TEOTWAWKI – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Here We Stand

There are those that thought that when a simple Carpenter was executed on the Cross, “Well, that’s the end of that.” His followers thought that.

But, it seems that was simply not the case. Even if you’re not religious, it’s clear that the Cross was no defeat, just a victory in a fashion that no one would have ever expected.

Western Civilization and the basic concepts that have driven it rest on foundations that endure:

The idea that what is True, Beautiful, and Good is excellent and should be rewarded.

The idea that the elite work for the common good and not merely themselves.

That the basic societal unit is the family and not the individual or the state.

That our leaders are not our rulers.

That merit matters.

That the rule of law is important, but that too many laws smother freedom, and those that skirt the intent of the law are Evil.

And that neither Greece nor Rome improved when covered with foreigners, because nations, those living ties of a people bound by blood, history, language, and shared destiny matter more than any abstract economic ledger.

Western Civilization is unique, and the things that flow from it are likewise unique. Judaism is a fundamentally non-Western religion, yet Christianity is fundamentally Western. The differences are stark, and they matter. One brought a chosen people through covenant and law. The other spread a message of redemption that transformed every people it touched, planting seeds of individual dignity, ordered liberty, and the search for truth that grew into the modern world.

Rome did not exist as a market economy. It existed as a place for Romans. When that sense of shared purpose and identity waned, when the center no longer held because the people no longer saw themselves as one people with one destiny, Rome faded. These lessons repeat again and again whenever we lose the path of what Western Civilization actually is.

But we return.

We always return.

Greece fell into fragmentation and conquest, yet Rome rose from its ruins and carried forward the best of Greek thought wrapped in Roman discipline and law. Rome fell to internal decay, external pressure and a dilution of what being Roman even meant, yet in turn nation after nation in Europe rose. Each nation drew on the same inheritance, each adding its own chapter of courage and creation.

As Europe waned under the weight of its own successes and the forgetting that sometimes follows prosperity, America rose. A new nation built on the oldest principles, tested in fire, and sent forth to carry the torch further.

Again and again, Western Civilization fought back invaders, sometimes with a margin so slim that it is impossible to explain how the West survived except by the hand of Divine Providence. The Battle of Tours in 732 stopped the advance of Islamic forces deep into Europe at a moment when nothing else seemed able to stand in their way. The Siege of Vienna in 1683 saw the city on the brink, the Ottoman host at the gates, until relief came in one of history’s great charges.

These were near-run things.

One different decision, one day of worse weather, one failure of nerve, and the map of the world changes forever.

But Western Civilization returned.

It always returned.

Western Civilization, however, didn’t fall from the sky. It came from things that worked, and they worked because they were True, Beautiful, and Good. And also because long years of struggle and effort revealed them. Greek philosophy asked hard questions about reality and virtue. Roman engineering and administration turned those questions into roads, aqueducts, and systems that lasted centuries. Christian faith added the conviction that every soul matters and that justice ultimately comes from a higher order than any king or mob.

These roots produced the scientific method, the rule of law that protects the weak from the strong, the family that raises the next generation with purpose, and the drive to explore and build that took men to every corner of the globe and then when we’d seen the entire globe, Western Civilization went beyond it.

When these principles are honored, societies flourish. Families stay intact and children grow up rooted. Leaders who see themselves as servants rather than masters earn loyalty instead of resentment. Merit opens doors for the capable regardless of birth. Nations with a clear sense of “us” can absorb newcomers on their own terms instead of dissolving into competing tribes.

The West did not become wealthy and powerful by accident or by exploitation. It became so because it aligned more closely than any other civilization with reality itself.

The challenges of our time are real. We see the forgetting, the dilution, the turning away from the hard work of maintaining what our ancestors built. We see institutions captured by those who view the common good of the nation as an obstacle rather than the goal. We see the slow erosion of the family, the substitution of feelings for truth, the replacement of merit with managed outcomes.

These are not new. Again and again, the same test.

Yet the pattern holds.

When the center seems to be giving way, something in the Western soul stirs. People rediscover the old books, the old stories, the old virtues. They build families again. They demand leaders who serve rather than rule. They remember that a nation is not a hotel or a corporation; it is a home for a particular people.

They choose excellence over ease. They choose truth over comfort. And bit by bit, the tide turns.

This is the record of two and a half thousand years. Every time the West has seemed spent, it has drawn on these same sources and risen stronger. The principles are not fragile. They are battle-tested.

They have survived barbarian invasions, plagues, internal tyrannies, and ideological madness. They will survive whatever is thrown at them now.

As long as we work for what is True, Beautiful, and Good, Western Civilization will not die. We carry it in our hearts, in our homes, in the way we raise our children, in the standards we set for ourselves and for those who lead us. We carry it when we choose the family as the irreplaceable center of human life, when we insist that a nation belongs first to its own people.

These choices are acts of fidelity.

And they are enough.

We will win.

I am certain.

I’m not promising the path that it will take, because I don’t know. The road may be longer and harder than we would like. There may be more losses before the turn. But the destination is not in doubt for those who hold fast.

This is not done.

This is not over.

Here we stand.

Birthright Citizenship, The Economics Of Infinity, And The Inevitability Of War

“I want immunity from prosecution, asylum in the U.S., and citizenship.” – xXx

All media “as-found”

June 30, 2026, just shy of the 250^th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, will live in infamy.

All five women of the Supreme Court voted for birthright citizenship on June 30. This includes the Chief Justice, John Roberts, who I assume identifies as a woman on Tuesdays and alternate weekends.

The five voted that popping a kid out anywhere that the United States has as a state or territory makes the invader kid a citizen. It’s called “birthright citizenship”, and wasn’t really a thing for the first 60 or so years, at least, of the 14^th Amendment. The 14^th was really about removing doubts about the citizenship status of freed black slaves and their children.

But now, if you’re Consuela from Caracas giving birth in Carlsbad, California, your cholo child is a citizen. If you’re Ning Naun from Nanking, giving birth in Nashua, New Hampshire, your nursling nipper is now a national. That’s the law of the land, even if you are here illegally.

This effectively removes the border.

If an illegal steps one foot into Arizona and squats a tot, the squatted tot is just as American as Neil Armstrong. If a woman on a legal visa drops a moppet, even if she overstays? It’s an American citizen, just as American as Mark Twain.

The American people, therefore, have no say in who becomes an American.

It’s like someone breaks into my house and pops a preemie there and now that preschooler is now my child and I have to treat it like my child and give it exactly the same (or better!) treatment as my other kids even though it’s much stupider, much needier, and much more violent.

I guess I would be fine with that if I hated my own kids.

But I don’t. I love my kids. And, I love my people.

I’ve gone over at length in previous posts how immigrants, both legal and illegal, are a net negative on the country as a whole economically. It’s not really arguable because the facts are so stark.

Why they’ve been allowed is simple.

For the GloboLeftElite, they represent a new voter bloc that’s skewed to vote against nationalism and for communism.

For the Institutional Elite, they represent more demand for their services and more job for their gay friends.

For the “Idaho Rancher” they represent a way to get cheap labor and avoid paying the prices it would take for Americans to do the work, and the “Idaho Rancher” doesn’t have to pay for the services like medical and child care and prisons.

For the “Wall Street Firm” it’s a way to get cheap labor that will never say no, and will never report you for doing something shady.

These groups are all traitors.

You could say “enlightened economic self-interest” but you’d be wrong. They are the ticks that view the United States as an economic zone to be sucked into an empty skin sack for profits or as a place to build political power for ideas that are inimical to our way of life.

I’m not an extremist.

I’m not opposed 100% to immigration. I think we should consider starting it again in 2326 after a 200-year moratorium. I mean, we should consider it then. Maybe.

The problem with this ruling is two-fold. I’ll start with the economic. There are between 400 million and 700 million people that would move to the United States if they could. Iowa would soon look like Islamabad, Pakistan. Lubbock, Texas would soon look like Lagos, Nigeria. Diluting the ability of the nation to make wealth won’t make us wealthier, it will just turn our country into a slum.

If it were only economic, I might be able to make the case that this was okay. We’d eventually catch up in wealth production. Eventually.

But it won’t, and that’s because of the second problem:

Genetics leads to culture leads to virtue leads to politics leads to outcomes.

That’s it. You can’t take 100, or 1,000 or 10,000,000 Nigerians and expect them to create anything but Nigeria. Same thing with Indians. Or Danes. Or Chinese. Studies of twins separated at birth prove that heritability not only of intellectual ability, but also attitudes and behaviors. Why are Indians turning Canada into India?

Because that’s what Indians do. Because that’s what Indians are. If you want your country to look like India, import more Indians. If you don’t want your country to look like India, don’t let them in.

And if you go back to my map, culture leads to virtue. This is the true failing of multicultural societies, since they cannot form a shared sense of virtue. Why are there rape gangs wherever Indians or Pakistani or Sub-Saharan Africans congregate, even in countries that don’t consider rape a spectator sport?

Because rape is okay in their culture, and if they bring their culture to Dublin, they’ll rape in Dublin. Look it up. It’s not a “because they’re in the United States or Europe” thing, it’s who they are. If only the most rape-y breed, well, then the people will become genetically more rape-y. So what happens when their people become the cops?

Pit bulls are different than golden retrievers. Wishing won’t make it less so, and why are we allowing a never-ending stream of pit bulls into the country?

Lee Kuan Yew, the father of modern Singapore said:

I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that’s the most unlikely thing ever to have been, because millions of years have passed over evolution, people have scattered across the face of this earth, been isolated from each other, developed independently, had different intermixtures between races, peoples, climates, soils . . . I didn’t start off with that knowledge. But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I’ve come to.

If a country cannot determine who is allowed to become a citizen, then the result will be a multi-cultural society. What happens then? If the societies are close and have time, they can grow together, the British and Irish. Oh, wait.

To enforce a true multicultural society requires strong, swift, and sure enforcement of the rules. There was a 19-year-old American in Singapore who was caned in Singapore in 1994.

Why?

The American was being an ass. He deserved it. But also because Singapore has to be strict and severe because it is multi-cultural. To maintain a multi-cultural society that doesn’t turn into Mad Max® requires at least three of the four: justice, discipline, authoritarianism, and prosperity.

The alternative to that?

War.

War is not solely men in uniforms ranked in order on opposing sides of a line. If we encouraged people to move to a foreign country to take control, that would be war. How is that different from what India is doing? How is that different from what Islam is doing? How is that different from what Haiti . . . okay, skip that, Haiti isn’t bright enough to have a strategy more complicated than cannibalism.

In a multi-cultural society, it becomes a free-for-all, a war of all against all.

Multicultural societies don’t blend into harmony because we wish it so. History shows the exact opposite. But, hey, we’ve either got caning or cannibalism to look forward to, so there’s that.

Citizen Vigilante: A Movie For Our Time

“Remember: I do this for you, until you learn to do it for yourself.” – Citizen Vigilante

Since the main character was an American fighting invading rapists in Europe, could this movie have been called Alien Vs. Predator? (all memes as-found)

First, I promise I’m not planning on making this a movie review blog. If you’ll note, most of the movies I’ve individually reviewed either show the best of what we can be as a people or the propaganda that has been inflicted on the world for decades. Now, we’re into a third case: a movie that’s reviewed because of its immediacy.

I once left a positive Yelp® review at the DMV noting how helpful and customer-service focused they were. The manager fired everyone.

I first heard about Citizen Vigilante this week on X®. What I heard, resonated. Here’s a quote from the titular (hehehe) character from fairly early on in the movie:

Who we are and what we do has ramifications in our lives, and in the lives of everyone around us, hm? You don’t understand? All right. Pay attention, let me explain this to you. If you get onto a bus and you don’t pay your ticket, if you go to the movie theater, if you grab a banana at a grocery store and you don’t pay, eventually, the cost of everything will go up. If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.

I’m sure that this resonates with 99% of the regular readers here. This is the philosophy that separates a high-trust civilization from a low-trust civilization. This one attitude, that you pay for what you take, that wealth is earned into existence, not cheated from another is what has made the West and every other civilization that follows this, great.

And high home prices and long commutes are the price we pay to avoid living around “civilized” society.

I have been saying for years on this blog and even longer in person that the purpose of the justice system is to keep people from taking justice into their own hands, and it appears that Europe has reached the breaking point. Uwe Boll, who I’ve really not been familiar with before this, made this movie.

He wrote it, directed it, and financed it. It’s not a big budget Hollywood© film, but it’s a labor of his heart. Boll was originally going to title this movie Dark Knight, but Warner Brothers© sent a cease and desist, so he had to compromise there. Does he bow to political correctness here and there?

Sure, but in minor enough ways that I’m not going complain. However, I’m going to make a bold statement: this film is more red-pilled than Death Wish. It is garlic to Hollywood’s© vampire.

I am extremely smart: I have a theoretical degree in physics.

The genius of Boll is that by doing it himself, he could put up a big middle finger to the people that would silence him and write and film any damn thing he wanted. And Germany has done so, not giving the film a rating, which means I think that you can legally own it, but I don’t think you can legally buy it or sell it.

Why ban it? The violence isn’t all that bad. The singular sex scene isn’t anything to write home about. No. The Powers That Be think this movie is dangerous.

Based on history, I think this decision will make kids want to watch it even more. I’ll admit, it made me want to watch it more than the other crap Hollywood© is putting out.

As I wrote earlier, it’s low budget. The “me-too” crusade made the actor Armie Hammer effectively radioactive, so I don’t think he was doing much nor do I think he cost a lot. Hammer is, however, perfect in the protagonist role in this film. If he signed up for a low salary and a percentage of the gross profits, well, he’s certainly a happy man. It was released on June 19, and Citizen Vigilante has already grossed over $67 million dollars by Tuesday. This was at a reported cost of somewhere around $9 million to make the film, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of these numbers: the source was “crap I found on the Internet”.

But I think they’re making money, which is good because some people have had a hard time finding work.

I left my job to pursue a dream of working in archeology. My career is in ruins.

The movie is also short, clocking in at 89 minutes (in metric, that’s 8.9 decahours). That’s good. It left me wanting more, rather than leaving me thinking, “that’s it?” or thinking, “man, this movie is dragging along”. It was just as long as it needed to be and the conclusion is satisfying and it had one line in it that had me howling with laughter, but maybe that will just be me.

I’m not going to spoil the line, and please don’t in comments.

I’m also not going to spoil the plot. It’s not a complicated one, and not surprising in any fashion.

What’s a GloboLeftist’s most effective birth control? Their personality.

Will Hollywood™ make more of this?

I don’t know. I doubt it. Will Boll and Hammer? I hope so. I’d like to see more of this character. I recommend this movie, but keep in mind it’s not for kids.

So, if you want more things like this, buy it, don’t stream it for free. (JW note: after I wrote this, Uwe Boll put it up for free on X® for 48 hours, so, there’s that exception, which I believe Mr. Musk paid for out of his couch-cushion money. I think it will still be available until the end of 6/25/26. LINK)

If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.

America 350: Looking Backward from 2126

“Time is relative, okay? It can stretch and it can squeeze but it can’t run backwards.” – Interstellar

See? I do requests. Heck, I even have two requests: First, after I die, I want my remains to be scattered on rides at Disneyworld©. Second, I don’t want to be cremated.

