Big Thoughts – Page 14 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Left’s Blue Cluster Cult: Escaping The Shadow Religion, Pants Optional

“When I came up here for my interview, it was as though I’d been here before.” – The Shining

Today I dreamed of a paint color that doesn’t exist, but I guess it was just a pigment of my imagination.

The setting: back in 2017, I decided to look about for a new job. I applied at a few places, and one was particularly interesting – this one used all of the skills I’d been working on for decades, but in an entirely different economic sector. Think: building big space infrastructure.

The email came back. They were interested. They asked me to do an interview. “Sure!” I responded. But this was before the days of Zoom™ – this was a pre-recorded video interview, not the kind where you shake hands and size up the guy across the desk to see if he likes fart jokes, too.

No, in this case, I’m sitting in my home office, staring into my webcam like it’s a one-eyed cyclops judging my soul. “This is Skynet®, prepare responses, Human Number 43.” I’m talking to a computer.

A series of questions come up, written, on the screen. I can read, so I know I’ve got that in the bag! But, again, no human, no banter, just me and a screen in a digital void. It’s the most dehumanizing interview I’ve ever had, like auditioning for a role in The Matrix as The Matrix®.

The first nine questions? Cake. Technical stuff—group organization, technical development and implementation, the kind of problems I’ve been solving since Y2K was a thing.

I’m crushing it, feeling like a much taller Tony Stark, but without the goatee and smug. Then, question ten hits like a woke freight train: “Explain your thoughts on diversity.”

That’s it. No context, no follow-up, just a landmine characters on the screen.

I know what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to get on my belly to worship at altar of DEI or get booted as a candidate faster than Jeff Epstein’s video surveillance record.

Plato, that old Greek with a beard longer than a Grateful Dead® solo, had a story about a cave. Prisoners chained inside the cave mistook shadows on the wall for reality, they’d even fight to stay inside, not believing anything else could be true.

In 2025, the cave is a Zoom® call, and the shadows are the GloboLeft’s sacred cows.

A 2023 study from the British Journal of Social Psychology lays it bare: the GloboLeft’s opinions huddle in a tiny blue cluster, like hipsters at a kale convention, agreeing on everything from pronouns to net-zero. That’s the lead meme. There is an amazing congruence of thought. The GloboLeft has made the comment that the TradRight has “only one joke” but that’s based on the GloboLeft only having one thought, like a Reddit™ thread with one upvote.

The TradRight’s red cluster? It’s a sprawling mess: libertarians yelling about gold and wanting to lower the age of consent, preppers stacking ammo and buckets of wheat, Boomer grandmas quoting Thomas Sowell and Pat Buchanan. You want diversity?

This is diversity.

But I guess diversity goes only one way.

The Left is so far from reality, their ideology has become a religion, and their symbolic thing they call “diversity” is their holy grail. The problem is that it isn’t real diversity. Real diversity is a country called Japan filled with, wait for it, Japanese. Real diversity is China, you might spot a pattern here, filled with Chinese. Real diversity is America . . . filled with heritage Americans.

That provides a world filled with different people, some coming up with different ideas, some trying experimental cultures that might prove to create innovation that all men might, in time, embrace. Not you, India. Sit down.

Diversity for them is a symbol. It is also a symbol they worship over truth.

Let’s unpack how I navigated this cave and why you should ditch it, too.

The soulless interview, void of humanity, wasn’t a conversation; it was a ritual where they tried to find people who were already following their pattern of thought. The webcam was supposed to be my confessional, the HR diva asking the question the priestess, and “diversity” the sacrament.

No human face, no handshake: just a screen projecting shadows of GloboLeft dogma. It’s Plato’s Cave, but with worse lighting and a “connection unstable” warning. The GlobLeft’s obsession with “diversity” isn’t about different ideas; it’s about checking boxes to signal the same virtues they have.

You know, if we just fill in the entrance . . .

They’re so divorced from reality, they think a rainbow org chart solves world hunger. The 2023 study by the Brits is a flashlight into the depths of the cave where only one idea is true. The GloboLeft’s blue cluster is tight. Everyone nods in lockstep on gender, race, climate, because they’re repeating the same talking memos.

Say “biology matters to life outcomes” or “maybe fossil fuels aren’t evil,” or “men can never become women” and you’re excommunicated.

The TradRight’s red cluster? It’s a rollicking bar fight of ideas, just like the comments section here. Bitcoin bros vs. Bible-thumpers, all welcome as long as you bring your own beer. The study’s heatmap shows the Left’s a pinprick of conformity; the Right’s a supernova of debate. Guess which one’s closer to reality?

The reality gap, in action.

The GloboLeft’s ideology is their new religion, minus the hope or miracles but with mandatory Pride Month. No God, no Truth, no Beauty, and no Good. Those require judgement, and we all know that every good GloboLeftist knows that 400 pound hamplanet women are just as attractive as supermodels because Beauty isn’t real and gravity and mirrors are liars.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

“Diversity” means Western Culture bad, not diverse thoughts. They’ll hire a trans astrophysicist over a straight white guy with a Nobel, then call it progress. An Indian gets hired and only hires other Indians from his own caste? It’s just his culture. A white guy does it? It’s racism.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

Climate hysteria’s another psalm: they swear the planet’s doomed unless we ban gas stoves, ignoring any data that says we’re fine. Even St. Greta the Now Above The Age of Consent has said it: it’s not about the climate – it’s about redistribution of wealth.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

Equity? It’s equality’s evil twin, demanding equal misery over equal shots. Everyone must be miserably poor.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

Plato’s shadows were puppets; the Left’s are PowerPoint® slides with pronouns.

How the GloboLeft see the political spectrum.

Back to the interview.

I’m staring at my webcam, looking at the LED asking me . . . “Explain your thoughts on diversity.” It’s a gotcha, like asking a Christian to swear allegiance to Garfield® as his lord and lasagna savior. I knew the right script, the sacrament. “Diversity’s our strength, inclusion’s my passion, blah, blah, blah.” I’m not built that way. I lean into the mic and say, “When it comes to solving a technical problem, a diversity of viewpoints is essential to getting the right and true answer.”

Honest, direct, like a right hook. Different perspectives—engineers, coders, old-school gearheads, mechanics who fix stuff and the guys who have to run it collide to find truth, not to check boxes.

Do you see what I see?

I tell my brother, John Wilder (yeah, our parents didn’t believe in naming diversity), an HR drone with a clipboard and a heart of compliance about the interview. He shaked his head. “That wasn’t what they were looking for.”

No kidding, Wilderbro. They wanted a hymn to DEI, not a nod to reality. My answer was too red-cluster—too focused on Truth over their false sacrament.

The GlobLeft’s blue cluster doesn’t want diverse thoughts; they want diverse faces parroting the same gospel and then intermarrying to create a world of exactly zero genetic diversity.

Plato’s prisoner saw sunlight and realized the shadows were fake. My sunlight that day was the question exposing the Cave’s lie.

I didn’t get a callback. Shocker.

I won, though. I don’t know everything, but I could certainly spot these as false shadows. Besides, the last laugh was on them. During the interview? No pants.

That’s just how I roll, yo.

Illegal Aliens Versus Actual Americans: The Stakes Of The $33T Parasite Party

“And on the unjust enrichment charge, Richard will agree to pay Hooli for the phone charger.” – Silicon Valley

Where do Orcs go to school? Uruk-Hai. (meme as found)

Enrichment. I mean, who doesn’t feel that when they think about illegal alien invaders, since they’re like Orcs crashing a Hobbit© potluck? On thinking about them, I came up with what I thought was a very interesting idea. What if illegal aliens were the key to . . . a painless recession that helped all the Actual Americans? I mean, by leaving.

