First of all, I love the comments. Some of you guys are very interesting and funny. I write to different groups, including introverts, the intelligentsia, political individuals, car people, and others. I’m getting to know you all more closely from the stuff you write.
I even connected with one reader who knew Denny from Grouchy Old Cripple, but neither of us knew it until I started AOTW in Denny’s honor.
Once in a while, I get off the wall comments that are out of left field. I saw this meme and thought about it.
I can write some offensive stuff and know it. Hell, I do it on purpose sometimes. I don’t care if you disagree with me, but keep it civil when you write back. My favorite are people who outthink me and write clever stuff.
I also ask questions that are set up by WordPress and answer them as honestly as I can. I love it when people answer them also (Bocopro is a great writer)
I have it set up to approve all comments, and if it gets too out of hand, I’m not going to let it on the page. It just starts a fight I don’t want to see happen and piss off others. If it’s spicy and will start a discussion, I’ll let it go. I also am not going to let people post their blogs that have nothing to do with my post. They have their own blog, and I read it there.
All I ask is that you be civil. I know that the people on the left hate my ass by now, but I don’t care. They aren’t smart and write childish things. I brush that off and move along, which is what they should have done to begin with.
So keep up the commentary. Many of you are better writers than I am. I enjoy reading your stuff.
I posted this for reader mosckerr. I often post directly for some people but have never before named anyone unless I say I read their blog. Occasionally, I call some people out for being nice or for being an asshole without saying who they are. mosckerr however, has made some very thoughtful comments to my blog and is a faithful reader. I respect the opinions of the written comments and I’m amazed that someone would take the time to research a subject so well or be that educated on the subject.
Previously, I worked with a man who was in Auschwitz and read his book (Avraham Harshalom) so I noticed this article and wanted to post it.
Here is a link to mosckerr’s blog in case you want to read more.
Here goes:
Some 70% of living Holocaust survivors will be gone within the next decade, according to a new demographic report entitled Vanishing Witnesses, which was published on Tuesday by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference).
Claims Conference President Gideon Taylor said the report stresses the urgent need to preserve Holocaust survivor testimonies for the purposes of commemoration and education.
“This report provides clear urgency to our Holocaust education efforts,” Taylor stated. “Now is the time to hear first-hand testimonies from survivors, invite them to speak in our classrooms, places of worship and institutions. It is critical, not only for our youth but for people of all generations to hear and learn directly from Holocaust survivors. This report is a stark reminder that our time is almost up, our survivors are leaving us and this is the moment to hear their voices.”
Holocaust survivor Marianne Miller speaks while her son Israeli comedian Adir Miller standing next to her during a ceremony marking the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, Jan. 27, 2025. (Photo: Arie Leib Abrams/Flash90)
The report forecasts that by 2040, only a small number of Holocaust survivors will remain alive, largely due to their advanced age. The median age of survivors is 87, with approximately 1,400 individuals over the age of 100. Women make up about 60% of the surviving population.
As of October 2024, an estimated 200,000 Holocaust survivors were living across 90 countries, with nearly half– around 110,000 – residing in Israel.
In comparison, roughly 170,000 Holocaust survivors lived in Israel at the beginning of 2022. The report projects that the number of Holocaust survivors in Israel will drop to only 62,900 by 2030. The number of living survivors are also expected to fall dramatically in the United States and the former Soviet Union countries.
Greg Schneider, Claims Conference executive vice president, warned that time is running out for firsthand Holocaust testimonies.
“We have known that this population of survivors would be the last, our final opportunity to hear their first-hand testimonies, to spend time with them, our last chance to meet a survivor. These are our final years to honor them, make sure they are living in dignity, care for them and provide for their needs. The work we do negotiating with the governments of Europe on behalf of survivors is critical to their existence – nothing could be more important, more urgent, as we see what little time we have left to ensure their wellbeing,” Schneider said.
Tziona Koenig-Yair, the associate executive vice president of the Claims Conference in Israel, echoed the calls to preserving survivor testimonies for future generations.
“Their stories are an irreplaceable piece of our collective history. We must ensure that the lessons we’ve learned from the horrors they experienced remain etched in human memory forever,” Koening-Yair said.
