Revenge of the NEET

“I wanted to send my kids to college.  It’s, like, $200 a year!” – Unfrosted

But I do have degrees in Mike Rowe Economics and Mike Rowe Biology.

NEET is Internet slang for “Not in Employment, Education, or Training” – in other words, “stays a home and smokes weed and plays video games”.

Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy, spent time noting last year that even with unemployment below 4%, 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 aren’t in the work force at all.

Now, I would hate to bring up the points that if our nation:

  • sends all the factory jobs overseas,
  • imports millions of foreigners with H1B visas (95,000 a year, minimum, since 2006, and more going back before that), or
  • just like Google®, cut hundreds of highly-skilled technical jobs in the United States and offshore them to Mexico and India,

then maybe, just maybe, the job market actually sucks because the wages are depressed to the point where living conditions at those wage levels are literally third world.

They’re not send us their best, or their best navigators, but I wonder if the repairs will be riveting. (meme used with permission)

Why would people put up with that?  The market.

An example I read recently was of a person from India claiming that the only way they could find a place to live (this was in Canada) was in a bed in a kitchen in a two-bedroom apartment where six other Indian families were living.  Admittedly, this is probably an upgrade from living in a slum in Mumbai, but these six families each pay a sixth of the rent.  If a typical Canadian family wanted to rent that apartment and each Indian family was making $300 payments, the Canadians would have to cough up $1800.

That’s why people are tenting it – tents are better (marginally) to the American psyche than living with six other families in a condition where “squalor” would be an upgrade.

Another example?

When I was a kid, delivery work was for kids.  Sixteen-year-olds were the ones frying Big Macs® and driving pizza from the Pizza Den to people’s houses.

Now?

Doordash® is now an adult job and everyone I see running the windows of the fast-food places has been voting for a big chunk of this century.

The United States is slipping quickly (and then, I fear, all at once) into a third world economy.  To be clear, I’m not blaming those attempting to get to a better place, but it would be magical thinking to believe that once they got here and were a majority that they’d not immediately turn the United States into just another version of their homeland.  You know, the one they fled.

Biden can’t stop doing connect-the-dot puzzles even though he can’t finish one.  I guess Biden just doesn’t know where to draw the line.  (meme as found)

But some of them aren’t working at all. And of those men that aren’t working, a huge number of them are white guys.  It turns out that all, and I mean all, of the job growth since Corona™ became something other than a beer, went to dudes that weren’t white.  In fact, the number of white people in the workforce dropped while Joe Biden “created” all of these jobs.

They were replaced.  On any job where there is a remotely credible alternative with some sort of “diversity” score based on: a sexual fetish, being “female”, missing one of their six spleens, race, ethnicity, or religion.  Of course, white, Christian and male is the opposite of diverse even though that category is only 6% or less of all of the humans we know of in the Solar System, excluding Phobos.

With things like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) actively putting up barriers to hiring (or keeping) white guys, I’m not surprised that many have just given up.  They are pretending right now that that DEI is going away, but in reality, they’re keeping it but just naming it other things.  “People and the Planet,” anyone?  (Yes, it’s real.)  Their goals really haven’t changed.

A lot of companies have women as DEI executives.  I guess because it’s cheaper.  (meme as found)

The big problem is that Identity is now more important than Competency.  Think:  Chernobyl 2.0, brought to you by DEI.  Why no DEI in the NFL®?  People actually care about meritocracy in football players, I guess.

Also, Automation is real.  Factories of almost any type, when compared by their counterparts of 1960, are much more highly automated.  A guy named Fred walking around to check temperatures on thermometers to make sure the boiler doesn’t suddenly wipe Peoria off the map has been replaced with sensors that feed pressure, temperature, and flowrates back to computers that automate the process.  Fred’s out of a job, and, if those boiler automation systems weren’t programmed in India (looking at you, Boeing®) then Peoria is still safe.

Except for Fred, who doesn’t have that job anymore.  A.I. is coming for lots and lots of other jobs.  Starting now.  According to Indeed®:

  • Software development jobs are down 51.3%,
  • Information Design down 44.3%
  • IT Operations and Helpdesk down 33.5%
  • Industrial Engineering down 30.3%

Are all of these jobs replaceable by A.I.?  Of course not.  But 35.3% of HR jobs (same study) apparently are.