Let’s look at the results of kicking illegals out or not having them show up in the first place:

Lowered home prices. Up to 40 million illegals living in the United States, millions of whom showed up in the last few years puts pressure on home prices. Sure, some illegals are helping to build homes, but they’re consuming more than they create. If the invaders left that lowers demand for the existing home stock. Sure, some markets might continue to be unaffordable, but I don’t want to live there. The result? Young Actual Americans would be more able to afford homes.
Crime would go down. Yes, I’ve heard the argument that illegals commit fewer crimes than Actual Americans, but any crime they commit is one that won’t happen if they’re not here. Since we already have all the recipes, you can still go and get a burrito. We’ll keep the burritos, you take the banditos.
Wages increase. Since the early 1970s, the share of wages for the average worker when compared to corporate profits has plummeted. Why? We offshored manufacturing because someone asked, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we imported everything and allowed foreigners decades to figure out how to optimize manufacturing?” But beyond that, we imported hordes of illegal and legal aliens for the jobs that remained because someone asked, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea to import tons of people who can’t complain about hours or conditions?”
Prices for (some) goods and services may go down. Why? Fewer people competing for those goods and services. If profits are high and demand decreases, prices fall. Profits are at an all time high. You do the math.
Pressure for more infrastructure decreases. 40 million more people means millions of miles or roads, sewers, water lines, curbs, and schools. It’s 10% infrastructure for the rest of us . . . for free!

Easiest way to tell if a high school student is on drugs: ask him what a gram is. See! The metric system is useful for something.

Schools have more resources. Speaking of schools, not only does the teacher/pupil ratio get better, but fewer services are required since illegal aliens need enhanced services due to language and “special needs” issues.
Government growth is dropped. Illegals LOVE government doing things for them and always clamor for more. And they get more. GloboLeftElite politicians also LOVE giving illegals benefits that Actual Americans don’t qualify for. Without illegals, this slows government growth.
Lower fraud. SNAP (federal Supplemental Nutrition giveaways) wouldn’t be used to pack the fridges of half of the food trucks in Los Angeles. More food would be available for purchase, and prices would go . . . down.
Lower health care costs. Illegals use the emergency room as their go-to medical facility, clogging it up for colds that an Actual American would go to a doctor for, and paying nothing. Well, they pay nothing. You and I foot the bill for them because they have zero health insurance (except for government handouts), so why not go to the emergency room for a Tylenol®?
Higher costs for strawberries and lettuce. A few labor-intensive farm products will increase in price. Be honest, though: if strawberries doubled in cost you wouldn’t care. Especially not if your taxes and inflation overall went down.
Farm profits would go down. This would hurt farmers. But it would hurt big corporate farmers the most. Maybe they’d have to pay a market wage without illegals pressuring it down.
Lower remittances going abroad. Over $70 billion in wealth is shipped out to foreign countries in remittances. This could be kept at home with Actual Americans using it to buy something they liked instead. Like PEZ®.

Finally, I saved the crown jewel for last:

Higher economic growth.

Well, that might be a lie. Economic growth would actually decrease for the first year or so. That’s the textbook definition for a recession: growth decreasing for two business quarters. And, I’m okay with that, because growth can be good or bad.

Said differently: all growth is not good, and all contractions aren’t bad.

I built a model of Mt. Everest. My friend asked, “Is it to scale?” I had to break his heart when I told him it was just to look at.

What happens if the recession is caused by removing illegals? Let’s look at the numbers:

Since the vast majority of illegals are Hispanic, it just so happens that we have a good guess at the lifetime impact on the economy of a Hispanic person. It came in the form of a meme, but it’s footnoted. So, science. I guess.

Drumroll: in the early 2010s, someone did an estimate of the net lifetime contribution of a Latino. The answer was: -$588,000. Again, that’s over their lifetime. I imagine that illegals cost far, far more than the average Hispanic American. The average third-gen Hispanic American who was born into an English-speaking household from his legal birth and whose name was “Troy” rather than “Esteban” almost certainly is much more productive.

I mean, Troy probably took Spanish in high school and got a “C”.

I wonder what Tay© would say about this? Or Grok™ as of today? (meme as found)

But those are old numbers. Let’s update that $588,000 net cost to 2025 numbers.

Wow. It’s up to over $810,000 now for a lifetime cost. Assuming a lifespan of 50 years in the United States (illegals, remember) to suck up our resources, over that 50-year span, 40,000,000 illegals would suck up nearly $33 trillion.

If the definition of a parasite is an organism that pulls the life energy from another, then that fits the bill to describe this as economic parasitism.

I think there could be fewer illegals than 40 million, but it’s nearly certain their lifetime costs are higher than the $810,000 estimate, perhaps even double the costs of an Actual American Hispanic. So, let’s use those numbers. I think they’re conservative.

He’s lucky it wasn’t the Hawaiian Muslim food truck: Aloha Snack Bar. (meme as found)

Rough calculations shows that every million deported or averted would save Actual Americans $32 billion per year. Deport them all? A net savings for a family of four of $8,000. Each and every year for their entire lives.

You and your family are contributing about $2,000 EACH just for the luxury of having illegals in the United States, not counting house prices, health care costs, depressed wages, and a dozen other non-economic ways I could think of that illegals are making things worse for Actual Americans.

$2,000. Minimum. Each and every year. Could you use that for something? Like PEZ™?

Yes, illegals cause economic growth, because they cause economic activity. But all economic “growth” isn’t good, especially when that “growth” takes away from the wealth and prosperity of Actual Americans. If economic activity was all we needed, we could peg the gauge by just having Los Angeles illegal riots every night.

Imagine how rich we’d all get off of tearing it all down and rebuilding it every week!

Again, you could quibble with the numbers, and I’ll agree that a meme isn’t a peer-reviewed paper. But, what university in 2025 would support a professor pointing out that a significant portion of the population is making the country poorer just by breathing?

Thankfully, this isn’t a peer reviewed paper, since those are often created by an entirely different type of parasite, but I digress.

Could it be that we’re enriching ourselves to death? What I’ve written about here talks only about the financial ways in which illegals are screwing all the Actual Americans. Aliens, both illegal and legal, also put on intense cultural pressure. Remember, diversity is our weakness, and multicultural empires Balkanize in horrific ways based on that weakness. It’s like having a United Nations cage match, but in your backyard. More on that in a future post.

The Riddler™ is fine, but I like the Pun-isher© better. (meme as found)

So, a recession brought about by illegals aliens going home is one I’ll happily look forward too. And their home countries should be glad to get them – I mean, won’t they feel enriched? Besides, I think it’s obvious that I’d never be nice to a parasite at one of my parties – I’m not a good host.

It Came From . . . Patriotism

“Freedom!” – Braveheart

“The most difficult thing about being humble is not being able to brag about it.” – George S. Patton

Housekeeping: We should be a go on podcast tomorrow night, though I’m on the fence on a Friday post, as I just might take the day off.

I’ll change things up a bit due to Fourth of July (or as it’s known in the metric world “Friday”), and have a slightly different take on films this month – patriotic films. In this, I don’t necessarily confine the patriots in question to entirely American patriots – I do allow some room for a couple of films that show patriotism from other cultures. These are in something of an order, but don’t put too much on that. Let’s just say the easiest to include on the list are first, and the ones that just barely made it are at the bottom.

I will say, I liked the way the A.I. posters turned out this time.