She concluded by stressing the need for assisting and improving the lives of the rapidly dwindling Holocaust survivors.
“This is the order of the day – care for them, ensure they live out their lives in dignity stolen from them in their youth, and preserve their testimony so that future generations never have to endure those atrocities again.”
Among the voices featured in the Vanishing Witnesses report is that of 110-year-old Nechama Grossman, one of the world’s oldest Holocaust survivors, who lives in Arad, located in southern Israel. Her son, Vladimir Shvetz emphasized the importance of preserving the memory of the Holocaust survivors.
“She lived through the worst of humanity and she survived. She raised her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren, to teach them that unchecked hatred cannot win. We must remember her story, remember the Holocaust, remember all the survivors; learn from it so that her past does not become our future,” Shvetz argued.
The 98-year-old Holocaust survivor Leonard Zaicescu vowed to continue telling the younger generations about the horrors of the Holocaust.
“As long as I am still alive and have strength, I will do everything I still can so that future generations will learn about what happened.”
Pinchas Gutter, one of the last survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, also stressed the need for the few remaining Holocaust survivors to speak up amid growing trends of Holocaust denial.
“It’s sobering to see exactly how few of us Holocaust survivors are left. We have an important piece of history that only we hold and only we can tell. I hope in the time we have, we can impart the learning from the Holocaust so that the world will never again have to endure that level of hate,” Gutter said.
When I say hell, of course I mean Portland. It’s a shithole now. Oregon is beautiful, but for some reason all the shit not in California or Washington is in Portland. It’s the required trip to the family.
All I hear or read is about problems with Boeing jets, DEI in Air Traffic Control and parts falling off of jets because maintenance workers require diversity. I don’t want to get on a plane, but there is no way out. I figured the statistics are with me and if some shit does go down, my rare flights should exempt me.
When I get there, I’ll get to deal with a city rampaged by Antifa, BLM and many other miscreants. Other than SF, it is the homeless capital of the world, not to mention walking on the streets to the freak show and shit on the sidewalks.
I’ve scheduled some posts and meme’s to enjoy, including stories and observations of mine. It’s a look into my head when I put these out. I’ll cover introverts, the gym fashion show, sibling hell, lots of meme dumps and other stuff.
I may get a post in about my adventures while there, but no promises. Maybe I’ll keep some readers, like Ellie K, a new subscriber. With all the shit I post, I’m surprised she’s still there, but there you go.
IBM recently became the first major company to acknowledge that it intends to substitute its workforce with artificial intelligence. CEO Arvind Krishna confirmed to Bloomberg that IBM will pause hiring plans, adding that the company intends to replace roughly 7,800 positions with AI systems over the next five years. In a separate Fox Business interview, Krishna explained that AI will target numerous white-collar jobs. Krishna noted that back-office functions, particularly in the human resources department, will be the first to be absorbed by AI. But accounting, finance, and other non-customer-facing areas might find algorithms and robots filling positions, too.
I’ve got news for investors. They could replace a hell of a lot more and be better off. They could do a twitter and lose 70% still be better off. During the business partner phase of my employment, I marveled at how incompetent they could be and still keep the doors open. They had 14 people for the job that I did at the time as a business partner. As it turned out, that was during the introduction of the PC era, so they were printing money and this excess of waste was overlooked.
Until John Akers, IBM was a job for life company with an army of blue soldiers. Unfortunately, you could also be one of the most useless employees and still have a great job with a high salary. It came crumbling down and Lou Gerstner had to save it or break it up. There was an internal joke called FUMU, fuck up move up. They’d just re-arrange the deck chairs if someone made a mistake and brush it under the rug.
One of the transfers from IBM to that company I was working for told me they had people they called the thinkers. They sat in their office and read the WSJ and drank coffee all day. They didn’t go to meetings or contribute, so he sarcastically said he thought they were paid to think. (The meme was just in time from wirecutter)
The other inside joke was the name of the program for the first layoffs. It was FAP, the financial assistance program. It is also an urban word for masturbating, what a lot of IBM employees did on the clock.
When those same employees had to go get jobs after the first cut and told me it’s hard to get a job in the real world. Most couldn’t.
