Valhalla – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Göbekli Tepi: How Beer Created Civilization

“You blow it tonight, girl, and it’s keggers with kids all next year.” – Heathers

There’s also a neolithic monument to Dad jokes: Groanhenge.

FYI upfront: very likely I’ll not have a post at all on Monday – travelling for pleasure and won’t be back until the wee hours Monday morning.

Göbekli Tepi is back in the news. But first? What the hell is a Göbekli Tepi?

Göbekli Tepi is a location in the southern part of Turkey, right near the place you put the onion in, and later discover you forgot to remove the plastic bag with the gizzards and cooked it, and decide, “meh, it probably won’t kill me,” carve it up, and serve it anyway without telling anyone.

Oh, wait, it’s the country Turkey not the tasty bird. Göbekli Tepi is located right near the border with Syria, and is one of the most significant archeological sites. Ever.

Why? It’s made of huge stone structures, carved intricately and realistically, and showing more artistic skill than any post-modern artist. That’s not saying much, but, there it is.

I once read a very moving story in Braille. It was touching, really.

Original by Sue Fleckney – https://www.flickr.com/photos/96594331@N03/20385309880/, CC BY-SA 2.0, snarky comment by Wilder.

It’s old. Very old. 9,500 B.C. old.

That’s a really long time to try to even imagine. I’m not sure I can, since when compared to the lifespan of any human except your mother, it’s hard to conceive. I’ll never be able to put it in terms anyone can wrap their brain around, but let me give an example:

We’re closer in time to Jesus than Jesus was to the building of the pyramids. Göbekli Tepi is four times farther back in time than the construction of the pyramids was from the perspective of Jesus. This was so far back in time that pottery had yet to be invented, but, strangely, Tupperware™ was already in wide use.

Tupperware™ even made a casket with a clear lid. It was a failure, I don’t know why. They had a great slogan: Remains To Be Seen©.

Göbekli Tepi is old enough that it started being built around the time the very first evidence of agriculture shows up in the archeological record. This is such an early settlement, that most evidence indicates that it was made by hunter-gatherers for use only occasionally, like the cabin in the woods that they visited only on Labor Day. But why did they go there?

I know the answer. Why would hunter-gatherers meet up at the dawn of history?

To party.

I’ve written about this before – there is evidence of grain and yeast in big stone vats at Göbekli Tepi. This is evidence of the really simple answer to the question of why Göbekli Tepi was built – the guys got together, made beer, sang songs, told lies about the big aurochs that got away, farted, and got really, really drunk. Want more evidence? Over 7,000 grinding stones to mash the grain into something they could brew with. 7,000 seems like a lot, but they gathered there to party and get stoned for over a thousand years.

I go to the pool every day to try to get a swimmer’s body. But no one ever drowns.

Once a year, probably, because that’s all the beer they had because they hadn’t developed agriculture.

That last part is new and is in a paper by Dr. Martin Sweatman (chemical engineer) out of the University of Edinburgh (LINK). It turns out that a bunch of Scotsmen (I assume it involved grad students, having been an engineering grad student myself back in the day) noodled over the carvings and started counting. Scotland is boring, so counting the number of times a “V” (apparently the only letter the Göbekli Tepi residents knew) showed up was the only other thing Sweatman’s team could think to do after they drank all the booze in the lab.

Adderall© is dangerous. One of my friends took it, blacked out, and now he’s a grad student.

They found that there was a pretty cool pattern on the blocks (figure 12 on page 38 of the .pdf I linked above):

One repeating set of the letter V (both right side up and upside down) that was either 29 or 30 days (depending on how you count the V). A lunar month is really 29.5 days, so 29 or 30 sounds right.
11 blocks, right under the 29 or 30 letter V. So, 29.5 times 11 (plus the original month above it) is . . . 354.
Then, 10 more of the V letters. That brings us to 364.
Finally, one more for the summer solstice (their guess), bringing us to 365.

My guess was that the last V? That was party day – the ultimate pre-dawn of writing stuff down beer bash. Since they only drank one weekend a year, I imagine these folks were the ultimate cheap date, sort of like a group of high school freshmen who had scored some near-beer.

I guess Cain was Abel. (meme as found)

And, by Crom Coors®, they invented mathematics, astronomy, sculpture carving, building craftsmanship, and agriculture in a short span of time.

To get more beer.

I’ll stand by that statement.

Once planting started, had stick around to harvest it.
So, we had to build a house.
Since others might want our beer, we had to defend the house.
We can’t do that alone, so we had to band together.
Growing grain is a lot of effort, so, for the first time in history, humans had a use for slave labor.
Work went from hunting and occasional fishing and gathering to back breaking farm labor.
This meant greater complexity, which fed greater returns, and now beer was available all year round.
We built cities, so we could support the beer industry, and had increased disease issues (COVID 8000 B.C., anyone?).
Then, we created a division of labor, started the development of technology, and invented the fridge (the first one was in Germany, used for beer making).
This led to the apex of civilization the 7-Eleven®, where one could buy beer, PEZ™ and pork rinds 24 hours a day, every day.

Society was created by and for beer drinkers. I’m not even kidding. People needed a reason to build all of this stuff, and men were the ones who did it. Have you ever been around men? We only do stuff for one of two reasons – one is beer, and you know what the other one is. Okay, three reasons. I forgot the PEZ®.

Wait until he tries to explain Netflix®. (meme as found)

In the end, Göbekli Tepi wasn’t destroyed. It was carefully buried. This, my friends, suggests a great reverence for the place. It was like the ritual burial of the frat house after all the fraternity brothers had gotten married and had a real job.

