Big Thoughts – Page 43 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Narrative: Crumbling in 2023?

“Oh, well, please, for goodness sake, narrate me down from here.” – Winnie the Pooh

I guess Scott should learn that in space, no one can hear you meme. (all memes this post, as found)

This isn’t my prediction post for 2023, but one thing that I’m seeing is that toward the end of 2022, the oddest thing seems to be happening – The Narrative is crumbling.

Good. Now do the January 6 Committee.

As you can see from Elon’s Tweet® above, Musk has enough data to realize what most readers here have known for a long time: Fauci has always been on his own side, and was tied into some pretty shady stuff. The Twitter© purchase gave Musk more public power than being an okay car manufacturer for niche cars that are (at least presently) wholly impractical for widespread use or a really good rocket manufacturer that has revolutionized space travel.

If humans ever set foot on Mars, it will be because of the work that Musk started with SpaceX®.

Sure, that might change the history of humanity and eventually turn us into a multiplanetary species, but his purchase of Twitter™ is changing the world, now. As I’ve written about before, Twitter™ is different. It was pumped up by the Left and eventually co-opted by them as one of their means to rapidly reprogram their NPCs.

Diogenes, getting ready to reprogram Plato. Again.

As such, that left evidence. I was a user of Twitter© for a while, and had individual Tweets© that got a lot of response – some of them in the tens of thousands. They weren’t anything in particular, merely reacting against the Leftist narrative.

That wasn’t allowed, apparently. After a year and a half, I noted that my Tweet reach was now very, very limited. That was fine. I could take my ball and just spend time writing here instead of Tweeting®. The Leftist tactic of silencing the Right worked in my case.

Now Musk has the keys to the data, and has already started showing the slime-trail that the Leftists always leave behind. The rot was inside, of course. Leftists tend to try to hire their own, and it turns out that the Federal Government was directing (in some cases) the stories what stories would be told, and what stories would be suppressed.

I’m sure that the guys who put this together said, “The science is settled! What are you, ignorant?” But they would have said it in German, so it would have sounded even meaner.

Wonder what data exists in the private messages of the Very Important? Probably only one person has greater access to that data (outside of the .gov people) and that’s Mark Zuckerberg. Mark won’t be telling anyone, because as Elon heads out to space, the Zuck seems to be suffering a reboot as Faceborg© slowly loses billions of dollars in value.

This makes me wonder if 2023 isn’t the year that The Narrative finally cracks. Disney’s™ stock value has plummeted, and they can’t make movies that people don’t want to see forever. Eventually, they have to have some cash coming in to pay for the LGBTQ+ chat rooms and employee abortions and transition surgery.

When did the Babylon Bee® become non-fiction?

That’s another thing that’s past its sell-by date: the trans (and trans indoctrination) movement. Parents will put up with a lot, but when you start messing with their kids? They push back. And they are pushing back. Parents are pushing back at school board meetings, and the woke can’t stand the light.

This one, in particular, opened a lot of eyes. But, hey, the science is settled that there’s no difference between men and women, right?

The Narrative on the COVID vaxx is also fading. It is now inescapable and proven that the vaxx has killed more people than any vaccine in history, and the long-term effects are unknown. I certainly don’t hope that all the people who took it die, since I know several people I really like that got the vaxx.

I think it’s also becoming clear that a very, very large number of the people who are Leftist activists are . . . crazy. The recent Department of Energy, um, person in charge of nuclear waste is now accused of (spins wheel) lifting luggage at airports. Clearly this, um, person is nuts, and we’re lucky that they were stopped after lifting a few bags, rather than after they went full “where can I bury all these bodies?” But that seems to be a qualification to be placed into high office in Biden’s administration.

You may see a crazy person, but I see someone who could be a Supreme Court justice, or take care of the nuclear codes, or decide educational policy impacting millions of children.

Ayn Rand was really wrong about a lot of things, but she knocked it out of the park with one particular statement: “We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.” That’s what The Narrative does. And the consequences of ignoring reality are showing up again and again here at the end of 2022. Will 2023

Looks like I’ve found the Biden motto on how to govern.

Even the virtue signaling, when it doesn’t have a basis in reality can lead to failure. When the symptoms of the situation are addressed, but the root cause isn’t, the problem will rot and fester. The sooner The Narrative crumbles and people are brought, face to face with reality, the sooner actual solutions can be found.

I’m sure that some people would rather that The Narrative would have crumbled a few months earlier, and probably would have made other choices. Including losing the “Where’s Waldo” hat. And if you think that’s mean, he called me an idiot first.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Elections And Narratives

“False Narrative!” – The Death of Stalin

When he was four, Pugsley asked, “Daddy, why do people make up things that their children have said for social media? Isn’t it just inherently dishonest and indicative of inability to construct a compelling narrative themselves? “

Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Open War.

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same, though tensions may very well spike after the power outage in early December. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Election 2022, Part III – Violence And Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Anything In Defense Of The Narrative – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 740 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge. Most of today’s memes are free-range, and not originals. The crop was really good again this month.

Election 2022, Part III

The entire premise of a society with elections is that the ballots are fairly cast, and fairly counted. It is not that every vote should count, it is that every valid vote should be counted.

Votes should be rejected. If the election was on Tuesday and the votes shows up on Wednesday? Nope. Dead on election day? No vote for you.

This is why I’m against early votes.

Each vote should be in person.
Each vote should be on election day (with provisions for absentee votes for military and those that cannot be in the state with a written excuse).
Votes should be on paper.
Ballots should be equipped with security so that I can’t take them to the copier and make dozens more.
The ballot casting and watching places should be open for anyone to observe.
Counting should be done by midnight on election day, at the latest.
Any vote not counted before midnight is void.
Identification required for a valid vote, along with proper registration.

Sort of simple, and implied. But for whatever reason, every point above is controversial. But only by the Left, because, historically, they have cheated. Sure, the Right has cheated, but the Right typically is less organized and has way better jobs than counting ballots.

The result?

2022 was certainly tampered with. “Dr. Oz” was a horrible candidate, but didn’t look like a mentally-challenged fictional murderer, Slingblade. And Dr. Oz could speak in complete sentences.

If this stands, the Left is slowly going to take over all the mechanisms that make a free and fair election possible.

Everyone welcome Senator Fetterblade.

However.

The Supreme Court is potentially taking a case with huge ramifications: the idea is that the Constitution means what it says, that the responsibility for setting up elections is with the legislatures of the several states. Not courts. Not the governor. The legislatures, and it’s not reviewable.

If so, this is big – it keeps the federal hand out of the cookie jar of state elections and the states just have to deal with bribery, fraud, and corruption. We’ll see.

