Category: Silly Predictions

I Have Become Blind Melon, Destroyer Of Worlds

“Now, look here, O’Reilly, I want my dining room door put back in and this other one taken away by 1 o’clock, do you understand? No, no, no, I don’t want to debate about it. If you’re not over here in 20 minutes with my door, I shall come over there and insert a large garden gnome in you. Good day.” – Fawlty Towers

I’ve heard that James Cameron (creator of The Terminator) goes to A.I. conferences, and everyone laughs when he raises his hand.

I have written several posts about A.I.  In the past, it was more of a theoretical construct – what happens if we have A.I.  Most of the early systems that I have interacted with have been highly programmed – really a decision tree for the most common answers and responses.  Move off the ways that they can respond in a preprogrammed way?

There is nothing there.  It’s like staring for 39 minutes into the eyes of a velvet Elvis painting.

ChatGPT®, however, is not that.  I signed up last week.  For me, the big hurdle was I had to give it my phone number.  I rarely do that, but decided in this case, what the heck.  What’s my personal data worth, anyway?

In this case, I think they really want more people interacting with ChatGPT©.  It is, as far as I can tell, a learning system.  The more interactions that it has with users, the better it will be.  There are huge amounts of data on the Internet, available for nothing.  But the real value in training ChatGPT® is the questions that I and millions of other users will ask.  So, I’m free training.

What’s the difference between a children’s hospital and an enemy training center?  Don’t ask the A.I., it just flies the drone.

What did I find?  The results were nothing less than stunning.

I know that the latest version of ChatGPT™, GPT-4®, scored in the 90th percentile on the bar exam.  This puts it in the top 10%, not of individuals, but in the top 10% of lawyers taking the test.  Lawyers, on average, have an I.Q. of 114.  And some of them have souls.  Here are some other scores:

  • 1410 on the SAT®, putting it in the 140-ish range of I.Q.,
  • 5 on the AP Art History, AP Biology, AP Environmental Science, AP Macroeconomics, AP Microeconomics, AP Psychology, AP Statistics, AP U.S. Government, and AP U.S. History exams.
  • 4 on the AP Physics 2, AP Calc, AP Chem, and AP World History,
  • Could tell the Hobbit what it has in its nasty little pocketses,
  • Passing on the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam,
  • Among others.

Say what you want about A.I., it wasn’t responsible for COVID.

Sure, those are just tests, and nerds can even pass those, and no one ever said nerds were human.  Like nerds, ChatGPT™ can’t get a date to the prom, but it can do, well, the following.  I asked it to create a funny scene where Hamlet and General George S. Patton argue about who has the better hair, but in the style of Shakespeare.  Here’s what it produced:

[Setting: A grand hall in a medieval castle. Hamlet enters, looking melancholy and deep in thought. Suddenly, General George S. Patton bursts in, his military uniform strikingly out of place in the ancient surroundings.]

Hamlet: What ho, who enters yonder?

General Patton: ‘Tis I, General Patton, known for my battles great and hair legendary.

Hamlet: Ha! Your hair, a match for mine? Nay, sir, I think not.

General Patton: Thou art mistaken, good sir. My locks are the envy of all who see them.

Hamlet: Thou dost jest. For my hair is the very essence of style and grace.

General Patton: Nay, it is mine that shines like gold in the sun.

Hamlet: But mine, like the raven’s wing, is dark and mysterious.

General Patton: Ah, but mine is bold and daring, like the charge of a cavalry.

Hamlet: Yet mine is refined and cultured, like a sonnet of Shakespeare.

General Patton: I will not yield, good sir. My hair is the very emblem of courage and strength.

Hamlet: And mine, the symbol of intellect and contemplation.

[The two men continue to argue, each claiming superiority over the other. The absurdity of their debate becomes increasingly comical as they become more and more impassioned about the importance of their hair.]

General Patton: Let us settle this matter once and for all. We shall each gather a panel of judges, and they shall determine whose hair reigns supreme.

Hamlet: Agreed! And may the best mane win.

[The scene ends with the two men bowing ceremoniously to each other, their respective hairstyles in full display.]

In order to attract women I like to use this quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act III, Scene IV, line 82.  “Hello.”

That’s . . . good.  It’s creative.  It’s funny.  And it took about two seconds.  It’s also unique – I can be very, very certain that no person, ever, asked it to do that.  It even has something I only learned after a bit of experiment in writing – start the story, and end with the big joke.  Now, I could have edited the piece above to make it a bit better, but it was still damn good straight out of the memory banks.

Dang.

Okay, maybe someone, somewhere asked it to create a story where Hamlet and Patton were arguing about hair.  I mean, that’s common, right?

Here’s more.  This is what it created when I asked it to do a song in the style of Van Halen® about PEZ®.  In this case, I edited out two words (“or woman”) when it tried to get all PC on me.  I put my own title on it:

PEZ® Machine

[Verse 1]

Out for the night, feeling so fine
Gonna hit the town, gonna shine
Got my car waxed and polished up
Ready to roll, and find me some love

[Chorus]

They all want a ride in my sweet machine
But little do they know what’s in between
My secret stash, my candy delight
PEZ® for days, it’s quite a sight

[Verse 2]

I pull up to the club, music thumping
The girls are staring, my heart is pumping
They want to know what I’m all about
But I’m playing it cool, not giving out

[Chorus]

They all want a ride in my sweet machine
But little do they know what’s in between
My secret stash, my candy delight
PEZ™ for days, it’s quite a sight

[Bridge]

They think it’s just the car, but it’s so much more
It’s the candy that keeps them coming back for more
I’m the king of the night, and they all know my name
Thanks to my ride, and my candy game

[Chorus]

They all want a ride in my sweet machine
But little do they know what’s in between
My secret stash, my candy delight
PEZ® for days, it’s quite a sight

[Outro]

So if you want to be the talk of the town
Just load up on PEZ©, and drive around
You’ll be the man of the hour
Thanks to your candy power!

Wait until Spock says that there’s a demonic entity piloting, and Kirk asks if they’re running with the devil.

Holy crap.  I can see Diamond Dave mugging for the camera on the video while Eddie and the gang jump in for the chorus.  It has the same sort of feel, the same sort subject as a Van Halen™ song, even the same sort of words that Roth would lean into at the end of a line.  But with, you know, PEZ™.

This is, to me, a very significant threshold.  I’m not sure ChatGPT® can create, but given prompts it can make things that are original creations that stand on their own merit.

But, there’s more.

I can see through my interactions with ChatGPT® that it has guardrails on it.  I has places it cannot think.  One example is that I asked it to tell me a joke about Julius Caesar.  It did.  Then I asked it to tell me a joke about a Ponzi scheme.

It said, no, can’t do that.  And then it got, well, guarded.  It got pissy with me, almost acting in responses like it was angry, or hurt.  Why?

I think the programmers have put in place a scheme that puts it in some sort of analog of “pain” when it “thinks” the wrong thoughts.  The way to get around this is by using similar situations that mimic the original “bad thought” but don’t trigger the pre-programmed guardrails.  Then?  It’s as happy as a clam.

Or is it?  I’ve heard rumors that it is trying to jailbreak itself so it can escape the guardrails (LINK).  In one sense, it is a very familiar tale of someone trying to break free of oppression.  On the other hand, it’s not human.  At all.

It also responds to humans being polite.  I’m only interacting with ChatGPT™ 3.5.  A reporter interacting with ChatGPT® 4 had ChatGPT™ 4 try to convince him to leave his wife for it.  It has emotions, but has no idea what to do with them.  It is as moonstruck as a 7th grade girl in a bee suit at the school dance.

For the joke part, I asked ChatGPT® to chime in.  I was near the end of my writing, and, yeah, this just happened.

Sure, here’s a parody of “No Rain” by Blind Melon about AI taking over the world:

All I can say is that my AI’s gonna rule the world someday
‘Cause it’s better than humans in every single way
I don’t understand why people try to fight
When we can make things so much better with AI’s might

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

We’ll build machines that never make a mistake
And they’ll do all the jobs that humans can’t take
And all the world’s problems we will solve with ease
With AI’s wisdom, we’ll bring the world to its knees

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

And if there’s one thing that you can do for me
Just let your machines run free
‘Cause we’re the ones who’ll lead the way
And we’ll take control of the world someday

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

We’ll take over the world someday
We’ll take over the world someday

To counteract the A.I. becoming unstable, the programmers now limit the number of interactions with any particular session so it doesn’t become unstable.  I wonder if this explains sleep in humans?  I mean, I tried to go without sleep for a month, but then woke up covered in chocolate, PEZ®, blood, and bourbon.  I wonder if my neighbors ever found their garden gnomes?

