internal police and propaganda forum, was instead just like Superman™ – the paragon of truth, justice, and the American way®. Oddly, both of those ideas are fiction.
Superman® challenged Chuck Norris to a fight. Loser had to wear their underwear on the outside.
Instead, the agents have spent their time illegally wiretapping (over 7,000 times by 1985, who knows how many more now) American civilians. The FBI© was more than happy to also jump in and get involved in:
Everything in italics above is from the last 10 years. This is another reason not to trust Italians, I guess. But in the last decade it’s almost all extremely partisan in nature, showing that the FBI™ could probably just be renamed the Grand Enforcement, Support, Tyranny and Police Organization (GESTaPO) of the Democratic Party. As the Leftists keep whining, they want to safeguard “Our Democracy”. Sounds very good until you being to understand that “Our” doesn’t include you or me.
In a moment of clarity, the FBI decided to dedicate themselves to the mission of fighting crime. Just kidding.
I do know that FBI® has done some good things in the past, especially when it came to rooting out commies after World War II. Say what you want about Hoover, but he did hate commies. But as it stands here in 2023, the FBI© has become a liability for anyone who is actually interested in freedom.
The problem comes from breaking the Constitution. The idea of Federalism is that we don’t have parallel laws, we have a single set of laws. If the state regulates insurance or regulates mustache length, why should the Feds do it, too? Well, what about kidnapping? That’s one that can cross state lines, right?
The Lindbergh kidnapping case led to a law that let the FBI® look into kidnappings.
Did you know you can fit 34 bananas in a kangaroo pouch? Also? I have a lifetime ban from the zoo.
The big idea was to look at crimes and figure out how to get involved. It turns out, the Federal government which was intentionally small because the Founding Fathers mainly just wanted to be left alone to mostly do what they wanted, as long as it didn’t violate state, county or city law. Federal law? There were a few back in the day (see: Whiskey Rebellion) but most laws were local. Murder someone and have it be a Federal issue?
Not going to happen.
Well, back in 1787 it wasn’t going to happen. But after decades of creeping laws encouraged by propaganda, the FBI™ only strengthened with time. Like a camel with a nose under the tent, the FBI© now looks into (spins wheel) things they don’t like (not illegal things, mind you, just things the FBI© didn’t like) said on the Internet.
My puns aren’t listed as a war crime. Yet.
The last example is real – the FBI worked with social networks and Internet companies to stop the spread of information that would be damaging to the Democratic party.
The FBI® is now a fully partisan appendage of state power. It always existed to support itself, but now it explicitly exists to support parties and politicians instead of the American people.
The fact that this doesn’t surprise anyone is perhaps the most telling thing about where we are as a people. The FBI™ is shown to be institutionally corrupt at the highest and lowest levels and (probably) irretrievably partisan for the Left and . . . no one is surprised.
Hmm, wonder why I’m getting all these hits from Washington and Langley?
“The Moon Unit will be divided into two divisions: Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa.” – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
There’s always that one kid who won’t smile in the team picture.
(Repost from 2019)
I was at a garage sale the other day when I came across a small leather-bound journal in a box filled with Tupperware®. Embossed on the worn cover was a now faded and flecked NASA logo that had once been a solid, shiny gold. In the lower right-hand corner I noticed, so faded they were barely visible, two initials: N.A. I flipped through and saw page after page of journal entries in what I assumed to be Neil Armstrong’s printed writing. I quickly paid the $2.50 price on the orange sticker on the book.
Here are the journal entries:
7/14/69, 21:00:00 GMT
Countdown begins. I will admit to being a bit excited. A rocket launch is never a routine event. They’ve kept us busy though, re-practicing procedures, re-reviewing maps of the Sea of Tranquility, and, for Buzz Aldrin, eating meals consisting entirely of re-fried beans. He says it’s for luck. Michael Collins continues to be . . . Michael Collins. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him smile. Or blink.
7/16/69, 07:22:15 GMT
Last shower, shave and breakfast. Collins doesn’t eat anything, stares blankly ahead – I guess that’s the way he deals with stress. Buzz had 16 cups of coffee – I counted them – and about thirty eggs. “For luck.”
Fun fact: your car insurance may cover you if you’ve got a rental, but generally not if you leave the United States.
7/16/69, 13:00:00 GMT
Ignition of the main engines, then 17 long seconds later, liftoff as the Saturn V slowly moves past the tower. The first stage burns for three minutes, total, and then stage two kicks in after a brief lull, and burns for nearly six minutes. Two minutes later, we’re in orbit. All of this is exactly as planned, exactly as written down in the procedures. Eleven minutes for Apollo 11 to enter orbit. That’s got to be a good omen.
For the first time in the mission, we’ve got some time to kill. I can’t stop smiling. Collins continues to stare directly ahead. “Mike, are you doing okay?”
He slowly turned his head towards me: “All of my systems are operating at nominal levels.” He then turned his head back towards the controls.
Does he blink? I’m interrupted by groaning coming from Buzz.
“Oh, man, I’m hurting. I didn’t think about the pressure differential.” He’s holding his stomach.
The pressure inside the Apollo Command Module, Columbia, is only 5psi, or the pressure at the top of Mount Everest. At sea level on Earth, the pressure is 15psi, or three times as much. We don’t pass out, because the atmosphere is 100% oxygen.
Apparently the food that Buzz ate is causing him discomfort. A minute later, Buzz sighs.
It smells horrible. I said, “Oh, Buzz, how could you?” My eyes are watering. Eggs and beans. The smell is nearly incapacitating.
Even Collins jumped in, “My nasal sensors detect a significant increase in organic gasses in the atmosphere.”
Collins was rechargeable, thankfully.
Mission Control: “Apollo, are you alright up there? We have just monitored a significant increase in methane in the cabin? If this keeps up, your atmosphere will become explosive. Do you have a situation?”
Buzz sighs again.
7/16/69, 16:16:16 GMT
Translunar injection burn started – that’s the boost that gets us to the Moon. Six minutes later, we’re on the way. Thankfully Buzz’s extravehicular emissions end about an hour later and the atmospheric scrubbers manage to keep the atmosphere safe until Buzz is finished.
7/16/69, 16:56:03 GMT
While we’re on the way, it’s time to dock with the Lunar Module. It’s in that last stage that boosted us to the Moon. Buzz then gets an idea.
“Hey, let’s change the name of the Lunar Module from Eagle to something else. How about we name it something funny, like Soviets Suck?”
I’m against this. “Buzz . . . we can’t do that. NASA already has the t-shirts printed.”
Buzz continues, “Okay, let’s vote on it. All in favor?” Only Buzz raised his hand.
Collins added, still staring straight ahead: “This violates mission parameters.”
7/17/69, 00:04:00 GMT
We go on television four times over the next two days. Collins follows the NASA script exactly, word for word. Aldrin brings up his new product, Aldrin’s Hair Care for Men®, along with Aldrin Cola© and Aldrin Paste™, which I believe to either be toothpaste or silverware polish. I think it must be toothpaste because he says it’s perfect for astronauts – “it’s zero cavity.” NASA has a private radio conversation with him after the first time he promotes his products.
The long distance rates shut that particular business down.
We can hear his side of the conversation: “What are you going to do, send NASA police up here and put me in NASA jail? Ha!”
It’s about this point that Buzz starts to try to read over my shoulder as I write in this journal. He pretends he’s not looking when I catch him.
7/19/69, 17:27:47 GMT
Lunar orbit. We’ll spend about a day here while we get ready to go down to the Moon. I’m starting to get a little irritated with Aldrin. First, there’s the humming. He won’t stop humming the theme to the Wild, Wild West®. Then, there’s his ear hair. Doesn’t he know that it’s there? It’s this one, long, 2 inch hair coming out of his ear.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I swear I hear a faint whirring, as if from small electric motors and gears from Collins during sleep period. Maybe it’s the space ship. I hope it’s the space ship.
7/20/69, 17:44:00 GMT
Lunar Module undocked. When we said goodbye to Collins, Buzz made a joke, “Hey, don’t go out joyriding while we’re gone!” Collins said, “No. I will be in rest mode while you are gone to conserve supplies.” Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Michael eat during the trip so far.
7/20/69, 20:17:39 GMT
The Soviets Suck Eagle has landed! This is the first gravity we’ve had in days. Aldrin immediately takes the opportunity to, umm, do things that are easier in gravity. The Lunar Module doesn’t have a vent fan, but we will dump the atmosphere when it’s time for our EVA. Which can’t come soon enough.
7/21/69, 02:56:15 GMT
First step on the Moon! On one hand, it’s pretty exciting. On the other, the responsibility is pretty big. Buzz follows behind me after about twenty minutes. He’s sulking – we rock-paper-scissored for the chance to go first, and he lost. He always, and I mean always throws rock. Speaking of which, it’s time to collect a few.
Heck, we can’t even do it since we’ve started using the metric system a little.
7/21/69, 05:11:13 GMT
The walk on the Moon is complete. We’re supposed to sleep, but we’re on the Moon. Buzz tries to tell spooky stories, but I’ve heard the one about the hook on the spaceship door before. He tries to make it scarier by thumping on the wall of the Soviets Suck Eagle. I remind him that even though the wall is supposed to be tougher than a steel beer can, we left the duct tape on Columbia.
Thankfully we were AAA members.
We’re supposed to sleep. Aldrin is laying down on the floor, and I’m propped up on the ascent engine cover. Not really sleeping, neither is Buzz. Finally Buzz stops humming the Wild Wild West® theme, only to start humming “In the Year 2525.” This is not much better.
This was the number one song as Apollo 11 lifted off. Even the Moon wasn’t far enough away to escape it.
“Neil, we need women astronauts.”
“Why, Buzz?”
“Those sandwiches aren’t going to make themselves.”
He’s not done.
“The next time I dump a girl, I know what I’m gonna say.”
“What, Buzz?”
“I need more space.”
Neither of us sleep at all that night, though I do come to the conclusion that there is no jurisdiction that I could be convicted in if I were to kill Buzz.
Yeah, I know. I’m mad, too.
7/21/69, 17:54:00 GMT
Liftoff from the Moon! Heading home.
“No, you’re upside down.”
7/21/69, 21:35:00 GMT
We’ve docked with the Columbia. As we open the hatch we see that Michael Collins is in the same exact position that he was when we left. It was as if he’d never moved.
“Welcome back, fellow humans. Was your excursion enjoyable?”
Buzz responded, “It was like any spacewalk, Collins. No pressure. Get it? No pressure!”
Collins stared blankly and then said, “I am not programmed to respond in that area.”
Getting back into the Columbia was pretty rough. It smelled like swamp and wet dog, and that was after Buzz had already been gone a day. Ugh. Why did Aldrin choose so many space tacos and burritos for dinner?
7/22/69, 04:55:42 GMT
We fire our engine to return to Earth. Two and a half days to home. Did Aldrin really order refried beans with every meal?
If I my rice is too dry, do I put it in a bag of cellphones?
7/24/69, 16:50:35 GMT
Splashdown. I never thought that smelling air would be so wonderful. I couldn’t wait to open the hatch to the Columbia. A deep breath with 100% less Aldrin.
7/24/69, 19:58:00 GMT
In quarantine – Collins, Aldrin and I are stuck here so we don’t start an epidemic of space pox. I can certainly understand why we would want to quarantine aliens so they didn’t bring in epidemics of disease.
There was a two-drink minimum.
8/10/69, 20:00:00 GMT
Release from quarantine. I’m outta here. Maybe I shouldn’t share this journal, after all. Perhaps it’s best if history remembers the official story . . . .
100% heroes.
Okay, yes, this was parody, or at least that’s what my law firm, Dewy, Cheatum and Howe suggests I say. Outside of my supposition that Michael Collins is really a robot, none of this is true. The Apollo astronauts represented the best of us in our nation at the time, men able to go into space, yet with enough humility to understand that their achievement was made possible by 400,000 other Americans working together to design everything from their underwear to the F-1 engines of the Saturn V to the food that they’d eat during the three weeks they spent in quarantine after returning to Earth.
An aside, they really did have problems with bad smells and space gas. NASA even calculated to see if the gas would build up enough methane to cause the ship to explode.
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“Wait a minute. Connie Swail? Don’t you mean The Virgin Connie Swail?” – Dragnet (1987)
I slept with a rich girl who was a bit of a tramp once. Got lobsters.
I’ve had several posts about how sex and economics are intertwined more tightly than a bachelor weekend at Bill Clinton’s place. It is one of the more misunderstood parts of what is slowly destroying the family in the West. This, in turn, will gradually destroy the economics of the West. Without the culture of the West, the West effectively disappears.
This post will be pretty heavy on pictures and memes, almost all of which are as-found.
Let’s take a step back to 1776. I would love to do that in reality, and (in future posts) we’ll look to see how close we are to that. But back to the people that were there the first time. They were, mostly, pretty young. Sure, there were old dogs like Ben Franklin, but Jefferson was only 33. Madison, who would steer the Constitution to completion just over a decade later, was only 25.
Man, John Marshall must have had a hard 20 years on him.
Men were young (even though, yes, the paintings above weren’t done in 1776), yet doing amazing and important things. George Washington was 57 years old at his inauguration, which is astonishing since our likely presidential candidates in 2024 will be a combined 741 years old.
Back then, most men could find a woman and get married, sometimes once or twice (when wife 1.0 died in childbirth). This led to a certain stability, combined with the family economic structure. In this case, most families were Corporate Families – everybody worked, and everybody pitched in to keep things going. The reason that schools had spring breaks wasn’t to go to drink tequila in Cancun and go “woo” but to help plant. Summers were off to work the farm. And fall breaks were necessary for the harvest.
Kids were small farm implements, which is why families had lots of them. Divorces: uncommon. Religion: common. 
Sadly, not a bikini graph.
In my lifetime, the Wilder Family has generally always existed in the tan area, including great-grandparents with a male breadwinner, though Great-grandpa and great-grandma McWilder ran an inn near a railroad where they only rarely killed and ate unsuspecting guests.
The golden age of the Male Breadwinner model was between 1900 and somewhere between 1960 and 1970. I’d note that around 1920 when women got the right to vote that the decline in Male Bread started, though it really began in earnest at the Great Depression.
At least Canada knows the score.
During World War II, there was a need for female labor as many men were given multi-year European and Pacific Island vacations. When the war was over, the decline continued at the same pace as the dual income model became the norm.
Until feminism and Leftism infected society at large leading to the steepest decline in stable family economic structures. This predated the economic decline of the United States, which I date to 1970-1973. Gee, I wonder if they could be related?
Now, Dual-Earner is the predominant economic model, with Female Breadwinner starting to make itself known.
New York Times Headline, 2025: Fathers’ Day: Women and Minorities Most Impacted.
Are there any economic or societal consequences to this change in the economic composition of the family? Why, yes. It’s killing society. It’s killing the kids.
The kids even have a name for it: No Girlfriend, No Work. There are other names, such as No Heir, No Work. It seems that young men have become utterly uninvested in society because they don’t have a girlfriend, nor the prospects of one. Things like Tinder® haven’t helped. As noted below, one young man was on Tinder® 3 and a half years. Nearly 40,000 swipes. 2 matches. Zero dates.
What? What’s going on?
In their youth, women are all fighting over the smallest number of men, the 9’s and 10’s. Since on a slow night, a 9 man will hook up with a 5, the 5 now thinks she’s worthy of at least a 9. Consider a 5 man?
No way.
This is not unique. This is not cultural. This is built into the innate preference of women to date up for offspring, and men to create as many offspring as they can. Here’s an example out of China (LINK) where an (American) teacher gave varying treats to a mixed class of boys and girls. On the first day, the girls got to pick first, and picked the best treats. The girls shared only with the two most popular boys, ignoring all of the rest. On the second day, the boys got to pick first, randomly. The treats were randomly distributed among the boys, so the girls interacted with all of the boys and everyone was happier.
When women pick, the distribution is (at least) skewed like the graph below, if not more skewed.
Most 22-year-old girls can have an 8+, if it’s 2am and the 8+ is drunk enough.
What are the results? Virginity in boys (not girls) is rising. Dating is going down among people who should definitely be dating.
As difficult as that is for guys, women use it as a golden ticket (again, in their early 20s) for fun and prizes:
But when these same women hit their thirties, the game is over. The 9s and 10s are either married to 9s and 10s, or they’re dating 22-year-olds. Just ask Leonardo DiCaprio.
Leo’s max age for dating is 25. And he’ll get 25-year-old 9s and 10s until he’s 75. Look at Al Pacino, who can barely walk:
I’m sure they’re super compatible, since she was born when he was only 53.
The woman who was in dozens if not hundreds of relationships in her 20s with the hottest of men will only settle in her mid to late thirties with a man who meets her qualifications. Those men who would have met those qualifications, being fit, making great money?
They’re married. They have kids, and that 5 (or less than 5) would rather be a drunken wine aunt then settle. Women use youth, beauty, and relative chastity to capture worthy men. If those are wasted on huge numbers of Chads? Off to the wine and cat farm with an empty womb. And the military will fight for that “right”, too.
I’m old enough to remember when the military was supposed to kill foreign enemies, not American babies.
Just like most things, this has a very, very simple solution. To be clear, the solution will be implemented when the circumstances require it. Oddly, the women will be happier, too. And we can finally stop listening to women complain about body shaming.
