The Kids Aren’t Alright – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Grooming Gang Cover Up: 250,000 Reasons “Online Safety” Is a Scam

“These borders are well protected.” – The Fellowship of the Ring (all memes as-found) Governments around the world trot out the kids whenever they want to remove freedoms. Protect the children. It’s always for the children. The reality is that they don’t care at all about the kids. Let’s look at the KIDS Act. The … Continue reading “The Grooming Gang Cover Up: 250,000 Reasons “Online Safety” Is a Scam”

“These borders are well protected.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

(all memes as-found)

Governments around the world trot out the kids whenever they want to remove freedoms.

Protect the children. It’s always for the children.

The reality is that they don’t care at all about the kids.

Let’s look at the KIDS Act. The “Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act” has passed the House. The Senate Democrats have said . . . it’s too weak. Of course they did. There appears to be no speech that they love except their own.

But they’re not alone: the European Parliament’s Online Safety was rammed through during “legislator vacation” using a backdoor procedural trick that required an absolute majority just to kill it. Now it’s legal for them to sort through “private” messages. For the kids.

The UK Online Safety Act is sold the same way. It’s there to protect children.

The real effect is that it pushes everyone toward some form of online ID and forces websites to keep kids off their platforms. Sites like 4chan and Gab® told them to pound sand because they aren’t a UK website. All of this is supposedly to protect the kids.

Right.

If that’s true, they need to explain the grooming gangs who have raped an estimated 250,000 girls in the UK.

The reports that came out in June 2026 are horrific. They underline the point that if you import rapists, they’re going to rape because it’s what they do, and approved. Indians made a movie back in 1997 called Raja Ki Ayegi Baraat. The plot is straightforward.

Mala is raped by Raja. She takes him to court. The judge sentences them to marry as punishment for Raja. Raja and his family are cruel and hostile at first, even trying to kill Mala. Over time she wins them over through her kindness and resilience.

Tens of millions of Indians have seen this movie. That’s the cultural attitude of India on display.

If you import Indians, you’ll get rape, and mainly gang rapes because their upper-body strength is generally less than the average woman in the West. I know that sounds like a joke, but it’s actually true. Pakistan is similar, with one in three women reporting rape during their lifetimes in Pakistan, and those are the women they supposedly like.

If you’re not of their religions?

Well, you’re an animal to them, and they can do as they like, so 250,000 rapes is what they like.

Since a license is required to paddle a surfboard on the Thames, I’m sure the justice system is set up to take on actual gang rapists of children?

Well, no. The report on the 250,000 white English, Scottish, and Welsh girls that were systematically raped over the decades came out in June 2026. GloboLeftists in the UK mocked the report because of course they did. They had to mock it because there is a hierarchy in their world. Illegal immigrants who contribute nothing are at the top, because the goal of the GloboLeftist is to destroy whatever nation they’re in.

Sure, GloboLeftists say they’re against rape and against oppressing women, but only when white men are doing the raping and oppressing. If they rapists and abusers come from a foreign culture, well, rape and abuse as much as you want. After all, they’re only women.

Based on anecdotal evidence, the police in Europe have zero interest in arresting anyone who isn’t a lawful white citizen. In several cases, the police brought the young girls that were being sexually abused back to the abusers. The thankful abusers gave the police a turn on the girls.

Again, I’m not making any of this up. I’d bet money that those police were either Pakistani or Indian, which is another reason why you don’t want foreigners in positions of power. Imagine how the all-moslim, all-immigrant city council in Hamtramck, Michigan will work to protect Christian rights? If you go during the citizen comment period the mayor will call you a racist for suggesting that they not name streets for Islamic terrorists. It won’t be long before the Islamic call for prayer will be broadcast.

Wonder when they’ll require burkas? The Democrats will no doubt approve and encourage this.

But let’s go back to the UK. There have been at least three high-profile events that hit the public consciousness in the last month. The first was the murder of Henry Nowak. The police didn’t want the footage to come out, but when it did, watching them handcuff a nearly bloodless young English man was heartbreaking. It turned to rage-inducing when the facts and lies of the Sikh who murdered him came out.

