I’m like Jeff Foxworthy. I grew up getting the Sears catalog in the mail. Those were the only girls in underwear you would see, until Victoria’s Secret gave us the catalog of dreams.
They put beautiful women in underwear for men and women to admire. Good art in any form is beautiful (the Sears models reminded Jeff of the lunch lady at the school cafeteria). It’s why there are so many naked statues. It was the concept of art to an artist. That they lasted longer than a catalog has so far so that also says something.
Victoria’s Secret has chosen going full woke over earning a profit, succumbing to the hypersensitivities on the left to embark on a major rebranding.
Even the standard size 32B mannequins on display in their stores didn’t make the cut, as the forms representing the female figure will now come in new shapes and sizes.
The paper said the company has been “scrutinized heavily in recent years for its owner’s relationship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and revelations about a misogynistic corporate culture that trafficked in sexism, sizeism and ageism.”
OK, back to my observation.
I’m not sure what is more stupid. Is it the marketing decision to lose this much money, goodwill and customers or to think that most people wanted to look or what make it hugely successful. Do they think that this is more beautiful than Giselle Bünchen in angel wings?
I’m sure there is a small portion of the population who identifies with this and good for them. The problem is it is ruining the beauty that was the draw for the other 98%.
I know this type of display is inclusive or is progressive or something politically correct in the eyes of the PC and SJW police, but I (and see below or read the article above for how many others) still think they are ruining a good thing.
All of this has come together to ruin another concept that has been around since whenever man showed up, women are beautiful. Both males and females think that the fairer sex is a work of beauty. For example, everyone thinks a naked woman is something beautiful to look at. I’m willing to bet that there are a lot more people (even females in beards) that find them better to look at than most men naked. There aren’t that many Chip n Dales guys just walking around. And let’s face it. Other than a few people who can ruin anything by being mean and nasty, almost all women are beautiful in their own way.
If there are 330 million people in the US (a low guess) and throw out the old and the young, you would still have a few hundred million just in the USA who liked the older style catalog and their models a lot more. VS is big all over the world so even the PC people like to look at the real catalog, not the travesty that is this year’s.
I don’t care how many likes they got in social media. Most people go along with the crowd in public and social media is a bunch of pretend anyway.
Get woke go broke they say. I doubt it for VS, but it hasn’t helped the bottom lines of Nickelodeon Channel, Gillette, Coke, the NBA, MLB, NFL and other companies.
It looks like I’m not alone. I’ll put up some links that have something to do with it in whatever way that is interesting.
“You know everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.”
We all are smart at something (the converse is true about the other things). For that we grant ourselves superiority status that bleeds to other things that aren’t always our best subjects.
That led to the next saying. “Here, hold my beer”. We all know how that turns out.
It’s ok to say you don’t know about something. It ends some conversations based on competing knowledge, some of which could actually be true.
I look at the experts on what is happening in the world and wonder if some of these people have overstepped their boundaries…….Like this one:
Alina Chan, a biologist at the Silver lab at the Harvard School of Medicine
Chan is one of 18 scientists who finally admitted in the journal of Science last month that the Wuhan coronvirus likely originated in a Wuhan, China virology lab.
Chan says liberal scientists lied to the American public for months about their beliefs on the origination of the virus to not be associated with the President who was trying to save lives.
I saw my life flashing before my eyes as I’ve been winnowing relationships somewhat based on this formula, just on my terms. When I felt someone wasn’t loyal to our relationship, it starts going downhill until I draw the Maginot line and it’s over. I treat others like they treat me.
I didn’t realize how much of a drag on your mental health these relationships are. It has been for me, but I’d made a conscious decision to end them whenever possible when they got toxic for me.
Sometimes it’s Mauerbauertraurigheit, but that is a last resort for me and I have no control over leaving people when that happens. Mostly, I reach a moment of truth and fade away. I don’t ghost people, but I actively avoid them and decline as much as possible until they get the hint. Most of the time, I just get forgotten.
Here are some excerpts, but I’m highlighting only parts of it, what was the blinking light to me. Here goes….
Then there is a category of people which sits right in between. You might call them “frenemies,” though the “enemy” part of that compound can feel like too strong a descriptor. Social scientists have a better term for these kinds of ties: “ambivalent relationships.”
Both positive and negative elements exist in every relationship. In a good, supportive relationship, the positive significantly outweighs the negative. In a bad, aversive relationship, the negative significantly outweighs the positive. In an ambivalent relationship, neither the positive nor the negative predominates; your feelings about the person are decidedly mixed. Sometimes this person is encouraging, and sometimes they’re critical. Sometimes they’re fun, and sometimes they’re a drag. Sometimes they’re there for you, and sometimes they’re not. Sometimes you really like and even love them, and sometimes they bug the ever-living tar out of you.
We can have ambivalent relationships with co-workers, friends, family, and even our spouses. And while we don’t tend to think about our ambivalent relationships as much as we do those on the more polarized ends of the affection spectrum, they actually make up about half of our social networks.
Here’s how it is for me in their words:
Sometimes the connection you feel with someone is very strong when you first meet, but over the subsequent years and decades, you change, and they change, so that your lifestyles, outlooks, and personalities end up more and more disparate. You still think of yourselves as friends, and still have a bond built on a shared history, but your connection is more conflicted than it once was. (Social media really sucks on this one).
Sometimes you’re friends with someone because your spouse is friends with their spouse. They’re not someone you would have actively chosen to be friends with, but because you spend time together as couples, you end up in a relationship, albeit an ambivalent one. (Me, I hate this one. I’ve yet to connect with any of them as they weren’t my friends, they were her friend’s spouse that I was forced to hang with, but we never would otherwise.)
Sometimes you’re just thrown together with people. There are office colleagues and fellow church congregants and roommates who you neither strongly like nor strongly dislike, but that you come to feel quite familiar with because of how much time you spend together. Sometimes this familiarity rises to the level of affection, and sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes the relationship just kind of is what it is. (Still, I’ve never really made a close friend from this group. They are people I have to put up with for a period of time. I know how much time that is and it is a countdown until whatever social engagement I’m forced into is over).
It goes on to say:
And, of course, there’s the whole dynamic of family. You may have grown up around certain blood relations, but you otherwise share little in common, and the fact you still get together is based more on biological bonds, and the expectations around filial piety and familial obligation, than genuine desire and enjoyment. You’re in fact more likely to have ambivalent relationships with family members than friends, which makes sense; while relationships with friends are a matter of voluntary choice, you end up connected to family members by chance.
Me:
I have little in common with any biological family anymore outside of my wife and kids. I wonder about them sometimes. Most are gone, but for the ones that are left, if we weren’t related, we’d never talk (and with most, we don’t). The ones that are left seemed to agree with me to keep each other at arms length. I avoid funerals and weddings if at all possible as I don’t need to catch up. I don’t want to talk about my life to people who are strangers other than the biological relationship.
As I recall growing up, my siblings weren’t my friends. Most of the time they would rather try to get me into trouble starting with telling on me to parents on stuff I didn’t do, progressing to talking shit about me to mutual acquaintances at school just to tear me down publicly or socially. We were forced together as a group. We don’t do anything other than the perfunctory requirements and no one really says anything. Even on vacation when young, I was off on my own on any downtime.
I know I never looked forward to any overnight trip to visit any relatives, even as a kid. I thought most of them were a bit creepy. As an introvert, I pulled away from the social gatherings that usually happened around a big meal. It was dreadful. I didn’t even know I was introverted, it naturally happened.
Now, I just try not to initiate any conversation with them to avoid them even thinking about me. If I can turn down a family gathering that involves siblings, count on it.
As far as other relatives, I’m fortunate to have my wife’s relatives living in another country. I’ve done stuff with them, but they for the most part revert to bashing either the USA, or want to try to make America a socialist country like theirs. They consistently trash what is morally right and it’s tiring to listen to. I’ve been fed up with it since 9/11 when they told me America overreacted, and this was before Iraq. If there is a position that is wrong, I can count on them to take it they are such a group of socialists. I can only take so much USA bashing and am now done with them. I just won’t go anymore.
I couldn’t figure these relationships out because I wasn’t born socially gifted like others. Being an introvert, I do have powers of observation and body language skills I’ve had to develop to determine friend or foe. It also helps me determine who is going to waste my time or try to get me to do shit I don’t want to do anymore. Now, I say no.
