Competence – Page 5 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Maybe It’s . . . Evil?

“But I just changed my lifetime tune about thirty minutes ago, ‘cause I know that whatever is out there tryin’ to get in is pure Evil straight from Hell. And if there is a Hell, and those sons of bitches are from it, then there has go to be a heaven, Jacob, there’s gotta be.” – From Dusk ‘til Dawn

My friend gets offended when I tell her fat jokes. I told her, “Lighten up.” (Most memes are “as-found”)

I’ve been having a bit of question in my mind about what we’re seeing going on in the world today. I’ve written quite a bit about the physical trends in the world today, with energy being the number one roadblock I see into the physical future since the complexity of the world’s economy is based on cheap energy for manufacture, transport, and use of goods in our “modern” society. That might explain why people on unicycles are always so energetic compared to me on my regular bicycle. I’m two tired.

The second big challenge I see is the virtual world. By virtual, I include not only cyber-dependence, A.I., but also cash. Our current economic system uses an entirely made-up set of markers called “dollars” to buy and sell things. What’s a dollar? Once upon a time, it was some fraction of an ounce of gold. Now, a dollar is worth whatever someone will give you for it. As Biden has adopted the Binge Bucks Better strategy to try to get votes (I mean, besides the ones they print up) the deficit has reached a record.

Hmm, if Brandon is so awesome, why is no one wearing a “Build Back Better” hat?

All this spending? There’s no end in sight. So, this is a world that is having its own set of challenges in both the physical and virtual realm.

The third and (in my opinion) most important one is the spiritual realm.

Let me digress a bit – I think it will make sense in the end, but I haven’t written the end yet, so it could just end up with all of the coherence of Kamala Harris talking about quantum mechanics. Nah, nothing could be that bad.

I was half asleep recently (hypnogogic, to be technical). I often get a “clearing of the mind” when in that state, when issues that have been perplexing me sort themselves out. It’s like my mind is running a program in the background, but when I’m half asleep, all the pieces come together.

What was this puzzle?

Let’s talk about the pieces, first:

No one, literally even the GloboLeftists in the Deep Blue cities wants the massive hordes of illegals streaming across the borders. No one. It’s so bad that Biden is even attempting to blame the Republicans for not letting him close the border.

Yeah, pull the other one, Joe, and a bell will ring.

Biden 2024! 20 years for Joe, 24 for Hunter.

This is destroying the country. Quickly. Why are housing prices going up? Because we’re not building new houses because no one can afford them but yet we’ve brought in OVER 12 MILLION ILLEGALS in just three years. If Putin could have gotten that many Russians into the Ukraine, he could have taken it without a shot.

Hmmm.

I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon® today. I’ll let you know.

Ever wonder if Tyson® was a company designed to import illegal aliens so they could make cheap food so people would have heart problems requiring heroic intervention to keep the medical system going?

The second datapoint is the weird fixation of the GloboLeft on literally every freak sexuality that could possibly exist. Sexually aroused by toasters? Yeah, I know that naughty bagel-sized girl is a tease, but toaster fixation is . . . deranged. The current poster child for adding deranged sexuality to avoidance of reality is the transexual movement.

The public has, at every opportunity, rejected this. Yet, Joseph Robinette Biden decided to issue a proclamation that Easter should be known as Transexual Visibility Day. To be clear, most of the time that transexuals are visible is because they’ve snapped and tried to kill a dozen people or were engaged in really awful things with children or were parading their female penis inside a woman’s dressing room. I have seen zero positive things in the news about trans people. Ever. Each time it’s some new horror story that would have led all of our ancestors look for kindling so they could have a burning at the stake.

Yet, we have a presidential proclamation on the single holiest day of Christianity promoting this abomination.

This is the Cartoon Network®. Trust them with the minds of your kid?

I could keep going. In general, there appears to be a concerted effort put forth to break down and eliminate the impact of Christianity as the basic underlying moral virtue of the West in general, including the United States.

The fall of Christianity in the United States (and the West) will have several big, negative impacts. The concepts that there is centrality of the family, the idea that life has an ultimate purpose, and the belief that all humans can be one in Christ have shaped the world. Christianity has been the central, governing moral vision at the heart of the West.

As Christianity declines, there is a risk of losing the moral foundation it provided. The decline Christianity in society accompanied by various societal issues, including divorce, cohabitation, drug abuse, abortion, homosexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, and suicide. People are born to be religious because it gives them stability and direction.

Yet, there has been a concerted war on Christianity for years, even though it makes society observably better, and observably more stable.

San Francisco is so woke, that even the homeless vaccinate themselves!

If I were an oligarch, all of these changes would be negative for me. I’d be an oligarch over a less stable society, that produced less wealth for me to leach off of, and, in every measurable way, including the amount of power I could have, I would be worse off.

There is the first answer: because they’re just sick inside, and want to watch it all burn. Someone like George Soros may very well be like that – if you look into his eyes it’s not like you’re looking at something healthy and good. Maybe he just wants to burn it all down because he can. Because his heart is filled with hate.

That’s a simple answer. It might even be right.

This is a math teacher, so you can tell she’s plotting something.

The other answer is more profound: the GloboLeftistElite might just be . . . Evil. Capital E. It’s a solution that the modern mind wants to find an alternative to. It wants to look to cultural factors, or mental illness, or poor parenting.

Oddly, the idea that these people really are Evil is perhaps (to me) more comforting. Just like William Peter Blatty felt about his book, The Exorcist, that it was a profoundly Christian book, and uplifting, since the end showed that it wasn’t Evil that won, it was God.

Watch this, and tell me that Evil isn’t at work.

We face amazing challenges in the near future – physical, virtual, and spiritual. I’d prepare for all three.

But that’s just me.

Next up? Kamala Harris explains the General Theory of Relativity using a banana and two meatballs as props.

Family Structure, Part II: Orphans Still Not Required

“It’s taken almost thirty years and my family fortune to realize the vision of that day.” – Back to the Future

It’s easy to make a website for orphans – you don’t need a home page.

Last post we talked about the main family structures that impact the ideology of the United States (Absolute Nuclear, Authoritarian, and Egalitarian Nuclear). As noted in the post and in the comments, there were several left out. Let’s start out with the biggest structure in the world and the structure that breeds commies:

The Exogamous Clan.

This is the family structure that was seen in China, Cuba, northern India, Russia, and the part of France commies come from.
The basic structure is that marriage occurs with women from outside the clan, and the husband brings the wife home.
This is a wickedly high stress scenario: more than one woman in the household is insanely susceptible to the competition and emotional games that more than one woman can bring, plus lots of adult males and jealous wives under the same roof.
The result, the father has to have huge amounts of power. Women are pushed down relentlessly to keep peace in the family. This is reflected in that the sons’ wives are chosen by the parents, and even the sons are fairly replaceable.
The idea of independence never comes up until the father dies and the son has to form his own clan and only then does the family break apart.