One of my IBM bosses, maybe one of the best, Jim Neumann explained it to me. He said you went to elementary school, middle, high schools then college. When you graduated, you went to the next school at IBM, but never got out of school.
Who they had working there when I left made me wonder how they were in business.
One of the biases there was that if you were from NY, you were a better employee. The headquarters are there so they would farm the ones they wanted out to jobs around the world and then bring them to NY to run the place. There were offices everywhere, but you were considered a second class worker unless you were in NY. I turned 2 job offers down to move there because it was so awful. The people were backstabbers and the area is one of the worst the worst in the company (or country not counting California). How they thought they were better was a clear signal of something wrong. A lot of them told me they were stuck there with golden handcuffs, but wished they could get out.
One asshole VP from Columbia U used to talk down to those of us at RTP. He did so in a way that would get any employee terminated in the real world. I saw people not help him just to not have to interact with him.
It only got worse under Ginni Rometty. It turned into a mean girls club with the excuse that Ginni said so, as the lead in to what you wanted done. She managed to halve the stock price during her tenure.
No one ever printed it fully, but they were full on in the diversity world and hired a lot of questionable people. The jobs and products reflected it. Some of the worst bosses for females were women. The homosexuals got away with yelling and treating people badly with immunity and the black head of diversity made racist remarks constantly. They have been woke for a long time while hiding it.
So artificial intelligence is going to replace those jobs. They really only need the artificial as a lot of the jobs never had fully intelligent people in it anyway.
It was high in my area anyway so the odds were with me to get it. I felt like I’ve been run over and my stomach is so bad I haven’t had coffee in 2 days. That hasn’t happened for decades.
I’m going through new templates so the site will change in the next few days/weeks/months/whatever. In the mean time, stuff is adding, subtracting and moving.
Apologies to those I follow, you will be back up soon.
It’s men at work and at my speed, that could be like road construction…stay tuned.
I regularly post about the tragedy that is social media, how government mishandled Covid, that Gates and Fauci are power grabbing beta males and the worst sin of all, saying Covid came from Wuhan.
I have enjoyed posting the dangers of the jab, because meatheads I know can’t believe that I’ve proved it’s poison.
It turned out that I was both ahead of the curve on a lot of things
I predicted it would take it’s toll on my traffic and it did. I still get hits from China watching me properly place blame on their policies and human rights, but the big G search engine didn’t like it at all.
I also got banned by Facebook searches which regularly borrowed my memes. I detailed how to delete fake book many times and why you should do it.
All of that has cut me to about 10% of my usual traffic.
Now, ask me if I care? Why I don’t is that I write this for me. I get my thoughts out there in writing. Being introverted, I’d rather communicate that way rather than orally.
Will I stop? Not a chance. I’m having too much fun lampooning the mistakes.
Heck, the election season is not really in full swing. I can’t wait.
I get statistics on views, country and other aspects of each post.
Recently, I criticized Canada and bingo, no traffic. I’ve dinged China for the Wuhan virus and right on queue, traffic cut off. Bear in mind I had multiple hits from each of these countries for stuff I posted yesterday and 10 years ago. WordPress is cutting it off. Since it is associated with Google, I’m sure they are censoring me also. I’m ok with it because they can’t silence everyone.
If you follow the blogs I read, we are all on the same page and see through the crap of Big Tech, Governments and other power hungry groups.
Now that Putin has attacked the Ukraine, the readers I had there get nothing from me. I’m about to jump on their leader’s actions soon, so again, I’m not surprised.
I might have to switch hosting platforms, we’ll see. It’s a pain, but it comes with the territory. Welcome to 1984 and the ministry of truth.
It’s not going to stop me. I do it mostly for me anyway. That others read it is a bonus for them if they learn to be independent and not serve the masters of censorship.
Education, information and independence are priceless
Some of the links in my Covid stuff come from there because he finds a ton of information that the mainstream lamestream Media (MSM) won’t cover. There is a lot of ways to get around what we are being told and what is true can be found there.
I found that they follow a lot of the same blogs I follow, so we think alike.
If you want to find the truth about Covid that other won’t tell you, go there.