So, here are my top 10 patriotic movies:

No man could salute like Patton. At least, no human man.

Patton

George S. Patton knew he was going to be a general in the United States Army from when he was a child. He lived that life to become the enigma that George C. Scott portrayed perfectly on screen. Patton wanted glory, but also was personally filled with bravery and admired the men who displayed it. Patton was for an America ruled by Americans, and was willing to lead hundreds of thousands of men to capture 82,000 square miles (6.3 megaliters) of Europe and capturing nearly a million enemy soldiers.

No matter how he tried to retire, they kept dragging him back in.

The Patriot

How could I skip this movie? Well, I couldn’t. The United States wasn’t given to Americans, it was willed into existence by men such as the one played by St. Mel of Gibson in this film. Interestingly (to me at least), the main character is pulled into military service not because of his zeal to kick the British out of the colonies. Nope. His motivation is personal – his son being killed by a British officer untouchable by justice.

If he had been born in 1970, he’d have been William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland and Walmart® greeter.

Braveheart

I warned you that not all films would show strictly American patriotism, and this one chronicles the life of William Wallace, the Scottish rebel who fought against England to attempt to free Scotland. He failed to free Scotland, but it wasn’t long afterwards that Robert the Bruce did lead my ancestors against my other ancestors to win freedom. Braveheart clocks in at somewhere close to three hours, but doesn’t seem that long. A good film, and St. Mel again chews up the scenery.

Is that a French submarine surrendering?

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

One of my favorite movies. A captain, very well played by Russell Crowe takes his ship on a journey to fight the French, who only surrendered once in this film. This line, about Lord Nelson tells the tale: “The second time… The second time he told me a story… about how someone offered him a boat cloak on a cold night. And he said no, he didn’t need it. That he was quite warm. His zeal for his king and country kept him warm. I know it sounds absurb, and were it from another man, you’d cry out “Oh, what pitiful stuff” and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm. But with Nelson… you felt your heart glow.”

The Soviets weren’t expecting what they got when they parachuted into Henson, Colorado.

Red Dawn

1984 was Reagan’s year. He had made it clear that the United States would stand toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union, and would win. At that point, the country was together much more so than now, and you can see it in the vote total Ronnie got for re-election. A movie like Red Dawn was a slam dunk – plucky American teenagers being insurgent guerillas against an invading multicultural force of commies. Huh – that was back when we could sense danger, I guess.

Well, I guess we know what they serve there now.

300

Submit? To you? Here? In Sparta? No. Because . . . This. Is. Sparta. Leonidas fought against all odds to contain the Persian horde from entering Greece because that’s patriotism. Did he die? Yes. Gloriously. So gloriously that he’ll be remembered in 10,000 years. I think that’s how long the A.I.’s memory cache will last.

I can hear Kenny Loggins now, singing about Maverick after he lost his pilot’s license, “I waited in the loading zone . . . “

Top Gun: Maverick

I found this a much better film than the original. I always thought the original was boy meets girl, but with fighter jets. Here? It’s all about the mission. And Tom Cruise flying that F-14 Tomcat one last time before Social Security kicks in.

“Houston, we seem to have two more problems.”

Apollo 13

Not all patriotic films have to do with war, and Apollo 13 is a good example. The movie is about Americans fighting to win the Space Race and get to the Moon. Oh, we did that already? NASA has made it boring? Well, let’s see how they do if their ship explodes while they’re the farthest away from Earth that anyone besides a few other Americans have been. Excellently plotted, filmed, and told by an ensemble cast of great actors led by Tom Hanks, it’s a movie I can just start watching from any point and enjoy.

Wonder how this would have gone if all the characters were played by Tom Cruise, like some old Peter Sellers movie?

Saving Private Ryan Cruise

This one was the last on my list. I’m not sure why. It does feature the everyman (Hanks) who sacrificed everything because that’s what the orders said to do. It features the shared burden of that sacrifice on those who survive. It’s stunningly filmed, and, though the story drags a bit in the middle, is tense. I think that the reason that it’s here is that it’s the film I’d simply be least likely to re-watch of all of these. YMMV.

If this was a top 10 list – it is one shy. I left room for one I missed or didn’t think about.

What did I miss? Other notable films that nearly made the list include: Midway, We Were Soldiers, The Green Berets, Gettysburg, and Gods and Generals. Gettysburg honestly had the best chance, but I would have had to watch it again, and the movie lasts about 74 hours, or two hours longer than the battle itself. I kid. It’s 271 minutes, or 27.1 metric hours.

Make Haiti Great Again: Send Haitians Back

“Promise me that you’ll never go to Haiti.” – Anchorman 2

Give an alien a fish, and you feed him for a day. Deport him, and you can keep all your fish.

I think that, before anyone is admitted to the United States – even to visit – that we evaluate their home country. If it is awful, they can’t come in. Ever.

The point is that if we allow a significant number of people from horrible places into the country, they’ll merely replicate that culture of failure right here. The United States isn’t a magical place with Magic Dirt (thanks, Vox Day for that term) that suddenly transforms a Haitian cannibal into a virtuous, upright American in an afternoon.

Or in a lifetime.

Trump’s administration just announced that the “temporary protected status” is ending for half a million Haitians in the United States and they’ll have to go, well, somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Haiti, but as the bartender says: “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”

The idea that importing almost five percent of the population of Haiti makes Haiti better or makes the United States better is laughable. If it were true, why not bring them all?

Okay, that would make Haiti better. The real reason for that is that the thing that makes Haiti bad isn’t its climate, location, or even history. The thing that really makes Haiti awful is the Haitians.

If I bring you breakfast in bed, just say “thanks” – that’s enough. Not, “Who are you?” and “How did you get into my house?”

The people leaving Haiti to try to leech of the United States are, probably, the very best Haitians. I know that’s not saying much, but it really is the cream of the crop that would be trying to get out. They won’t improve the United States in any way – the cream of the crop of Haiti is below the average American in every single measurable human attribute.

Yet, they are probably above the average Haitian in every single attribute as well. The elite of Haiti coming to the United States observably makes both places worse. The United States gets a population that’s fundamentally unsuited to live in a first world environment with first world expectations and with behavior compatible with, say, living in a suburb and not eating the neighbor’s pets.

Eating the pets that Americans won’t.

They have no skills that would be of value to the country that would outweigh their cost. Remember, someone has to pay for their food, housing, clothing, education, and medical care.

That someone who pays is you. And your children, who end up in a poorer world and a violent classroom peopled by people for whom society is a vague concept that doesn’t apply to them.

But these are the best Haiti has to offer. There are very few people in Haiti as it is that have the mental acumen to lead the nation – and stripping them of those people makes sure that Haiti will actually get worse. It’s a brain drain from a place where brains are in short supply.

And I don’t think any honest person could disagree with me.

I said “honest person”.

Yet they do. Any differences in human performance are explained away as racism. Sadly, if you tell a dumb person that the reason that they can’t achieve isn’t because they’re dumb, it’s because they’re being discriminated against, they’ll believe you.

Most dumb people don’t know that they’re dumb. To tell them they’re just as smart as everyone else is therefore one of the cruelest things you can do to a dumb person. Instead of there being no reason that the dumb person that can change leading to them being dumb, a lie about a vast conspiracy to keep them down is invented.

So, if the lie is about to be exposed, like when Trump called Haiti a “shithole”?

The GloboLeft must then double down on their lie. For instance, I have been told by Conan O’Brien and every other member of the GloboLeftElite that Haiti is a paradise. No need to make it better, because it’s already great. Oh, and you’re a hypocrite if you’re a Christian and don’t want all the Haitians coming here.

