Tag: stupid

Friday Meme Dump

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4 – especially the cars, girls, and music

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Arguing With Stupid People

I was reading the substack of Miguel Gonzales, he formerly of the Gun Free Zone blog. In the installment in question, he was relating a sort of fail, wherein he had a (I guess) “conversation” with a soul who articulated the (I guess) “thought” that Mr. Trump’s shooting in Butler PA last summer, was faked. Miguel described how that was, to be charitable, unlikely, with several failure modes which Miguel described.

His correspondent then pivoted to describe how tariffs were a horrible idea.

I could not enter my comment, so I inflict it upon you here.

“So, your corespondent was an ELEVENTY! Sharpshooter, eh? As well as an economist?

Was this soul an epidemiologist, as well?

I am reminded of the story of a fellow who, finding himself in the company of The Guru, and, seeking wisdom, inquired how The Guru achieved wisdom?

The Guru instructed the fellow, “Well, I never argue with stupid people.”

The fellow countered, “But, don’t you have an obligation to correct stupid people? Do you not have an obligation to set them straight?”

The Guru looked at him a moment, and then told him, “Of course. You are right.”

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How Kamala Will Kill The Economy With Corporate Tax Rate Hike

FAFO Chronicles – 13-yr-old Palestinian youth killed after shooting fireworks towards police in volatile Shuafat refugee camp

Israel Border Police shot and killed a 13-year-old boy in the Shuafat refugee camp near Jerusalem on Tuesday night. 

The young teen, along with several other youths, had been shooting fireworks in the direction of the border fence, where soldiers were stationed due to an earlier disturbance in which several Molotov cocktails were thrown over the border fence and at Israel Border Police observation posts. 

More

Don’t be a dumbass and you won’t have the consequences. There is enough tension there already, don’t add to it by being stupid. Fireworks sound like a gun

This is why America is in decline. Because of monumental woke stupidity.

Woke ruins everything it touches. That it’s destroying our military is a reflection on its leadership and bad for the country. Remember this when going to the ballot box this year.

New Report Highlights Green Failure in Europe and Warns America

If I didn’t need any more proof that the Climate crap we get is a scam, there’s the following. It’s just a scare tactic to grift money out of people dumb enough to give it, in this case Bloomberg, SMH. It’s just another wedge issue from those trying to distract us from the abject failure of the current administration.

As one digests Rupert Darwall’s latest report for the RealClear Foundation, the well-known quote from Spanish philosopher George Santayana might ring through the mind: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Anyone looking to combat the activists pushing a ‘net zero’ agenda here in the U.S. would be wise to read Darwall’s piece, entitled “The Folly of Climate Leadership.”

The analysis tells the story of Great Britain heeding the cries for decarbonization, starting when Parliament wrote an 80% decrease in emissions target into law in 2008. They raised it to 100% – or “net zero” – in 2019. The results have clearly been catastrophic.

Since decarbonization efforts commenced, Britain’s economy has grown at half the rate as it did from 1990-2008. According to a research study from noted British economic historian Nicholas Crafts, that’s the second-worst period of British peacetime growth since 1780.

In addition to the economic malaise, British energy prices have skyrocketed, and Britons are now concerned with how to survive the effect of those costs on their wallets, as they look to heat and power their homes and businesses, travel for work and pleasure and live life as best they can. 

The differences between British energy costs and those here in the U.S. are staggering: Britons paid an average of $228 per megawatt hour (MWh) for electricity generated from coal in 2022, whereas Americans paid an average of $27 per MWh. For natural gas, 2022 saw Britons paying $251 per MWh, versus American consumers averaging $61 per MWh for their power. 

Darwall’s report also highlights the effects of unchecked and anti-market driven government investment in ‘green’ energy on grid reliability, as intermittent production from wind and solar – coupled with a lack of utility-grade energy storage – dropped electricity generated per gigawatt of capacity falling 28% since 2009.

The same arguments that have crippled Britain’s economy are now being used by the Biden Administration here at home, with zealots in Cabinet-level positions – including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, and EPA Director Michael Regan – pushing the message from their bully pulpits.

The recent – and completely misnamed – Inflation Reduction Act passed by Congress provided the zealots with nearly $400 billion to dole out to supportive organizations and start-ups to jump-start our nation’s push for ‘net zero.’ Those dollars – doled out with few oversights or performance metrics attached in many cases – have produced very few wins in the last year, unless a win is measured in keeping political cronies happy and rich.