Which was probably the case, they were now all farmers and soldiers and bureaucrats that ran the small cities so they could eventually build breweries, convenience stores and refrigerators. They gradually forgot about the place.

Then we (modern humans) found it. Now, the people who found it were very serious people who have grown only more serious over time at university cocktail parties in the woke modern world. They can’t, for the life of them, figure out what this was, since they forget that this was a place built by and for men to party.

I think Dr. Sweatman is totally right (there’s more in his paper including a Time Lord™ and a possible record of a cataclysmic comet, you should RTWT)– the stone is a calendar. And it’s counting the time until the next party.

It’s the countdown to beer day. And who doesn’t like beer day?

If There Are Seven Basic Plots, Which One Is Yours?

“There’s no plot. It just goes on like that for an hour.” – Videodrome

Why don’t they use thyme as medicine? I hear I heals all wounds.

Last week’s post was about life as a three-act play. It may or may not work, and, like all metaphors, it’s flawed and suspect. Perhaps I should used something better, like a metaphive?

The Third Act

During the post, I also mentioned that a dude named Christopher Booker had written a book called The Seven Basic Plots. In it, he broke down most everything we watch into, well, seven basic plots. I guess he completely blew the suspense with the title. These plots all follow the same three acts discussed last week, though this week I’m using “hero” more as a descriptor than “protagonist”.

But what are the plots?

Overcoming The Monster: Destroying a great evil that threatens good. Examples: my divorce attorney from my first marriage, Star Wars®.

Rags to Riches: Start out poor and drunk, get money, lose money, get more money plus the girl and a private helicopter. Examples: Sonny Bono, Brewster’s Millions.

The Quest: The search for and attainment of a thing or place after being found worthy. Examples: losing my virginity, The Lord of the Rings.

What kind of magic to GloboLeft wizards use? Soycery.

Voyage and Return: A trip to an unfamiliar place, a learning experience, and a return as a changed hero. Examples: The Mrs. and I moving to Alaska and back, The Hobbit.

Rebirth: External events happen, and force the hero to change for the better. Examples: I was adopted. Duh. Groundhog Day.

Comedy: External things keep happening and pile up to the point that they get more and more confusing, but then sort themselves out in the end. Examples: My first marriage, any episode of Frasier.

Tragedy: Bad things happen to good people because they let temptation spoil their virtue. Examples: Me giving up on a drug-addicted friend, Macbeth.

Yup. Seven plots.

Whether or not you agree with them, all of them (with one exception that we’ll talk about in a bit) all have the same basic idea: the hero goes out, does stuff, and grows. That personal growth is what leads to ultimate victory in the climax of the story. Sure, luck can play a part of the victory, but to have a really emotionally satisfactory end, the victory comes because the character has faced his past mistakes, worked, grown, and is now a better man.

Our new puppy can’t write a decent plot. The only thing he can get out is ruff drafts.

This is a wonderful story and sings to our hearts: who of us hasn’t lost? Who of us hasn’t worked hard to get better, and then won in the end, even if it was just a small victory?

It is the personification of a story of virtue that we want to change to improve, to work to a higher goal, to pay the price in effort, and to win. Who wouldn’t want their children to live that life?

An aside: one of the (many) reasons modern movies suck is because, especially with victim-class characters and girl-bosses, they can never be shown in any sort of negative light. Looking at the stupid movie that made me hate Star Wars™, The Girlboss Awakens©, the main character starts off as invincible, invulnerable, and never has to grow. Why should she? From the first moment she can pilot the Millenium Falcon© better than Han Solo®, fight better with a lightsaber™ than a man who has spent his entire life in perfecting that skill, and is way better at The Force© after hearing about it for the first time.

No struggle. No growth – how could she need it? She was born the BeSTeSt EvAR hero because she’s a girl. This is of course, even though the character was written by people who would tell you that gender doesn’t exist and that you’re a bigot for not liking girls even though they don’t exist either. Bigot.

Her next movie? Fifty Shades of Rey.

It’s also the deprivation of that challenge that’s ruining our kids. I had a conversation with a Zoomer the other day, and he noted that, yeah, they were a generation that lived on phones, didn’t have bullying, and were afraid of real challenges because they never had to face them. Why are Zoomers on anxiety meds? Because their parents protected them from the dragons and never let their kids work themselves out of a hole that they’d dug for themselves.

We need to let kids do heroic things, dammit!

Okay, I’ll step back away from that ledge, and end this aside.

Fun fact: most coyotes, despite years of effort to teach them, cannot do simple calculus.

What was I talking about? Oh, yeah, plots. There’s one different plot.

Tragedy. This plot shows how temptation lures in the innocent hero, corrupts him, and then causes his ultimate destruction.

This is also a story we want our children to know. Regardless of intent, regardless of skill, there is a danger in allowing temptation to overcome virtue, allowing negative emotions to rule our lives.

Here’s a real-world example: the firefighter who was murdered (Corey Comperatore, PBUH) at the Trump rally. A tragedy? Do you think he’d look back at his life and call it tragic? A hero who died saving his family, who fathered children who love him and who was married to a wife who mourns him?

It’s not tragic. It’s heroic. There was no vanity, no anger, no petty emotion that led to his downfall. He didn’t have a downfall. He died a hero’s death. Tragic? Absolutely. The plot of a tragedy? No.

And, in this case, we find seeds of the important: the plot of our lives, as long as we breathe, as long as we can change, isn’t set. The ultimate destiny of whether we live as the hero on a quest or a villain who lived the plot of a tragedy rests with us.

Me? I’m trying, very hard, to be a hero. I can look back on my life and see places where I could have been more heroic, but also places where I’m damn proud of my actions and would do them again, no matter the outcome. I can also see places where my weaknesses made me the villain in a tragedy or two.

But, as long as I’m breathing, I’m still attempting to be the hero.

You can, too.

Fight! Fight! Fight!

The Third Act

“That’s why every magic trick has a third act.” – The Prestige

A man has to have a purpose in life. All memes today are “as found”.

I’ve heard it said that there are only seven basic plots to stories, and that was the thesis of a book by the Christopher Booker. Who would have thought a guy named Booker would write a book? On the other hand, I’d hate to be the guy named Booker who didn’t write a book, unless my name was Dan-O.

Anyhow, we might look at those plots in a future post (maybe next Friday?) but now I want to talk about how most movies are made – they use a three act structure, and compare that to a human lifespan.

The First Act is the setup. It introduces many of the characters and the situation. You start by knowing absolutely nothing about what’s going on other than the title and maybe you might have seen a preview. It’s the job of the storyteller to let you know what’s going on, while at the same time bringing drama and challenges into the life of the protagonist.

For most people, their first act may vary in details, but it’s the time of life from when they’re born until they complete their schooling and are “out in the world”. Obviously, most of the ways that we reached adulthood are different, but most of them rhyme pretty well. You may have had more or less adversity, you may have had more or less wealth, you might have been raised in the mountains or in the city, but those are just variations on a theme.

True story: when I started my first website back in 2000, I was trying to figure out how to get it in search engines, so I did a search, at work, for “Submission Websites” when a bunch of fetish websites for a fetish I never even knew existed popped up. Thankfully, the web controls were weak then.

Most people lose a grandparent, experience some tragedy, experience some conflict with parents, and almost everyone has to deal with the disturbing revelations of puberty and growing awareness of how small they are in comparison to the world.

Sure, some stories vary greatly, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be raised in the 1930s Soviet Union, but I imagine most stories of those reading this are pretty similar through adulthood. Not the same, but similar.

How do you ground someone from Gen Z? Make them go outside and socialize with their friends.

That’s the end of the first act, and the first challenge for most people is finding their way and path in life. That’s the second act. In a movie, the protagonist has a problem introduced in the first act that they have to solve. In a good movie, the protagonist has to grow in ability, skill, virtue, or some combination of the three to deal with the problem. The second act transforms the protagonist into something more than what he was.

The Second Act of most lives consists of wrestling with careers and marriages and children for most people. Some miss part of that triad, but most people deal with all three.

I tried this, and it actually works, but video games are more fun.

This is the time in life when marriages succeed or fail. When careers go where you expected, or, more likely, veer off in wild tangents that 18-year-old you would never have expected. And, children. Anyone who has raised more than one knows that each one is different, and each one presents a different challenge in order to make them suitable to add value to the world.

Or not. Sometimes, all of these things fail. I guess that’s why they make comedies? Regardless, it’s the time when people are busy trying to accomplish things, trying to solve problems, and trying to make a place in this world and contribute.

Say what you will about Vlad, but he took action when the stakes were high.

While similarity remains, there is much more variation in the Second Act for most people. That’s where fortunes rise and fall, and that’s where heartbreak and setbacks are either overcome or we allow them to overcome us.

The final act is the Third Act.

In a film, it creates a climax. All of the action, all of the plots, all of the tension built into the story is resolved, for good or bad. It finishes the story, and resolves enough of the plot to satisfy the audience, and finally allows reflection by the protagonist on how they’ve changed, and understanding who they really are.

In a life, what does the Third Act look like? Is it a gold watch at retirement, cruises, and sitting on the patio in a shade with a lemonade watching boats go by?

For me, I can’t see that.

I can’t imagine that being my Third Act. I’ve consciously filled my life with struggle, with daring myself to improve and get better and see my worst times were when I was complacent and life was easy. It may be that you’ve chosen differently, and I’m just messed up, but it does set up my Third Act.

Steve Jobs said he wanted to “kick a dent” in the Universe, and he certainly did. Would smartphones have come without the iPhone®? I do think so, but I think his overall legacy is a negative one. Smartphones haven’t made humanity happier, for the most part. Instead, they’ve created a false connection where people are still seeking real connections.

This would be a good third act.

I guess, if I were looking for a climax to my life, it would kicking a far different dent in the Universe, allowing people to see that we don’t have to live like this. There is another way, and it’s better, and freer, and provides that hope of humanity becoming the flower of creation, rather than another weed.

I believe that with all of my heart, that there is another way. I’d write a book about it, but my name isn’t booker. Wait, maybe if it was a wild book?

The Book:

Is There Room For Anything But Materialism?

“Our great war is a spiritual war.” – Fight Club

Does a llama think the end of the world is called the Alpacalypse?

Generally, around holidays, I let my remaining seven strands of hair down and allow a post or two to deviate a bit from the normal categories. Why? Because we live in a world where often unusual ideas will eventually be found to be true, and I like to ask, from time to time, “What if?”

Enjoy!

Just as the pendulum of society has oscillated to the GloboLeft position (and, is oscillating back to the TradRight as we speak) there has been an oscillation of the way people think about the world.