Violence And Censorship Update

As usual, censorship has been the biggest front. In most of Civil War 2.0 Weather Reports, the trend has been that censorship has been on the increase from multiple fronts. November has seen a small victory as Elon has rustled jimmies all through the Left.

How much? They want him dead:

And if they don’t want him dead, they want him hauled up before a Senate committee to answer stupid questions from geriatric windbags who had their feelings hurt:

But Elon has made journalists seethe. How? He’s taking away their beloved Blue Checkmark© because it turns out, there might have been some shenanigans about how some of them got the Mark©.

I guess they’ll have to check their blue (check) privilege:

In serious news, it appears that several tax preparation software packages sent back email, income, and refund information straight to Facebook®.

Oh, and your phone? The FBI issued “a general warrant” for data on anyone near the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Never happened before. Justified based on (seriously) COVID.

The Left will stop at nothing to turn data against you. Remember, your phone is a tracking and listening device, and if it sees something, it says something.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. Thanks, Brandon. It sucks that there are so many Kamalas.

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence ticked slightly upward this month. Unless there are more blackouts, I’m betting it stays down until March-April at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it went up a bit – November didn’t cause a spike, and I’m not seeing a lot in the next two months to cause increased instability.

Economic:

Amazingly, I think people have become used to the inflation. Wonder what a rail strike would do?

Illegal Aliens:

Illegals are eight (8!) times more this time of year than any time measured during the same month during Trump’s time in office, and close to an all-time record. This is a repeat comment, because the border is wide open.

Anything In The Defense Of The Narrative

I’ve been aware of Graham Hancock for decades. He’s a journalist/writer who has been focused on history for quite a while. Initially, his work was pretty normal – writing about hunger and AIDS and poverty. But then? After a three-year hiatus, he published Fingerprints of the Gods, about the evidence that supported a civilization that predates all of recorded history.

Oddly, at least at one place, he was correct. Göbekli Tepe is a site in Turkey that predates the “first civilizations” in Mesopotamia (about 5,000 years ago) and ancient Ur (6,000 years ago) and even your momma (8,000 years old). Göbekli Tepe is about 11,500 years old.

Hancock was at least partially right. Here, after his book was published, was the evidence of a civilization older than the oldest one we knew of. By nearly 6,000 years. They were moving big stones, and getting together. There is pretty significant evidence that they were making beer, too, so they can’t be all bad. Hancock even has a Netflix© special about his work.

Sure, you say, “That’s interesting, John, but this is the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report not a Netflix® special.”

And that’s the point. The entire reaction from the Left has been silly over this. Despite being proven correct on some of his conjectures, Hancock has been attacked ferociously in the media.

Why?

I have only one guess: there is a single narrative on anything. An attack on any “established fact” can’t be tolerated. At all. So, if “science” says something, it simply cannot be disputed. I think this is, at least partially, a reaction to the COVID nonsense where Leftists pulled in the virtue signaling idea that “This House Believes In Science” when the truth is science isn’t a belief – it’s a system for discovering truth.

Nothing is off limits in real science, but the Left has to censor any idea that challenges the mainstream. Evidence? How about Canada?

Well, Justin Trudeau has put himself fully in favor of protests, except when it comes to protests against him.

Strangely, there are rumors that the people who carried a flag very popular in Germany in the 1930s during the recent Trucker’s Protest was a government agent.

Here’s the person in question, carrying the freshly purchased, just unfolded out of the sack flag. Not at all suspicious.

The idea is to paint absolutely everyone who disagrees with The Narrative as evil. No matter what part of The Narrative that’s questioned. And they don’t see the irony.

Thankfully, Nina Jankowicz, who was tapped to be the “disinformation Czar” earlier this year has a new job. Working for foreigners.

Since this doesn’t challenge The Narrative, this is fine. In fact, noticing things that challenge The Narrative is Badthink. I’ll just leave this here:

And we wonder why the nation is falling apart . . . .

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1590858149162274816

https://youtu.be/h_cvFEfpU3g

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1597808974295728128

https://twitter.com/i/status/1591160541829300224

https://twitter.com/i/status/1596490454245089282

https://twitter.com/i/status/1596592437127917568

https://twitter.com/i/status/1591179759228444674

https://twitter.com/i/status/1597196379725914112

https://twitter.com/i/status/1599182109780119554

https://twitter.com/i/status/1596308757151043585

https://twitter.com/TheFilthyTimes/status/1595826090035253248

https://twitter.com/i/status/1590745057224642576

https://twitter.com/i/status/1598109618483625984

https://twitter.com/i/status/1598837217140477955

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1592284803944288256

https://twitter.com/i/status/1597452016305205250

One Guy

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63470

Body Count

https://summit.news/2022/12/02/new-federal-data-shows-73000-illegal-immigrant-gotaways-in-one-month/

https://www.statista.com/chart/28644/rate-of-homicides-that-go-unsolved-in-the-us/

https://www.amren.com/videos/2022/11/latest-interracial-crime-stats/

https://vdare.com/articles/about-28-black-on-white-homicides-including-a-5-man-massacre-suppressed-by-the-new-york-times-october-2022-another-month-in-the-death-of-white-america

https://summit.news/2022/11/18/video-thermal-drone-footage-shows-army-of-illegals-entering-u-s/

https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/world-premiere-died-suddenly/

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1590083864558727170

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/share-of-covid-19-deaths-by-vaccination-status-30-jurisdictions-in-the-u.s.-september-2021-to-august-2022-age-18-and-over.png?itok=s40nRW3J

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/other/covid-deaths-skew-older-reviving-questions-about-e2-80-98acceptable-loss-e2-80-99/ar-AA14DLdb

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

Vote Count

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/SBF%20democrat%20donor_0.jpg?itok=MS58Rkl8

https://media.gab.com/system/media_attachments/files/120/617/428/playable/9fec9ca3968f76ad.mp4?_=2

https://www.heartland.org/_template-assets/documents/publications/112322_SocialistWatch2022_3.pdf

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1597400282253922305.html

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/11/heres_how_they_did_it_realtime_election_fraud.html

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1590446073213952000.html

https://roloslavskiy.substack.com/p/voting-doesnt-win-you-elections

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fradio%2F2022%2F11%2F14%2Fexclusive-shawn-steel-ballot-harvesting-california-republicans-must-adapt-or-die%2F

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanthinker.com%2Farticles%2F2022%2F11%2Fwith_this_obstacle_in_place_republicans_cant_get_the_white_house.html

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/11/04/cocktail-parties-that-could-define-democrats-00064560

https://newschannel9.com/news/local/walker-county-man-convicted-of-voter-fraud-sentenced-to-25-years-da-says