Why Ambivalent Relationships Are So Terrible for You
Supportive relationships have been shown to buffer stress, boost resilience, and improve physical and mental health.
Aversive relationships have been shown to amplify stress, diminish resilience, and damage physical and mental health.
You might think that because ambivalent relationships feel middle-of-the-road, their impact on your life would be similarly neutral. But in fact, multiple studies have shown that their effect is significantly and uniformly negative, and that “ambivalent relationships not only are less effective at helping individuals cope with stress but also may be sources of stress themselves.”
Studies have found that your blood pressure goes up more when you interact with someone with whom you have an ambivalent relationship, than it does when you interact with someone with whom you have a supportive relationship. Even just anticipating interacting with an ambivalent tie triggers a greater increase in heart rate and blood pressure. Researchers speculate that this heightened stress response is due to the unpredictability of an ambivalent relationship: Are you going to enjoy your time with this person or are you going to get in a fight? Are you going to have fun or just feel annoyed? Are they going to be supportive or critical?
We might hypothesize a couple other reasons that cardiovascular reactivity increases when interacting with ambivalent ties.
One is the greater exercise of self-control you have to muster during one of these interactions; you have to check yourself from rolling your eyes, showing signs of your boredom or frustration, offering an overly harsh rebuttal to an opinion you strongly disagree with — and this takes effort. The heightened stress response experienced around ambivalent ties may also be due to the psychic split you feel over whether you even want to be hanging out with this person at all. You don’t dread seeing them the way you might the dentist, but you don’t really look forward to seeing them, either. The interaction feels more compulsory than voluntary, more obligatory than willful, and we feel a measure of frustration when we don’t experience ourselves as fully autonomous and have to do things that are contrary to our personal desires. (This is how I almost always feel anymore. I have to work up to want to go out with someone and want to know when it will end so I know when I can leave. There are very few I look forward to seeing anymore. Most people who think we are friends don’t know that we aren’t).
Here’s the really surprising thing: blood pressure not only rises more when you’re interacting with an ambivalent tie versus a supportive one, it also rises more when you’re interacting with an ambivalent tie than it does when you’re interacting with an aversive one. In other words, you feel more stressed when interacting with someone you like/dislike, than you do when interacting with someone you entirely dislike.
Me:
I end it by saying not for me. The trouble is in the interaction with people. When I just don’t, my blood pressure is better and any stress over socializing is avoided.
I’d rather not talk to them, especially the majority of those I’m related to. I like the pets though.
Only Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity remains unchallenged. It’s the way it should be. If it weren’t, we’d have the science from 100’s of years ago.
Everything going on today should be challenged in thought as to whether it stacks up to actual science or political science.
I’m kind of looking at Fauci, the CDC, WHO and politicians here.
If they don’t agree, just follow the scientific method above and show why it is provable. The tactic now is censorship instead.
Well, this won’t be my most popular post, but if you read about me up top, I see patterns. A lot of what has happened smelled wrong to me. I could still be wrong, but I’ll bet a lot of people think the only accident was it escaping the lab it was created in. I see deceit (well, they are politicians), misdirection (a typical PR trick) and a lot of obfuscation. The MSM covers it like the second coming.
I’ll bet I catch some flack from the censors and from subscribers who disagree, but everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I heard they are stopping articles that say HCQ cures it so read quick as this might not be up long.
Here’s mine, I don’t know the real answer and may never as might not a lot of people. What I do believe is that what actually happened isn’t what we were told and that a lot more will come out about it. I think a lot of eyes are going to be opened about what is going down right now.
Number 6 just gave me another reason to think social media has a dark side and they are one of the faces.
Number 8 looks like it is true based on his emails. Amazon pulled his book so something is up.
I’m seeing guns, beer, cash, hotel stays, joints and a lot of other bribes to get the vaccine. How about letting people make up their own minds before we get to step 4 on the top meme?
First, you have to know what brrrrttttt is. It is the sound the 30 MM cannon makes from an A-10. If you don’t know the sound or are female and want to know what the big deal is (read, how childish men can be at any age) it is very important to know the sound to actually get the meme.
It will help you understand your man though as this stuff goes through our heads, its only 37 seconds.
For those who know the sound and are a guy, enjoy and I hope you laugh. Get you some.
I wonder if this is going to offend hillbillies? I wonder if that name is a cultural appropriation? What if it is a racist name?
Fear not, I have a strain in my family as southern as turnip greens.
I shake my head as I’m making fun of woke people using hotdogs, and yet I think there might be someone ready to lead a revolution to protect hillbillies now from discrimination. On second thought, nah.
Also never get in their way when they are losing arguments and taking each other out. I find this on Quora a lot also. I already published Stupid things smart people do, although the title may be wrong about them being smart.
This is stuff I laugh at because I know it applies to everyone, not just introverts. I just internalize more than most so I go through this when asked.
FWIW, I ask this about most other people at some point also.
Two nights ago, LeBron laid on the floor after being breathed on too hard to fake a foul. It’s a well known NBA joke about him laying down on the job like this.
While the following is sarcasm, I’ve seen soccer (Futball) players lay down and no one got near either them or the part they were clutching.
I’ve been beaned by fastballs, decked by a football hit, fought against Blackbelts in Karate, Judo and Ju-Jitsu. You get hurt and get up. Win the right way, not by faking or lying.
These guys are better actors than the Hollywood celebtards who aren’t working very hard either. When we were growing up (listen to the old person here talking like an old person), We got back up after being hit and said nothing. These guys are p*****s.
Traffic 101, The Set Up On What The Battlefield Was
I learned the rules of the road in Miami during the Miami Vice days.
I had a 10 mile commute that took 1 hour because of traffic. There was basically one way from where I lived to where I worked. You could see any number of things on the ride. There were girls putting on make up, men shaving, people having sex (yes, not a typo) and a lot of people getting high on their way to work. Back then, the drugs came through South Florida, not Mexico. It was enjoyed with great gusto at the port of entry.
Getting in and out of traffic was difficult. Miami is just another Borough of New York driving wise. Florida drivers are close to the top of the list of worst in any state. Traffic, short tempers and the same freakin’ commute every damn day made them mean and short fused.
Road rage was way different. Instead of giving the finger and cussing someone out in your car all nice and protected, we saw guns come out a window on the road.
If you read all of the above, you got that there was a lot of drug money and expensive cars. Mine was not. My first lesson was to learn how to play chicken. Most people will finally back off if you are willing to sacrifice your car or make it look like you are.
Sure, like the picture you can go to the end of the line to get in, but what if the opportunity is not there?
—–> HERE IS YOUR BEST PIECE OF ADVICE.
Find the most expensive car in the line and merge on it. They will give way as they have more to lose. Don’t try it if you see them pull a pistol. I always liked Mercedes or Sports Cars. This excludes Ferrari’s because the druggies owned them. I aimed at the Merc’s or other big sedans. They were executives who didn’t want to let you in, but gave up easily.
——> NEXT PIECE OF ADVICE
Don’t make eye contact because you want them to think that you don’t see them, despite the fact that they are guiding a 3000 pound death machine capable of causing pain and damage potentially inches away from you. You might be nice or scared off by people like me if you see them. Conversely, if I didn’t want to let you in, I was willing to win the game of chicken from the other lane.
It’s like asking for forgiveness instead of permission. Just keep going. Pretend you don’t see them and barge in.
—–> A CHEAP MERGE, BUT DOESN’T GET YOU POINTS IN THE MERGE GAME
I’ll mention it because someone will call it out, but merge on the trucks nicely. Be decent about it and give them time to stop. They hate cars doing that and sometimes they can’t stop in time. Catch them on the acceleration because cars always win.
——> A DICK MOVE, BUT EFFECTIVE
You can always come in on a motorcycle, but what’s the sport of that. Coming in on a really expensive car with a person who looks like an asshole is a lot more satisfying.
—–> LADY DRIVER WARNING
Don’t come in if they are putting on makeup in the mirror. They won’t see you and you will sacrifice both cars. This is the one time you need to check first. I am more likely to go in on a female however as they are less aggressive. They can get way funnier when they get mad at you though, so the show sometimes is worth it. They give up too fast though
Living in the South
I don’t live in Miami anymore. I moved to the South. That sounds counter-intuitive but the South begins above Orlando and goes to about Virginia-ish. It mixes with the north from there. The reason I bring that up is that people are nice in the South. They let you in when you want to merge into traffic.
You just look at the other driver, ask with your hand if it’s ok and almost always you get let in. You wave when done and everyone feels good. Sure, it’s not the satisfaction of gaining seconds during a last dash merge, but I’m not in that big of a hurry anymore.
I got so used to letting people in, on a business trip in New York I tried to let someone in. They didn’t trust me so I realized I was supposed to cut them off. Once I did, they almost thanked me. See why people are happier in the south?
My traffic study skills show that staying in a lane can be just as fast as jumping all around. Merging skills are for when you are caught in a lane close and you have to get in. Don’t be a dick and tie up traffic for those few seconds.
Any reading of this blog past the sarcasm and humor leads to intellectual issues or introversion (for now).
Get this…….
Sailing through the smooth waters of vacuum, a photon of light moves at around 300 thousand kilometers (186 thousand miles) a second. This sets a firm limit on how quickly a whisper of information can travel anywhere in the Universe.
While this law isn’t likely to ever be broken, there are features of light which don’t play by the same rules. Manipulating them won’t hasten our ability to travel to the stars, but they could help us clear the way to a whole new class of laser technology.
Physicists have been playing hard and fast with the speed limit of light pulses for a while, speeding them up and even slowing them to a virtual stand-still using various materials like cold atomic gases, refractive crystals, and optical fibers.
This time, researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California and the University of Rochester in New York have managed it inside hot swarms of charged particles, fine-tuning the speed of light waves within plasma to anywhere from around one-tenth of light’s usual vacuum speed to more than 30 percent faster.
This is both more – and less – impressive than it sounds.
The key to getting out of these toys that you get in Cracker Jacks or the Movie Theater is to relax. How can you do that when all the blood has rushed to your head?
This is so wrong above. The rules are if there is more than two urinals, the second guy goes to the furthest one. You always look straight ahead, but if you have to, you can only look the other guy in the eye.
My daughter had a simple nose piercing before she joined the real world. One day while teaching Sunday School, one of the toddlers asked her why she had a booger on her nose (it was a small diamond). Kids tell the truth. It didn’t look good, but what can a Dad tell a teenage daughter? You guessed it, nothing.
I talked to Doctors who told me this is a petri dish for bacteria. What happens in allergy season when your nose is constantly running? It is disgusting to think about.
Finally, I’m not in the dating pool. If I was, this would be on the list of red flags that would tip me off to not everything is going well upstairs. I don’t care what others do to their bodies as long as it doesn’t affect me. It doesn’t mean that I think it looks good or makes anyone more appealing. That affects me.
I try to protect myself from crazy people. Piercing your nose doesn’t make you crazy. It does give a hint that maybe not everything is working well in the decision part of the brain though.
Caveat: I have readers from countries that this is a tradition and perhaps a religious symbol. I get that it is a part of your life. However, are they are getting it done because they have to or are supposed to. I wonder who would do it if the mental pressure to do so wasn’t there?
I still ask myself how does one think that makes them look better? I move along and say nothing, but so far it hasn’t improved anyone’s appearance that I can tell.
Remember belly button piercings? No one is running out to get those anymore either.
I’ve not had a Windows PC for a long time now. I got tired of a crappy operating system.
As you read in About Me, I’ve worked with Bill Gates. As a person he was ok to me, rather bland. His products never worked well after DOS. I couldn’t wait to get rid of both.
Microsoft was the hardest company to work with to try and get something done. It was like working with the SS or the KGB. You know you could never trust them and they kept giving me reasons why not to.
This example is a bit much in introspection, but the point is that examining yourself and your life gives you a window to learn who you are and why you do what you do.
Most people don’t take the time to look at past events to see why you act now like you do. Occasionally, one remembers something familiar, but that is when you have the time to think or daydream, like when it happens to you when you remember a familiar song. This is just knowledge that you have.
WHY WE DON’T STOP TO THINK ABOUT ME
I’m not talking about the online and public me (and I mean you here). Everyone takes care of that and primps or struts accordingly, especially on social media.
Life is more chaotic than social media and can hit you in the face. You are on instinct then unless you have prepared for whatever. Some are just instinctual about it. Others could be on the discovery of a lifetime if they learned why they act that way.
I know you can’t be ready for everything, but everyone knows their strengths and weaknesses. Some refuse to admit them though. Those that can will master their greatest opponent, yourself.
That’s where self-awareness comes in. I look at patterns so if the same type of event or response to something happens, I put the information together and can deal with the problem better. Not your run of the mill stuff, but how am I messing up relationships or how did a situation go from great to hell with one misstep on my part.
Instead of asking have I faced this before, what lesson did I learn, I want to know why is this happening again to me because of something I did, said or forgot to do? How was I successful in dealing with it or avoiding it? What lesson was learned past don’t burn your hand on the stove. It’s never the obvious answer.
Most can do this type of recall with a single occurrence of a prior or recent event that happened, but I go back to my youth and multiple iterations of a pattern that becomes obvious. The things that happen to me now when it goes bad probably happened to me in my earliest formidable years, but I forgot the lesson. I’m at a point in my life that I’m remembering that stuff now and it has affected how I look at life now.
I discovered my personality was the same although I, like everyone else can be an actor and can put on a different front. Usually it was a job interview or a first date, something we all go through.
Now, it’s take it or leave it with what you get from me. I don’t pretend and I also stop short of telling (most) people off and walk away. No one can fire me and I fired Twitter and Fake book.
My private thoughts go somewhere else. When I look back at my younger self now, I see the same person, only one who is trying to figure out why it is happening. Now, when the SHTF, I’m ready as I’ve read where I mis-stepped before and usually think it through before I get into trouble.
As long as I’m being self-aware, I can usually remember to shut the F**k up in time to not make the same mistake twice. I also learned to build, fix and mend things around the house, but that is easy compared to people.
One day, maybe I’ll look back and remember something that will help me in the future.
I want to look back fondly that I at least improved or grew in how I acted or re-acted. Occasionally I do. Mostly, I’m still learning not to be a screw up.
Look back when something is familiar and think of times as a kid when this lesson was first taught. Either that or look back on forgotten memorable times to enjoy.
2001: A Space Odyssey, Terminator, Aida of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the robots always want to take over in the end and kill the humans.
See below the meme on stupidity so I can get to the point.
Yes, this woman is an idiot. My robot vacuum is so stupid it doesn’t know where it’s going. I named it Jarvis after Ironman’s AI assistant (Paul Bettany). It is my dearest form of sarcasm. So the vacuum isn’t going to kill me, but that isn’t my point.
The AI in the wrong hands is dangerous though.
For example, what if an AI-bot creates vaccines for diseases by predicting what the next strain will be. What if the next strain is the one that causes humans to shut down all the robots. There you have the premise for how it goes with AI taking over. Kill the humans.
I could bore your with many other examples like using AI to enhance a soldiers armory. It would be controlling your actions, making you more invincible in war. If it sensed a danger that didn’t exist, it could fire up the code to kill everyone in the way and you have created a murderer out of an innocent man. Kill the humans.
Fortunately, I’ve been around AI development. That danger isn’t exactly around the corner yet.
I worked at IBM and knew that Watson was a gimmick. The Chairman told me it was. They are trying to sell it now because it’s usefulness in medicine paled in comparison to it winning Jeopardy. It was a lot of wasted money because they could to sum it up.
Some of the team have moved to Quantum Computing because Watson was a dud.
Microsoft, Google and Facebook are much different and apparently more evil. IBM is too bureaucratic to turn it into a killer robot. However, if you’ve read any of my social media rants, you know that I trust these three companies less than almost anything, except Congress and the media. I will say they are equally evil though. (Another shot for the censors to see if they are watching here). They are the ones that will kill the humans.
Now, imagine if it got into the wrong hands. What could some guys who want to either take over or blow up the world do with that kind of power? Those bastards are evil. At least the robots just went bad.
And there you have it. Like many things we can create, there is always someone hanging around to put it to bad use.
The political rhetoric is about equality, but people are too different to be equal, at anything, even identical twins think differently. Equal opportunity to succeed is our best shot.
There is no magic bullet in life on Earth.
BTW, this is another censorship shot. I don’t think they like the real definition instead of theirs.
He lived through the ravages of Communism and wrote about it.