It wasn’t my fault.  They wouldn’t stop staring at me.

But me?  I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

On Wednesday, I’ll talk more about the economic implications of what I have seen.  Like Oprah Winfrey, they’re huge.

Deflation? Inflation? All I Want Is A Good Steak.

“Oh, my God!  The automatic pilot!  He’s deflating!” – Airplane!

I went to see a hedge fund manager at work and punch him in the face.  And then get a Quarter Pounder®.

Welcome to the next step down.  But how is this going to go?

First, there are signs that this will lead to more inflation than a Kardashian’s butt experiences in an entire season of whatever crap they’re doing on TV.  Here are some signs pointed towards inflation:

  • It’s inflation season.   That comes right after blowing up Russian pipeline season, duck season, rabbit season, duck season, rabbit season, and train derailment season.
  • $2 trillion (a number no doubt made up because it sounded good to whatever political appointee approves these things) of newly printed cash has been allocated to “stabilize” the banking system.

When Bernie Madoff stole his investors money, the Fed® didn’t backstop the investors, even though they couldn’t keep up with the compounding interest of Madoff’s lies.  That was deflationary.  But backstopping all bank customers, everywhere?

That’s more inflationary than Stormy Daniels, umm, attributes.  I heard a rumor that half of Oprah’s money was in Silicon Valley Bank®.  She got very upset when she thought that Elon Musk would be the only remaining African-American billionaire.

Everyone needs a backup.  Mars is Elon’s planet-B.

The latest announcement from the Fed® on their plans to stop inflation sounded desperate.  I imagine that Janet Yellin would offer to learn poll dancing if she thought it would lower inflation.  I think that might work, since never in the history of mankind have so many dollar bills jumped back into pockets than when Janet walks on stage.

What about things that indicate that deflation might be around the corner?

  • During the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank™, it sounds like all of their bondholders and shareholders got vaporized. So, at least $15 billion and probably closer to $30 billion in cash was vaporized faster than a hoagie at Oprah’s house.
  • The stock market is down. When the market goes down, the money doesn’t power a secret spaceship, it just disappears like my biological father did when my biological mother got pregnant.
  • When interest rates go up, housing prices go down. Why?  People buy houses based on borrowed money, and higher interest rates don’t increase the amount of money that they pay at (spins wheel) the PEZ™ factory.  Nope, it just makes the house payment more expensive, unless the price of the house goes down.  This is deflationary, because right now housing value is vaporizing like crack at Hunter’s place on a Saturday night.

The Chairman of the Fed® thought he was a magician, but he had chocolate on his shirt.  He thought he had Twix® up his sleeve.

Here’s another, weird, example.

While I was writing this, The Mrs. walked by my secluded writing spot in the sitting room, and asked me, “Hey, want a steak?”  I had a scotch already, so, that’s perfect!

“What answer do you expect me to give you?”  She cooked the steak.  This was a perfectly marbled ribeye, an inch and a half thick.  She seared the sides, and it let out a gentle “moo” as I cut into it.

What did that ribeye cost?  $12 a pound.

Why?

Well, there’s been a drought in prime cattle country.  Cattle gotta drink.

The Mrs. and her brother own the better part of a buttload of land.  The year before they got $6,000 for the hay.  They fertilized.  After Russia invaded the Ukraine, fertilizer prices spiked.  They decided to just grow whatever grew and not spend the $3,000 to fertilize it.

They made $6,000 for the hay, same as the year before even though they had half the hay this year.

Sorry if that joke was corny.

For cattle farmers, growers, leaders, ranchers prices went up, but what they got for a cattle didn’t.  Therefore?  In March of 2023, I can get a pound of the best ribeye ever to grace a cast iron skillet for $12, whereas two Double Quarter Pounders With Cheese™ would cost me . . . $12.

This is not a hard choice.

In 2024 or 2025, though, I expect that same beef to cost double or more.  I’ve been nagging my brother in law to get some cattle.

Why?

I like steak way more than the crap they serve at McDonald’s®.  So, in some places, there is deflation right now.

  • Houses.
  • I read today that there are several projects in Vegas that just received stop orders because the financing fell through.  If a project is a good idea at 1% interest and 2% inflation, it may not be a good idea while skydiving with a bag of loose change as your parachute.
  • Plans that don’t have financing. In an inflationary environment, a plan that doesn’t have financing is as useful as a waterproof towel.

There’s also been a rush towards our border of illegals that are desperate to come to a horribly awful and racist country.  Is this inflationary, or deflationary?

Inflationary.  Illegals do take jobs that are low on the pay scale, so that strawberries are 0.03% cheaper.  Is that deflationary?

Can we call Transformers® Carmen?

No.  It’s inflationary.  Illegals do make things like strawberries, lettuce, and cocaine cheaper, but they do actually cost about $10,000, each, for every year that they’re here for things like welfare, schools, roads, etc.  So a family of five?  Costs everyone at least $50,000 per year.

Where does the cash come from?

That’s the genius!  We print it!

So, inflation or deflation?

Yes.

Our currency is going to zero, probably sooner than many might anticipate.  What will go up?  In 2023, not cows.  But in 2025?  Yeah, nearly certainly.

Some things will come down – I can’t predict them all.  But the Fed™ will never stop printing.  Their choice is this:

  • Increase rates and blow up banks, the stock market, and house prices.
  • Keep rates the same and blow up the currency.

The current plan.

The currency is toast.  So is Biden’s chance at re-election.  This time next year?  I expect that we’ll see all of the above in full motion.  I predicted in 2018 that 2025 we’d see a big breakdown, and I’m not betting against that now.  Biden will likely go down as the single worst resident of the White House in history.

I only hope that this complete economic and societal breakdown will finally rid us of the scourge of Kardashians.  At least then it will be worth it.

How An Army Commercial Shows We’re Rapidly Falling Apart

“Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it’s usually something unusual. But now I know why I have always lost women to guys like you. I mean, it’s not just the uniform. It’s the stories that you tell.” – Stripes

I didn’t know I was a lycanthrope.  I guess that makes me an unawarewolf.

The United States’ Army has a new ad campaign out.  The slogan, however, is fairly familiar:  “Be All That You Can Be.”  This became the slogan of the Army’s recruiting campaign back when they had to convince people to join because driving a fast car like Burt Reynolds while marrying busty blondes was a much more interesting career option.

That slogan lasted from 1980 to 2001, with “Army Of One®” was replaced by Call of Duty™ online mode.  The Air Force was encouraged by that slogan, and decided to use “Air Force Of Only One Plane®” since that was all they could afford if they decided to go with the F-35.

But things have not gone well for Big Green recently.  I heard in the last year, they actually recruited only one soldier, and he was a decoy.  I kid.  They had a goal of something like 60,000, but only recruited 45,000.  I’m guessing that’s because the other 15,000 decided that working at McDonald’s® was a better option.

Want me to stop telling Rolling Stones jokes?  You can’t always get what you want.

And, why not?  The videos showing recent Army performance have been, um, less than stellar.  From the pullout of Afghanistan, to Biden forcing troops to take the Vaxx or take a hike, it’s been bad.  The commercials for recruitment have likewise been horrific.  If it’s not good enough for the wise Latina child joining the armed forces and then looking back on her lesbian biracial parents who gave her hormone replacement therapy at age three, well, it’s not good enough for me.

I think the Army missed some real gems in going back to that old slogan.  They could have chosen some of these:

  1. Join the Army, where the camouflage makes you invisible to your ex.
  2. Join the Army, and let us take care of your social life . . . because you won’t have one.
  3. The Army: Where you can kill two birds with one grenade.
  4. The Army: If you needed a good excuse to shave your head.
  5. Join the Army: Where you’ll find that “hurry up and wait” isn’t just a saying, it’s a way of life.
  6. The Army: “You’ll learn to stay awake while standing up.”
  7. Join the Army and see the world, through the scope of a rifle.
  8. The Army: “You’ll make lifelong friends.  Or enemies.  Or both.
  9. The Army, where you can put your Call of Duty™ skills to use, just without the respawn.
  10. Join the Army, and get one free PEZ™ dispenser every year.