I’m not a NEET, but I’m sure it’s easier being a NEET without a family.  No particular requirement to have shelter other than couch surfing, and some NEETs work for a couple of months during the year and then goof off, smoke weed, and play video games during the rest of the time.

And you can do both of these things in a video game, while stoned.  (meme as found)

Families have always been the nucleus that keeps men showered and shaved, but without them, men give up.  It’s not like they can afford a family, either.  Housing prices and interest rates are now high enough in most metro locations that most young families are effectively locked out of homeownership.  The price to income ratio has doubled since 1985 nationally – homes are now twice as expensive as 1985 compared to median family incomes.  Add in 7%+ interest rates, and you’ll see why the middle class has caused Red Lobster to go bankrupt.

Who knew we’d live to see so many movies come true?  (meme as found)

In reality, there’s not a labor shortage – there’s only a labor shortage at the wages companies are willing to pay, and a ludicrous inflation of the value of women so that what they bring to the table (for kids) doesn’t equal what they have to put.  NEETs don’t really care about either.  They’ve got their weed, couches, and video games.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Time And Temperature

“Hey, come on.  You divorced?  You Separated?  She beat you up?” – Die Hard

My book on clocks finally arrived.  It’s about time.

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

Volume V, Issue 12

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.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Clock of Doom Setting– Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Talking About The Inevitable – 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 or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Clock of Doom Setting

Klaus really rocks that Klingon cosplay?

I’m keeping the clock at stage 8 this month.  But last month there was the comment from Aesop (LINK) that I promised to address this month, so here we are.  The critical comments are in italics.

You’re still vastly over-selling the case.  We’re at a 5 to a 6, at worst.

Things are neither wider nor deeper, just more widely and repetitively reported.

That’s a sign of desperation by the minions of Evil, not dominance.

Things are ugly. (Really ugly, if you want to use 1982, or 1962 as benchmarks. Which is why you shouldn’t.) But they’re not out of control, by any stretch.  They haven’t turned up the burner, and the water isn’t anywhere near getting to frog-boiling range.  Yet. That may (probably will) change. Perhaps quite rapidly (but that’s been true for ages).  But until it does change, you really should throttle this back some.

Calling things an 8, at the current time, is gross overstatement.

This is a 100% fair criticism.  I am certain we are, at minimum, at a 6 (People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology).

Why?

I know multiple people who have fled states merely for ideological reasons – the Red folks are leaving the Blue states, the GloboLeftists are leaving the Red states and taking their guns with them, to go and live in states that actually value the Second Amendment.

I just flew into Australia, and boy are my arms confiscated.

The GloboLeftists leaving Red states isn’t as big, because (at least now) the GloboLeftists are tolerated in Red states.  You can have a “Biden” sign in your front yard and no one will vandalize the place.  This is mostly true.

There is a paradox of these places:  If you live in the parts of America where it’s likely that you’ll need to use force for self-defense, you also live in a part of America where the District Attorney will charge you, and the jury will convict you for using self-defense.  If you live in the parts of America where it’s unlikely you’ll need to use force for self-defense, you also live in the parts of America where the odds are they’ll give you a medal instead of indicting you.  If indicted, the odds are nearly zero that any jury would convict you,

People on the TradRight see that, and they’re moving.

So, 6 is the floor.  Is it also the ceiling?  My logic says no, and here’s why:

Most Civil War violence is homicide.

A large portion is because the state allows or encourages it to happen.  It’s not tanks, it’s not fighter jets, it’s people killing people – US Civil War 1.0 was an anomaly, mostly.  Out in Missouri, though, there were many blood feuds that only glancingly involved politics.  Ditto the Balkans, where neighbors just started killing neighbors due to ethnicity or due to them being middle class.  Ditto the Indonesian civil war, where it was mainly just homicides based on opportunity, not based on political reasons.

Dali’s brother was a really good boxer.  His name was Muhamma.

Regardless, there is currently an increasing amount of violence that is well tolerated, as long as it is perpetrated on people who probably vote on the Right.  The January 6 protesters were charged in ways that strain any sort of claim of fair justice.  The actually violent and felonious Black Lives Matter™ protests and Antifa® protests had nary an arrest, and of those arrested, the punishments for things like assault with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, and actual murder were not handed down.  Most protesters (of the GloboLeft variety) were just ignored.

They got the message.  Even now, violence is 100% tolerated by the GloboLeftElite Soros District Attorneys and their “catch and release” program for violent felons.  In 2011, Syria released all of the violent prisoners to act as a counterbalance to peaceful protestors.  This is a known strategy.  Civil War 2.0 won’t look like Civil War 1.0, and it will be a far, far dirtier thing, and we may never see a single uniformed conflict.

Where do football players get fresh uniforms from?  New Jersey.

In my mind, that brings us to an 8.  Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.

I see Aesop’s point, and, though we may differ, I’ve got to make my call, and I’m sticking with an 8.  If we see any meaningful attempt to back down the violence in GloboLeftist areas, I’ll rachet it down accordingly.

Violence and Censorship Update

Let’s start with Elon Musk.  A judge in some place called Australia seemed to think that Australia controls the media in the United States, and, heck, maybe interstellar space for all I know.  She ordered Elon Musk’s company, X™ to stop showing a video of an adherent of the Religion of Peace stabbing a Christian priest during a sermon.  Elon (predictably) told her to shove it.

Microsoft® has likewise decided that games should only have women in them that look like sacks of potatoes.  The good news is that Amy Schumer isn’t doing much, so she should be okay to step in as a model.

And, if you thought that you could own and operate a business and not hire criminals?  I guess you didn’t figure on 2024.  A convenience store is being sued by the Justice Department for not hiring criminals.  I didn’t know Hunter needed a job that badly.

And, if you thought that having a bridge named after the guy who wrote the National Anthem was not unreasonable, well, they’re trying to disappear him from history.

Finally, the FISA program was not only extended, but expanded.  Now the NSA has the power to look into, essentially, the whole Internet.  Go figure.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again.  And it’s gonna get worse.

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 with cooler weather.  Probably quiet until June or July.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly up.  I expect this fall to be a bit more crazy.

Economic:

Economic numbers are down a bit.  But prices are up.

Illegal Aliens:

Second Highest April.  Ever.  But the normies are waking up.

Talking About The Inevitable

One of the clues that people are going to have a divorce is that they start talking about it.  A recent Rasmussen Reports® poll shows that:

  • 41 percent of voters are thinking that there is a new civil war due sometime in the future,
  • 16 percent felt it would occur in the next five years,
  • 37 percent of voters felt civil war is more likely if Biden remains in the White House after the election,
  • 36 percent of Alaskans want to leave the Union,
  • 31 percent of Texans want to leave the Union,
  • 29 percent of Californians want to leave the Union, and
  • 28 percent of New Yorkers want out.

When I started writing the Weather Report in 2019 (this is the 60th monthly issue!) I stated that I felt that the very first possible time that a civil war would occur would be 2025.  I felt the halfway point and most likely time would be 2032, and the latest date would be (I think this is right) 2037.  There are reasons for those years, tying to several large trends in economics, world power dynamics, hordes of illegal aliens, and other demographics.

Back in 2020, Scott Adams predicted we wouldn’t have a civil war in the near term.  His reason?  “We don’t want one.”  I think, four years later, we’re getting closer to wanting one.  Remember:  it doesn’t require everyone to agree to a civil war, what it requires is a committed minority.  John Adams, who knows more about this than I do, noted that he thought about a third of Americans were in favor of the Revolution, which was just a civil war that we happened to win.  Adams felt another third didn’t want war, and another third were loyal to the king.

The numbers above are showing that we’re at danger levels of support for a major change, and I think next year takes us into the period where civil war becomes possible – with the peak probability still sitting at 2032.  Here in 2024, though, it’s a nice, cool night and tomorrow’s weather will be perfect.  A storm may be coming, but tonight I’ll prepare.  And enjoy.

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky.  Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/TTEcclesBrown/status/1779532832056180756

https://twitter.com/TTEcclesBrown/status/1776630901277126892

https://twitter.com/i/status/1779690452398330155

https://twitter.com/i/status/1782456547525685499

https://twitter.com/GangHits/status/1784616636735004918

https://twitter.com/i/status/1783536135085388174

 

Good Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13371699/UNC-protest-Israel-frat-American-flag-protected.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0gKDgYHvRA

https://nypost.com/2024/05/02/us-news/bill-ackman-donates-10k-to-unc-frat-bros-who-shielded-us-flag-from-anti-israel-mob/

https://www.newsweek.com/unc-frat-brothers-flag-donations-update-1897055

 

One Gal

https://twitter.com/Red_Pill_US/status/1779348493490131392

 

Body Count

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLGuBnfbMAA2xEN?format=jpg&name=large

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GLGFWhwXsAAinOO?format=jpg&name=900×900

https://www.thirdway.org/report/the-21st-century-red-state-murder-crisis

https://www.shewon.org/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/04/09/transgender-surgery-in-military-paid-by-taxpayers

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-births-alarmingly-slide-lowest-level-1979-failing-exceed-replacement-rate-gfc

https://www.lifenews.com/2024/04/25/americas-fertility-rate-hits-record-low-as-planned-parenthood-abortions-hit-record-high/

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1775928212805103945

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/ar-BB1llO5L

 

Vote Count

https://twitter.com/Rogue_Outlaw17/status/1775851708436078957

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/04/24/poorly-managed-toddlers-are-running-elections

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1778840719387488583

https://twitter.com/amrenewcitizen/status/1774806979367641474

https://www.newsweek.com/fani-willis-dealt-blow-new-testimony-1886322

https://twitter.com/CannConActual/status/1773089354635698446

https://twitter.com/Rasmussen_Poll/status/1774799076707422307

https://twitter.com/TrueTheVote/status/1775625397431877718

 

Civil War

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/alex-garland-civil-war-explosive-083228878.html

https://americanmind.org/salvo/extremism-on-the-ballot/

https://alt-market.us/the-political-left-has-proven-beyond-a-doubt-that-they-are-authoritarians/

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/09/america-politics-divided-polarization-data

https://apnews.com/article/ap-poll-democracy-rights-freedoms-election-b1047da72551e13554a3959487e5181

https://metro.co.uk/2024/04/18/second-civil-war-becoming-increasingly-plausible-insurrections-likely-20671654/

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/1-in-5-americans-think-violence-may-solve-u-s-divisions-poll-finds

https://english.almayadeen.net/news/politics/41–of-americans-say-second-civil-war-likely-in-next-5-years

https://www.nysun.com/article/100-million-americans-say-civil-war-could-rip-country-apart-within-5-years-survey-suggests

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/04/06/america-is-hurling-toward-a-full-blown-hot-civil-war/

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/26/what-a-real-civil-war-would-do-to-the-us-economy/

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.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

“That’s them!  They knocked us out and stole our space suits!” – Dude, Where’s My Car?

How does a crab cross the street?  It uses a sidewalk.

The future isn’t what it used to be.

Going back in time, the future as envisioned by the 50s, 60s, and even the 70s was pretty cool.  There were flying cars, jetpacks, and a world that was cleaner and more convenient filled with abundant energy that would be too cheap to meter – and humanity would soon be headed outward to the planets, at the very least.  I believe that’s because that’s where the hot alien women in bikini space suits are kept.

That didn’t happen, or at least hasn’t happened yet.  Pa Wilder was born after World War I, but still within spitting distance of the first time people flew in the rickety plane that Orville and Wilber tossed together.  By the time he finished his government-funded all-expenses-paid European vacation in 1945, jet engines had already screamed over Europe, ballistic missiles had crossed into space on their way toward delivering urgent packages to London.

Jet airliners and satellites followed, and before Pa Wilder hit fifty, man was walking on the Moon.

And his favorite eel?  That’s a moray.

Amazing progress, by any stretch of the imagination.  But what (at the individual level) has changed since, say, 1981?

Let’s put computers aside (for a moment).  I know that’s like wanting to talk about the life of O.J. Simpson but just skip that one little detail.  Life in 2024 would be utterly comprehensible to Pa Wilder of 1981, especially if he never looked at a cellphone or a tablet or a computer.

The big advances in basic applied engineering seemed to stop around 1970.  Heck, in some ways, they’ve regressed – it’s not really possible to get on an SST and jet to London in a few hours going faster than the speed of sound unless you’re in the .mil club.  We’re also tinkering with going back to the Moon, but seemed to have lost the directions since Buzz Aldrin left them in his other spacesuit.

“I am Buzz Aldrin, I’ve been on the Moon.  Neil before me!”

One of the reasons that progress in a lot of conventional technology has slowed down or stopped is that progress is always easiest at the front end.  The Wright Flyer?  It sucked.  But after flight was proven, people lined up to improve it.  Radio?  It sucked, too, just dots and dashes until AM and then FM were plucked (by very smart people) from the aether, leading also to television in very short order.

Unfortunately, television also led to The View and Keeping Up With the Kardashians, so there’s at least some argument that Philo T. Farnsworth could be held liable for war crimes.

The biggest and most important refinements to a new technology often come soonest.

But that’s not the only reason technological development slows.  Nowadays, experimenting has become too hard because failure is no longer an acceptable outcome.  A prime example of this is Elon Musk’s SpaceX® versus NASA.  Elon makes more progress in an “old” field in a month than NASA does in a year because he watches things blow up and smiles because he knows that his team will have learned something new about why stuff broke.

Space is hard, but it’s a thousand times harder if you have to continually guess what will go wrong rather than test, and that slows progress.  Nuclear power may be an exception here, since we only need so many Godzillas® and Gameras™ to fight off dangerous kaiju, like Michelle Obama or Amy Schumer.

What do you find between Godzilla’s toes?  Slow Japanese people.

As I mentioned, Pa Wilder of 1981 would be quite comfy and unsurprised by the world of 2024 with the exception of information technology and telecommunications, which, aside from financial shenanigans, has received the greatest amount of investment of any single industry since 1981.

What would the biggest changes be for him?

Well, duh, computers, telecommunications, and their influence on the world.

It has transformed businesses in fundamental ways.  Walmart®’s secret sauce wasn’t just cheap Chinese merchandise – nope.  It was also the information tech that allowed them to manage the purchasing and logistics of a business with a supply chain that spanned multiple continents.  The time was ready for that particular innovation:  if it hadn’t been Walmart©, it would have been some other company.

You can get Batman® shampoo at our Walmart©, but not conditioner Gordon.

Pa Wilder would not be very comfortable with the pace of social media.  Also, I think that he would be very, very concerned with the advances in Artificial Intelligence, but enough about the chairman of the Federal Reserve®.

Pa was the president of a very small farm bank as computer terminals began to replace the paper ledgers that they used to track accounts, so he was familiar the changes that he was seeing in banking that in, but taking it from that level to the idea of “all the information anywhere, immediately available” was never something he quite got.  Of course, it probably didn’t help that he used a 28.8kb modem and there were only something like 24 lines(!) from his county to the AT&T© office the next county over.

Yes.  28 lines.  It wasn’t like everybody would be calling all at once, right?  That was, however, the time that we ran for the phone in my house, since calls were rare, and you really wanted to see who it was.  Now?  I have the data equivalent of 10,000 old phone lines coming to my house.

We certainly don’t have jetpacks or flying cars, but we do have an information explosion that is unparalleled in history.  That being said, we’re probably pretty near the limits for conventional computing power based on the limits of physics and energy density, and I’m not sure that quantum computing isn’t just a meme.

Is the next big field genetics?

What do you get when you cross a duck and a pig?  A media exposé about the lack of ethics in genetic engineering.

Advances in things like CRISPR and genomic sequencing have come about because of the advances in information processing, and we are, perhaps, at the cusp of the A.I. world where things could get very, very interesting indeed in just a few years.  Maybe the scientists and A.I. working together with CRISPR can even find a way to turn plant matter into protein.  You know, like a chicken.

Or maybe they’ll finally locate the hot alien women in bikini space suits?

Forbidden Science: I.Q. And The Industrial Revolution

“For going against his forbidden rules of old!” – The Mist

Are protestants in love otherwise known as Popeless romantics?

I’m going to start off with a happy note, Concerned American, from Western Rifle Shooters Association isn’t done, and he’s up over at Cold Fury (LINK) until he gets things ironed out at his normal place (LINK) which is up periodically.

Last Monday when talking about Forbidden Science, I included the following paragraphs:

The Soviets started a fox breeding program to try to understand the interplay of genetics and behavior.  Within six generations, there were foxes that actually liked people and wagged their tails.  Now, this program is some 50 generations in, and the foxes actually seek people, and, though still foxes, behave and act like dogs.

The aboriginals in Australia were separated from the rest of humanity (mostly) for 2500 generations.  It has been 101 generations since the birth of Christ, so imagine how living in cities has changed us from what we were?  In Great Britain, virtually all of the poor people living 500 years ago died out due to economic selection, and the vast majority of folks are descended from the aristocracy.