I know someone who just went vegan and sure enough, I get to hear all about it. I don’t really care what anyone eats other than me so I’ll skip any vegan jokes here. You don’t have to tell everyone you see that you are vegan. We’ll see it soon enough anyway, or smell it.
I drew the line at asparagus for breakfast though. No, just no.
“My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.”
It’s always been difficult to be unpopular. We learn this lesson in school. No one wants to be an outcast.
With the dreaded social media and their censors against only certain people and certain words that they don’t agree with, the visibility of this subject has leapfrogged past logic, reason and congeniality. You say the wrong thing to the wrong person and your head gets bitten off.
First, you have to care if what people say about you bothers you. I don’t give a flying fig anymore because if they like me they do. If they don’t, what they say probably isn’t going to phase me.
The real hero’s and leaders are those who will stand up against the sheep and go the other way, or lead the sheep. Oh, you are going to piss some people off, but they were probably just there to try and get in your way.
The moral is don’t be a sheep. Fight (say to others, don’t hit them unless you are in Portland) for what you believe in and the hill you want to make your stand on.
Most of all, when you have made your decision, don’t let public opinion or popularity contests sway you. When you are right you are. If you are not sure, you probably aren’t.
Most people who get in your way are jealous or get their kicks by bringing others down instead of worrying about what they should be doing.
Be careful. This doesn’t mean completely blowing off others, just not running your life by what others think.
I look to times when I can go alone somewhere, especially when I worked and had to travel with others. I’d already spent the work day with them, please let me recover alone and not have to go out. We wouldn’t have at home so why now?
I saw others in that jail as early as middle school and I knew I didn’t want to be there. I only let things in that I need to hear.
I’m going out of my way to avoid gossip also. It’s as bad as Facebook and Twitter. My life is better without them also.
“You can pretend to be serious; you can’t pretend to be witty.” – Sacha Guitry
I can’t tell you how many arguments I’ve won in the shower, 3 hours after they took place. Sometimes, 3 days after the event took place, I think of the wittiest comeback possible, but the world moved on 2 days, 23 hours and 59 minutes ago.
I can however be the most serious person you will know and mean it. I also don’t have to pretend to be loyal, considerate and other traits that may be inborn or taught by my parents. That comes as naturally as breathing. If I’m not, the other person did something to cause me to treat them like they treat me.
Some however, like a relative I have that has both wit and a sharp tongue at their disposal. It is frustrating for people like me. I know I have something correct and salient and even when history proves it, the moment is over and I’m left frustrated by (lack of) words.
The only time I have a comeback is when I’ve already prepared for the onslaught. If it is spontaneous, then so is my conversation skills bonfire of destruction.
I’ve written out responses just to be able to be ready. It occasionally works, but only if the stars align.
Some wonder why Introverts are quiet. Besides the fact that we are mostly listening, we don’t want to die in a verbal dual where we stand no chance to those who start talking fast and first.
I’m learning to say stop before they get a roll going and I get flattened.
And just think, company’s 1 and 10 are trying to be the most woke right now. I get that it’s a long time ago, but memories are long.
I once had to deal with this issue at IBM. Naturally, the PR department did it’s best to sweep it under the rug in public, but behind the scenes it was a train wreck to not get it wrong. I remember thinking that what they said in public was morally wrong and couldn’t support it.
Evil is evil
10. Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola was a major presence in Nazi Germany, even though officials in the Reich were said to believe the stuff was too frivolous for the German character. Nevertheless, the very American nature of the product (wealth, flashy dreams, etc.) appealed too much to the German public and the stuff was kept around. It wasn’t until 1942 that the company’s presence in the nation was seriously threatened.
Coca-Cola’s hundreds of bottling plants in Germany were naturally cut off from main American support when America entered World War II. But Max Keith, the representative of the company in Germany at the time, redubbed the product “Fanta” for Reich consumption. The bottling factories and processing plant were then used to provide Germany’s citizens a key element to keep their energy up to support the war effort: A supply of sugar above what the government rationed to them. After the war, Keith, in an amazing display of company loyalty, turned over the wartime profits to the parent company when the Allied armies arrived, when surely the gigantic amount of inevitable post-war confusion and complication would have allowed him to sneak off with it.
9. Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Prior to World War II, Germany had been one of America’s most important film markets (as implied in the above entry, Germans had a bit of an obsession with a heavily romanticized vision of America), and as such, American film studios were willing to bend over backward to appease the German government. Even Warner Brothers, who developed a reputation for being the most anti-Nazi of major studios at the time, ordered that the word “Jew” be taken out from their movies and invited Nazi dignitaries to visit their studio.
But the single greatest act of Nazi support was one done by MGM after the invasion of Poland in 1939. They donated prints of eleven of their films to the German Relief Effort after the war with Poland began. These bewildering dreams of maintaining a market in Germany only died off after France and Britain’s markets threatened to die out too in response to all this collusion with their enemy.
8. Chase Manhattan Bank
The Chase Manhattan Bank’s form of colluding with the Reich was particularly heinous. Because Carlos Niedermann, Chase’s representative in Paris, had very good personal relations with the Nazis, he agreed to their requests that the bank seize the assets of at least one hundred Parisian Jews that were considered especially worth pursuing by the Reich. This doubtless helped the Gestapo capture those people. Chase Manhattan was hardly alone in this, though. In 1998, the company was part of a suit demanding reparations from J. P. Morgan and Citibank for the millions of dollars stolen. In the end, the payouts were $200 a month. The survivors and descendants had to fight to not have large amounts of the payments eaten up by wire transfer fees.
7. Dow Chemical
It’s not too much of a stretch for many people to imagine oil companies collaborating with evil people. We are used to the mental image of oil companies being willing to prop up evil dictators to have access to petroleum and similar atrocities. Dow Chemical was one of the companies that provided an insane amount materials for the Nazis, including not only raw materials but also American technological innovations in regards to oil refinery. The contributions were so extreme that it allowed the Nazis to forgo their previous quotas to accommodate the influx. This indicates the Nazis were taken by surprise in regard to how much material they received from these American companies! No wonder they were able to achieve the massive armament build-up that they did.
6. Brown Brothers Harriman
During the early 1930s, Fritz Thyssen ran a business that he used to help finance Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Brown Brothers Harriman was a subsidiary company that he used as a base of American operations. This collusion is of particular note because it was integral to the basis of the claim that Prescott Bush, father of ex-President George Bush and of course grandfather of ex-President George W. Bush, supported the Third Reich. He was on the board of directors for BBH and in 1942, the company’s assets were seized by the federal government. Suspicions then arose that some assets were taken as part of the Bush family fortune. These, among other reasons, came to light in 2003 as part of the presidential campaign, and make it appear that the Bush family owed their fortune to Nazi activities. It really does seem like the sort of discovery an opposing campaign team would dream about making in regards to their opponent (not that it ultimately helped much).
5. Woolworth
In 1933, 1.25% of the company’s entire inventory came from Germany, but mostly it was in the form of trinkets, like Christmas decorations. At the time, even that led to protests in America because news was coming from Germany that the Reich was beginning its public persecution of the Jews. When Woolworth conceded to public pressure and removed the offending items from its stock, it caused protests over in Germany over the abuse of their “hospitality.”
What was significant about Woolworth’s interaction with the Nazis was a horrible thing that Woolworth did, that ultimately lent legitimacy to their notorious anti-semitism. Woolworth fired all of its Jewish employees. This won them the designation “Adefa Zeichen,” an award reserved for companies that were “pure Aryan.” Most likely Woolworth doesn’t advertise their products with that seal of approval.
4. Alcoa
Alcoa is now the third largest aluminum producer in the world. Back in 1941, it was much more powerful. It had a monopoly on aluminum in addition to owning a massive amount of America’s electricity production and other minerals. Before America declared war on Germany, it sent so much of its aluminum product over to Germany that the country made upwards of sixty percent more aluminum products than America. When the US’s involvement in the war began, there was a massive aluminum production shortage in America, in no small part because of Alcoa’s monopoly. Alcoa essentially sold the Axis powers much of the material to build their war machines and a reprieve from the American war machine.