I promise that no matter how sarcastic I am, my stuff is absolutely tame compared to this place, which is why I find it refreshing.
Here’s the tagline at the top of the blog:
All of us, every single man, woman, and child on the face of the Earth were born with the same unalienable rights; to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And, if the governments of the world can’t get that through their thick skulls, then, regime change will be necessary.
This is a good news site for those that want to skip the lies and bias of the MSM, link here.
I don’t know about you, but I gave up trusting the alphabet news services on either side. They all have an agenda. I decided to go to sites not bought off by a political party.
There isn’t sensationalism here, but I get a good cross section of what is going on that others won’t cover.
I have a lot of sources and will link to them over time. This is one I’ve followed for years and am ok with.
If you look at the Bad Blue top 20 tweets, I get some of my sarcasm material there.
Update: I’ll leave this post here because Denny was a fellow blogger. He passed away and this site no longer exists. We’ll miss him.
It’s tough to stick your neck out in today’s cancel culture. It’s why I read who I read.
Denny, the author at GOC does just this. He isn’t afraid to call out the truth and say what is going on the way it should be said. If you are offended easily, don’t go there (actually please do for my entertainment). If you are PC or a SJW, you will be offended. You probably deserve it.
He is a clever writer (something I admire) and has a way with words. He breaks from stoic grammar with words that don’t exist like yannow (hope I spelled it right).
I started following him when he was pointed out by a lot of other blogs I read. I thought the name of his blog was funny as hell and so was his banter.
One of my favorites is AOTW (asshole of the week). I don’t think I’ve ever disagreed with him.
I discovered that he also suffered through working at IBM. He routinely roasts them with the truth about diversity, wokeness and other crap that is ruining a once great place. Since we worked about the same time there, albeit in different divisions, I can relate to what he says.
We texted through comments this week and he hammered them appropriately. I felt a kindred spirit. I was glad to find out I wasn’t alone and that I am glad I left when I did.
I was made aware of her when she left CBS when her computer was hacked by the FBI/DOJ, and she wouldn’t stand for it. She currently is in mid-trial against them and I’m on her side. (Link here to her site)
Why I follow her is that she is actually independent in her views. Any post that have written that has the tag MSM shows my contempt for the press, their bias and lack of journalistic skills. They have become the propaganda tool for political parties. Note, I don’t excuse Fox News either because they have been on an island for their views, but still are not unbiased. The rest are fully ensconced on the left.
I also have been clear about my respect for those who write well. She is among them. She also has established an independent online show and podcast. Disclosure: I follow her blog and podcast.
I spent my career working with TV, Radio, print and online journalists. There are very few that I ended with any respect once they made their bias known.
Just to prove that she is a better writer than me, here is an excerpt from her book, Slanted.
The five-time Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and New York Times bestselling author of Stonewalled and The Smear uncovers how partisan bias and gullibility are destroying American journalism.
The news as we once knew it no longer exists. It’s become a product molded and shaped to suit the narrative. Facts that don’t fit are omitted. Off-narrative people and views are controversialized or neatly deposited down the memory hole. Partisan pundits, analysts and anonymous sources fill news space leaving little room for facts. The line between opinion and fact has disappeared.
In Slanted, Sharyl Attkisson reveals with gripping detail the struggles inside newsrooms where journalism used to rule. For the first time, dozens of current and former top national news executives, producers and reporters give insider accounts, speaking with shocking candor about their industry’s devolution.
For those who understand how hard it is to write well, I encourage you to go to read her work. It is a breath of fresh air in the cesspool of what is journalism and the MSM are.
When I first started blogging in 2004, Glenn Reynolds or Instapundit was the the biggest game in town. I noticed that Don got a lot of attention by linking to him. I thought he was being contentious to gather a following, until I found out what he did for a living.
He was a reporter for a Newspaper in West Virginia, now retired. I won’t mention it because he’s said that he’s not all that fond of it.
What draws me to his writing is that it is good. It’s hard to write well. I can ramble on and take forever to make a point, but Surber gets to it with wit and pithiness that I admire.
I love his Highlights of the News and his commentary of it. I’ve read it for a long time now. He doesn’t pontificate, yet makes his point with the summary that he presents.
Hopefully, I’ll one day be able to get my style somewhere in the ballpark of Surber, but I doubt it.
I don’t expect him to mention or follow me. It doesn’t matter.
I was most happy for him when the greatest radio host of all time called him out last year. That is an accolade to take to your grave and I’m glad it happened to him.
Why do I like it? I first started when I found your Florida report for the day. I’m originally from there and it is so true. I didn’t realize how many idiots were there until he pointed it out.
I like that he doesn’t care about offending anyone. One of his regular posts is shit I post on Facebook. I think it’s great that he tries to get banned. If you’ve read much of my blog, you already know how much I loathe fake book and happily got rid of my account. That he ties up their time to review the hilarious stuff he posts there kills me.
There are posts like, roast me, fucking Mondays, Friday gif dump and I’m sure she’s taken men that I look forward to. I went through the loss of his 2 dogs and now he’s left with Jack the asshole dog that found him with a broken tail.
His sarcasm, wit and creativeness is a breath of fresh air for me and I hope it is for you.
I linked to him in the posts that I follow and hope he links back as his audience is big. He also is in cahoots with other blogs I’m going to call out.
I’ve posted stuff on Covid (link here to some of my posts to make it easy on them), where I called it the China/Wuhan virus, all to point at the CCP and the MSM. I also have done a lot of gene editing posts about creating bio weapons and super soldiers, and highlighted how they have doped the athletes over the years.
I don’t single out just China. I’ve listed stuff a lot of other people or countries have done too.
My blog is insignificant compared to others who have massive audiences. I go after the Media a lot too. I worked with them for decades and know how much they lie and how biased reporting is. (Recent studies show they have about 12% trust in America).
The statistics show me who’s reading what, and all of a sudden I’m getting a lot of hits from them. They re-route through multiple servers, but I can see that too. I poked the dragon and they responded, from all over the world.
I can’t be cancelled off of fake book or Twitter, or most of social media either because I cancelled them first. It is a cesspool of hate and once you try to silence any group, you are no longer free or accurate. It just becomes propaganda and Josef Goebbels showed us what that leads to.
I’m shocked that they give a crap about a blog that now has topics that go all over the place, but not surprised that no stone is left unturned.
Maybe I should work on the Russians or the Iranians next. I could create all kinds of fun. I think those guys kill people with polonium though. I don’t want to die like that.
Perhaps they’ll get a kick out of all the Gorilla Glue screw ups instead.
I didn’t want to read this until I couldn’t keep my eyes from jumping ahead to find out what happened. I never expected how it would turn out.
As for me, when I write (not blogging where I write streams of thoughts usually too early and mostly unedited), trying to urge a reader to become emotionally involved with the characters and read on is what I try for.
They didn’t want to turn her on but they did. I never want to turn her on but I do. After they had turned her on for awhile they grew tired of listening to her. After listening to her for even ten seconds I’m enraged by her. Somewhere along the long road to their duck hunting camp they named her “The Bitch” and turned her off. At random points on any road I drive I want to throw “The Bitch” out the window and run over her until she’s nothing but a flat black splotch on the asphalt.
“The Bitch” has her uses. She’s helped me find my way to unknown destinations and out of places where I’m hopelessly lost. It doesn’t matter. I hate the very thought of her. She’s the worst nag since Eve made Adam slap on the fig leaf and remarked on how small it was. She’s Lilith and Delilah and the “What–ever Girl.” She’s the most passive-aggressive talker since the last speech by Barack Obama. She’s “The Bitch.”
“Delusions of grandeur make me feel a lot better about myself.” – Jane Wagner
It turns out that Jane was a comedy writer for Lily Tomlin. I sort of thought it was a joke but it had so much to do with the name of my blog, I’ve even put this statement in the sub-title.
I’ll stick with my title, it seems a better fit for most of the stuff that has been going on recently.
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 9,400 times in 2010. That’s about 23 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 19 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 283 posts. There were 38 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 11mb. That’s about 3 pictures per month.