The result of this is that the culture where the Exogamous Clan is the family structure prizes discipline, social duty, conformity, and not being different. The culture lends itself to strong central governance: strong emperors or a strong central government – looking at you, Chairman Xi. In China, the initial failed attempts at communism were attempts to move this Exogamous Clan structure to the societal level.

And they decided they didn’t need to teach him, they said, “Hilfinger it out.”

When these cultures have an overthrow of their leadership, the bloodshed is epic until the new father figure takes over. Children from this family structure will have a really hard time understanding the Absolute Nuclear and Authoritarian since independence is prized in the Absolute Nuclear and Authoritarian and is a cancer to the Exogamous Clan structure.

The next stop on our world tour leads us to the Islamic world, which pretty much all follows the same family structure:

The Endogamous Clan.

The Endogamous Clan is essentially and nearly exactly the Islamic world.

These are marriages based on arranged cousin marriages.
There isn’t much family stress since everyone is already family and is already inbred related so everyone pitches in.
Dad busy? There’s an uncle who will help you out. The “Patriarch” rarely has to rule because the uncles will form an opinion and go with it.
Women aren’t outsiders, and they are the ones who end up setting up the marriages, picking and choosing which cousins should marry.
They consider the entire world a clan, and their goal is to carry their clan, Islam, to everyone.
If you’re outside the clan, however, slavery is just fine with them.

If you think about having kids with your cousin and go, “ewww, gross” you’ve been inoculated against Endogamous Clans. For good reasons: one study in Bradford (U.K.) determined that childhood birth defects in Bradford was double the national average – largely because of Pakistani first cousin marriage. I guess it’s okay for them to sleep with their second cousin, if the first cousin doesn’t mind.

Islamic pubs are the worst, no drinking, no dancing. But the women can get stoned.

The English and the Pakistani (and other East Asians from Endogamous Clans) living in England will never really understand each other. The English will see a group that they want to assimilate, and the Pakistani are there only for conquest. Why did Pakistani kebob shop owners chop up and cook and sell an English child (to other English people)?

The kid was not a member of the Clan, so who cares? This is a significant cultural clash that has yet to come to a head.

The last major group is from sub-Saharan Africa. This was classified by Todd as a Flexible System. There’s a system, but that system is defined as “whatever”.

This is primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, and Todd found it also in the United States cotton belt.
Monogamy? Polygamy? Whatever.
Women raise the children while men wage war and herd cattle.
A large number of the men don’t have the opportunity to have sex: polygamy leads to periodic civil wars.
Men join together in war bands to take women or create social status.
Power is important, but responsibility is not prized.

Africa has been chaotic, and it appears that much (not all!!) of the social system seen in the United States today from African descendants has been a replication of the Flexible System, which appears to be in many cases becoming the predominant urban family structure for all people, not just African descendants.

Since Ford V. Ferrari was such a hit, Chevy tried to release a film: Total Recall.

The final two are Asymmetric and Anomic.

Asymmetric is:

Weird and limited to India, consisting of arranged marriages from the cousins of female relatives only.
It’s India, so like all things Indian it’s confused and chaotic and covered in curry powder.
I’d like to ignore it, but it’s like a billion people. But it’s a billion Indians, so I’ll ignore it.

India probably breaks every rule, primarily because regardless of the family structure, that structure also has to contend with the caste system. When I was interacting with Indians, they looked to see what caste I’d have been in if I were Indian. Due to several questions, they seemed convinced it would have been the warrior caste (they were warrior caste) so we were cool.

India will keep being India, and Indians (wherever they go) will want to hang out with other Indians more than anyone else, including getting all of their family hired.

What do you do with an elephant with three balls? Walk him, and pitch to the rhino.

Anomic is:

No fixed structure, whatsoever.
Tribal, think rainforest tribal.
Consists of oppressive empires and peasants, with consisting of military dictatorships coupled with coups.
Comically ineffective at doing anything of note.

I have no doubt that Mssr. Todd would not write this book today in the current climate of moral relativism. In choosing to review cultures and compare them, by definition some will come up short in some way or another – the greatest burst of human invention, ever, came primarily from two family systems, the Absolute Nuclear and the Authoritarian. Cultures like the Exogamous Clan structure have provided innovation, but for the most part (until recently) tried to turn their back to the world since dealing with foreigners is, well, messy.

What did Malcom X name his son? Malcom XI.

But it does explain that to the CCP and Chairman Xi, if you are Chinese-American, you’re still Chinese. Back in (I think?) the year 2019 I read that China had naturalized 4,000 citizens from other countries. That’s not a typo. 4,000. Conformity comes from being Chinese, which is why I don’t really expect them to ever be interested in taking over the world. They like Chinese people, and I’m pretty sure they think they’re a separate species.

Will China fight for resources? Certainly. Will China fight for Taiwan? Yes, to the Chinese, those are just more Chinese. Does China want to control Japan or Korea or Vietnam? No. They want them to do what China wants, but China has been, historically, very happy staying at home, likely (in part) for the reasons Todd discussed related to family structure.

The endgame of this is complex – as family structure in nations changes due either to technological progress, social change (divorced moms), and/or the influx of foreign family patterns, the very ideology of nations is bound to change.

Family patterns may change, but remember, to an orphan a selfie will always be a family photo.

A Modest Proposal Concerning Haiti

“Don’t worry. It’s good luck. In Haiti.” – Caddyshack

Two cannibals were eating Amy Schumer. One asked the other, “Does anything taste funny to you?” The other cannibal answered: “No.”

Haiti is in trouble. Again. This is not a repeat from (spins wheel) . . . nearly every year in Haiti’s history. If you look back, more Haitian leaders have been killed and eaten (hopefully in that order) than there are grains of sand in a beach.

Okay. That may be an exaggeration, since I made up the statistic. But it’s clear that Haiti is awful. The best part of Haiti is not even close to being as good as the worst part of the United States. I believe it was Michael Yon who described Haitians as “Cannibals Without Borders” which is a phrase I really hate for the sole reason that I didn’t come up with that one on my own.

Dangit.

Look how they’ve kept their plate clean.

Haitians have a history that would make Pol Pot jealous. From the beginning, it was born in blood and slavery, and then managed, somehow, to get worse. I want to make a stand, right here and now, and say that the number of Haitians that should be let into the country is zero.

To be clear, I don’t want most anyone allowed in anymore, but I decided to pick on Haiti because it’s the latest foreign hellhole that will soon be sending in droves of awful people trying to escape the very problems that they created by moving to Nebraska or some place so they can bring the wonders of Voodoo (yes, they still do that) and cannibalism (yes, they still do that) and rape (yes, it’s the national sport) to the Cornhusker state.

As I said, this isn’t entirely a Haitian thing, though they’ve managed the impossible: they make communist Cuba communist Venezuela, and all of the Mad Max® movies look like paradise in comparison to Tuesday in Haiti.

This is what roadside assistance looks like in Haiti.

No, the biggest reason I don’t want Haitians to come to the United States is because I really feel empathy for the Haitians and wouldn’t want to expose them to the horrors of our country. First, it’s a philosophical question: The GloboLeftElite tells me that all cultures are equal. So, if all cultures are equal, I think that depriving Haiti of their best and brightest is selfish. They should stay home and keep their totally equal culture going.

I mean, why shouldn’t they give cannibalism a chance?

Point Two: I’ve been reliably informed that the culture of the United States is filled with systemic racism. Why would we want to bring more People of Color into a situation where they would face that? Why would they want to come here? I realize that Point One says that all cultures are equal, but it’s been pointed out that the culture of the United States is bad, so we cannot in good conscience let anyone else in.

Ever. We’re that bad. We need to keep everyone else from living here.

Why does the expression on Jerry Nadler’s face always say, “Oh, my, that wasn’t a fart.”?

Point Three: I’ve been reliably informed that the United States, while having no culture of its own, steals the culture of various people across the world. Imagine the horror! White teenagers are making tacos, TACOS!, at the local Taco Bell® thus stealing the sacred food that only Hispanics can make and despite the GloboLeftElite© being in favor of diversity.

An aside: I came up with a climate-friendly way to stop the illegal alien problem while fighting Climate Change™ by turning all the illegal aliens into food to stop them from entering the most carbon dioxide creating economy on the planet and killing us all. Sadly, this would be (I am reliably informed by the GloboLeftistElite) cultural appropriation from Haitians. Perhaps we should ship all of the illegal aliens to Haiti to allow them to be consumed, thus feeding Haitians and slowing Global Warming®?

Point Four: The Haitians might feel bad because there are still statues left standing of amazing Americans and Europeans that have achieved things that Haitians didn’t, like killing but not eating lots of Japanese or going to the Moon and not killing or eating anyone up there. We really want to spare their feelings.

How dare the Japanese deny Haitian culture!

Point Five: The vast majority of Black Studies programs in the United States wouldn’t be good for Haitians because they do not, in fact, deal much with black people, but rather with how evil white people (and now those sneaky Asians) have been bad to black people. Since the vast majority of Haitian History (since 1800 or so) has been more-or-less white people free, these college courses would just confuse them.

Point Six: Many Haitians actively say that they hate white people. Good Heavens! The United States is literally filled with white people! I think we should take them (and every other illegal alien that hates white people) and help them by sending them to a country without white people, like Wakanda or the upper part of the Amazon drainage basin.

Point Seven: The United States is one of the most slave-free countries in the world today. In all of the countries of North and South America, Haiti is number two in terms of per capita modern slavery. Why would we want to impose our anti-slavery cultural imperialism on the absolutely equal (according to the GloboLeftElite) slavery practices of Haitians?

In summary, we need to keep Haitians out of the United States because we don’t want to expose them to the toxic United States culture (which also does not exist) which would infect their totally-not-awful-and-not-at-all-a-hellhole-culture-which-is-totally-equivalent-to-the-United-States-except-it’s-better-because-the-Haitians-aren’t-imperialist-colonizers.

Could be worse. Could be raining.

In summary, Haiti is only in trouble because we have tried to help it in the past. We could help by keeping the Haitians in there by sinking their boats and not sending them food except for airdropping them the illegal aliens who are currently suffering oppression and racism by being in the United States.

See? Hard problems have simple Wilder solutions.

Gamer Gate 2.0 Update: Disproportionate Response Edition

“Well, that escalated quickly.” – Anchorman

I’ve been stuck in Ancient Rome all this week. All of the roads seem to have this one weird design flaw.

All visual content today is as-found, except the bits that I might add a comment to.

This will be a post with exceptions: normally I like to post “second day” type material, where we’ve had a chance to get through the event and reflect back on what really happened. On Monday, I posted about the history of Gamer Gate 1.0, and what I thought just might be the start of Gamer Gate 2.0. Here’s a link if these posts ever get separated (LINK).

I have another post, nearly completely done, that I was going to run today. Completely different subject.

Then fresh info on Gamer Gate 2.0 hit, and I thought it was important to show just how fast this story is moving, and how critical it is. The older stuff can wait, and I’ll have an easier week next week polishing it and it will probably even be a better post. I do promise that, pending significant developments, this won’t be a regular feature.

The hallmark of Gamer Gate 1.0 was that gamers just wanted to play games, and after they saw the journalistic community (allegedly) SIMP out (look it up) for a talentless narcissist, they complained. The response was coordinated and disproportionate – it’s like you say, “I don’t like this package of McDonald’s® Chicken McNuggets™ and they say . . . “You can never come to any McDonald’s© again for the rest of your life.”

It was weird. So, Gamer Gate 2.0 started with something simple: “We’re watching woke Marxists injecting The Narrative into our video games and we don’t like it.” Simple enough, and in 2024 not particularly controversial. The response? “Biden Admin Zeroes In On Gamers In Push To Crush ‘Domestic Violent Extremism’”.

Because Gamers are easer to catch than the unending hordes of illegal aliens that were let into the country.

Gamer Gate 1.0 very, very strange way to treat the people that are your core audience.

Gamer Gate 2.0 is using the full power of the FBI, DHS, and probably NSA to crush people who just want to play video games without a bunch of woke crap.

I know many readers aren’t into gaming, computer or otherwise. This is not at all about video games. It is about the attempt to use hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to create a fully functional propaganda system to fundamentally alter the values of the nation.

This is a big deal.

In this case, the journalists that hate the majority of people in this country are still awful.

And it’s wonderful that they tell you, right out loud, that they are Satanists.

Doesn’t that make it a Satantree?

But they’re only part of the problem. Dr. Rachel Kowert, who, on her website indicates that she is:

. . . currently working on a two-year project funded by the Department of Homeland Security (in collaboration with with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and Logically AI) examining the landscape of extremist radicalization and recruitment within digital gaming spaces. This project aims to establish a baseline of understanding for the unique characteristics of extremist activities within video game communities, build capacity within the gaming industry to prevent and counter violent extremism in these spaces, and create collaborative networks across public and private sectors.

I left the “with with” in there. Yeah, I know I have typos on here, but it’s a bad look Dr. Kowert (and she also talks about her “cahnnell”, which I assume means “channel”. I guess if you have a Ph.D., you’re not allowed to use spellcheck.

Regardless, this is the point: the DHS, rather than finding the millions of illegals crossing the border, is instead putting as much money into Rachel’s fat cheeks so she can bury them with her nuts for winter.

Here’s her Tweet on 3/11:

As Anon notes, her response was because ONE GUY made a LIST of games that Sweet Baby®, Inc. might have collaborated on. ONE GUY. ONE LIST.

Dr. Kowert apparently locked down her X account. Huh.

And this is what puts the Kow in Dr. Kowert.

But one thing the GloboLeftElite doesn’t complain about is when they get the game they want. Since they’re not horribly creative, they end up making games that . . . well, you be the judge:

Gee . . . sounds fun.

And here are the stakes. Wonder why the full weight of the DHS comes down on ONE GUY making ONE LIST?

It’s because of this.

Gamer Gate 2.0: Woke On Patrol

“Mortal Kombat on Sega Genesis is the best video game ever.” – Billy Madison

Also like a gamer, he spent 73 years living off his mother before he got a job.

I predict this will be the most censored post I ever write, even including the one where I told Joe where he could stick his F-16s.

As I touched on in my last post, there is a process that makes people feel good – have a goal, work, and achieve. It was important when my great, great, great grandpa Grug was hunting mammoth on the frozen steppes, and is important today. Since there are few mammoths to hunt, lots of young men get their surrogate achievement from playing video games.

Games are important to them.

That’s why Gamer Gate was a big deal, and Gamer Gate 2.0 might turn out to be bigger. Many of you might not be familiar with it, so I’ll give a too brief synopsis that skips over a lot of details, because you’re bright and can research more if you want to.

Zoë Quinn. It starts with Zoë.

Literally who?

I think she was 27 going on 50 in this picture.

Original Picture By Ian Linkletter – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81658314

Zoë was a lame GloboLefty girl with stupid hair color who moved to Canada, built a crappy GloboLeft video game called Depression Quest, her lame GloboLefty ex-boyfriend wrote a long blog post.

Really? A long blog post about your ex? Regardless, in the post, people walked away with the idea that Zoë had slept with almost half a dozen journalists to get good reviews for her crappy game. For this story, it’s not particularly important whether or not she did sleep with them or not.

The important thing to come out of this was that a bunch of gamers got together to complain about the corruption within the gaming journalism community. It could have ended there because gaming journalists aren’t serious, and were gaming journalists in 2010s because they couldn’t get better jobs.

That would have ended it. But no, the gaming journalists tried to cover it up and silence the whole thing, calling the gamers (you know, the audience that reads their crap and buys the games) sexist with dozens of articles all at once with the same theme. The Narrative fought back, and, sadly Anita Sarkeesian got semi-famous.

Maybe someone could pay for a tattoo of fake kids over her barren womb. Someone get that woman a wine and cat I.V. Stat!

It kept growing, and growing, and growing. Oddly, that was the time The Fappening (leaking of all of the nekkid celebrity women’s iPhone® pictures) happened and lots of nudes of celebrities were leaked, starting at 4Chan to discredit 4Chan.

But what became clear was in 2014, there was a narrative, The Narrative that had to be protected. And why gaming, and why gamers?

Remember the 1995 movie GoldenEye? It was an okay Bond™ movie? It cost $60 million to make, but made $356 million worldwide. A tidy profit. The 1997 video game GoldenEye 007 grossed over $250 million. Not quite as much as the movie, but it also racked up hours and hours and hours of play by, mainly, guys.

In other words, Gamers.

Yup, you have no idea how deep it goes. Snowden might . . .

What a propaganda tool! Hours and hours of time and attention of people. Having it the market dominated by (gasp!) young white men was simply not acceptable. Why think of all the wrongthink they demanded? Attractive women! Strong men! Violence solving problems! Bond had to be changed to the less-manly Daniel Craig, and video games had to be changed to serve The Narrative.

But the Gamers still existed. It was required to change the message, to show via the combined might of the gaming journalist press that Gamers were dead. Boys need not apply to the future – the future was about putting a chick in it, and making her lame and gay.

Well, Kathleen Kennedy didn’t ruin games, but she ruined Star Wars®. Lame and gay.

So, places like the Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) funded by the GloboLeft and manned by the fire-breathing GloboLeftistElite came for the games. Their job was to create “scholarly” papers regarding video games. I’d write more about the connections of DiGRA, including supposed links to DARPA funding, but, oddly, much of that material is now 404’d. Now, this stuff is nine years old, but I get videos on YouTube™ from fifteen years ago, so the removal had intent.

Remember when the mask started to come off at Hollywood, Twitter®, Wikipedia™, Amazon™ and YouTube©? When the transnonsense became sacrament? Why are there raging GloboLeftElite censors trying to shut down people merely questioning The Narrative?

It was GamerGate, the leaderless resistance to the GloboLeft that started it all. One summary I read said, “A girl slept (allegedly) with some journalists for good reviews, a lot of stuff happened, and then Donald Trump was elected president.” As I’ve said, there’s a LOT more there if you want to dig into this subject. I won’t even mention PizzaGate. Oh, too late:

But that was then. Now, in 2024, GamerGate2.0 has started.

What this time?

Sweet Baby© Inc. is a “narrative development and consultation studio . . . .” The idea is that they go into a company that actually makes games and tell them what story they should tell, and how they should stick a chick in it, and make her lame and gay. In one of their triumphs, they kill off male characters (think Batman™ in the most cringe way possible just so strong, triumphant women can have the story.

Yeah. That didn’t go over well with the core audience that buys the games. Think about Left Behind 2 – where the popular male hero of the first Left Behind was reframed to be an evil white man, and the new hero was a trans sack of potatoes.

That’s what Sweet Baby® Inc. does, but I don’t think they were behind Left Behind 2, which shows you how deep the crapfest is. Well, why would anyone hire a corrosive crapfest of woke to make their games more awful? Here’s the idea in the CEO’s (Kim Belair) own words:

If you’re a creative working in AAA, which I did for many, many years, put this stuff up to your higher-ups. And if they don’t see the value in what you’re asking for when you ask for consultants, when you ask for research, go have a coffee with your marketing team and just terrify them with the possibility of what’s going to happen if they don’t give you what you want.

And, just in time for journalists to show their true spots haven’t changed since 2014 . . .

These are the journalists we’re dealing with. Nice that they at least tell you to your face how they hate you.

The best news though is that someone is pushing back. On Steam®, a service where you can buy and talk about games, a gamer has put together a simple list: Sweet Baby Detected, which showcases games Sweet Baby has helped ruin. That’s okay with Kim, she’s gotten rich making the people who buy her games angry while helping companies lose money. As /pol/ notes, she’s probably a Marxist, so for her, it’s a two-fer.

I’m skipping out on fuzzing the f-bomb. I agree with Anon on Marxists.

Sweet Baby isn’t alone. There are hordes of these cancerous “companies” out there, with their sole intent to make stuff worse.

Is there any surprise that the Zoomer males think Pinochet did nothing wrong?

You Want Dark Ages? Well, That’s How You Get Dark Ages.

“In the world I see, you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.” – Fight Club

I had to stop working in the granite industry: it was counter productive.

Grug want break rock. Grug grab other rock, smash rock. Rock eventually breaks. Grug happy.

Another example: Grug want break rock. Grug create iron ore mine. Grug create coal mine. Grug find tree. Grug mix use coal and iron to make steel hammer. Grug smash rock. Grug happy, much faster.

Yet another example: Grug want to break rock. Grug create iron ore mine, coal mine, chemical factory. Grug find trees, sulfur. Grug make hammer, drill, and dynamite. Grug break rock real fast. Grug very happy because Grug like blow stuff up.

I stole this example from Grugwig von Mises, the Austrian economist who thought about these things a lot. The indirect way to do something is generally more efficient. It’s most direct to break a rock with a rock, but it’s much, much faster to blow the rock into gravel and you can do a lot at one time. And it’s really cool.

What sound does a piano make when it falls down an ore well? A-flat miner.

The catch, of course, is that to do things indirectly, there have to be multiple industries and infrastructure supporting the indirect method. And, if any of them fail, the method becomes more difficult, if not impossible.

One big example of indirect work in our economy is the impact of the computer and the Internet. Paul Krugman, (who is always wrong) said that the Internet would have no more economic impact than the fax machine. Of course, since Krugman is always wrong, he was wrong this time, too.

The Internet is a vast communication web, moving data about everything, everywhere, all at once. It is now pervasive, and has been for decades.

Decades?

Krugman? More like Grugman.

Yes. Back when I lived in Alaska, one of the two fiberoptic cables to Fairbanks was cut by a backhoe operator, thankfully mostly cutting Fairbanks off from Paul Krugman’s stupid ideas. What was the backhoe guy digging for?

I have no idea. Everyone in Alaska has a backhoe, a skidsteer, and a dump truck. And they were always digging. I think they might be part mole. Maybe they were digging for this:

Meme as-found.

The result of this one fiber being cut, though, was apparent very quickly: couldn’t buy gas. At all. Even with cash. Credit card usage? Nope. And I think prescriptions were similarly impacted.

Now, at work and home, I still had Internet – it was like nothing had happened since my employer must have gotten Internet from the other fiber. But it was unusual to see so much dependency – I hadn’t realized how much infrastructure was hooked up and required the Internet. In Alaska. In 2005.

The reason is that the Internet allows information to move freely. Information used to be hard to move. Now, information moves at near lightspeed in many places. It used to be the way to get information from one place to another was the most direct – mouth to ear. Then writing, probably to let someone know the sad facts about very fat their mother was, was invented, and is probably carved under half the pyramid blocks.

When I got arrested for graffiti, I tried to deny it, but the writing was on the wall.

Then, books preserved information about many fat mothers through centuries and made it much easier to share from Rome to ancient China. Finally, we have Internet pages and ebooks that share stories about maternal adiposity around the globe in an instant.

But, one funny thing – the more direct methods such as carving in stone and the ancient legends of huge hulking mothers whose buttocks block out the sky remain. But books burn. The ephemeral website? It may reach 90% of the planet yet be gone in an afternoon. Think of the deprivation of the future world of all those unsung stories of mothers whose gravitational pull could disrupt the very alignment of the planets.

What brought this to mind was that a big chunk of the Internet disappeared today. I think it’s back, but I don’t go on FaceGram™ or InstaTok©, but I think those are both back.

To be clear, those cannibal tribes in the Amazon (the river basin, not the company) didn’t even notice. Why would they? Their methods, their lives are the most direct. They don’t depend on getting ammunition for their bow from Cabela’s®, rather if they need a new arrow, they make one out of the stuff that’s lying around.

I hear Dwayne Johnson is going to star as a time traveler who has to go back to ancient Rome to steal a document from Augustus. It’s called Rock, Paper, Caesar.

The upside of this communication is that I can see first person video of drone attacks in the Ukraine within hours of a strike. The downside is that by knowing, people feel a philosophical burden – they have information about something yet are (mostly) powerless to do anything about it. Think about Michael Collins, orbiting above the Moon. He had a contingency plan if the landing had failed and Armstrong and Aldrin were lost.

“I’d go home.”

Why? There would have been nothing at all that Collins could have done. He knew that, and so did Neil and Buzz. Many things are like that, best not to obsess about them.

Our modern economy has created a great deal of leverage using cheap information combined with cheap information processing – efficient supply chains and people working in far-flung areas.

These systems, just like the chemical factories that Grug made to make his Grug dynamite to break his rock are inherently more fragile than the direct. How fragile? Back in 2017 or so, a congressional report came out that predicted that up to 90% of Americans would die in the event of an EMP taking out the power grid.

I have to remember that the rhythm is to “Staying Alive” when I do CPR, and not “For Whom The Bell Tolls”.

Knowing congress, they’ve done nothing to make the systems better, with the potential exception of trying to make EMP proof margarita machines.

I’m in hopes that the looming competency crisis, where complex systems become unreliable due to being put in the hands of the unqualified while the competent people are shuffled aside, won’t bring the take down those same systems, and with it, our society.

We’ll leave that to your mom. I hear that, though, she’s old enough that when she was a kid with Grug, there was no history class.

(Irony – I lost all Internet at my house while writing this one.)

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: It’s All Planned

“Did everything go as planned?” – Pulp Fiction

I had some chips at midnight on Saturday. It was a snackrifice.

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 V, Issue 10

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.

I’m keeping the clock at two minutes to midnight, probably will roll back next month.

In this issue: Front Matter – All Of This Is Planned – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Border In Five Memes – 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 810 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

All Of This Is Planned

When I look at the road we’re on to Civil War 2.0, it has not gone unnoticed that the enemy creating this isn’t outside the United States. As much as the GloboLeft likes to call out Russia, others see things perhaps a little more clearly.

Nayib Bukele is the president of El Salvador. What has he done for them? He’s broken the back of organized crime, by this one crazy tactic: arresting criminals and putting them in jail and getting gender ideology “contrary to nature, contrary to God” out of El Salvador’s schools. He has a 90% approval rating from El Salvadorans, so of course the GloboLeft hates him.

What is the response of the GloboLeft? Isn’t it obvious? First is the rotting the minds of youth. The map above should be clear enough – it’s a symptom of a plan coming together.

Although this is from Canada, it’s very, very clear that the agenda is simple: they want the kids. It has long been the GloboLeft’s desire to use propaganda to get children at their most vulnerable and split them from their parents.

Things like this idea are created to humiliate people. None of that can make a “more green” planet since the energy used in the process more than offsets any “benefits”. No, this is humiliation and dehumanization.

Canada, again, has show the goal. They want to stop making any new roads outside of cities. Live in a rural area? No roads for you. And, last I checked, Canada has a lot more rural availability than most nations outside of Russia.

Now they’re even giving TED® talks about how literally any sort of degeneracy is a sacrament.

And the lawfare is continual. The New York Soros GloboLeft Attorney General, Letitia James, is on a a tear. Donald Trump is just the most prominent of her use of the law to destroy people. Another target besides the new one listed above? VDARE. VDARE is a fairly prominent anti-immigration website that Ms. James has hit with amazingly broad subpoenas and is costing them tens of thousands of dollars – even though they aren’t in New York. You can read more about that here (LINK).

She’s also gone against the NRA, suing them. The important question: why would anyone want to do business in New York?

So, Nayib Bukele is right. It’s all being taken apart from the inside.

Violence and Censorship Update

Several readers have reported to me (via email) that they were unsubscribed or that their subscriptions are filtered out as spam. FYI. Might it be random? Sure. It might.

I’ll (mostly) let the memes speak for themselves. Foreign stories are included as they often foreshadow attempts in the United States.

I guess this one involves both censorship and violence?

This one is especially fun: Canada has a bill that punishes hate crimes, which can be reported anonymously, and that do not require evidence with huge fines and up to life imprisonment.

Crabs reading? Forbidden knowledge.

People reading? That’s racist!

Looks like the plan is working.

I thought they loved science?

If only they could be sent home to Make Eritrea Great Again.

Yeah, that’s the history of the top Google® executive in charge of A.I.

Looks like the New York Times censors . . . food.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again. Why? The GloboLeft are economic geniuses, right?

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 flat. Winter is in, and riots aren’t as fun in galoshes.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down.

Economic:

Economic numbers did a slight dive. I wonder if this is the new American Dream?

Illegal Aliens:

Highest January. Ever.

Also, other people are noticing:

The Border, In Five Memes

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762833481682264080

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762297111381455043

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762568451581681721

https://twitter.com/i/status/1762225168645059071

https://twitter.com/i/status/1610431809334149120

https://twitter.com/i/status/1763481437372567971

https://twitter.com/i/status/1761129463218139238

https://twitter.com/i/status/17636130393229273

https://twitter.com/i/status/1760862306005590149

Good Guys

https://youtube.com/shorts/tQGuha2gpQw?si=kjoLNVF2y0qd7wdE

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1759109053630800211

https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-worker-fired-shoplifters-retail-theft-fight-problems-2024-2

https://www.wtoc.com/2023/07/24/woman-gets-job-back-lowes-after-being-attacked-while-trying-stop-shoplifting/

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article285835356.html

One Guy

https://www.shreveporttimes.com/story/news/2024/02/28/louisiana-expands-gun-rights-for-self-defense-against-criminals-with-concealed-carry-bill/72765215007/

https://www.wowt.com/2024/02/09/nebraska-legislators-consider-bill-alter-self-defense-laws/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/beltway-confidential/2894180/arizonas-commonsense-self-defense-bill/

https://www.oxygen.com/kill-or-be-killed/crime-news/how-to-watch-kill-or-be-killed-an-oxygen-true-crime-series

Body Count

https://twitter.com/MakisMD/status/1754830517986566210

https://thehighwire.com/editorial/why-are-young-adults-having-more-heart-attacks-the-level-of-denial-is-stunning/

https://newsone.com/playlist/black-men-boys-who-were-killed-by-police/item/5

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2024-02-13_11-38-28.png

https://www.prri.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/PRRI-Jan-2024-Gen-Z-Draft.pdf

https://twitter.com/noble_x_x_/status/1758149565251784710

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-68244963

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-81749d7c-d0a0-48d0-bb11-eaab6f1e6556

Vote Count

https://twitter.com/eyeslasho/status/1757461240421449806

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1759305508584882680

https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/politics-and-government/nevada/nevada-identifies-voter-history-errors-on-website-fixes-underway-3003358/

https://www.dailysignal.com/2024/02/11/data-specialist-presses-georgia-look-voters-cast-ballots-wrong-jurisdictions/

https://thefederalist.com/2024/02/08/exclusive-see-the-grave-markers-of-long-dead-residents-listed-on-michigans-voter-rolls/

https://www.justfactsdaily.com/elon-musk-is-right-and-the-ny-times-is-wrong-about-illegal-voting-by-non-citizens

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/voting-laws-roundup-2023-review

https://heartland.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Feb-24-2020-Election-Analysis-vWeb_Final.pdf

Civil War

https://uproxx.com/movies/civil-war-alex-garland-details-february-2024-update/

https://www.chathamhouse.org/2024/02/could-united-states-be-headed-national-divorce

https://www.themirror.com/news/politics/cpac-donald-trump-voters-warn-355149

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/texas-is-spoiling-for-a-civil-war/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/kristi-noem-war-texas-border-standoff-1234960568/

https://www.wired.com/story/russia-disinformation-campaign-civil-war-texas-border/

https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/01/27/the_geopolitics_of_world_war_iii_1007840.html

https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/comes-thermidor/

Feminism: The God That Destroys

“Bullhorns are a core principle of eco-feminism.” – Futurama

Why are the books on Dwarf Rights on the top shelf?

The GloboLeftist use of power can be objectively observed to be feminine. To put it bluntly, GloboLeftism is feminism. One way this is especially apparent is the tactics that the GloboLeft uses – it uses the tactics of gossip, the swarm, and ostracization of those that it deems unworthy.

If you look carefully at how the GloboLeft attacks, it follows that pattern. Gossip against an enemy, a swarm against that enemy, and finally the ostracization of that enemy. With men, the way to solve a problem is simple – get up, get a hammer (or other appropriate tool, like a much bigger hammer) and solve the problem. Or fail.

If necessary, and the problem is big enough, get a friend. If that’s not enough, go build better tools and recruit more friends. Or a brigade. Or tanks. Or an army. Or take this newfangled flight and build jet engines to fight at the speed of sound and play with the fundamental forces of nature to create a miniature star to cause your problems to evaporate.

Simple. Okay, not simple sometimes. But it is direct. This is how men historically kept other men (and other tribes) in line, just various sizes of hammers.

I hope that joke didn’t catch anyone by surprise – I don’t want to be convicted of involuntary man’s laughter.

Women, however, use the gossip/swarm/ostracize technique naturally to keep the group members of other women in line. I’ve seen it. When women are together in a group and they split away from the main group, they begin the gossip to keep other members in line or to pull them down.

When a big enough transgression occurs, they swarm against the offender. Then they kick them out of the group. In smaller tribal groups this behavior was probably entirely necessary to keep the peace. Many of the historical tribal punishments were directed not at adulterous men, but adulterous women.

Why? Men have the key, and women have to have the lock otherwise the fighting and killing start. Also of note, is that in every point in history up until the modern society, women depended on men for their power – so women had to rule over women to keep the worst female impulses down.

What do you call a letter from a feminist? Hate male.

Back in the day, the worst case for a woman was to be shunned and shamed and denied resources. Being denied resources meant (in many cases) death for the woman, and her children if she had them. This is the core feminine fear, and is the basis for society today.

This was why, of all the crazy things developed by the commies, that feminism was the worst, because it preys upon a core fear. The result is that feminists have done everything that they can possibly figure out to remove any consequences for their action as feminism took hold. Examples?

Abortion made the defining hallmark of real femininity, having kids, an option.
No-fault divorce was next – having an affair no longer meant that a woman was liable in court for her actions – now divorce could happen just because she was tired. But that wasn’t enough – women needed cash and prizes for leaving the marriage:
Community property and child support followed. That was fine for high-status females. But what about poor females?
Well, for them we need welfare and Aid For Dependent Children so they can have as much irresponsible and unprotected sex as they like.
I’m generally not in favor of slugging women, but domestic violence laws have made men guilty until proven innocent, with many jurisdictions requiring an arrest if the police are called out for domestic violence. But even that isn’t enough:
Making fun of Lizzo because she’s the size of a school bus is now “fat-shaming”. And making fun of a woman who had sex with all of Wyoming is now wrong and called “slut-shaming”.

All of these are intended to insulate a woman from the consequences of her actions and choices. No society on Earth can afford this for long, because the consequences of insulation of consequences are what we see around us.

Rampant criminality because removing consequences should apply to everyone, up until they commit murder.
Declining birthrate as women avoid having children and having families until they’re at the point that having more than one or two for them is impossible.
Lower than optimal family formation is happening because women are skipping the family to become the drunk wine aunt that makes PowerPoints® for a living but can’t get a “good” man to commit.
Lower than optimal family stability, since there are no consequences, women can monkey branch from one man to another and this be accepted.
Sentimentality as a basis for public policy rather than rationality – i.e., illegals are viewed as individuals in pain rather than a contagion that will turn the Untied (it was a typo that I thought I’d leave) States into the average of Venezuela, Eritrea, Cambodia, and the Congo.
Degeneration as all consequences for anything sexual are removed as sex becomes the new sacrament for the feminist religion – note that in any argument with a member of the GloboLeft® they’ll soon drop a sexual insult.

Name something that goes better together than “Wilder” and “procrastination”. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Oddly, feminism does the opposite of what it says on the label – it either turns women into cut-rate men, making them unhappy tramps who “settled” but still thinks she deserves a Chad because she slept with fifty Chads. Conversely, it deprives them of family, making them unhappy drunk wine aunts by having them chase a career so they could be complete women that don’t need no man. In fact, keeping women unhappy is better for the GloboLeftElite because it keeps women dependent on feminist ideology and makes them defend it all the more.

Go figure.

What African country do neckbeards hate the most? Chad.

The reason this all was available was because we have amazingly abundant resources and could pay for it out of the spare change that we had from printing money.

The good news is that this can’t last.

To be clear: I really like women. And I know that women are different than men. I know that this might be heresy at places like Harvard™, but it’s true. Women add to society, but when they’re in unmitigated charge of society, it just creates a big mess like the one we’re seeing now. The future needs women, acting like women, in families, making children that are worthy of being called men and women, which can only be made by the atom of society – the family.

The future won’t be the feminism of the GloboLeft – it’s a cancer. And the methods that it uses gossip/swarm/ostracize aren’t ways of solving the problems that we have right now as the resources of the eternal summer end – that’s when the only real solution is the solution of men – get a tool and fix it. The only real question is what form that solution will take.

Will it take a miniature star to fix it?

What did fatman say to little boy? “Nuke, I am your father.”

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About Bank Failures And Yachts

“A major one.” – Fight Club

What did Kim call his yacht? His dictator ship.

Last March, Silicon Valley Bank® failed. In a big way. Because the people who deposited money in the bank own things like yachts and senators, well, they escaped with hardly a haircut. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation® (FDIC™) normally ensures deposits for $250,000 per account holder. In this case, they decided, nah, what the heck, we’ll make sure that Roku® and Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry don’t lose a dime.

Ironically, today the Internal Revenue Service sued the FDIC© for $1.45 billion in back taxes they say that Silicon Valley Bank™ owed when the FDIC© took it over. Sure, it sounds like on part of the government is suing another part of the government for play money made up by the (non-federal) Fed™ but the FDIC™ is supposedly independent and gets its money from the member banks.

Which are members of the Fed™. Which prints the cash.

If this sounds as incestuous as a Hapsburg family stump, well, it is. And of course I’m going to go with a fresh meme about the Hapsburgs, because that’s what all of the cool kids are doing today.

A Hapsburg walks into a bar, the bartender says, “Why the long face?” The prince says, “Generations of inbreeding.”

The root cause of the Silicon Valley Bank™ failure is that they lent money for long periods at low interest rates. When interest rates go up, those loans aren’t worth a lot, at least to the bank. Right now, my mortgage has a lower interest rate than I’m getting in checking.

Silicon Valley Bank™ looked at all the crappy loans they had, and did the math, and found out that they were worth less than zero. Even worse, their bigger depositors heard (because depositors who own senators seem to get advance notice) and started to pull their money out.

Since those folks had friends, they told them. Soon enough, everyone wanted one thing – they wanted their money out of Silicon Valley Bank™. Rational people realized that if this was a problem at Silicon Valley Bank©, it was a problem everywhere.

Silicone and silicon – electrical engineers know the difference – no one trusts them around silicone.

In a thought that gives central bankers and senators cold sweats (after the previous night’s booze wears off) is the idea that people lose faith in the banking system. Oddly, this wouldn’t be a problem if we used money made out of gold and silver, but since ours is just as much a fantasy as thinking that diversity enriches us all.

So, there’s a problem that’s impacting literally every bank. Some big ones have failed, but thankfully Duchess Markle still has her cash so she can get enough publicity to hide from commoners like me. What’s the solution?

First, pay off everyone so no one is scared and Oprah doesn’t have to fly commercial with mere mortals. Second, flood the system with money. If a bank needs cash? Wheelbarrows of it?

Give it to them.

Thankfully Congress took a break from sending your tax dollars to Ukraine to bail out Oprah.

Last year, banks were paying 0.10% or so for crappy checking accounts. This summer, rates started shooting up, so I snuggled into some CDs that paid a lot more than my mortgage cost. Then, last month, I got a call from my bank where I set up the CDs.

“Mr. Wilder? You have money in other banks, right? If you deposit (a few thousand) dollars from accounts outside of your accounts with us into savings, I can give you a 4.5% rate on checking and savings.”

What????

If there’s one thing I know about banking, is that bankers are not generous except to themselves, senators, and Oprah.

I check with him, drove to the nearest branch of Major Bank™ in Mt. Pilot, and tossed a few thousand in. Could I take it out later?

Sure!

I am informed this is funny because horses often live in stables, so this would be a violation of California’s work safety laws.

I started wondering about this, but soon enough came up with the answer: when I make a deposit in the bank, I’m making a loan to the bank. And if they’re offering me nearly 5% for just parking cash at their place, that means . . .

I’m their best alternative for a loan. Me. John Wilder. Enough so they paid a dude to call me and ask.

Yup, it’s just that simple. And they called me to ask me to make a loan, and offered to pay me over four times what I was making on my cash to make that loan. Reading a bit further, it turns out the way that the Fed™ shoved money down the collective throats of the banks was through the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP).

Yes, the Fed© created the BTFP, loaned the money to the banks who then deposited the money . . . at the Fed™. I’m not making this up. As of March 11, 2024, the Fed© will no longer be making more BTFP loans at those sweetheart rates. All new loans would be made at the same rate the bank gets paid by the Fed©. The gravy train, or at least this gravy train, is over.

When did I get the phone call wanting to borrow a few bucks from Major Bank?

January, 2024.

Since when do I believe in coincidences? And it was weird, it wasn’t a lot of money that I needed to deposit, but I think they were looking to get bigger players than tiny John Wilder.

But at least they’re not insufferable idiots . . . oh, too soon.

And that’s the rub. If banks are looking to borrow cash from me, how bad are their balance sheets?

Dang, I’m worried! Will Prince Harry have enough money to travel the world for 45-minute meetings with his father? Will Oprah be able to afford more caviar?

And, maybe I should take up loan sharking. Maybe I can buy my own yacht, bigger than Prince Harry’s and I’ll sail past him, and look down on him, and try to give Harry that condescending look that appears to be his Resting Prince Face.

And I’ll write a rock song about it.

I’ll call it Smirk on the Water.

Friday’s Musings, Including LEGO, Seinfeld, And A Ted Talk

“Clarice, doesn’t this random scattering of sites seem desperately random, like the elaboration of a bad liar?” – The Silence of the Lambs

LEGO® just put in a hospital near my house, but they only do plastic surgery. It’s busy though, people are lining up for blocks.

Fridays are generally the more relaxed post of the week, so this one won’t be an exception. Here are some random musings:

Joe Biden won’t be the nominee – the cliff of performance we’re seeing from him is too stark. Kamala Harris has the charisma of chlamydia, so she’s out. That leaves two players for the Democratic nomination, Mike Michelle Obama and Grabbin Nuisance, governor of California.

My prediction? Biden will bow out at the Democratic convention. He’ll very emotionally note that “for the good of the country” he’ll bow out in favor of Obama or Nuisance. The big networks will already have this in the books, and the new candidate will get hours of free advertising from every network so they won’t be stained with Kamala’s chlamydia.

What does syphilis and chlamydia have in common? Kamala.

It’s funny to watch the Leftists try to blame cold winters on Global Warming®. Yup, they did that. Global Warming© is the best thing that every happened to the Left: it’s an excuse to solve weather fluctuations with global governmental control and communism. Everything is about Global Warming™, and finally Leftists have figured out how to blame it getting cold on everything getting “warmer”.

Sigh.

To the Elite, every single event will be used to increase control. Stayed up too late and tired at work? Mandatory bedtimes, unless you’re protesting or at a BIPOC LGBT+ riot, in which case you get a guaranteed minimum income.

Whenever I feel far from God, it’s not because He moved. Duh. Most (90%?) of the problems I have in life are the ones that I created. Wonder who is going to fix those?

Things happen when they happen, and not when they’d be easiest. The proper time to install machine gun nests and to mine the southern border with Mexico was 1960. Life would have been pretty simple if that happened.

But it didn’t. Life is what it is, and not what we’d like it to be. The solution to the border problem is obvious to any thinking person. It will be taken, or the United States will Balkanize into a collection of warring states, or a Caesar will arise. Regardless, we’ll get snacks. Or unending low-level conflict. To-may-to, to-mah-to.

The Swatch© in Switzerland, thank heavens it wasn’t made in Croatia – then people would have been staring at their Crotch™.

Peak racial amity in the United States was in the 1990s and early 2000s. Barack Obama was (for race issues) the absolute worst president in the history of the nation, erasing decades worth of propaganda poured into virtually everyone from the 1960s on led to my generation being the least racist generation of white kids in the history of the United States.

Race issues will continue to go downhill as all of that is undone by the racial animus currently on display against white folks. But, hey, we’ll always have Seinfeld.

As found.

I thought I was getting too old to enjoy books, since the recent ones I read sucked. I then re-read older books that I had, and discovered the truth: Older books were better. It’s not because people were better writers back then, but editors and the people who pick the books that are published pick crap.

Yes, I think people are getting stupider on average, but there are a lot more of them, so there still are a bunch of smart writers, even more than before. But people who can write books that don’t suck aren’t getting them published as much. Regardless, it’s time to read more than I have in the last few years. Books are the best way to understand the thoughts of someone from years or decades or centuries ago.

I wonder if my memes will be studied 2,000 years from now?

Speaking of reading, several years ago, I started reading books with a pen in my hand. If I see something I like, I underline it. If want to make a note, I make a note. It makes it easier to summarize books for this blog, but it also will allow a future reader to see what I thought at the time.

The Mrs. noted that, as laudable as this habit may be, it’s still going to cause people to talk if they see me reading Ted Kaczynski’s book with a highlighter.

TED: Ideas worth spreading. (As found, and as if I weren’t on enough lists.)

I’m superstitious. In high school I had a great football game (multiple sacks, multiple tackles, performed CPR on a child that choked on a Hubba Bubba®). I used a particular roll of athletic tape before the game, so I used it the rest of the season. There are dozens of things like that. Humans have a pattern-seeking brain, and I have a good memory. That’s not necessarily a great combination.

Sure, rationally, I know that these random coincidences are just random coincidences.

But you never know.