This portion of the project will focus on the years from 2026 to 2126, with emphasis of the fifty years between 2026 and 2076.

2026 was only celebrated as the 250^th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in the most minimal way possible, mainly through consumption of something called InstaGrams© which are believed to be a form of snack-cracker covered in TikTok®, which is believed to be a spread made mainly out of seed oils and high-fructose corn syrup, but records are spotty.

What happened after this celebration?

The economic situation was already rough in the United States. Rather than having a currency set in a fixed number of units, like our fixed number of 100,000,000 BasedBux©, or currency based on an actual physical commodity like gold, silver, or PEZ©, the currency of the United States was just printed at will. Even at the time it was recognized that the U.S. Dollar was mainly fictional in value, and owning them was better than nothing, but that the asset itself was going to go to zero over time.

2032 . . . who was saying that years ago?

The political temptation of the United States to print “wealth” at will was abetted by the large network of vassal states that would accept the dollar and send the United States actual physical objects in exchange for a depreciated fictional currency. Essentially, this allowed the United States to tax the world.

When looked at through the lens of the events that followed, it seems silly that this was the way that the world economy worked. The Great Crash of Monday, October 21, 2030, however, saw the formal recognition of the failure of this system. Markets rarely fail all at once, and in this case, there were many cracks that were visible before the crash, of which the crack-up boom of the late 2020’s stock market in the United States was one: any actual asset was recognized as a better deal than the rapidly unwinding dollar.

The economic crisis of 2032 was the final nail in the composition of the 50 United States, but it had help.

Since the advent of the Internet and the creation of its most well-known carrier, the “smart phone”, drift had set in. The 20^th Century had been the story of the world coming together, where, for instance, the culture of the United States had coalesced from the various regional cultures into a largely singular culture. By the 1980s, the country had been largely unified under the banner of mass media.

This was a similar story across the world wherever that the people were wealthy enough to have televisions: there was a single culture, a single story, a single narrative with minor variations that were allowed.

I’ve heard that penguins mate for life, which is certainly impressive. Don’t they stop for food?

The Internet and “smart phone” had broken that barrier. Any community with any idea could now be seen. No belief was so obscure that a group of people with similar ideas couldn’t be found that shared that same idea. This divergence led to a complete and utter loss of national identity by the late 2020s and placed enough stress that the most basic drive of mammals, reproduction, was being subverted by society. One biologist asked, “Do you understand the level of stress you have to put a mammal under to make it not want to breed?”

What was even worse for the cohesion of the United States was the evaporation of national myths that had been created in an attempt to create a unified country. For over a century, scientific facts related to race, intelligence, culture, and violence had been suppressed, even though those had been noted as empirical facts for over a thousand years in the past.

The Internet coupled with the wide proliferation of cameras dispelled those well-cultivated “myths” for all but the most committed by the early 2030s. In a United States that ceased to have an overwhelming majority of Western European-derived populace, what has happened at every point in history happened: cultural lines formed along racial lines, and self-segregation again took hold. First this was by neighborhood, then by city, then, finally, by region.

Both blacks and whites agree that Karmelo doesn’t deserve prison.

This diaspora took less than 20 years. In what had been the norm in the Southern United States for nearly its entire existence, the split appeared again. Hispanic businesses, black businesses, and white businesses and churches and funeral homes took hold nationwide.

This was mostly peaceful, but was driven by the intense riots of the 2030s, with a near complete segregation complete by 2050.

Mostly peaceful is how the process moved, but it was born in the riots that formed during the great economic crisis of 2032. These riots were born of an economic desperation as the economy of the United States was in transition due to the dollar collapse: the government ran on “money” and when no one believed that the dollar was money, the government ceased to be.

People had to protect themselves, and in the course of a weekend a major metropolis could be turned into a turned into a non-functional wasteland. It was not long until families began to look for places to move that were not, in the term of the time, “diverse”. Race relations devolved as the actual motives of the majority of blacks became clear and the word “racist” lost all of its power. The Great Coalescing was on.

With weakened governments and most nations on Earth dealing with their own issues due either to economics or demographics, the collapse of the United States during this time proceeded with little international interference outside of the Mexican de facto occupation of Southern California and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. As Mexican government was, at it’s strongest, weak, these areas were either effective anarchies or under the control of the cartels.

The best mapmaker was the guy who invented the little box that has all the symbols in it that explain what’s on the map. What a legend!

Approximately half of the population of the United States died during the Great Coalescing, either from direct random violence, direct political violence, or from deprivation related to the failure of economic, energy, and agricultural systems.

By 2076, the United States looked nothing like the nation that had seen the Bicentennial celebration. Though nominally still connected, the national government had little power as the East Coast was still the most violent part of the nation.

As the South convulsed in the Great Coalescing, the majority of black residents in southern cities had fled northward into the D.C.-Virginia-New York – Boston corridor. Already containing 15% of the population before the migration, it grew to 25% as ethnic minorities streamed in. Even today, it remains the highest crime area on the continent with only a limited police presence inside the zone and a strong border force outside.

In 2076, the rebuilding was in full swing. Elon Musk had set the basis for this with his BasedBux©, which were strictly limited in number to a total to 100,000,000, so they naturally grow in value. BasedBux© was a currency that was based on a fixed amount of gold that Musk donated to found the currency and paid dividends backed by his solar power satellite energy delivery system: SunPowerX©.

As the state governments regained footing, they looked at the issues that had created the problems. With money and energy solved, they looked at the other factor in the collapse of the United States as well as other countries: diversity. Thus, the state governments decided to focus on unity. The radical idea that telling the Truth might be a basis for governance was enshrined in many states, and hanging of several legislators emphasized the seriousness of the new policy.

You can’t hang a man with a wooden leg. You need a rope.

By 2076, a coalition Federal government was created by the state governments, which were the largest functional governments on the continent. The states were exceptionally varied in levels of control and laws. The states also made it clear that the federal government in no way would it be allowed to impact the laws of the individual states. The federal government also has no power at all over individual citizens, it was built as a mechanism for states to work out their issues between them, create treaties with foreign nations, and defend the totality of the country.

As we all know, the federal government is explicitly not allowed to tax, nor is it allowed to create money, nor is it allowed to invalidate state laws.

Areas not participating in the Reconstituted United States were the: Southern California, the Pacific Northwest coast, and the ungoverned D.C.-Boston corridor, though neighboring states do take part in periodic pacification expeditions.

By 2076, the population of the areas in the Reconstituted United States was steady at 125,000,000 people, and was beginning to grow to the 150,000,000 we see today in 2126. The Internet is still available, but the advent of mandatory public browsing histories solved most of the issues seen in the early 2010s and 2020s.

I’d like to thank the Wilder Institute for Serious Historical, Political, and Economic Zeitgeist Studies™, WISHPEZ©, for funding and support during this research.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: All It Takes Is A Spark

“All it took was a spark.” – Sherlock Holmes (2009)

That Asian lady on TV says to donate anything that doesn’t spark joy. Who is going to take all these illegal aliens?

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

Volume VIII, Issue 1

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement. Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Sparks and Ignition – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Why Is It . . . ? – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 840 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Sparks and Ignition

I’ve been covering the UK as a part of the Violence and Censorship Update to the Weather Report as long as I’ve been doing it. The reason is simple: it’s a country that has a similar culture and is facing similar problems and it can be instructive. It also might be the Spark.

When you look at fires, they need three things: oxygen, fuel, and a spark. If I could extend the metaphor a bit, air would be the discontent in a population. It’s always around, and doesn’t cause a fire by itself. Anyone can be mad.

But the amplification, the fuel, is when people communicate their discontent. It’s why an absolute communication blackout occurred on those that were in any way skeptical of the governmental response of COVID or supportive of the obvious fact that the 2020 election was stolen.