This time last year, we put up the developerWorks blog as the first external IBM blog site. It was a small snowball barely dropped from the top of Mount IBM. It turns out be an end around being able to blog at IBM who now want to establish a company wide policy that will smother and restrict effective blogging communications. Fortunately, IBM Corporate Comm’s is clueless and so behind the times and we were able to put this site up under their noses without much effort. Since we did it without asking, it now can’t be taken down as too many people look to this site for blogs. Many people are trying to get on to it so for now, we control the outbound blog content unlike comm’s department in Armonk which moves at the speed of smell.
Armonk communications is a bubble that can’t see past New York, led by a hot head who ran Ed Koch’s liberal political campaign. Their lack of vision is the bane of much of the sterile communications that you read about when IBM is discussed. While they see it as a well oiled machine, the rest of the comm’s team who actually does all the work, know that they are a ball and chain that has to be worked around to get anything done. The developerWorks blog site is a prime example of how to work around people such as those in Armonk.
It’s funny, almost like the tail wagging the dog, as we are doing what we want, whenever we want, while the rest of every word written from IBM goes under the microscope at the home office, effectively removing any creativity or actual information that might be helpful. If you don’t believe it, read a press release. It is quite enjoyable to usurp the Stalin like control that they try to impose on everyone else, and act like a regular company who understands how to deal with the media.
I decided to list my blog there as I was the first official blogger for IBM analyst relations and have set many of the policies up until now, including starting and running blogging for IBM A/R. When the corporate communications machine finds a way to destroy the effectiveness through obsessive guidelines overseen by people who have never written or likely read a blog, any control I currently have will diminish. They are so paranoid from the monopoly trial that they manage to put effective PR into the stone ages. Fortunately, they are so obsessed with the media right now, the most effective communications program is on the analyst side as they don’t understand what it is. Anytime they try to interfere, they treat A/R like pr and look silly.
At that point, my blog may or may not be on the corporate site depending on the rules and guidelines. Since I don’t care what they say (and best of all am not in NY, which the powers that be can’t see beyond) and have learned to be more creative about communicating through social media than they have, I’ll make that decision as needed on my terms. I’ll likely then be on new social media platforms that are industry wide so it won’t be tough to stay ahead of them while keeping current with the rest of the world. Since they move so slowly for fear of actually stepping out into the real world, I won’t have to worry about it for a while.
With prodding from the outside (thanks to the analyst community) and many unconnected but interesting bloggers, we got the fever. Now there is the internal blog with thousands of bloggers going at it (another IBM communication killer since the audience is IBM’ers), a mainframe blog, gamers and worst of all attention on this from the top.
What I see is momentum for blogging that started as grass-roots inertia (bottom up, not the usual top down) which I believe is best (ask RIM or Palm). Sure, we were a bit later than some companies, but it won’t be that long for us to catch up. Fortunately, I started my blog and put up the developerWorks site like we did and that is how it will be done. All we need is a few rock stars to start writing.
Now the blog plan is prominent in the outreach plans for new products and announcements. Normal companies do this and since I came from the outside where I honed my skills staying ahead of companies like IBM, it is important to connect on terms with the audience that are mutually agreeable and most effective. I knew that I’d already won and would get the message of the company I represented if there were IBM communicaitons people in the room. Sure, they were the 800 lb. gorrilla in the room, but as soon as I got time with the media or analysts, they were far more likely to work with me as A) I wasnt’ trying to write their story and B) I actually was working in the 20th or 21st century. I’ll bet those same comm’s folks were hell with tabulation machines and IBM 360’s.
So it’s more like cells dividing, people from all over the world in IBM are jumping on this as they should. Many of the execs who are the busiest people in the world are blogging Buell Duncan and IWB.
I’ve watched trends for a while at IBM, lots of hype at first, then some catch on or fizzle out, but this one has legs…the snowball is now big, and for now the only blog site at IBM until the wonks in IBM corporate communications figure out how to sterilize this also. The fact that I can write this clearly shows that they have no clue about social media at this point, nor do they move faster than cold honey.
If you’re reading this, you likely had something to do with IBM blogging brought to you by developerWorks. Thanks. We offer more information on a timely basis that is more meaningful than you’d ever find from the wonks in Armonk.
Delusions of Adequacy 