3. Ford
When Hitler pays tribute to you in his biography and keeps a portrait of you in his office, it will be hard for you to claim that you did not have some connection to him. However, Henry Ford didn’t seem particularly inclined to distance his company or himself from the Nazis anyway, since he accepted Germany’s highest honor freely and never returned the award while Hitler was alive. He was a committee member of the America First Association which advocated America to stay out of World War II. In 1998, it came out that the Third Reich was providing Ford’s factory in Cologne with 1,200 Russian slaves, as a potential form of compensation
2. General Motors
Similar to their automotive rivals, General Motors was sued by Holocaust survivors for assisting the Nazi war machine. Beginning in 1935, GM built a factory in Berlin for the purpose of building “Blitz” trucks for the Wehrmacht. Ford began building similar trucks around the same time, but GM was the number one producer of the vehicles that were vital for the quick conquests of Poland, France, and much of the Soviet Union. Albert Speer, the minister of armaments and war production, claimed that the rubber GM supplied was the key to the ability of the Germans to wage war the way they did. Inevitably when America declared war on Germany, the Reich seized GM’s German production facilities.
Although neither Ford nor General Motors ever fully conceded that they had willingly participated in the use of slave labor, they both were massive contributors to a fund started in 2000 for Holocaust survivors.
1.IBM
In 1933, International Business Machines began providing Germany with punchcard machines that functioned as precursors to modern computers and databases. Documents have since been uncovered that show that as late as 1941, IBM was working in tandem with the Reich to liquidate Jews from Holland. IBM employees were training SS personnel how to use their machines to record the movement, sorting, and mass execution of large numbers of undesirables, at times right in the headquarters of death camps. These machines, however, remained IBM property at all times.
In 2002, IBM was sued by five gypsies to collect reparations because their parents had been killed during the Holocaust. After four years of legal discussion, the case was dismissed due to the statute of limitations.
“We are confronted with insurmountable opportunities.” – Walt Kelly
Only a few generations ago, the average lifespan was about 40 years. People died from diseases that make Covid seem like a scratch.
More people have more chances to do good or get ahead in their own way than any other time in history.
I ask myself, why is there so much unrest and hate? It shouldn’t be that way. Your time is short and passes quickly. Not everyone needs to go down as a revolutionary. That is so much wasted effort out of the day.
My saying for today is look for something good instead of bad. No matter what, it will make at least that moment better.
“Man, I think most white people and black people are great people,” Barkley said. “I really believe that in my heart, but I think our system is set up where our politicians, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, are designed to make us not like each other so they can keep their grasp of money and power.” “They divide and conquer. I truly believe in my heart most white people and black people are awesome people, but we’re so stupid following our politicians, whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, and their only job is, ‘Hey, let’s make these people not like each other. We don’t live in their neighborhoods, we all got money, let’s make the whites and blacks not like each other, let’s make rich people and poor people not like each other, let’s scramble the middle class. I truly believe that in my heart,” he said.
Here’s a classic song that few know. The amount of music theory needed to do just the counting and coming in on time is innovative and rarely duplicated. It’s from Houses of the Holy, a classic album.
Cardi B and her WAP is something that should be before Dr. Seuss in the line of things to be banned.
I bet I forget names as quickly as you do. There are memory aids like associating a name with an object or another person to help you, but who remembers that when you are just trying to hear their name the first time?
I gave up trying to dance around the subject and just say I’m getting old or my hearing is going (both likely to be true) and ask them to tell me again. More often than not, they forgot my name also.
Most likely, I just move along and not really care. I find that being nice and waiting to see if they will really enter your life or is it just being cordial determines if I’m going to remember their name.
Either way, it’s a conversation starter, not something for Introverts so it won’t be me unless I just want to ignore everyone.
Being a person of a certain age, I need to exercise my brain, body and even spirit. You stay in balance that way.
I’ve been using Duolingo to learn Italian for a couple of years. I would have picked French but the wife speaks every language in Europe it seems except Italian. Those are the two best sounding languages so it’s been the one I chose first when exercising my mind.
See my travails below how I turned it into a competition to beat others and dominate.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve meandered my way from rookie to the Diamond league, where most people who stick with it will stay with it and work hard, just because of human desire I suppose. The reward for that is that everyone studies hard and you need to do more to stay in the league.
HOW IT WORKS
Of course you learn, but you can use it on your computer or mobile device. Each is different. On the phone, you have 5 hearts (tries) before you fail a lesson. On the computer you can keep going, but get a continuously lower score.
There is a 15 minute double points score available as a bonus for finishing each round of lessons. If you do a practice on a finished lesson you can get max points with no hearts loss. Sure, this is sounding like a video game but everything is a competition to me. I’m a man and it was born in me. I can’t help it and I don’t apologize. I accepted it and use it to fuel my desire to learn.
There is more, but that gives you an outline of how to game it, but this blog is about how I got wrapped up in something else instead of blogging. Oh, and how I slayed the competition.
THE PLAYERS
As I stated, by the time you get to the diamond league, you are pretty well committed. Some are learning because they are in a new country. Some took languages in school. Others are near borders and naturally speak the language. Most have a reason to be in that league.
I’d taken German in high school so I added that language a few months back. It is good to learn Spanish because of the makeup of the country so I then added that. Just because I couldn’t stand not being able to do it, I picked up French. I’d already started Danish because of some in-laws so add that to the mix.
There is a pay version of the app and you can get points a lot easier and never run out of hearts (like having unlimited outs in baseball). It’s an unfair advantage to the free players but they paid so good for them. They can get points at twice the rate of us plebs, but it’s where I am at now. It makes winning that much sweeter.
There is always some inspired player who wants to win the league for the week and to do so you have to commit to really working. Sometimes it is a horse race.
HOW MY WEEK DEVELOPED
I always like to start out the week with a big score by doing the 20 point doubles. You can cruise the rest of the week and score enough to not get bumped down to a lower league. I then watch who is going to go for it during the week. Sometimes it’s early and sometimes people wait and put on the full court press at the end.
I noticed a trend a while back (read about me, I see patterns and trends in everything) that even though someone might want to compete, you can suck the will to win out of most if you put it out of their reach. They’ll fight for first loser (2nd place).
I did my usual big total on Monday and was in the top 3, but that isn’t unusual as I turn it to cruise mode once someone takes off. By Tuesday, I noticed the makeup of the group were people who weren’t aggressive and just did the same number of points a day.
THE PERFECT STORM
Once I put it together, I knew this was my week to give it a shot. I threw up 1000 points on Tuesday to see who the real players were going to be. Nothing happened. I tried it again on Wednesday. There was no response. I knew right then that if I killed it a couple of more days, it would be over. I didn’t see anyone willing to make it a race so I made it a run away.
THE ATTACK OF THE KLINGON’S
Early in the week, one of my relatives told me that Klingon was a language. I’m a huge Trekkie/trekker so I said why not. Points are free and easy at the beginning of every language to keep you going because it is a beta language. That means no penalty for missing. It’s like you paid for the pro version of the game. Free points just lit up in my eyes, plus I can say stuff in Klingon, only not yet.
By now, I was committed. As they say in Klingon, today is a good day to die (I haven’t learned it in Klingon yet and won’t put it through a translator, but watch any Klingon episode of Star Trek). I went for it and quickly stayed the week at double the score.
WHAT HAPPENED ALONG THE WAY.
For one thing, I didn’t blog much. I did learn a lot of Spanish, German, Italian and especially French. I learned a little Danish and some Klingon. I understood a lot of what happens in grammar, sentence structure and everyday conversation. I can ask for the bathroom in some languages and order a complete meal or talk about the house in others.
It was a good week. I’ll win because I never play for second. I told myself along the way it was for learning, but when the stars lined up, my inner self took over and I went hard at it. I killed any desire for the rest of the group to compete and I won’t get an opportunity to win but a few times in life. There are too many good people. I struck early and often and learned a ton along the way.
One day I’ll be fluent or can survive, at least in Europe.
Here’s a shout out to my German teacher in High School, Jane Phillips. She taught me well and was pretty hot so I liked her class.
If you look in my quote blogs, there is a lot about winning. I have a hard time sticking with anything very long before I drop it or figure out a way to the top or my desired destination.
It’s weird sometimes when you expect to win and you do, just like it is supposed to happen
Mauerbauertraurigkeit (n.) – the inexplicable urge to push people away.
This doozy of a word may add an extra dimension to our socially exhausted state. Mauerbauertraurigkeit means: “The inexplicable urge to push people away, even close friends who you really like — as if all your social taste buds suddenly went numb, leaving you unable to distinguish cheap politeness from the taste of genuine affection, unable to recognize its rich and ambiguous flavors, its long and delicate maturation, or the simple fact that each tasting is double-blind.”
I’m not sure if this is a true psychological condition that is being taught or is proven like the Theory of General Relativity, but I know it is true.
Recently, it happened to me and I pulled out of some things I was doing. Partly it was Covid and partly it was Mauerbauertraurigkeit. There were different reasons, but remember I’m a patterns in life guy. I notice when it happens.
It’s happened to me all my life. I can’t stay with a group for much more than a couple of years. It depends on how obsessed I am with what I’m doing as to how much I’ll put up with before I have to go. I get socially and emotionally exhausted and my will just forced me away. It was if I was watching what was happening and couldn’t (and didn’t want to) stop it.
As it turns out, all the groups I left were for a good reason and were the right decisions in aftermath, but at the time I was mentally overwhelmed. The realization that I was free from the social obligations that kill me inside was blissfully comforting.
Normally, Covid would have been a problem as I wouldn’t have to go to groups I didn’t want to. Unfortunately, they invented Zoom and those of us who actually need body language to read people can’t.
Fortunately, I live a whole different life in my head as do most Introverts so I go there many times during Zoom. If I’m on mute, I probably muted not thinking about what was on the call.
I will say this, most extroverts are not polite about this and want to include you on all of their tedious activities, and want to know why you don’t want to do everything with everybody. They literally force me away because they want to be all up into my stuff. I suffered at work from this until I found ways to get out of social activities.
The answer and I guess the moral is when I’ve had enough, either for the day or for life, I have to get away and I can’t help it. I leave and never come back usually.
I can’t be alone on this. A lot of people are overwhelmed socially, by extroverts.
I imagine some people think they were ghosted, when in fact the person couldn’t help themself from pulling away.
I’ve never felt better about myself than when I leave, any of them at any point of my life. I don’t think that I’m missed and don’t really care if they think I’m anti-social. As long as I’m not a part of them anymore is all that matters.
I can’t believe some of nonsense that people are saying. History is being trampled by a pack of crazed Hyena’s.
Think for yourselves and don’t be a sheep. It is far more satisfying than doing what everyone else is doing to be accepted.
As said by Vincent Price and the Moody Blues:
Cold hearted orb that rules the night Removes the colors from our sight Red is grey and yellow white But we decide which is right And which is an illusion?
This is about climate warnings via scaring people, not whether there is global warming or whatever.
The trick to get people to do something is the carrot or stick. This one is kind of both.
I’m used to being told that the statue of liberty will drown or Miami Beach is going under water and rarely pay attention. I think they are just after money and will say almost anything.
Its a new low though when they go to your unit, your family jewels, the python of passion…..uh, stop right there. I think you get what I’m talking about.
Now, your dick is getting shorter or something. Really? If you want me to buy into this, at least make it believable.
The chemicals to blame for our reproductive crisis are found everywhere and in everything
The end of humankind? It may be coming sooner than we think, thanks to hormone-disrupting chemicals that are decimating fertility at an alarming rate around the globe. A new book called Countdown, by Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, finds that sperm counts have dropped almost 60% since 1973. Following the trajectory we are on, Swan’s research suggests sperm counts could reach zero by 2045. Zero. Let that sink in. That would mean no babies. No reproduction. No more humans. Forgive me for asking: why isn’t the UN calling an emergency meeting on this right now?
The chemicals to blame for this crisis are found in everything from plastic containers and food wrapping, to waterproof clothes and fragrances in cleaning products, to soaps and shampoos, to electronics and carpeting. Some of them, called PFAS, are known as “forever chemicals”, because they don’t breakdown in the environment or the human body. They just accumulate and accumulate – doing more and more damage, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. Now, it seems, humanity is reaching a breaking point.
And Now for Guys, I present the Nothing Box. Girls, you should pay attention if you really want to understand men, even though you’ll never really get it.
Also Guys, understanding why women’s minds are so busy is also explained. It’s something we’ll never get.
What is so funny to me is that every time I try to explain it to a girl, she can’t understand it or wants to get into my nothing box. They never understand that if you got into my nothing box, it would be a different box (see at 8:15 where nothing is something). Watch and see:
First of all, every Pepe Le Pew is the same cartoon. The cat gets into wet paint and looks like a female skunk so Pepe is attracted to her.
Let’s get to the real story here! At the end of each cartoon the role are reversed. The cat somehow gets into water or looks like a wreck and falls in love with Pepe. The rest of the show is the cat doing a #MeToo on Pepe.
It is the cat that should be cancelled, not Pepe. He was fine until she ruined his life, just like the snowflakes going after everything that hurts their feelings. Get a life and learn to enjoy the sarcasm of the show.
I’d never thought of this before. I knew the tech Oligarch’s are weird and crave power, but I didn’t realize that they are trying for immortality (good luck with that one).
This always makes me wonder when they try to create a better human. Didn’t anyone watch the Borg in Star Trek?
Note: this is from Andrew Torba, CEO of Gab and not mine. His view is below. I found it interesting on the theme of creating a master race via gene enhancement (what the Covid vaccine is) that someone else saw what those with unlimited money try to do. Playing God never works. He is more informed than I on this subject and I find it interesting how far we try to push the envelope.
In the end, we all die. All they are doing is prolonging the inevitable.
Last month I appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room to discuss the topic of transhumanism. In the simplest terms transhumanists believe in using technology to transcend beyond the limitations of human biology into a post-human existence.
This is something we are all familiar with on a surface level thanks to many different movies and TV shows over the years, but it’s time to start taking it seriously as a threat to humanity itself.
The march towards transhumanism isn’t a conspiracy theory or some outlandish science fiction movie, it’s a very real and dire situation unfolding before our eyes.
The oligarchs in the American regime, in particular the ones in Silicon Valley, are obsessed with eternal life and the topic of transhumanism. Peter Thiel wants to inject himself with young people’s blood as a method of “radical life extension.” Elon Musk put a computer chip in a pig’s brain with the hopes of one day soon putting one in yours.
The goal of the Silicon Valley oligarchs, and of the globalists in general, is transhumanism. They aren’t hiding this, in fact they are flaunting it in front of our faces. While we are all too busy bickering about what AOC tweeted this week, the oligarchs are spending billions of dollars to become immortal “gods.”
Their strategy is two-fold.
First, they perfect the transhumanist technology behind closed doors and become among the first human beings to “transcend” beyond the limitations of human biology to become “gods” with eternal life and access to all of the knowledge and information available in the cloud.
Second, they will get the rest of us to adopt a form of this technology that they own and control by selling us on “progress” and convenience. If you doubt they will be successful with this approach, just look at the phone in the palm of your hand as a wildly successful beta test of this strategy.
In many ways the smartphone was the first iteration of this grand vision. We are now witnessing the consequences of giving them the power to control the flow of information and access to basic online services in the form of censorship, deplatforming, and outright unpersoning of individuals, businesses, and any threat to their system of control. What do you think will happen when they build, own, and control the chip they plant in your brain at birth?
In order to fully understand this you need to understand the mindset of the Silicon Valley elite and the American Oligarch Regime. These people believe that they are superior to the rest of us in every way. They went to the “best” schools. They built the “best” companies. They consolidated all of the wealth into their hands. They know what is “best.” This is why they project their supremacy on the rest of us with terms like “white supremacist.” We are but mere cattle to them. Digital serfs.
This may all sound outlandish now, but this technology is being developed as we speak and it is something that people under 50 will witness in their lifetime. We need to be prepared to fight for our humanity and to resist the literal dehumanization of the entire human race itself.
Ultimately, this is a spiritual war. They are targeting our very humanity. This is evidenced by everything that these people promote. Their “values” are inherently anti-human. Abortion. Moral decay. The destruction of sovereign nations and people. The persecution of everything and anything related to God Almighty our Creator.
We need to prepare ourselves for what is coming by exiting their entire system and raising up our children to value and cherish human life. We need to build our own economy. We need to return to tradition and get right with God right now, because the judgement day of singularity is upon us.
How did we get here? It seems that someone is against every regular thing we like. The Obama’s had the Cat in the Hat at the White House not long ago. I guess rappers have been there recently also but it’s hard not to notice the difference in the language. Keep your WAP and hop on pop (I don’t think that book got cancelled)
There are no extraordinary men… just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.