Now, I would suggest, Western Civilization is at another peak: peak materialism. By materialism, I mean not that people are into material goods (even though they are) but that the entire focus is that there is a material explanation for everything, including why Kamala Harris exists.

Ever notice that Tom Cruise has one tooth in the middle of his face? Now you’ll never be able to unsee it.

This isn’t a revelation to anyone in the West, since this is what we’ve been dealing with for the majority of our lives. We have a mechanistic determinism that says that everything has an explanation, and that those explanations are all based in some sort of material, physical, phenomenon.

I used to play rugby, back in the day (prop) and our coach would, during practice, say “bad luck!” when someone goofed up. My immediate thought was, no, that wasn’t bad luck, the player goofed up. But was I right?

Well, if the world had taken a slightly different turn, the ball a different bounce, the opponent a different line, maybe the decision the player made would have been the right one. Perhaps, then, there is a place for luck.

What’s the difference between a teabag and the American Rugby World Cup team? The teabag stays in the cup longer.

And I do believe in luck. Part of is because my life has been an extraordinarily lucky one. And, no, not the “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity” definition, but “How is that stupid SOB so lucky?”

Okay, that’s a sample size of one, and the average scientist would say that’s just one data point, and not a series. But, it’s not: a series of improbable events in a single lifetime isn’t just one datapoint, it’s a series of them.

But what about actual studies that show phenomena that are far outside of the real of anything science can explain?

This one (LINK) shows that 90 experiments across 33 labs in 14 countries have shown that precognition exists. What’s precognition? That’s knowing the outcome of a future event, before the event occurs.

What kind of event? Well, one study that I read used sensors on someone viewing a computer screen. The screen would show random images, most of which were rather dull. Occasionally, though, the screen would an emotionally charged picture – think nudity or an accident victim, meant to be a “shocking” picture. The sensors recorded (in general) things like increased heartrate and increase blood pressure before the emotionally charged images showed up onscreen.

I went to a swimwear store and asked them if I could “Try on the bathing suit in the front window.” They told me I’d have to use a changing room.

The subjects “knew” subconsciously that something was up and their bodies reacted.

Now, I can certainly come up with several ideas from quantum physics that might allow for this time-reversed phenomenon, you know, when effect happens before cause. But people before, say 1900, would have just said that precognition was part of life – from the ancient Greeks to the prophecies of the Bible, precognition was just accepted as a part of reality – one that couldn’t be explained.

I’ve even had weird, precognitive dreams about odd events. One time when I was in seventh grade, I awoke, laughing. Why? Because someone had stolen the lock off of my school locker, but left the valuable stuff inside. I found it really humorous that someone would just steal the lock.

The next day? After fourth period (the period immediately after I’d told my math teacher the humorous story) the lock was . . . gone. My stuff? There.

I can’t understand kids these days and their overwhelming Axe®-scents.

Certainly, it could be a coincidence. But the odd perfection of the dream and the reality was jarring. I’ve had other dreams that came true as well. Most have been relatively boring things, and, certainly I’m not above calling them coincidences.

However, .gov, (in conjunction with the Stanford Research Institute) created a project for remote viewing – clairvoyance, where they created a program that produced (according to some sources) actionable information and according to at least one independent statistician were clearly 5-15% above random chance.

Those are just two examples of potential phenomena that exist outside of our ability to explain using purely material descriptions. And, no, I’m not wedded to the idea that those phenomena exist, but that would certainly be the simplest explanation for several events in my life. But, I am a committed Christian, so obviously I have the belief in things that have and always will be beyond the understanding of men.

And, again, before 1900 or so, the vast majority of people in all civilizations all over the world would have agreed that while there is the material plane of existence, but there is also the spiritual plane of existence, with as much (if not much more) relevance to our daily lives than the physical.

I like Chihuahuas, but not enough to eat a whole one.

One thing I’ve learned during my life, is to understand that there’s a lot that I’ll never understand, but that I do think that there is far, far more to our lives than just materialism. Heck, if I had a dime for every time I thought about materialism, I could probably afford some Gucci™ socks.

Could It All Be Worms Making The Decisions For The Left?

“You can’t have both of the parasites.” – Fight Club

A tapeworm showed up to a party and got kicked out. I guess the guy was a terrible host.

When I think about parasites, I start with thinking about the GloboLeft. Somebody like George Soros has been sucking at the economy, producing no value, and trying his best to control its brain.

Like Toxoplasmosis gondii.

Toxoplasmosis gondii (T. gondii from here on out) is, like a gender-studies major, a parasite. It has an interesting life cycle, in that it often occurs in cats. In reality, it can infest any warm blooded animal (and birds as well) but most people are aware from due to its association with cats, and not the Broadway musical, but the fuzzy felines.

I want to write a Broadway show titled Vocabulary. It’ll be a play on words.

T. gondii likes to infest cats. Since it occurs as cysts in animals, T. gondii has developed the ability to change the behavior of mice and rats. Specifically, T. gondii changes the brain and behavior patterns of rodents to make them less worried about being dinner.

Of things that rodents don’t like, “being eaten alive” is pretty near the top of the list. Uninfected rodents really hate the smell of cat pee and avoid it, since cat pee often occurs near where cats are, and cats like to eat rodents alive, just for sport.

However, give a rodent an infection of T. gondii and it either loses it’s aversion to cat pee or becomes attracted to it. It also reduces the behaviors associated with avoiding predators and makes the mice more bold and less worried about predators. It also makes them hyperactive, increases the distances they travel, and makes the reckless when they show up at a new area.