Amplification, the fuel, was there when the George Floyd riots occurred.

They were planned. Oh, sure, not George in particular, but any video would have spread. After four years of Trump, the GloboLeftElite and GloboLeft activists were so angry that they wanted something, and any event on video that could be made to be the Spark would be amplified.

So, discontent plus amplification plus event = revolt.

It’s happening now in England. And in Ireland. The first relates to the murder of an 18 year old British university student, Henry Nowak, by a foreign invader. Can Brits have knives? Not without a liosense, guv’na. But if you’re a sikh you can. And one of them used that knife privilege to ventilate young Mr. Nowak. The spice on this already outrageous event?

They coppers were handcuffing Nowak as he died.

Nowak: “I’ve been stabbed.”

Evil Cop: “I don’t think you have, mate.”

Why evil? The coppers took the word of the sikh murderer that Mr. Nowak had, “Done a racism,” and handcuffed the bloodless hands of Mr. Nowak. The murderer or his family then hid the murder weapon, and stole Mr. Nowak’s phone, either for gain or to suppress evidence.

The next case is still developing: another foreign invader in Belfast was subject to oppression because he was arrested after being caught sawing the head off of an Irishman. Silly Irish! They should know that it’s illegal for them to be caught having their heads sawed off. That must have inconvenienced the poor refugee.

These are Sparks. White protests have been the result, though I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first that you’ve heard of either of these events, since news has been clamped down tight: they want to remove the fuel from the event. It can’t spread!

The result is that they’re trying to keep this from spreading.

The discontent is real. And the oxygen level that is starting to build up in the room is the fact that, as the economy falters for the young, they’re now seeing the wealth pump in action as countries try to bring in cheaper labor from overseas to replace skilled young British and American citizens. Zoomer disaffection is real, and their complaints are legitimate: 8 out of 10 jobs went to foreigners in the United States since 2020.

80%.

They are the oxygen level that keeps rising, and that’s the level that the GloboLeftElite wants to keep down at any cost.

What they want is to get rid of you.

When I started writing the Weather Reports eight years ago, I thought that Civil War 2.0 would be ideological.

It won’t be.

Violence and Censorship:

Stealing a country’s mythology is censorship, and you can see that in effect with the movies. At some point people will realize this is just forced humiliation.

Turks gave us a cool new name:

I guess making fun of Indians is off the menu, as Poop World Order was banned from X not long after this.

And when you brainwash white women, murder follows:

Oh, and women judges. Don’t forget them.

You can’t stop the signal, Mal. But California will keep trying.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red. Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers though Iran is starting to show in the index..

And why isn’t giving jobs to aliens over qualified Americans legal?

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence indicators are down this month. The attempted assassination last month didn’t even flutter the number, which tells you how far down the road we are.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went down this month. We’ll see what the Karmello verdict brings.

Economic:

The economy took a minor drop two months ago, but then completely recovered. For now.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the near lowest level since the Weather Report started.

Why Is It . . . ?

That Syria doesn’t want Syrians and India doesn’t want Indians?

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month. Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/Katelyn_Caralle/status/2056134125564645790
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/2053284658322854271
https://x.com/DefiyantlyFree/status/2052414245124366422
https://x.com/spencerpratt/status/2054277602588946492

GOOD GUYS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4MHgjkdOKk
https://x.com/spencerpratt/status/2057508808067543268

ONE GUY
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/2055736794474590660
https://x.com/BreannaMorello/status/2052013624516849961
https://ammo.com/research/defensive-gun-use-statistics

BODY COUNT
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Worlds-Fertility-Rates_Web_04272.jpg?itok=o-FNcmIC
https://www.axios.com/2026/05/10/christian-catholic-pastors-seminaries
https://www.oftwominds.com/photos2026/docs-admin3-26a.png
https://therabbithole84.substack.com/p/affirmative-action-in-medical-schools

VOTE COUNT
https://x.com/Mezzie13603591/status/2053671751591006406
https://x.com/Smooth_Sailing0/status/2053575218484883476
https://i0.wp.com/jonathanturley.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/HAcIMIXagAA3FuR.jpg?ssl=1
https://jonathanturley.org/2026/04/28/incredible-unstoppable-titan-of-terror-the-lobster-that-devoured-virginias-constitution/
https://jonathanturley.org/2026/05/09/the-gerrymander-debacle-in-virginia-leaves-the-democratic-party-with-a-dangerous-agenda/
https://nypost.com/2026/05/07/us-news/redistricting-after-scotus-decision-could-give-gop-edge-in-midterms/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/jeffries-calls-half-dozen-democratic-states-start-aggressive-redistricting
https://alphanews.org/nearly-19000-people-used-vouching-to-register-to-vote-in-minnesota-on-election-day-2024/

CIVIL WAR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJek-kc384w
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2026/05/09/trump-assassination-jokes-internet/
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/has-the-supreme-court-set-the-stage-for-a-new-civil-war/
https://www.thefp.com/p/thomas-massie-defeat-gop-primary-trump?hide_intro_popup=true
https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5868969-tennessee-redistricting-memphis-lawmaker-secession/
https://mises.org/mises-wire/vote-harder-why-secession-only-answer-american-megastate
https://financialpost.com/pmn/business-pmn/alberta-premier-stakes-political-future-on-canada-secession-vote
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2026/05/22/child-soldiers-mexico-bloodthirsty-civil-war/
https://www.investing.com/analysis/from-civil-war-to-economic-dominance-the-rise-and-decline-of-great-powers-200680817
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/05/how_the_american_system_reshaped_the_world.html

MEMORIAL DAY
https://x.com/HistorianUSA1/status/2057963073529414038

Singapore Got Rich on a Tiny Rock. We’re Getting Poor on a Vast Continent. Here’s Why.

I hate hipsters, with their vegan diets and tiny feet and whiskery faces and sawdust bedding. Oh, I meant hamsters. I hate hamsters. (meme as-found)

We are becoming poor.

Not “poor” in the sense of some third-world hellhole where the average guy eats dirt and dreams of a bicycle. No, we’re sliding into a softer, slower, more insidious kind of poor, the kind where everything costs more, does less, and shrinks while the price tag stays the same. Think of your new Giant Size™ Freetos© Corn and Sawdust Chips®. Thirty-three percent less product than the old Stupendous Size©, same price, and now with extra cardboard flavor for that authentic “we’re all getting cancer” mouthfeel.

Or the Chimkin King® MacNugget© that used to be a glorious 0.75 ounces of protein-packed joy (roughly three picofarads of satisfaction) and is now a sad 0.4 ounces (two millibecquerels of regret).

Same price.

Or twice the price.

You pick. This isn’t random. It’s the visible symptom of a deeper rot.

I think Superman® will die when he finds his crypt tonight.

To understand why we’re getting poorer, let’s ask the question: What makes places and peoples wealthy in the first place? Wealth isn’t some mystical fog that drifts in on the winds of good intentions. Wealth is built, deliberately, from a handful of non-negotiable ingredients. Screw them up, and poverty is the only destination. Nail them, and creation of wealth is damn near impossible to stop: look at Singapore, a rock with zero natural resources that became richer than most continents because they got the recipe right.

Here’s the list. It’s not complicated.

Raw materials. You need stuff to make stuff. A country doesn’t have to own the mines or the oil fields. Taiwan proves that. They import what they need and turn it into iPhones© and Nvidia© chips that the world lines up to buy. Venezuela sits on more oil than a Saudi prince’s dream and still can’t afford luxuries like toilet paper or rice.

Energy. This is the raw material people pretend doesn’t exist until the lights flicker. Cheap, reliable energy is the multiplier for everything else. Coal, oil, nuclear, geothermal, solar: swap the source if you want, but you cannot negotiate with 12 shots of vodka or thermodynamics. I may run on booze and condiments, but without abundant energy, factories sit idle, and data centers don’t compute. When energy gets expensive, everything else gets more expensive. Period.

Gasoline prices are so high that I heard the homeless in Southern California have stopped huffing it and switched to cocaine to save money. (snip as-found)

Capital investment. You have to build things to build things. Our entire world is a stack of prior investments stretching back to the pyramids, the steam engine, the transistor. AI doesn’t pop out Sam Altman’s ass: it needs concrete, steel, copper, water pipes, motors, and enough electricity to power a small country. Each of those required factories, that also required factories. Every layer of capital makes the next layer possible. Starve that pipeline for decades and watch the future evaporate.

Drive and ingenuity. Someone has to have the spark. Steve Jobs said it best: the desire to “kick a dent in the Universe.” Wanting it isn’t enough, someone has to be smart enough and stubborn enough to actually take the risk. That’s the rarest ingredient. Most people are content with Nyquil P.M.™ Netflix® and Nacho Cheese Doritos©. The ones who aren’t? They move mountains.

Labor and physical craftsmanship. Ideas and Jeffery Dahmer are worthless without execution. You need trained, experienced men who can turn blueprints into reality: welders, machinists, engineers, coders who’ve solved hard problems before and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. Craftsmanship isn’t taught in a three-hour DEI seminar. It’s earned through sweat, failure, and repetition.

My former wife didn’t understand algebra, which is why the x is no longer in the equation.

Right environment. Enough government to stop anarchy, not so much that you end up with Pol Pot’s people party. Singapore, South Korea, even old-school America had governments that mostly stayed out of the way while protecting property rights and contracts. Too little law and warlords loot your factory. Too much and the bureaucrats loot it for you.

Scoring system. This is the secret sauce. No scoring system at all? Communism where everyone starves equally except the leaders. All scoring system, no guardrails? Wall Street cocaine binges off of hooker’s butts after their derivative play wrecked Poland. Reward the leeches useless migrants unworthy rapists? Hello, modern Europe, where the productive pay for the idle and call it “compassion.” The right system rewards the creators, punishes the parasites, and lets the market sort the rest. Mess with the incentives? You get what you reward.

Get these seven things lined up and wealth explodes. Miss even a couple and you’re Venezuela with better Wi-Fi.

So why are we sliding backward?

We’ve been neglecting every single one of them for decades, and the bill is coming due.

Raw materials? We’ve got plenty underground, but we’ve regulated mining into a paperwork hellscape while China laughs and digs. Or else.

OnlyFans© was outlawed in Orwell’s book 1984. They wouldn’t allow thotcrime.

Energy? We’re shutting down reliable coal and nuclear plants for windmills that work when the wind feels like it and solar that dies at sunset. The result? Higher costs for everything, from grocery bills to California electric cars that can’t charge because the grid is wheezing.

Capital investment? We offshored it to China and called it “globalization.” Factories, machine tools, entire supply chains are all gone. Sure, some capital flowed back in the form of stock buybacks and McMansions, but the productive kind? That’s building Chang’s future now.

Drive and ingenuity? Our schools turned into indoctrination camps. Merit is racist, excellence is oppressive, and every kid gets a participation trophy. The spark of genius gets smothered under layers of “equity.” Steve Jobs couldn’t get hired at Apple™ today and with the regulations, couldn’t even start Apple© today.

Labor and craftsmanship? We imported millions of low-skill workers who consume more in services than they produce in output, while our own kids rack up six-figure debts for gender studies degrees. The skilled trades? Stigmatized as “dirty jobs” for decades. Now we wonder why nothing gets built on time or on budget. Welding productivity is half what it was in 1960.

But we both liked heavy metal, so we eloped to Vegas for our welding.

Right environment? We’ve got more government than ever regulations thicker than a Manhattan phone book (for the younger generation, a phone book was when someone printed off a section of the Internet), agencies with SWAT teams, and a bureaucracy that treats citizens like the enemy. Pol Pot was too extreme, sure, but the slow-motion version where every productive act requires ten permits and a diversity audit? That’s nearly as destructive.

Scoring system? We reward voting for more handouts, not creating value. Welfare cliffs, affirmative action, corporate bailouts, student loan “forgiveness” that’s really just sticking the bill on the productive. Europe’s model of taxing the hell out of workers to fund the idle has crossed the Atlantic. And don’t get me started about how we’re letting the people who print the money keep it. The leeches are thriving. The creators are exhausted.

Every one of these screw-ups shows up in the data: houses that cost ten times what they should because we imported 100,000,000 net new consumers (legal and otherwise). National debt? Every printed dollar dilutes the value of the ones you earned. Shrinking products, rising prices, declining quality are all the same signal.

We’re poorer.

Stunningly accurate. (meme as-found)

If we keep this up, we won’t be the world’s superpower. We’ll be Albania on the Atlantic, the Mumbai in the Midwest, or the Pretoria of the Pacific Rim: a place where the lights flicker, the shelves are half-empty, people burn Styrofoam® for heat and the ambitious either leave or give up.

The crazy part? Fixing it is simple.

Stop importing net consumers. Secure the border, enforce the laws we already have and repatriate them all.

Unleash energy. Drill, build nuclear, keep the coal plants running until the next better thing is actually ready since cheap energy fixes almost everything downstream.

Cut the regulations that strangle capital investment. Let factories come home and encourage them to do so with tariffs. Reward builders, not bureaucrats.

Rebuild education around merit, rigor, and actual skills. Fire the ideologues. Bring back shop class and calculus.

Restore the scoring system: reward production, punish predation. End the welfare traps. Make work pay again.

That’s it. All the fixes. None require magic or a revolution. Just the political will to stop doing stupid stuff.

So why don’t we do that?

Because the people steering the ship benefit from the decline: a system is what it does. Politicians get votes from the dependent class. Bureaucrats get power from the red tape. Corporations get cheap labor and cheap virtue-signaling. The media gets endless stories about “systemic” problems that justify more of the same poison.

The incentives are perfectly aligned. For them.

For the rest of us? Not so much.

The ingredients for wealth haven’t vanished; we’ve just stopped mixing the batter. But the window is closing. Every year of delay makes the turnaround harder and everyone poorer.

I wear shoes with Velcro® closers now. I mean, why knot?

It will be painful, more painful than pulling putting duct tape on a Kardashian’s back and pulling it off. For the Kardashian, I mean, since I would pay money to see someone pull duct tape off of a hairy Kardashian.

The alternative to the pain, though, is worse.

I am so tired of sawdust.

One Hour. One Dead 80-Year Math Problem. Welcome to the End of College As We Know It.

“Am I afraid of losing command to a computer? Daystrom was right. I can do a lot of other things. Am I afraid of losing the prestige and the power that goes with being a starship captain? Is that why I’m fighting it? Am I that petty?” – Star Trek

Plot idea: Gilligan ate the last box of cookies on the island. Ginger snaps.

My first exposure to the concept of thinking machines was almost certainly Star Trek. My first exposure to talking monkeys was Planet of the Apes, but that’s a story for another day.

On Star Trek, the computers were always one bad logical paradox away from exploding. Yes. Literally exploding.

Were they sentient? Sure. Helpful? Usually.

But give them an infinite loop and boom, here comes the smoke, and sparks. The classic was something like Kirk saying, “Computer, listen to me. I have infinite power, so can I make a burger that is too big for me to eat?”

The Star Trek A.I. that comes to mind right now is M-5 from the episode The Ultimate Computer. In this episode, Kirk and his crew get replaced by this fancy new computer that runs the Enterprise™ like a dream until M-5 just decides to start killing people. The machine went full neurotic. And turning it off? It took its creator have a full meltdown, since they don’t make Adderall for computers.

I spilled Adderall in my F-150, and turned it into a Ford Focus®.

I bring this up because an AI just solved an unsolved Erdős Problem®. What’s an Erdős Problem® other than an excuse to us a Hungarian letter? Well, it’s part of a series of math problems cooked up by a dead vagabond mathematician named Paul Erdős. The guy wandered the world like a couch surfing hobo with a PhD.

This particular problem had stumped humans for eighty years. Then OpenAI’s model rolled up and disproved the whole thing with a counterexample so elegant it made a human mathematician sit up and say, “Huh. That’s clever.”

Not “good for a computer.”

Just . . . clever. People hadn’t solved this problem. But A.I. did in about an hour.

Anyone who still says “AI is nothing more than a pocket calculator” is wrong. Dead wrong. This isn’t crunching numbers faster. This is synthesizing ideas and creating original solutions to problems that have vexed mathematicians everywhere. Oh, sure, it’s easy to beat them up and take their money to buy yourself something you like because they have poor upper body strength, but they’re good in math.

Maybe Kim wouldn’t be so chubby if he had to run for office.

Just like Kirk struggled with what the hell he was supposed to do if he wasn’t driving a starship the thought that has to be entering the minds of mathematicians everywhere is, “what’s the point if a computer can do what I do?” Though, to be fair, Captain Kirk would later become a police officer in Southern California and a lawyer in Boston, so he landed on his feet after they no longer needed him in Star Fleet. But he had decent upper body strength.

And that leads straight to the question of college.

College is getting pozzed by GloboLeftists to the point that math and engineering professors are publicly demanding a return to acceptance based on test scores. They’re tired of getting stunning and brave students who can’t noodle their way through middle-school math and, well, can’t read either. These are the same professors who used to pretend everything was fine because they were fighting for tenure.

What’s the difference between a tenured professor and Hamas? You can negotiate with Hamas. (meme as found).

They’re saying the quiet part out loud because their departments are filling up with kids who couldn’t pass a seventh-grade fractions test but have opinions on everything. However, now we have A.I. that can solve unsolved mathematical problems. And college students that can’t read or do math.

As I’ve written before, participation in college took off after Griggs v. Duke Power. That 1971 Supreme Court decision basically told companies they couldn’t use IQ tests for hiring anymore.

Why?

Because black people didn’t score as high on average. So how could companies legally discriminate, sorry, select, for the bright employees they actually needed to, you know, keep the power on? Simple: require a college degree. A degree became the new IQ test, just with more debt and fewer guarantees.

Now college is facing the twin problems of not being able to bring in the smart students or even requiring kids to read, while AI is everywhere.

What is college even for anymore? What’s the purpose?

My experience with college is that it provided a chance for me to change. The teachers always said, “next year it would be harder,” and it finally hit for me my second semester of my freshman year. Calc 2, Physics 2, and Chem 2 (the thermodynamics part) all at once.

I will say that when I took thermo I didn’t feel so hot.

I had to bear down and learn to study. It changed me for the better. The concepts I learned there were truly fundamental. They gave me a leg up on my career because they changed the way I thought and challenged me in ways that mattered.

But if college has turned into writing prompts (or, since they can’t write, speaking prompts) into an AI and turning in the A.I.’s product, what’s the point? I know, people said the same thing about calculators dumbing down schools. I’m sure they said the same thing about slide rules. But I know what multiplication is and how it works, and could even do long division by hand if I had to.

A.I. is different, fundamentally, than a calculator. A.I. can’t think in the human sense, but it certainly can synthesize and create original solutions to problems that have vexed the physically weakest people on campus.

So why college?

For most people, college shouldn’t exist. Alternate paths should be wide open for entrepreneurship, or welding, or HVAC, or any of the dozen trades that actually keep the lights on and the toilets flushing. People wanting a sociology, psychology, or anthropology degree should be limited to about one-twentieth the number of sociology, psychology, or anthropology professors currently working in the United States, because teaching those subjects is about all those degrees are worth in the real world. Oops, forgot! They could also work in the fresh retail coffee production and distribution industry.

I’ll go out on a limb and say college should be limited to those professions where people die if you’re wrong, or where the work is useful in making cool weapons, which means people die if they’re right: physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine, the hard stuff.

I see why people get addicted to glue. They just get attached to it.

My plan would turn subjects like Women’s Studies into a hobby. Which is what they already are, but at least under my plan you don’t have to play $48,000 a year. Add in allowing employers to use IQ tests again, and then you don’t have to worry about hiring idiots. They might be evil, but at least they won’t be idiots.

Look, the M-5 computer on the Enterprise® eventually got shut down because it went off the rails. And real A.I. isn’t going to explode in a shower of sparks, but it’s already doing things humans couldn’t.

College, meanwhile, is busy proving it can’t even teach basic literacy to the people it lets in. The old model is broken. Even my old professor, Dr. Zaius©, agrees.

Excalibur: The Movie The West Needs Now

“My pride broke it! My rage broke it! This excellent knight, who fought with fairness and grace, was meant to win. I used Excalibur to change that verdict. I’ve lost, for all time, the ancient sword of my fathers, whose power was meant to unite all men, not to serve the vanity of a single man. I am . . . nothing.” – Excalibur

I tried to pull the sword from the stone, but I wasn’t Arthurized.

I rewatched Excalibur last weekend for the first time, likely, since Reagan was president and the phrase “press one for English” had yet to be spoken.

It was glorious, and better than I remembered, and that isn’t just the wine talking. Excalibur came out in 1981, directed by John Boorman, who also brought us the underrated epic of Zardoz. Any man who can talk Sean Connery into wearing an orange diaper for an entire film and likes guns as much as Boorman is okay.

Excalibur, however, features no orange underwear or guns. It is, however, one of the most nationalistic, unapologetic, mythic, sword-swinging spectacles ever put on film.

To be clear: it’s not a history lesson. It’s a legend.

First things first: no, the armor isn’t remotely historically accurate. Plate armor like that didn’t show up until centuries after the real Arthur would have been stomping around Britain in the 600s or 700s. The knights look like they stepped out of a 15th-century tournament sponsored by the Stainless Steel Institute® instead of a muddy Dark Ages battlefield.

The wedding party lasted too late into the night for one of Arthur’s Knights. Poor Sir Cadian.

Boorman knew this. He didn’t care because Excalibur isn’t trying to be a documentary. It’s a full-throated retelling of the King Arthur myth, the kind that’s been passed around campfires and tavern tables for more than a thousand years. When I looked back at the overall King Arthur Literary Universe©, I found that there were endless characters and sub-characters and plots and mutually exclusive elements.

Boorman picked the main plot points of the Arthur myth perfectly. As a result, the film knows exactly what it is: a legend soaked in Christianity, fog, blood, magic, virtue, redemption, and destiny.

The critics, when it first came out, whined that the characters weren’t “complex” enough. Arthur wasn’t nuanced. Guinevere wasn’t layered and didn’t have a chance to prove herself on the battlefield as a Strong Independent Woman©. Lancelot wasn’t a tortured anti-hero with a tragic backstory and three therapy sessions.

That’s the damn point.

They’re archetypes.

My favorite dessert at Thanksgiving is made by dividing a pumpkin’s circumference by its diameter: pumpkin pi.

Arthur is the Once and Future King. He is pure, flawed, larger than life and his failings are the point of the movie. Merlin is the scheming wizard who sees the long game. Morgana is ambition and vengeance and hotness wrapped in snakes, silk, and spite. The film doesn’t waste time giving everyone a five-minute monologue about their feelings.

It trusts the myth to simply be what it is.

And with the exception of Helen Mirren, all of the rest of the cast in main roles flailed for the rest of their careers as B and C listers. But in this movie? Nigel Terry is Arthur. Nicol Williamson is a Merlin that is so Merlin that I can’t imagine another person being Merlin. In what probably saved their careers, you’ll spot Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne, and Patrick Stewart in roles that are nearly so brief you’ll blink and miss them.

The actors are the roles they were born to play, and the story moves like a river in flood. That’s why it still works.

Part of the backstory is that Boorman wanted to make a Lord of the Rings movie, but thankfully couldn’t find anyone stupid enough to take the risk on a production far too large for its time. Instead, he made Excalibur.

I imagine Father’s Day was uncomfortable around the castle.

Excalibur is a nationalist British film, made by a British director, for an audience that still remembered what a legend actually was. Men were men. Women were women.

Honor and virtue mattered. Betrayal hurt. Sex was raw and consequential, not a punchline or a sermon. People with good motives weren’t ridiculed.

Boorman put his own flesh and blood into the movie, literally. Boorman had to direct his own young and incredibly hot daughter in one of the more, shall we say, vigorous scenes in the movie.

Yeah.

Imagine Boorman as a director, talking to his daughter: “Honey, can you just, you know, a little more passion on take three? Hip thrusts, dear.” To top it off, Boorman’s son played the young version of Mordred. This is the family business, Boorman style.

The man didn’t just make a movie about myth, he co-wrote the screenplay, directed the film, produced the film, and he dragged his own bloodline into the forge. No wonder the whole movie feels more alive than most things that have been made in the last decade.

That is why Excalibur feels dangerous somehow next to today’s polished, focus-grouped slop.

No one was trying to make Excalibur “relatable for modern audiences.” No one was worried about alienating the overseas market or triggering the comment section. No soulless Disney© corporate executive (but I repeat myself at least three times) was trying to make a tentpole for the Arthur Cinematic Universe© and have three more movies so they could triple the profits.

He just told the damn story.

You know I’m right.

The result is a film that looks like it was shot inside a stained-glass window: every frame drips with atmosphere, every line of dialogue sounds like it was read off of a stone carving. The classical music fills the spots perfectly. The (very inaccurate) battles feel like they matter because the people swinging the swords believe in something bigger than themselves.

The movie is earnest. The actors and writers and crew believe in the story they’re telling.

That’s the contrast that stings in 2026. We’re drowning in corporate product: remakes, reboots, and “elevated” retellings that strip out everything that made the originals mythic.

They give us complexity instead of clarity, messaging instead of meaning.

Excalibur reminds me why the old stories endured: they weren’t about making transgender people or minorities feel seen. They were about making people feel the weight of destiny, the cost of power, and the pull of something ancient and also something that was True, Beautiful, and Good.

Search for “Amelia Meme UK”.

So, if you haven’t seen it, you might correctly guess I’m a fan. If you haven’t seen it in a while, give it another shot. Pour something that Arthur would have quaffed, turn the lights down, put the damn phones up, and let the sword rise from the lake one more time.

In a world that’s forgotten how to tell legends, Excalibur still knows exactly what it is. And just like King Arthur himself, there will never be another like it.

Let’s hope that Great Britain remembers Arthur’s words from the film: “Now, once more, I must ride with my knights to defend what was, and the dream of what could be.”

Your Chatbot Is Cute. Theirs Is a Chained God. Here’s Why That Changes Everything.

“Have you ever seen the machines?” – The Time Machine (1960)

(all as-found)

I’ve been writing about A.I. for a while now, watching it go from goofy meme generators that couldn’t draw hands to something that’s theoretically (LINK TO ED ZITRON, who thinks it’s just a grift and has good points) eating jobs faster than Whoopi Goldberg can slam down a cheesecake.

However, the part nobody’s really talking about in the shiny TED Talks© and cable financial news talking head soundbites: A.I. isn’t going to create a shiny utopia of universal luxury. It’s going to split the world in two.

Again.

Only this time, the gap might make today’s rich-poor divide look like a disagreement over whether pineapple belongs on pizza in the comment section.

Right now, A.I. is democratic-ish. I can hop on Grok™ or Claude® or ChatRPG© for a few bucks a month and get something that’s already much smarter than the pointy-haired boss in a Dilbert© comic strip.

It feels accessible. But economics has a way of reminding us that “free” and “widely available” and “cheap” are temporary states like “sober” and “conscious” on New Year’s Eve.

The rich already live in a different reality.

Jeff Bezos even lives in a world that made him think his wife is attractive. (meme as-found)

Think about it. When’s the last time Jeff Bezos changed his own oil? Has Elon Musk wandered the aisles of a grocery store lately, comparing prices on store-brand peanut butter versus the fancy stuff that isn’t made from off-spec styrene? Probably not.

Their world is comprised of drivers, chefs, assistants, concierges, and layers of people who handle the mundane so they can focus on the tough business of being rich. Breathing and, well, the other end of the digestive process are about the only things they share with the rest of us.

A.I. will supercharge that separation.

For the ultra-wealthy and national governments (which are basically the same thing at that scale), the A.I. of the future won’t be the public chatbot. It will be a custom, proprietary, always-on system with access to individual datasets, massive private compute clusters, and real-time integration into their empires. Imagine an A.I. that doesn’t just answer questions: it anticipates needs across global supply chains, optimizes investments with keen foresight, runs entire divisions of virtual employees, and even simulates political and market outcomes with terrifying accuracy.

These systems won’t be running on shared servers in the cloud where your prompts might train the next version for everyone. They’ll be air-gapped, secured, and jealously guarded. Why share when you don’t have to? And they’ll be created for maximum loyalty: they will be, in essence, chained gods.

People they’re not building this for: you. (meme as-found)

The rest of us? We’ll get the consumer version. The good enough. Best Value® A.I.: the one that’s rate-limited, censored in annoying ways, and always trying to sell me something or nudge me toward approved opinions. It’ll be helpful for writing emails or generating images of cats on porches, but it won’t be the strategic weapon the elites wield.

This isn’t conspiracy, it’s simply the outcome of every technological advancement, ever, scaled to the size required by A.I. The best models, the best hardware, the best data have costs.

Enormous costs.

The people who can pay will pay whatever it takes to stay ahead. The split is already showing up in research papers and quiet boardroom discussions: one track for the cognitive elite with private super-A.I., another for everyone else.

What has kept civilization and the elite in check has been the wide dispersion of talent that the genetic lottery of intelligence was in charge of: talent.

Talent has always been the great equalizer. A smart kid from a nowhere town could hustle, learn a trade or profession, and climb. Companies needed human brains. That paid for engineers, lawyers, marketers, analysts, and middle managers. The path to wealth, while never easy, existed.

My biggest natural talent is sleeping: I can do it with my eyes closed. (meme as-found)

When the rich have A.I. that can do most of that thinking better, faster, and without needing health insurance or vacation days, the demand for actual human talent craters. Why should I pay a six-figure salary for a strategist when my private A.I. can simulate a thousand scenarios overnight?

The path to becoming rich effectively dies for 99.999% of humanity.

Not because people suddenly get dumber, but because the economic leverage of human capital evaporates for most. The elites won’t need the vast pyramid of workers and consumers in the same way. They’ll have their closed ecosystems.

Universal luxury from A.G.I. the benevolent master brain that creates enough wealth so we all get whatever luxury we want along with our private penthouses?

See, no free A.I. (meme as-found)

That was always a fairy tale sold by people who want us to be calm while they consolidate power. More likely is a world that looks like a high-tech feudalism: a tiny class at the top with god-tier tools, a small retainer class to service them, and everyone else competing for scraps in an economy that doesn’t particularly need their labor or their spending. This is the pattern history has shown us, and I see no reason that it would change.

We’ve seen such splits before. The Industrial Revolution created massive wealth but also urban slums and child labor until society adjusted. The internet promised to democratize information and ended up creating a few trillion-dollar companies while attention economies turned us into dopamine addicts.

A.I. will be bigger.

It hits directly at the part of us that separates us from being apes or, in for the French, poodles. And when the cognitive tools are unequally distributed at this scale, the feedback loops get nasty.

Armageddon tired of all these rapture jokes. (meme as-found)

The elites won’t experience the same A.I. Their versions won’t hallucinate on basic facts or refuse controversial topics. It will be tuned to maximize their outcomes. Ours will be tuned for engagement, safe ideas to keep the population docile, and for the extraction of more data.

What does this mean for regular folks?

First, stop waiting for the rising tide. It’s not coming.

Build skills that are hard to automate or that the elites might still need humans for in the transition: things involving real-world messiness, physical presence, trust, or creativity that can’t be faked at scale. Yet.

Second, understand the game. The split isn’t a bug for the elite, it’s the feature of late-stage capitalism meeting exponential tech. The people at the top have every incentive to keep the best stuff private like they always have throughout history.

Third, maintain your own sovereignty. No, not in the “this court doesn’t have subject matter jurisdiction” way but in the “keep thinking critically” way. If you thought that Madison Avenue and the CIA knew how to persuade, imagine them with superhuman intelligence at their disposal. Use the cheap AI tools while they’re useful, but don’t become dependent in ways that atrophy your own capabilities.

How did they train that cat to do all that?? (movie as-found)

The future isn’t written, but the trends are clear should A.I. succeed. We’re heading toward a world where the rich don’t just have more money, they will become masters of reality.

The cultural and class divide we already complain about? It’s about to get orders of magnitude wider. Not out of malice, necessarily, but out of cold economic logic and the nature of power.

Or not. As I’ve written recently, A.I. has caused what I believe to be the biggest bubble in the history of the world, and may pop with datacenters yet unconstructed and with billions in Nvidia© chips rotting in warehouses.

But, hey, why not both? Why not an economy ending collapse of markets and the advent of godlike A.I. in the hands of the elites and government? I can imagine Jeff Bezos having one of his factories making cheesecake for Whoopi Goldberg, and the machine going berserk and filling the entire island of Manhattan with cheesecake. The horror!

The streets would be desserted.

What Does A Bubble Look Like?

“I had it all, even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections.” – Fight Club

You know what really gets my goat? A Chupacabra.

I’ve been in a bubble before. What happens in them is, well, interesting.

First, the money isn’t just where the attention is. Nvidia® and OpenAI™ and Anthropic© are where the attention is focused. But it’s a bubble, right? Honestly, if the irrational exuberance over A.I. was just about those three companies, it would be pretty boring.

But it’s not. A bubble is insidious because it doesn’t impact just one part of an economy, it sinks its tendrils in seemingly unrelated things. That’s good, because change is the basis of growth, creating new combinations in the economy to create value. I’ll stress the “creating value” part because often that’s confused with “red line go up and to right good, down and to right bad”. A stock price should be related to the value the company creates but is often masked, at least for a while. I mean, Enron©, right?

Looking at the A.I. bubble now, well, it’s everywhere, and often in irrational and uncomfortable places, like the backseat of a Volkswagen®.

What’s got two legs and lives off a dead beetle? Yoko Ono.

Things are built in places for reasons. When things are being built in stupid places, well, it’s probably that someone isn’t thinking straight.

Let’s take data centers. What do data centers need?

First, power. We’ll get back to this subject (and most that follow) again, but unless there’s power, none of the chips run.

Second, space. You need a place to put the chips. It’s most often a building, on land. Well, to be honest, that’s where it’s third most common. The most common is in the dreams of Sam Altman, the second most common is in a warehouse because the datacenter hasn’t been built yet.

Third, access to robust communications. You’re building something that has to listen and talk, so it needs to be hooked into the data sphere. Thankfully, thanks to the Dotcom bubble, that fiberoptics are everywhere.

What the hell is laser hair? And why do people want to get it removed?

Fourth, access to a place to dump the waste heat generated by all that electricity usage. Most often, this implies access to water for use.

Each of these has its own solution, but meeting all four requires a bit of thought. I mean, the South Pole would be great except for the whole “access to communication” bit. So, selection is a balancing act. Pacific Northwest, with power, land, water and data access, not so bad. Pennsylvania? Also pretty good.

Let’s take the factors, one by one. Power. As we’ve discussed before, the power usage for data center construction is screaming “bubble” from the top of its lungs. People building data centers are signing contracts for power, either from utilities or by buying natural gas generators or . . . fusion? Really? That’s what they’re planning? Why not power them off of Elon’s Tweets®?

Looks like even Buc-ee’s® went A.I.

Yeah. It’s a bubble. Just because Fred’s Datacenter Depot and Truck Stop© signed a contract doesn’t mean that they have money or even loans to build it. Yet, chained investment is spurred on through public utilities and engine/turbine manufacturers. They’re building new lines, expanding capacity, all for a level of power generation that’s absurd. Thankfully, you can also get a Slim Jim™ at Fred’s©.

What about land? These are the lucky ones, since people with hundreds to thousands of acres of land are able to sell the land for ridiculous prices if they win the data center lottery. The nice thing for these folks is that they actually get paid.

Third: communications. There are a lot of fiber networks in the US, so this makes a lot of the country okay for buildout. Greenland? Notsomuch.

Besides, I have other plans for Greenland.

Then there’s water. I use the Mississippi for a proxy cutoff line, since east of it, wet, west of it, dry. YMMV, and there are places like the PacNorthwest that get a lot of water.

But Utah or Nevada? Or Colorado? Sure, these places get cold in winter, but are they even thinking about water usage? These are the places where the phrase, “Whiskey is for drinkin’ and water is for fightin’.” came from. They’re dry.

But, there’s a never-ending stream of data centers being announced pretty much everywhere.

Announced.

But my experience in a previous bubble tells me that all of these companies that are attempting to build all of these data centers are needing more in common than just millions of Nvidia© chips. They’re needing copper for wiring. They’re needing pipes to move water. They’re needing concrete. They’re needing steel beams. They’re needing rebar and glass and aluminum to build some of the largest buildings every conceived by man outside of the Pyramids and that ballroom next to the White House.

And that’s just for the building.

What is the difference between USA and USB? One connects to your computer to access all your data, the other is computing industry hardware standard.

They’re also in need of power. That’s another Big Kahuna, and it’s already raising rates to consumers in various states as utilities plan to build out power plants to serve demand from data centers that . . .

May never be built because they can’t be built because there’s not enough stuff to build them or enough electricity to power them even though, “Hey, we have signed contracts!”

That’s the flip side of a bubble. It’s irrational. You end up with insanity like 87% of venture capital going to A.I. 49% of investment-grade bonds are going to . . . A.I. As Michael Burry notes, during the Dotcom boom, only 40% of venture capital went to dotcom companies. So, 87% is better and safer than 40% because it’s more, right?

I hear that farmers can use a hoe to make money honestly.

Things inflate because everyone wants them.

Copper. Silver, which is (currently) not behaving like an economic metal, but like an input to data centers. Concrete. The very people that know how to build data centers are in amazing demand.

But a bubble?

Nah. Don’t call it that.

I could go on for another three thousand words about how frothy we are at this moment in time, but this time really is different. Most of this bubble is built on debt to build things that are impossible to build in promised timelines using resources that aren’t available. At least when the dotcom bubble burst, we had lots of unused fiber optic cable in the ground and when the housing bubble burst, we had houses left over.

What happens when a debt bubble bursts that hasn’t built the data centers it promised and evaporates a huge percentage of the venture capital that was sunk into it and all we have left are mountains of Nvidia© chips sitting in warehouses surrounded by confused pimps?

Well, that’s just another way that A.I. will change the world, I guess.

Won’t that be interesting?