William Halsey
This man had to lead a range of military men in WWII ranging from high school drop outs to business men doing their patriotic duty. They fought for our freedom with little to no training for the horrors of war.
I first learned this when I visited Dachau, the concentration camp outside of Munich. It was a gloomy day and I could feel the pain and suffering that went on 70 years prior. It was a reminder of what men can do when led by the most cruel and deceiving of governments and leaders. They tried to ban a lot of things because they didn’t like them also.
I don’t have any connection to issues like the Civil War Statues, and didn’t think about them until they started tearing them down. I’m not defending either side here. I’m defending the side of history. If you aren’t proud of it, maybe you need to be reminded why not to do it again, rather than pretend it didn’t happen.
I’m sure it makes a snowflake feel better to tear down history, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
Our best lessons are those that come from mistakes.
“Facts are the enemy of truth.” – Miguel de Cervantes
This is very inconvenient for politicians. Sooner or later, history records what they do and it’s generally the same pattern. Over promise and under deliver. I guess those that seal their college records and presidential records are most vulnerable to facts. If all fails, use the FBI or CIA to obfuscate any issues.
Although a good percentage of politicians are lawyers, the rules change.
It also is an issue for those trying to get through life without working hard and overcoming. Taking the easy way out and basing your success on verbiage instead of action and results gives the same results. People will find you out if you aren’t real.
You are as free as you are honest (except for politicians who seem to have their own set of rules)
For decades, we’ve been told that the population of the earth is one of the causes of many of our problems and only by reducing it (Bill Gates) will we survive.
This is either something that is a global destruction issue (like the dinosaur extinction) or is just more climate scare tactics (yes, it is the same group claiming the death of the planet by weather also). Certainly history will be the judge but so far none of the climate extinction events have come true (such as from an Inconvenient Truth FWIW).
NOW WE HAVE THE TEST – SEX
One would think that if you were holed up with someone else, sooner or later it would lead to babies in 9 months. I get that there is birth control but we’ve seen that people are inconsistent and sooner or later it happens. Look at office sex. A lot of people wind up doing it with co-workers they’d never touch except for familiarity.
However, we find that this is not the case. People have stopped bumping uglies.
CBS obtained data from health departments in over two dozen states that shows “a 7% drop in births in December—nine months after the first lockdowns began.”
Research from the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., predicts that births may well be down 300,000 to 500,000 in 2021.
The prediction is based on a negative correlation between birth rates and the unemployment rate. Higher unemployment means fewer babies.
Brookings also notes, contrary to what the romantics thought would happen, that surveys of couples, particularly those with young children at home, report declines in sexual activity.
But these COVID-related hits to birth rates really attach to a trend of declining fertility rates in the U.S. that has been going on for years.
WHO ISN’T DOING THE DIRTY?
The U.S. fertility rate in 1900 was almost 4, more than double today’s rate. Please don’t tell me it was because times were so much more safe and certain over a century ago.
In a 2019 Pew Research survey, 16% said having children is essential for a man to have a fulfilling life. Twenty-two percent said it is essential for a woman to have a fulfilling life.
In the same survey, 57% said that “having a job or a career they enjoy” is essential for a man to have a fulfilling life. Forty-six percent said “having a job or career they enjoy” is essential for a woman to have a fulfilling life.
Regarding being married, 16% said it is essential for a man to have a fulfilling life, and 17% said it is essential for a woman to have one.
This data, I think, sheds light on why Americans are not having children. It’s not because times are so hard. Every time is challenging, and Americans are more comfortable and prosperous today than ever in history.
Maybe the Brookings scholars will be right about having 300,000 fewer births in the U.S. in 2021 because of COVID-19.
They get picked on for being losers, but the millennials and Gen-X,Y and now Z are not holding their own. There is a reason for a generation of Baby Boomers. They came home from war and got busy about life. Boomers had the hippie sex and love days so they held up their end of the deal.
Humor here: Maybe all the drugs that the Boomers did is why we have screwed up generations that follow. The boomers got out of the parents basements and for the most part never returned.
WHAT WE WILL FIND OUT ABOUT OVERPOPULATION
Now we will see if the over population alarmists are right (no) or are they full of it to try and get money (the usual reasons). With the younger generation just not doing it to the fill the needs of replenishing our population minimums it’s going to go down. We will then get to see if there is enough food (yes), land (yes) and will people kill the earth (no).
The population scare tactics crowd will not stop until they move onto the next scare to try to get us to part with part of our paychecks so that congress can waste it.
Judge for yourself. I think we have the technology to farm all the food we need and people haven’t been able to change the temperature more than a tenth or two (not even proven yet scientifically, no the science isn’t settled yet).
Here’s my advice. Get busy at getting busy. The planet is resilient. We need the kids and generations prior to ours survived actual million death events unlike Covid. The death count is so overstated and incorrectly calculated that by just correcting for actual Flu deaths would make what it is, less significant were it not an election year in 2020
I slip in things like China Virus, IRS is big brother and other words just to give the censors something to do. Sooner or later they’ll move the line and you won’t see me for 30 days or whatever the penalty is for using the wrong work or pronoun that I probably couldn’t keep straight.
They can’t ban me on Fake book or Twatter because I fired them first.
Pursue what you love. Passion is an incredible motivator. It fuels focus, resilience, and perseverance.
Do the hardest work first. We all move instinctively toward pleasure and away from pain. Most great performers, Ericsson and others have found, delay gratification and take on the difficult work of practice in the mornings, before they do anything else. That’s when most of us have the most energy and the fewest distractions.
Practice intensely, without interruption for short periods of no longer than 90 minutes and then take a break. Ninety minutes appears to be the maximum amount of time that we can bring the highest level of focus to any given activity. The evidence is equally strong that great performers practice no more than 4 ½ hours a day.
Seek expert feedback, in intermittent doses. The simpler and more precise the feedback, the more equipped you are to make adjustments. Too much feedback, too continuously can create cognitive overload, increase anxiety, and interfere with learning.
Take regular renewal breaks. Relaxing after intense effort not only provides an opportunity to rejuvenate, but also to metabolize and embed learning. It’s also during rest that the right hemisphere becomes more dominant, which can lead to creative breakthroughs.
Ritualize practice. Will and discipline are wildly overrated. As the researcher Roy Baumeister has found, none of us have very much of it. The best way to insure you’ll take on difficult tasks is to build rituals — specific, inviolable times at which you do them, so that over time you do them without having to squander energy thinking about them.
I’ve eliminated a lot of them when I dumped Twitter and Facebook, but I see it out there just like everyone else does. Sooner or later you run into someone who has Internet Road Rage. They are idiots.
I post a lot of sarcasm on my blog because it’s my blog. Some people have that sense of self-importance. I’m glad I don’t have time for that anymore.
If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much. – Jim Rohn
It goes with another quote I like. You will realize how much people are thinking of you if you knew how seldom they do.
I know I’ve learned the hard way to make my plans and stick with it. It’s not being selfish, rather self protection. I’ve rarely found that others have your best interest at heart. If they do, it is often behind their best interest.
Didn’t anyone watch The Wrath Of Khan? Don’t we already know that trying to engineer a master race always goes wrong. Isn’t Russia kicked out of world competition? Do we even have a James T. Kirk who can defeat a superior enemy?
Gene Editing Through Crisper-Cas
We are witnessing the manipulation of DNA through eRNA as a Covid-19 vaccine. We have no idea what the long term effects are going to be.
Crisper is a gene editing technology that allows for cutting, inserting or deleting DNA in an individual. It can be used to cure diseases or potentially eliminate defects or perhaps create immunity to disease.
These are the potential upsides.
Potential Downsides
When editing DNA, if you are not ethical, one could create a six million dollar man in effect. You think you can build them bigger, faster, stronger. We have no idea what this will do to people.
Think of it, you might give someone the superior intelligence, strength and physical capabilities that can take over the world.
“U.S. intelligence shows that China has conducted human testing on members of the People’s Liberation Army in hope of developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities,” wrote then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, in a December 3 Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “China Is National Security Threat No. 1.”
All these Chinese moves are meant to obtain “biological dominance.” “There are,” as Ratcliffe noted, “no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.”
The experiment evoked the eugenics program of the Third Reich to create a “master race.”
Shenzhen’s He [Jenkui], after an international uproar caused by news of his dangerous and unethical work, was fined and jailed for “illegally carrying out human embryo gene-editing,” but in the Communist Party’s near-total surveillance state he obviously had state backing for his experiments…. Beijing’s prosecution of He, therefore, looks like an attempt to cool down the furor and prevent the international scientific community from further inquiry into China’s activities.
“What is most disturbing about these endeavors is that China has gleaned access to CRISPR and advanced genetic and biotech research, thanks to their relationship with the United States and other advanced Western nations. American research labs, biotech investors, and scientists have all striven to do research and business in China’s budding biotech arena… because the ethical standards for research… are so low.” — Brandon Weichert, author of The Weichert Report and Winning Space, interview with Gatestone Institute, February 2021.
Biological Dominance
It is not clear how far Chinese military researchers have gone. They are, however, advocating use of the CRISPR gene-editing tool to enhance human capabilities, and the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission is “supporting research in human performance enhancement and ‘new concept’ biotechnology.”
The People’s Liberation Army has gone all-in on gene editing of humans. As leading analysts Elsa Kania and Wilson VornDick report, there are “striking parallels in themes repeated by a number of PLA scholars and scientists from influential institutions.”
All these Chinese moves are meant to obtain “biological dominance.” “There are,” as Ratcliffe noted, “no ethical boundaries to Beijing’s pursuit of power.”
It is clear that the Communist Party is thinking about more than just soldiers. A Chinese researcher is also the first — and so far only — person to gene-edit human embryos that produced live births.
He Jiankui, while at Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, used the CRISPR-Cas9 tool to remove gene CCR5 to give twin girls, born in late 2018, immunity to HIV but perhaps also to enhance intelligence. The experiment evoked the eugenics program of the Third Reich to create a “master race.”
When was the last time we heard of creating a master race? Does anyone remember what the Nazi’s tried already?
Finally, I was taught by a Chinese-American how to survive in life and the business world in China. He told me throw out the 10 commandments and you are on even ground. They will not adhere to them so you will lose (I am not suggesting that you break the 10 commandments, this is what I was told on how to survive negotiations with the Chinese).
China’s regime does not have ethics or decency, is not bound by law, and does not have a sense of restraint. However, with its rapid weaponization of biotechnology, it does have the technology to start a whole new species of genetically enhanced, goose-stepping humans. Pictured: Soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army march on October 1, 2019 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)
They have proven that they are willing to cheat in the Olympics, Life, technology and so forth. The question is now how far and what will it cost the others? The CCP clearly has no respect for human beings. The Wuhan research is coming out.
It doesn’t take many posts for you to see that I think Fake book and Twatter are the cesspools of the Internet. More hate is spilled there than Iran towards Israel and the USA.
I happily quit both. My life is better and while I didn’t waste a lot of time on them, it still was mostly useless.
I always hated those friend recommendations because I’m sure they were on the other side also. My rule was if you aren’t my friend then you aren’t worth being my fake book friend either. I happily forgot most of the people I grew up with and didn’t want to find them again, let alone reconnect.
It’s as bad as a phone call for an introvert without first warning that you are about to intrude on my life. There was an introvert on the team that invented texting to avoid that phone call.
When I saw this one, I realized that it was time to dump fake book. I also can’t stand that they are the arbiters of free speech and who is allowed on, so I made the decision for them. I don’t want to be in a place of hate or that has special rules for people who they don’t agree with personally, and went to other platforms that don’t suggest people I’d rather not see or hear from again in life.
Those who have been stupid enough to use Gorilla Glue on themselves need to be made fun of. They have the Darwin awards, but these losers couldn’t even kill themselves right.
Unfortunately this generation will be making decisions for us in 20 years I fear.
Usually, a generation is in fear of the next but so far those fears have been unfounded. We now have proof that the next generation are in fact idiots.
Usually, one of the parties wants something different from the other one and the fun begins.
It’s not only in relationships, but I’m usually disappointed by people more than anything else. They are far more consistent at it than plans are in letting me down.
If you want to know the road ahead, ask someone who has been there.
Throughout my life, I’ve always asked people for what advice helped them the most, either good or bad. Sometimes, knowing what to avoid is just as, if not more helpful. I stumbled on this by accident when I realized that I didn’t know everything there was to know as an adolescent, even though I thought I did.
Not knowing the outcome is good if you don’t want to spoil a surprise. Knowing the right path in life to take is never a bad thing.
One thing I’ve learned is that most wise people have also learned that a lot of people don’t listen, so their knowledge remains with them because they are tired of offering to help, only to see it rebuffed or not taken. The same mistakes that experience already taught someone is then a lesson never learned or passed on.
It’s up to you. Ask what is the meaning of life, what helped the most, what is your biggest mistake, I have 2 paths in life to take but don’t know which to choose.
Our morally vacuous Congress and other leaders no longer seem to have our best interest in mind. It seems that keeping power is more important than the will of the people. Spending $4400 per person to give them maybe $1400 is not a great deal for those who have to pay for it.
Why are they wasting time on anything not devoted to helping us medically, economically and protectively? They want to consolidate power and ensure re-election. This is not new it seems. Every politician seems to succumb to this unless he has a greater calling, few do.
I’m not taking sides because I believe politicians to mostly be on one side, theirs. Vote themselves a raise. Buy stock in a company 2 weeks before you are about to approve their product.
I shake my head at how we let this group of elitists in. They crept in over the years and I doubt their intentions are good, rather mostly self-interest.
The money flows easily in Washington. Lobbyists, tech companies and their oligarchs (the richest) and who can forget the celebtards who pretty much take the morally wrong position whenever possible.
There, did I offend enough people? I said nothing about race, religion, gender, or belief. I am talking about greed and power.
First of all, don’t get bent that I put China virus in the title. I’m testing big brother to see if they’ll censor me or not. Yes, I’m pushing the limits because, well because.
Back to the meme, it hasn’t changed much for me, other than having more people in the house. Being alone is where I find myself headed by nature. I have to remember to be social to the others because I can get so into my own world that the outside exists, but is no where near as fun or anything but a distraction.
Don’t get me wrong, there are some good things, but sooner or later it goes down the crapper when someone “offends” another. It is where you can find more bias and discrimination (against anyone and everyone) since segregation.
Twitter is probably the biggest cesspool. Since Facebook Fake Book started censoring, you can’t trust what is real or not. I also don’t care about my high school or college enough to see what they are doing. If either of us cared, we’d have stayed in contact.
The hate generated against the last President just told me the people in charge of these platforms are untrustworthy. They say one thing and do another.
Do what you want. Most are addicted to social media. The truly smart people don’t waste time trying to impress others as to how good their life is or worry about what others have.
My life is better without social media terrorists. I still get what I need to know without it being filtered by a loser in a cubicle with an axe to grind over who voted for whom. The elitist oligarch’s have told them what is allowed, then they prattle on condemning exactly what they are doing.
As usual, I’ll just do my own thing and let others suffer who wish to read that tripe.
Unfortunately, power is a a drug that affects most. Only those who learn to control it and not let it control you are the real leaders. We haven’t had many of them in the recent decades. Only 2 come to mind.
This quote was supposed to be about grit, but the passion came in when it helps you keep going.
While Angela Duckworth separates passion and perseverance into two separate dynamics, Steven Kotler argues that passion is part of perseverance; it plays an essential role in determining how motivated you will be to keep going. “Passion doesn’t make us gritty,” he says, “Passion makes us able to tolerate all the negative emotions produced by grit.”
Anytime I wanted to get a real team together to get something done, passion was the trait i looked for in people I wanted to hire. Some have a passion just to get a job, not to do it well. You have to want to do it and want to do it well. Those are two different and distinct things.
Find your passion and you will do what you want to, probably well. That is except for golf. No one does well at golf all the time.
“No matter how rich you become, how famous or powerful, when you die the size of your funeral will still pretty much depend on the weather.” – Michael Pritchard
Steve Jobs died with billions and with Aids (according to Wikileaks). He went into a box and nothing he did on Earth helps him for eternity. Everything he did on earth means nothing to him now.
We should step back and take a look to see if we are being effective here on earth while preparing for eternity.
China Is Now Sending Twitter Users to Prison for Posts Most Chinese Can’t See
Two of the most restrictive groups censorship wise are going at each other here to ban information that was made to be published, go figure. Note: It refers to the CCP government, not the Chinese people.
Both are paranoid and neither are really helping anyone get better. My advice, leave both.
Delusions of Adequacy 