Yes. T. gondii turns mice into little mobile food trucks for cats. This is on purpose, so the cats eat the mice, and then get infected, and then poop, and then spread T. gondii everywhere.

Mary Poppins Food Truck Review: “Super cauliflower-cheese but the lobster was atrocious.”

Well, there’s a horrifying thought! A parasite that changes the behavior of creatures! Thankfully humans don’t get it, and it doesn’t impact human behavior?

Well, nazzo fast, Guido.

It turns out that T. gondii just loves to hitch a ride into humans. And just like it changes the behavior of rats and cats and mice, studies have shown that it also impacts humans as well. How?

T. gondii has shown to have some of these effects in people:

Increases impulsive behaviors,
Increased car accidents,
Increased road rage, and
Increased mental illness (like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder).

Yeah, T. gondii is a disaster for people since if you look at the list above, it appears to turn them into GloboLeftists. It also messes with human immune systems so it doesn’t get eaten, makes healthy cells die, increases inflammation, and may even encourage other parasites to join the party by downregulating the parts of the human immune system that keep them out.

Staying up all weekend is fun – after all, sleep is for the week.

Thankfully it’s rare, right?

Nope. In women of childbearing age, infection rates are:

50%-80% in Latin Americans,
20%-60% in Eastern Europeans,
30%-50% in the Middle Easterners,
20%-60% in Southeast Asians,
20%-55% in Africans, and
7% in the United States natives (2004 data) but 28.1% in foreign-born.

Billions of people have this parasite, T. gondii. But that’s just one parasite.

I had that parasite. Didn’t care for it.

Let’s take this a step further.

There are large numbers of parasites beyond T. gondii that infect and impact humanity. I looked it up and came to two conclusions:

Parasites are really gross and repulsive.
There are hundreds of different types of parasites out there.

How likely is it, of all of the different types of parasites that impact humanity that the only one that impacts behavior is T. gondii? If I were a betting man, I’d lay money that there are certainly more parasites than not impact behavior. And since many of these parasites require exposure to blood or poop to increase the number of hosts, well, might the behaviors that the parasite “encourages” be tied to more exposure to those things?

It’s a thought.

Once again, when looking at the religious themes of chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty, it occurs to me that all of those virtuous behaviors – every single one of them – reduces exposure to parasites and disease that may take over our minds.

Is it just a coincidence that as adherence to chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty are tossed away as old, outmoded thinking that we find ourselves in a world surrounded by triggered adherents of Clown World? Perhaps the warnings we’ve seen in the past of those possessed by demons was, at least in part, based on parasites. It seems like all the behavior that leads to the fall of civilizations tends to increase the likelihood that people will catch parasites.

Where do Viking clowns go? Val-ha-ha.

Maybe, maybe it’s only the GloboLeft, but the GloboLeft is actively encouraging behaviors that result in the perpetuation of parasites. Today. Ever wonder why the GloboLeft reacted so harshly to ivermectin being a potential cure to COVID? It kills parasites.

What would have happened if GloboLeftists had taken it and found out that their lives are a lie and their predilection to certain sexual practices was actually parasite mind control?

Are the GloboLeftists, in addition to being parasites, are also being consumed and controlled by parasites?

You be the judge.

Economic Doom? You’re Soaking In It.

“Two Purple Hearts – Leningrad and Siberia. Youngest man to be decorated by the president. You robbed the Federal Reserve Depository. Life sentence, New York Maximum Security Penitentiary. I’m ready to kick your ass out of the world, war hero.” – Escape From New York

Elon bought a coffee company and then made it a cryptocurrency. Yup, StarbuX®.

I’m a bit under the weather (sniffles). The good news is that some of the memetic content/graphs I found on the Internet about the current economy probably speak mostly for themselves. So, comments may be shorter than usual. I guess I’ll offer you this shorter post and an IOU for a longer one sometime in the future when I sober up get better.

First off – the dollar and gold used to have (depending on the era) a very similar volatility – at one point dollars were gold. What if the dollar was more volatile than gold, for the first time in 45 years??

Normally, longer term bond and notes have higher interest rates than shorter ones. The reason is uncertainty – if I was going to borrow money for thirty years, there’s more risk of crazy things happening, like Civil Wars or George Lucas selling Star Wars™ to Disney© in a thirty-year time span than in a three month time span. But when things get uncertain, that ration flips. If you look below, note that even a small inversion is a strong, strong signal of an impending recession. Well.

How bad has Biden been? Median mortgage payments (average selling price and current interest rates) are higher than Hunter Biden at a Burning Man®.

Homeowners aren’t the only ones paying huge interest payments. Here’s what’s happening on the national debt:

But it didn’t have to be that way. If someone remotely intelligent was in charge at Treasury, it wouldn’t be an issue at all. Don’t know where this snip came from, but it’s spot on:

Janet should be managing a grade school lunch kitchen. How deep does the rot run in the Banking Industrial Complex? O’Keefe tells us tons with one of his people hacks:

Thankfully the Fed™ has infinite money to lend. Or, at least the balance sheet shows that. In this case, this shows the economy as needing three times as much cash injected into the system as in 2008 to prop it all up and keep everything from draining into the abyss. In this case, the big vertical line represents the Silicon Valley Bank© failure.

That happened because Silicon Valley Bank™ had a lot of low interest, long term assets. Let’s just say I’m happy with my 4% mortgage right now, since I actually lose money by paying it back, since I can get 5%+ from banks. Silicon Valley Bank© had lots of crappy, long positions, and exploded.

Silicon Valley Bank? You’re Soaking In It.

When that happened, I wrote (link above) that I really expected that the vibrations would shake the system into a bigger failure by that October – this stuff takes a while to propagate. Instead, the Fed pulled a very cunning move: it printed buttloads of cash, allowed the banks to deposit the crap they had with the Fed™ and then the Fed™ took the losses. Of course, since they haven’t sold the crap the banks gave them, those are “realized” yet, so those losses are like a girlfriend so ugly you make her hide in the closet when your friends come over.

In addition to that, the Fed© has also lost at least $161 billion, according to the Fed©. Total? A trillion? Who knows? It’s not like anyone’s counting.

Back in the Before Time, the Fed™ never bought the debt of the United States. Why would they? They debt of the United States was to Ma and Pa Citizen, central banks all around the world, and, (oddly) to the United States when it spent the Social Security funds on Popcorn, PEZ™, Pantyhose, and Pachyderm Rides. Yup, the United States would spend the Social Security cash, and then write itself an IOU and put it (seriously!) into a filing cabinet in D.C.

Can you imagine a job that’s more futile? It’s like I wrote myself an IOU for stealing money from my kid’s college fund to buy beer, and then made my kid file the IOU, knowing full well that the file would experience “surprise combustion” in the backyard fire pit when I sobered up.

You really should be concerned. Unless you want to send me your cash so I can send you an IOU.

I promise I won’t blow it on Popcorn, PEZ™, Pantyhose, and Pachyderm Rides. Thankfully, people are waking up to the scam:

The Post On Nihilism I’ve Been Working On (Here And There) For Weeks

“Think his nihilism got the best of him and he tried to kill himself?” – House, M.D.

Nietzsche couldn’t use pencils. He thought they were all pointless.

A big danger is Nihilism.

It’s certainly one of the biggest dangers that society faces today. As our society has become less religious, more urban, and has a greater and greater embracing of technology, people begin to ask:

Does any of this matter? Do our values have any real meaning?

My answer to both of those questions is, of course, yes. Values and virtues don’t become outdated.

But what is Nihilism? Nietzsche defined Nihilism fairly simply:

“That there is no truth; that there is no absolute state of affairs – no thing in itself. This alone is Nihilism, and of the most extreme kind.”

To a Nihilist, nothing matters and everything that anyone can think of is true. Read that sentence again, and tell me what I’ve missed in what’s ailing society at its foundation, right now, today. To quote Eugene (Fr. Seraphim) Rose, if Nihilism is the “extinction of the individual, then this world and everything in it – love, goodness, sanctity, everything – are as nothing, nothing man may do is of any ultimate consequence, and the full horror of life is hidden from man only by the strength of their will do deceive themselves; and ‘all things are lawful,’ no otherworldly hope or fear restrains men from monstrous experiments and suicidal dreams.” I’m guessing he knew my ex-wife.

Observance to a religion gives a society many things: purpose, values, unity, and stability, among others. But a Nihilist would say that all religions have the same validity, just like all cultures have the same validity.

But that is observably false.

Say what you will, but the Aztec people had a great motto: “Believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everyone.”

I’ll cherry pick an example: Aztecs. The Aztecs were a bloodthirsty, cannibal, slaving religion. When their ancestors escaped up north, they became known (later) as the Anasazi, and were so hated that they managed to get a huge coalition of all the other tribes together to unite to kill them, probably because having cannibals as neighbors is horrible for property values.

We live in a nation where academics and the news media are trying to normalize everything from cannibalism to “minor-attracted persons” to men pretending to be women. The only, and I mean only, way that this sort of normalization attempt occurs is because the GloboLeft are a group of nihilists that don’t have any fixed beliefs, at all. They were HATING former FBI Director James Comey before Trump fired him. Then, in the span of a single day, they were converted to loving him.

“Comey was always the good guy.”

We were always at war with Eastasia.

When Amy was a child, she said she wanted to go into comedy. Well, no one is laughing now.

If horrible religions like the Aztec religion can result in murder, wholesale slavery, human sacrifice, and cannibalism, imagine how much worse it is to have no religion at all? Now, it becomes open season on anything. The Mrs. likes to talk about an article she read once (maybe it was back when we subscribed to Reason?) about the author attending a Washington, D.C. dinner party.

The conversation went something like this . . . .

“Well, of course Africa is a problem, and probably has 200,000,000 too many people. I think that it can be solved, though, by withholding food supply.” This wasn’t a politician, but probably a GloboLeft academic or regulator.

The author confronted the GloboLefty: “You’re casually talking about starving 200,000,000 people to death?”

Apparently, the GloboLefty didn’t really like it when it was phrased that way, but when he could hide behind pretty words that disguised the real meaning of what he was saying, well, he was good with it.

I was going to donate my clothes to starving people in Africa, but I decided not to. If my clothes fit them, they’re definitely not starving.

The French Revolution was, perhaps, the very first example of this sort of extreme Nihilism, where the idea was not a war on man, but an organized war on God, Himself. Mankind has certainly had its share of civil wars and genocides throughout history, but the French Revolution was something entirely new – the desire of an idea, Nihilism, to remake an entire nation and discard every idea from the past.

To a Nihilist or a GloboLeftist (but I repeat myself) I am nothing. You are nothing. We are not even worthy of consideration as humans. We are beneath contempt. To quote Rose again, “The Revolution, in fact, cannot be completed until the last vestige of faith in the true God is uprooted from the hearts of men and everyone has learned to live in this void.” In the words of V.I. Lenin: “. . . there will be no way of getting away from it, there will be nowhere to go.”

Really.

Should the Russian Revolution be renamed the Tsar Wars?

The greatest horrors (that’s “horror” – I’m not talking about Madonna) in the history of humanity have been brought about by GloboLeft governments while being run not by atheists, but by antitheists. Period, and that’s verifiable by actual numbers. The end stage of this is the Nihilism we see around us now: The Nihilism bent only on destruction. The French Revolution started it, but you can see it daily at work

As I’ve said again and again, I believe we will win, because we stand for something and to win they have to kill us all. Every single one of us.

They can’t. After 74 years of trying, the Soviets couldn’t erase Religion and the values it provides. Today, only 13% of Russians are atheists. Infecting everyone with Nihilism is really, really hard.

My doctor said I should drink more wine. He actually said, “less beer”, but I’m pretty good at reading between the lines.

Why am I so certain we’ll win? Because we’ve been winning for at least 2000 years, and that won’t stop now. I do believe in Truth. And I know others to, too.

That’s all it takes to win.

Forbidden Opinions: The GloboLeft Versus The Beautiful

“Look, there is light and beauty up there, that no shadow can touch.” – The Return of the King

I’m trying to improve my double entendres. But it’s not easy.

This is the last in the series about the GloboLeft’s war against the Good, Beautiful, and True, at least for now. We’re down to Beautiful. Why did I do them in the order of True, Good, and Beautiful? Because they’re not really in order, and they each complement the other. Or maybe I have a problem with authority – who can say?

Which one of the three is best? Each of them. They all work together. That is why the GloboLeft fights these so very, very hard. Their typical pattern is to pick a value, and then pick its absolute opposite, and then celebrate that. To pick from Monday’s post: why to they look at men dressed as women and call them women? Because that’s the opposite, and it must be celebrated.

(as found) My take? There are two sexes, two genders, and about a million fetishes. I mean, I have a logic fetish – I can’t stop coming to conclusions.

Beauty is the last of the three that we’ll discuss, but it figures in so much of what we see in our lives today, especially since everything that’s ugly is now celebrated, and there is an active attempt to remove beauty from public life.

A GloboLeftist would try to convince you that beauty is subjective.

It is not. Back when people were allowed to experiment on human babies, they’d show babies pictures of pretty things and ugly things. Babies reacted positively to pretty things (and people!) and negatively to ugly things (and George Soros). It is a part of us. And we know it when we see it.

So, here are some of the statements that the GloboLeft actually believes:

GloboLeftists believe that every female is stunning and brave.

Not so much with males, since they don’t like the patriarchy. Or something, not sure what, but it’s still okay to make fun of dudes. This is one where they’re specifically talking about female (which includes, bizarrely, transexuals) beauty.

Here’s an example: Lizzo is just as beautiful as (insert actually attractive actress here). I wasn’t originally aware of what a Lizzo even was, until I saw a video of her playing a crystal flute that belonged to James Madison.

(meme as found) Where do you find the scariest part of the internet? HTTP Lovecraft.

Wow. She (at that point) looked to weigh about as much as a World War II Iowa class battleship. And she wore a skintight leotard. There isn’t enough eye-bleach in the world. It looked like a potato (Lizzo) with a crystal toothpick.

Another example: Zendaya was named one of the 10 most beautiful women in the world. I’ll admit that she’s a middling character actress with a range of emotions that go from “irritated” to “thinking about talking to my doctor about my inability to have regular bowel movements.”

10 most beautiful women in the world? She wouldn’t have been in the top 10 in my senior class. Plus, I think she’ll fill out and look like a middle linebacker for the Chicago Bears® before she’s 35. The good news is I don’t think she’ll go full Lizzo-potato.

I know which choice I’d McMake. (meme as found, so my criticism is not unique)

The GloboLeftists believe that all art is valid and beautiful.

There are so many different ways that humans work to create beauty that it’s hard to catalog them all. But I’ll start with architecture. Sure, I don’t live in a city, but lots of people do. Here’s one made by actual humans in Copenhagen versus a nameless, faceless, commieblock. Which is more beautiful? Which makes you feel more human? Which would contain more PEZ®?

I worked with an Asian who dipped Copenhagen. His name was Mr. Chu.

And then there’s music. We started the 20^th Century with Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1908) moved to I Want to Hold Your Hand in 1963, 55 years later. What came out 57 years later? Wet Ass Pussy.

Sure, Take Me Out to the Ballgame doesn’t mention virtues, but it’s innocent. I Want to Hold Your Hand shows a little intent. But Wet Ass Pussy? It’s beyond crass and replaces Beauty with it’s very opposite.

Likewise, literature (mainstream) has gone downhill. I’ll pick science fiction. Why? I’ve been reading that since I could read. Around 2010 I had the idea that I’d outgrown science fiction, that I was older, jaded, and the genre didn’t have anything for me anymore.

I then picked up one of the old books I’d loved as a kid. It was still awesome. I hadn’t changed, the genre had become ugly. And that’s coming from a Hugo®-nominated (really, this is true, under a pseudonym) author. But there are still great novels out there. And maybe one of those authors will (hint) post links to his stuff below.