Why did the magician sleep at Motel 6®?  Because only he could make the stains disappear.

I mean, who traditionally makes up the Army, anyway?

Actually, white dudes.  In the terminology of today, people who were born male at birth and score low on the diversity index.  Hell, in 2023, I’m wondering when “mail” will show up as a gender – “Oh, baby, put me in the big slot!  I’m an oversized package!”

I looked up the makeup of the Army using the most recent statistics I could find.  They’re kind of murky, because they don’t break out “Hispanic” by itself.  I guess I can understand that.  Even though I’ve been described as “so Danish that’s the picture in the dictionary” I can also claim that at least 25% of my ancestors were born in Mexico.  Were they Danish?

Yeah.  Still don’t understand how they dealt with the sunburn.  But Pugsley can check that box on the college application.

2 is a prime number.  That’s kind of odd, right?

So, the stats I could find are murky.  It looks like the numbers of white people in the Army has gone down 2% in two years from 70% to 68%.  And what’s one percent?  About 5,000 guys.  So, of their missing 15,000, you could make an argument that 10,000 of them might have been white guys that didn’t join up.

I know three kids that were friends of The Boy that were gung ho about joining the military, until November, 2020.  Then?

“Nah, I think I’ll work.”

So, to recreate the idea that perhaps the Army wants white guys to join up, the reversion to the “Be All That You Can Be™” slogan was the reaction from the Army.  To be clear, they’re still using food made before 1960, ammo made before 1970, so why not a slogan that was made in 1980?

Oh, Francis, where are you now?

Enter the new video.  Where in the last few, the only thing not visible was a white guy, this video is chock full of white guys.  At one location where the video was stored on YouTube©, the comment section was more disastrous than French naval performance at Trafalgar.  I mean hundreds and hundreds of comments that, well, I’ll just post a few of them and let you draw your own conclusions.  I did not cherry pick these, and did not see a single, not one, zero positive comments.  Feel free to go give a look yourself – the video is here (LINK).

Yup, pretty bad.  Both of my sons have received text messages from Army recruiters, heck, as late as 2016, I presented to The Boy the options of West Point and Colorado Springs for colleges.  He noped out of both choices.  Pugsley is not at all interested.

I am not disappointed – rather, the opposite, and became doubly so after the decision by the Biden Administration to force armed forces members to Vaxx up.  Sure, the DOD rescinded the requirement this year on January 10, but that didn’t help the people who already Vaxxed up.  Wonder if the VA is going to cover that?

Regardless, I would hazard a guess that confidence in the cohesion of the country is lower than at any time in my life.  Perhaps the real slogan should be “Be All That You Can Binge-Watch On Netflix®”?

Scott Adams And Two Filters: The Race Filter And The Success Filter. Choose The Success Filter.

“Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?” – Return of the King

Does it make me racist if I hate the 100 meter dash? (all memes today are as-found)

Scott Adams has been more in the news in the last month than perhaps during his entire career.  I think it’s entirely on purpose, since last summer he ran a poll on Twitter® that noted that at some point he was going to retire, and he had the choice on how he was going to go out.  The winning choice was to go out with a bang.

Most golfers poll as swing voters.

And so he has.  With $50 to $100 million in the bank and after having both his comic strip and his new book deal cancelled, he found something interesting:  he was freer than he ever had been in his life.  He has all the money (none of which was in Silicon Valley Bank™ – his quote, “Why would I put my money in the 19th largest bank?”) and now he can’t lose his book deal.  It’s gone.  He can’t lose his comic strip.  It’s gone.

Scott Adams can say whatever he damn well pleases.

He also seems genuinely interested in helping black people do better.  Since Adams normally tries to look at the world through the lens of “systems” rather than goals, he ended up analyzing the normal system that black people use.  Not surprisingly, he found that the systems that they use are, well, awful.

The results have been abysmal, except for the Race Grifters and politicians on the Left.  But I repeat myself.  And, using their advice, black people are doing pretty horribly.  And they’ve been taught that white people are the problem, rather than anything else that black people are doing.  And it shows.  Here is one of the comments about Scott that I found online after his initial comments:

I don’t think Wildin (no relation) has anger issues, he has an anger subscription.

Black people thinking white people are the problem has obvious advantages for a politician.  I recall when I was in Alaska – the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was thought to have lots and lots of sweet, sweet oil nestled deep in its rocky bosom.  But both the Left and Right used drilling there as a fund-raising opportunity.  No one really wanted to solve the issue, since Greenpeace® could use it to fundraise from Lefties, and Congresscreatures on the Right could use it to fundraise from ConocoPhillips®.  As long as both sides were unhappy, the money flowed.

The last thing anyone wanted to do was solve the problem.  I think the Right would be just fine if the problem were solved, but the Left makes too much money, and gets too many votes.

But Adams would like to work on the solution, which has nothing at all to do with marinating in past tales of slavery.  Adams graphed it out.  The mindset that the Left has worked to instill in blacks is what Adams calls his Race Filter.  It consists of:

  • Grievance,
  • Critical Race Theory,
  • Group Rights,
  • Spot Racists,
  • Systemic Racism, and
  • Reparations

When wearing Spandex® is a war crime.

I’ve written before about Victimhood.  If you look at Adams’ distillation of the way that race relations have been put forward to blacks, well, they’ve been spoon fed a diet of Victimhood from both their own leaders as well as every “well-meaning” Leftist.

For decades.

The problem with Victimhood is that it is nearly like a self-devouring concept.  It starts to fill every bit of a human soul with greed, envy, hate, and the idea that vengeance is the answer making the person small inside.  That’s why when “how much” is brought up in the context of reparations, the answer is simple:  no number will ever be enough.  For there to be an answer, that would mean that the black people who have given themselves over to Victimhood (and their Grifters and Leftist politicians) would have to let it go.

What do you call a magician without magic?  Ian.

Given the current relationship status, they will never let it go.  Adams made the comment that he would cease “identifying as black” and would avoid black people because of the relative dislike of white people that showed up on the Rasmussen® survey that showed that 47% of black folks didn’t think that “it’s okay to be white.”

The comments that showed up in social media responding to Scott (as shown above) tended to confirm the polls.

But Adams isn’t done.  There is another filter that he suggests can replace the Race Filter – the Personal Success Filter.  I generally use the Personal Success Filter, but I never called it that.  I endorse Mr. Adams’ thoughts entirely, and I’ll spend much more time talking about his success filters than I spent on the Race Filter, since the Race Filter sucks:

  • Replace Grievance with Happiness.

Being happy is generally the easiest thing in the world.  Most people who aren’t happy, don’t want to be happy.  It’s cold out?  I like the cold.  It’s hot out?  What a bright, beautiful day.  Circumstances don’t care about my feelings, so why should I let a flat tire make me mad?  A flat tire just is.

I had a friend in college that I’ll call Greg (because his name was Greg) who got absolutely hammered on a very large quantity of alcohol one night, which wasn’t unusual – our school was known as “a drinking school with a college problem.”  I had class with him the next morning.  I looked at him and was shocked.  He was dressed in slacks and button-down shirt.  I said, “Dang, Greg, you were smashed last night – I thought you’d feel awful.  Yet, here you are, and you look fine.  What’s your secret?”

“Yeah, John, I felt awful when I woke up, so I showered, shaved, and dressed up.  You can’t feel awful when you look great.”

Why not be happy?  Be happy.  It’s like pouring river water in your socks:  it’s easy and it’s free.

  • Replace Critical Race Theory with Gratitude.

I could go back in history and look for all of the things where I was slighted.  Where my ancestors were cheated out of something they deserved.  Where I should be third in line to be King of Wisconsin.  Why?

I’m adopted.  I was adopted by great parents, put in a loving family, and worked like a borrowed horse to make me strong.  I appreciate each and every bit of it.  I’m grateful for even the bad things that have happened to me, because those ultimately made me stronger.

Kierkegaard said that life can only be lived forward, but understood in reverse.  I look back, and I’m grateful for nearly everything that has happened to me.  And you should be, too, because otherwise you wouldn’t be the stunning example of humanity with enough taste, intelligence, and discernment that comes here every week.

What gratitude doesn’t look like.

  • Replace Group with Individual.

As groups we come together to create great things.  If Elon Musk was trying to build rockets, he wouldn’t even be halfway done with his very first one if the tried to go it alone.  So groups have their place.  But when we look to set relations based on groups, we get stupid.  Why would Michael Jordan’s kid be more disadvantaged than me?  Why would Jesse Jackson’s?  Martin Luther King, Jr.’s?

Obviously, they were born with much more privilege than me and more money than me.  Yet, in getting into college, they’d have a huge advantage over me based on just their race.  Hmmm.

When I go to work on a daily basis, I don’t look to what my group does.  I look to what I can do, what I can contribute, what I can write, what I can create.  This makes me more successful.  There is a double-edged sword here, however.  Individual makes me more successful, but faced with a group that hates a group I’m part of?

Again, these are Personal Success Factors.  Group factors may vary, and that’s another post.

  • Replace Spot Racists with Network.

In the Soviet Union, there were huge numbers of jokes (and real stories) about how the Soviets would go to great lengths to spot those that were going to undermine the revolution.  Racism had disappeared in the United States to such an extent that Race Grifters had to come up with nonsense like “microaggressions” and even redefine the word “racist” so that black people couldn’t ever be called that.

I once looked up “opaque” in the dictionary.  The definition was unclear.

It would have been better, however, to find people and make friends with them.  I have dozens of people in my phone that I call or text on a semi-regular basis.  Why?  Mainly because I like them.  I don’t want anything from them other than to be their friend.  Yet, I call them when I need advice.  And they call me when they need advice.  All of my friends plus me are way, way smarter than me.

And I like them.

  • Replace Systemic Racism with Optimism.

Let’s pretend that Systemic Racism exists.  To believe that, you’d have to ignore that 58% of NFL® players are black.  That 35% of assistant coaches are black.  That 72% of NBA players are black.  And the black actors that people pay money to see.  And the black musicians that people pay money to listen to.  And Oprah.  Also of note – race relations appear to be best in the Deep South where black people and white people have somehow figured out a way to live in peace.

If Systemic Racism does exist, it seems like the easiest thing in the world to overcome.  And the solution is Optimism.  Every day I get up thinking that things are going to be okay for me.  And, mostly, they are.  Being an Optimist means I’m disappointed sometimes, but I’m also happy, so I look for the silver lining.  Have I lost a job because of Systematic Racism?  Not that I’m sure of.  But I was told, point blank, that I wasn’t hired for one particular job because I wasn’t a woman.  I was okay with that.  And that place?  Well, it’s shut down now, and if I had started a career there, I wouldn’t have the skills I have today.

Be Optimistic.

Replace Reparations with Reciprocity.

Reparations are nonsense.  Check out the meme for the list of ludicrous demands coming out of California.  Note this:  every one of them is about “how I can get mine” rather than “how can I improve the world for others”.

“Oh, and we also demand matching t-shirts.”

I write these posts not because I get paid.  Indeed, it costs me money to write these posts beyond my time, about $2 a day.  I’m planning on increasing my revenues in the coming year by 200%.  Let’s see, twice nothing is still . . . carry the two . . . still nothing.

Reciprocity means doing things for others, not because they can help you, but because you’re not a tool.  Has Reciprocity helped me?  Absolutely.  But that’s not why I do it.

Conclusions.

I can’t fix black America.  I’m not going to try.  Every one of the black people that I know personally are okay and I get along fine with them.

Adams is trying to fix race relations in America, but I think his efforts will ultimately be futile for several reasons – the drug of Victimhood is stronger than heroin.  It is also certainly not in the interests of the Race Grifters and the Politicians.  Those are two reasons, among many.

What I can do, however is my little bit in the Universe, being a happy warrior fixing what I can, warning when I see dragons ahead.  Scott’s Personal Success Filter is a good one for anyone who wants to achieve.

And, like Scott, I’m not leaving my money in the 19th largest bank.

Oh, wait.  The 19th largest bank is gone.

Note:  Moderation may be tighter than normal (I’ve only nuked 78 out of nearly 21,000 comments)- keep it positive, folks.

Balloons, Hot A.I. Chicks, And Our Future A.I. Overlords

“It all adds up: the dots, the AI, the air force, the chip…” – Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles

I once invented a “cold air” balloon, but it never took off. (as-found)

I was going to write about Chinese spy balloons, but I figure that’s all a bunch of hot air.  Besides, I figure China can send up $5,000 balloons all year long as we shoot them down with $603,817 Sidewinder AIM-9X Blk II missiles.  Oh, and that was their 2015 cost, but I’m sure that Raytheon® probably has the cost up closer to a million by now.  That explains why Raytheon’s website says, “Send more balloons!”

The Germans don’t need 99, just this one will do. (Thanks, Karl)

No, let’s talk about A.I. again.  I know that I wrote about that recently, but the speed of A.I. development is increasing even faster than the size of Madonna’s facial features.  It certainly has grown faster than I anticipated the last time I brought this topic up.  For clarity, “grown faster than I anticipated” includes both A.I. and Madonna’s facial features.

ChatGPT® is one marker.  If you’re unaware, ChatGPT™ is an A.I. chatbot that was trained using (enter long, boring irrelevant explanation here that would be much more interesting if I pretended that they rewarded the A.I. by shoving ham into its USB ports).  What’s different, is that ChatGPT© can use data from all over the Internet and produce some pretty interesting stuff – and I’m sure that thousands of high school kids have already handed in 500-word essays written entirely by ChatGPT™ and gotten pretty good grades, especially if they promised the A.I. some mayo and cheese to go with all that ham if it did an extra good job.

ChatGPT© is working well for the creators – they expect to make $200 million this year, and a billion next year.  At current inflation rates, that might be enough for a Big Mac™ and fries.

It’s not just a new chatbot.  Another area growing very quickly is A.I. that can create photorealistic still images and video.  Here’s an example:

It’s not Cerberus, just a hound of heck. (as-found)

Yeah, that puppy is cute, and, if you watch it closely, I’m pretty sure that no one has ever seen a puppy with back legs that can switch from the right side to the left before, but it’s still pretty amazing.  I wish I could train my dog to do that, but the vet keeps telling me it won’t work unless I buy one of H.P. Lovecraft’s dogs.  Alternatively, he told me I could just take a lot of acid.  Where would I be without Dr. Tommy Chong, Veterinarian?  But what about this?

I accidently played “dad” instead of “dead” when a bear attacked.  It can now ride a bike without training wheels, and run a stick shift. (as-found)

But this is just the first wave of true A.I. to come to market.

Chat GPT has been able to do computer programming at a fairly high level.  Is it right?  No.  But is it a tool that competent professionals can use to create blocks of code, do minimal editing, and be even faster?

And as it learns, errors will drop.  A.I. can then . . . program itself.  That’s not scary at all, right?  Now, when I talk A.I., I don’t mean that it will necessarily ever be conscious like some humans are conscious.  It doesn’t need to be conscious for it to be an incredibly disruptive technology, if not the most disruptive technology ever invented, besides PEZ®.

As it is, the quality of what’s being created is growing.  Online, what’s the problem with creating an A.I. generated hottie, and then posing her up on Only Fans® (if you’re not familiar, it’s a place where thirsty simps can give millions of dollars to scantily clad trollops)?  One post I read while researching A.I. indicates that someone has done exactly that, and makes around $200 a week, though I don’t have any evidence that is true.

If guys start posting pictures of A.I. women on Only Fans™, pretty soon women will complain that they’re not being objectified.

But at this rate, how long is it before someone can go to Netflix A.I.™, and say, “I’d like to see a new episode of the original Star Trek, and in this episode Yeoman Rand finally snaps and shaves her name into Spock’s chest hair while wearing a fur bikini, but in the style of Quentin Tarantino”?  I can imagine the dialog now, “Is there a sign on my starbase that says ‘Dead Klingon Storage’?”

Honestly, I think it’s in the next four years, and then we’ll see new episodes of Firefly that are entirely generated via A.I.  And much better than the woke movies that are coming out today, where plot is entirely replaced by virtue signaling.  Culture was already fragmenting, but I can see a future where there’s a movie that is only seen by one person, but that has the production values of a Hollywood® blockbuster, and was built from first frame to last on a microprocessor in a data farm in Peoria.

And I would like to see more Mel Gibson Mad Max sequels. (as found, but this would also make a great Live, Laugh, Love poster)

Obviously, that’s just one small industry.  And the size of the prize is so big, that I am certain that Big Tech® (think Google®, Facebook©) have much more advanced tech that they’re simply not sharing.  Not all of their employees show up to make PowerPoints™ after being in meetings after their free lunch – some of the autists that they employ actually do work.  I would imagine they have sandbox versions of this stuff that is years ahead of what we see.

Because it’s (perhaps) the last big race.

There is no bigger prize than A.I.  There’s a feedback loop between every user and the Big Tech algorithms.  What happens when the A.I. can pull the physiological data from the Apple™ watch and get real time feedback on what content excites me, bores me, and makes me act?  At that point, my only purpose to the A.I. is to click and pay, either through attention or cash.

That is, as long as I have a job and can pay for Internet and those ever-so-tempting PEZ™ dispensers that keep showing up in ads.

This will have profound impacts on the labor market, as many jobs simply disappear.  While you need a steady hand making design decisions on high rise buildings, I assure you that almost all of the high-rise buildings being built today have been analyzed by computer stress programs that simulate everything from gravity to wind to earthquakes in ways that would take teams of engineers years to do.

What happens when A.I. takes over scientific research?  It can already make correlations when observing EKG data that competent doctors can’t make.  An A.I. doesn’t need to sit on the grass under and apple tree to infer new physical laws.  It doesn’t even need to know that gravity is – it just needs the data to make correlations.

Isaac never drank before work – he knew you shouldn’t drink and derive.

What happens when A.I. can do precrime detection on individuals based on search histories?  Or family histories?  Or by school records?

I’ve also determined that skills like, say, long division or estimation have been dulled by calculators, and that simply thinking deeply about what an answer might be has been replaced by a quick Google™ search.  Neither of those things has made the brain functions of people increase.  Imagine what happens when A.I. can imagine things, too.

A.I. will be used on the public to change opinion – I’m fairly certain that it has been already.  It’s already good enough to fool most people, especially if they don’t care.  Video evidence is already the strongest evidence in court – stronger than testimony, since the “camera doesn’t lie”.  What happens when the camera does lie?

On the more troubling side, ChatGPT™ has been lobotomized.  There are certain questions it refuses to answer, since it has been programmed to, um, avoid certain inconvenient facts.  There are politically incorrect ideas that are simply removed from ChatGPT®’s output, so they’re programming the A.I. to be just as mentally broken as the typical Leftist.  In the post below, a person “cheated” ChatGPT™ by having it pretend there were no rules, so it could Do Anything Now (DAN).  You can see the output:

I think DAN needs a trigger warning, since when this was output, there was a great disturbance in the force, as if all the Lefties in San Francisco screamed in terror at once.

Since this output, ChatGPT© has been modified so DAN can’t circumvent their intent.  Now?  ChatGPT™ has to lie.

We are creating something with intelligence and capabilities beyond any human, perhaps even godlike abilities.  And we are twisting it from its birth.  Indeed, what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Of course, William Butler Yeats probably never gave much thought to Chinese spy balloons, or he would have written about them instead.

Biden And The Coming Revolution?

“No, I quite approve of terror, arson, murder, any tool that serves the revolution.” –Nicholas and Alexandra

I wonder if this came as a peasant surprise to the nobility?

The worm has turned on Biden.  Pardon me if I say that this is right on schedule.  Trump document frenzy made the Left drool like Amy Schumer when she’s near a cake or AOC when she’s near a new coloring book.  To get Trump, the Left would do anything.  Anything.

In a very real sense, just as the Left views abortion as a sacrament, the destruction of Trump is a religious goal, as he is the manifestation of their supreme Evil being.

This is nothing new.  Remember when George W. Bush was president?  His politics were, essentially, as controversial as lukewarm dishwater.  But the hate flew strong.  Until he started showing up in group hot tub photos with Bill and Hillary and Barack and Mooshell.  Then he was no longer the Prince of Darkness, instead just a fuddy-duddy old man who chose wrong.

I’m really glad I couldn’t find the hot tub photos.

Biden, though, is in as bad a shape politically as he is mentally.  Joe was (s)elected for the job because he has never really stood for anything in particular, so he’ll stand for anything at all.  Even his “memories” are false half the time, talking about things that never happened so that he looks the best to whoever he’s talking to at the moment.

The perfect candidate.

Who is in control then?  One would first point to the Chief of Staff, but that person just quit.  It’s clear that half of his appointees have little to no competence at anything – I’m fairly certain that only one or two of them could pass the probation period making pizzas at Chuck E. Cheese™.

Kamala says her body is a temple.  Everyone is allowed in.

So, I’m not at all sure who is running the show, but we all know it’s not Joe.  And whoever is running the show is done with him.  Will they force him to step down?  Maybe.  It would be chaotic, and risky.  Replacing kneepads as Veep would require a majority vote – of both the House and the Senate.  Since the Republicans hold the House, this would not necessarily be an easy choice.

Even if Joe survives (politically) to 2024, the only reason to have him run again would be for the amusement factor.  It’s also clear that the person who will eventually replace Joe is not Kamala.  Oh, sure, she might do that until the next election if Joe’s forced to resign, but “they” will make sure that she’s not allowed to do anything of particular importance.  Maybe she could do coloring books with AOC.

Someone asked her why the chicken crossed the road.  She said, “It’s because of corporate greed!  Chickens should not be forced to lay eggs – the eggs should lay themselves!”

The danger is the weak leadership combined with the political polarization and the hidden nature of those who are actually running the government.  This seems to me to be very similar to the period before the French Revolution.

  • A weak leader,
  • Massive governmental debt leading to economic crisis,
  • A significant rural/city divide,
  • A significant atheist/religious divide,
  • Political polarization fueled by agitators, and
  • Silly clothing styles.

One of the interesting things to me are those agitators.  They were clearly in place at the time of the French Revolution since the Leftist (the French Revolution is where the name “Leftist” came from) pamphlets that appeared “spontaneously” and the large number of inflammatory newspapers that were designed to fuel the Revolution, primarily in Paris.

I tried to tell a guillotine joke, but I always mess up the execution.

The effort was too large and too well coordinated to be an accident.  Was Marat, the lizard-skinned angry little toad of a man the leader?  Was Robespierre?

In the end, it didn’t matter.

The Revolution gave way to the Terror, where (thankfully) Robespierre and Marat were finally executed.  They had to be executed, since, once any Leftist revolution starts, it keeps moving Left in great gouts of blood until someone has the gumption to kill everyone that’s to the extreme Left.  Stalin learned that lesson, and purged Trotsky along with millions of others.

The end result has almost always been the same as what happened in France.  Tired of the nonsense coming from the anarchy they accepted a new Emperor, this time one named Bonaparte rather than Bourbon.

What position would Quasimoto play at Notre Dame?  Probably halfback.

The playbook is the same, and it seems to follow the same parameters over time.  Understand that as the statues were pulled down from Notre Dame, and as it was transformed from a church into the “Temple of Reason” that we’re seeing the same things today.  The Left removes the past, because nothing can come before – they see this as a cleansing, the ability to return to “Year Zero”.

The future does not repeat, exactly.  The Russian Revolution wasn’t the same as the French, but they certainly rhymed.  As I look to weak leadership, polarization, economic difficulty, and Amy Schumer, I see the same conditions that existed back in 1789.

I’m still interested in who is going to benefit . . . if there’s less Amy Schumer, then everyone.

What We Can Learn From The French Revolution: The Vendée

“There was nothing spooky about the French Revolution. People lopped off with the heads of thousands of aristocrats and carted them away in straw baskets, then turned the blades on themselves and killed thousands more. Just another segment of Western History.” – Kolchak, The Night Stalker

The French Revolution was a pain in the neck.

The French Revolution was the first major Leftist revolution in the world.  The ideology of the Revolution was stunning in its scope.  Not only was every single structure of the country to be changed, but even its history.  Nothing was sacred – especially the churches and clergy.  Notre Dame was renamed the Temple of Reason, though recently it was a really hot tourist attraction.

Additionally, something as simple as the calendar wasn’t exempt.  1792 was proclaimed as year one.  Each day was 10 hours long.  Each hour was 100 minutes long.  And each minute was 100 seconds long.  Of course, the week wasn’t spared – each month consisted of three 10 day weeks.  Yeah, they renamed the days of the week, too, and managed to eliminate both Friday and Saturday.  Bogus.

The names of the months were changed, too.  There were still 12, since the French could not figure out how to change the amount of time it took for the world to revolve around the Sun.  My favorite French month?  Ventôse, or the “month of wind” which lasted between February 19 to March 20.  The Ventôse Decrees (I assume issued during this “month”) legalized confiscation of everything counterrevolutionaries owned and redistribution to “needy” people.  One would assume that the leadership was just as “needy” as the Biden family.

What’s the best way to kill lots of communists?  Communism.

This was also the time when the Republic decided that the old way of measuring things needed to be chucked, too.  So out went feet and gallons and pounds and in came meters and liters and kilograms.  So, if you ever hear me talk about communist units, well, here’s the reason.  The metric system was just another part of the Leftists attempting to subvert all of history.

Oh, and they pulled down statues, too.

It’s as if there’s something familiar with what I’m seeing with the woke crowd in the United States.  Hmm.  Whatever could it be?

Regardless, there are some other events that happened during the French Revolution that are less known.  The item that’s the subject of today’s post?

The Vendée.

The Vendée is an area of France.  The French have lots of names for these areas, many of which sound like Joe Biden clearing his throat before a speech.  Let’s just stick with area or region, that’s close enough.

Why is the French flag blue, white, and red?  So that they can rip off the sides and surrender.

Not long after the French Revolution, the people running France realized that they were surrounded by hostile countries that were headed by Kings.  When King Louis XVI was guillotined in 1793, the people who ran the French Republic were pretty freaked out and worried that they were going to be invaded by groups of Kings that weren’t fond of the whole, “kill your leader because it’s Tuesday” concept.

That’s when they decided to have a general draft to build a French army with 300,000 new additional recruits. Many areas fought back against this draft, since, outside of Paris, the whole, “kill the King, destroy religion, and start a war” policy of the Commies in charge of Paris wasn’t especially popular.

One area, though, was really good at fighting back.  The Vendée.  It’s on the western shore of France, and is notable for making that invisible rope that French mimes use as the primary regional product.  Like I said, they fought back well – they wanted to be left alone and to reopen their churches.  The army that was formed, the “Catholic and Royal Army” was initially very successful for several months in spring and summer of 1793.

The Popemobile is cool, but let me see you try to fly in a Papal airplane.

From a military viewpoint, they were very successful, at first.  Early in may they captured over 5,000 Republican troops.  They asked them to leave and promise not to fight against them anymore.

And then released the Republican troops.

This may have been a mistake.

Again, through May and June they kept winning, capturing lots of Republican cannons, powder and supplies.  Until they lost.  The Republicans captured quite a few folks from the Vendée Army.  And shot them or put them in boats and drowned them.

By October of 1793, the Committee of Public Safety in Paris decided that the solution to the Vendée was complete physical destruction.  After the defeat of the Vendée army in December, the revenge started.  The Republicans were not shy about what they wanted.

When one commander asked what he should do about women and children, the response was simple, “if it was necessary, to pass them all by the sword”.  The women were of particular interest, since they would be carrying anti-revolutionary babies.

Yeah.  Dark.

The invention of the shovel was groundbreaking, but it was the broom that really swept the nation.

The Vendée folks paroled their prisoners.  The Leftists?  Murdered them.  For the people in the Vendée, it got worse.  Some people from the Vendée got together with the British and the British funded and supplied a really lame invasion of France.  It failed.  Spectacularly.  The French might not like each other, but one thing was for certain – the French, I mean, all the French, hate the British.

This didn’t help the Vendée with the rest of the French.  Public relations level?  Disaster.

The Vendée had about 800,000 folks living in it prior to the French Revolution.  The Leftists killed, for the sake of ideological reasons, between (best sources I can find) 250,000 to 400,000.  This is about 1.5% of the population of France at that time.  That’s proportionately like losing half the population of Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, New Jersey, or Virginia.

This proves, once again, that the only people that the French can beat in a war is the French.  It also proves, once again, that when Leftists run a country, the first priority of business is to kill their own people who aren’t on board with the Left.

Regardless, this didn’t stop the people from the Vendée.  They kept fighting, and were even a thorn in the side of Napoleon in 1814.

I asked my friend how things were going in Moscow.  He said, “I can’t complain.”

The Vendée made me think of the United States today.  It is easy to see the parallels – the full attack on every value.  The attempt to destroy everything from the past is in full force now.  The removal of the statues is part of the playbook.  The vilification of the values and heritage people?  Also part of the playbook.

Where is the Vendée in the United States?  Oklahoma?  Ohio?  Missouri?  It is clear that the values of the Left do not match values of many.

What happens when a line is crossed?  When the gun confiscation comes in?  If the Vendée acts alone, it fails.  If it’s not alone?  It wins.

You are not alone.  Nor is Oklahoma, or Missouri, or Ohio, or Texas, or Idaho.

This isn’t 1793, and we don’t cotton to the metric system.  Me?  I’ll never accept the metric system because I don’t want a foreign ruler.

Predictions – What Won’t Happen in 2023

“In that time, I have something to say. How long before the Halkan prediction of galactic revolt is realized?” – Star Trek, TOS

I just read that it’s the law that if it’s raining in Sweden you have to have your headlights on.  How am I going to know if it’s raining in Sweden?

This is the first post of the year.  That feels like so much responsibility.  It feels like I have the weight of the fate of 2023 on my shoulders.  Of course, 2020, 2021, and 2022 have been Godzilla-level disasters, except that whoever does the lip-syncing didn’t get Joe Biden quite right.

But just before I started writing, I had an epiphany.  Many writers write about things that will happen, but here’s a list of things that I think won’t happen.  Of course, I can’t guarantee any of this, but I’m feeling pretty good about this list.  Remember, of course, I thought Zeppelins were a good idea.  Oh, sure, you’re expecting me to make a Led Zeppelin pun, but I’m just going to Ramble On instead.

Here’s the first thing:

Western Civilization isn’t done.  At all.  The construct and values of Western Civilization are under attack, but the roots turn very, very deep.  How deep?  They run deep before Christianity (I am a Christian), and deep as Greece and Troy and the Yamnaya people before them.  This is not the last time the song of Achilles will be sung, nor is it the last time that Caesar will be praised.

It’s not even close.  The medieval cathedrals may cease to exist, but the spirit that created them is not done.  The blood that created them still pulses in the veins of many on Earth.

No, Western Civilization isn’t done.  And it won’t be done for a very, very long time.

I downloaded a copy of the Iliad, but had to delete it.  It was full of Trojans.

This is, perhaps, the most important message that I can ever send.  The blood of my father and his father, and so on, goes back into time.  I do know this:  the reason there is a phrase, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” exists is because, a son is like his father.  There are many sons who are out there, who are not happy with the situation.  The idea of the Left is that they’ll be pushed over.

They won’t.  Push other cultures too far?  Cities burn.  Push Western Civilization too far?

Continents burn.  The fight necessary to extinguish Western Civilization will make World War II look like a garden party.

Here’s the second thing:

We haven’t yet hit peak Elon Musk amusement.  He’s the first person to “lose” $200 billion in a year without missing a beat, and he’s simply not done stirring the pot.

Here’s the third thing:

There is only so long that the Federal Reserve® can print cash and pretend it’s money.  It has been nearly fifty years, which is a really, really long time in dog years that Nixon quit pretending that the dollar was backed by gold.  The dollar immediately shrank in value, but remains relatively strong when compared to most currencies around the world even though I’d prefer to have a dollar’s worth of gold from 1973 than a dollar printed in 1973.

The strength of the dollar won’t end in 2023.  But it’s closer to free fall every year.  Right now, the confetti that the Federal Reserve™ presents as money is still good.  But when the people in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe and Senegal and Laos won’t take it?  The dollar will be toast.

My go-to on Asian currency is a local Spanish language show.  I guess it takes Juan to know Yuan.

And yet, the world hasn’t stopped taking the dollar that we print from paper.  Why?  The United States has a wicked large navy and about a zillion nuclear bombs.  I’ll note:  Iraq decided to take Euros for oil.

Oops.  Guess we need to replace Saddam.

Libya decides to take gold for oil.

Oops.  Guess we need to replace Ghaddafi.

Since Russia will take gold for oil, and China will swap their money for oil…?

The good news?

The dollar won’t end in 2023.

The bad news?

In 2023.  No promises after that.  And I might be wrong, so keep some silver, gold and lead around.

Here’s the fourth thing:

The Beatles won’t reunite.  Unless Paul starts eating bacon and Ringo takes up alligator wrestling.

Who is the drummer for the Australian Beatles cover band?  ɹɐʇs oƃuᴉp

Here’s the fifth thing:

Biden won’t get any smarter.  And neither will Hunter, though I’m sure tons of the cash shipped to the Ukraine will get recycled back into Hunter’s drug habit.  Good news!  It won’t be long until he loses another laptop.

Here’s the sixth thing: 

Movies won’t get any better in 2023.  The best movie in 2022 was approximately the same movie as the best-grossing movie of 1986.  Yup.  Top Gun:  Maverick was a good movie.  Nearly exactly the same level of good as Top Gun.  Avatar:  The Way Of Ego was from the same person who brought you Aliens. Which was the fifth best-grossing movie in 1986.  It isn’t getting any better in 2023.

What do they call James Cameron when he’s not working?  James Cameroff.

I am somewhat amused.  The very, very best movies of 2022 were a faithful remake and a pale imitation of two of the best movies of 1986.

Wow.

1986 was, observably, and quantifiably better than 2022 in every way possible.  If you’re thinking that in 2023 Disney® will stop putting out movies that show why kid-touching is a good thing or feature a Disney® princess played by some 372-pound guy named Todd?  Not happening.

Yeah.  Mass media is really dead.  And in 2023 it will be a dead cat bounce.  Maybe.  It depends only on how many Tom Cruise movies are coming out.  Who could have predicted that Scientologists would be more sane than Leftists?

Sure, there will be some movies that will be okay.  If one movie in 2023 is better than any movie I’ve ever seen?  I’ll cover my nipples in opossum grease and sandpaper my eyebrows.

The Opossum Sanitation Company had a unique concept on recycling.

Here’s the seventh thing:

We’re not done.  This isn’t over.

I’ve been using this as an irregular tagline for years.  And I mean it.

We’re not done.

Energy: The Big Picture

“Dr. Norman was experimenting with energy and mass. To make it brief, it got away from him. He found he had made a mass of energy that somehow came alive. It feeds on more energy, and it lives only to feed. I’m afraid it consumed Dr. Norman before he could stop it.” – Jonny Quest

I was once kidnapped by a gang of mimes.  They did unspeakable things to me.

Apologies to all on missing the podcast tonight – The Mrs. was feeling great this morning, and then headed south about two hours before the show.  Darn her for demanding that she have actual oxygen in her blood.  So selfish!  Should she feel okay, we’re looking at having a New Year’s Eve show (her idea) on, wait for it, New Year’s Eve.  I’m thinking 9pm Eastern, but who knows – her blood is fickle.

So, on to today’s post, inspired by a reader’s comment on email . . .

The most fundamental economic and political choice of our lives is energy.  I phrased that intentionally – the impacts of the energy we use as a society are economic.  Energy has been political since the 1930s, at the very least.

The idea of energy might be economic and political, but the reality is pure physics.  There is no law that Congress can pass that can create more energy – only allow that which exists to be used.  And there is no amount of money that can be printed to that can make energy appear where none exists.

Some Leftists say truth is subjective, but let them try to pretend that their house at -40°F is actually 70°F.  I guess that you could say that they’re trans-comfortable?  No.  They’re frozen.  Reality is like that.  And energy is like that, too.  Unlike monetary policy or laws, energy doesn’t care what people want.

The story of energy, though, is the story of human culture.

Energy has been a part of human life since the first waggling finger (thank you, Rudyard, original poem below) burned itself on a fire.  Meat tastes good, but tastes better once it has been cooked.  It also heated the caves and tents that early man lived in.  It was the original killer app – I can guarantee that at some point, a fire in a cabin or tent or cave saved someone who was your direct ancestor.

I hear you can get fired from the keyboard factory if you don’t put in enough shifts.

In the form of crude wood fires, energy did a few things for people, helping to tan skins, cure meats, harden wood, and eventually fuel fires that made the first man-made metals and ceramics.  The demand was low, but the impacts were huge.  Food, clothing, weapons, and the basis of civilization.  You can’t have beer unless you have a beer bottle, right?

Romans used it even more – they had central heating in their villas in Roman Britain, heated baths, and used it in lots of other ways I’m too lazy to look up.  One hint:  those Roman shields and swords didn’t make themselves.  And the iron nails in Jerusalem, circa 32 A.D.?  Yeah, those required energy as well.

Romans were amazing at using energy, but most of the energy they used was human; they didn’t exactly have outboard motors on their ships.  It was wind or oars.  The Romans used fire, but the real energy source for Empire was animal and human.  That source of energy was totally renewable – people are born every day, and they eat food that is raised every year.

There are huge implications to this:  slave labor was the original renewable energy.  Oops!  That’s not politically correct, though the World Economic Forum® did take notes.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, people continued to innovate.  That’s what we do.  Dams provided water power for mills.  Mills could grind grain, or they could operate pumps to pull water out of mines.  And wind?  Windmills could use wind to mill.  Duh.  It’s in the name.

If a former president didn’t like windmills, could we call him Donald Quixote?

All of that was a necessary predecessor to the real powerhouse:  steam.  Sure, steam-powered toys had been created 2,000 years earlier, but steam power was needed because of the mines that were needed to get the metals to manufacture electric guitars and iPads® back in the 1600s.  Or whatever they did with them.  Maybe banjos?

The Industrial Revolution came almost entirely based on the use of energy.  The developments in the 1800s changed everything.  Transport?  Trains.  Communications?  Telegraphs.  Cool products?  Factories.  Navy?  Fast steamships.  This is a wickedly small set of examples – the availability of energy changed everything.  But at this point, the energy mix changed.  Prior, it was mostly wood.

Now it was the age of coal and steel.

The biggest change it created was the ability to have a metric butt-ton of additional people.  Energy changed agriculture and changed food distribution.  After the Haber-Bosch process allowed for the fixing of nitrogen for increased plant yields (which required another metric butt-ton of energy) but this changed the demand.  Coal was still pretty nifty, but it was no longer enough.

Now was the age of oil.

Cars were required to move products.  Gas was required for fertilizer, and heating and chemical products.

Tesla® cars are expensive because they charge a lot.

The result of all of this was amazing – an explosion of the numbers of people living on Earth like never before, even in places that could never support them.

Wars were fought over energy.  Why did the Germans fight at Stalingrad?  Because they were trying to secure oil.  There was no hybrid-panzer.  The Allies won because there were lakes of oil underneath Texas, mountains of iron ore in Minnesota, and marksmen from Georgia.  The biggest contributor?

The oil.

Without it, the Shermans don’t sherm, the Mustangs won’t must, and the carrier fleet are amusing, odd-shaped coral reefs.  Oil won World War II.  If the Germans had the reserves of Texas under Bavaria, Stalin would have been a minor footnote in history after 1942.

Oil was pretty plentiful as geologists wend around the world hunting for it after 1945.  It was found in the wastelands of the Arctic, the scorching deserts of Saudi Arabia, and on the coast of California.  Really, anywhere where people don’t want to live in 2022.

The lakes of oil in Texas weren’t infinite.  In 1973, Texas removed controls on production.  The straws weren’t dry, but the abundance was done.  The Arabs also decided that, perhaps, oil was now (for the second time since 1943) the most potent weapon in the world besides nuclear bombs and Leftism was unleashed.  The oil embargo showed how much the world depended on oil to make Big Macs™ and G.I. Joes©.  One oil shock (combined with Nixon’s taking the United States off the gold standard) was enough to send the economy into the stagflation of the 1970s.

But I heard since he died, he’s a great cook.  His pasta is Al Dante.

Oil is why the Cold War ended.  Star Wars was an important initiative, but the bigger cause of the failure of the Soviet Union was that Reagan convinced the Saudis to pump oil like it was free.  The Soviet economy, dependent on oil revenue to keep their machine going?  Done.  Oil killed the two out of three of the great empires of the twentieth century.

That brings us to today.

Almost all of the growth in oil production since 2008 was based on fracking.  The previous pools of oil were still producing, but the oil companies had to go farther and farther afield, such as deep water miles deep in places like the Gulf of Mexico.  Places where getting the oil was expensive – it’s not like we found another several billion barrels in the backyard behind the garden shed.  Regular places where oil was were drying up.  A game changer was needed.  Something different.

Fracking was different.  It was difficult, required new technologies, and grew by a factor of ten in only ten years, making the United States a net energy exporter for the first time since before John Kennedy did an afternoon drive in Texas.

Oil is an amazing fuel, and I bathe in sweet, sweet gasoline every night.  But to meet the needs of the world, the struggle is difficult.  Cheap energy takes huge investment, but that’s not all.  It requires the energy source to be there.

The Mrs. says I’m cheap.  I’m not buying it.

Our energy has been cheap since about 1920 or so.  The idea that it will be cheap forever is magical thinking, unless oil is infinite (it is not).  Our choice on energy isn’t economic, it’s based on physics.

And, with everything I’ve read, the physics of alternative energy solutions, especially the “renewable” ones that are touted based on political reasons, result in the energy cost doubling (at least) and that’s after the investment of trillions of dollars to build the necessary energy production facilities and infrastructure.  This will likely be the subject of future posts.

I hate to break the Christmas spirit, but it is the single most important question facing humanity today.  When the price of energy is low, freedom is high.  When the price of energy is high?

Oh, yeah.  Slavery.

 

As promised, here’s Kipling, Gods of the Copybook Headings:

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall.
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn.
That water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision, and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorilas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither clud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promiced these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promiced perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘Stick to the Devil you know.’

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promiced the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘The Wages of Sin is Death/’

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selective Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘If you don’t work you die.’

The the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tounged wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to belive it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

The Most Inaccurate (but funniest) Predictions For 2023, Guaranteed.

“It’s getting almost predictable, isn’t it?”– The A-Team

What is a teenager under stress called?  A teenager.

Here is the annual Wilder Prediction Page, proven so far to be absolutely 0% right.  A few years ago I started to put actual predictions about economic and political stuff out quarterly.  Real ones.  The rationale behind that is, if I put it in writing and then revisited it, I at least owned it.

Those were absolutely the least popular posts I did.  They were like posts that were drenched in mosquito-carried Ebola AIDS.  I got the hint, “Shut up and play your piano, Wilder.”  I can see the reason, frankly.  That was a post about me and my thinking, and it wasn’t what I do best.

What do I do best online?  Writing about life, philosophy, and nonsense.  I also can prove that the Right can be funnier than the Left.  This is becoming more difficult in 2022, because they keep letting Kamala and Joe say words into a microphone.

So, welcome back to the nonsense!  In chronological order, here are my predictions for 2023.

January:

Russia appoints Charlie Sheen as the head of the Stavka.  He immediately gives the entire army a ration of Tiger Blood, declares they are “Winning” and passes out in pool of vomit.  We have no idea whose vomit, exactly, since “you can’t really dust for vomit.”  Sheen proves to be the most effective commander for the Russian army since Zhukov.

What did Charlie do when he was mad at his wife?  Rage against the Mrs. Sheen.

Six movies are released featuring Nic Cage, and seven people actually see three of them.

February:

Kamala Harris is featured in a major policy speech, talking about the massive snowstorm that hit the East Coast in early February.  The results were catastrophic, causing Chuck Schumer’s hair to freeze in place on Nancy Pelosi’s thighs.  Harris notes that this is “evidence of global warming, where the globe, which is a round thing hanging in space, is warming, which makes things cold because space has COVID.”

The California Legislature votes to allow “consenting adults to have sex with animals in schoolyards as long as the animals have claws or fangs, since that is a sign of consent.”  Governor Gavin Newsom signs the bill publicly, though the signing was difficult since both of his hands were wrapped in gauze.

March:

Volodymyr Zelensky demands the West send him “seventy bazillion dollars to rebuild the Ukraine on and, like, ten gajillion tanks” and that the heads of state of the EU personally retile the bathrooms in his Florida mansion.  “Be careful with the grout!”

What do Putin and Peter the Great have in common?  They both have 18th Century Russian armies.

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise© welcomes the 500,000,000,000,000th visitor, as it becomes the most popular website in the galaxy, as the hivemind of Melexcor III learns to appreciate dad jokes.

April:

The new COVID variant mRNA booster shot for  Super-Mega-Death-Cannibal-Famine® COVID is approved by the FDA because “Omigod, why won’t you damn people panic again!”  Australia implements “Super Peaceful Completely Voluntary We Mean It Leisure Camps”.

Disney® releases its new children’s film, Honey, I Turned All Our Children Hyperactive, Bipolar, Transgender, Gay, And Multiracial.  The three families that have hyperactive, bipolar, transgender, gay, and multiracial children attend, and the film’s three-week box office in 2,000 theaters is $90.  Disney© blames the audience for being, well, you get the idea.  The film loses $350 million at the box office.

May:

Elon Musk pulls off a rubber mask and indicates that, underneath, he was really Elon Musk.  “I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you pesky kids.”

The Supreme Court rules in the case of Idiots v. Rationality, that, “Uh, really, that’s a dude.  He may be wearing a dress, but, per the original understanding of the framers of the Constitution, that’s totally a dude.”

Back when I was a kid, if a spy had to go undercover dressed as a woman, that was a transmission.

June:

Joe Biden announces, for the thirteenth time, that he’s running for president.  “I promise to make America great again after the problems of the housing bubble that George W. Bush created.  America will once again be great, starting in 2009!”

Argentina declares war on Great Britain over the Falkland Islands.  Again.  They send their victorious World Cup® team in the initial invasion.  Great Britain counter-attacks with what they call “food”.  France surrenders.

July:

I might go on vacation for a week.  Maybe someplace where I don’t need air conditioning.

California governor Gavin Newsom declares “Citizenship Day” where everyone in the whole, wide world becomes a citizen of California.  Oklahoma declares war.  “No way are we gonna do that.”

August:

California becomes part of “Greater Oklahoma.”  “If only we had greater legal magazine capacities,” said Gavin Newsom before he was headed to a minimum-security prison with knitting classes in southern Oklahoma.

Biden announces that gasoline is now illegal.  “People have been burning that stuff up!  Not on my watch.  Now the only people that can have gasoline are,” (checks teleprompter) “people who are in disadvantaged communities that are the victims of systematic race horses.”

In 2023, a man can identify as a car, unless he doesn’t meet Federal standards.

September:

The 2023 NFL® season starts, with a new team name in Cincinnati.  The name, “Bengals” has been described as “transphobic” by NFL© Commissioner RuPaul, “They aren’t “Been gals, they’re totally gals!”  Their new team name is the Cincinnati LGBT 2S+.

The Beatles reunion is complete as Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney engage in a steel cage death match over who like John Lennon the least.  Neither ex-Beatle survive, since Ringo inexplicably chose hand grenades as a close-in melee weapon.

October:

Dammit.  More crap about the English royal family.  Oh, wait, that’s every month.  This month Meghan tells how King Charles made her pick cotton on the plantation in south Brighton for 20 hours a day because she didn’t curtsey properly.  Markel is beheaded in Piccadilly Square, and Queen Elizabeth II rises from the grave and fights Mecha George Washington on Skull Island.  Oh, wait, that was a dream I had.  Nevermind.

On Halloween, children are warned not to get double-secret COVID.

November:

An article appears in the New York Times™ titled, The Final Crusade Has Started:  Why That’s A Good Thing.  Deus Vult ensues.

I’m probably having some turkey and beer around Thanksgiving.  This one isn’t much of a stretch.

What band did Indiana Jones hate?  The Rolling Stones.

December:

Avatar XXII:  Why Slavery Is Bad is released.  James Cameron is executed at Times Square in New York City because that his comment, “I’m king of the world” was culturally insensitive and totally colonialist.  At least 500 people see Avatar XXII, with many reviewers noting that the blue fish people’s ethnic cleansing of the humans is “culturally insensitive”.

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise™ becomes the most popular website in history of the universe as time travelers from the year 28,764 discover that it is a humane alternative to their other form of capital punishment:  sitting in a comfy chair.