Big Thoughts – Page 7 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Best And Funniest Debate Post You’ll Read Today: Read It For The Salty Tears

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Whelp! All memes from X, and I didn’t even have to scroll more than three times. This is an implosion.

I had very different plans today for this post. During the debate, I had no fewer than 1200 words worth of notes, and had penciled in no fewer than nine really funny jokes on the first pass. It would have been hilarious. I guess that’s just me, pining for the humor of the situation.

But as the debate ended, I realized that wasn’t the post I was going to write. It couldn’t be.

I have predicted that Joe Biden would not be the DNC candidate for the 2024 election on these pages months ago. When the debate happened so very early, I began to wonder: why?

Someone on Team Joe® convinced him (which doesn’t appear to be hard right now) that he needed to debate Trump in June. Why? The conventions hadn’t occurred, and Joe wasn’t even the official nominee, merely the presumptive one.

Now I understand. Having these debates in October would have assured a Trump landslide. Even the deepest blue GloboLeftist couldn’t even salvage this monstrosity in a real manner after an October showing like today. It would not be possible.

So, Team Brandon© (yes, Trump really called him Brandon and Joe didn’t react) decided to get him out early.

To expose him.

Joe is done. He’s finished. His political career is finished, and his candidacy is in shambles. Reports are that his team are in tears, and “25^th Amendment” (the one that allows for the removal of incompetent folks as president) are trending on X.

I had predicted that either Gavin Newsom (whose wife allegedly willing banged Harvey Weinstein) or Big Mike Obama would be the candidate months ago. I’m pretty sure I predicted it in the blog, but certainly did so in conversations and it’s too late to check – Ricky might help me here! – that Joe would not be the candidate.

That is now certain. There is another, like they said in Star Wars™: Hillary. I don’t think she’s physically up to the task, but she’s still in the running.

It won’t be Joe. So, here’s my take on the night, along with a few memes. I’ll respond to previous post comments tomorrow (like I said, it’s late). Python, Monty® predicted this years ago. Note, I hope that Joe Biden lives a long and pleasant life, this is in reference to his chances on being elected in November:

A voter watches a debate.

Voter: ‘Ello, I wish to register a complaint.

(The DNC does not respond.)

Voter: ‘Ello, Miss?

DNC: What do you mean “miss”? Are you assumin’ me gender?

Voter: (pause)I’m sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!

DNC: We’re closin’ for the Juneteenth Pride Festival.

Voter: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this Candidacy what I decided to vote for not half a year ago from this very DNC.

DNC: Oh yes, the, uh, the Scranton Joe…What’s,uh…What’s wrong with it?

Voter: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, my lad. This Candidacy is dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!

DNC: No, no, ‘e’s uh,…he’s resting. He has COVID.

Voter: Look, matey, I know a dead Candidacy when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.

DNC: No no this Candidacy’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable Candidacy, the Scranton Joe, idn’it, ay? Beautiful plumage!

Voter: The plumage don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.

DNC: Nononono, no, no! ‘E’s resting!

Voter: All right then, if he’s restin’, I’ll wake him up! (shouting at the Candidacy) ‘Ello, Mister Dark Brandon! I’ve got a lovely fresh 10% for the Big Guy for you if you show…

(DNC hits the cage)

DNC: There, he moved!

Voter: No, he didn’t, that was you hitting the cage!

DNC: I never!!

Voter: Yes, you did!

DNC: I never, never did anything…

Voter: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) ‘ELLO JOE!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o’clock alarm call!

(Takes Candidacy out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)

Voter: Now that’s what I call a dead Candidacy.

DNC: No, no…..No, ‘e’s got COVID!

Voter: COVID?!?

DNC: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin’ up! Scranton Joe stuns easily, major.

Voter: Um…now look…now look, mate, I’ve definitely ‘ad enough of this. That Candidacy is definitely deceased, and when I decided to vote for it not ‘alf a year ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein’ tired and shagged out following a prolonged ice cream.

DNC: Well, he’s…he’s, ah…probably pining for Corn Pop.

Voter: PININ’ for Corn Pop?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got ‘im home?

DNC: Scranton Joe prefers keepin’ on it’s back! Remarkable Candidacy, id’nit, squire? Lovely hair plugs and replacement teeth!

Voter: Look, I took the liberty of examining that Candidacy when I watched the debate, and I discovered the only reason that it had been standing by the podium in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.

(pause)

DNC: Well, o’course it was nailed there! If I hadn’t nailed that Candidacy down, it would have nuzzled up to that podium, bent it apart with its strong arm, and VOOM! It would have talked about String Theory in six languages!

Voter: “VOOM”?!? Mate, this Candidacy wouldn’t “voom” if you put four million volts and a gallon of Adderall® through it! It’s bleedin’ demised!

DNC: No no! ‘E’s pining!

Voter: It’s not pinin’! It’s passed on! This Candidacy is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the podium it’d be pushing up the daisies! It’s metabolic processes are now ‘istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, It’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-CANDIDACY!!

(pause)

DNC: Well, I’d better replace it, then. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry squire, I’ve had a look ’round the back of the shop, and uh, we’re right out of Candidacy, except for Big Mike, Hillary, and Gavin.

Voter: I see. I see, I get the picture.

DNC: (pause) I got a Kamala.

(pause)

Voter: Pray, does it talk?

DNC: Nnnnot really. Slurs quite a bit like it’s drunk.

Voter: WELL IT’S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT?!!???!!?

DNC: N-no, I guess not. (gets ashamed, looks at his feet)

Voter: Well.

(pause)

DNC: (quietly) D’you…. d’you want to come back to my place?

Voter: (looks around) Yeah, all right, sure, it is the Juneteenth Pride Festival.

DNC: (to the audience) Well! I never wanted to do this in the first place. I wanted to be… a lumberjack!

Gamer Gate 2.0: Ugly Women Edition

“Report here safely, stop. Do not play video games.” – John Wick

Proof once again you’re an un-person if you remember the 1990s, intact families, and Christmas. (as found)

Pop culture exists, and I often write about it. The reason is that it is pervasive, surrounds us, and can absolutely be used to manipulate human feelings and behavior, so, in a sense it is a form of programming about who and what we are. In essence, it can be a myth that evolves with us, sort of like intestinal parasites.

Pop culture has always been around, but it has transformed over the millennia of human existence. It likely started with Grug talking around the communal fire, telling stories of the clan, their origin, and the evils they defeated, and how he had to walk uphill both ways to get back to the cave when he was a child and that they didn’t have any of those new-fangled flint arrowheads when Grug was small.

Through this mechanism, the ideas that the clan had, its virtues, its norms, and even its fears were transmitted from one group to another. It told the story of the group. Their story. That narrative bound them together as one – they knew the deeds of their fathers and sang songs about the virtues of their fathers.

My eye got infected with COVID. I had Corona-Iris.

Control of that story, then, is very, very powerful, and Grug probably (rightfully) skipped the part where he pooped his wolfskin jockstrap the first time he had to fight someone from the Wilder clan. Grug’s stories and pop culture thus both provide and define the Overton Window – those ideas that are safe to speak about in a polite society.

An example:

The idea that JFK was assassinated by literally anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald acting totally alone was not acceptable to The Powers That Be®. What did they do? They invented an entire new term to disparage any idea that varied from the Warren Commission report – “Conspiracy Theory”.

Oddly, when the House Select Committee on Assassinations looked into the JFK Lone Gunman theory in the late 1970s, they decided that, no, it couldn’t have been Lee Harvey Oswald acting by himself. The results of the Committee were mostly ignored. The smear of anyone with a different opinion continued, and if it weren’t for the Zapruder film, I imagine they’d probably try to convince everyone JFK killed himself because he hated Dallas.

I promise, I don’t know any dirt on the Clintons.

The cast of people who benefited from Kennedy’s death was huge: The CIA, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Mafia, LBJ, Israel’s nuclear program, the gun control agenda, and the Boy Scouts™ all benefited. Okay, maybe not the Boy Scouts©, but you get the picture. The only person I’m sure wasn’t involved was me, and that’s because I wasn’t born yet.

Beat that alibi.

But crafting that public opinion isn’t just for the CIA or whatever thinktank meme’d the phrase “Conspiracy Theory” into existence. Nope. Pop culture is largely put out by Hollywood™ and, increasingly game companies.

Hollywood™ (if I include television, which I should) was the biggest influence when I was a kid. Everyone in my grade was watching the same movies at the same time on the same station. If a James Bond® movie was on, you were watching that, because cable came to the vicinity of Wilder’s Mountain about the time I was finishing high school and you had three choices (no one watched PBS™) and James Bond™ was always going to be better than whatever else was on.

I’ve never played Warhammer®, so I’m really hoping that it doesn’t have a “Shoe” or I’ll feel more stupid than usual.

We watched the same television shows, too. And, I’ve related before, I remember wondering in middle school if there was a reason that the TradRight couldn’t be funny, since even in seventh grade I recognized that every comedy and drama on television was written from a GloboLeftElite perspective. Even in middle school I recognized that Hollywood™ was a Leftist enclave.

Television (and movies!) was a pipeline that was well in place as owned turf of the GloboLeftElite by the end of the 1970s. But a new medium was emerging, and the old monolith of the big three networks was fracturing.

The new medium was gaming.

I hear she wears Fruit of the Tomb™ underwear.

Gaming was, especially at the early parts, unabashedly libertarian, as was much of the infant Silicon Valley at the time. Games like Pac-Man™, Pong©, and that one with the plumber were big, and largely free of politics, which is to say skewed towards the TradRight in the opinion of the GloboLeft.

Games rose under Atari™, sank, then rose again, this time higher and higher with Nintendo™ and then Sony™ and Sega™ and finally the X-Box™. Each iteration brought more story and visual complexity to the games, but the consumer was mainly the same: young white dudes. Sure, women have always played games, but the biggest gamers have always been boys. Oh, and the Prussians. They invented wargaming when it wasn’t convenient to duel or kill someone just to pass the time (seriously, look it up).

And what do boys like? Girls. Thus, Lara Croft™ and the Tomb Raider© series came into existence, complete with her huge . . . eyes. And shapely . . . hair. Lara Croft® was about as realistic as He-Man® was, but that was okay. She was an idealized version (through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy) of what a hot woman looked like.

But the GloboLeftElite have started a war against hot women. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s because that women feel threatened by hot women. I will note that not a single feminist ever jumped out and said that Superman™ was an unrealistic body model, or has tried to get Brad Pitt out of movies and replace him with that guy that plays Paul Blart.

When He-Man© did a PSA, was he He-Man®-splaining?

No. They want to uglify women characters in video games. I think so that ugly feminist women feel better.

The latest? Jean Grey™, that buxom fiery-haired psychic that, ahem, inspired so many young men, has been redone. Yup, here it is.

Yes, hot Jean Grey™ has been turned into a plank of wood that looks like Melinda Gates. And who was responsible? Not sure, but Sweet Baby, Inc. (links below) have allegedly been busy as they can be with Jean Grey, gumming up the works to make sure that all of the GloboLeftElite talking points and propaganda is included in the game and that the women in the games are as ugly as the Sweet Baby, Inc. women feel that they are inside. And outside, I guess.

When I play a video game, I’d rather play a cool strong character rather than Archie Bunker. Do women want to play as a hot chick, or do they want to play as a woman with a body best described as “tubular and featureless”?

Gamer Gate 2.0: Woke On Patrol

Gamer Gate 2.0 Update: Disproportionate Response Edition

It’s not just video games. Dungeons & Dragons™ has said that they’ll be happy when white guys stop playing their games.

Okay, done. (meme as found)

Disney’s© latest Star Wars™ flop, The Acolyte, has lesbian witches creating a baby without needing no man via the Force™. The producer also said that if we didn’t like it, don’t watch it, and then when we didn’t watch it, blamed us for not being the audience she (yes, you guessed it) deserved. I guess that in Star Wars©, they don’t need no man to have a baby.

And since Sweet Baby, Inc., Marvel™, D&D®, Disney© and Star Wars© don’t need me, I won’t be there.

You can do what you want, but I’ll be skipping this round. I like Grug’s stories better, anyway.

Illegal Immigration: It’s a Pyramid Scheme

“If you’re trying to extort us because we are immigrants, we know the law.” – Taken

If you would like a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve our lives, please press 1 for English. (All memes today are as found.)

As I look to the vast, teeming hordes of illegals washing on to our shore daily, I ask myself, what rational nation would make it easy for hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men to easily enter the country each month, every month, for the entirety of the Biden administration?

Some have claimed that as many as 11 million to 13 million of these fighting-age men are entering the country every year. That’s a total of nearly 40 million in the three and a half years since Biden assumed the office. Of military aged men. Who won’t be in the military. At least not our military.

It has even gotten to the point where the normies that tend to vote left (not the committed GloboLeft, mind you, but the normies who voted for Biden) have come to realize, “No, this is too much.”

It’s gotten to the point where other immigrants have said, “No mas.”

It’s gotten so bad that Joe Biden, he who Executive Ordered out of existence Trump’s border strategy in the first forty minutes after he took the oath, had to pretend it was the Republicans who were against border security last month.

Oh, and a few minutes after that he then offered immediate legal status to 500,000 spouses of illegals. It must be wonderful to be a GloboLeftist and have the memory of a goldfish.

Of course, one of the main reasons the GloboLeft want to haul in illegals over the border is that most people who are illegals want free stuff, and most immigrants in general (not all, but in general) have come from countries where a higher degree of socialism is the norm. Plus, many don’t speak the language, so they’re left to whatever the local GloboLeftist “Community Organizer” tells them for political beliefs.

But, perhaps, another reason that the GloboLeft wants so much immigration is debt. If you look at average debt in the United States, it’s at $104,000. Even Gen Z is getting on the debt train: the average Zoomer debt is about $30,000, even though the oldest Zoomer is 26.

Average illegal (or legal) immigrant debt load? Zero.

The opportunity then appears: load the illegals up with loans at silly high interest rates. Keep in mind, they have crappy credit, so a 20% interest rate to buy a car at a buy here/pay here place seems like a good deal. Illegals also have, generally, lower reading comprehension and less experience with the debt-industrial complex, so renting to buy a tv, a car, furniture (rent to own!) which makes it look like the immigrant is actually adding to the economy rather than subtracting from it.

And they are subtracting from it: medical care, schooling, infrastructure, housing, and criminality all pile on. While American might have become a third-world hellhole all by itself (which I doubt) illegals are a pyramid scheme. The scheme requires more and more illegals to take on the debt and consooom the resources.

The solution to all of these problems brought on by the immigration? GloboLeftists want to import yet more illegals to solve the problems caused by all of the previous illegals. The endpoint of this is disaster. It ends up destroying the countries, no, nations, that were insane enough to practice this importation. A nation, like Ireland, filled with Irish people ceases to be a nation when it ceases to be Irish. A Moroccan born in Ireland is no more Irish than a mouse born in a stable is a horse.

No, Ireland then ceases to be a nation when it ceases to be Irish, and then it becomes a country, and it will never be the same. I think the Irish have figured this out, as they’ve been pushing back on the GloboHomoElite as of late.

Several years ago, I was listening to NPR™ before I gave up on it entirely – it was probably 2016. This was an out-and-out propaganda piece, and I realized it at the time. In this snippet, the child of Iranian parents that had lived in California had moved to Copenhagen. He was quite upset that his daughter (born in California) was not considered to be Danish.

Well, she’s not. She never will be. Persian? Sure. Danish? Never. At best, a resident. Her children, three or four generations hence? Maybe so, as soon as they are named Viggo or Alfred or Clara or Freja.

These changes have consequences that range far deeper than just the economic. England was a country made for the English, and that’s how it works. The customs and attitudes of India or Pakistan? Well, import enough of that, and England won’t be England.

America is not Ireland – I’m of Scots-Dane-English extraction, and no Scot, Dane, or Englishman would claim me as anything but their very distant kin, which I understand. But I am more than three generations American, so I have no other home, no other place that is mine.

And just like England was made by and for the English, America was made by and for the Americans. Whoever is coming across the border is not an American, but someone who is actively destroying America.

None of the GloboLeftElite care that this will ruin all of the nations of the West economically or demographically. As an anon put it,

“They’ll destroy it all, all of society, for a lifetime of personal hedonism and debauchery, funded off of the suffering of billions.”

I’m not sure that’s right. The forces of the GloboLeftElite do like their pleasures, but many of the foot soldiers of the GloboLeft simply want to watch it all burn. They don’t care, particularly, to see anything grow in its place, just so long as the True, the Beautiful, and the Good are destroyed.

Destruction, though it may be easy, and though it may be very common in the coming years, will not be the final say. In the end, since the beginning of man, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good have proven to come back alive, again and again, even when the night seemed the darkest.

I have never said the path is easy, and I’ve never said any of us will live to see the end of the tale, and I hate to give spoilers, but we’re not done.

Not even close.

Bad Economics Destroys Wealth

“Hey, there’s no airbag. I can fly out through the windshield?” – Rocketman

Toyota® introduced their new Nagasaki airbag – they say “you won’t feel the impact”.

Annually, about 2800 lives are saved by airbags. Hurray!

Annually, 13.6 million new cars are sold. That probably doesn’t rate a hurray, I mean, not ever fact is exciting.

I’m guessing (numbers are sketchy) that it costs approximately $2000 per car to add airbags. This number may be a bit high, but replacing a single airbag can cost $2000, and many new cars have so many airbags that some cars can legally be sold as bubble wrap.

By federal law, all passenger autos sold must include airbags.

That pencils out to an annual cost of $27.2 billion dollars in additional consumer spending.

For airbags.

So, we have all of the math ready for us: how much does it cost to save a human life.

(drumroll)

About $10 million dollars per life saved.

Every Monday evening, Superman® researches bitcoin. That’s his crypto-night.

That’s insane. I mean, I know the goal is a good one, but why is the federal government mandating that Americans spend an average of $10 million dollars per person to save them? Heck, I don’t like most people even $50,000 worth. But $10 million?

This number, and, indeed the federal mandate that airbags be installed on everything on the highway is a product of the “safety at all costs” culture. Their motto is, “If only one human life is saved . . .” which is meant as a rallying cry for whatever uneconomic idea that they want to put forward. An actual economist, Thomas Sowell, made the argument that if you wanted people to drive safely you’d replace the airbag with a big Bowie knife. I tried to verify that quote, but the link that I came up with was . . . my site.

So, I couldn’t verify it, except by myself. I’m not sure I’m a reliable source, but, hey.

It would also decrease emergency room visits. Save him? No, then how would he learn anything?

Hit the brakes too hard?

Sorry about that – there are consequences to the driver.

Imagine how polite drivers would be then? If not, think of the lowered hospital visits!

The news is simple: no one makes it out of here alive. No one. We cannot escape the one inevitable consequence of living, which is death. The GloboLeftSafetyPatrol thinks that if we spend billions of dollars, we can make Death go away. No, at least in 2024, the only thing that we can do is shoo Death away from our doorstep for a little while by using better diet and exercise and maybe renting an 18-year-old to use as a blood donor to live off of them like a vampire. I heard them called “blood boys” once.

If I brought the concept that actions have consequences up with a GloboLeftist, it would break their mind. They live in a world where money is what other people provide to satisfy all the wants of the world. In my experience, most people want a lot more than the world can afford, so we have to make choices. Not everyone can afford a blood boy.

Asian fathers are disappointed if their son has a B+ blood type.

That’s the basis of economics, making the least-bad choice given the information you know at the time.

The second thing that drives the GloboLeftistSafetyPatrol nuts is the idea that people might have a choice. It drives them nuts. What if I wanted to buy a car that didn’t have airbags?

I’m the bad guy.

Why? Well, for that to be the case, the GloboLeftSafetyPatrol has decided that they own me.

To be clear, I do believe that there are obligations that an individual has with society, and that a society has for an individual. Pure libertarianism in the absence of an infinite expanding frontier is simply not workable, though it has been tried and certainly worked better than communism and with a much smaller body count.

A similar bad choice is involved with the decision to import the swarming masses of parasite carrying (link below) illegals to replace actual citizens. All of the job growth post-COVID has been by immigrants, either of the legal (or, since there are millions and millions of them) more likely illegal aliens.

Could It All Be Worms Making The Decisions For The Left?

When illegals do a home invasion is it a house swarming party?

In one way this is a multiple hit to the economy. First, these aliens, on average consume a lot more resources than are offset by the tax revenue they produce and work that they do.

For every illegal crossing the border, the economy has that much more sand poured in the gears in terms of unpaid for medical cost, schooling costs, infrastructure costs, and benefits cost. The average illegal costs far more than the average veteran, and much more than the average veterinarian. Heck, they even cost more than the average vegan, though they’re not so smug.

Second, for every illegal that consumes additional housing, often in conditions of squalor with much higher occupancy than an American family, the housing stock is consumed, raising prices. I read one story about a Canadian apartment where the inhabitants were living in every room in the house, including having a bed in the kitchen where two people lived.

Lastly, the illegals keep wages low. Literally if we import the third world, we become the third world because our wages will eventually drop to third world levels – the same goes for free trade.

Importing illegals (and, let’s face it, many legal) aliens actually makes the economy get worse, and it’s faster the more we import. With lowered demand for housing, prices would go down. With lowered amounts of workers, wages would tend to go up. Take these to the extreme, and California becomes Mumbai, but with fewer cobras.

If Chuck Norris didn’t have arms, what would his catchphrase be? “You’re about to meet de feet!”

The GloboLeft loves illegals, because of their compassion – but studies have consistently shown that their compassion is just that, a feeling, and that people on the TradRight are generally those that actually fund and charities that help people. To the GloboLeftists, that’s simply not their problem – government (meaning you and I) should take care of it.

We can’t afford airbags anymore because we’ve used that wealth on . . . airbags. And illegals. And any one of a thousand things that you or I could think of where the government either mandates waste or pursues policies that are directly detrimental to the voters. I mean, even Sweden is waking up to the concept that importing rapefugees might not be the best policy since there are no-go zones (Malmo) where actual Swedish people aren’t allowed.

But what bothers me the most is, if the government keeps wasting the wealth of the country in this fashion and at this rate, I’ll never be able to afford a blood boy.

Hopefully My Last COVID Post Ever

“There was a vaccine, just and experimental batch.” – Omega Man

I wish that there was still a mask mandate, at least for Pelosi.

It’s Father’s Day and I have to get up earlier than usual in the morning, so I thought I’d just put a retrospective of COVID headlines instead of a Lame Repost. Some of them might be fake (you’ll see them) but I left ’em in anyway. It gives a sense of where we were that they could have been real.

The statistics were pretty clear (to me) early on (and everything I wrote is still here, unchanged) that I wouldn’t recommend the Vaxx to anyone that wasn’t at a bigger risk of death (because of complications and co-morbidities) to take a bioactive compound that, on purpose, hijacked human cells to make bits of foreign material to stimulate the immune system.

It was a clinical trial in the tens of millions. My family and I decided to be the control group. I have never regretted it, and they certainly don’t now. Pugsley competed in a very cardiovascularly intense sport. Not long after being Vaxxed, one of the competitors at a local school died. A seventeen-year-old boy, in peak physical condition.

Yeah, the number of times I’d heard of that happening was zero, and that’s through decades. Could it have been a fluke?

Sure. Just like the two people I knew who took the Johson & Johnson® Vaxx on the same day had open heart surgery a month apart.

It turned out that “safe and effective” wasn’t either, since whatever immunity the Vaxx granted was, at best, transient, and, at worst, made people who took it subsequently more likely to catch strains later on. It was interesting when I blurted that out at a meeting, and the medical guy there nodded.

Now we’re at the predictable endgame, where a court has ruled that the Vaxx wasn’t a vaccine in any sense at all and a major newspaper has asked the question about if the Vaxx has “helped fuel rise in excess deaths”.

But Google® isn’t happy about this.

It started with:

A Trump Vaxx was horrible, but the GloboLeft loved the idea of a Biden Vaxx:

But that turned into actual hate:

But then motives became apparent:

But the tune began to change as “Suddenly” people were impacted:

Politicians did normal politician things:

And the press started covering it all up:

But did someone know?

Regardless:

Could It All Be Worms Making The Decisions For The Left?

“You can’t have both of the parasites.” – Fight Club

A tapeworm showed up to a party and got kicked out. I guess the guy was a terrible host.

When I think about parasites, I start with thinking about the GloboLeft. Somebody like George Soros has been sucking at the economy, producing no value, and trying his best to control its brain.

Like Toxoplasmosis gondii.

Toxoplasmosis gondii (T. gondii from here on out) is, like a gender-studies major, a parasite. It has an interesting life cycle, in that it often occurs in cats. In reality, it can infest any warm blooded animal (and birds as well) but most people are aware from due to its association with cats, and not the Broadway musical, but the fuzzy felines.

I want to write a Broadway show titled Vocabulary. It’ll be a play on words.

T. gondii likes to infest cats. Since it occurs as cysts in animals, T. gondii has developed the ability to change the behavior of mice and rats. Specifically, T. gondii changes the brain and behavior patterns of rodents to make them less worried about being dinner.

Of things that rodents don’t like, “being eaten alive” is pretty near the top of the list. Uninfected rodents really hate the smell of cat pee and avoid it, since cat pee often occurs near where cats are, and cats like to eat rodents alive, just for sport.

However, give a rodent an infection of T. gondii and it either loses it’s aversion to cat pee or becomes attracted to it. It also reduces the behaviors associated with avoiding predators and makes the mice more bold and less worried about predators. It also makes them hyperactive, increases the distances they travel, and makes the reckless when they show up at a new area.

Yes. T. gondii turns mice into little mobile food trucks for cats. This is on purpose, so the cats eat the mice, and then get infected, and then poop, and then spread T. gondii everywhere.

Mary Poppins Food Truck Review: “Super cauliflower-cheese but the lobster was atrocious.”

Well, there’s a horrifying thought! A parasite that changes the behavior of creatures! Thankfully humans don’t get it, and it doesn’t impact human behavior?

Well, nazzo fast, Guido.

It turns out that T. gondii just loves to hitch a ride into humans. And just like it changes the behavior of rats and cats and mice, studies have shown that it also impacts humans as well. How?

T. gondii has shown to have some of these effects in people:

Increases impulsive behaviors,
Increased car accidents,
Increased road rage, and
Increased mental illness (like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder).

Yeah, T. gondii is a disaster for people since if you look at the list above, it appears to turn them into GloboLeftists. It also messes with human immune systems so it doesn’t get eaten, makes healthy cells die, increases inflammation, and may even encourage other parasites to join the party by downregulating the parts of the human immune system that keep them out.

Staying up all weekend is fun – after all, sleep is for the week.

Thankfully it’s rare, right?

Nope. In women of childbearing age, infection rates are:

50%-80% in Latin Americans,
20%-60% in Eastern Europeans,
30%-50% in the Middle Easterners,
20%-60% in Southeast Asians,
20%-55% in Africans, and
7% in the United States natives (2004 data) but 28.1% in foreign-born.

Billions of people have this parasite, T. gondii. But that’s just one parasite.

I had that parasite. Didn’t care for it.

Let’s take this a step further.

There are large numbers of parasites beyond T. gondii that infect and impact humanity. I looked it up and came to two conclusions:

Parasites are really gross and repulsive.
There are hundreds of different types of parasites out there.

How likely is it, of all of the different types of parasites that impact humanity that the only one that impacts behavior is T. gondii? If I were a betting man, I’d lay money that there are certainly more parasites than not impact behavior. And since many of these parasites require exposure to blood or poop to increase the number of hosts, well, might the behaviors that the parasite “encourages” be tied to more exposure to those things?

It’s a thought.

Once again, when looking at the religious themes of chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty, it occurs to me that all of those virtuous behaviors – every single one of them – reduces exposure to parasites and disease that may take over our minds.

Is it just a coincidence that as adherence to chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty are tossed away as old, outmoded thinking that we find ourselves in a world surrounded by triggered adherents of Clown World? Perhaps the warnings we’ve seen in the past of those possessed by demons was, at least in part, based on parasites. It seems like all the behavior that leads to the fall of civilizations tends to increase the likelihood that people will catch parasites.

Where do Viking clowns go? Val-ha-ha.

Maybe, maybe it’s only the GloboLeft, but the GloboLeft is actively encouraging behaviors that result in the perpetuation of parasites. Today. Ever wonder why the GloboLeft reacted so harshly to ivermectin being a potential cure to COVID? It kills parasites.

What would have happened if GloboLeftists had taken it and found out that their lives are a lie and their predilection to certain sexual practices was actually parasite mind control?

Are the GloboLeftists, in addition to being parasites, are also being consumed and controlled by parasites?

You be the judge.

The Latest Attack: White Fortressing

“Lord Vader will provide us with the location of the rebel fortress.” – Star Wars, A New Hope

I lost a castle in chess once. It was a rook-y mistake.

One of the unintended consequences of a multicultural society is the way that identity fuels animosity and envy. In the latest story from this dispatch comes the concept of “White Fortressing”.

What on Earth is White Fortressing? Does it involve a series of blankets covering the dining room table and various chairs to create a blanket fort, but this time using only white blankets?

No. In Louisiana, besides the Gumbo Landslides and the Alligator Squadron attacks, one of the things that people wrestle with is government. In Baton Rouge (French for “smells like mold”), Louisiana, there the people in one area have been trying to split off from the local parish. If you’re from Louisiana, no one calls those subdivisions “a parish” except you. I blame the Louisiana Purchase.

Why? People in Louisiana do things, um, differently. Heck, if Adam and Eve had been from Louisiana, they’d have eaten the snake, too.

Pictured: Louisiana after half an inch of rain.

This group of about 100,000 folks wanted to form their own city, which they have called St. George. Because this new city would be only 12% black instead of 50% black like the rest of East Baton Rouge Parish, Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig of the Urban Institute™ coined the phrase “White Fortressing”.

What’s Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig’s job title? “Equity Scholar.” And given that job title, it’s no wonder that, wherever she looks with her beady little eyes she sees inequity. To be fair, I can’t really tell if they’re beady, but the low-resolution picture that she uploaded makes me think that when her friends tried to set her up on blind dates they described her as having “a great personality except for the everything is racist bit”.

According to the article written by Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and someone named Muttley, er “Smedley” who I am sure is completely not a dog that communicates only by snickering, White Fortressing is “opportunity hoarding”. What’s that? You mean, gasp, a community would want to spend money on itself rather than ship it to other people?

I wonder if Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and Smedley had a cartoon, would it be called “Wacky Racists”?

To quote myself in a discussion with a friend, “Why should I want to ship money overseas? I don’t want to ship it to the next county.”

It appears that the big reason that St. George wanted to make itself a city wasn’t because Louisiana was in desperate need of a new mayor, nope, the East Baton Rouge School System appears to be crap. How crap? WAFB™, which I assume stands for War Air Force Base, reported that there were 6,587 fights that were reported in the school district over the past two years. Given that there were 40,000 students in the System, it’s likely that just under 27,000 students weren’t pulling their fair share and starting fights.

Let’s be real: most fights aren’t reported. So, this would indicate to me that the schools are likely much more violent than would be indicated by the raw numbers above. So, in 2013, a group of parents decided that enough was enough. In the St. George area, there were 16,300 or so kids going to school. Of that number, some 7,700 went to private school. I think it’s obvious why: It’s to protect the poor kids, since the rich kids can hire hitmen to take care of business.

To quote Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley: “When white communities fortress themselves, they siphon away resources from the larger region, including communities of color.”

Important note: before providing Human Resources with a urine sample, make sure they requested one first.

That’s what the people of St. George are to Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley: “resources”. I suppose that a charitable way to put this is that these people are really just tax slaves. The “Opportunity Hoarding” that Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley describe is really just Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley’s Opportunity to Hoard the tax dollars coming from people who just want out of a failing, violent system.

Those ingrates! They and their children should just stay and take the beatings and worse that they so obviously deserve!

This is the mind of the GloboLeft: their job isn’t to provide a shared initiative to block those who would try to invade or enslave us. Nope. They view their job is to mine us for resources so we don’t “Hoard” our productivity and thus deprive them of their “Opportunity” to extract their pound of flesh.

The hypocrisy of the GloboLeft is laid bare by this:

Their god is democracy, except when people vote against them. This is why they always use the term “Our Democracy”. You and I simply do not need to apply.
If white people leave an area due to violence or high tax rates due to transfer payments, it’s called “White Flight” and it’s bad. So bad, because (apparently) the GloboLeft really wants people around?
No, they don’t. When white people move back into an urban hellscape and begin to economically transform it for the better, that’s “Gentrification” and it’s also bad because it raises the taxes from their previous “urban war zone” level.
Finally, if people just want to stay in the same place, and govern themselves, their horribly shellfish because they don’t want to share their taxes with the greater region. Heck, those ingrates probably don’t want to ship their tax dollars to Raytheon™ so they can build bombs to give to foreign countries or Boeing® so that Boeing© software programmers can continue trying to solve the deep mystery of the coloring book in the break room.
Who self-segregates more than anyone? The GloboLeftElite.

Hey, don’t laugh, battering rams were a real breakthrough.

The GloboLeftElite always, always, has the same idea – the things that are produced by individuals belong solely to them – there was a reason the Iron Curtain existed – and it wasn’t to keep people out. Whereas I really do believe that certain services and regulations are required, my view of the world is “anything not illegal is allowed.” Their view? “Anything not mandatory is prohibited.” I wish that last phrase was something that I made up, but it’s not, but I wish even more that the GloboLeftElite hadn’t heard it, since it appears to be their game plan.

The aptly named Larry Fink.

An irony of this is that the school district proposed by the folks who put together the city of St. George isn’t even particularly white: only 35% of the public school students would be white.

I guess, in the end, White Fortressing simply means, “Not spending your tax dollars the way our GloboLeftElite overlords wanted”. Maybe they could shut themselves up in their own safe space.

What color blankets do you think Doctor Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley would want?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Trump Trigger and Complexity

“Rita, you’re a convicted felon, and now you’re an escaped con.” – The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

They fired me from the clock factory because of all the extra hours that I’m putting in.

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume VI, Issue 1

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. 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 – The Trump Trigger– Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Stairway to Where? – 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 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Civil War Weather Report Previous Posts

The Trump Trigger

Donald Trump scared the hell out of the GloboLeftElite when he was elected. I’m fairly certain that he makes many of GloboLeft rank and file lose sleep when they think about him being re-elected.

Rand Paul was quoted in Zero Hedge® (a reader sent this in):

“I worry about strife. I worry about war in the streets. I worry about 50 percent of the public believing that the court system will be used against them . . . I worry when half the country thinks they won’t be treated fairly, what happens and how people react.”

Huh, I thought he was dead.

Where we sit now, Trump may never spend a day in the pokey. And he may never even be convicted – yes, there’s a jury verdict, but until the judge finds him convicted, there’s just a vote by a jury of twelve GloboLeft peers, one of which may have violated the rules and talked about the proceedings.

Oops. There are other very, very valid reasons that Trump has for appeal – selective prosecution among them not identifying the charge against him – they never specified the other crime that Trump supposedly committed.

Rand Paul is right. The judicial system has been weaponized at every level against Trump. The fact that the Federalist Society has produced a slate of judges over the past several decades that aren’t woke Sotomayor-level GloboHomo soldiers will apply actual justice at the federal level.

But what if they don’t?

If Trump is convicted and sent to prison that will a very dark day in history – one that will show to millions of normies that the republic is irretrievably lost, a conclusion that many on the TradRight have come to years if not decades ago.

Does this lead to immediate chaos? This is a tough one – I tend to think not, but then again, the number of people that support Trump and MAGA are significant. It will be a sign that businesses need to create a quick exodus from New York, California, or any other location where the business has a political difference with the GloboLeftElite agenda. I mean, it’s not like elections matter.

But I’m told it was a FaiR ElEctIoN.

Perhaps Musk moving to Texas is beginning to make a lot more sense. On the bright side, it means that the Republic of Texas will be born with it’s own space force.

Violence and Censorship Update

The issues in Israel have done several things – they’ve increased the level of fighting in the GloboLeft as the Pro-Palestine wing and the Pro-Israel wings slug it out. As Bracken notes, it is a weird GloboLeft/Palestine alliance.

Of course, as soon as the GloboLeft makes one of their crappy villages, they . . . put up the borders that they claim to hate.

The other side of the coin is the reaction in Congress, which is entirely at odds with that pesky 1^st Amendment:

And, Massey has a very good question, especially since they committed $300,000 to ads attacking him:

Oh, and questioning the “Muh Immigration is Good” narrative is worth a banning:

They’re still trying to ban JK Rowling for telling the truth:

Propaganda, anyone?

Oh, it’s not like they’re trying to suppress anything . . .

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again. It’s like there’s a pattern here . . .

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 is up, a little. I wonder if Chicago’s Democratic National Convention is going to spike temperatures?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down. I expect this fall to be a bit more crazy.

Economic:

Economic numbers are up a bit. But so are prices.

Illegal Aliens:

Second Highest May is actually down. But the normies are waking up.

Stairway to Where?

History never repeats exactly, but the same themes keep coming up again and again. While there is no guarantee, there are patterns.

The lead up to civil war is often the same: misery, rising tensions, and too many elites fighting each other for scraps of power. The wars are often drastically different, and depend on things like ideology, geography, technology, and telepathy. Okay, maybe not telepathy, but the other ones all count.

Broadly, when civil wars occur there two things that can happen as a result. The first one is what happened after the Russian Revolution or the American Civil War 1.0 – that is, a drastic reduction in freedom for citizens.

But I’ve been assured that everything is fine.

The American Civil war did increase the freedom of slaves, and granted them full citizenship, to be sure. But for the common man who hadn’t been a slave? Freedom declined. There had been a balancing act between the Several States and Fed.Gov, but after the Civil War was done, the States were no longer sovereign, and, in fact were nothing more than subdivisions of the federal government.

This was drastically different than what existed before. The Several States were recognized as just that, complete governments. They only banded together, reluctantly, to create an organism strong enough, just barely, to resist being beaten up and conquered by the various European powers.

After the American Civil War? The process of eliminating the rights of the Several States has been an ongoing battle every year since 1865, and, with a few exceptions, has been largely won by the United States.

If increased central control and tyranny are one outcome from a civil war, what’s the other?

Increased complexity. Think back to the fall of the Soviet Union. A huge, monolithic, multicultural tyranny if ever there was one. It looked to the world as if it would never be defeated – heck, the view of the Russians in the 1980s (I know, I was there) was that, while they didn’t have lots of different consumer products, they did have a huge technological edge over the West.

But when the end came, the fighting that did happen was minimal – the Soviet Union (like the multicultural British and Roman empires that came before) didn’t end so much with a red tide of blood, but rather a gradual realization that no one wanted to play anymore. The sad, shattered core of empire let all the parts fly to the wind.

I met the guy who puts the symbols on maps that say what things are. What a legend!

It seems that one key is the “multi-cultural” part. Whereas you could make the case that the United States had Irishmen and Scots and Norwegians bopping around back in 1860, the vast majority of Americans were just that, Americans descended from (by and large) stock from the United Kingdom with a common language and common religious and cultural heritage.

That led to Tyranny.

The seat of power of Imperial Russian was mainly . . . Russian. The Russian Revolution led to? Tyranny.

It seems that there is some tipping point where a Civil War results not in tyranny, but in Balkanization, heck, the name “Balkanization” is literally exactly what we’re talking about.

The more I think about it, unless there is a Caesar sitting in the wings (and I don’t see him) then we will end up Balkanizing after a Civil War.

Disagree? This is a newer thought, so, love to hear comments.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1788630900781047856

https://x.com/i/status/1797153228032815184

https://twitter.com/i/status/1787518756756901901

https://x.com/i/status/1795801690014429550

https://x.com/i/status/1790510753952194692

https://x.com/i/status/1796322999056163026

https://x.com/i/status/1797272685791117522

Good Guy

https://x.com/i/status/1797274250438476199

One Guy

https://www.actionnews5.com/2024/05/29/scjc-alleged-teen-triggerman-deadly-community-center-shooting-fired-self-defense-wont-be-prosecuted/

https://www.courtnewsohio.gov/cases/2024/SCO/0307/221482.asp

https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/man-shot-killed-overnight-in-a-carmichael-apartment-deputies-say/

https://apnews.com/article/roger-fortson-stand-your-ground-race-florida-2c6a585f3fa5b2bd21179b84ff258b1d#

Body Count

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F04d489f3-35f1-4579-80f6-dc5babc003cf_936x528_png_92.jpg?itok=sQRpJ67q

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F13892e0d-32cb-47c1-8cef-b2e1554b9e62_1456x972.jpeg_92.jpg?itok=HMg63_9I

https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Population-Grew-51-Million-Last-Two-Years

https://trac.syr.edu/whatsnew/email.240510.html

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/30142.jpeg?itok=jcgiDaxv

Vote Count

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/31/dinesh-dsouza-election-film-2000-mules-pulled.html

https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/13/heres-fresh-evidence-bidens-using-your-tax-dollars-to-turn-out-democrat-votes-in-2024/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/05/13/the-georgia-state-election-board-ensures-2024-will-be-a-2020-repeat

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/officials-overseeing-elections-swing-states-doubt-2020-results/

Civil War

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-uncivil-war-rages-rcna150666

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13447357/THIRTEEN-conservative-counties-Oregon-approve-ballot-measures-SECESSION-vote-join-non-woke-Idaho-issue-list-demands.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13452561/Divided-states-America-Oregon-Louisiana-campaigns-secession-taking-place-local-state-levels-succeeding.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinion-we-are-starting-to-enjoy-hatred/ar-BB1nm54r

https://x.com/seanmdav/status/1796301843338789070

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-investor-ray-dalio-warns-115219371.html

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/18/unpacking-ray-dalios-alarmist-prediction-of-civil-war/

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-hush-money-verdict-maga-civil-war-1906671

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/trump-trial-maga-internet-violence/678571/

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-guilty-verdict-online-maga-fanbase-war/

https://www.salon.com/2024/05/28/terrible-place-bill-maher-warns-a-civil-could-happen-here–some-already-pining-for-it/

Why Haven’t Aliens Visited? Maybe Our Reviews Are Bad: “Earth? Just One Star.”

“This object does fit the parameters of Dyson’s theory.” – Star Trek: TNG

When I was 12 I was abducted by aliens, they told me to do chores, eat my vegetables, shower, and brush my teeth. I guess I was on the mother ship.

When I was a kid, humanity knew about nine and only nine planets. One big question that we had was, because we were a sample size of one, is whether or not planets were common in the galaxy or rare. The first extrasolar planet discovered was51 Pegasi b in 1995.

The question was answered: there were other planets. But how common are planets?

We keep finding them wherever we look. Humanity has found thousands and thousands of extrasolar planets. In 2014, the estimate was that one in stars have planets about the size of Earth with a surface temperature where life (as we know it) could exist. If that’s the case? It’s certain that life exists outside of the Solar System.

That’s a lot of real estate. But is there any evidence that any of it is in use by things smarter than a paramecium or Kamala Harris?

Kamala, just Biden her time.

Recently there have been two studies by astrophysicists that point to the possibility that there are observable technosignatures, specifically the excess infrared radiation that would accompany something like a Dyson sphere. One group focused on a particular kind of star and found 7 candidates; the other study found 53 candidates looking in a different way.

I am of course referring to the physicist Freeman Dyson who popularized the idea that a civilization could take the material in a star system, munch up the planets, and surround the central star in order to use the energy. Oh, and Dyson also invented the vacuum cleaner. That’s a different Dyson, you say?

Dang.

Why would they need that much energy? Oh, they could use it for anything, making video games, or making PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ powered starships, or running the air conditioning with the doors and windows open and leaving the fridge door open and the lights on. Man, as a dad, it hurts me to even write those words. But I still claim to be the first person, ever, to use the phrase “anti-PEZ©”.

The Future of Humanity: Galactic Empire, PEZ-Driven Starships, and Girls Drinking Beer

The starlight would fall on the sphere, it would be used to create useful energy, and the remainder would be infrared, otherwise known to most humans as “heat”, but not the 1995 movie since aliens don’t have any use for Robert DeNiro either. The big surprise is that some of these stars were radiating more than 60 times the amount of “heat” that they should be, indicating it has been absorbed by . . . something.

But some sponges are more a-loofah.

Now, that could just mean that Yo Mamma is hanging out around in space, or it could mean that there’s an explanation we’re not yet familiar with.

But then there are the fleeing O-Class stars. O stars are very hot and very young stars that burn out very, very quickly (in a cosmic time scale), with total lifespans of as low as 4 million years. Sure, that sounds like a long time, but it’s only half as old as Joe Biden.

The end of an O-Class star is nearly always a supernova – a huge explosion. Isn’t it odd that 25% of the O-Class stars that have been found are being ejected from the Milky Way galaxy at a high rate of speed? It’s almost like there might be an alien intelligence throwing bums out of the neighborhood before the pee on the garage.

What does Taylor Swift have in common with John Wilkes Booth? They both know how to get a crowd excited.

Well, I guess that was an oddly specific example.

I’ve also written before about other examples of possible technosignatures.

Bikinis, Aliens, And Tabby’s Star

If other intelligent life has existed in the past and developed significant technology to gather most of the energy from their star, would they come visit?