No, the Beauty still exists in literature, but the GloboLeftElite that controls the mainstream press wants to make it ugly. That’s the same reason that movies are sucking now, and actresses often look like a burlap sack filled with doorknobs. The movies are no longer meant to exult in what’s best in us, to show and celebrate virtues. Nope. Movies are there to sell the opposite of the values and the opposite of Beauty.

Speaking of movies, Disney® apparently is forcing video game creators to make characters ugly. From Overlord DVD (a YouTube® channel) comes the news that a new Star Wars® video game is . . . ugly. The rumor is that Disney© is requiring that the studio make the characters that way. Why?

(as found at Overlord DVD’s channel) “Fugly girl, come out to play . . . Fugly giiiirrrll, come out to pla-ay.”

Disney© isn’t doing this to make money. There must be another purpose.

I could go on and on, but at some point I need to hit the hay. Here are more examples, and you no doubt could make a very, very long list where Beauty has been replaced by ugly recently:

Painting contests, won by an actual chimpanzee.
Celebrating every family structure except ones with mothers and fathers,
Natural foods versus slop – I think nacho cheese is probably made in a refinery out of Vaseline and yellow crayons, but I can’t prove this.

The end process is to pick a value, invert it, with the goal of subverting the actual value. The best news is this: The True, the Beautiful, and The Good are going to win.

How do I know this?

Even the GloboLeft knows the True, the Beautiful, and the Good when they see it. They just hate it.

So, they dress up a potato and celebrate it playing a flute. This is their best play.

We’ve got this.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Month Closer

“That’s the theme song from The Jeffersons. You really need help.” – Tropic Thunder

All these clock pictures sometimes tick me off.

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 V, Issue 11

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

I’ve rolled back the clock this month. We’ll see if it holds.

In this issue: Front Matter – Variations on a Theme – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – We Win – 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 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Variations on a Theme

During the month I collect headlines and other information that documents the way things are going – for me, it’s interesting just how quickly something either fades from memory, or becomes the “new normal” and becomes business as usual. The following (at first) seemed a bit disjointed to me, but in the end they all tell the same story – the story of the plans to eliminate the culture that now exits, and the desire to hold on to power, no matter what the cost.

Keeping that in mind, the election is coming up. Trump is leading and one major Democratic technique is to create an electorate split. The reason they want the power, is to use it.

And there’s a big population of businesses that are coordinating to “interfere” in the election. The GloboLeftElite always project what they are doing on their enemies. And, to them, we are not competitors, we are deathly enemies.

As has been a major theme on all media this, not just here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise®, illegal aliens oozing across the border has been the biggest story of 2024. The GloboLeft tries to pretend that they’re not in favor of this, but it’s abundantly clear that this is no mistake, not act of nature. This is entirely planned.

This policy stays either without respect to the consequences or, perhaps, because of the consequences. The consequences have significant negative impacts of the actual citizens here, including employment. They are helped by official at every level.

The consequences? Lawlessness and lowered competence.

The long term plan? Who knows?

There is sufficient proof that the GloboLeft hates God:

And that the GloboLeft is everywhere:

And that they worship death:

And don’t care about our deepest cultural beliefs:

And that they’ll put their, um, “money” where their mouth is since humans are apparently just TransCows to them:

Violence and Censorship Update

Several readers have reported to me (via email) that they were unsubscribed or that their subscriptions are filtered out as spam. FYI. Might it be random? Sure. It might. Heard about more this month.

I’ll (mostly) let the memes speak for themselves. Foreign stories are included as they often foreshadow attempts in the United States.

I did two stories this month on Sweet Baby Inc.’s looting of game companies for money and to insert GloboLeftElite propaganda into games to control your mind. Remember, never buy anything from a company that has a CEO that stole a hair style from Sideshow Bob on the Simpsons.

Here’s the playbook that Sweet Baby Inc. uses . . .

And the voice of someone who called them on it, and got doxed:

And (from the UK) what successful Social Justice looks like:

And the next few are the result of successful Social Justice policies:

And probably the plan:

And, Canada is seeing the end game in sight:

Here’s a bit more on that:

And the what the RCMP thinks of Canadians:

But March was also rich in Orwell:

Never forget, the GloboLeftElite will blame others for what they’re already doing:

And Canada showing they’ve figured out what a woman really is . . .

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. It’s like it’s planned:

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 is down, expected in spring. Probably quiet until June or July.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly up.

Economic:

Economic numbers are near a high, but I wonder if it’s the drunk before the hangover?

Illegal Aliens:

Highest March. Ever.

We Win

To have a civil war, there have to be two sides. I think the goal of the GloboLeftElite has been to convince those who oppose it that the game is over. They have already shown themselves to be ready to do anything, absolutely anything to gain power. From then, they’ll pull up the ladder. What do they want?

“Voting” so loosely open that anyone can do it. Think something as simple as obtaining a drivers license equates a ballot in the mail. Then, anyone can harvest those ballots and mark them however they want, with no accountability. This was tried in 2020, and works great for the GloboLeft.

Combined with voting changes (first point) the GloboLeft is cramming illegals into Red States as fast as they can. Either they’re “voters” or an army. Neither of those is good news.

They also want control of the finances so that they can wreck them. Why? I have no idea on this one. Perhaps the Elite just want to consolidate the power and own it all.

Of course, guns have been the bug up the butt of the Left for, well, forever. They try to make up things, but the real answer is that guns prevent the GloboLeft from taking the country over. It is clear from history that killing children is not something that bothers the GloboLeft at all, as the GloboLeft are currently the world champions at kid killing.

People are waking up. They’re seeing the real Evil of the Left: