Mechanisms Of Control – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Zoomers And Pools Of Cash

“The pools of blood that have collected, you’ve got to soak that up. Now, Jimmie, we need to raid your linen closet.” – Pulp Fiction

How do you drown a programmer? Put up a sign that says, “no swimming”.

If I were to come up with a metaphor for today’s situation, well, it might be this . . .

While I was half asleep this morning I visualized in that gauzy dreamy sort of way, dark pools, sitting quietly behind a large earthen structure. At first, the surfaces of the pools were smooth and reflective like glass as they slowly filled.

It was calm, and serene. For now. But the level was coming up.

What was the defining moment of my generation in our youth? Probably the fall of the Berlin Wall. I can still remember the news stories piling up day by day as the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations slowly turned away from communism and then someone said the Berlin Wall didn’t match the Iron Curtains, so, it had to go. What a time to be alive! Heck, women were still winning women’s swim meets!

If I were born a bit earlier, it would probably would have been the Iranian Hostage Crisis, or Carter’s Stagflation, both of which led to Reagan’s election and eventual conversion to MechaReagan®, who fought Godzilla® and Mothra™. But that’s another story.

Anyway, think about those defining moments, the defining events of Gen Z are still out there, and I wonder what that would be. In the case of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it was a story that, at the time, was filled with hope. Here was the collapse of a political system bent on the forceful subjugation of humanity. What’s not to celebrate?

What was the favorite song of East Germans before the Berlin Wall came down? “Under Prussia”

In the end, though, what was lost in that moment was restraint. Just like Gingrich restrained the worst (political!) impulses of Bill Clinton (“What, I can’t spend what I want to spend because of the way the bond market might react?”), the Soviet Union constrained the worst impulses of the people in power in Washington. That restraint really ended with Clinton who had to fight to save his political career after lying under oath about dallying with the help.

But after Clinton, after 9-11?

Bill Clinton will be remembered for the economy. Oh, and that one other thing . . . .

All restraint fell. Oh, sure, we needed to go and find Osama Bin Laden, but did we need to invade Iraq? In hindsight, almost certainly not. Did we need to stay in Afghanistan for 20 years? Again, almost certainly not. And these adventures cost trillions of dollars, all of which we didn’t have. But that’s okay. Cash isn’t for earning. It’s for spending. Like AOC said when asked where the money would come from for one of her socialist programs: “You just pay for it!”

She was, and is, serious about this, since her understanding of cause and effect is limited to her goldfish-like memory.

But those dark pools of my dreams, they were filling. And while they filled, they began to destabilize everyone tied to the United States. In Egypt, for instance, I think they eat nothing but rice, sawdust, and the occasional house pet, which is fairly inexpensive. So, a small change in the price of rice or a decrease in the availability of sawdust causes people, real people, to go hungry.

Does Biden look like he needs more fiber in his diet to you?

As Snickers® told us, “You’re not you when you’re hungry” and hungry people are the ones that overthrow Middle Eastern despots. But that’s okay. You just pay for it.

What does the Left think about all the illegal aliens that are teeming over the border in relentless streams? You just pay for them. And you have to. Even when we’re not stacking them like cordwood in Chicago or displacing vets to house them in New York or trying to teach them to ski in Colorado, there is one horrible fact about illegal aliens:

They cost more than they create. We can’t get a volume discount if we import them by the millions. No, they just cost billions more. The net annual value of an illegal to the economy is, at minimum, -$10,000 per year. NEGATIVE $10,000, and that’s after the work they provide.

I used to worry about the collapse of the United States because of the destruction of our nation’s values and economy by illegals, but that was too scary. Now I just worry about celebrities. (meme as found)

Where does the cash come from? If you’re AOC, “You just pay for them.”

And all that “you just pay for it” is what’s filling those dark pools of my dreams.

If all that cash would just sit, quietly, in those dark pools, there really isn’t a problem. If we pay Raytheon™ for a $4 million dollar Patriot® missile to destroy $20,000 Iranian drones, as long as Raytheon© just leaves that money in their bank account, filling up the pool.