I’ve made my opinion clear that if intelligent life exists elsewhere (which I think is probably a certainty) then the Solar System has probably been visited. By Little Green Men? Dunno about that, but it’s much easier to send a toaster than a living critter into space. They could send an A.I. out here, have it wait and watch.

This is called a Bracewell probe, and is really the plot to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sending a probe out would be relatively cheap and easy. Okay, I couldn’t afford to do it, but it would be cheap and easy if you have experience throwing O-Class stars out of the galaxy to improve the resale value of your Dyson sphere.

“Hot singles are looking for dates in your area, Dave.”

If we start hunting around the local Solar System, that would be my first guess of what we’d find, and it would probably be on some sort of weird elliptical orbit around the Sun so it can observe without being observed.

Will we ever make the jump to becoming a species that harnesses the power of our star? I don’t know. We certainly have some roadblocks to doing so.

We’d have to overcome our tendency to turn wealth into hedonism, and avoid a civilizational tombstone that says “We Were Happy Childfree Couples and Wine Aunts” in our own Mouse Utopia (link below).
We’ll have to make sure that A.I. doesn’t turn on us.
We’ll have to ditch anything made by Boeing™.
And, of course, we need to make sure we don’t blow ourselves up.

Want Dystopia? Because this is how you get Dystopia.

At some point, and I think this might be in the next decade if we haven’t blown ourselves up, I think we will finally have reasonable proof that intelligent life exists. In my lifetime, then, we will have gone from not knowing if other planets exist to knowing that other life exists out there.

And if other life exists out there, there’s one thing I know for sure.

If it bleeds we can kill it.

Catabolic Collapse – Coming Soon To A Place Near You

“Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.” – Fight Club

My friend struggled with steroid addiction, but it only made him stronger.

If you’re a bodybuilder, the word “anabolic” is your friend. While often used in conjunction with the word steroids, anabolic really means “taking the proteins and stuff you eat and turning it into more complex stuff for your body”. Like I said, that’s a good thing if you’re in shape as a body builder. The Mrs. says that that spherical is technically a shape, so I guess I’m technically in shape. At least in “a” shape.

But just like there is day balanced by night (see, I can be poetic!) anabolic is balanced by the less commonly used word “catabolic”. And, just like an anode has a cathode, catabolic means the opposite. If I’m dieting, the word catabolic is my friend – it rips apart complex molecules like fat that represent stored energy, releasing the energy, and making my shape appear less spherical as the fat is turned into energy releasing sweet, sweet CO₂.and plutonium.

Ahh, back when a screwdriver was the height of nuclear safety protocol. (meme as found, if obscure, look up “demon core”).

Economic growth is anabolic. Building a house takes a complex logistics chain of materials and manpower and creates a yet more complex outcome, assembled only with effort and time. A house fire is therefore catabolic – it torches and burns the whole thing down, much faster than it took to build. But allowing a house’s roof to fail and the house to rot is also catabolic – it just takes a lot longer.

Just as it applies to houses and body shape, catabolic can also apply to economies. Essentially every day after the paving of a road is complete, the road is rotting. At first this happens slowly. However, then, as water gets a chance to penetrate it and freeze and thaw, the decay happens much more quickly.

What happens when we can’t afford to fix stuff? It slowly rots. Buildings slowly decay. Street signs fade. Water pipes burst. Kardashians move in.

How are Kardashians like deer? They get new racks every year.

Just like keeping a body from starving requires continual food, keeping a complex system operating and running requires continual wealth and effort. Every bridge, unless maintained, will collapse. A comment last week talked about a pullback of restaurants in their area, more in keeping with what was in place decades ago.

Decades ago, even in Modern Mayberry, there weren’t a lot of external chain restaurants, not even a McDonald’s™. McDonald’s© business model requires a Regional owner who owns multiple McDonald’s™ to build a restaurant on land the McDonald’s Corporation© owns and lease the restaurant from the Corporation®. It also requires that the restaurant go through suppliers that the Corporation® selects to purchase stuff like food and cups and napkins. On top of that, the Corporation™ takes a percent off the top for profit.

I once had a sirloin sandwich at McDonald’s®. I’ll never do it again, that was a Big McSteak™.

Back in, say, 1960, all the profits, including the money the local bank lent for the mortgage on Ma and Pa’s Diner, stayed in the community. Many of the costs would as well, especially if the beef and vegetables were locally sourced through the butcher. While the City wasn’t a closed economy, it still retained a lot of the money currently being extracted and kept it local. But when the economy is prosperous, there’s enough wealth being generated, and the extraction of a bit of it doesn’t matter all that much.

Now? The excess cash is hoovered out of the local economy with maximum velocity. That turns the people that would have run Ma and Pa’s Diner or the butcher shop or the local grocery store into wage employees rather than entrepreneurs. Amazon© and eBay™ have removed the reason for small shops selling specific items like games or cooking utensils, and that leaves room for Walmart™ to sell bulk commodities. At least our local Walmart® isn’t like a Target® store in the big cities, which I hear now come complete with their own police precincts.

In a small town like Modern Mayberry, that’s one thing, but last week I wrote about the beginning of the collapse of the casual dining (as opposed to the philosophic problem created by causal dining) restaurant chains. There are none of these in Modern Mayberry, because we’re far too small for an RedAppleChiliLobsterBees™. No, the extraction is starting to fail in the suburbs as well.

I always stop my microwave when the clock hits 0:01, which makes me feel like a bomb disposal expert.

It was mentioned that area was going back the earlier “norm” of restaurants, but the reason is because the middle class has been squeezed. This squeezing of the middle class is catabolic and will destroy demand. This is why, right now, the economy shrinking while stocks continue upwards. A recession is occurring in the middle class even as profits are up. This is the collapse, but as discussed last week, it’s not sudden, until it is.

I’ve described Modern Mayberry, but I’ve also described the core areas of many larger cities, where as our economy moved from making things into reality to making profits on paper, the core died. I’ve walked through the bones of industries long sent overseas and seen the majestic steel columns holding up the roof over an empty space, long since dead and forgotten. That’s also catabolic.

The good news is that it starts slow, but picks up speed. As I’ve said before, we’re standing on the edge of a new land ready to be born, that will be far different from what we’ve seen in the past. The things we’ve taken for granted will no longer be there in many cases. I’m looking at you, Social Security.

When The Mrs. was giving birth she seemed in discomfort, so I asked, “What’s wrong, honey?” She responded, “These contractions are killing me!” So, I asked, “What is wrong, honey?”

What matters is the rebuilding. There will be choices to be made – some that will lead to freedom, some to serfdom. As we’ve seen that paths leading away from the True, Beautiful, and Good always end in failure, most often spectacular failure, I’m optimistic.

I must be. That’s why I keep dieting.