I was questioned in the comments about the very last sentence, so I wanted to put it into context by making sure the rest of the “stuff” was around it, because the conclusion that comes from this is yet more Forbidden Science.

Do these genes make me look fat?

How do I know this?  The book in question is A Farewell to Alms:  A Brief Economic History of the World by Gregory Clark.  How do I know that it’s Forbidden Science?

  • Despite many news articles at the time, it took a bit of searching to find the source – as the joke goes, where’s the best place to hide a body? On the third page of Google® results.  (FYI, I don’t actually use Google™ since they censor me)  After a bit, I finally found it.
  • On the Wikipedia® page about the book, there’s almost three times as much content attacking the book and the author as there is a description of the thesis of the book. There’s a line here about protesting too much . . . .

Since it’s Forbidden, Clark’s basic idea is this:

Back before the industrial revolution hit, Great Britain had no real safety nets for the poor.  Have too many kids so you can’t feed them all?  Guess you’d better start picking favorites.  In real terms, however, if someone was poor, they were more likely to get sick.

But this man clearly plays bass.

Why?  The food wasn’t as nutritious or plentiful for a poor person, same as forever.  Houses (if they even  had one) were cold and often filthy, unless they were too poor to even be able to afford filth.

I remember driving through some city with The Mrs. once, and I said, “Well, this would be a nice place to live, if you were rich.”  The Mrs. responded to my stupid comment like a pit bull on a toddler:  “John, any place is nice to live if you’re rich.”

Without a social safety net, everyplace sucks if you’re poor.  Great Britain was no exception.  There are, however, implications and consequences to being poor.  The poor were less likely to marry – many bloodlines just evaporated because the men and women were too miserable or had such bad hygiene that they couldn’t get together and get it on.

The poor also die earlier before they have as many kids, and if they die earlier, their kids are maybe out of luck, since they can’t be sold into medical experimentation because medicine then consisted of bloodletting.

If you eat Ramen with ketchup for sauce, it tastes just like poverty.

So, the poor don’t have as many kids.  But the poor kids also die more often.  This isn’t the world of 2024 where we encourage poverty by subsidizing it, so pre-industrial Great Britain is the exact opposite of the movie Idiocracy:  the rich and the successful have more kids and start replacing the poor people who didn’t show up.  Thus, the poor that remain are getting smarter.

While being rich is not perfectly correlated to being smart, it’s close.  It’s also not perfectly correlated to greater degrees of the ability to defer pleasure, but it’s close.  The Stanford marshmallow experiment was a test where kids were brought in and offered one marshmallow now, but if they could wait 15 minutes, they’d get two marshmallows.  Those who could wait had better SAT scores, education and income later in life.  And, we all know the difference between camping and being homeless:  marshmallows.

Crimes were also punished much more severely compared to today – and (unless you were on the wrong side of Henry VIII) most of them weren’t political, but were for theft.  Yup, one estimate is that 70% plus of executions were for theft.  And although the numbers were only 200 a year out of a population of 8,000,000 or so million (think 1770s) the children of those people didn’t show up, because they were never born.

If Henry VIII had invented the airplane, he would have been an alti-Tudor.

Up until the Industrial Revolution changed the game, the social pressures in Great Britain favored an increase in intelligence, and an increase in civilized behaviors.  It’s very likely that these civilizational pressures made the Industrial Revolution possible by helping people in Great Britain become clever enough to start it.

The Industrial Revolution started to improve the lives of everyone in Great Britain, and the (now smarter) poor didn’t die so often, even after they were fired from clock factories for putting all those extra hours in.

As these pressures disappear, there is strong idea that IQ can go down.  It looks like the world (and the United States) is in the midst of a reverse Flynn effect (LINK).  To put it bluntly, we are very likely in the midst of the plot of Idiocracy.  So, remember, Brawndo® has what plants crave!

Thanks for asking the question, and I hope this covered it.

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 20th 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.

Forbidden Economics: The GloboLeft Versus The Good

“Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.  One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

My neighbor has had a bad financial crisis.  He has to drive a car without a top and his car doesn’t have a roof.

Monday’s post was about Forbidden Science.  These are inconvenient truths that simply don’t fit into the ideology of a GloboLeftist.  In the tradition of the very best GloboLeftists, whenever this inconvenient set of facts conflicts with their ideology, they do what rational people have always done – they consult how the facts disagree with their ideology and change their positions.  Nah, just kidding.  Instead GloboLeftists ignore them and stick their fingers in their ears and yell loudly “I’m not listening to you!  I’m not listening to you!  I’m not listening to you!”

Wednesday is the day I typically post about economics and related issues, so what better topic than Forbidden Economics?  Just like on Monday, I’ll start with things that the GloboLeft actually believes and then make fun of them, primarily because they deserve it.

Me?  I say bring back the positive power of bullying.

I was a bully to this orphan kid in school.  I mean, it wasn’t like he was going to tell his parents.

GloboLeftists believe that Modern Monetary Theory isn’t just made-up justification for “I spend what I want”.

Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) has quietly taken the place of any sort of rational thinking.  When I first wrote about it, it seemed so fringe and tongue in cheek that I was shocked anyone smarter than AOC would fall for it.  I know, I know, that leaves about 85% of the country, but the GloboLeft has willingly and enthusiastically embraced MMT.

What is MMT?  It’s the theory that, since money is entirely made up in the first place, that it doesn’t matter how much you print.  Yes, you read that correctly.  The idea is that money is like points in a football game.  When a team scores a touchdown, there aren’t some vat of points that are decreased to add points to that team’s score.  Instead, they’re made up.  The limit to the number of points that can be scored in a game is based entirely on the productivity of the teams.

If we reset to zero every day and all played NFL® football, well, that might make sense.  In MMT, the idea is that extra cash is just soaked up via taxation rather than the game ending.

What happens when the score keeps going up from game to game.

But the GloboLeftElite really, really don’t like to be taxed.  As much as Warren Buffett complains that he’s not taxed enough, the one thing Warren never, ever does is send more than he owes in taxes in voluntarily.  In fact, he has fleets of lawyers working every angle possible so that he pays the least amount in taxes possible.  (Note:  If Donald Trump were to try this he would be tried for felony tax evasion.)

There are two types of people in this world:  Those who can find an answer through simple deduction.

This is not a new thing.  It really started under W., and has continued through Obama, Trump, and Biden.

But what could go wrong?

GloboLeftists believe that women are cheated in the workplace, earning less than men.

I’ll start by reminding everyone that GloboLeftists don’t even know what a woman is, to the point that a sitting Supreme Court Justice was unable to define what a woman was during her Senate confirmation hearings, and sits on the Supreme Court.

However . . .

The reality is that women actually make more than men when their wages are controlled for things like, oh, career choice, amount of overtime put in, time taken off to have children, et cetera.  The idea is so simplistic in that it takes everyone, puts them in a bag, and says that the average man makes X, and the average woman makes 0.8X.

Yes.  That’s true.  But when I went to a college graduation several years ago and they called out the engineers, 90% plus were men in some fields, and in no engineering field were women even close to a majority.

And they both give sound advice.

I wonder if that could be partially a reason for a pay difference?

Nah.  Sexism is easier, and if people will swallow MMT, they’ll swallow anything.  I mean, we already knew that about Kamala.

GloboLeftists believe that increasing a labor supply won’t decrease wages.

Immigration is an amazing source of brain rot for GloboLeftists.  They think that bringing in hordes of illegal aliens won’t drop the price of unskilled labor.  Now, not for one minute do I believe that’s the case, and neither do the people (the GloboLeftElite) that are feeding those thoughts to the rank and file.

But lower labor costs mean higher profits, so why not bring in not only illegal aliens, but tons of people on H1-B visas to take the jobs that Americans had – the number of stories of people showing up to work only to be forced to train their replacements to “earn” their severance package is so common as to be boring.  It doesn’t even make the news anymore.

Yet the flip side is that they also don’t think that raising the minimum wage will have any impact on prices?

As found.

The last belief that I’m going to touch on that the GloboLeft has is this:  history has nothing to teach us about the danger of an irreligious society basted in feminism and socialism.

Hey, wait, do you hear someone yelling “I’m not listening to you!  I’m not listening to you!  I’m not listening to you!”?

I’m sure it’s not just me.  You can hear that, right?

Oh, and as a follow up to Monday’s post, here is NASA’s Administrator.  He believes the far side of the Moon is always dark.  Really.