Civil War

https://newrepublic.com/article/169141/its-elites-vs-base-coming-republican-civil-war

https://www.axios.com/2022/11/15/republican-civil-war-trump-mcconnell-scott

https://www.newsweek.com/republican-civil-war-trump-desantis-midterms-1758558

https://www.newsweek.com/republican-infighting-starts-democrats-also-face-revolt-new-york-midterm-election-1758810

https://hayspost.com/posts/1c6d7c57-df36-4a9a-af45-a4a144702552

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fus-news%2F2022%2Fnov%2F06%2Fhow-close-is-the-us-to-civil-war-barbara-f-walter-stephen-march-christopher-parker

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/is-a-civil-war-brewing-in-america/ss-AAZBzFn#image=2

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11385903/Ex-CIA-staffer-claims-Christian-white-men-primed-start-civil-war-America.html

https://phys.org/news/2022-11-brink-civil-war-survey-highlights.html

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/has-next-civil-war-already-started-205967

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/2022/11/30/how_the_next_civil_war_begins_585926.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/at-protests-across-america-guns-are-doing-the-talking/ar-AA14zpif

Beyond Civil War

https://www.wired.com/story/nord-stream-pipeline-explosion-dark-ships/

https://www.newsweek.com/leaked-fsb-letters-russia-putin-nuclear-war-weapons-ukraine-1762695

https://time.com/6228466/nuclear-war-risk-daily-issue-biden/

https://larouchepub.com/other/2022/4947-what_would_happen_if_a_nuclear.html

Reprogramming NPCs For Fun And Profit

“Dad, two of the greatest football players in the country hang out in a speakeasy downtown.” – Horse Feathers

I dated a partially blind girl once. She said she wasn’t seeing anyone else.

Donald Trump fired James Comey, Director of the FBI on May 9, 2017. Leftists had been hating on James Comey since he had, right before the election, announced that additional information about St. Hillary the Divine was on Anthony “hitting on underage chicks while I’m in the bed with my son” Weinerman had thousands of emails on his computer.

Oops.

Leftists really think that this was the reason the most unlikable candidate since cancer lost the election. It really wasn’t. It wasn’t Russia. It was that Hillary was rated below the plague in popularity.

But that didn’t matter a bit. The Left hated, with every cell in their rotund transsexual bodies, Comey.

Then Trump fired him. On Stephen Colbert’s show (press ‘S’ to spit) Colbert announced that Comey had been fired. The crowd cheered. I don’t recall what Colbert said, exactly, but it was something on the order of, “Oh, so you’re big Trump fans, eh?”

The crowd was confused. The Narrative up until that point was Orange Man Bad, Comey Hurt Hillary, So Comey Man Bad, Too.

Colbert went on to explain that now, Comey was now a hero. Inside of thirty seconds, Colbert had reprogrammed the entire studio audience. He had also (probably) reprogrammed however many people who could stand his drivel that were watching him on television.

Why didn’t James Comey indict Hillary Clinton? He found his suicide note in her emails.

In one week, Comey went from villain to hero. Why? The Narrative demanded it.

I know what you’re saying. “Okay, John Wilder, you manly beast who men admire and women swoon for, that was more than half a decade ago, back when gas prices were low and inflation wasn’t 49% per year. I’m sure it’s better now.”

Oh, my sweet summer child.

The reality is the programming now is even more blatant. Let’s pick just one thing. China and the ‘Ronavirus.

This week, I was stunned when The Mrs. was reading me comments from Leftists. It turns out that the ‘Vid is either killing all the Chinese people or Xi is using it as a social control tool. Or something else. Heck, I don’t live in China, so I’m not sure I really care.

It’s true that China has a Wonton regard for life.

In a brief conversation, The Mrs. related these stories:

Leftists were upset that China was arresting a woman who “wore her mask in a way that didn’t cover her nose” and that cause her business to fail.
Leftists were upset that the Chinese people were being forced to follow government dictates about how to deal with Corona.
Justin Trudeau was in favor of the Chinese anti-COVID protests. See below:

Yes. He said that. I guess he reprogrammed himself?

So, these are the same people who were applauding when a woman in Dallas was arrested for trying to be a beautician. When people in Australia were being put into “voluntary” camps that they “escaped” from. And when Trudeau was being protested against? He froze the bank accounts of the protesters, his advisors talked about putting tanks in the streets, and used a law meant for a state of war to give himself more powers.

In February, noncompliance with anything Biden or Trudeau wanted was treason. Today, when China wants to do the exact same things that Biden and Trudeau did?

China bad.

Shouldn’t it be called NPCNN®?

The Left is reprogrammed again.

A common term for behavior like this is a Non-Player Character, like a character that shows up in a video game that has no autonomy. And many on the Left are just that – they don’t have any opinions that are fixed. They show up, repeat what was programmed into their heads, and then the next time you encounter them, repeat the next talking point.

When the old talking point is done?

Replace.

When considering this, I thought, “Well, I know that there are NPCs on the Left. How many of them are on the Right?”

I looked to a moment when Trump was at a rally long after the 2020 election. He praised his work in creating the vaxx.

The arena turned ugly, quickly. Trump wasn’t their leader, and the crowd wouldn’t be reprogrammed. Trump stopped with that little line. I also know from the comment section here and on other blogs that there is a healthy disagreement on the Right. We aren’t a monolith, but most of our decisions are based on principle, not on the moment.

Why shouldn’t vaxxed and boosted people play charades? Everyone guesses they’re having a heart attack.

An NPC? They’ll change their opinions in 30 seconds or less.

I can see at least some reasons that Leftist NPCs are like that. They don’t search back to principles, rather, they’re more swayed by what the crowd says. But television and the Internet serve the Narrative. I think there’s something that happens to an NPC when a crowd all thinks the same thing. I think they seek conformity with whatever the Narrative is, because to be outside of the Narrative is uncomfortable.

At least that’s what I’ve come up with.

So, why NPC programming so easy?

If there isn’t a fixed principle, I think most people will believe anything. I think people on the Right tend to have fixed principles. They have a strong feeling of right and wrong.

In the end, this is why we’ll win – the Right is built on principles, many from thousands of years in the past. The Left? Not so much.

We watch what goes into our heads.

So, here’s our latest livestream. It’s just The Mrs. and I, and we were, sadly, sober. Enjoy!

Woke, Broke, Wealth, and Agendas

“Been to Disney World, one too many times, have we, Captain Ron?” – Captain Ron

What’s the difference between an iPhone™ 14 and half an ounce of gold? Half an ounce of gold will still be worth $1000 next year.

Once upon a time, there was a small business. It was run by a man who wanted to make cartoons and money. The cartoons were, mainly, for children, but he branched out. He made wholesome entertainment for families for decades, had multiple television shows, and eventually made a theme park. He was an avowed Christian, and was an ardent anti-communist.

He was moral. He hated pornography. And then he died and was frozen into suspended animation so his reanimated body could conquer the Universe from beyond the grave.

After he was put to “rest”, Walt’s Company was acquired and began to put out R-rated movies, as well as taking very, very un-Christian stances on, well, almost everything.

I’m talking, of course, about Walt Disney. Were Walt unfrozen alive today, I think he’d be shocked at what his company had become. I’ve had a beef with Disney® (the company, not the frozen founder) since before 2000 when they pushed hard to own all of their intellectual property until the heat-death of the Universe.

I have a problem with that, since I think that’s essentially stealing from the public domain, but I won’t go into that right now. Beyond that, there’s the steering of the company into entertainment that Walt would certainly never have greenlit.

In space, no one can hear Walt scream.

Case in point, the latest film from Disney©, Strange World. It’s being hailed as an “alt-family eco-drama featuring an openly gay teen”. I’m out of the “raising pups” stage, but hearing that I knew it was going to be a flop. Why? About a million gays would go see it for the feelz, and the hardest of the hard-core Left who had forgotten to abort their babies. That provides a stunningly small audience.

It is going to lose, by some estimates, up to $150,000,000. The earlier Adventures of the Incredibly Gay Buzz Lightyear probably lost a similar amount.

$300,000,000 in losses between them. I know people that work a whole month and don’t make that kinda cash. So, the guy who was running the company got fired. And then they re-hired the person that initially green-lit the bombs in question, Bob Iger, who had only left the company a little over 11 months previously.

Iger gets rehired, and in the first town hall with employees, says that he’s going to stay the course and continue the LGBT programming that has cost Disney™ $50 million a month for the last six months. And it’s not like there’s no movie audience – Top Gun: Maverick made $1.5 BILLION while Disney© was losing piles of shareholder cash. Disney’s© market value in 2022 is pretty close to what it was 8 years ago – and that’s after billions in profits from Marvel™ flicks.

Hmmm. Why is Disney© so committed to making “entertainment” that people don’t want at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars because Disney© doesn’t share the values of the parents of the kids the movies were made for? It’s like going to Drag Queen Story hour and asking, “Why do men in lingerie want to spend hours in close contact with children under the age of six?”

Well, certainly Apple© is different, right? I mean they have all the cool iPhones© and iPads® and iPods™ and no real new ideas since Steve Jobs died. Certainly, they’re focusing on making money?

It turns out, they are. Apple® is making a 30% cut off of everything bought through apps from their App Store©. That’s loan-shark level cash. But as soon as Elon Musk took over Twitter©? Well, I’ll let Elon describe it:

And not only that:

Either advertising on Twitter™ makes Apple© money and they’re voluntarily dumping a revenue source because of feelz, or advertising on Twitter® never made them money and they’re removing a woke subsidy.

I wonder which. And speaking of wondering, why the heck is Elon still using an iPhone©, as noted on his Tweet©?

Stonetoss has a comment on the whole situation:

I guess losing Steve Jobs and turning the company over to a committed Leftist like Tim Cook would make Apple® less than a fan of any thoughts other than Leftist thoughts. And Tim Cook is not at all afraid of Elon Musk – Apple is worth $2.3 trillion dollars, which is more than Elon has, even if he looks under the couch cushions.

Who is Tim Cook afraid of? I think the Bee® nails it:

If Xi turns off the iPhone© flow, Apple’s™ cash flow will fail – it’s that simple. I wonder if this would impact the way Apple™ deals with security on their phones? Nah. But Apple is still raking in the cash.

For now.

We’ve discussed Disney® and Apple™. But certainly a fashion company wants attractive people in their ads?

Well, Calvin Klein® has changed a lot in 30 years.

There are some people I don’t want to see in their Calvins®. No! Don’t take them off!

In the final analysis, some businesses make money just to make money. Others make money just to fund their own ideologies, and I’m certain that’s the case with corporation after corporation. I could go on, but will stop here so the post doesn’t get 2,000 pages long.

I think Walt had an ideology, back in the day, but it was one I agree with. I do hope that Walt is eventually unfrozen in a thousand years and comes back with a vengeance and finishes that last cartoon he was working on.

I guess that would be the world’s longest suspended animation.

Thanksgiving Thanks, 2022

“Two men are dead! This is not the time for petty sibling squabbles. That’s what Thanksgiving is for.” – Psych

I knew an Irishman who used to sell lawn chairs. I’ll never forget Paddy O’Furniture.

As this is Thanksgiving week, I thought I would share a few things that I’m thankful for. These are in no particular order.

I’m thankful that almost every single one of my problems is self-inflicted, and has a clear way to solution. I am where I am because of who and what I am, and I can change everything I don’t like, when I want to.
I’m thankful for being with The Mrs., because either of us with other people would be just an unending misery for them. I believe the Geneva Convention specifically lists being married to either The Mrs. or to me as a Crime Against Humanity.
I’m thankful for Elon Musk and the amusement he creates by stirring the pot. Do I think he’s on our side? But I think he irritates enough of the people who hate us to make me laugh, nearly daily.
I’m thankful for friends. I have a Polish friend who is a sound tech. And a Czech one, too. And a Czech one, too.

Or if I opened a trampoline in Prague, would the Czechs keep bouncing?

I’m thankful for standard time. Daylight savings time is the tool of the Devil.
I’m thankful for the “ringer and vibration off” switch on cell phones. And I should use it more. There’s something to be said for uninterrupted focus time. When going out to dinner, we often ditch our cellphones at home. This leads to this crazy thing called “talking to each other.”
I’m thankful that The Boy is home from Midwestia State U (located right next to Wassamatta U) and that he and Pugsley talk for hours when they’re together. A loyal brother can be the closest friend as you move through life.

I recently bought a toilet brush. Long story short: I’m going back to toilet paper.

I’m thankful that I got up late today, and that I’m writing this early.
I’m thankful that, right now in this place and time, my family is safe, and we are together. This is why Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday: there isn’t the stress from presents, merely a time to give thanks and be together.
I’m thankful for decongestants. I’d tell a joke about me having a virus, but I’m worried you might spread it.
I’m thankful that I live in a time that has the greatest access to knowledge of any place and any time in history, allowing me to read the thoughts of the greatest men who ever lived and the ideas that influenced our civilization and showed us what truth is, almost at a whim. Oh, and there’s also CNN®.
I’m thankful for cheese.

A Pomeranian puppy looked Medusa in the eye – he became pomegranite.

I’m thankful for living in a time and place where starvation is unknown, though the Left keeps wanting to put it back into play.
I’m thankful that The Mrs. talked me into buying the chair that I sit in to write these posts. I had to get rid of my old recliner. Me and my old recliner? We went way back.
I’m thankful for beer. It actually made one of my friends smarter, you know, Budweiser©?
I’m thankful for hard exercise, where when I’m done, I know I’ve given it my all. I try to use the workout the actors who played the Marvel® superheroes use, but I get Thor just thinking about it.

I accidentally hit my Nokia® with a hammer, and took it to Best Buy™ so the Geek Squad© could fix it. Best Buy® said they don’t work on hammers.

I’m thankful that the WD-40© fixed the front doorknob. I promise this really worked – it’s non-friction.
I’m thankful that Pugsley and The Boy are sons I can be proud of, strong and with their own opinions for their own reasons, and with exactly the character that I had hoped for. It wasn’t easy, and no matter what I do, German children will always be kinder.
I’m thankful for Ma and Pa Wilder, who, though gone, helped me become the man I am today. There was a time when I had a difficult relationship with them: when I was born, I didn’t talk to them for two years.
I’m thankful to have lived through some of the most interesting times in human history, and having seen amazing advances in technology. And Chia Pets®.
I’m thankful for the first sip of hot coffee on a cool morning. I’m thankful for the last sip of coffee on a hot day. I guess words cannot espresso how much I like it.

What was the subtitle for War and Peace? Tsar Wars.

I’m thankful for the troubles I’ve had in life, because those have made me better. When I was young, Ma Wilder called me a pirate when I was learning the alphabet, since I always got lost at C.
I’m thankful for the talents that I was born with, because those gave me capacity. In fact, I have one talent that I’ll brag about: I can always tell what’s inside a wrapped present. It’s a gift.
I’m thankful for winter. Winter is the time of year when things are quiet, and I can think. Sometimes I work on math, which makes The Mrs. say that I’m cold and calculating.
I’m thankful that I don’t have regrets, and go to sleep soundly. I often sleep without pajamas, which seems to bother them at work.

And I’m thankful to spend time with you folks every week. Happy Thanksgiving!!

There’s a Twitstorm a Brewin’

“You guys taking it all in? Because this is what it looks like when Google acquires your company for over 200 million dollars. Look: Dustin Moskovitz. Elon Musk. Eric Schmidt. I mean, Kid Rock is the poorest person here. Apart from you guys.” – Silicon Valley

The Mrs. didn’t want to go to a fortune teller because they always looked so depressed, but we settled on a happy medium.

Twitter© has officially unbanned Donald Trump.

It’s unclear if Trump will ever return to the platform that, arguably, he used better than anyone else. That being said, Elon Musk, who made the decision based on a Twitter® poll, made it clear that he thought The Don could not turn down the offer (I actually verified this one, but not all Tweets© are verified).

I’m not sure if Trump will return. I think that the number of followers that he has is simply huge, and that’s enticing for him. But a contract that he signed notes that if he’s going to use social media, he has to use the Truth© platform first. After six hours, he can use the other media. I’m not sure he’s that good at waiting, and honestly, the power of the Twitter© platform is the instant gratification from watching the responses and likes showing up.

We’ll see. The number of followers (over 80 million) is probably too much for him to ignore.

But this has some folks up in arms.

All of the letters of the alphabet have been declared hate symbols by the ADL© except for the letter C. Why? The other letters are not c.

Some folks are really upset. I think this one is a parody, but, who knows?

Juneau he’s gonna be disappointed.

And even the Mayor of London can’t resist making the point that his speech is the speech that shouldn’t be banned:

If Sadiq Khan, so Khan you.

And though Musk isn’t going to unban Alex Jones, he is bringing back Project Veritas©. These folks don’t upset the Left as much as Trump does, but they are still Enemies of the Left.

I hope Veritas© does some investigations into hammers – that would be hard-hitting stuff.

Predictably, some Leftists have left Twitter™ and gone to other platforms; Mastodon® is popular. But the Leftists are upset that their Leftist ideas don’t get an invulnerability pass like they got on Twitter©.

Why can’t mastodons clap? Because they’re extinct.

Some Leftists are just upset that Elon has $44 billion in the first place:

And some called Musk a hypocrite for banning folks for breaking a simple rule he’d put in place:

The Chinese military was banned from using Apple® watches due to them being a security risk. One soldier cried, “But my eight-year-old daughter made it for me!”

But I’ll leave the last word to Kevin Sorbo (of Hercules and Andromeda fame)

Defeat? Never.

“Okay you people – sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning, and if we’re not back by dawn? Call the president.” – Big Trouble in Little China

I hear that Rob Halford became an eastern monk, which I guess makes him a Buddhist Priest.

Back when I was in high school, I started a quest. It would probably be a trivial quest in today’s world with the Internet, and tens of millions of songs available all from a single search. However, back when I was in high school, the only people using the Internet were computer nerds at colleges or places like Los Alamos sharing nuclear bomb design info and ASCII porn.

Is this how Los Alamos beat the Soviets?

There was exactly one rock and roll radio station that reached the lofty heights of Wilder Mountain, and it was a good three-hour drive from where I lived. Heck, the nearest record store was a 45-minute drive. But I heard a song . . . and loved it.

I had no idea who the artist was. All I knew was that it had guitars that sounded like jet fighters coming in for an attack (metaphorically) and a heavy metal singer with pipes to growl low and also hit the high notes.

This was not helpful. My bumbling attempts to hum the song to the record store clerk probably sounded like a toddler attempting to instruct an Albanian goat herder on how to repair a Junkers Jumo-004 on an ME 262. My incoherent rambling eventually convinced the store owner that I could probably be sold a lot of records on my quest to find the goofy song.

What happens when a plane full of Leftist lands? The Jet turns off but the whining continues.

She was right. On one particular winter day, I bought two cassettes. Memo to the young: a cassette was an attempt to put a part of the Internet on a skinny magnetic tape and take it with you. Sort of like WIFI but with a really, really low transfer rate that cost over $7 for 42 megabytes.

I listened to one of the cassettes on my forty-minute drive to Stately Wilder Manor. I don’t recall what the first cassette was. It was okay. The song I was looking for, however, wasn’t on it.

When I got to Wilder Mountain, I decided to listen to the other cassette. Pa Wilder wasn’t home. It was November, and snow was falling gently across the valley, as I looked toward the volcanic cone that dominated the view above the mountains that surrounded the valley.

I put in the cassette. I hit play.

A single guitar hit an E note that crunched and then was followed by 41 seconds of guitar solo that made my brain implode. The first second was enough, the next 40? Pure passion. My father’s stereo, which before that day was primarily concerned with playing Dean Martin and Johnny Cash, must have been surprised.

I know I was. Then? Another driving song, this time about a sentient A.I. encased in an orbiting surveillance satellite.

The two satellite dishes on my house got married. The ceremony was awful, but the reception was amazing.

What? I was in heaven. The cassette was Judas Priest, the album? Screaming for Vengeance.

The theme of the music was unabashedly masculine. It was fueled by testosterone and optimism and defiance. It was, in short, everything I loved in life.

What was my ethos at that time? Full speed. Every moment in life. When I played football, I played football. Every ounce of my being was focused on the next play. The cleats digging into the turf, the snap as the center delivered the ball to the quarterback, my sudden sprint, and the exquisite feeling of my shoulder pads digging into that quarterback’s belly as I impacted him at full speed. Life was a game to be played at full speed. When a football game was over, win or lose, the idea that I would have left anything of myself or held back an ounce of myself? I never felt that after a single game.

Win or lose. Everything I had.

And that was the ethos. My focus was on doing everything that I could humanly do during the game. If we won? Excellent. If we lost? There was no room for regret since I had done every single thing I could for the team.

Amazingly, here that was, in music.

This music and most of the music I have loved since then was fueled by one concept – it was fueled by the idea that, in this life, there are winners, and there are losers. But there are no victims. I was responsible for my preparation. I was responsible for my effort. I was responsible for me.

If I won? Wonderful. If I lost? Yeah, it stung. But if I gave it my best, and lived up to my own values, I still won.

I took a survey of what soap people used in the shower. 95% of them told me to get out.

Again, winning was and is important. But a loss of a single day was nothing. Winning could and would come. And I would live my life, on my terms.

Have I been cheated? Yes. Have I been wronged? Yes. Did I stand toe to toe with my boss and tell him that I wouldn’t sell my honor and principles to him for any reason?

Yes. And did I pay a price?

Duh.

Do I regret it? Not for a minute. Not for a second.

There are moments in life, where honor and values will be tested.

Heck, that was in this music, too.

In this world we’re living’ in, we have our share of sorrow
Answer now is don’t give in, aim for a new tomorrow

Also in the music? Questions of deep philosophy. The eternal battle between Good and Evil. Oh, yeah, and hot chicks.

Eventually, this changed and fell out of fashion. I think it was Bush. Or maybe raising the drinking age to 21. Or maybe drugging generations with lithium and Adderall®. Or maybe the new “zero tolerance” lifestyle, where fighting for Good and being right still resulted in a suspension.

Or maybe all of that.

Kurt Cobain was depressed at 13. Guess that was his midlife crisis.

Music based on honor and testosterone and optimism eventually fell out of favor. I can even give you the date: September 21, 1991, when Nirvana launched Nevermind.

With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us

That abomination of learned helplessness replaced this from Judas Priest:

Thousand of cars and a million guitars
Screaming with power in the air
We’ve found the place where the decibels race
This army of rock will be there
To ram it down, ram it down
Straight through the heart of this town
Ram it down, ram it down
Razing the place to the ground
Ram it down

One of these makes me feel like slitting my wrists. The other? Fills me with the idea that none of us are alone. We have power. We are . . . going to win, no matter what the damn odds are. Judas Priest is still touring. Kurt Cobain? Not so much. I guess it proves that one person can handle only so much Courtney Love.

Fast and furious, we ride the universe
To carve a road for us, that slices every curve in sight
We accelerate, no time to hesitate
This load will detonate, whoever would contend its right

I refuse to accept defeat. The idea is against every fiber of being in my body. I realize that I will not win every battle. And I am going to listen to music, and I am going to take in media that tells me the truth, but I shall never, ever, despair no matter how dire the situation. My family? They come from heroes. So does yours. Never, ever, give up.

I always took a piece of paper to a wrestling match. That way I could beat The Rock.

I’m not going to stop until I stop breathing. And I won’t relinquish my honor to any man. And I am responsible for every aspect of my life and my situation.

Oh, I did find the song I was looking for, a year later:

The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, sing and cry
Valhalla, I am coming

But that’s another story, though the song remains the same.

The Potemkin Economy

“By noon, the submarines Ranger and Potemkin will have reached their designated firing positions. Within minutes, New York City and Moscow will cease to exist. Global devastation will follow, and a new era will begin.” – The Spy Who Loved Me

What do you call a reality show about people with lobotomies? Mindless entertainment.

Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tauricheski is famous mostly for what he didn’t do, but more about that in a minute. What Potemkin did do, starting in 1774, was conquer most of what is southern Ukraine, the Crimea, Moldova, and Catherine the Great a bunch of times. The land he mostly took from the Ottoman Empire, but Catherine seems to have invited the conquest. And apparently, Grigory didn’t do it right, because she made him do it again. And again.

I mean a bunch of times. Catherine had a succession of lovers that would put Kamala’s body count in 1992 to shame. Okay, the summer of 1992. Okay. August of 1992. Okay, August 11, 1992. By noon

But when Potemkin wasn’t kicking Ottoman butt or . . . well, the other thing, what he did do was found city after city along the Black Sea coast. You just might have heard of Kherson? Yup. Potemkin founded and named that city. He was even buried there until Putin dug him up and took him back to Russia recently. It’s certain he wasn’t the last Russian to retreat.

But mostly, we remember Potemkin for the phrase Potemkin Village. Where did that phrase come from?

Why did the old lady fall in that well? She didn’t see that well.

Catherine the Great, somewhere between lovers, decided to have a Lord of the Rings-type trip to go see what Potemkin was up to down south, and maybe have Potemkin put something in Mount Doom, if you know what I mean.

That was based on the idea that Potemkin had a lot of the Novorossiyan (approximately the southern area that Putin held before the Russians began advancing to the rear last month) villages built and rebuilt so that he could fool Catherine about how prosperous the area was.

Well, not really. First of all, Potemkin didn’t have to impress Catherine, they’d known each other forever by this point, and she really liked him even though whenever they weren’t together they were boffing enough other people to make Paris Hilton blush. What everyone does agree on is that Potemkin had folks paint some of the village buildings, and they did build a few fake ones, but those were mainly to show Catherine what the area would look like.

So, despite personal bravery, solid administration, building an entire fleet, and being a diplomat worthy of any of today’s age, we remember Potemkin for something he really didn’t do. To be fair Potemkin was the guy that conquered most of the area that Russia and Ukraine are fighting for right now, so there’s a good argument that they should just give it all back to Turkey and be done with it.

Well, at least it’s a seasonal joke.

But it came to my mind when I started thinking about the economy we find ourselves in today – in many ways, it’s a Potemkin economy. FTX®, that wonderful stealer of money and funder of Democrats? It was a financial Potemkin Village. There was nothing really there, ever. A smelly-looking Millenial with his autistic girlfriend who is so homely that she makes Greta Thunberg look like an 8.5 and the rest of the crew literally printed their own virtual currency, and then grifted their way through piles of cash from nations and celebrities and even their own employees.

A Potemkin Village? Sure.

And now Elon Musk is finding that his $44 billion toy, Twitter™ is filled with fraud. First, there are fraudulent users. We don’t have the full number of bots that Tweeted™, but it wasn’t a small number.

Second, there was an algorithm that was built to push the Leftist agenda by artificially drawing people’s attention to things they weren’t organically interested in. As soon as Musk stopped the algorithm in Japan, for instance, politics stopped trending and anime and Godzilla© and sushi topped the list of things that Japanese people were actually interested in.

Third, the advertisers weren’t all they were cracked up to be. Rather than being advertisers that were interested in, oh, say, advertising to customers, they’re fleeing the platform. Why? Because they weren’t interested in selling products, they were really interested in social posturing. They’re leaving in droves – the economic engine of Twitter® appears to have been built on corporate virtue signaling.

Burgers. Right. That’s what they’re selling.

Fourth, the employees themselves seemed to be, at a ratio of at least 75%, useless people with a huge sense of entitlement. How bad are these people? They’re upset that they won’t have free food from in-house chefs. They’ll have to pay for lunch. Maybe they’ll have burgers?

As Potemkin himself might have said, “North Crimean Canal”. Oh, sorry. Potemkin might have told those disappointed Twitterites©, “Crimea River.”

There are more examples out there. By definition, these Potemkin Companies look fine to casual observation until something breaks down. Facebook© started as the darling of the Internet. Then Zuckerberg decided that he’d spend the rest of his life staring out of the world through virtual reality, and spent $36 billion dollars on “the Internet, but with stupid goggles”.

Facebook® discovered a man was building a bomb. The dilemma: inform the FBI, or send him ads for digital timers?

Sure it makes sense to Mark who took the movie The Matrix as a how-to manual, but pretty much everyone else thinks it is . . . stupid. But the scary thing for Mark is it’s making people look at what he really owns. Some folks think it’s just the next version of MySpace©, because the teens have abandoned it and it now consists of businesses trying to sell stuff, mothers trading recipes for what to do with their children’s Adderall© for a quick buzz, and the NSA desperately trying to track everyone.

And how many other Potemkin Companies are sitting out there, in plain sight, but just not yet recognized? My bet is that there are a lot, especially in the financial sector and tech sectors. One principle that I’ve seen apply again and again is Wilder’s Rule #32: what can be built really quickly can collapse a lot quicker. If Zuck can make $100 billion in four years, he can lose it in four weeks.

The valuation of almost everything in our economy is subjective – it has value because we give it value. Amazon™ was worth $180 last year at this time. It was worth $99 yesterday. It has gone down by half. Amazon© has also announced that they’re going to lay off 10,000 employees in the next month.

Oops. And what else might be a sign of a Potemkin Economy?

I’m sure it’s all legit, right? Thankfully for the Ukraine, Russia sucks at war.

Valuations are built on emotion, and emotion is defined on how pretty something is. Well, at least if we lose the Potemkin Companies and the Potemkin Dollar, we still have our relationship with Catherine the Great Kamala.

Oh, crap. We’re in even worse condition than I thought.

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About: Money. Sex. Football. Corruption. Oh, And War.

“No respected psychic will come on this show. They all think you’re a fraud.” – Ghostbusters II

On one side, we have a liar that preys on unsuspecting youth, and on the other, his son Hunter.

It starts with an election.

I know that I was a bit surprised by Pennsylvania. The candidates weren’t great. The Republicans tossed a greasy TV fraud who, until he started running, believed in everything Woke. Ugh.

His opponent? Sling Blade™, an actually mentally impaired man who had a stroke. Before Sling Blade© had a stroke, though, he was as socialist as Trotsky on the day rent was due.

So, who gets the win? Uhhh-humn.

Can’t you see him on a ticket with Biden?

One little win like that, and sure, it makes sense. People like idiots better than frauds. But it wasn’t one little win. It was everywhere that mail-in or bulk ballot boxes exist and where the Left needed to win elections in order to keep control.

I had done the math after a discussion with a friend. In 2020, mail-in votes were tracked in most places by the party affiliation of who had requested them. Leftists had certainly requested them more frequently, so often made up more than 50% of the total.

Fine. More people on the Right vote on the day of the election, so that makes sense. But when you looked how those mail-in ballots voted in Pennsylvania, Biden got all of the Democrat ballots, plus almost all of the independent vote, plus a chunk of those registered as Republican.

I did these numbers based on NBC© and Newsweek™ data and if the mail-in ballots behaved like other places, Trump was cheated out of around 120,000 votes, more than twice what was required for him to win Pennsylvania.

I was thinking that the Democrats might have been interested in having the Republicans have control of the House in 2023, because then the Left could blame them in 2024 for not having all the answers. Nope. They apparently drank their own Kool-Aid® that this was the biggest and most important election, ever. They cheated. How can we tell?

Everywhere the vote didn’t matter, the Left didn’t spend the time and money to shift the election. Look at New York . . . the last time a Republican won as Governor his name was Pataki, and he was last elected 20 years ago. Before him? Nelson Rockefeller. Yup. New York could be called Blue York. So, letting it shift to the Right was fine. But Michigan? They had to get their governor, Waddles Whitmer re-elected.

Why did they have to get Waddles back in the chair? So that they could keep the voting laws favorable to the Left. That’s it. From the standpoint of the Left, it is literally her only job. In Illinois? The Left didn’t need it, so people could vote however. Besides, Chicago is so corrupt that they could generate however many votes they needed in an afternoon with a bored school secretary and a mimeograph machine.

Even in races that were virtual locks for the Right (which historically underpolls) you ended up with blatant theft. What does Washington have? Mail-in voting.

And they don’t even bother to hide it at times, or, rather, hide it in full view:

So, we have the “What” and the When” – a stolen election in 2022. Again. We have the “How” and the “Where” – mainly mail-in and drop-off ballots. We have the “Why” – to change voting laws so that the Left can maintain power, forever. What about the “Who”?

That’s simple. And you may not like it.

Bert knows. Consider this a warning.

Upfront, this is a developing story, and the following is the best version that I can source right now. Take everything here with a big helping of allegedly, because I can’t independently verify lots of bits.

Let’s go back in time. On April 25, 2019, Biden announces he’s running for President. Thirteen days later, on May 8, 2019 Sam Bankman-Fried launches the FTX crypto exchange. Oh, and his mother? She’s a Leftist political fundraiser and organizer when not teaching law. Sam Bankman-Fried is 27 at this time. FTX makes Sam a multi-billionaire a few months later.

What a coincidence! Leftist needs money to fund Democrats, and immediately becomes a billionaire.

Sam becomes the number two Democrat donor to aid Biden in becoming elected. And Bankman-Fried has donated (according to some sources) over $100 million dollars to the Democrats during the last two election cycles.

How did he make his money? Well, in a lot of cases, he just printed it. In others, he used the deposits of people in (what appears to be) a Ponzi scheme. He got high-profile people to invest big bucks in to his firm, and even pressured employees to invest in his company. This is Sam Bankman-Fried:

I hear his favorite sport is phishing. Also, that’s my grandma’s hairstyle.

So, Bankman-Fried did the usual, by begging for money from famous people. And, he was amazingly good at that. He convinced Tom and Gisele (by some accounts) to give him hundreds of millions of dollars to invest. Want proof?

Is it just me, or does he give off a creepy vibe?

And the rich and powerful are now paying the price. Tom Brady and his ex-squeeze Gisele? They were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I wonder how much they trusted Bankman?

That’s a pretty good hairline for 65.

But Sam Bankman-Fried didn’t date supermodels. Nope. He dated his CTO(?), a 28 year-old Harry Potter® fan. Here’s her picture:

Her name is Caroline Ellison and she’s the reason for Bert’s earlier warning. She manages to simultaneously look like a 12-year-old and also an 80-year-old grandmother which is an odd choice for the girlfriend of a billionaire. Or anyone.

Not gonna lie, I’m hoping both of these kids hit prison so neither of them can take a dip in the gene pool. Me? If I ever get to the tres comma club, I’m gonna follow this man’s example:

But why settle for that, when you can go international? Reports coming in today indicate that tens of billions of dollars were laundered from US government funds sent to the Ukraine. Yup. Money sent to Ukraine was sent, by Ukraine, to FTX, where Sam Bankman-Fried, son of hardcore Leftist operatives, funneled the cash back into the Democratic coffers.

Or, graphically:

If you’re not mad by this point, your name isn’t Tom Brady (hi, Tom!) or you’re not dedicated to the actual rule of law in this country. This is a scandal of global proportions. Again, rumor has it that Sam Bankman-Fried is trying to figure out how to escape the Bahamas to join up with his creepy girlfriend in Hong Kong so they can move to someplace that doesn’t have extradition back to the United States so he can avoid ending up like Bernie Madoff, or, more likely, Jeffery Epstein.

So, if you wanted additional proof of Wilder’s Principle of Greatest Amusement (given the equal likelihood of two events occurring, the most amusing event will happen) here it is. This event has everything.

Mathematically provable corruption and stolen elections. Senile, likely incontinent usurper presidents, Tom Brady, the theft of billions, a brewing world war, the ugliest girl to ever date a “billionaire”, and an actual supermodel. If this was a movie plot, there are exactly zero people that would believe it.

What could make it more amusing?

Okay, that’s close. But, hear me out. What if Sam Bankman-Fried escapes to Venezuela, and Tom Brady joins with a group of Navy Seals to sneak in and take revenge? And Fetterman was really Tom Brady’s brother, who had a pet mouse named George? And then Tom was elected President?

I’d buy that for a dollar.

Burning Your Way To Happiness

“No! Look, what’s the matter with you all? It’s perfectly simple: We have the fire drill when I ring the fire bell. That wasn’t the fire bell! Right?” – Fawlty Towers

At the pub, the owner told me I was drunk and needed to take the bus home. Turned out those are even harder to drive when you’re drunk.

It was a cold, February campout. It was also rainy, and also weather that most folks would call miserable. In fact, it was also the first campout that I was Scoutmaster.

I think the temperature, at its highest, was probably around 45°F. It froze at night. We put our tents up in the dark, and I snuggled deep into my sleeping bag.

The next morning, we had breakfast. One thing that I had changed since I became Scoutmaster was that the Scouts bought, cooked, and ate their own food. One thing I observed on previous campouts was when the kids and adults ate the same food, the adults wanted good food, and wouldn’t leave the kids alone. Me? I had no desire to eat chicken tartare, so I let the kids fix their own food, and I often cooked for the adult leaders.

I drew a picture of a criminal once. He looked pretty sketchy.

The plan for the day was fairly simple. 80% or more of the Scouts needed to get to First Class (a rank where a boy would know most of the things so they could survive a solo campout for a few days, if need be). We focused on First Class skills. One other thing I instituted is that the older Scouts were to teach the younger Scouts, for reasons that are probably obvious.

My job, mainly, was to drink coffee and take someone to the hospital if the hatchet got the best of them. At this campout, there was one Scout in particular who had very little skill at anything. One of the Scouts of higher rank ran him through building a fire.

Jack London aside, building a fire after a rainy night on a blustery, rainy day isn’t the easiest of things. And, to be fair, this Scout wasn’t the quickest on the uptake. But he worked at starting his fire for a really long time. More than an hour? Certainly. But he had dogged determination, and finally got his fire going.

“Okay,” I said, “You can put that one out now. That qualifies.”

“No, I want to keep it going.”

I hear arsonists do well on Tinder®. They have a lot of matches.

I was fine with that. It was his fire, and if he wanted to keep it going, I was fine with that. There was little chance of him burning down the soggy campground.

He kept the fire going through the night, feeding it, and teasing it along.

He made First Class, but I must point out, by the time he got the rank badge it wasn’t nearly as important to him as building that fire. He had acquired a skill. He could do more than he could before. He did not need outside validation. The achievement was part of him. He was proud of himself.

So often, we get tied up in feeling about things that are beyond our span of control. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.”

I hear that Marcus Aurelius got the first weather report. “Hail, Caesar!”

I know that we are living in a world filled with tough situations. I would say this, if some outside event upsets you, go ahead and be upset. Until midnight.

Then, take control. Realize that what you can be and do is the important thing. As that Scout taught me, being fulfilled isn’t being surrounded by supermodels and driving a Lambo® while they softly nuzzle your neck and . . . where was I? No, that’s not fulfillment. Fulfillment is achievement.

Almost every single person reading this has the power to be better tomorrow at something. A skill. Bench pressing five more pounds. Learning Shakespeare in the original Klingon. Becoming a better carpenter. Finally trimming those nosehairs, or at least weaving them into an attractive scarf.

Me? I write, and try to get better. When I’ve written what I want, I don’t need anyone to tell me – I feel it inside.

And I’m okay.

Except in especially tragic situations, it is in our power to be better. It is in our power to improve. And through doing so, it is in our power to build internal strength. And we don’t need anyone to validate it.

Life is tough, and it’s even tougher when we try to take on every injustice in the world. Sometimes we just need to take a few minutes, and build a fire.