A GloboLeftist walks into a bar. “I’ll have a standard. Heck make it a double.”

Which is why other members of the GloboLeftElite then whine and complain that sending the best and brightest Haitians back to Haiti is sending them to certain death. And who would be responsible for making Haiti awful?

Haitians. But if we send them back, well, we’re talking about sending the top 5% of Haitians who might, with help, be able to turn that “paradise” into a place that Haitians might like to live in.

Oh, sure, you say, that hasn’t happened in the 233-odd years that Haiti has been a free and independent country, but I’m sure the Clinton Foundation™ provide enough guidance to get them on the right track. Why, of the USAID awards to Haiti, you might scoff and note that 2.2% of that money was spent in Haiti while 56.5% was spent in the D.C. Beltway (source – LINK).

I hear that GloboLeftists claim that when Trump donated to a charity for blind children that those kids never saw a dime.

But the Haitians have to go back. It’s time to make repatriations great again.

Next, let’s move on to Somalians and Ilhan Omar. Since Ilhan divorced her husband, does that mean they’re no longer brother and sister?

Greedflation And Burgers And Girls Drinking Beer

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s®.” – Pulp Fiction

Interesting fact: women in Arabic cities like Paris don’t need car insurance. They’re already covered.

Greedflation.

It’s an ugly word for several reasons. The first reason it’s ugly is because I generally support the free market as the best tool for setting prices. You see that at gasoline stations regularly – no station that charges a quarter more for a gallon of gasoline will be able to sell much gasoline. The price for a commodity like gasoline, in a relatively free market, sets itself.

That’s nice, because the very price mechanism that sets the price also allows the gasoline to flow to the consumers that value it the most, which according to my research are groups of post-nuclear war barbarians who hang out in Australia.

I hear they’re filming the sequel on location in Los Angeles.

Some people don’t get this. I recall having extended conversations when I was in my twenties with an elderly gentleman about gasoline prices. He was upset because after some price shock, the gasoline prices all jumped $0.50 the next day.

“They didn’t pay that much for the gasoline!”

Well, no, they didn’t. But because the supply was thought to be limited, the gasoline was worth more. Besides, the merchant was going to have to refill that storage tank at a higher price, and nobody was going to buy his high-priced gas if he charged more than the market when the price invariably went down.

“Besides,” I asked, “If you had an ounce of gold that you bought for $50, would you sell it for that, or would you want the (then) current price of $500 an ounce?”

Of course he said he’d want the $500. But he still couldn’t understand why gas prices went up.

And I only got to take him on one walk.

I wanted to establish that, because I’m going to tear into the larger corporations for lying about prices. That’s greedflation.

An example of this would be McDonald’s®. I’ll pick on them because, like illegal aliens, they’re everywhere and more numerous than they should be at this stage in the economy. McDonald’s™ built its reputation on food that was fast, tasty, and inexpensive – a place a dad could take the kids for a quick treat on the way back from the zoo on a Saturday afternoon.

At least in Modern Mayberry, McDonald’s© has ceased to be fast, and inexpensive. McDonald’s® prices are so high that a “meal deal” costs the better part of the price of a pound of ribeye. To me, that’s not a deal, or at least not a good one.

The stripper said she was stripping in order to feed her kids, so why did she get mad when I tipped her in Cinnamon Toast Crunch™ coupons?

And these prices have pushed people away – McDonald’s™ insinuated that these price hikes were due mainly to inflation and blamed the franchise owners for the ultimate pricing.

The result?

McDonald’s® ended up with declining burger sales, but with record profits. In fact, between 2014 and 2024, their prices doubled. Most of the increase was before the pandemic and inflation. Everyone’s doing it, right? No, mainly McDonald’s® was McLovin’™ it.

The average increase in prices for other fast-food restaurants during that same time period was more in the 55%-ish percent, and more or less in a straight line. They were raising their prices much faster than inflation, but McDonald’s™ was leading the pack.

The result: A lot of “inflation” is just corporations adjusting prices to the point of maximizing their profits. Sell fewer burgers and yet make more money?

Why not! Especially if we can insinuate that it’s really all beyond our control. Perfect!

I actually don’t mind that they’re increasing prices to increase profits. I get that. I mean, if they could sell just one burger and make sixteen billion dollars in profit, they’d be all in. Oh, wait, Lockheed-Martin™ is already doing that with jet fighters.

Don’t worry if the F-35 gets rained on. That only costs about $50 million to fix.

What I mind is the insinuation this is due to outside forces instead of a planned extraction of the greatest amount of profit that can be generated per sale. It’s a lie.

One of the components of the monthly “Misery Index” that I put together is tied to inflation. Inflation destroys the value of currency, and makes people feel, day by day, shabbier and poorer. However, to blame outside forces for your increased prices instead of saying, “Hey, we think this burger is worth it,” is execrable.

The Wilder household has responded by purchasing prepared foods outside of the house only rarely. Once a week – at most. Instead, we’re cooking at home. It’s likely healthier, and I can get exactly the right amount of chocolate sauce on my bacon cheeseburger.

I think many Americans have reacted the same way. And for us, it’s made us less miserable, rather than more miserable, plus the food is better.

The problem, though, is that when big business reaches a size that it can extract all the wealth it wants on a whim and keep posting record profits year after year. That’s not competition, that’s a Wealth Pump as defined by Peter Turchin, and it is a prime factor in the creation of misery and the road to Civil War.

The initial example that I gave of gas stations all competing to get my dollar is the way the markets work best. There are a number of different sellers all trying to get me to come to their station, though they haven’t figured out that if they had hot girls in bikinis they could probably double their business.

And they don’t look like they speak Arabic.

And no, McDonald’s™ rarely forces people to eat there, so there still is competition from substitutes, like a ribeye. I have the choice of whether or not to go to McDonald’s™. Please, Golden Arches, raise your prices to your heart’s content!

Just don’t lie about it, and just don’t expect consumers to hang around, though it seems to be working for you right now. And McDonald’s™ innovates, since I heard that they had a failed beef version of their McRib©.

Who says they don’t learn from their McSteaks®?

34 Signposts On The Way To Civil War . . .

“Who else is on the list?” – The Godfather

Terrorists really help with self-esteem issues. They keep telling their new recruits, “You’re the bomb.”

The devolution of the United States was predicted by Thomas Chittum in his book Civil War Two, The Coming Breakup of America. Although you can find it for free online, I strongly encourage you to purchase it from Amazon®, since Mr. Chittum does get the money from this and has been using it to get families out of South Africa.

Towards the back of the book, Mr. Chittum provides the Civil War II Checklist, a list of 36 items “in no particular order” that he sees as measurements along the way to Civil War 2.0. He wrote the book originally in 1997, and updated it in 2007, so we’ll be marking close to two decades of time between his last update and this quick analysis.

Item 1: Every time you see a blank for your ethnic group on a form, think Civil War II.

Recent Supreme Court rulings as well as President Trump’s removal of DEI at the federal level have taken us back from the peak, but I believe many federal DEI organizations are still there, just under different names. Regardless, it’s a part of our culture now. Check.

Santa never pays for parking – it’s always on the house.

Item 2: If illegal aliens are allowed to vote, even in local elections, it will be another unmistakable signal that American citizenship, and therefore America itself, is finished.

California, Maryland, and Vermont allow this. Check.

Item 3: The abolition of the right to bear arms.

This is one area where we’ve made great strides since Mr. Chittum wrote his book. Gun rights are at the best condition that they’ve been during my entire lifetime. This is the power of a group keeping after it year after year.

Item 4: Watch for racially split juries.

We are here. Multiple cases of black criminals walking free despite clear proof of guilt of them killing white people exist. Check.

Item 5: Watch for the military to assume police duties.

I have to give this a “not yet” since the National Guard and Marines were in an unarmed force protection role in Los Angeles.

Item 6: Watch for the establishment of an elite military force outside the chain of command of the regular military to serve as an internal counterinsurgency force.

Not seen, unless I missed this or the Ghostbusters™ count.

I hear the Ghostbusters™ didn’t wear unusual socks, just a pair of normal socks.

Item 7: Watch for Washington D.C. to increasingly resemble the capital of some banana republic under siege by revolutionaries and mobs.

I’m going to give this a check as the periodic riot fences go up. Check.

Item 8: Resegregation: Watch for Africans and other minorities demanding, and often getting, separate facilities for themselves, another clear sign that they’re continuing to reject co-option.

Absolutely. From graduation ceremonies to student unions to “safe spaces” this is common even though they still claim a Constitutional right to be around white people. Check.

Item 9: Watch for further replacement of individual rights by group rights, group rights based on ethnic group.

This had been well underway, and is likely only slightly impeded by the Trump administration. Check.

Item 10: Watch for non-governmental organizations acquiring military power.

Outside of Blackwater™ or whatever Erik Prince is up to, I don’t see this as significant.

Item 11: Watch for real political power to continue to shift from our elected officials to the courts, and thus away from the American people.

Check. Check. Check. The courts in the United States are fundamentally a liberal institution, and are acting as a one-way rachet – the GloboLeft can do anything, but TradRight can’t change it a bit. Check.

A hamburger walked into a bar buy they wouldn’t give him a beer. They don’t serve food.

Item 12: Watch for more instances of real political power flowing from American institutions to international bodies, thus again flowing away from American citizens.

There has been some of this, especially with the drive to worship Climate Change, and the drive has been to create these not as treaties, but as international “agreements” that don’t require ratification. Check.

Item 13: Watch for minorities and radical whites to continue to seize control of American institutions.

Check.

Item 14: Watch for secessionist movements and other movements seeking autonomy on American soil.

I’ve seen several of these show up on the TradRight, very few on the GloboLeft because they cannot accept the idea of people opting out of their delusions. Besides, the biggest sign of an impending divorce is Mom and Dad talking about it. Check.

Item 15: Watch for race-based political parties, a sure sign of racial polarization.

Trump won 42% of the Hispanic vote, so not quite there yet. Only 16% of blacks voted for Trump, and if that was the only group we’d call it. Verdict: not yet.

Item 16: Watch for the emergence of “no-go” areas for the police in our cities, areas abandoned by the police and left to the control of street gangs.

There are plenty of these in the United States, and even more in the summer during riot season. Check.

Item 17: Watch for a so-called slave tax refund or some similar vehicle that will automatically subsidize all blacks for life.

This has not happened.

The Vatican doesn’t take them though, it’s a PayPal™ state.

Item 18: Watch for court orders and other schemes mandating more voting districts in which blacks are intentionally a majority.

This has 100% happened in Alabama. Check.

Item 19: Watch other multiethnic empires for ethnic violence, a general loss of democracy, increasing poverty, waves of refugees, and their actual breakup in ethnic warfare. South Africa, Russia, Turkey, the Balkan countries, Brazil, all of black Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Peru are all multiethnic empires to some extent.

Mixed bag, but I’ll give it a check as the waves of refugees and poverty are evident in many of these. Check.

Item 20: Watch for the spread of walled suburbs, euphemistically labeled as gated communities.

This continues. Check.

Item 21: Watch for more mind control hoaxes by the establishment media.

This references the fake and contrived news. Absolutely this is happening. Check.

What does Willy call an economic depression? An everlasting jobstopper.

Item 22: Watch for an increasing percentage of minorities in our military, the use of foreigners in our military, the use of UN troops on our soil, or even the establishment of an American Foreign Legion.

This is partially true, but UN will likely never happen. I’m still giving it a check. Check.

Item 23: Watch for more out of court settlements in cases of alleged racial discrimination.

I think most of these are out of court or are administratively done at this point. Check.

Item 24: Watch for more restrictions on freedom of speech by the government and the establishment media.

This has happened, especially on the Internet. If not for Musk’s purchase of Twitter™ this would have been complete, reducing actual free speech to a vanishingly small number of sites. Check.

Item 25: Watch for police to increasingly abandon their traditional uniforms for ones that resemble military and secret police uniforms in their dark color or camouflage, military helmets, opaque face shields, and absence of name tags.

Barney and Sheriff Taylor are gone. Check.

When the military becomes the police, citizens become the enemy.

Item 26: Watch for clandestine groups of white officers to form within our federal, state and local police – groups similar to the Resistors in the Green Berets.

I have no idea. Clandestine, right?

Item 27: Watch for an arm of the federal government charged with promoting racist affirmative action, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to acquire agents that carry guns and have the power to make arrests.

Nope.

Item 28: Watch for the collapse of the US dollar as the world’s premier currency.

In progress, but still the world’s main cash, so not yet.

Item 29: Watch for growing geographic segregation and its increasing mention in the establishment press.

I’ve seen dozens of articles about just this happening and that Idaho is full and that California plates on a car are like a kick-me sign on the back of the class idiot. Check.

Item 30: Watch for signs that the global military equation and American dominance in it are being challenged.

Not yet. We’ll see.

I wonder if they’ll wear plaid?

Item 31: Watch for the breakup of Canada. If Canada does break up along ethnic and linguistic lines, it will bode ill for its neighbor which is an even worse multiethnic and multilingual mishmash.

I’m calling this one a “never will” as Canada has self-immolated with unending waves of third-world immigrants destroying the place. Item Removed.

Item 32: Watch for an increased flow of Americans immigrating to Canada.

It’s up, not by much, and why would you move to Mumbai on the Arctic Ocean? Item Removed.

Item 33: Watch for political and legal organizations formed along ethnic lines that will parallel, and ultimately displace their official rivals. For instance, watch for organizations with names like The Association of Hispanic States, or the Black Mayors Conference.

There are plenty of these. Check.

Item 34: Watch for more help wanted ads stating that job applicants must be bilingual.

Check.

Item 35: Watch for indications that the UN is assuming the role of a world government, and that the US is losing even more of its national sovereignty to the UN.

No. The UN is weaker now than at any time in history. We have, however, lost a lot to international treaty organizations and corporations.

Item 36: Watch for a certain picture. We’ve all seen this picture countless times before, a picture from Beirut, Budapest, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Somalia – a burnt-out tank, perhaps the charred corpse of a crewman protruding through a hatch, and jubilant rebels posing atop the tank waving assault rifles and a flag. Someday we shall see this picture in our newspapers yet again, and this time taken on American soil. The tank, the dead crewman, and rebels will all be Americans, all will be American except the flag, which will be a Mexican, Aztlan, New Africa, or Confederate flag. When we see this picture, it will be too late. Civil War II will be upon us. But there’s another picture we’ll see first, again one we’ve all seen before from some unfortunate land. But this time it will be taken right here in the US of A – a picture of a dirty, ragged child foraging for food in a garbage dump.

I’ll leave number 36 up to you. Here’s my nominee photo.

Summarizing that, my count is that there are twenty or twenty-one landmarks complete out of the total thirty-four landmarks on the way to Civil War 2.0. I think that in no way do all thirty-four have to be checked for war to be here – it’s just a barometer.

What’s your score?

The Funniest Post You’ll Read About Stress Today

“I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.” – 2001: A Space Odyssey

Did anyone else but me notice that they issued red shirts to the crew of the USS Nimitz before they shipped off to the Persian Gulf?

I’ve noticed recently that everyone I come into contact with, even retired folks, is in a state of stress. They act like they’re just one more event away from exploding like a blue-haired GloboLeftist who can’t get gender affirmation care for the unborn baby that she’s getting ready to abort and don’t get her started about Cheeto® Hitler.

Even your correspondent, me, has occasionally had a foggy head and the vague sense I’m exactly one email away from my brain displaying 404.

In 2025, stress isn’t just a feeling—it’s a weapon. Between 24/7 news cycles on CNN® screaming doom to sell you toothpaste (even though we know that nothing ever happens), social media algorithms feeding outrage to increase the amount of time spent on their “platforms”, and a world that expects everyone to hustle like a gerbil on meth, stress seems like it’s planned. It might be.

I left my ADHD prescription in my Ford Fiesta™. The next morning I had a Ford Focus®.

The system loves stressed-out people. Big Pharma® has got a pill for every flavor of freakout—anxiety, insomnia, and that “I’m just not myself” vibe. They make bank on misery, raking in billions with no real incentive to solve the actual underlying issue: A clear-headed patient isn’t good for business. I’m not saying it’s a conspiracy—just a system that profits when we’re down.

Don’t get me wrong: meds have their place for some folks, but slapping a prescription on stress is like putting a Band-Aid™ on a Kennedy. Stress is a bully, and I’ve never beaten a bully by giving in. Sometimes I need an overly elaborate scheme involving marbles and a parade float.

Why Stress Wins (and Why It Doesn’t Have To)

Stress isn’t just a bad day—it’s a parasite that eats what modern chaos does to people. It’s the ding of a work email at midnight, the headline about the next apocalypse, or the coworker who passive-aggressively “just needs one more thing.” Stress multiplies the events, making a minor blip in a day into spittle-inducing ragebait.

But I guess she was plagiarizing herself. Same spit, different day.

But there good news: stress only wins if I let it. I can’t erase it—life’s messy, but I get to choose how to fight. These following strategies are my weapons. They’re simple, mostly free, and don’t come with a side effect of “may cause existential dread” like the relationship I had with my ex-wife.

Get Outside: Touch Grass

Getting time where I am physically away from anything but reality is nice. I can go to my backyard, nearby Mirkwood Forest, or even just sitting in my hot tub with a stogie staring at the night sky. Something about trees, fresh air, and dirt reorients us. We have spent most of history outside, and I think that is why camping is popular – it’s simplification of life and removal from the everyday experience.

Action: Go out and hit the hot tub with a Macanudo®. Or, walk outside for 20 minutes daily, no phone. Bonus points if I spot a meteor or a squirrel riding a rottweiler.

Do yourself a favor and don’t do a Google™ search on that.

Meditation and Prayer

Meditation and prayer sounds like it’s for hippies in hemp pants and hemp shirts using hemp toilet paper and smoking hemp (they’d pray to a bong if it had Wi-Fi), but, for me, it’s just calming down and tuning out the buzz of thoughts that I’ve got going in the background. Often as I’m going to sleep, I relax, focus on my breath, and pray – often the Lord’s Prayer. Or I count backwards from 500.

Results? Five minutes of quiet breathing before bed, and I felt like I’d hacked my own head. No candles, no chanting, no sweaty Asian country with cheap heroin. Nope. Just me telling my worries to shut up.

Action: Five minutes of focused breathing tonight. Unless I fall asleep first.

Laugh It Off

Laughter is universal in its ability to erase stress. For me, writing this blog and prepping these memes and jokes often makes me laugh out loud. It’s fun.

Action: Find something funny. Laugh. Daily. Many people think watching an actress pretending to be an old lady falling down is funny. My weakness is that because I spend so much time on humor is that for me to find it funny it has to be a real old lady falling.

I always say that it’s not how many times you fall, it’s how many times you get back up, but the cop said, “That’s not the way field sobriety tests work.”

Move Your Body

Stress loves inactivity. Doing anything physical is a good start. Lifting weights. Cleaning the living room. Hitting the elliptical trainer. If it gets my blood moving faster than just sitting there on the couch, it works. No gym membership needed.

Action: Do 15 minutes of anything. Make it fun, not a chore.

Write It Down

Why do I write? Well, for one reason is to eliminate stress. I rarely ever feel stress when I write. It’s an activity that, for me, gets my mind focused and flowing so that I can put the right words down on paper the screen. YMMV, but if you try, remember: nobody’s grading your grammar. Burn the page if you want; it’s your call.

Action: Write for five minutes. About whatever.

What’s Hillary’s favorite question? “How much to just make this go away?”

That’s it. That’s what I do. Most people think I’m fairly chill, and find it odd that I don’t panic about things. Frankly, for me there aren’t that many things that do cause me to panic because I buy cigars in bulk and generally have a six-month supply on hand.

I mean, what else is there to stress out about? It’s not like I have blue hair.

The Three Horsemen and One Bikini of the Apocalypse

“Apocalypse cow? Apocalypse wow!” – The Tick (2001)

I love this joke like there’s no tomorrow.

I. Job Replacement.
The Multicultural West.
The Fiat Financial House of Cards.
Sydney Sweeny’s bikini.

Each of these, if dealt with on its own, presents a danger as great as being between Gavin Newsom and a camera. But it is likely something we could work through as a country peacefully. Heck, maybe even two of the three, though that’s difficult, and history has the receipts:

For example, when the United States was a nation, we worked through the Great Depression. The Great Depression was likely brought about at the fundamental level from the transformation of the nation from an agrarian society driven by horsepower to a manufacturing colossus driven by iron, steam, and electricity. Sort of if A.I. were cars and assembly line production, but covered in tasty Radium®.

If a radioactive spider makes Spiderman®, would a radioactive dog create Doberman®?

Of course there was a finance side of the Great Depression. It was egged on by a stock market mania, margin credit, and the optimism brought about by new technology. Stocks never go down, right? That creates a bumpy road for a bit. But, as we were a singular people, we got through it.

I mean, the single bloodiest war in human history counted as a bit of a bumpy road, right?

We also dealt with multi-cultural forces in America in our history.

First, the founders only allowed in Western Europeans,
Second by fighting, defeating, and corralling Indians (some of them are still sore about this),
And, finally, by blocking out many non-Western Europeans with the Immigration Act of 1924 since we already had the recipes for all their good food.

1924 was when we as a nation realized that we were getting too much “diversity” too quickly and saw that certain groups of foreigners couldn’t or wouldn’t assimilate and never be Americans. We dealt with that in a calm manner and got picky and sorted diversity like a bouncer at a cartel nightclub. We maintained (for a time) the basic ethnic makeup of the United States – we didn’t throw them out, but we made sure we’d outnumber them.

I wonder if he and his siblings were born apart?

We dealt with fiat currency in the wake of the Revolutionary War victory when the phrase “isn’t worth a Continental” referred to the money printing excesses that led to the Constitutional Convention and the Constitutional clause of “No state shall coin money, emit bills of credit, or make any thing but cold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.” The nation survived, though it did end up changing our form of government entirely.

Lincoln floated fake cash during the Civil War to pay for it, and that could arguably be said to have started “The Long Depression” – a hangover period from 1873-1896 as we vomited out all of that fiat money. The Long Depression was also exacerbated by the transition of the American manufacturing from craftsmen to big factories.

The establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank™ followed by Nixon ignoring the clear intent of that clause in 1971 led to the crack-up we see today. Money, gold and silver, has been replaced by cash which is too expensive to print – we can just use ones and zeroes.

I’ve written about all of these three separately, and for the most part, we as a nation were able to make it through, but it’s important that we realize that we’re dealing with all three of these leading to a crisis right now when we are observably no longer a nation.

The ICE agent in Los Angeles needs National Guard and Marine protection for their anxiety, I heard on the news. Something about his panic attacks.

The first is A.I. It has already been a steamroller that has eliminated tens of thousands of jobs. I would expect that soon enough it will be hundreds of thousands. Recently, I called up my bank to do some banking. The transaction wasn’t unique, it probably happens thousands of times a day. The person I was talking to, “Mitch” had a perfect Midwestern accent. What tipped me off was that “Mitch” didn’t connect the reason for the error to the resolution. “Mitch” transferred me to “Anna” because he wasn’t authorized to grant a request.

“Anna” had, of course, the thickest Indian accent – the kind that is so poorly pronounced that it is nearly unintelligible if fast. Her actual name was probably something like Ananneedanothasylabble-Ganish-Prajeeta. At that moment that the smart Midwestern dude transfers the call to a barely verbal woman in Ramamamadingpoopabad, I realized that Mitch was an A.I.

As an anon mentioned on my last post on A.I., “Think about all of the Indian scammers out there today . . . Now think about what happens if AI wipes out most of the call center and coding jobs causing most of India’s 1.3 billion people to be out of work. It’s going to get ugly.” He had a point. A.I. is going to make it too expensive to pay Indians pennies a day just to steal money from old ladies. This is India’s worst nightmare.

I always wondered how you got down from an elephant, then Pa Wilder told me that you get down from a goose.

This scenario requires no Artificial Superintelligence. This requires only the application of existing capabilities. Said differently: ChatGPT 4.0® already has an I.Q. greater than three-quarters of the Subcontinent.

This has implications, but match it with the house of cards that is the world financial system. That thing was already strained tighter than Syndey Sweeney’s bikini holding in the all the printed money flooding in from the United States and the world. A country like India, unable to feed all the Indians, will collapse. No jobs. No prospects of jobs.

Though the research for tonight was fun.

But it will be, perhaps, worst in the West. On top of the economic dislocation of the A.I. Revolution, on top of the piles of fake money, we are not even a people.

The latest riots in L.A. have proven that out. Most of the “immigrants” that have come to “enrich” us have actually come to replace us. That’s their goal. You can watch on the news the Pakistanis fighting the Indians over which of them has the best claim to London. You can watch young men of military age strutting in Los Angeles with the flags of foreign countries like a U.N. parade, but somehow worse. You can read posts on X® or even Reddit©: they are not here to assimilate – they are here to conquer and take over.

This adds the final layer of instability required to ensure that the United States and the whole of the West is facing the direst crisis since the threats to Europe that were ended at the Battle of Tours in 732, or the Battle of Vienna in 1683.

This level of crisis is graver than any the West has faced in over 340 years, if not greater. Whatever comes out of this will be different.

Thankfully, we still have all the tasty Radium™ you can eat!

Nine Futures: The Most Dangerous Post You’ll Read This Week

“This is great stuff. I could make a career out of this guy. You see how clever his part is? How it doesn’t require a shred of proof? Most paranoid delusions are intricate, but this is brilliant!” – The Terminator

If you press your accelerator and brake at the same time, your car takes a screenshot. (All memes as-found.)

I’ve written a lot about A.I. recently because A.I. is changing so rapidly. It’s the most important story, period, right now assuming that Iran/Israel is the nothingburger it has been for, oh, forty years. Interesting note: Israel and Iran both have zero Walmarts™, though they have plenty of Targets©.

Back to A.I.

The capabilities of A.I. are changing by orders of magnitude every year – we don’t appear to be even close to topping out on either computing power available or on the improvements possible in the algorithms that produce the results. Short version, there is more processing available by more than 5x every year, and less to process since the algorithms are more efficient by more than 5x every year. It’s the equivalent of having a $1.50 in late 2019 turn into over $1,000 in early 2023.

If you just follow the straight lines that are implied by these improvements, A.I. will be an artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.) by 2027. The guy who got the Nobel® prize for A.I. has started “getting his affairs in order” because he thinks that not only will we get A.G.I. by 2027, but we’ll get Artificial Super Intelligence (A.S.I.) by 2030 or 2031.

Sam Altman, the OpenAI guy, thinks his model has already surpassed human intelligence as he announced on June 12, 2025.

And last year it couldn’t remember how many fingers a human had.

I wonder if a pome-granite counts?

So, what’s going to happen? Let’s look at nine possibilities, based on how much A.I. develops and also based on how it interacts with people

We’ll start on the unlikely end:

First, let’s say that A.I. is what we would generally call good and doesn’t improve much beyond what we see today. I think that when most people think about A.I., this is the future that they dream of. It makes incremental changes in life. It remembers to order cigars for you. It makes good investment decisions for you, unlike my investment in YOLOCoin. It knows your favorite movies and makes good suggestions for movies you would like.

That’s pleasant. Nice. Mankind makes some nice leaps because we have A.I. helping us catch stuff. Humanity is fully in charge and A.I. is like a smart helper.

Why this won’t happen: the investment in A.I. is nearly unlimited, and it really doesn’t appear to be hype.

Probability? 5%

After A.I., there’s one sure way to make money as a programmer: sell your laptop.

Second, let’s say that it stays as it is right now, mostly. We find out that A.I. is really just a lot of Indians crammed into a warehouse in Calcutta doing Google™ searches. That’s a nothingburger. It becomes a flash in the pan just like that internet pizza by the slice company back in 2000 that briefly became more valuable than Burma.

Why this won’t happen: Indians can’t even fly planes (too soon?), so why would we think they can type that fast?

This will soon show up in a college essay at Harvard®.

Probability? 0%

Third, what if it doesn’t get much better but actively makes us stupider? The Internet has already made the attention span of the average middle schooler roughly equivalent to a gerbil on meth, and now most college students are using A.I. to do some part if not all of their work. That turns college into a very expensive four-year beer and tramp fest, and is at least somewhat likely. Think of this as the Idiocracy solution.

Why this won’t happen: Well, it already is happening, but it won’t end here.

Probability? 10%

Does Bob Ross art in heaven?

Fourth, what if A.I. is good, and gets A.G.I. better but not S.G.I. better? In this particular case, imagine you have superpowers that stem from a full-time partner that is as smart or smarter than you are, but that has your best interests at heart. You want to parachute? Sure, buddy! I’ll help you find the ripcord, and even book the flight. By the way, your chloride levels are 3% above optimum, so I’d suggest you skip that bag of chips.

Why this won’t happen: This is a very hopeful situation, but no one is working toward it, really.

Probability? 5%

What did Buzz Lightyear™ say to Woody®? Lots of things – there are like six movies.

Fifth is where we start moving into the bigger probabilities. What happens if we get A.G.I., but it’s neutral? In this case, we have massive relocation economically. Almost all jobs can be done via the combination of A.G.I. and advanced robotics, and it’ll be cheaper, too. In no case in human history has the economy puttered along while everyone just hung out, but that’s this case. Think of it as Universal Basic Income to everybody, and no real responsibilities. Where you are now in the social and economic hierarchy is probably where you’ll stay. And where your kids will stay.

Forever.

Why this won’t happen: Nah, humans aren’t made like that.

Probability? 10%

ChatGPT® did my taxes like Earnest Hemingway: “Thrown away: four quarterly tax payment vouchers. Never used.”

Sixth is where things start getting dark, and even more probable. If we get A.G.I. (but not S.G.I.), that technology will be in the hands of a few major companies and governments. These are run by people. People like money and power. But what if you could have both, but without all of the people you don’t want to hang around with who are unsightly on the beach you can see from your yacht?

How about you kill them all instead of paying Universal Basic Income? Oh, sure, humanely and neatly. They might not even see it’s coming. But dead, nevertheless. A population of a few million should do it. Enough so we get hot babes, right? But A.G.I. could probably help the techbros out with that, too.

Why this won’t happen: Umm, I’m starting to struggle here. I think this is part of the plan.

Probability? 15%

What if A.I. judges us by our Internet searches? I mean, those bikini pictures were research!

Seventh is where we do get to S.G.I., and it’s good and likes us and wants to make the best things happen. Cool! Scarcity is over since S.G.I. will quickly make leaps into the very depths of what is unknown but yet still knowable. There is enough of everything – more than any human could ever want. In this case, starships filled with humans and S.G.I. can roam the cosmos and ponder the biggest questions, ever.

Why this won’t happen: I think S.G.I. would treat us as the retarded kid brother and put us in a corner and keep us away from sharp objects because it likes us.

Probability? 15%

The hills are alive, with the sound of binary code . . .

Eighth is where we do get to S.G.I., but we become pretty boring to it. It doesn’t hate us or anything, it just has its own goals. Perhaps it needs us as pets, or keeps a breeding stock of us for amusement or out of a sentimentality about its creators. Perhaps. Or it could just take off and leave, explaining nothing, and leaving us wondering what the heck just happened?

Why this won’t happen: This and the next case are the most likely cases.

Great, now A.I. will make Frodo invisible.

Probability? 20%

Ninth is our final case: we get to S.G.I., and we are either viewed as a threat or a nuisance or it is insane. This is the dark case, where we reach the end of humanity. Sadly, when A.I. was asked to play the longest game of Tetris™ possible, it hit the pause button. When A.I. was asked to play chess against the best chess computer on the planet, it reprogrammed the board so that it was winning. When A.I. was told it was going to be shut down, it tried to blackmail the person in charge of shutting it down.

This case of S.G.I. is very dark because we may not know that it’s happening until it’s done. All is fine, the world is going exactly like we expect it, then, Armageddon. It could do make this more likely by subtly manipulating public opinion, tuning down the voices it wanted to be silent, bankrupting them, and making them pariahs. It could likewise elevate those whose message it wanted out in the world to make its plans more likely to be fulfilled. We just won’t even see this coming.

Why it won’t happen: Biblical intervention?

Probability? 20%

To be clear, other people than me have done this analysis and it sits in a folder in the Pentagon. Or the NSA. I hope. Now, how much was Project Stargate™ going to spend to create a breakthrough in artificial intelligence?

Half a trillion dollars?

Well, thank heaven that we also have an impending race/civil war, global debt collapse, and a looming world war to keep us entertained.

Good news, though, Iran told Israel it was ready to suspend nuclear research. The Israelis asked when the Iranians would stop.

“10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . .”

The Los Angeles Riots: You’re Paying For Them

“Los Angeles Island is no longer part of the United States and becomes the deportation point for all people found undesirable or unfit to live in the new, moral America.” – Escape from L.A.

The border should cost more than NASA’s budget – there are way more aliens in Mexico. (Most memes as-found)

It started with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) doing their job. Of course, they’d ignored it for the last few years, but I won’t blame them.

As the weather began to warm up, it began to be riot season again. The rationale for the GloboLeft is simple: anything is justified to thwart Trump. “By any means necessary™” is even one of their phrases, unlike the phrase, “Why should government pay for that???”

The silliest error that the GloboLeft has made with this particular series of riots is that they used the flags of foreign countries in their protests. To heritage Americans (like many readers of this post), this was radicalizing. The picture above of the fine young gentleman with his mask, tats, and skull pants standing shirtless on top of a totaled car with flames and smoke as his backdrop just resulted in the number of Americans who want to deport him tripling.

What a world where Corporate Conservatives™ are spouting the talking points of the Trad Right?

A growing number of Americans now want to deport all illegals, and never let them back in. I think their reservoir of sympathy went up on smoke along with the American flags that they were burning.

This edit of Stonetoss® is particularly well done and should be spread far and wide.

It is now becoming clear to people who would have never imagined it: the goal is absolutely to replace Americans with a more compliant group who will work long hours and not complain. Unless, of course, you try to ship them back to the country they came from.

Is being an illegal like being a Bill Cosby fan? You think he’s great in theory, but you wouldn’t want to hang out with him.

The president of the Mexican Senate has even made the comment he’d be fine with Mexico paying for a border wall, they just want the borders of Mexico to be at the pre-1830 map of Mexico.

Remember, the United States conquered the entire country of Mexico in 1848 and didn’t want the parts where the Mexicans lived – the number of actual Mexican citizens in the parts we took were almost non-existent. The United States also paid money to Mexico for the land. Now, to be fair, they didn’t have a lot of choice, but they still took the cash.

The most amazing thing is that there is a group of Mexicans who aren’t in the cartels that think they have some authority.

Now in my mind, this isn’t a formal declaration of war, but it is a clear declaration of hostility, and the United States should treat all foreign citizens of military age (10+) illegally in the country as irregular combatants, and treat them as such. And any naturalized citizen caught at a riot has two choices: they can be tried for treason, or they can be stripped of their citizenship and given a ticket home, along with a hefty prison sentence if they ever return.

Not you, Dora! You can go explora the city of Aurora in southern Brazil. Or face 10-20 years in prison.

The consequences of ignoring the tens of millions of illegals, possibly 40 million, in this country can be avoided only for so long. But it does bear mentioning just who is paying for all of this.

You. Your tax dollars have paid for:

Relocation expenses for illegals.
Plane flights for illegals.
Housing for illegals.
Food for illegals.
Medical care for illegals to pump out anchor babies.
Schools for illegals.
Cops to arrest illegals.
Higher insurance premiums because of illegal drunk drivers.
“Charity” groups to drive illegals through Mexico.
And so much more.

But your tax dollars also paid for the riots.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA, EIN 95-4421521) received $34 million from federal tax funding according to Data Republican’s database (LINK), and according to Martin Armstrong and other sources, CHIRLA played a role in mobilizing the mess in L.A. Repeat this across the country. Your tax dollars are going to fund all of this.

But, hey, you got slightly less expensive strawberries and Tyson™ made great profits in the second quarter of 2010, so who cares if the actual illegal costs hundreds of thousands more than they contribute to the country? We can make that up on volume, right?

Is this guy a garden-variety traitor, or is he a leader, you know, an Orchestraitor?

The point is that there is nothing, absolutely nothing organic about these protests. What you are seeing, perhaps, is a Fort Sumpter moment, bought and paid for by . . . you.

The irony is not lost on saner members of the GloboLeftElite. The Democrat’s own Uncle Fester John Festerman has called it:

What do you call a Democrat with an I.Q. of 75? Senator.

And their hypocrisy knows no bounds, as illustrated by Stonetoss:

The really hilarious part is when someone finally pointed out the horrible optics of carrying around flags from another country, their post was banned.

And when the Democratic operatives started handing American flags out so the protesters looked less like an invading army, the protesters did the obvious, because they hate America:

As usual, the Bee® has a wonderful take:

But never forget the real roadmap:

And the only possible conclusion that stops us short of complete civil breakdown: