Creating havoc since 2006. Fair use is claimed for images on this site, but they will be removed (if owned) on request out of politeness. movingnorth@gmail.com
“Okay, Wang, let’s just chew our way out.” – Big Trouble in Little China
Who wears a red suit and knows if you’ve been naughty or nice? The Spanish Inquisition. Bet you weren’t expecting that.
It’s Friday. So why not be happy?
In truth, being happy is one of the easiest things to do, most of the time. You just do it. It’s literally as easy as just telling yourself, “I’m happy now.”
I know that there are difficult things going on in the world, and on days that aren’t Friday I spend a lot of time writing about them, because I like to do my best to try to get the Truth out. I firmly believe that some things are utterly predictable in life, like what happens when Democrats get to count votes.
If I drop a glass from five feet above my ceramic tile floor in the kitchen, 999 times out of 1,000 it’s going to break. It doesn’t take psychic powers to tell me that.
I’m horrible at predicting the future. I guess you could call me a non-prophet.
But I certainly can’t tell you where all of the pieces are going to go, and I can’t tell you what shape each piece will be in. I can only guess.
Most of the things that are going on in the world are like that falling glass, and most of the questions we have are how is it going to break. Yeah, $34 trillion in debt is unsustainable – some people work a whole year and don’t make that much. How will I do? I really don’t know.
I can, maybe, make some changes that make the crack up a little better for me. Maybe not – there’s a lot of things that can happen, since, as Yogi Berra said, “Prediction is hard, especially about the future.”
So, when I’ve done the thinks that I think I can do, and it’s the end of the day, I turn it off. I don’t fret. I don’t worry about the things I can’t control. Unlike a Clinton, I let life happen.
Suicide hotline put my uncle on hold, just left him hanging.
In the words of the youth, I “touch grass”, which is the phrase of those hep cats who caution that we can make ourselves crazy by losing touch with those things around us, like nature. I good walk on a cool autumn day as the Sun starts to become dimmer with its march towards winter is . . . awesome.
We have the choice, each day as to how we’re going to feel about the day.
Most of the time that I’m feeling glum, it’s not at all about what has happened, instead it’s about what might happen. In the words of Mark Twain, “Worrying is paying interest on a debt you might not even owe.”
In that case, I know the answer to “What Color Is Your Parachute” – that would be red.
I can think of a million things that can go wrong before lunch, if I let myself. I prefer not to get wrapped up in that sort of thought, so I try to limit my worries to things that it might be good to worry about, things like, “Is there another beer in the beer fridge?”
It is, generally, easy to just take a step back and smile. Even if I’m out of beer, it doesn’t mean that life is bad.
Most often, I get upset when I find that life isn’t doing what I want it to do. This happens much more than I’d like, obviously. I don’t give up, but I also want to keep focused on a simple idea – life happens the way it happens. I can do my best to alter outcomes here and there (which is part of the reason that I write) but in the end I have to understand and make peace with the idea that, although I certainly won’t go gently onto that goodnight, I can learn to make peace with it.
If you can’t win the Nobel Peace Prize, might as well try for the Darwin Award.
The other thing I’ve had to come to grips with, is often my plans sorta suck. If everything had gone the way I wanted it to go, in most cases it would have been horrible for me. As much as I plan, my plans fail to see the things that have helped me grow as a person and become better.
I don’t think that if every plan I made would have come true that I would be as happy as I am now. I certainly wouldn’t have accomplished as much.
In the end, I’m not content. I’m not satisfied. And I’m always trying to get better.
“Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.” – Jaws
If you’re lonely you could buy some stocks. Then you’d have some company.
In July, the New York Times® ran a story titled, Is the Cure to Male Loneliness Out on the Pickleball Court? It wasn’t particularly political, and I think I can summarize it in just a few words: “If you’re a dude, have a few friends. The best friends are those that share some sort of common interest with you. Friends make you happy.” Writer Michelle Cottle strung those three sentences out into several hundred words of mainly forgettable fluff that would be obvious to anyone with an I.Q. higher than a Phoenix, Arizona winter temperature. In centigrade.
The real joy of this particular story, however, was the unleashing of memes. The picture that accompanied the article, however was, shall we say, regrettable. It’s above, showing a man (I think, it’s 2023, so who can even define a man in 2023) with massive, fat tears containing enough water to keep California going through a megadrought. I think he might be crying because he hates pickleball, or maybe because he can’t afford a shirt with sleeves.
I have so many orb memes.
Regardless, the /Internet/ reacted predictably to the picture, and created a list of memes that would make all those sages pondering orbs proud. I saved a few of them, just for you in the hopes that you, dear reader, might find your key to cure your loneliness. If you’re like me, you don’t have feelings other than cold, salty, and drunk, so I haven’t figured out what the whole “lonely” thing is.
Anyway, here are the memes, as found, with some annotation.
I think that drinking with Quint and killing sharks is definitely going to solve any issues with loneliness.
Curling? Not so much.
Now being in a Roman Legion? That’s the stuff! Hiking every day! Just avoid Germany.
It’s weird that the Turks mispronounce “Constantinople” as “Istanbul”.
I, for one am always happy when I’m at Chili’s. It is the booze.
I’ve never tried it, but, what could it hurt?
Now this looks inviting. I think termites like saloons, because they like the bar tender.
I wonder if he’ll be a crying-on-the-inside NPC?
Can confirm, this is fun until the cops show up.
Is the Wendigo related to the Whodigo, or the Wheredigo, or the Whatdigo?
Who can be lonely interacting with 400’ tall anime girls?
Travolta and Cage walk into a bar. Bartender says, “Why the wrong face?”
Lovecraft walked into a bar, and the rest is too humorous to even describe.
Ever notice that you never see Walken and Buscemi in the same place? Discuss.
Hell yeah, brother!
Well, even Hunter gets lonely.
I guess it didn’t work for Kaepernick.
But it might have worked out for Kaepernick’s dad.
Sometimes, it’s the simple things.
Or many simple things.
What’s a little psychosis between friends?
If I tried that, I’d be grounded.
Well, back to giant women . . .
And who doesn’t need another synthesizer?
Is there more to life?
Yes, yes there is.
Thankfully, my job will let me work as many hours as I want to.
“It’s logical to assume that something within this zone absorbs all forms of energy whether mechanically or biologically produced. Whatever it is, it would seem to be the same thing which drew all the energy out of an entire solar system and the Intrepid.” – Star Trek, TOS
Electric cars owners should never go down a dead end street – there’s no outlet.
As I have written time and time again, the future of energy is the future of humanity. Cheap, safe, limitless energy is the dream, and that energy is one component of a future that is not nasty, brutish, and short, like George Soros. Because the Leftists have tried to propagandize the subject, they’ve done a great job at muddling the thoughts on what in the end is actually the engineering question that drives the economic engines of the world.
Let’s remove the confusion on the term “energy source”. Electricity, for instance, isn’t an energy source, since it has to be created in some fashion, such as by windmill or coal-fired power plant, nuclear power plant, or tiny faeries hooked up to electrodes while being chained to beds in the basement of Disney® . . . oh, I’ve said too much.
I heard a fairy tale about politics once. It was Grimm.
Electric cars, then, are dependent upon getting their electricity from somewhere upstream. Electricity is an energy carrier, not a source.
On the other hand, crude oil is an energy source. The refining process doesn’t take up too much energy, and the sweet, sweet hydrocarbon molecules in a gallon of gasoline were there (mostly, some have been rearranged a tiny bit) in the refining process.
So, let’s define energy sources as energy, in crude, raw, or potential form that can be manipulated for use and that we get more energy out than we put into it. So, crude oil is definitely an energy source in most conventional and fracking situations, producing up to (depending on how you count it) sixteen times as much energy as used to get it out of the ground and turn it into 89 octane. I will say if we converted the entire economy to biofuels emissions would go down and we could starve at the same time!
Biofuels are entirely questionable, and most of them are poor when compared to gasoline as an alternative, returning just a little bit over break even for both biodiesel and corn ethanol. These products exist as fuels primarily because Lefties like ruining the economy and the RINOs know that farmers vote. Thus, there are tax incentives in place to force the use of biofuels.
“But we could make houses out of it.” “No, you have to bury it.” “But we could make furniture out of it.” “No, you have to bury it.” “But we could heat houses with it.” “No, you have to bury it.” “I’m beginning to think you don’t like people.”
The dream of the Left (at least this version, Arthur Sido has another one here: LINK), then is to get rid of all of the cars to replace them with “clean” electric vehicles. The International Energy Agency (IEA) wants to get electric cars and trucks (EVs) to 45% of the vehicles on the road by 2050 according to their Net Zero Scenario. 45%! The insanity doesn’t stop there – the IEA expects that alternative vehicles will reduce gas and diesel use by 30% by 2030 – seven years into the future.
That’s a stunning number, because the average age of a car in the United States is 12.2 years. I guess I’m pretty close to average, because the average Wilder fleet ages is 11.5 years. That means that the 30% of the car and stock in existence today needs to be replaced by 2030 with electric and hydrogen vehicles. I have no idea where the IEA is getting its dope, but they must get really good stuff.
>Be forest.
>Exist. Die. Kill mankind by raising temperature 0.0001°F.
>Wonder why this didn’t happen 100,000,000 years ago.
That would mean, though, that conventional vehicles that run on sweet, sweet oil and diesel will have to be phased out starting very soon. Further, the remainder of the vehicles the IEA are hydrogen-powered. Now the Hindenburg wasn’t hydrogen powered . . . .
Now, checking back to energy sources versus energy carriers, hydrogen is just an energy carrier. It has to be generated somewhere.
One of the first problems is that EVs are wickedly expensive compared to actual cars since they require massive amounts of material to replace the empty gasoline tank of an internal combustion car. The question is, where do those materials come from? If, all of a sudden, millions of EVs need to be made, the prices for the materials that go into them will go up, too.
>Be forest.
>Burn. Kill mankind by melting 200 gallons of ice.
>Wonder why this didn’t happen 200,000 years ago.
According to the IEA itself, demand for lithium alone will be 4,000% greater in 2050 than it is today. Cobalt increases would be 2,000%. The increase in availability alone is questionable. Resources show up in clumps – I can’t go in my front yard and look for gold, it is where it is. And when Leftists dream of this wonderful economy that they’re creating, they ignore the environmental costs waste of mining all this stuff – how much will that create in greenhouse gasses plant food?
It’s clear, once again, that these plans aren’t serious. China is producing a stunning 30% of greenhouse gasesCO2, while the United States produces about 15% of human made CO2. Why do we fixate on the United States?
First, Leftists have to pretend, really hard, that global warming climate change has replaced what real humans call weather.
Second? The Chinese are already communist, so let them do whatever. The people who have to have their economy ruined while they chase unicorns and rainbows rather than actual engineering solutions to actual engineering problems will have their economy destroyed.
Or maybe they’ll just buy beachfront property at a discount?
Or was that the plan all along?
At the beginning of this, I said the future of energy is the future of humanity. That’s just a bit inaccurate – the future of energy is the future of free humans and our economy. Me? I have my own plans.
Whoops, sorry! Just a regular old death cult after all.
This is the second post about Leftist self-hatred this week. This particular Leftist self-hatred is one that uniquely hurts the economy and even the prospects of the survival of humanity, so it’s par for the course for the most malignant philosophy ever to exist, outside of Taco Tuesday.
What spurred this was a note from a friend that suggested a post. I knew where I wanted to go with it, since I had seen a graphic (from Nature Communications® which is a part of Nature™ the magazine, LINK) that surprised me. I mean, knowing what I know about Leftists, it really shouldn’t have, but what got my attention is how starkly it shows the divide in the philosophies of Right and Left. It’s presented pretty weirdly, so I’ll help out a bit on the interpretation since I’m a trained professional.
The graph is shown as a bullseye. Why? I think the researchers might have been drunk and had a bullseye graph generator, so they decided between shots of tequila that they’d use the damn thing since the University had paid for it anyway. They then got the grad students to enter the data for free, and, boom, paper complete.
I remember watching a PBS® show on how fish swim. They shocked a fish by putting an electrode up its behind so they could photograph it. Who put the electrodes up the fish butts? Grad students.
The concentric circles in the graph are pretty simple, though, and the innermost are the things closest to an individual. The rings get rather more distant as they go outwards until they get rather silly:
All of your immediate family.
All of your extended family.
All of your closest friends.
All of your friends (including distant).
All of your acquaintances.
All people you have ever met.
All people in your country.
All people on your continent.
All people on all continents (apparently, screw those guys on islands, they suck anyway).
All mammals (finally got the people on the islands and astronauts covered).
All amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds.
All animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae.
All animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms.
All living things in the universe including plants and trees.
All natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks.
All things in existence.
So, that’s the scale – what things are the most important to you? For me, this is an easy answer. I like the things that closer to me better, and I could see my feelings about this covered very well under the title listed for “Conservatives”.
Is it just me, or does this graph look very, umm, happy?
In general, I like the people that are close to me more. Yes, I care about Americans more than I care about people in Tannu Tuva, or people in Tanganyika, or even those pitiful island people. I generally care more about my kids than yours, and I generally like all people better than rocks, though there are some exceptions that I make for ex-spouses and members of Antifa®. Heck the entire meme below is encapsulated in the graph above:
Now if that isn’t what’s on his headstone, it sure should be.
Okay, that explains the Right, and how we generally feel according to statistics. What about the Left?
Why did they pick 45°?
Whoa, that’s amazingly different! Lefties are really focused over to the end, with only a minor preference for humans and a lesser preference for people closer to them. The perception of the granola-eating surrender chimp as the model for Leftism is once again validated. They like these things best:
All animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms.
All living things in the universe including plants and trees.
All natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks.
Rocks are more important to them than their parents. And if their parents are as disappointed in them as I’m guessing they are, I can see why. They hate themselves, so they hate the things that are closest to them. You can see it when they throw themselves in front of cars when they protest, they have never won anything in life, so the only way they can win, they feel, is to have transferred virtue from their death. “See, I told you I was a good person, but you never believed me!” Thus, the victim Olympics where they compete based on victim status. “Well, Bob, he stuck the victim status, but he wobbled on the virtue signal, and the blind gay judge with AIDs from Ethiopia gave him a 7.3.”
I wonder how many upvotes they got on Reddit®?
To be clear, I’m not sure I would like alien lifeforms at all unless they grilled well, and I think I would be just fine if an entire planet of intelligent, bloodthirsty cannibal lizard-people was wiped out, even in a slow and agonizing way, just to make sure that my family had slightly more comfortable air conditioning. But enough about the people who are related to George Soros.
I’m not kidding. I can come up with entire species that I’d love to see wiped from existence, and I’d start with mosquitos, gnats, wasps, and vegans. Vegans especially, because they eat what my food eats, and that’s just selfish.
To be clear, I love the environment. I love hiking, I love nature, I love hunting, I love trees. The reason I love them is simple: they exist to by enjoyed by Man. If Man doesn’t exist? None of these mean anything to me. There are millions of cows alive on Earth right now. Because we want to make cows happy? No, because cows make us happy, especially when done medium rare with a nice crust. To be clear, I think “nature” has no intrinsic value outside of what it can provide to Man. But I love nature, because it’s awesome to man.
The Moon? Just rock without people. And Soviet Russian ships that landed. A crash is a landing, right?
Oddly, because of these heat maps, people on the Right go out to work to care for the people they know and their country. Why was the Right the primary source of military recruits? Because we like our nation more than we like other nations, and since we are focused on those around us, we’re fiercely individualistic, and focused on family and friends. Why? We like our families and friends, and if they’re loyal to us, we’re more than loyal to them.
When the chips were down and you needed help, would you rather have a friend on the Right, or one on the Left?
Thought so.
People on the Left, though, end up in the traditional Leftist positions, in academia, or, in government. I’ll perhaps discuss in some future post a bit more on Leftism and academia if there’s interest. For today, let’s focus on government.
The idea of government, at least as outlined in the Constitution, is simple, “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and, ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”. Note, even in the Constitution it talks about “ourselves and our posterity” and doesn’t mention the slave-pirate amoebas from the planet Melkor-7 or trees.
Wait, tell me about the slave girls again?
The people who gravitated to government over time, however, like control. And that control includes enforcing their morals (which rate rocks above people). And in 2023, those are the folks in charge of policy. They like people who live elsewhere more than they like citizens of their own country, and the like clinging vines more than they like their second cousin. Depending on the second cousin, I might agree, but the point remains: they hate humanity.
Rather than environmental policy being about how to best work and preserve the environment for people, environmental policy is now viewed as either one of state control, or the idea that we’ll preserve a beetle that isn’t that much different than millions of other beetles rather than try to provide a future habitat for our grandchildren, or Keith Richards, whichever lives longer. None of these policies have humans in mind.
Right now, I drive a huge pickup truck. I might have bought a smaller pickup, but they can’t be sold because of fuel-efficiency standards – only my massive, hulking pickup with an interior bigger than my first apartment can be sold legally because huge pickups don’t have to meet car standards, but little ones do. That’s also why sedans and station wagons disappeared and massive “sport utility vehicles” replaced them – a consequence of bad environmental policy. I like using less gasoline, but .gov says I have to use more.
Hmmm.
Mussolini was lucky. On his last day he got to hang out with his friends.
Other examples of this are things like nuclear power. The Left has always hated nuclear power because it was something only First World societies could afford, and the thing the Left hates more than themselves is a winner. How can we drag them back down? Oh, yeah, we can make power so expensive and unreliable that no one can afford it.
The biggest question facing humanity in 2023 is energy. Is an energy crisis coming? It certainly is. Will the regulations that the Leftists who like rocks better than their parents put into place make sense for people? Unlikely, since the civilization of humans isn’t on their radar.
To be fair, since we’ve already demonstrated the self-hatred of humanity, it’s pretty simple to note that these consequences that put all of humanity at risk, might not be unintentional at all.
“I’m a man, but I can change, if I have to, I guess.” – The Red Green Show
Remember to always ask yourself what you can do to make Leonardo DiCaprio’s life better.
I remember one Twitter® exchange I had way back in the past. It was with a Leftist, and I made the statement, “Don’t you see, the only ethical path is to be against illegal immigration, and immigration of any sort. Since Americans emit nine times the greenhouse gases of countries like Mexico or Guatemala, the only thing we can do to protect the climate is to keep them there or send them back.”
There was a pause on the response. “Not sure if you’re really concerned about the environment or just don’t like illegal immigrants.”
That was one of my favorite trolls, since they had to think about conflicting narratives in their programming. In many cases, the Left ignores this, but my major message is never to the Left, since they are not on a rational mission, but on a religious one since Leftism isn’t a political system at heart, it is a religious one. Look at it when a Leftist talks about Trump – it’s like someone on the Right being forced to think of Satan in the Oval Office – it’s religious, not ideological.
The Sun never went to college because it has thousands of degrees.
One of the sacraments of this religion is abortion. The other? Global Warming, er, Climate Change.
This summer has been hotter than the last few here in Upper Lower Midwestia. I’ve seen stories where it was hot in lots of other places, mostly places that you’d expect, like Phoenix. Some of the hottest places this year are the places where people are only there because there’s oil there, like Saudi Arabia, Iran, or the place they make French fries at McDonald’s®.
But that’s why we always see Global Warming, er, Climate Change stories trotted out in the summer and never when it’s -20°F (-273.16°C in metric units) in winter. How bad is it? The propaganda of the sacrament of Global Warming, er, Climate Change is trotted out on weather forecasts to nail down the idea that things are getting worse when in reality, they’re not a whole lot different. Want an example? Here’s Sweden:
Are illegals in Sweden known as “artificial Swedeners”?
Yup, 36 years later, the biggest change has been that they changed the color of the map to a scary color. Why? To celebrate the sacrament of Global Warming, er, Climate Change.
How bad is it? I’ve pointed out again and again how the people in charge of defending our country are fundamentally not serious people. They want, well, I’ll let them tell you:
If she succeeds, everyone will know how to stop an American tank: shoot the soldiers pushing it.
It has even become a death cult, of sorts. The doom that has hit country after country across the world has been staggering. The big part is propaganda – starting at the schools where teachers, predominantly taught Left-leaning curriculum by Left-leaning professors at Left-leaning colleges are the ones in charge of the indoctrination. What does that lead to? Students that don’t want to have children because they believe that they’re part of some sort of Original Sin just by breathing. Notice that China is utterly ignoring the nonsense.
Looks like the Germans and the French are finally equal at something.
The other part of this equation is that people are ignoring the elephant in the room: a volcano last year put an additional 13% water vapor into the Earth’s atmosphere. 13%. And water is a very, very potent greenhouse gas. That’s huge, but I don’t see Greta wanting to sacrifice virgins to the volcano god to stop those from going off, or Joe Biden wanting to make water illegal.
Soon enough the water will drop out of the atmosphere, but Joe Biden will still have to live with being Hunter Biden’s dad.
And I will say, again and again, that this has nothing to do with Global Warming, er, Climate Change. It has everything to do with Leftist ideology and nothing to do with the temperature or the weather or any sort of solution. Again, listen to them when they talk:
What’s the scariest word in nuclear physics? Oops.
The Left is adamantly against nuclear power, because, properly implemented it solves a whatever Global Warming, er, Climate Change problems there are. To be fair, the plants need to be idiot proof, because idiots have a really great track record of screwing everything up, and hiring anyone but actually competent people to design and run the things is an absolute must.
Never let a cat run your nuclear power plant.
Nuclear power is clearly a part of the plan, but keep in mind that the plan is created by people whose idea of nature is a strip of lawn in a park a half a mile from their house. The people crafting the plans to create the “new world” have no more real appreciation of nature than Mark Zuckerbot.
Remember, these are people that get scared when they’re more than 20’ from asphalt.
I think we need to move away from fossil fuels, and quickly. Not at all because I hate them, no, but because we need to save them for the really useful things they do. It will take decades and trillions of dollars of investment to move the world to a new power source. And we only have so much time to do it before that opportunity expires.
Leftists oppose it:
“Environmentalists” don’t understand it:
But true Chads know that’s where we’re going:
And if we ignore it, the actual aliens (not the illegal ones) will never stop giving us crap:
“No, for God’s sake! You’ve got it all backwards! AIDS, the Ebola virus? On an evolutionary scale they are newborns. This virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs.” – The X Files Movie (‘98)
Greta has made a real difference in electrical usage – every time she’s on the TV, I turn it off.
One of the more interesting ideas that I ran across was when I was first exposed to the idea of a meme. It’s really short for mimeme, which means “imitated thing”. Richard Dawkins described it as the idea that ideas would be faced with the same sort of pressures that biological entities face in the world – they either reproduce, or they die.
Regardless of how I feel about Dawkins’ other ideas, this one has always intrigued me, because it’s about the fundamental relationship between people and information and ideas. It’s the place where ideas propagate and are passed on.
Or not. An idea that’s passed on, lives. One that isn’t passed on, dies.
The doctor said I had Peekaboo virus. He said that sends most people to ICU.
Now, that really may not have any relationship with the truth of an idea. Let’s take a meme that has been artificially boosted to the point where it’s known by virtually everyone:
“Diversity is our strength.”
Well, not so much. It turns out that diversity is our diversity, but probably not our strength in that when you have a bunch of people living together that don’t share a common ethnicity, “social trust” drops. It turns out that if you want to live in a society with high trust, it’s probably more reasonable to say, “Diversity is our weakness”.
What about another great meme, this one from our Founding Fathers, “All men are created equal”.
My hairline would beg to differ.
Now if the meme had been, “All men have the same rights” I would have been right on board, and I think that was the original intent. But people are decidedly unequal. Some are short, some are tall. Some are smart, and some are Leftists. All men may have the same rights, but all men aren’t the same.
Why are all the corporations hiring female Equality Officers? They’re cheaper.
How about this one: “majority rules”?
That’s one I remember having been well drilled into the brains of fourth grade kids when I was one, typically when I lost the vote on the movie to watch in class. Why wouldn’t a bunch of fourth grade kids not want to watch Tommy?
But “majority rules” is a horrible way to run a society. Doubt me? Look around. The idea that has been the most stable (outside of Kim’s Best Korea Solution) has been a constitutional republic, not a democracy. But, hey, who needs a constitution when people might have bad thoughts? Majority rules is mob rule, and that defines the worst of us, a place where the passion of the moment takes over from the rights of all of us.
The ideas here are simple, and the phrases have an amazing lifespan even when they are observably false. There is a place for Truth, and it isn’t in a meme. Just as a virus doesn’t have to be virtuous, neither are ideas that are spread by memes. What they are though, is excellent persuasion material.
Oh, Garfield! And here I thought you just wanted to be Nermal.
But just like all people aren’t created equal, all memes aren’t created equal, either. One could make the argument that Trump’s victorious election in 2016 was partially due to fun memes. I’m sure that you saw some of them. Remember The Deplorables meme?
The Internet has not made this better. In many ways, the websites (especially social media) are created to be addiction pumps by manipulating your emotions – and brain chemicals.
The good news is that we aren’t simply blank slates for corporations, government, and universities to imprint on, we have free will, and most importantly we get to choose what goes into our heads, what information we watch, and what thoughts we consume.
As Garfield® taught us, we aren’t immune to propaganda.
But realizing it’s there is the first step to understanding it, to taking a step back, and to evaluate what I think.
I asked my librarian if they had a book by Shakespeare. “Yes,” she replied. “Which one?” I asked. “William.”
Is that my thought? Did I put it there? Is it consistent with what I know? Is it consistent with the truth?
Is it consistent with the Truth?
When I think about just what a meme might be imitating, I keep coming around to the same idea: the Truth. And what is propaganda, but an idea imitating the Truth?
“Yes, sir! That’s exactly who I am and what I am, sir. A victim, sir!” – A Clockwork Orange
What’s black and white and red all over? A victim of an industrial accident at a newspaper printing press. (All memes today are as-found)
The inversion of virtues: I’ve written on this topic recently, but decided I needed to have another go at it. Part of the blogging theme is that my posts are limited in space. No one wants to read a 10,000-word post on PEZ™ on Friday morning as they drink their coffee.
Virtues make a civilization worth living in. I’d rather live in a poor civilization with great values than a rich one with poor values, and both of those sound better than what we’ve got going on now. And I’d suggest that our current free-fall is due to that loss of virtue.
What were Epstein’s last words before he committed suicide? “You don’t have to do this! I promise I won’t talk!”
Let’s compare values at the peak of Roman Civilization, the peak of Western Civilization, and what the Left is shoving down our throats right now. For instance:
Rome: Worshiped gods.
The West: Worshiped God.
The Left: Worship man (atheism) or the State.
See? Inversion. Who did the cultures idolize?
Rome: Worshiped heroes.
The West: Worshiped heroes and Saints.
The Left: Worship victims.
See, that’s not hard, and yet more inversion. What about sin?
Rome: Sin of hubris.
The West: Sin of pride.
The Left: Sin of privilege.
I’ll just quit making inversion comments, because this is a slam dunk. Who are the spiritual leaders?
Rome:
The West:
The Left: Professors, Leftie politicians.
Ideals?
Rome: Ideal was glory, excellence (Areté).
The West: Ideal was holiness, modesty, courage.
The Left: Social Justice, victimhood.
Ideal social class?
Rome: Warriors and those who served their fellow men.
The West: The middle class.
The Left: The lower class, victims, victims, victims.
Even a virtue, charity, has been turned from a voluntary act that provides spiritual growth in the terms of the classic West, to taxation to provide forced “charity” to the (often) undeserving.
I’m thinking I don’t want to know how my tax dollars are spent because I’m afraid all mine went to buy crack pipes in San Francisco.
This inversion bleeds over into all of society. “Drag Queen Story Hour”?
Wonder why they don’t read to old folks in nursing homes, or to the blind? Whenever I hear about that, my mind sees:
And then there are questions that are more difficult to answer:
Inversion, of course, shows up in the obvious things:
Jazz Jennings is a transgender person who feels no need to change with no sense of irony:
And their goal is that you will live and produce and that you should be okay with not being meaningful or having any joy, so live in the pod, and eat the bugs, wagie.
And we now have a Marine Corps who worries about people’s feelings. Perhaps they’ll land with Nerf™ guns so that they won’t have their feelings hurt.
But the pushback is well underway. Or overweigh:
But there’s a catch:
And I think this has broken the Left, mentally:
And the internal contradictions in their “victimhood” matrix are starting to show:
Canada has shown that it certainly can’t be trusted with the power of life and death:
The inversion has hit, but people (and maybe Higher Powers) are pushing back. And, I think we will win. Why? Because we’re so very pretty. And? PEZ®.
“Some actually value wealth of knowledge over material wealth, Harper.” – Andromeda
My butler just quit his job here at my stately home. He said he refused to be ordered around in that manor.
I find it sort of hilarious that economists spend a lot of time fretting about what causes poverty. I love economics, but often think that they create pocket universes to study that have no real connection to the here and now. I think that’s called sniffing their own . . . uh . . . emissions.
But sometimes it’s not just economists who ask the wrong question. As bad as they are, the worst offenders are politicians. Let’s start with the dumbest question that has been asked in my lifetime (at least in the United States):
“What causes poverty?”
That’s letting Whoopi Goldberg loose in a chocolate factory stupid. It doesn’t help the chocolate and leaves Whoopi sticky and needing an insulin shot.
But why is that a stupid question?
Because poverty is the dominant condition of humanity everywhere since we didn’t have two rocks to fight over. People throughout history have been devastatingly, living in mud hut, sleeping in straw beds filled with more bedbugs than straw. Mary and Joseph had to walk uphill, both ways, to get to the manger.
That’s a joke that keeps you coming back for myrrh.
Only in rare times, and only for a small percentage of the population of the world have some humans felt prosperity. Fewer still have felt prosperity for most of their lives. Fewer still experienced enough wealth in their society for them to think that wealth was normal, and poverty was the exception. We call them Pampered Coastal Elite Leftists.
Why? Because every farmer in the Midwest, every rancher in the High Plains, and every shrimper in the Gulf (among many, many others) knows how close they are to failure, and how close poverty is, especially if a free-range Whoopi Goldberg is free to eat and trample their crops.
Ma Wilder was impacted by the Depression (she was a lot older than my biological Mom, I was adopted) to the point that, living up on Wilder Mountain she’d save aluminum foil and old pickle jars and have enough food for six months because, “You just never know when you’ll need it.” It was kinda cute until she made us re-use Q-Tips®.
The Wolf is always at the door.
I couldn’t find the wolf, which I guess makes it a where-wolf.
So, the question to ask isn’t “what makes people poor”. We can see that as all the systems around us break down like they are now when morons are at the helm.
We should ask the important question: “What makes us wealthy?”
That’s a much better question to ask, since LBJ’s War on Poverty has just subsidized being poor and created a permanent underclass of voters for Leftists to farm, dependent on the Left for a constant stream of handouts. If you were late to Leftist language class, that’s their word for “compassion”.
So, what makes us wealthy? I can only go from history in those places where the world has deviated from the “nasty, brutish, and short” version of life to that “shining city on the hill”. What matters?
The first thing that comes to mind is Liberty, tempered with Virtue.
When a kangaroo gets hurt, it requires a hop-eration.
What Liberty does is provides options, for millions of people to make individual decisions on how to better serve fellow citizens. Virtue means that they shouldn’t destroy their fellow citizens in the process, since that’s generally bad for business. I guess that cigarette companies have found that it’s okay if you kill them slowly after decades.
Not only that, it’s regulation. Who loves regulation? Big companies. Regulations make it hard for small companies to start, make it hard for them to compete, but increases their profit margin. I mean, I would have loved to compete with Pfizer® with my “Super Saline Covid Injection” that didn’t cause myocarditis, but they would probably want to make sure mine was entirely WD-40® free.
Which would still likely have been better for people than the mRNA Vaxx. But who is counting? Not the CDC®.
What else?
I hear Senator Mitch McConnell stole my rabbit. Mitch better have my bunny.
Intelligence. If you ask ChatGPT® about the correlation between intelligence and national prosperity it blows a fuse. Bing™ chimes right in: “There is a correlation between IQ and economic prosperity. A one point increase in IQ is associate with a 4% increase in welfare for the average country. High IQ is associated with high per-capita GDP and fast economic growth, as well as more equal income distribution.”
Ouch! That’ a truth bomb that most folks don’t want to hear. IQ is not really something that anyone can change for the better. Sure, I can drink a few shots of Jim Beam® and take mine down, but what I’ve got, is what I’ve got, from birth.
But smart people in an economy can keep a more stable economy, and can better grow a complex economy than a group of people who don’t know what vowels are. Sure, I’d like to think that groups of dumb people could get together and solve the nuclear fusion problem, but I’ve met dumb people – they can’t figure out how to split a restaurant tab without a knife fight then a follow-up sacrifice of a live chicken to Gorto the Destructor god.
Or I could have just said, “Imagine Haiti” and everyone would know what I meant.
Why is Haiti spelled without an “e”? Simple. They hate e.
Again, I’m not blaming Haitians for making Haiti, well, Haiti, but if you want to cry, go look over the difference in income between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. I’ll save you the time – the Dominican Republic has nine times the per capita income, despite being on the same exact island. The data I found (on the ‘net, mind you) has the Dominican Republic has an average IQ of 80. Haiti has an average IQ of 67.
Haiti has an average intellectual capacity (if this data is correct) at the level where Social Security would consider them disabled (on average).
Having great resources? That doesn’t appear to help. It’s the System. It’s the People. If Hong Kong and Singapore can create wealth out of zero resources in a location that almost anyone in the United States would consider so crowded they’d have to make an appointment to change their mind, it’s not space, it’s not stuff.
We can change our laws to allow more Liberty and increase Virtue and reverse the trends away from the nonsense of the last fifty years that encourage large corporate growth at the expense of the People.
But if we change out our People?
Who are we? Will we see the continuation of turning our cities into Haiti on the half shell?
Studies of the genetics of dead Romans (LINK) showed that “intelligence increased from the Neolithic Era (Z= -0.77) to the Iron Age (Z= 0.86), declines after the Republic Period and during the Imperial Period (Z= -0.27).”
Why did Rome fall? Many reasons. It lost Liberty, it lost Virtue, and it replaced Romans with people who weren’t Romans.
“The Moon Unit will be divided into two divisions: Moon Unit Alpha and Moon Unit Zappa.” – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me
There’s always that one kid who won’t smile in the team picture.
(Repost from 2019)
I was at a garage sale the other day when I came across a small leather-bound journal in a box filled with Tupperware®. Embossed on the worn cover was a now faded and flecked NASA logo that had once been a solid, shiny gold. In the lower right-hand corner I noticed, so faded they were barely visible, two initials: N.A. I flipped through and saw page after page of journal entries in what I assumed to be Neil Armstrong’s printed writing. I quickly paid the $2.50 price on the orange sticker on the book.
Here are the journal entries:
7/14/69, 21:00:00 GMT
Countdown begins. I will admit to being a bit excited. A rocket launch is never a routine event. They’ve kept us busy though, re-practicing procedures, re-reviewing maps of the Sea of Tranquility, and, for Buzz Aldrin, eating meals consisting entirely of re-fried beans. He says it’s for luck. Michael Collins continues to be . . . Michael Collins. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him smile. Or blink.
7/16/69, 07:22:15 GMT
Last shower, shave and breakfast. Collins doesn’t eat anything, stares blankly ahead – I guess that’s the way he deals with stress. Buzz had 16 cups of coffee – I counted them – and about thirty eggs. “For luck.”
Fun fact: your car insurance may cover you if you’ve got a rental, but generally not if you leave the United States.
7/16/69, 13:00:00 GMT
Ignition of the main engines, then 17 long seconds later, liftoff as the Saturn V slowly moves past the tower. The first stage burns for three minutes, total, and then stage two kicks in after a brief lull, and burns for nearly six minutes. Two minutes later, we’re in orbit. All of this is exactly as planned, exactly as written down in the procedures. Eleven minutes for Apollo 11 to enter orbit. That’s got to be a good omen.
For the first time in the mission, we’ve got some time to kill. I can’t stop smiling. Collins continues to stare directly ahead. “Mike, are you doing okay?”
He slowly turned his head towards me: “All of my systems are operating at nominal levels.” He then turned his head back towards the controls.
Does he blink? I’m interrupted by groaning coming from Buzz.
“Oh, man, I’m hurting. I didn’t think about the pressure differential.” He’s holding his stomach.
The pressure inside the Apollo Command Module, Columbia, is only 5psi, or the pressure at the top of Mount Everest. At sea level on Earth, the pressure is 15psi, or three times as much. We don’t pass out, because the atmosphere is 100% oxygen.
Apparently the food that Buzz ate is causing him discomfort. A minute later, Buzz sighs.
It smells horrible. I said, “Oh, Buzz, how could you?” My eyes are watering. Eggs and beans. The smell is nearly incapacitating.
Even Collins jumped in, “My nasal sensors detect a significant increase in organic gasses in the atmosphere.”
Collins was rechargeable, thankfully.
Mission Control: “Apollo, are you alright up there? We have just monitored a significant increase in methane in the cabin? If this keeps up, your atmosphere will become explosive. Do you have a situation?”
Buzz sighs again.
7/16/69, 16:16:16 GMT
Translunar injection burn started – that’s the boost that gets us to the Moon. Six minutes later, we’re on the way. Thankfully Buzz’s extravehicular emissions end about an hour later and the atmospheric scrubbers manage to keep the atmosphere safe until Buzz is finished.
7/16/69, 16:56:03 GMT
While we’re on the way, it’s time to dock with the Lunar Module. It’s in that last stage that boosted us to the Moon. Buzz then gets an idea.
“Hey, let’s change the name of the Lunar Module from Eagle to something else. How about we name it something funny, like Soviets Suck?”
I’m against this. “Buzz . . . we can’t do that. NASA already has the t-shirts printed.”
Buzz continues, “Okay, let’s vote on it. All in favor?” Only Buzz raised his hand.
Collins added, still staring straight ahead: “This violates mission parameters.”
The long distance rates shut that particular business down.
We can hear his side of the conversation: “What are you going to do, send NASA police up here and put me in NASA jail? Ha!”
It’s about this point that Buzz starts to try to read over my shoulder as I write in this journal. He pretends he’s not looking when I catch him.
7/19/69, 17:27:47 GMT
Lunar orbit. We’ll spend about a day here while we get ready to go down to the Moon. I’m starting to get a little irritated with Aldrin. First, there’s the humming. He won’t stop humming the theme to the Wild, Wild West®. Then, there’s his ear hair. Doesn’t he know that it’s there? It’s this one, long, 2 inch hair coming out of his ear.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I swear I hear a faint whirring, as if from small electric motors and gears from Collins during sleep period. Maybe it’s the space ship. I hope it’s the space ship.
7/20/69, 17:44:00 GMT
Lunar Module undocked. When we said goodbye to Collins, Buzz made a joke, “Hey, don’t go out joyriding while we’re gone!” Collins said, “No. I will be in rest mode while you are gone to conserve supplies.” Come to think of it, I haven’t seen Michael eat during the trip so far.
7/20/69, 20:17:39 GMT
The Soviets Suck Eagle has landed! This is the first gravity we’ve had in days. Aldrin immediately takes the opportunity to, umm, do things that are easier in gravity. The Lunar Module doesn’t have a vent fan, but we will dump the atmosphere when it’s time for our EVA. Which can’t come soon enough.
7/21/69, 02:56:15 GMT
First step on the Moon! On one hand, it’s pretty exciting. On the other, the responsibility is pretty big. Buzz follows behind me after about twenty minutes. He’s sulking – we rock-paper-scissored for the chance to go first, and he lost. He always, and I mean always throws rock. Speaking of which, it’s time to collect a few.
Heck, we can’t even do it since we’ve started using the metric system a little.
7/21/69, 05:11:13 GMT
The walk on the Moon is complete. We’re supposed to sleep, but we’re on the Moon. Buzz tries to tell spooky stories, but I’ve heard the one about the hook on the spaceship door before. He tries to make it scarier by thumping on the wall of the Soviets Suck Eagle. I remind him that even though the wall is supposed to be tougher than a steel beer can, we left the duct tape on Columbia.
Thankfully we were AAA members.
We’re supposed to sleep. Aldrin is laying down on the floor, and I’m propped up on the ascent engine cover. Not really sleeping, neither is Buzz. Finally Buzz stops humming the Wild Wild West® theme, only to start humming “In the Year 2525.” This is not much better.
This was the number one song as Apollo 11 lifted off. Even the Moon wasn’t far enough away to escape it.
“Neil, we need women astronauts.”
“Why, Buzz?”
“Those sandwiches aren’t going to make themselves.”
He’s not done.
“The next time I dump a girl, I know what I’m gonna say.”
“What, Buzz?”
“I need more space.”
Neither of us sleep at all that night, though I do come to the conclusion that there is no jurisdiction that I could be convicted in if I were to kill Buzz.
Yeah, I know. I’m mad, too.
7/21/69, 17:54:00 GMT
Liftoff from the Moon! Heading home.
“No, you’re upside down.”
7/21/69, 21:35:00 GMT
We’ve docked with the Columbia. As we open the hatch we see that Michael Collins is in the same exact position that he was when we left. It was as if he’d never moved.
“Welcome back, fellow humans. Was your excursion enjoyable?”
Buzz responded, “It was like any spacewalk, Collins. No pressure. Get it? No pressure!”
Collins stared blankly and then said, “I am not programmed to respond in that area.”
Getting back into the Columbia was pretty rough. It smelled like swamp and wet dog, and that was after Buzz had already been gone a day. Ugh. Why did Aldrin choose so many space tacos and burritos for dinner?
7/22/69, 04:55:42 GMT
We fire our engine to return to Earth. Two and a half days to home. Did Aldrin really order refried beans with every meal?
If I my rice is too dry, do I put it in a bag of cellphones?
7/24/69, 16:50:35 GMT
Splashdown. I never thought that smelling air would be so wonderful. I couldn’t wait to open the hatch to the Columbia. A deep breath with 100% less Aldrin.
7/24/69, 19:58:00 GMT
In quarantine – Collins, Aldrin and I are stuck here so we don’t start an epidemic of space pox. I can certainly understand why we would want to quarantine aliens so they didn’t bring in epidemics of disease.
There was a two-drink minimum.
8/10/69, 20:00:00 GMT
Release from quarantine. I’m outta here. Maybe I shouldn’t share this journal, after all. Perhaps it’s best if history remembers the official story . . . .
100% heroes.
Okay, yes, this was parody, or at least that’s what my law firm, Dewy, Cheatum and Howe suggests I say. Outside of my supposition that Michael Collins is really a robot, none of this is true. The Apollo astronauts represented the best of us in our nation at the time, men able to go into space, yet with enough humility to understand that their achievement was made possible by 400,000 other Americans working together to design everything from their underwear to the F-1 engines of the Saturn V to the food that they’d eat during the three weeks they spent in quarantine after returning to Earth.
An aside, they really did have problems with bad smells and space gas. NASA even calculated to see if the gas would build up enough methane to cause the ship to explode.
“Wait a minute. Connie Swail? Don’t you mean The Virgin Connie Swail?” – Dragnet (1987)
I slept with a rich girl who was a bit of a tramp once. Got lobsters.
I’ve had several posts about how sex and economics are intertwined more tightly than a bachelor weekend at Bill Clinton’s place. It is one of the more misunderstood parts of what is slowly destroying the family in the West. This, in turn, will gradually destroy the economics of the West. Without the culture of the West, the West effectively disappears.
This post will be pretty heavy on pictures and memes, almost all of which are as-found.
Let’s take a step back to 1776. I would love to do that in reality, and (in future posts) we’ll look to see how close we are to that. But back to the people that were there the first time. They were, mostly, pretty young. Sure, there were old dogs like Ben Franklin, but Jefferson was only 33. Madison, who would steer the Constitution to completion just over a decade later, was only 25.
Man, John Marshall must have had a hard 20 years on him.
Men were young (even though, yes, the paintings above weren’t done in 1776), yet doing amazing and important things. George Washington was 57 years old at his inauguration, which is astonishing since our likely presidential candidates in 2024 will be a combined 741 years old.
Back then, most men could find a woman and get married, sometimes once or twice (when wife 1.0 died in childbirth). This led to a certain stability, combined with the family economic structure. In this case, most families were Corporate Families – everybody worked, and everybody pitched in to keep things going. The reason that schools had spring breaks wasn’t to go to drink tequila in Cancun and go “woo” but to help plant. Summers were off to work the farm. And fall breaks were necessary for the harvest.
Kids were small farm implements, which is why families had lots of them. Divorces: uncommon. Religion: common.
Sadly, not a bikini graph.
In my lifetime, the Wilder Family has generally always existed in the tan area, including great-grandparents with a male breadwinner, though Great-grandpa and great-grandma McWilder ran an inn near a railroad where they only rarely killed and ate unsuspecting guests.
The golden age of the Male Breadwinner model was between 1900 and somewhere between 1960 and 1970. I’d note that around 1920 when women got the right to vote that the decline in Male Bread started, though it really began in earnest at the Great Depression.
At least Canada knows the score.
During World War II, there was a need for female labor as many men were given multi-year European and Pacific Island vacations. When the war was over, the decline continued at the same pace as the dual income model became the norm.
Until feminism and Leftism infected society at large leading to the steepest decline in stable family economic structures. This predated the economic decline of the United States, which I date to 1970-1973. Gee, I wonder if they could be related?
Now, Dual-Earner is the predominant economic model, with Female Breadwinner starting to make itself known.
New York Times Headline, 2025: Fathers’ Day: Women and Minorities Most Impacted.
Are there any economic or societal consequences to this change in the economic composition of the family? Why, yes. It’s killing society. It’s killing the kids.
The kids even have a name for it: No Girlfriend, No Work. There are other names, such as No Heir, No Work. It seems that young men have become utterly uninvested in society because they don’t have a girlfriend, nor the prospects of one. Things like Tinder® haven’t helped. As noted below, one young man was on Tinder® 3 and a half years. Nearly 40,000 swipes. 2 matches. Zero dates.
What? What’s going on?
In their youth, women are all fighting over the smallest number of men, the 9’s and 10’s. Since on a slow night, a 9 man will hook up with a 5, the 5 now thinks she’s worthy of at least a 9. Consider a 5 man?
No way.
This is not unique. This is not cultural. This is built into the innate preference of women to date up for offspring, and men to create as many offspring as they can. Here’s an example out of China (LINK) where an (American) teacher gave varying treats to a mixed class of boys and girls. On the first day, the girls got to pick first, and picked the best treats. The girls shared only with the two most popular boys, ignoring all of the rest. On the second day, the boys got to pick first, randomly. The treats were randomly distributed among the boys, so the girls interacted with all of the boys and everyone was happier.
When women pick, the distribution is (at least) skewed like the graph below, if not more skewed.
Most 22-year-old girls can have an 8+, if it’s 2am and the 8+ is drunk enough.
What are the results? Virginity in boys (not girls) is rising. Dating is going down among people who should definitely be dating.
As difficult as that is for guys, women use it as a golden ticket (again, in their early 20s) for fun and prizes:
But when these same women hit their thirties, the game is over. The 9s and 10s are either married to 9s and 10s, or they’re dating 22-year-olds. Just ask Leonardo DiCaprio.
Leo’s max age for dating is 25. And he’ll get 25-year-old 9s and 10s until he’s 75. Look at Al Pacino, who can barely walk:
I’m sure they’re super compatible, since she was born when he was only 53.
The woman who was in dozens if not hundreds of relationships in her 20s with the hottest of men will only settle in her mid to late thirties with a man who meets her qualifications. Those men who would have met those qualifications, being fit, making great money?
They’re married. They have kids, and that 5 (or less than 5) would rather be a drunken wine aunt then settle. Women use youth, beauty, and relative chastity to capture worthy men. If those are wasted on huge numbers of Chads? Off to the wine and cat farm with an empty womb. And the military will fight for that “right”, too.
I’m old enough to remember when the military was supposed to kill foreign enemies, not American babies.
Just like most things, this has a very, very simple solution. To be clear, the solution will be implemented when the circumstances require it. Oddly, the women will be happier, too. And we can finally stop listening to women complain about body shaming.