Then a young man was being attacked by three non-English black men, and the police arrested the white guy. Birmingham Police politely asked that the footage not be shared, but they fully supported the actions of the police in arresting the victim and ignoring the attackers.

The third case didn’t get nearly as much attention, but it was again a white Englishman being attacked while the police arrested him as his attackers mocked him.

So, yeah.

As Ian Fleming wrote: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

Justice in the courts is similarly absent. In Sweden, a rapefugee wasn’t deported after his three-year prison sentence because the rape “didn’t last long enough.” In the UK, a rapefugee raped three women in a short period and got a suspended sentence. But, a white British man was sent to prison for 20 months for saying, “Every man and their dog should be smashing fuck out of [hotel filled with rapefugees].” ‘

He had 1,500 Facebook followers. The post got six likes. Off to prison, mate!

How much of this is going on in the United States right now? How many Patel Motels are filled with H-1Deviant Indians setting up their own grooming gangs? The data shows that Indians are now leading the sexual abductors in the United Kingdom, and it’s not like we’re getting Indians from a different India over here in the United States. And the authorities in the United States are actively trying to skew the data as shown below:

No, any government licensing for use of the Internet is not for the kids. At all. It’s to make it so no one can talk back against the false reality the GloboLeft creates, so that any speech that they don’t agree with is hate speech.

And by their logic, hate speech isn’t protected speech, so any speech they hate is hate speech.

They just need a way to track you so they can punish you if you complain about children being raped or your people being replaced while Big Tech companies lobby to get your data so that they can maximize your profit potential to them.

But it’s for the kids, right?

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.”

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?

Chud The Builder And Two-Tiered Justice In America

“I got a new problem when I post bail.” – The Usual Suspects

“Chud the Builder” is an Internet provocateur/rage baiter who videos himself with strangers in public, often using racial slurs to black people. His name is Dalton Eartherly, but I’ll stick with Chud.

Chud claims that it is within his free speech to say pretty much whatever he wants if he’s not threatening people. I’ll leave it up to you to form your own opinion on that, but Chud isn’t shy about using the same words that black people use in songs to describe each other to them directly.

After going to court in Montgomery Coutney, Tennessee on a debt he owned, an altercation occurred. I’d go into more details, but I’ve heard a lot of contradictory stories, so for now I’ll stick with that. At some point, Chud drew his weapon and managed to get a two-fer: Chud accidentally shot himself and he also shot a black man named Joshua Fox. Both are alive.

There’s a lot to unpack with just this single case. On X®, @RetroCoast said:

What? $1.25 million? I’ll admit that seems like a lot, but maybe that’s normal bail for Chud’s charge: attempted murder.

Well, no. In this age of free information flow, it’s now possible to get that data and share it quickly to millions. OPERATION FREE DALTON went and got the receipts.

Outside of the scale being way off, it is clear that Chud’s bail is excessive compared to the average of $40,625 (hang on, I’ve got that in my other pocket) for other attempted murder cases. It’s 31 times the average, assuming the data is right.

This was already a complicated case that touched on free speech and the right of self-defense, but now it’s bigger than that. Chud could only have gotten a bail that high if he was much more dangerous than say, someone who was charged with first degree murder and aggravated assault.

Unless, you know, he was a white guy who said racist stuff on the Internet and it’s a high profile case. That must be it. Surely the system punishes white people and black people the same?

Huh. I guess not.

And note that Chud will get zero support from mainstream groups dedicated to, say, defending those who want to promote free speech or the right to self-defense. I could keep going. But keep in mind that Karmello Anthony, who murdered Austin Metcalf by stabbing him in the chest has been out on $250,000 bail for nearly a year.

A system is what it does.

Think back to various high-profile self defense cases. Kyle Rittenhouse and Daniel Penny were both acquitted of homicide, but what did their trials cost? $1 million? $2 million? What about the Modern Sporting Lawyer who was arrested for protecting his home during the George Floyd Riots? He pled to a deal.

No, what’s on trial is the ability for individuals to defend themselves, but a very special group of individuals: white guys. If you can’t be convicted, it doesn’t matter. They’ll run you through the ringer of a court case costing millions if you don’t want to go to jail for the rest of your life. And if you win? Well, you’re broke, and the process was the punishment. But if you’re black?

This is not the case if you’re black. Stab away if you think there’s a good chance he might say a slur after you try to kill him. And if you’re black you can try to fake a hate crime and the school you go to will cover up for you.

The statistics are clear:

This is so clear I’ll let Mr. Obvious point it out:

And I think the goal is also obvious:

There’s more to this story. This is only one aspect. Remember, a system is what it does. What does the system react most strongly to? What does it punish the hardest?

Dr. Michael Burry Has Spoken Again. The End Is Nigh, Or Margot Robbie’s Thigh?

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” – Fight Club

A truck filled with quinoa and a truck filled with Worcestershire sauce crashed into a charcuterie shop near my house. What was the result? It’s kind of hard to say. (meme as found)

Dr. Michael Burry has spoken again. Okay, actually more like “emailed again” but he’s on the record again saying that the the end is nigh. Is he right? Well, on a long enough timeline, entropy always wins, and the heat death of the universe doesn’t care about my 401(k) yields.

But are we close?

The S&P valuations are through the roof. We’re in the middle of the largest investment in the history of the United States outside of World War II: Artificial Intelligence.

More has been spent on A.I. than was spent on the Manhattan Project, but less than was spent on, well, insert whatever outrageous bill Congress passed last week while you weren’t looking—probably something involving green energy subsidies for gluten-free solar panels raised free-range by Antifa® Chapter 4077.

The payoff for winning the Second World War was a big one. Essentially the United States was surrounded by a smoking crater of a world. Our industries were ready to absorb all the G.I.’s returning with their war brides into job to rebuild that crater. I mean rebuild the nice parts, not India.

The world without Western Civilization. (meme as found)

Factories were humming, houses were sprouting like dandelions, and the economy was so robust you could afford a house on a single blue-collar paycheck and still take the kids to Disney World® without having to resort to Moustitution© or selling a kidney. That’s what we got for entering into the war late and avoiding any of it happening on our homeland.

But what is the prize if A.I. is successful?

Well, it’s negative jobs. It’s a profusion of information so vast it makes the Library of Alexandria look like a collection of Post-it® notes abandoned after spelling errors. Elon Musk thinks it will create a society of abundance so great that no one will have to work and everyone can have a cool penthouse and all the gold they can eat. We can be sure he’s right, because this is just how the Industrial Revolution ended.

Wait, what?

Hours worked went up? Rural agrarian lifestyles were traded for urban factory hellscapes where the owner of the factory charged extra for all the asbestos he let you breathe in? Yeah.

Every production “revolution” that the world has seen has actually increased human effort. Those leaps forward did increase material wealth, but they also led to humans having to work more. Hunting nomad chads became farming incels.

Why?

You can’t brew booze if you don’t have the grain and the place to brew it. So, just like me, the nomads decided to give up a lifestyle of hunting, fishing, sex, and leisure for all the beer they could drink. I mean, I have priorities.

As a child I never napped. I was resisting a rest. (meme as found)

I don’t expect anything different in the Thought Revolution. Nobody will get free stuff, but the world will need a lot fewer of us. This is the case if it is successful: essentially an entire civilization working overtime to create a replacement for itself.

Yikes!

But let’s say it doesn’t work.

That’s better, right? Well, maybe. A bit. If A.I. reaches some limit where it becomes economically unfeasible to get to the next level (think power generation capability required being infinite) of cognition, or the models start to get dumber the more advanced they are (there’s a fashion model joke in here somewhere, but I’m too polite to make it), then the stock market will collapse.

Collapse? Surely, John Wilder, you exaggerate. No, I meant collapse. The market has priced in that A.I. is going to work. On the recent day that Wall Street hit new highs in the S&P 500, most (55%!) stocks weren’t near their highs. The high is high, but it’s not broad. This current level of investment in A.I. is so big and so deep and so tall, there is no way it can do anything but fall.

Sorry, got a bit of Seuss stuck in my keyboard.

“Oh me! Oh my!” said the plumber named Fred,
“My pipes cost a fortune, I’m deep in the red!
I can’t fix the sink or the tub or the drain!
This copper’s so pricey, it’s driving me insane!”

