Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

A.I.: The Most Important News Of 2023?

“This is the One Ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron in the fires of Mount Doom, taken by Isildur from the hand of Sauron himself.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

I asked Microsoft’s® Bing™ A.I. to draw itself, and it looks like the A.I. is dying for a microbrew.  All drawings this post are from A.I.

It’s between Christmas and Penultimate Day (that’s Saturday, December 30 this year), and I often write about “whatever” during that time frame, so I’ll focus on what a truly goofy year this has been while I watch The Fellowship of the Ring in the background.

If I were to pick the first biggest reason 2023 will be remembered (if it isn’t because of the brewing World War III that seems to be on the verge of breaking out) it will be as the year that A.I. became a reality.

No, I’m not talking about generalized artificial intelligence, but I am talking about A.I. that’s useful enough to start taking jobs away.  This won’t be the first time that’s happened.  Google Translate® has cratered the market for interpreters/translators.  Why?  Even if Google Translate© isn’t right, it’s probably close enough for 99% of tasks that people used to use translators for.  I mean, I can now ask, “What is this growth in my armpit?” in Swedish.

Translator wages have been flat, and in the United States (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) there is the need for a total of 14,000 in the country at a stagnant average wage of about $50,000 with roughly 10% unemployment in the field.

I guess a Googlebot™ will help you pack your bags if you get fired as a translator.  But, hey, free cats.

Without Google™?  We’d need more translators.  Free translation is killing that profession.  Never try to compete with a product, however inferior, that’s free.

Now, I wouldn’t call Google© Translate™ A.I., since it’s just matching patterns, it’s something that could have been done by a whole big library of notecards where it matches the ones that you pick.

But ChatGPT© is very different.  It’s possible to have an actual conversation with ChatGPT™, and a much more interesting conversation than one with a feminist.  Is it like talking to a human?  Mostly not, but I’d argue that it passes the Turing Test better than most Leftist college kids.  Is it conscious?  Probably not, even though there are emergent properties – it does more than it’s programmed to, and in some cases (speaking of current A.I. as a whole) we don’t have any idea how it does the things that it is doing.

So, I guess A.I. is familiar with Harvard.

One version of ChatGPT© (GPT-4) lied to a TaskRabbit™ worker so that the worker could solve CAPTCHAs for it so it could get the information it needed.  The worker, suspicious, asked GPT-4 why it needed help and asked if it was a robot.  GPT-4™ told the worker it was a blind person instead.

A.I. is becoming useful.  It’s also replacing people.  Sports illustrated® was recently caught creating fake writers that were creating content with A.I.  On my cellphone, one news service is obviously entirely written by A.I.  The dates and facts are wrong, and the stories are often entirely made up, on every story (feednews.com).  Based on the types of stories, they’re either clickbait or attempting to influence public opinion (by lying).  So, feednews® is just like a politician, but it doesn’t tax me.

Also, apparently Fox News® never covers news about foxes.

But A.I. is moving quickly, and changing.  If you were to have spent the time to become an expert at using ChatGPT© a year ago, that time would have been wasted.  Why?  The model is evolving, and evolving at an ever-increasing rate of speed.

Science fiction author Vernor Vinge came up with a term for the time in history when, as artificial intelligence begins to feed back on itself, the pace of technological change becomes so fast that it becomes constant – imagine hyperinflation, but with technology.  A.I. art is moving along very, very quickly, and, just like the market for translators – the market for illustrators will be drying up.  A.I. art may not be perfect, but it’s very hard to compete with free.

The concept of the singularity is one that is more probable by the day.  2023 made that clear, and I would expect that in 2024 or 2025 we’ll see commercialization of A.I. tools that replace huge amounts of human brain work.  GPT-4 was passing the bar exam in the beginning of 2023, but what if an A.I. legal tool could review all case law (in the appropriate court system) so that it could help create the most powerful arguments?

So, this is what happens when I input the previous paragraph in the art description.  I know I’ll be sleeping well tonight.

I have made the argument that, soon enough, we’ll be seeing A.I. as a mandatory part of the medical diagnosis process.  Why?  Lawsuits.  As soon as A.I. can be used to, say, read x-rays or read EKG information or verify medication dosages on a commercial scale, it will be used.

Why?  A.I. analysis of EKGs has already shown that the A.I. can see who has heart problems better than doctors.  Soon enough, a clever lawyerbot will file a lawsuit noting that the doctor was negligent because he didn’t use A.I. to diagnose a patient who died.

It’s coming.

The prediction was that A.I. would replace fast food workers, when the reality is that it’ll do a much better job replacing mediocre programmers which cost a lot more than the dude at the Wendy’s® drive through.

Profits will be huge for the companies that most quickly harness and use A.I., so they’re all rushing as fast as they can to make it, regardless of the consequences.  It’s almost like they’re trying to be first to create that One Ring of Power®, because if they can do that first, well, that absolute power certainly won’t corrupt them.

Christmas 2023 – Looking Back

“It’s like Christmas at the Kennedy Compound.” – The Simpson’s Movie

What happens if you hallucinate and see a psychologist?

I was going to write a story about one of my Christmas experiences, but instead I thought I’d write about more than just one.  Since my only boss at this blog is you, dear reader, I thought you wouldn’t mind.

So, for this Christmas, I’ll share some of the Christmas memories I have of my family while growing up.  Why?  Because those Christmas memories are the strongest in the young, but our understanding of Christmas as well as our experience of Christmas changes as we age.

The very first Christmas memory I recall as a child was of sneaking out of my bedroom, late at night on Christmas Eve.  As an adopted child, I might have been looking for firearms or an exit so I could exit if these adoptive parents wanted me to do chores or something.  Or not.  I was four.  Long after everyone had gone to bed, filled with excitement, I got up and headed towards the fireplace where I had been told Santa would be dropping off presents.  I recall seeing Santa, putting presents in the stockings, his back to me.  Or it might have been an alien.  I was four, so it was probably just a dream.  Or maybe Ma and Pa Wilder put something extra in my eggnog so I “slept well”.

That would have been an uncomfortable parent-teacher conference for them, “Hey, he’s thirty and in the fourth grade, but he sleeps well.”

Jeff Bezos doesn’t sleep naked – he sleeps with pajamazon.

The next year, when I was five, I recall that there were presents under the tree.  Of course, I was drawn to them like the Colorado Supreme Court is drawn to crack cocaine.  Being five and having the coordination of Joe Biden biking, I stepped right one of the presents that was meant for me.  The result?  My foot tore right through the wrapping paper, revealing to me what the gift from Uncle McWilder was. It was awesome:  a tool belt, complete with real tools including a flashlight, screwdriver, and metal pliers.  Immediately, I imagined putting the belt on and helping Pa Wilder fix things, like the sink.

Our sink had never been broken to my knowledge, but if it ever did break, I had a pair of real metal pliers and all the tools a five-year-old could imagine would be necessary to fix a sink.

We never did fix a sink, though I believe I did an unsanctioned fieldstrip of an Electrolux™ vacuum cleaner.  Note:  I still have the pliers.

I once bought a three-foot long ruler at a yard sale.

I don’t recall a particular present from first grade, but I do recall sitting at dinner.  Being an idiot, I announced to Ma and Pa Wilder (who I think had stopped drugging my food by now) that there was no Santa.  My brother, John Wilder, kicked me savagely under the table.

“Ow!  Why did you do that???”

“You idiot, now they won’t give us presents for our stockings!”

I’ve written about second grade before, here:

A Wilder Story, or, The BB Gun, The Black Bear, The Soviets, and Me

In third grade, we had moved to Wilder Mountain.  We were in a very small place while the rest of Stately Wilder Manor was still being constructed.  Ma Wilder decided to make wine, which involved really good, thick balloons.

My brother John and I decided to play a strange version of volleyball using one of the really thick wine balloons over the small pine tree Ma Wilder had made since we were living in a house the size of Hunter Biden’s sense of morality.  Good times.

In fourth grade my brother John Wilder was proven wrong, as my parents really went all out filling our socks.  In addition to several G.I. Joes®, my brother and I got wind up cars that, when they hit something, all of their body panels flew off.  I had no idea that kind of toy existed.  What was best?  The surprise.

What crayon is in charge of answering the phone?  Yellow.

In fifth grade my parents had said we weren’t going to get any presents.  It was part of a deal – they were going to buy some new snowmobiles, and because of the expense, those would be our Christmas presents.  To be fair I was fine with that – a snowmobile is just awesome.  But, my parents lied, and on Christmas Day we found lots and lots of presents under the tree.  What were they?  Boardgames, galore.  Everything from Mousetrap® to Clue™ to giant checkers.

The present I remember most from sixth grade was one from my brother – he got me the cassette version of Alice Cooper’s album, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell.  An odd Christmas present?  Sure.  But I’ll never cry.

Welcome to my lunchline . . .

Seventh grade brought probably one of the most peaceful Christmas Days from my youth.  I recall on Christmas Day quietly doing a Star Wars™ jigsaw puzzle.  If ever there was a day where there wasn’t a single problem, no strife, nothing but a completely happy time spent with my family growing up, this was the day.

The biggest present I recall for Christmas in my eighth grade year was a Nerf® football, which my brother and I promptly took and threw in the driveway for hours on an unseasonably warm Christmas Day.

As a freshman, my brother and I were out shopping for Christmas presents for Ma and Pa Wilder.  One gift I saw was a towel.  It wasn’t just any towel, but one that had metal snaps and the Everlast® logo.  It looked like boxer’s trunks when you wrapped it around your waist.  This was the era of Rocky™, and I told my brother, “Man, that’s cool.”

He said, “Yes, it is.  I like it, and I’m buying it, for me.”  I was only slightly disappointed, since he had the money, and I didn’t.  Imagine my surprise on Christmas morning when I unwrapped his present to me and found . . . the towel.

I named my pet rock “Rocky” – not because it’s a rocky, but because it has trouble speaking.

When I was a sophomore, all the varsity wrestlers shaved our heads.  Why?  I have no idea.  We were in high school.  Ma Wilder took great amusement in this, and, for Christmas, she made me a knit hat in my high school colors.  The hat was ludicrously long, and perfect in every way.

My junior year was the last year that my brother was with us before he got married, so, in a sense, it was the last, close family Christmas.  Pa Wilder could see the nerd in me, and my present that year was an HP-15C programmable calculator that used reverse Polish notation (RPN).  Back then, HP™ had no equal.

My senior year, I recall that Pa Wilder gave me a metal puzzle – one that he had given all of his friends that year.  Made of brass, it wasn’t a hard puzzle, but I still have it, a memory of the last Christmas before college.

Going through this, it’s interesting (to me, at least) to see the changes over time as I moved from greedy excitement to looking for meaning and peace.  This year?  Not sure I’m getting a present at all, and I’m certain I don’t need one.  I’m also not sure if there’s going to be a Monday post, I’ll give myself permission to skip it if we’re having a good time here at Stately Wilder Manor.

I hope your Christmas is a wonderful one, and brings you peace and meaning as well.

2023: The Funniest Year-End Review You’ll Read Today, Probably

“Ten years I’ve been working in this town, that man never gave my food a good review.” – Psych

Why do skydiving companies get great reviews? Only the survivors rate it.

Every year here at Wilder, Wealthy and Wise, I like to end the year with a look back at how ludicrous and pointless that year was. 2023 is, so far, no different, but there’s still 11 days left for it to either get sillier or for them to indict Trump.

January 3

After 754 days of voting, a bloodletting, and an oath to the grim god Gorto the Nasal, Kevin McCarthy is elected Speaker of the House.

January 9

Joe Biden’s lawyer confirms that Joe had classified documents in his office, garage, closet, and several nuclear codes were stuffed in his Depends™. Biden’s lawyer contends, “It’s okay because he’s not Trump and we couldn’t read the nuclear codes because the ink was urine-soluble.”

January 24

Former VP Mike Pence notes that in a search, he found several classified documents, too, although his were wrapped around 30 pieces of silver. In related news, Pence announced the forming of his new heavy metal group, Judas Pence.

I guess Tom Brady and Robert Kraft both went to Florida for happy endings.

February 1

Tom Brady announces he will stop playing pro football and attempt to become Taylor Swift’s boyfriend or immortal, whichever is easier.

February 3

A train carrying hazardous chemicals derails in East Palestine, Ohio, causing mass evacuations and still not quantified environmental damage. As no Palestinians or Israelis were involved, it was quickly forgotten. Biden quickly uses the event to request more aid for Ukraine. BUT DON’T WORRY ABOUT OHIO – LOOK! – THERE’S A CHINESE SPY BALLOON!!!!!!

February 20

President Biden makes a surprised visit to Kiev. What makes it a surprise is that Biden thought he was just going out to get ice cream, Jack.

February 22

The “Three-Day Special Military Operation” in Ukraine enters day 730. Putin has since renamed it to “Special Military Operation Anniversary Tour.”

March 10

The FDIC announces that Silicon Valley Bank has been closed. Thousands of starlets awaiting surgery sigh in relief when they find out that Silicone Valley Bank is still open.

You didn’t think I’d pass that one up, did you?

March 10

Xi Jinping is re-elected president in China with a vote declared “fair and free” by the Democratic Party of the United States. “No evidence of anything wrong here, it looks like China has successfully defended their democracy, especially since Donald Trump wasn’t elected.”

March 15

The French raise the retirement age from 31 to 32 years of age. There are riots. The French surrender.

March 30

Trump Indicted on charges of “being Donald Trump”. Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

April 4

Finland joins NATO, adding a +5 to the autism level of NATO.

April 24

Tucker Carlson is fired from Fox News™, since firing your most popular host and one of the most popular people on television for no particular reason is what networks do all the time.

Mayonnaise may be trying to kill me. At least that’s what Tucker’s sauces say.

April 25

Joe Biden formally announces he is Joe Biden, and will win the presidency in 2024 so he can “take over and build from the wreckage that the current president created, Jack.”

May 2

The Writers’ Guild of America goes on strike against Hollywood. They are nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize™ for stopping their crusade against good movies and humanity.

May 6

King Charles crowned. Meghan Markle immediately rushes the camera and notes that she’s not king because she’s black and that’s why people don’t like her.

Meghan Markle – the first woman to turn a prince into a frog.

May 9

Trump is found liable for sexually abusing a really unattractive female in the very plausible and not at all made up story about him pulling her into a dressing room in a crowded luxury department store because that’s where billionaires commit sexual assault against homely women. Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

June 8

Trump again indicted on charges that he is, indeed, still Donald J. Trump despite Leftists wanting him to not be Donald J. Trump. Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

June 18

The search begins for the submarine that had been taking people to go to see the wreckage of the H.M.S. Titanic in person. Critics say the submarine name, “U.S.S. Turning Millionaires Into Something With The Consistency of Library Paste” was probably not to blame.

June 23

The Wagner Group begins a march on Moscow, despite it being June and Prigozhin not having reservations. The march ends when Prigozhin is given several gift cards and a Happy Meal™ with a Transformers© toy.

June 29

The Supreme Court rules that colleges and universities can no longer discriminate against people based on their skin color. Harvard™ and Yale© announce an immediate initiative to bring in hair texture and tendency not to sunburn as a specific reason for admission.

I guess a guy in a wheelchair could be a sit-down comedian?

July 27

Hunter Biden’s plea deal sentencing the United States government to give Hunter Biden an apology and $23,000,000 for inconveniencing Hunter by stopping him from snorting coke off of hookers while taking naked pictures of himself falls through when OMIGOSH! ALIEN HEARING IN CONGRESS! IGNORE HUNTER! ALIENS! IT’S REAL I TELL YOU!

August 1

Trump again indicted on charges that, despite being warned, he is still Donald J. Trump. Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

August 8

Hawaii wildfires break out, and Joe Biden immediately announces more funding for Ukraine to the tune of “a gazillion trillion”. For residents of Hawaii, Biden promises a “buy one get one free” coupon to Subway™.

August 14

Trump again indicted on charges that, he is “still breathing and stuff.” Leftists everywhere say, “We’ve finally got him this time.”

August 23

Wagner Group leader Prigozhin is killed in a totally accidental and coincidental plane crash. Shards of shrapnel from a Transformers™ Happy Meals© toy are suspected to have caused the malfunction.

Is Prigozhin really the only one who didn’t see this coming?

September 14

Queen Elizabeth II is still dead. Meghan Markle announces that she has assumed a new form, Mega Markle, and will eventually usurp the throne after her dragons are full grown and that, “Those meanies are gonna be sorry!”

September 28

Dianne Feinstein passes away at the age of 1371 years old. She is survived by her great grandson, Count Chocula®.

October 3

Kevin McCarthy sacrificed to Gorto and removed as Speaker of the House in a mostly peaceful ceremony. Three weeks later, Mike Johnson of Louisiana is elected Speaker, after promising “gumbo, elephant rides, pantyhose, and hot sauce” for everyone.

November 8

The Vatican decides that the new basis of Canon Law is that “anything goes, and if it feels good, do it.” It is also announced that Holy Water is a dated concept, and will be replaced by “Holy Lube”.

I used to take dead raccoons with me when I traveled by air. It was my carrion luggage.

November 14

Xi Jinping visits the United States and San Francisco shows they can clean up crime and the streets, but only for a foreign communist ruler. I mean, you have to look good for him, right?

December 3

Venezuela decides, “What the heck, let’s go get some oil” and decides to invade Guyana. Venezuela’s sixteen-man army with six working helicopters quickly crashed after not being able to find Guyana, which was unaware that they had neighbors, since the Internet has yet to reach there and their number one television show is Seinfeld.

December 16

Senate aide allegedly has sex in the Senate. Senate Democrats say it’s okay and perfectly legal, since at least one participant is an illegal alien, and, besides, Democrats are used to screwing everyone.

Most years, I have to make up some silly stories. 2023? Every time I’m showing Donald Trump being indicted in the above list? He was indicted. Can you imagine the excited Lefty flop-sweat each morning at Stephen King’s and Rob Reiner’s house when they hear that Trump was indicted, again?

Here’s to the world being absurd – it makes The World’s Foremost Hugo™-Nominated Humorist writer’s job easier.

NOTE: If you sell something or write something and are a regular commentor, please feel free to link your stuff or site as long as it’s legal and tasteful – my choice there on the tasteful part. If we’re going to build our own future, we should buy stuff from each other (if we like the stuff).

On Winning The Big Fight

“If I owned a company, my employees would love me. They’d have huge pictures of me up on the walls and in their home, like Lenin.” – Seinfeld

And how do we get rid of communists?  We Oxycute™ them!

We’ve talked about the bigger picture recently.  The bigger picture includes Elite Overproduction and The Wealth Pump.  What we haven’t discussed so much is how the Left subverted so many of our institutions.  I think we have the why down pretty well, but let’s go to the “how” of the situation.

It starts with Vladimir Lenin:  “Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”

Yup, Lenin said that.  Or at least someone typed that he said that.  I mean, someone besides me.  And when Lenin said it, it was probably in Russian and I imagine he needed a breath mint, because I always imagined he’d smell like cabbage and B.O.

How does Stalin drink water?  GULAG, GULAG, GULAG.

Regardless, Lenin’s idea was to propagandize kids from the start.  And, in the Soviet Union, he could get away with that because the Soviets had the secret police and the bravado and the people thought they were at their mercy.  I think Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn said it best:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking:  What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?  Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

If . . . if . . .  We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

In the United States we were entirely different – there has yet to be a secret police that could act with impunity against Enemies of the State.  Oh, sorry, forgot about Ruby Ridge and Waco and January 6 protestors and the ATF and FBI.  I guess we do have one, but ours is on a shorter (for now) leash since they still have to pretend that the Constitution exists.

I’d tell an ATF joke, but I can’t compete with their supervisors.

But to get to where we are now, things had to start to rot.  The rot in America really started in academia, specifically colleges.  And, the colleges that were targeted were the education departments of the colleges.  Why?

Here’s Lenin’s statement again:  “Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”

Now, in my experience, teachers generally start teaching when they’re in their early 20s and stop sometime after they become petrified wood.  I think my kindergarten teacher was born in the late Triassic, but my first-grade teacher was maybe 22.

If you’re a Lefty in a rural farm school district, you’re not going to get away with much, especially if the other teachers are all married and religious conservatives.  But over time, bureaucracies always swim Left.  I recall the first really Leftist teacher that showed up at my school.  She was fresh out of college, and was a substitute.  She went on a long rant about income redistribution and lots of other commie talking points.

Someone said I make too many graphs, but I know where to draw the line.

Since it was middle school and she was a substitute, she got about as much respect from the students as Joe Biden would if he guest-hosted Jeopardy!, which is zero.  “You know, you have to answer the question in the form of a question like my dead son, who was in the military did.”

These teachers had to bide their time, move into the administration, and slowly build a majority.  Of course, this didn’t happen all at once, it evolved.  And once it evolved, it did what Leftists always do:  they radicalized themselves more and more until only the most Leftist idea survives.  I was blessed to have “conservative” and left-leaning teachers, but no real Leftists.

But in the big cities and in Blue State?

Lenin would be proud.

But that’s only a part of it.  Pop culture is important, too.  I recall reading once that because Fonzie in Happy Days said, “The Fonz don’t go to sleep without sweet smelling teeth,” that toothbrushing doubled among the 8- to 14-year-old set.

I fell in love with some blood, but it was all in vein.

Propaganda works, and the younger you get the kid, and the more hours that you have with the kid, the deeper the hook sets.  That’s where television came in.

Before the big cable invasion, before the Great Fragmentation of the streaming services and multitudes of video sharing services, there was the Big Three.  CBS®, NBC™, and ABC©.  These three dominated the airwaves, and produced content that was beamed directly into the brains of Americans from when they got up to when Pa Wilder turned off the TV after watching the 10:30 weather.

In between, it was filling brains with Leftist propaganda.  Norman Lear (who just died) was one of the biggest proponents of Leftist propaganda on television, and made tens of millions.  It really was Lear who made me question if the ideas of freedom and nationalism that I’d had since I can remember could ever be funny, or if the only humor could come from the Leftist perspective.

Of course, I know now that the brainwashing didn’t hold, and that we’re actually a lot funnier than the Left because our humor is based on Truth, and the only way that they’re funny is when they set up a construct.  In order to poke fun at the Right, they had to construct an Archie Bunker and use him as their strawman.  And Norman Lear created him.  And had shows that showed that stronk womens don’t need no man (On Day At A Time).

Why are divorces expensive?  They’re worth it.

Those shows weren’t aimed at parents – they were aimed at kids, so Norman could pump his Leftism into their brains when the teachers were off duty.

Norman made millions attempting to destroy everything that made American culture strong, and when Reagan was elected, Norman took is tens (if not hundreds) of millions and tried to continue on building a cultural subversion mechanism, People for the American Way©, which, even now, funnels money to Leftists.

This subversion took decades, of course, and it brought us to where we are.

Thankfully, the tide is turning.  Home schooling is great for counteracting Leftism impact on kids and more people are opting for it.  Places like Modern Mayberry don’t care much for Leftism in schools.  The media chokehold the Left had forever is weakening – they can’t channel our minds on just three channels for 12 hours a day.

Let’s look at the other side:

“Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a state of free men that won’t yield to tyranny.”

Do we want to win?  We have to show up.  With our children.

The Good News? It’s Up To You.

“Winners always want the ball when the game is on the line.” – The Replacements

People keep wondering if the Bowling Alley Killer will strike again.

One of the freeing things about what’s going on in the world right now, especially with respect to the current breakdown of American (and perhaps Global) society is the fact that many are coming to one of the biggest realizations they’ll ever have:  most people don’t care about us, and there’s probably no one that’s going to come and save us.

I remember the first time I came to that conclusion, that it was all on me. – I believe I was a sophomore in college, and realized that to the college, I was just a number measured in GPA and how much I had to pay beyond what my scholarship paid for.  Sure, I had friends at school, and I do know that several professors liked me, but I was on my own.  Well, with the exception of student loans:  for a long time, I didn’t think I could ever figure out how to repay them.

Sink or swim, it was up to me.  It was a cold winter day.  I was having a beer with my roommate.  I remember at him and saying, “No one really cares about us, do they?”

“Nope.”

Like I said, this was good news.  I got to survive or thrive or fail based on my own efforts.  This realization was a winner – my GPA actually went up afterwards, and it wasn’t all that horrible to begin with, though I hear the minimum GPA needed to go to USC is $500,000.00.

What’s another name for an adoption center?  A stork market.

We are at that point in society as well.  Many of the legacy institutions that were created by our forefathers are no longer in the business of serving actual American citizens who love freedom and have no idea how to have a complicated Starbucks™ order.  Here’s a partial list:

  • Immigration: Right now, ICE is on the side of the illegals streaming across the border.  Not you.  You can apply this to most government (both federal and big city) agencies.  Disagree?  Ask the January 6 Protestors if they think they got a fair deal from the DOJ and FBI.  The only reason the FBI isn’t spelled KGB is because they don’t know Russian.
  • Most Colleges: I can post academic after academic engaged in the vilest hate speech.  Do they lose their jobs?    Because it’s directed at you and me, which is okay and is covered under policy 364.3.d.  But make a joke about a trans-GPA 4.0 student living in the body of a 2.0 student?  That’s not allowed.
  • The Military: The officers on the Right have been under attack since (at least) Obama.  Good luck being promoted if you don’t agree with the Left.  With things like illegal alien lesbian mom recruiting videos and mandatory Vaxxing, well, they’ve done their best to filter out people in the lower ranks, too.  Thankfully the most reliable fighting force in the history of the United States is vaxxed illegal alien lesbians.

Just wait until she wants to talk to the manager.

  • Most Government Schools: Yesterday, read a story about a history teacher that marked a student incorrect on the question, “All men have a penis (T/F)”.  Apparently, this is now indoctrination that is deemed worthy of history class where I recall spending a lot of time talking about George Washington’s penis.  Oh, wait, I never heard the word penis a single time in history, except when my teacher was talking about FDR.  Today?  They’re not on our side.
  • Mainstream News Media: Without the Internet, there would be very little division in the country because The Narrative is agreed to by almost all (including Fox™) news organizations.  Without the Internet, there would be exactly one opinion, and it would be presented in crayon.
  • Mainstream Entertainment: Why does Disney® make movies for kids that their parents find to be objectionable?  Because their investors don’t care – they have an agenda that goes beyond making money.

I could keep going on and on, but my laptop is running out of ink, and you already know all of this.

And, this is the good news:  these institutions aren’t going to save us.  They actively despise us and are doing everything they can to destroy us and erase us from memory.  I mean, apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the people on the Right ever created?

Did you know the Monty Python theme was written by someone from the United States?  After all, nobody expects the American composition.

Like I said, that’s the good news.

Why?  Because, just like I discovered in college, it should change everyone’s mindset.  Our fate isn’t in their hands, but instead it’s in our hands.  When I see people like Andrew Torba building out GAB™, I know that he’s out of the victim mentality, and is building a future that doesn’t depend on the Left.  Vox Day is doing something similar with multiple initiatives, from his Arktoons® to Arkhaven Comics™ to Castalia House© (publishing) to Infogalactic© (Wikipedia® without the Leftist Overlords).

These institutions that people are actively creating show that they’re intent not on relying on the institutions that the Left has subverted, but instead on building their own.  In truth, that’s the first step.  The second is to make sure that the culture of each of these organizations that we’re creating is rooted in freedom and the ideology of the Right.  Why?

Because any institution that isn’t explicitly Right becomes Leftist over time, as John O’Sullivan’s First Law states.  O’Sullivan cited the ACLU™, the Ford Foundation© and the Episcopal Church.

Why?  Since Leftists aren’t good at creating much besides starvation and misery, they look to insinuate themselves into institutions that others have made.  And they don’t do it in a good way, building something new – no, they’re like termites, gradually eating away at everything they find until they end up destroying what they’ve infiltrated.

Do termites on a date order a table for two?

Then they blame those that built the institution they subverted in the first place for the failure.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

No, it’s time we take the future into our own hands and build the structures that we need.  Homeschooling is one bright example of how the Right has built something out of the ashes of public schools.  We’re building our own social networks, our own entertainment.

I want my ashes stored in a clear glass urn – I wonder if my family will like it?  Remains to be seen.

We don’t need the Left – or what they produce.

There’s a bright future ahead once we realize that no one is coming to save us.

All we have to do is make it.

The Jenga Economy

“Out of these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.  One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

What do you call a man in debt?  Owen.

After 9-11, sales of the Jenga® game really dropped.

I’m not sure why, but in 2002 people had to play Jenga® the old-fashioned way – by stacking dishes in the sink.

But the game of Jenga™ is a pretty good analogy for our economy right now.  Jenga© is based on taking one piece from the lower part of the structure and putting it on top.  As the game progresses, everyone can see that the structure becomes weaker and more unstable.  The game always (at our house) ends the same way:  the tower, which now seems ridiculously tall, sways a little bit, becomes unbalanced, and topples.

The pieces then go everywhere, and we leave them on the floor for the herds of stray free-range toddlers in our neighborhood to eat.  We’re givers that way.

The economy (to me) looks exactly like a game of Jenga™, seemingly impossibly stretched out and tall.

Pro-tip on how to pick-up women:  lift with your legs, not your back.

Examples?

Well, let’s talk about when we turned money into cash.  The dollar used to be bound to actual, physical commodities – gold and silver.  I guess you could call it an either-ore situation.  Gold was always the preferred, but people who wanted looser money (i.e., inflation) fought to get silver in there, too.  In fact, silver was actually part of the money supply, making up a portion of many coins up until the 1960s when one Jenga© block was pulled and set on top.

Nixon pulled another when he ended the ability of foreign nations to bring piles of dollars and walk away with piles of gold.  He made the tower even shakier as he threw gold out, entirely as a standard.  The good news was that Americans could once again own gold.  The bad news was that dollars were no longer money – they were cash – not backed by anything.

And could be printed at will.  Another Jenga™ piece on top.  The tower becomes a bit wobblier.  And wobblier still as Nixon and Ford and Carter start printing.  I mainly blame Nixon, since he got the ball going, and it took the hand of Reagan reaching out to steady the tower, though that created the very deep 1982 recession.

What was Bob the Builder© called during a recession?  Bob.

Reagan, though, added his bit as well.  Sure, it made sense to try to spend the Russians into the ground – after the 1982 recession the economy came roaring back as The Wealth Pump started in earnest and the stock market soared.  But during this time, the market cheered as jobs left the United States.  In many cases, the jobs were subsidized by the country taking them.  They wanted to build up the industrial expertise so that they could make world-class products and were willing to pay for their economy and workers to learn how to do it.

Remember George H. W. Bush’s advisors saying they didn’t care if the economy made computer chips or potato chips?

Pepperidge Farms© remembers™.

Because it does matter.  Potato chips or computer chips don’t matter if you’re a banker making a loan, but if you’re trying to create the greatest value with the economy?  It sure as hell does matter.

One step closer to living in the Prime® Pod™.

On the government side, fiscal responsibility seemed to come back for a bit with Bill Clinton.  Now, don’t thank Bill – it was entirely based on Newt Gingrich stopping all the nonsense for a few years that primed the pump of the economy.  While Hillary is an ideologue, Bill was always in it for the hot chicks.  Sure, there were shenanigans, but the Jenga™ players were mostly playing it safe during that time period.

But when the recession hit in 2000?  George W. Bush really wanted to open the floodgates, so he started stacking as high and as fast as he could.  War helped him move a few Jenga™ pieces, and low interest rates in his “everyone who breathes should own a McMansion” policy fueled an amazing set of bubbles that ended up including housing, natural gas, crude oil, and what was left of my hair.

The path out of the Great Recession was a simple one.  Print more money.  People aren’t buying United States Bonds?  Heck, the Fed® can buy them now.  We can also pay Wall Street to launder all the bad debt and make sure that irresponsible bank vaults get filled to the top with cash.

Is it just me, or does Janet Yellin look exactly like Benny Hill?

Because, why not?

Obama took some Jenga™ pieces from the very bottom and put them up top because he wanted to get health care into the system.

Trump didn’t add too many blocks to the top of the board, at first.  Trump was mainly because he was focused on deals – immigration, trade, covfefe.  But he couldn’t make a deal with COVID.  His instincts were bad and his solution was just to stack more blocks up top by printing money and cramming it down people’s throats as fast as he could.

Biden doubled down on that strategy:  importing illegals by the truckload to paper over the economy that no longer serves its citizens, spending billions to “reduce inflation” and now nobody wants to buy the bonds.  Thankfully, the banks are scrambling to create weird new structures so they can pretend that the loan that they made at 4% isn’t costing them when they’re giving 5.5% on CDs.

Anyone else feel comforted that the banks have a really complicated strategy to avoid reality?

The tower is now, really, really tall.  And really, really shaky.

And these things never end slowly – they end either with mass social unrest, a big war, or both when the tower finally collapses.  And others have just given up.

When 4Chan is smarter than the Fed®.

For clarity’s sake, Hasbro™ (the owner of the Jenga® trademark) had nothing to do with this post.  I’m sure they’d rather people look at Jenga® and think about the 9-11 than have them look at Jenga® and think about our economy.

The Wealth Pump In America – Two Examples

“We wounded this place, it’s our duty to close her wounds, it’s the least we can do to show our gratitude for all the wealth she’s given us.” – Treasure of the Sierra Madres

Time is wealth – I found out that a fresher kidney costs more than one that’s a week old.  Also, never try to donate more than three at a time – they ask a lot of questions.

I read this week that the UN Climate summit (LINK) is offering food that included smoke wagyu burgers, Philly cheesesteaks, and BBQ at the summit.  This same summit is expected to tell people that they can’t have meat anymore because, you know, climate.  It’s almost like there’s a double standard . . .

The nice thing about spending the time reading books like Turchin’s End Times is that it gives a new filter to view the events that we’re seeing around us.  This filter, or model, is useful because it allows the events of the world to be reviewed in relation to the model.

Peter Turchin’s End Times: There Be Dragons Here

Turchin actually presented two major models:  Elite Overproduction, and The Wealth Pump.  While both are important to a civilization beginning to dissolve, the one I’d like to focus on today is The Wealth Pump.  Part of the wonderful part of a model, is that it can predict what’s going to happen, and explain the otherwise unexplainable.

Never get married on Mt. Everest – it’s all downhill from there.

Let’s take a look at the first strategy:  feminism.  This came on board starting as far back as the 1800s.  Why?  It was good business.  More women making financial decisions meant more customers.  To this day, that’s the case – women make more purchasing decisions than men.

Mission accomplished.

The next idea was to mobilize women into the workforce.  It took two world wars where women went from making babies to making welds on Liberty Ships to test the theory.  In the 1950s, though, those darn women went back to homes, and were making babies in the biggest baby making event the world ever saw.

That wasn’t good for business, and, thus feminism.

Chuck Norris had COVID.  For breakfast.

Feminism has had a long, horrible past.  In modern-ish times, the biggest example was the Spanish Civil War.  The first things the commies did was make abortion legal and to abolish marriage.  Oh, sure, they killed a lot of priests and nuns, but the focus was on splitting apart the family.

Why?

So women could be more productive in the economy.  This is the weird place where The Wealth Pump and commies are in complete agreement:  women shouldn’t be at home making babies, women should be at work making PowerPoints® and tractors in Glorious Tractor Collective Number 171.  Women aren’t loving members of a family, who have the job of creating compassion in their families while the men instill duty and honor.

Nope.  There are decades of propaganda convincing women that being a mother just wasn’t enough – it was beneath them.  The latchkey generation (mine) was based on the thought that Moms should do whatever and find themselves because . . . reasons.  Although my parents didn’t divorce, millions of other families were ripped apart by that abomination.

When stoners divorce, do they get joint custody?

Yes.  Divorce is bad.  Sometimes it is justified, and that requires fault.  But no-fault divorce made it a game show based around fun and prizes for women – they still initiate 80-90% of divorces.  Combined with the government welfare for women using a uterus as a clown car, this creates a society of children who have no real family.  Also?  They have no real sense of duty or honor.

But, hey, we have tons of women who are making wonderful PowerPoints® on how to exclude white guys from jobs without looking like they’re excluding white guys from jobs.  And those women weren’t making babies.  Certainly, The Wealth Pump requires cheap labor, so that brings us to:

Immigration.

The hordes of immigrants that have been coming to this country, both legal and illegal have been in unprecedented numbers.  The American public overwhelmingly is done with this level of immigration – they don’t want it.  Why was Trump’s three-word slogan – “Build the wall” so effective?

Because people want a damn wall.  In many places, they look around at their country and see it doesn’t resemble at all the country they were born in, and they’re tired of it.

The wall might work.  China built one, and they have nearly zero illegal immigrants.

Yet, it continues.  The Democrats crave it like a junkie craves whatever junkies crave after heroin.  I think they crave drooling, which would explain why they like Joe Biden.

The Republicans have and continue to be the “sure, but not so much” party since, well, forever.  Reagan signed in the first big amnesty in the 1980s.  Why?  Because the wealthy folks demanded it.

Why?

Because all the women were making PowerPoints® doing whatever it was that women did in business in the 1980s, The Wealth Pump demanded this:  cheap labor.  Women had been cheap labor, since they could run typewriters while the men did the real stuff.  But when women wanted to move up the corporate ladder and computers allowed people other than women born with the typing-gene to type, The Wealth Pump demanded that we have cheaper labor.

Thus?

Rather than pay a slightly higher wage to people picking strawberries, it was way easier to have illegal people pick lettuce and tomatoes and strawberries.  They couldn’t complain, or they’d get booted out of the country.  Rather than pay actual Americans to pick (or invent picking machines) it’s much easier to have a labor class in this country with no ties to this country and work for less.

Gardening is complicated – someone suggested I try manure on my strawberries, but, ugh, I’m sticking with whipped cream.

Except these Wealth Pump-encouraged people also get free health care for their children, free schooling for their children, and career paths that receive priority over the people born here.  When you add it all up, these actually end up sucking much more money out of the system than they provide in economic benefits to the country.  This analysis doesn’t even come close to adding in the societal costs in lower trust and increased crime.

Here we have the ultimate irony of The Wealth Pump – it creates more wealth for the operators, while it sucks the money out of the entire country.

But, hey, Bezos has a new tramp with lips so inflated that he could use her to transport Amazon™ packages if he inflated them with helium and a yacht that can land his helicopter.  And eat all the beef he wants, even though it’s time for you to get in the pod and eat the bugs.

I mean, it’s your duty to those that benefit from The Wealth Pump.