It is my gravatar, being sarcastic like the name of this blog and my view of a lot of things. I saw this and identified with it immediately.
The next generation has a problem as they just kick the can down the road. Unfortunately they are millennials. There wasn’t any hope for them anyway.
Even I know pigs can’t fly.
Here is my gravatar.
Girls? Better
Music? Way Better
Movies? More Original, that’s for sure
Cars? When cars were real cars
I got my ass beat a lot growing up. It was almost every day one summer. I’m pretty sure I earned and deserved every whack. I turned out just fine and respected my Dad even though he was the administrator of spanking.
When I look at the woke people, the cancel culture and the idiots on Twitter, Fake Book and other social media, I’m thankful for my upbringing. It scares the crap out of me that this group of ‘tards are about to run everything while a bunch of them still live in their parents basement.
The ones that made it out of the basement are bringing down the NBA, NFL, MLB and the rest of sports and entertainment (and life).
I also can get anywhere with only a map, write in cursive and can figure out how to fix just about anything without a search engine.
I’m not sure if we should blame the parents or the kids. These are time out kids, not fear of God ass whooping that kept us in line and for most of us kept us on the straight and narrow later in life.
I’m not for spanking kids here so save the hate. I am for proper discipline and letting kids grow up as kids without mind numbing drugs they give the boys.
There are a lot of comparisons and finger pointing that anyone can make here so I’ll delete the comments by jerks.
I rode in the back of a pickup in a lawn chair on the way to the beach because it was a 2 person truck with 3 people going. At 9 in the morning, someone ran up and handed me a beer to which all the nearby cars were honking in approval.
I made it to the beach safely and returned with a lot fewer IQ points due to the alcohol.
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
Apple has prided itself on cutting edge products. Their mantra is to create great products that we didn’t know we needed. It worked for the iPod, IPhone and iPad. Now there are rumors about the iWatch. Guess what, they are going to miss the boat on this as they have overlooked what we do and do not need.
Who are the biggest consumers of new technology?
First it is the early adopters, they’ll buy anything. That is a small percentage of the population though, maybe 15% at the most and that is being generous.
They will likely be the bulk of the iWatch consumers. Here are the others:
Dilberts who need to have the most gadgets.
Some workout people who for while will think this is cool. This groups purchasing power will wear off as you can tell by the proliferation of watch style monitoring devices being purchased, but then discarded. It is not the killer app.
Who won’t by buying them?
Almost everyone else and the biggest problem is the group that has the largest digital footprint:
The generation of 18- to 34-year-olds, known as Millennials, are an increasingly influential group that impacts many aspects of the American lifestyle, including fashion, technology and entertainment, according to the upcoming 2013 Digital Marketer Report from Experian Marketing Services. The report looks at key segments of the consumer landscape, including millennials, who provide a major opportunity for marketers to reach consumers via mobile. Millennials spend 14 percent more time engaged with their mobile devices in an average week than their generational peers.
Guess what? They don’t wear watches for the most part, they keep time on their phone. They want a phone with a bigger screen, better input capabilities and easy access to social media. An iWatch doesn’t fit this model. This will continue for the rest of their lives (likely) and with the younger generation.
They also have to pick which device they are going to buy as student debt is at an all time high. If you need an iPhone to work the watch, no money left for beer or video games.
Digital Currency
What is the biggest attraction for Facebook and most social media? It is the sharing of pictures. Why did Instagram get bought for 1 Billion dollars? Why is snapchat gaining ground and Twitter adding video to their photo capabilities? With the grandparents getting onto Facebook, the youngsters are using other apps like Instagram to share their lives with their friends. While you can see a picture, it is small.
So why are they doing it? Because they need the buzz or the next great thing. Will they do it anyway? Of course, Samsung already has one announced and Apple copies and tries to make it better
I’m not saying watches are dead, who doesn’t want a Rolex for example, it’s just that the impact of an Apple Watch isn’t going to be the $100 jump in the stock price that earlier products were.
I was going to call it the 2 faces of humanity, just thinking of what the folks in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama are going through bringing out the good and bad in some, but it occurred to me that there are many flavors of this subject. But for this post, I’ll concentrate on the simple good and bad.
What is happening in those states is devastating. I can only mildly relate as we’ve had some bad hurricanes here (Fran comes to mind in NC where some are still recovering) and a recent ice storm where we were out of power for a week, but it is bad there. My sister lives near Lake Ponchartrain and has likely lost her house. Her family got out in time and are living with my parents right now, lucky them. It’s not the same for those who have lost lives, jobs, family and other things like heirlooms and photo’s which are forever gone.
These catastrophe’s bring out the good in some folks. Already there are local fisherman driving around in bass boats rescuing people from their houses. There are organizations which are gathering supplies, people lining up to donate time and money to help. I read this morning where you can donate like the Red Cross , Samaritens Purse, and other good groups who are sincere in helping out. FEMA is organizing for the biggest relief effort ever. For those that get my feed via RSS, I’ll be visiting del.ico.us today to add them to my list.
Then there is the other side. I’ve seen reports of looters, the construction scammers, insurance fraud and many others. This is also unfortunately something that raises it’s ugly head during these times. I hope that this is kept in check.
Then the way we can act hit me. Through the power of DVR (i was scanning and deleting shows), I happened to watch back to back the hurricane coverage then the reality show, “filthy rich cattle drive” where the spoiled brat kids of celebrity’s are “roughing” it on a cattle drive. This is like going to a zoo to watch animals. These kids are the most narcissistic people I’ve ever seen, worried about how they look, trying to get make up, dry cleaning and Fed Ex in the middle of nowhere and me, me, me. This was supposed to be about helping a charity. One of them of course was Kim Kardashian.
It’s just to ironic that these two faces of humanity are happening at the same time.
Natural disasters have been happening since the creation of the earth. There was the tsunami last year for example. Fortunately, people have stepped up and helped others through the course of history and I hope and pray it happens here.
A lesson that strikes me (besides the obvious of striving to be good) is to be prepared and to be able to take care of yourself in the many situations life will present to you. Acts of God like this (even for skeptics, this is the clause in your homeowners insurance) will continue, so dealing with it is inevitable. Being ready in anything is half the battle sometimes. Appreciate your family, friends and experiences in life. It’s times like this that remind you how important and fleeting they can be.
So it’s off to my now seemingly trivial day when compared to those now trying to put their lives back together.
Update on Sis: just heard from her and the house made it, but she won’t be able to go back for months. Thanks to those folks who sent regards.
Delusions of Adequacy 