This is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. Let me put on my Cassandra pants and throw out this idea: Why not both?

The economy is screwed, or at least the economy that I grew up with is screwed. We’re becoming poor at a fantastic clip. Not “poor” as in West Virginia moonshiner with a still and a shotgun, but “poor” as in living like we’re in a crowded megacity filled with unwashed brown people where the air smells like regret and curry.

Let’s look at how affordable things are compared to income from the 1970s. I found this handy chart on the Internet. You know the one: houses, cars, healthcare, education all marching upward while real wages stagnate like a sloth on Ambien. Now, I know that no one actually goes to movie theaters anymore even though it’s on the chart. There’s no point in going to the movie. I can get booze from my fridge and pause the movie whenever I want if I watch it at home, but yet it’s “indecent” if I fall asleep drunk and in my underwear in the front row at the latest Avatar™ movie.

(as found)

But everyone can still afford a place to live, right?

Well, not since we’ve opened the floodgates and let in the entire world. A massive population increase combined with a group of people that consume much more in services than they contribute is killing us. They’re actually making us poorer as each one crosses into the country.

Remember in math you can always raise per capita by lowering the number of capitas.

But, hey, they borrow money so they can create debt that produces profit for the banks, right? Win-win, except for the natives footing the bill.

Isn’t enough that our economy is as stable as a knife fight between a drunken Whoopi Goldberg and a blindfolded Jimmy Kimmel in a bikini atop a butter-coated teeter-totter on top of WTC7? Did we have to put the whole existence of humanity in the future in the balance, too?

The good news, I guess, is that Burry could be wrong. He has been wrong before. Like me, he’s predicted five of the last two recessions. But there comes a point where we won’t be able to paper over the cracks in the structure with more printed money and hopium.

Yup, been there, done that.

When all this cracks, and it will because complexity plus leverage plus narrative equals fragility, the reset won’t be gentle. It won’t be “buy the dip” and back to brunch. It will be the kind of event that makes 2008 look like a mild correction and 1929 look like a Tuesday.

So where do I want to be when it happens? I want to be listening to a twenty-something Margot Robbie describing what collateralized debt obligations are from a bubble bath.

And remember Wilder’s Rule of Humorous Collapse #6: civilizations don’t fail because they run out of money; they fail because they run out of reality.

But at least I finally understand collateralized debt obligations (warning, mildly spicy language).

Disclaimer: I am not Margot Robbie, though I would take a cameo to talk about philosophy in a movie from my hot tub while I smoke cigars, and am also not a professional anything, let alone your financial advisor, so please bang your head against the wall a dozen times before you take the advice of an unpaid Internet humorist.

How The GloboLeft Uses Your Virtue Against You And Why It’s Killing The West

“Be excellent to each other.” – Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

I’ve never been to central Europe, but I might Czech it out one day. (all memes as-found)

“Then what makes a beautiful person? Isn’t it the presence of excellence? Young friend, if you wish to be beautiful then work diligently at human excellence. And what is that? Observe those who you praise without prejudice. The just or the unjust? The just. The even-tempered or the undisciplined? The even-tempered. The self-controlled or the uncontrolled? The self-controlled. In making yourself that kind of person, you will become beautiful. But to the extent you ignore these qualities, you’ll be ugly, even if you use every clever trick to appear beautiful.”
-Epictetus

Epictetus may have had some ulterior motives when he said this, since if history is correct he was lame, was missing an eye and an ear, and had hair only in patches on his skull. Did I mention the burn scars?

I kid. But Epictetus was lame. I mean, not 1980s “lame” but rather had a limp.

The point he makes is a good one, though. We are fundamentally the genes we are born with. If I wanted to be taller, I suppose there is surgery I could get to lengthen my legs. Yeah. Really.

If I wanted to avoid being a blinding hazard when the Sun shines off of my scalp, well, I could get hair plugs or a toupee.

Neither of those, however, would make me a better person. And I don’t know about you, but when I find out about the vile beliefs and practices of some Hollywood™ starlets, well, they start to lose a lot of their attractiveness to me. In fact, I start to see ugly, just like the ugly I see with Jeff Bezos’ wife.

I mean, really. Wow. That’s a lot of plastic surgery. Seriously, does she not look like an alien that was constructed out of a scaffold of lizard DNA in a Tupperware® factory? If she and Bezos have kids I don’t know which they’ll look like: dime-store rubber geckos or a tube of Saranwrap©.

I do think that Epictetus, despite the handicap of being dead as well as gimpy, has done a good job at sketching out some of the things that have made Western Civilization great. There was a time that we nearly universally admired being just. Our culture is one that’s based on guilt, rather than shame, so being just comes from within.

Shame comes from without. In a shame-based culture (which describes most third world cultures) the idea is that cheating an old widow in Iowa out of her family fortune is acceptable unless you get caught. It’s clever, and they feel guilt only in being caught. Ever see any video of a foreigner getting caught doing something wrong on video?

I know you have.

What happens is that the shame kicks in. They can’t and don’t feel guilt over doing evil, only shame for getting caught doing evil. This explains why India looks like India and Nigeria looks like Nigeria. Good actions aren’t valued.

Next, Epictetus talks about the virtue of being even-tempered. Again, this is something that society selected for through its very construction. People who impetuously committed crime were systematically executed in Great Britain for nearly a thousand years.

Don’t think that has something to with keeping tempers in a bottle? It certainly does. And when men like that become warriors, well, Heaven help you if you push one over the edge into rage and wrath. That is something mythic, something that makes entire continents burn.

Lastly, Epictetus talks about self-controlled versus, well, not.

Again, this is a virtue that Western Civilization has lauded in its stoic male heroes who experience hardship yet come away stronger for the effort. Our very fables talk about men who never cry because they understand that they are masters of their emotions and can select which ones the let to the surface when the stress is running high.

To one extent Epictetus is right: these are all necessary values for beauty, at least for me. They are also necessary values for everything that is required to move society upward, to keep us from being crabs in a bucket, drawing each other down for our own temporary gain.

And, Epictetus notes that these virtues are within our control, each and every one of them. Sure, if you come from a place that’s not been selecting for these behaviors for nearly a thousand years (and I could argue that Europe as a whole has been selecting for these behaviors for thousands of years) then it might be difficult.

But not impossible. And if it is impossible, then that person could rightly be called a savage.

All of Western Civilization is ultimately built on the idea that these are things that individuals can do, right here, right now through being virtuous. They are True. They are Beauty in themselves. And they are Good.

This is, in my mind, a major disconnect and why Western Civilization is hated by so many in the third world. They look at this wonderful cultural set of values of which we are exemplars (on our best days) through our own choices and feel envy. They want a world that looks like ours, but yet don’t want to change their behaviors.

This is why they don’t build.

This is why we do.

Are there other cultures with similar values? Certainly. Japan appears to have undergone a similar winnowing with respect to honor. Feel free to opine in the comments about other places that make the grade.

Like Western Civilization, though, cultures that have a large focus on just outcomes are susceptible to propaganda that plays on cultural guilt. Ever wonder why GloboLeftists pimped the 1619 Project? Like the entire Civil Rights movement, it was based on creating guilt in people who had committed no crime or offense.

And it was effective.

On white people. But it wouldn’t be on them.

I think that there still exists a strong fear on the part of white people to say, “Hey, I’d rather live among other white people.” It sounds scary to them. Yet, those same people wouldn’t bat an eye if black people wanted their own dorms that excluded whites.

It’s guilt. Our virtues have been weaponized against us. It’s so effective that even British people feel guilt over slavery, even when they effectively ended the international trade in slaves. Those who do this are, like Epictetus said, using every trick to be Beautiful to try to hide their true ugliness.

My guess is that’s why they really want the statues to come down. To see Western Civilization and all it has created is the biggest slap in the face to them and fills them with shame, so they have to either destroy it, or come up with some reason why they have failed to assuage their shame.

Continue in your quest for excellence, and understand those that will try to drag you down or fill you with guilt.

Ignore them.

And, in the immortal words of Abraham Lincoln,

“Party on, dudes!”