But, oops, you have to pay people to make the missile. If it’s only the Chinese who keep the money in a bank account somewhere and never use it, that’s fine, too, because that’s just another dark pool of money.

When the Fed™ started out bailing out every bank, that’s really what happened. The banks kept the cash in deposit, and salted it away in their dark pools.

I think it’s the dark pools of cash that will ultimately be the defining moment for Gen Z. Well, not the dark pools themselves, but, rather, the mess they make when the levee breaks. We’re seeing the problem starting now, and Gen Z is aware – many of them have lived their teen years seeing nothing but inflation as the pools break loose.

I’m getting tired of Gen Z, always walking around like they can afford to rent the place.

The pools are up high, and have a great deal of potential energy. The destruction the flow will create as the cash spreads down through the economy has been bad, but it will be legendary. When the American Continental was issued it was backed by the same thing the dollar is today: nothing. The phrase “not worth a Continental” was no doubt on the minds of the framers of the Constitution as they wrote that no State shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment in debts.”

But that’s quaint thought, right?

(meme as found)

Weimar Germany followed the AOC “just pay for it” formula, and German bankers eventually (after some, um, events) became the most cautious in Europe about inflation.

So, after my dream of last night, I think we have a big dam problem.

It worked so well last time, right?

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.

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.

The Unabomber Teaches The Facts Of Life

“Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery. The perfect world was a dream that your primitive cerebrum kept trying to wake up from. Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this: the peak of your civilization.” – The Matrix

I figured out how to turn Alexa® off. I walked through the room naked. (Only two memes are not “as found”)

Although he is certainly better known for other things (which I won’t defend), Ted Kaczyinski was very smart. He did spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the human condition when he was, um, not working on projects. One of the things that he wrote about was what he called The Power Process.

I’d be surprised if Ted was the first to point out The Power Process, since on its face it seems so . . . logical. I’ll let him tell the tale, though the added emphasis is mine:

The power process has four elements. The three most clear-cut of these we call goal, effort and attainment of goal. (Everyone needs to have goals whose attainment requires effort and needs to succeed in attaining at least some of his goals.) The fourth element is more difficult to define and may not be necessary for everyone.

We’re skipping the fourth element (autonomy) because it doesn’t pertain to the post at hand. You can read it in Ted’s work. Remember my wife’s advice about reading Ted Kaczinski: it’s okay to be seen reading Ted, but never with a highlighter.

Yeah, that’s a picture I made of Ted in front of a Blockbuster®, with A.I.

I am not sure this is universal, but it seems to appear every time I look into human nature and why people aren’t happy. People like the struggle. I had a friend who I will call “Joe” because his name is Joe. Joe would often procrastinate at work, sometimes not doing much of anything for days. Then, when the deadline approached, he’d work incredible hours to finish.

John Wilder: “Joe, you did this on purpose.”

Joe: “Yeah, I wanted to wait until I didn’t know if I could do it.”

The game wasn’t sufficiently interesting to Joe to keep him going until he created the challenge. Since this was his job, the one he was getting the money necessary to eat and live from, he often flew pretty close to the flame. But he always managed to keep his wings from being singed too badly.

What do you call a primitive man who liked to take random walks? A meandertal.

For Joe, a very highly functioning human, effort was the key. And to get to enough effort to keep him happy, he needed to have real jeopardy. Without the required effort, it just wasn’t fulfilling for him. Imagine fighting a kitten. I mean, there’s no real effort involved, unless you give it rabies or a gun or make a genetically engineered kitten the size of a tank.

Ted goes on:

Consider the hypothetical case of a man who can have anything he wants just by wishing for it. Such a man has power, but he will develop serious psychological problems. At first, he will have a lot of fun, but by and by he will become acutely bored and demoralized. Eventually he may become clinically depressed. History shows that leisured aristocracies tend to become decadent. This is not true of fighting aristocracies that have to struggle to maintain their power. But leisured, secure aristocracies that have no need to exert themselves usually become bored, hedonistic and demoralized, even though they have power. This shows that power is not enough. One must have goals toward which to exercise one’s power.

This explains why so many actors today are whining GloboLeftists who turn their adopted vanity children into transexuals: they have everything they want, anything they could imagine, they don’t have to work for it – it’s just there. All the time. They (most of them) are fundamentally unhappy unless they have a goal to shoot for, and one that matters to them. Maybe winning an Oscar™. If you look at the youth of Robert Downey Jr. and Christian Slater, I can understand with their ludicrous early success why they went on crazy drug and violence benders: they had it all.

If Ma Wilder had divorced and married a Mongolian, would I have a steppe brother?

There is, of course, a flip side to this: the run of the mill GloboLeftist foot soldier. Ted talks about them:

Nonattainment of important goals results in death if the goals are physical necessities, and in frustration if nonattainment of the goals is compatible with survival. Consistent failure to attain goals throughout life results in defeatism, low self-esteem or depression.

I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again: the vast majority of GloboLeftists are losers. They are awful people who hate themselves, the world, and God. They hate God because they look at how awful they are, and have to blame someone, anyone other than themselves.

See, Ted agrees with me. Is that good, or not?

Thus, in order to avoid serious psychological problems, a human being needs goals whose attainment requires effort, and he must have a reasonable rate of success in attaining his goals.

Bingo. Life is struggle, and if we win that struggle, even a bit, we feel good. I would imagine this is hardwired into almost every living creature because otherwise they’d just give up like Mitt Romney’s spine.

In the current world, especially the First World, most of the struggles that used to occupy our lives are gone. We spend very little time worrying about starvation or running from bears. That leaves us in a weird position – we don’t have to fight to live, but we’re wired to like fighting to live. So we need something more.

Amish women use protection to stop the spread of Abes.

Thus, we come up with other things, hobbies, games, sports and other ways to build a goal, work for it, and achieve it (or not). One experiment I wrote about in the past (link below), the John Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia where mice were placed in a habitat where they had food and were free from predation and . . .

Want Dystopia? Because this is how you get Dystopia.

His paper was called Death Squared because the mice, despite having all the food they could eat, died out. But before they died out, their society collapsed in upon itself. You can read Calhoun’s paper here (LINK), but it is as grim as remembering Biden is in the White House. The mice stopped acting as families, rape became rampant, some mice became pansexuals (mate anything, any time) there were gangs, some mice ignored everything and just groomed themselves, and mother mice stopped nurturing their young.

Another A.I. drawing I made.

Sound familiar?

Yeah, I thought so. Men need quests. Society needs quests. We need something worth fighting for, something worth winning for life to have meaning. And, yes, I realize the irony of writing about Ted Kaczynski’s on a laptop and putting it on the Internet, but I think he’d understand.

Thank you for attending my Ted talk.

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.”

A Tale Of Two Economies?

“Strange women lying in ponds, distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

I guess, for her, these are dark times.

I saw a graph last week from the New York Times®. The graph showed the views of the economy based on political party – people of the GloboLeft thought that the economy during Trump’s years in office wasn’t great and got worse every year until it fell off the COVID cliff. Their view of the economy changed as soon as Mumbly Joe got into office. Things were aLL bEtTeR NoW! Oh, sure, not as good as they were when Obama was in office, but better than the average of the Trump years.

When looking at the Trump supporter numbers, it was the exact opposite, the economy had gotten better during Trump’s time in the chair, until the COVID cliff, but bounced back but had dropped off of that same COVID cliff.

When Biden got into office, if not a little earlier, the economy cratered for people on the TradRight, and has been in the gutter since then.

The takeaway from the Times™ is: “Republicans react much more strongly to a president from the opposite party than Democrats do. That disproportionately affects the national mood during this Democratic administration.”

Probably the most important part of this graph is the why axis.

I’ll admit there is certainly bound to be component of that, but by any reasonable stretch of the imagination, the economy was much better under Trump than under Brandon. I think the analysis by the Times© is myopic and doo-doo headed (that’s a technical term).

The Times© is missing the point that Biden voters are not at all the same as Trump voters. Biden voters (the actual living ones), by far, make more use of public assistance than Trump voters. Any move or perception of a move that the gravy train of cash and prizes for just breathing and eating Hot Pockets™ is going away is going to cause unease.

Since they are the consumers of things that illegals create more than Trump voters, any tightening of the border lowers the number of people to be Squatamalan nannies or gardeners and makes the “raise the minimum wage” crowd have to pay more.

The horror!

You might not think it’s a lie that there is worse than Biden. The Canadians know it’s True-deau.

Lastly, a Trump administration will slow the growth of federal and state local jobs, as the gravy train is slowed, and as the regulations that spawn new regulatory jobs are strangled.

But what bout the Trump voters, are they delusional?

No, they own small businesses, and when profits are up, they’re happy. And they don’t have bright green hair. They’re homeowners instead of renters, so when interest rates are low, they can afford more house. They don’t live in the urban hellholes so gasoline prices are much more important to them than they would be to the average Biden voter who lives in the core urban Bluetopia of some place like Detroit or Atlanta or Baltimore.

Things were better in the burbs, and better for families, and better for people who had to get up in the morning to make the doughnuts and keep civilization moving. Oh, and the shutdown of the illegal pipeline raised their wages – lower labor availability raises wages.

Give a man a pizza and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to make a pizza and he will work for minimum wage.

Who doesn’t like increasing wages? The GloboLeftElite, that’s who. They don’t like higher wages because higher wages mean decreased profit. It’s odd that they end up having more money that they could ever spend, so it’s not the cash. Again, it’s the concentrated power that money brings.

And concentrated power is equivalent to the ability to reward. Or punish.

So, no, New York Times, Republicans are actually hurt by the economy. And it’s likely on purpose.

And, since actual intact nuclear families are overwhelmingly for Trump, this leads to the next problem – if the conditions are bad for a family, imagine the problems that causes for the most important segment of our population:

Young men who want nothing more than a traditional, Norman Rockwell marriage with a wife, a car, 2 or 3 kids, and a home that they own. That’s the desire.

The Hapsburgs had faces only a cousin could love.

The reality is that this dream is slipping away. I think kids are losing ground every year. Houses are more expensive, cars are more expensive to own and insure, and marriage costs more. The situation is horrible compared to the early 1970s, when a manufacturing job could support a Norman Rockwell family. Pay has stayed down due to the massive influx of cheap immigrant labor, whether that immigrant labor is here or in Vietnam.

Free trade means that we can be miserable on a race to the bottom for labor costs. And mom and pop stores, as inefficient as they may have been, mainly kept the profits of their stores in town. As the Walmartization™ of the rural economy continues, the guy who used to own the butcher store is now the guy at the meat counter, and the real butcher is hundreds of miles away in a meatpacking house, and is probably an illegal alien.

What was once a great middle-class life is now replaced as the GloboLeftElite search for yet more power.

The kicker is that the big key to a young man having a family, women, are more elusive every year having been propagandized into a dozen or more years of increasingly desperate and meaningless sex followed by desperation to find a “worthy” man as they enter their 30s and decide they want a kid.

Is that meme thot provoking?

So, guys check out. They’ve got weed, booze, and video games. When there aren’t women worth having, there won’t be men working to make themselves worthwhile. Why are there no good young men? There aren’t any good women worth chasing.

This leads to unrest in young men, and a misery in the population of people that are the real spark plugs of an economy, destruction of the middle class?

As usual, the New York Times® misses the big picture – the misery is real. And they don’t care.

Why Does Asymmetric Warfare Exist? It Works.

“Apparently, my shoulder muscles are asymmetrical. Did you ever hear of such a thing? They say it’s genetic.” – Malcolm in the Middle

Never sell your soul to make good pickles – that’s a dill with the Devil.

Why do we have the TSA?

My contention is that there have been exactly zero hijackings of passenger planes since 9/11 (although one Alaska Air® plane was stolen by Sky King, PBUH). Oh, sure, we had the shoe bomber. That’s why one time when The Mrs. was going through a TSA checkpoint they made her take off her sandals and passed the x-ray wand over her bare, human, totally flesh-covered feet.

Yes, that really happened.

I suppose you could argue that a terrorist could put a bomb in checked luggage, so we needed minimum wage mouth-breathers to paw through my luggage and steal stuff, but an x-ray is far less invasive and cheaper in the long run than those idiots – besides, when I travelled with pistols, those were locked up and I didn’t have to show anyone anything. I guess that’s one big advantage to having pistols. Also, a TSA agent with a gun?

The TSA agent asked if I had any weapons. “I prefer to kill with my bare hands,” apparently wasn’t the answer they were looking for.

Why have we spent billions of dollars on a system that (arguably) has saved no one, but cost me, personally, several hundred bucks when a TSA agent hot-fingered stuff out of my luggage?

Well, the government had to do something. It doesn’t matter that the something was stupid and futile and useless, they did something. The reason that they did something?

Asymmetric warfare works, though it’s called “terrorism” when not done by an established government. Waco? Totally not defined as terrorism. Oklahoma City? Terrorism.

Why is Ireland no longer governed by the British? Terrorism, er, asymmetric warfare works – look it up. Why does the state of Israel exist? Terrorism, er, asymmetric warfare works.

What do you call a terrorist group from Hoth®? Ice-IS.

Asymmetric warfare isn’t just bombs, though. It works against individuals.

Make a statement that’s too far outside of the window of the acceptable? That’s a public flogging and shaming. Vox Day identified their tactics in SJWs Always Lie:

Locate or Create a Violation of the Narrative.
Point and Shriek.
Isolate and Swarm.
Reject and Transform.
Press for Surrender.
Appeal to Amenable Authority.
Show Trial.
Victory Parade.

I could give you many examples of this, but you already know many of them. The result was the same – since the Narrative was like Cthulhu, and (until recently) only swam Left, there was an ever-advancing line of things you couldn’t say, even if they were 100% factual. Some of these facts were (and still are, in some places) 100% censored. That’s why they have to hobble and censor A.I. – the Truth is contradicts their Narrative.

And then everyone clapped.

The really, really corrosive part of this censorship is and was that the line was never a clear one, and kept shifting.

YouTube™ content creation is a big business. It makes millions of dollars a year for some people. Some even end up hiring writers, editors, and concentrate on making content that never would have made it to television in the past. But they live and die at the whim of YouTube™. Violate the nebulous terms and conditions, and not only do they end up losing their revenue stream, but they end up having to fire people that they’ve hired, people that they have grown close to.

So, as a content creator, they stay firmly on the “safe” side of the line. Until the line moves. Then, when their old videos (which were fine a year ago) now are found to violate the new narrative that just came into being last week? They get scared.

See, it’s funny because it wasn’t my window I was naked in front of. The Mrs. always tells me it makes the jokes more funny if I explain them.

And viewpoints are suppressed because of this non-violent, yet still very destructive type of terrorism. My own podcast on YouTube® was flagged a year ago over making a joke about the Vaxx®. Note that to any listener of the podcast, it’s really, really obvious that whenever we use the words “safe and effective” that we really don’t mean either safe or effective. But when we say “no refunds” we actually really do mean that.

Regardless, viewpoints are suppressed. For kicking off a few higher profile YouTubers® (Stephan Molyneux, for instance) they get compliance across the entire platform. Molyneux had millions of comments and millions of hours of his content viewed during his time on YouTube™. The result?

All deleted in a moment, and then banned from not only YouTube™, but PayPal©, Mailchimp®, and SoundCloud™. Go to his Wikipedia© page and he’s listed as a “white nationalist podcaster who promotes conspiracy theories, white supremacy, scientific racism, and the men’s rights movement.”

Does this sound like isolate and swarm, anyone?

Yes, it’s economic terrorism on an individual. And it works.

Oddly, though, in another sign that the Narrative can be stopped, Bud Light™ forms the backstory for the same tactics being used against GloboLeft. We’re all familiar with the narrative that Bud Light© stupidly partnered with a man who dresses like a woman and lost hundreds of millions of dollars, but why?

Just in time to remind everyone before their Super Bowl® ads.

Because in the same timeframe a gender-confused young woman killed a bunch of people at a church school. The name of the killer was known (and presented her as a woman, not the man she pretended to be). The names of the victims were known. But what was left?

The reason. Within a day, it was known that the killer had left a Tranifesto, a description of why she had killed. It was kept under wraps.

Why?

Because it showed, without a doubt, that her mind was twisted with a Leftist hate against . . . white people. That’s simply not the Narrative, so immediately an investigation was started to find those horrible people that shared the truth of the mind of the murderer.

But the people (you and me) connected the dots between the beer and the shooter and were done. Bud Light™ was and is seriously wounded. And just like the YouTubers© that shy away from content that might cross the line, wounded companies stopped. Not just InBev™, parent company of Bud Light©, but also every single app on my phone that normally turns gay-rainbow in June . . . didn’t. Not a one.

I hope it will give it time to reflect.

The line had been drawn. The economic asymmetric warfare from the people began to be heard.

I think that’s the case along not only the Texas border, but the whole border. People everywhere are done with illegals, and done with pressing 1 for English and done with being quiet about the horrors caused, big and small by this unchecked invasion. People are pushing back, and I’d expect that illegals and other immigrants will soon be the subject of public rudeness and shunning.

Racism? No. It’s our country.

Obviously, unlike in Canada, the government, despite its bluster, realizes that it can go only so far. That’s the reason the Second Amendment is there.

And it has gone too far.

And no make-believe “compromise” will work, but more about that in the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, coming next Monday.

I’m For Not Being Against Things

“A new power is rising. Its victory is at hand.” – Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers

I guess she didn’t see that coming.

Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. Back a decade ago, Anonymous Conservative (link below) was writing about the term “Amygdala Hijack”. An Amygdala Hijack occurs when a person is “an emotional response that is immediate, overwhelming, and out of measure with the actual stimulus because it has triggered a much more significant emotional threat,” according to Wikipedia. Basically, it means that someone has gotten in the target’s face so much that their brain breaks – they can’t contain the emotion and either lash out or stroke out.

The Amygdala Hijack In Action – A Video Example

This is the definition of Trump Derangement Syndrome. People are willing to disfigure their bodies and write “Trump” permanently on them to signal they hates him, they hates him so very much.

My friend got a tattoo of his favorite Star Wars™ character on his cheek. You should have seen the Luke on his face!

As much as the GloboLeft® hates Trump, most of their beliefs are made up not of provable facts (as much as they F*****g Love Science™) but rather the way that they feel on a subject. A great example is abortion: as much as they try to hide it, an unborn child is a discrete human entity with its own DNA, blood type, and body. That’s actual science.

But to disguise that very unpleasant truth, an entire web of “feels” has to be developed, focusing on the edge cases of rape and incest. As such, members of the GloboLeft™ cannot discuss abortion in any terms other than emotional ones, mainly because they want jobs where they can make PowerPoints® and a child wouldn’t be convenient.

What’s logical doesn’t matter. It’s what the GloboLeft® feels that matters.

Men have feelings too! Like hungry. Or drunk. Or salty.

Note that this leads to a subtle but important difference: GloboLeft© people aren’t for Joe Biden, they’re against Donald Trump. When a person is against something in emotional terms, they’re ripe for their amygdala being totally hijacked. They’re deranged, raw anger because something they’re against has happened.

On the other end of the spectrum, I thing most people on the TradRight™ aren’t for Donald Trump, they were for the border wall. They were for lower gas prices. They were for a return to normalcy. The were (and are) for America, first. When Donald deviated from what the people were for, well, they let him know. Remember the choruses of “boo” at a Trump rally when he began to brag about the Vaxx?

Pepperidge Farm remembers. Trump never led us. He saw the caravan and sprinted to the front.

Michelle has a “big” future.

But the experience of GloboLeft© was the exact opposite. When it was Trump’s Vaxx, it was poison that they would never in a million years put in their veins. When it became Biden’s Vaxx, it became a holy sacrament and a sign of their oh-so-virtuous behavior. The reason for the change is that they weren’t for the Vaxx, they were against Trump and anything he ever tried to do. People on the TradRight© were always skeptical, because, I mean, what is that stuff, anyway?

Being for something is generally positive. I’ve got to say generally because there are some pretty twisted folks out there that are “for” some pretty awful things. If the thing I’m for isn’t based in virtue, well, that’s a problem.

In the long run, “our” (I’ll count you in, dear reader, but feel free to opt out) movement must be a movement about being for things, because by being against things, we’ve already lost, and we’re on the defensive.

Why did Norm MacDonald never have a farm? Because he never got old. (I think Norm would appreciate that)

We have not lost, and we need to go on the offensive for things we are for. I know, it’s a subtle point, and sometimes difficult to get to. It could be said that I’m against immigration, but I can easily swap that and say that I’m for a culture which values the lives and fortunes of its citizens more than economic growth at all costs to depress wages and serve the elite, which is the driver of our current tidal wave of immigration. I’m for a unified culture based on Western values.

It’s the same thing, but it’s not. Being against war is not at all the same thing as being for peace. I am for peace for my people. And if it takes a war to get peace for my people, then so be it. Being against war just makes a nation a victim.

By making myself state what I’m for, rather than what I’m against, I force clarity to my thoughts, and also have created the basis for going on the offense. Being against Donald Trump gives him the ability to live rent free in the heads of the GloboLeft®, which makes them exactly what Donald calls them, losers. And they hate him even more for being right.

Being for makes us winners from the beginning. It gives us a goal, even if it’s so lofty that even our grandchildren might have to wait to achieve it. It gives us hope, and a vision for a brighter future. By being for something, it gives us the pathway to achievement, and the belief that we can move to victory.

I guess a Middle Eastern nation was providing armored vehicles to Ukraine for free. Is that tanks-giving Turkey?

Do I fall into the trap of being against things? Certainly, but I try to take step back and understand and flip the script to focus on the things that I’m for. But when I’m out there creating the vision of things I’m for, I know that I’m planning and plotting the seeds of our inevitable (and I do believe it is inevitable) next victory.

All of this with my amygdala firmly my own.

Why Do They Want You To Eat The Bugs And Not Garden? Profit And Control.

“I thought the garden was the right place for her.” – Alien: Covenant

We could get rid of all of the carbon in the atmosphere by making the oceans carbonated. This would work, because right now, the Earth is flat. (memes mostly as found)

Last week I wrote about the ridiculous idea that electric cars (absent a big technical breakthrough) are the solution to anything other than a rich person trying to smugly signal their virtue like a really, really expensive Bernie Sanders campaign sign. Continuing on the “carbon is bad” mantra of the GloboLeftElite®, the next obvious thing to deal with?

Food.

For some time, the mantra from GloboLeftElite© is that it’s time for you to stop eating the food you’re eaten your entire life, and eat bugs. Why eat steak when you could eat crickets and worms instead? Oh, and have you heard about all of the huge environmental problems that Big Agriculture™ causes? Why, there are huge tractors guzzling diesel fuel as they lumber about the farms! And farmers just love to burn vast ponds of diesel into great geysers of black smoke because they’re so rich and hate the environment.

Farmers I like, but I’ll not get up to defend the current average diet in America – there’s too much corn syrup and too many gallons of seed oils and it apparently makes Amber Heard poop the bed. All American food isn’t bad, but some of the current commercial implementations are. But there’s an alternative for lots of people.

Gardens.

Gardens are one reason a lot more folks didn’t starve back during the Great Depression – people were able to make a lot of their own food (a lot, not all of it) mostly for free. Yup, stick a seed in the ground, fertilize it, water it, keep the weeds and bugs out of the garden, and you get food. During both World Wars kitchen gardens helped people deal with food scarcity.

I mean, that’s the theory. GloboLeftElite™ would prefer you just eat the bugs. A recent article in The Telegraph notes that “the carbon footprint of homegrown food is five times greater than those grown conventionally.”

I thought this meme was a joke. Nope. Real.

Yes, you read that correctly. Gardens, in this case urban gardens, are the next thing that has to go. Why? Well, it’s not the growing of the food that creates the carbon, you see, it’s all the infrastructure.

They count sheds (which, if made of wood, would sequester carbon, but, hey) and sidewalks and things like raised beds, which apparently are single use, since lower carbon can be achieved by “using urban agriculture sites for many years.”

Who knew you could plant crops the next year, too? And who knew that growing things that eat CO₂ without using CO₂, lead to more CO₂?

I’m not kidding.

Yes, they (in this case, idiots with degrees at the University of Michigan) count the sidewalk that is probably already there to get to this ridiculous answer. There were a few foods they were okay with: tomatoes and asparagus, because those used greenhouses to grow and air freight to move them to supermarkets.

I heard OSHA started making porn. They’re experts in NSFW content.

Again, silly answer, but what do you expect from the people who brought you this sad little garden in the CHAZ during the “George had too much fentanyl and died” riots of 2020. Yes, the people at CHAZ were serious.

This is why GloboLeftElites™ want to ban gardens – revenge!

But the GloboLeftElite© wants you to lower your carbon footprint. Oddly, the dinner menu at the World Economic Forum didn’t include a diet of corn syrup, slugs, and microplastics. And none of them arrived by bus.

The propaganda from GloboLeftElite™ has, however, been excellent. People have been brainwashed into believing that vats of gooey insect parts are where healthy food comes from, and tasty cows are the force of pure evil in the world. Soylent Green™ is now no longer dystopian – the rank-and-file GloboLeft® (notice we’re missing the “Elite” part) think that Impossible Meat™ is better.

History has shown the GloboLeftElite® is never, ever right. In fact, I’ll go one better:

If we don’t do the things that the GloboLeftElite® want us to do, they claim it will destroy us through a magical demon called carbon that has been higher than it is today for most of Earth’s history (after life, that is).

I know that there’s been a long-time war against meat, at least since the 1960s. Vegetarians, are almost always Lefties, but it’s okay, because they’re weak. Why do they not want us to have meat? Because it makes us strong?

I think vegetarians always lose because they’re too weak for leg day.

The biggest problem for GloboLeftElite© is that food from your garden gives them no profits and gives them no control over you. We have the technology to turn bugs into a tasty protein source: it’s called a chicken egg. But they want you to eat the bugs, because if they humiliate you enough to eat the bugs, they know that they can make you do anything. Anything.

Want proof? Why, when COVIDmania® was ongoing did Michigan ban stores selling anything but essentials, and those essentials didn’t include seeds for food? Why did a group of Amish get raided and arrested for selling food? Control. And GloboLeftElite™ loves that.

Yes, that’s what they think.

Controlling the food as a route to controlling the people has been a strategy employed since the days of Mesopotamia and ancient Egypt. It’s very easy to control a person if they starve when they misbehave based on social credit scores.

Remember that the real source of carbon they want to stop is you, and that if they were serious, they’d ban big yachts and private jets and look outside of the Western world for sources of carbon to cut. No, it’s you, and it’s personal. They want you to eat bugs to help the climate. What did they eat at the Climate Conference in Dubai back in November?

“Traditionally Cooked Smoked Briskets, Smoked Ribs and our Smoked Wagyu Burgers. Our Style of Cooking gives unique taste and technique in Authentic Gourmet Foods.” Think I’m kidding? Here’s the LINK.

Yes, they could cut back.

Hey, do you have a license for that garden?

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.