Consider: wind energy projects in Nebraska, Colorado, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Jersey were scrapped last year, even after untold millions of federal dollars went to their developers. Over 100 solar companies went bankrupt, and solar projects from California to Florida were shuttered in the middle of their development. Battery storage – a key component to offsetting the intermittency of wind and solar – also saw projects stalled, along with at least one lawsuit filed against a storage company when its solution failed.

Despite the perils of ‘green’ energy dependence shown throughout Europe, the eco-left continues to double down on ridding America of traditional energy sources. Supporting those efforts are ideologue billionaires, who continue to fund net-zero initiatives. 

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has given well over $1 billion of his personal wealth to the Sierra Club to fund its “Beyond Coal” and “Beyond Carbon” campaigns. Designed to rid the U.S. of every coal-fired power plant by 2030, the Sierra Club/Bloomberg partnership has succeeded in shutting down nearly two-thirds of the plants to-date, with most of the remaining in rural locations, including my home state of Alaska, where alternatives to existing coal plants in the state’s interior don’t readily exist. Without coal, countless Alaskans would have their livelihoods – and very lives – threatened during our long, dark and sub-zero-temperature winters.

With activists entrenched in government bureaucracy, zealots running government agencies and rich men (and women) funding these efforts, only those educated in historical failures of decarbonization – and willing to stand up and fight back against the climate warriors – stand a chance of helping stem the attacks. Darwall’s study should be required reading for anyone looking to build a fortress in their state against job-killing, family-harming decarbonization efforts.

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Top Posts For The Year As Clicked On By Readers

There is a lot of good reading here, the best insults, the best stories of fooling around at work, the biggest racists, history, IQ and more to catch up on.

Euphemisms For Stupid

A beer short of a six pack
A brick short of a load
A couple of eggs shy of a dozen
A couple of gallons short of a full tank
A few ants short of a picnic
A few beers short of a six-pack
A few bricks short of a pile
A few bricks short of a wall

It’s a long list, click on it for your friends, and enemies

Democrats on the 4th of July, A history of racism and slavery

….Facts are facts, no matter how much you try to deny them, or how much you blame others for what you did. Here they are. Democrats are the Jim Crow party, KKK and the party behind eugenics – the attack on blacks by abortion. They have been behind the slavery, racism, bias, and are everything they accuse others of being and doing.

There are a lot of inconvenient (for Democrats and liberals) truths in this. It names names, lists who they are and what they did, meme’s to steal for the upcoming election and blows out of the water anything other than who they really are, including Biden.

My first job included Madmen Shenanigan’s – This is the one with sex and booze and work stories in it.

….I found what I thought was a private place and parked. I made my move quickly as I figured we were drunk and if I got any push back, I’d just go home. I wasn’t going to try that hard. Well, she was in on the plan and probably hadn’t gotten any since college so her shirt was unbuttoned in no time. I’d had a steady college girlfriend who had the same bra that unsnapped in the front. I had it undone faster than Fonzie from Happy Days, to which her surprised response was wow, you did that well. I said I’d done it before, so she knew she was going to have a ride that night. Let the rodeo begin.

What does Ha! mean on a text, or the worst single word answers.

…..As I suspected, ha is a single word equating to “I’ll let you go now” the on phone or best wishes.  I also means I don’t want to text anymore and this lets you think something witty was said while giving you the finger.  I got news for you, it wasn’t.  I knew what you meant which is why I don’t want to continue and doubt whether you are mature.

People are assholes sometimes.

What’s it like to have an extremely High IQ?

While this wasn’t written in 2023, it still got a ton of clicks because people want to know what it’s like to be smart.

….Since I published this, the comments have been coming in and are now far better than the blog post. I encourage you to read about the lives and struggles of those who have high IQ. Their stories are quite revealing.-> It’s in the comments, hint, hint, hint.

RAIR – Pharmaceutical Whistleblower: Covid and the ‘Toxic Vaccines’ are Bio-Weapons Created by U.S. Department of Defense

People still care about Covid-19 as this was written in 2020

….According to Sasha Latypova, a Russian-American, former pharmaceutical industry research and development executive, and Katherine Watt, a para-legal researcher, and philosopher, it’s an inside job. Covid-19 is an act of bio-warfare perpetrated by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) on the U.S. and worldwide populations in two stages. 

Euphemisms for Stupid

This is the first update in a while, but it was well worth it.  If I missed one, please comment and I’ll include it.

If one of these offends you, take the complaints elsewhere, I’m the one that got dissed here.

A beer short of a six pack
A brick short of a load
A couple of eggs shy of a dozen
A couple of gallons short of a full tank
A few ants short of a picnic
A few beers short of a six-pack
A few bricks short of a pile
A few bricks short of a wall
A few cards short of a deck
A few clowns short of a circus.
A few feathers short of a whole duck
A few fries short of a Happy Meal
A few peas short of a casserole
A few tomatoes short of a good thick sauce

A few soldier short of a squad
A few trucks short of a convoy
A fortune cookie short of a Chinese dinner
A pepperoni short of a pizza
A photographic memory but with the lens cover glued on
A sandwich short of a picnic
A train short of a full service?
About as bright as a burnt out 20 watt light bulb.
About as useful as a chocolate fireguard
Ah say, that boy reminds me of Paul Revere’s ride; a little light in the
belfry
An experiment in Artificial Stupidity
An intellect rivalled only by garden tools
As much use as a hedgehog in a condom factory
As much use as an ashtray on a motorcycle
As quick as a tortoise on Prozac
As smart as bait

As smart as Joe Biden
As useful as a screen door on a submarine
As useful as a wooden frying pan
As useful as tits on a bull
Body by God, Mind by Mattel.
Bright as Alaska in December
Couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel

Could screw up a one car funeral
Doesn’t have both oars in the water
Doesn’t have all his corn flakes in one box
Doesn’t have all his dogs on one leash
Doesn’t have all the dots on his dice
Donated his body to science before he was done using it
Dumb as a corn cob.
Dumb as a stump.
Dumber than a bag of hammers.
Dumber than a bag of rocks

Dumber than a lobotomized rock

Elevator don’t quiet make the top floor
Fell out of the family tree
Forgot to pay his brain bill
Goes surfing in Nebraska
Golf bag doesn’t have a full set of irons
Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all together
Got into the gene pool when the lifeguard wasn’t watching
Gross ignoramus — 144 times worse than a normal ignoramus
Has an IQ of 2, but it takes 3 to grunt

This is the one —> Has delusions of adequacy.

Has two brains, one’s lost and the other is out looking for it
Having an intelligence rivalled only by garden tools.
He fell out of the Stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down
He had a little too much chlorine in his gene pool.
He is so dumb, he would look for a wishbone in a soft-boiled egg.
He is so dumb, the only thing he ever read was an eye-chart.
He played too much without a helmet
He’s got a mind like a steel trap, rusted shut
He’s got a leak in his think-tank
He’s got a mind like a steel sieve
He’s got his feet firmly planted 3 feet above the ground
He’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer
He’s so dense light bends around him
He’s so dumb he couldn’t pour the water out of a boot if the instructions
were on the heel
His belt doesn’t go through all the loops
His cheese has slipped off his cracker

His mother should have thrown him away and kept the stork
His porch light ain’t on
I say, that boy is about as sharp as a sack of wet mice
If brains were chocolate – he wouldn’t have enough to fill an M&M
If brains were dynamite – he wouldn’t have enough to blow his nose
If brains were dynamite, he wouldn’t have enough to blow his hat off
If brains were gasoline, he couldn’t ride a moped around a fruit loop
If brains were taxed, he’d get a rebate
If he had a brain, he’d be dangerous
If he had another brain, it would be lonely
If he were any more stupid, he’d have to be watered twice a week
If stupid were a talent, he would be considered gifted

If stupid could fly, you’d be a jet.
If you gave him a penny for his thoughts, you’d get change back
If you stand close enough to him you can hear the ocean
Isn’t firing on all 6 cylinders
Isn’t firing on all thrusters
Its hard to believe that he beat out half a billion other sperm

If I wanted to kill myself I’d climb your ego and jump to your IQ
Kangaroo loose in the top paddock
Like a pair of children’s scissors, bright and colorful, but not too sharp
Million dollar body and a 2 dollar engine.
Mind is in neutral, body is in gear
Mind like a rubber bear trap.
Needing a few screws tightened
Not firing with all spark plugs
Not the brightest light in the harbor
Not the brightest light on the Christmas tree
Not the sharpest hook in the tackle box.
Not the sharpest pencil in the box
Off his rocker
On/off switch is broken in the off position
One Fruit Loop shy of a full bowl
One neuron short of a synapse
One taco short of a combination plate
One turbine short of an airplane
One-celled organisms out score him in IQ tests
Prime candidate for natural deselection
Proof that evolution CAN go in reverse
Requires directions to lay sod
Room temperature IQ
Running about a quart low
Running on empty
Sets the lowest possible goals, and consistently fails to achieve them.
Sharp as a bowling ball.
She is so dumb, she couldn’t tell which way an elevator was going if she
had two guesses.
She is so dumb, when I asked her to pass the plate, she said: “Upper or
lower?”
She’s not tied too tight to the pier
Some drink from the fountain of knowledge, he only gargled
Strong like bear, smart like tractor.
Takes him 1 1/2 hours to watch 60 minutes
The elevator is stuck between floors.
The lights are flashing, the gate is down, but the train isn’t coming
The lights are on, but nobody is home.
The wheel’s spinning, but the hamster’s dead
Too dumb to pull his head in before he shuts the window
Too many yards between the goal posts
Two hub caps short of a Buick.
Warning – Objects in mirror are dumber than they appear
Was left on the tilt-a-whirl too long as a baby
Would be out of her depth in a mud puddle.
Your the flower of my life (you blooming idiot)
You can’t call him an idiot, you’ll insult all the idiots in the world.

Your mouth is writing checks that your intellect cannot cash

“I’m not saying you’re the dumbest person in the world—but you better hope the dumbest person in the world doesn’t die.”

Surely your parents only met once. Money was involved; no more than a twenty. And they say she was dressed as a boy at the time.

One of my favorite Far Side Cartoon’s ever

Midvale School for the Gifted: Today's Government | Trade the Tape

Harvard Does It Again, Every Time I Think They Can’t Ruin Their Academics Further, They Do

Here are two examples that just came through. A diploma from there comes with a woke minor in any discipline. Were I a hiring manager, I’d shuffle these students to the bottom. Not only are they doing the below, but the parents are way overpaying for this.

Harvard Law Journal Applicants Must List Race and Sexual Orientation for Article Submissions

Harvard Law School’s journal Civil Rights and Civil Liberties requires that applicants submit their sexual orientation, gender identity and race for their article submissions to be considered, a relatively new requirement for the publication.

Also required are the applicant’s pronouns, whether they have a disability, and whether they are a first-generation professional or student, according to the “Author Submission Form” Google document for the journal.

There is more at the link, but how about the merit of being a critical thinker instead of a color? How is this not racist or sexist?

This next one is the killer. If I have a life threatening disease, the climate is the last thing I’m going to care about.

Harvard Medical School’s Climate Change Curriculum Examines How it Impacts ‘Health and Health Inequality’

The Harvard School of Public Health’s Caleb Dresser said students and faculty “have been pushing” to add a climate change component into the HMS studies for some time.

“Many graduates of Harvard Medical School go on to leadership positions in medicine and beyond,” Dresser said. “It’s going to be increasingly important for people in leadership roles in healthcare and other industries to integrate climate change and climate-related hazards into their strategic decision making as they lead organizations.”

From the story:

[Student Benjamin] Grobman said changes in the Medical School’s curriculum are just one step toward addressing the impacts of climate change on health care.

“It has to go beyond that, and I think that’s something that hopefully we can start to do in the future,” he said. “But I think curriculum is essential because it really lays the groundwork for people to be thinking about these issues.”

HMS student Madeleine C. Kline said though medical education remains outside of her core passions, the potential for enhanced patient care has motivated her to push to modify the curriculum.

“Every student who comes through the Medical School will leave with an understanding of what climate change is and what it means for their patients,” she said. “I think it is going to mean a lot for their patients.”

SMH

Conspiracy Stuff Meme Dump

What I can’t believe are the sheep that believe this, but I guess that’s what they get for believing the media, the government and social media. None of them are your friends or care about you. They care about them and you are the pawn.

The truth is out there, don’t be stupid. Wake up.

Also, steal at will, I did.

Oh and for stupid, Harvard is in there.

The Trans Athletes, Turning Sports Into Men’s And Co-Ed

The end of girls sports can be blamed on feminism and the Ivy League. They have failed to stand up for the females and have bowed the knee to political correctness by letting men kick ass on the rest of the girls and the record book. Of all groups, you’d think the pink pussy hat group of cackling Karen’s would at least stand up for their own.

The Ivy League are supposed to be smart people producing smart people. They are revealing a new level of stupidity that only the woke could deliver at this level of idiocy. They continue to under perform in producing a quality education experience and over perform in the price charged for this lack of education. They are good at woke though. It’s no coincidence that they are the premier of the left also.

The rest of us in the real world (the one’s who think they are elite call us the flyover states) know that men are stronger than women and that this is ruining things for girls sports.

From Legal Insurrection, Lia the girl with a dick wins by 7 seconds:

Lia Thomas Breaks Pool Record of Olympian Kate Ziegler In 500 Freestyle Win at Ivy League Champs

One night after posting the fastest split in the 800-yard freestyle relay, the University of Pennsylvania’s Lia Thomas captured her first individual title at the Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships. Thomas, a transgender woman, produced a winning time of 4:37.32, which was more than seven seconds quicker than the 4:44.83 clocked by teammate Catherine Buroker for second place.

A three-year member of Penn’s men’s team, Thomas transitioned to female during the COVID-19 pandemic and is in her first season as a member of the women’s team. Her performance at the Ivy League Champs established a Blodgett Pool record, breaking the mark of Olympian Kate Ziegler, and just missed the meet record of 4:36.37, set in 2020 by Ellie Marquardt of Princeton. Marquardt was third on Thursday night in 4:46.63.

One of the few times I have anything good to say about social media, they cheered the second place finisher who was an actual girl in the women’s events.

Since no one will call out the tranny’s for ruining Title IX and girls sports, guys have turned it into co-ed sports.

Here’s the track and field version of co-ed sports:

I’m a mom, a coach and a Team USA World Masters track athlete who is fighting for something greater than another gold medal: I’m standing for the protection of women’s sports.

If male-bodied athletes continue competing on female teams, it will be the end of women’s sports. This is no exaggeration; this is reality, and it’s happening right now.

At the 2018 World Masters Athletics Championships in Málaga, Spain, I competed in the 200-meter race against a male-bodied athlete, whom I beat by only a few tenths of a second. The next year, the same athlete beat my teammate in the hurdles for a place on the podium at the 2019 World Championship indoor meet in Poland. My teammate had trained harder than anyone I know.

It wasn’t just on the world stage that I experienced the demoralizing trend of male-bodied athletes displacing females from their own competitions; it was also on my home island of Maui, Hawaii.

How Man Buns Were Inspired

I’m sure they think they look good, but as we look back on some of the do’s that we thought looked good at the time, I don’t think this is going to age well.

It should age like the inspiration at the bottom.

Sounding – A Terrible New Internet Trend (sticking things in your dick)

First they ate a spoon of cinnamon. Then, they were snorting rubbers (It’s on YouTube, I didn’t want to have to see it again).

Now there is sounding. It’s sticking something in your dick to see how far you can do it.

To no one’s surprise, the participants are going to the hospital and are being injured, like this boy who stuck a USB cable so far down that he couldn’t get it out.

A U.K. teen had to undergo emergency surgery after a bananas attempt to measure his manhood resulted in him getting a USB cable lodged in his urethra.

The phallic fiasco reportedly began after an unnamed 15-year-old boy was “triggered by sexual curiosity” and inserted a USB wire into his urethra, per a wince-worthy study published in the medical journal Urology Case Reports.

The sexperiment backfired when the cable became lodged in the curious teen’s scrotum like an electronic catheter. Despite attempts to extract it himself, the USB cord became tangled so terribly that both ends were left hanging out of his wired willy.

Play with it, use it to pee and the other stuff it was made for, but don’t stick anything in it. It is your best personal friend for men and a play toy for females.

Why I Don’t Argue On Line Anymore

I’ve written about Internet Road Rage and Stupid Things Smart People do. It’s also why I stay away from a lot of social media. My life is a lot happier that way. Also, I don’t have to worry about my body image that Zuckerberg lied about yesterday.

Breaking: A New Update On Euphemisms for Stupid (Bonus For Introverts, What to Say Is Handed To You Here)

By far, my most popular posts are What’s it like to have a high IQ and this one, Euphemisms for Stupid. For a decade, this post was #1 worldwide in Google on how to call someone stupid.

More people have re-used content on this post around the world than some marketing campaigns by Facebook, and that is where a lot of it wound up it seemed (and I still have a happy life after I fired them).

To honor that post, I updated it today (there are almost a hundred creative ways to say someone fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down or that they couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel) with this one:

Enjoy, and if you want to find out a way to say someone is stupid that you’ve never heard of, go get you some at the link above.

Friday Stupid Saying – About The Incompetent

“The incompetent with nothing to do can still make a mess of it.” – Lawrence J. Peter

I know this is not all that witty but bear with me. The reason it is there other than it is true is that in all of my posts, I have one entitled Euphamisms for Stupid, which has been in the top 5 for Google since 2006 worldwide. It is pages and pages of these. Go get one and use it at a meeting today:

Like a pair of children’s scissors, bright and colorful, but not too sharp
Million dollar body and a 2 dollar engine.
Mind is in neutral, body is in gear
Mind like a rubber bear trap.
Needing a few screws tightened
Not firing with all spark plugs
Not the brightest light in the harbor
Not the brightest light on the Christmas tree
Not the sharpest hook in the tackle box.
Not the sharpest pencil in the box
Off his rocker
On/off switch is broken in the off position
One Fruit Loop shy of a full bowl
One neuron short of a synapse
One taco short of a combination plate
One turbine short of an airplane
One-celled organisms out score him in IQ tests
Prime candidate for natural deselection
Proof that evolution CAN go in reverse
Requires directions to lay sod
Room temperature IQ
Running about a quart low
Running on empty
Sets the lowest possible goals, and consistently fails to achieve them.
Sharp as a bowling ball.
She is so dumb, she couldn’t tell which way an elevator was going if she
had two guesses.

I wish I had written something of extreme intelligence that changed the course of history, but it looks like laughing at ways to say someone ain’t that bright is what it is for now.

Note: to the SJW, this post as with most of mine is made in jest. Try to have fun and not ruin the day for others.

Great Sayings – John Wayne On Life

Life is hard; it’s harder if you’re stupid.

John Wayne
Yes life is hard, especially if you choose the wrong people, the wrong sources to get your information and put any faith in social media.
The filter you choose to get your information is usually someone trying to persuade you to their position.  Think through things and look past what others say to see if it is true, relevant and is in accordance with your principles.
Don’t be stupid

Stupid Things Smart People Do

Once again, here is a smattering of what the internet says.  I observed some of this behavior at the IT companies I worked for.  Many of them were brilliant on the IQ scale, but couldn’t find their way out of the social (real not web) wet paper bag.
I found most of this on the internet.  If you don’t agree, try arguing with the internet.  BTW, that is one of the stupid things smart people do.
Enjoy.
free nobel peace prize
Stupid Stuff smart people do:
Fail to recognize their own cognitive bias
Fail to recognize the cognitive bias in those whom they care about.
Underestimate theal gore Horses-Ass-Awardir own stupidity.
Overestimate the stupidity of others.
Fail to understand Psychological projection

Getting into an argument on the internet.
Believe in global warming.
Believe what’s written on Quora.
Believe that socialism works.
Get frustrated and give up too easily when something doesn’t come naturally to them.

Related to this perhaps is not learning to lose gracefully.

And care more about being perceived as smart rather than doubling down and becoming smarter through failure.

They value intelligence over kindness.

Assuming other people think the same way about things as themselves. Also, assuming people act according to rational cost/benefit analysis of outcomes instead of according to their “gut”, habits or emotions.Also, conflating education (college degrees) for intelligence. This can lead them to pay too much attention to people with the right Ivy League credentials and not realize that it is often people who are “working in the trenches” who know more about what is going on.

They don’t spend enough time wondering “what are some smart things that stupid people do?”Underestimating people is a dangerous habit.
  1. Not reading the instructions.
  2. Never learning the value of practice.
  3. Underestimating the value of experience.
  4. Not learning how to study — really study — so they are unprepared when study is the only thing that will save them.
  5. Procrastinate

A study of successful con-men will show that they choose smart people to con.This is because smart people think they are smart in all things as against just their area of expertise.Smart people are commonly successful from a young age so do not have to experience the problems of  surviving on a daily basis. They are not forced to work for people they don’t like or do jobs they hate.They do not have to live without hope, or accept insults and attitudes of others who denigrate them.In all, they become divorced from the realities of life. They mix with others of their kind, and this reinforces their belief that they are smarter than those of lower social rank.They indulge in conspicuous consumption to keep up with their peers. They develop a lifestyle that assumes they will always have the means to live that way.They are easily conned because con-men flatter them on how  smart they are.

The smart people who end up in jail are rarely short of money, they do what they do because they think they can outsmart others.

How we love to see pride come before a fall.

They are the fodder of movie makers and writers.

Wow, there are so many.  Here are but a few of my favorite stupid things smart people tend to do:

  • Ignoring the importance of design and style – When the iPod originally came out, technical people complained about its lack of features and perceived high price (“ooh, who cares about another MP3 player, I can go buy one at Best Buy for $50” http://forums.macrumors.com/show…).  In the meantime, it was so cool and easy to use that normal people went out in droves to buy it.
  • Using terrible tools, and taking pride in their awfulness – Especially common with programmers, who take pride in using programming languages and text editors that have been designed by programmers, not updated since the 1970s, and never touched by anyone with a modicum of design sense. They believe that mastering arcane, overcomplicated commands and processes are a mark of pride, rather than a waste of time.  I will refrain from singling out specific programming languages and tools here, because smart people also like to get caught up in pointless flame wars about this sort of thing.
  • Following the pack – Many smart people often seem to be followers, probably because they grow up spending so much time pleasing others via academic and extracurricular achievement that they never figure out what they really like to work on or try anything unique.  Smart people from top schools tend to flock into the same few elite fields, as they try to keep on achieving what other people think they should achieve, rather than figuring out whatever it is they intrinsically want to do.
  • Failing to develop social skills – Some smart people focus exclusively on their narrow area of interest and never realize that everything important in life is accomplished through other people.  They never try to improve their social skills, learn to network, or self promote, and often denigrate people who excel in these areas. If you are already a good engineer you are going to get 10x the return on time spent improving how you relate to other people compared to learning the next cool tool.
  • Focusing on being right above all else – Many smart people act as if being right trumps all else, and go around bluntly letting people know when they are wrong, as if this will somehow endear others to them.  They also believe that they can change other people’s minds through argument and facts, ignoring how emotional and irrational people actually are when it comes to making decisions or adopting beliefs.
  • Letting success in one area lead to overconfidence in others – Smart people sometimes think that just because they are expert in their field, they are automatically qualified in areas about which they know nothing.  For instance, doctors have a reputation as being bad investors: http://medicaleconomics.modernme….
  • Underrating effort and practice – For smart people, many things come easily without much effort.  They’re constantly praised for “being smart” whenever they do anything well.  The danger is that they become so reliant on feeling smart and having people praise them, that they avoid doing anything that they’re not immediately great at.  They start to believe that if you’re not good at something from the beginning, you’re destined to always be terrible at it, and the thing isn’t worth doing.  These smart people fail to further develop their natural talents and eventually fall behind others who, while less initially talented, weren’t as invested in “being smart” and instead spent more time practicing.  http://nymag.com/news/features/2…
  • Engaging in zero sum competitions with other smart people – Many smart people tend to flock to fields which are already saturated with other smart people.  Only a limited number of people can become a top investment banker, law partner, Fortune 500 CEO, humanities professor, or Jeopardy champion.  Yet smart people let themselves be funneled into these fields and relentlessly compete with each other for limited slots.  They all but ignore other areas where they could be successful, and that are less overrun by super-smart people.   Instead of thinking outside the box, smart people often think well within a box, a very competitive box that has been set up by other people and institutions to further someone else’s interests at the expense of the smart person.
  • Excessively focusing on comparing their achievements with others – Smart people who have been raised in a typical achievement-focused family or school can get anxious about achievement to the point of ridiculousness.  This leads to people earnestly asking questions like: Success: If I haven’t succeeded in my mid 20s, could I be successful in the rest of my life? and Are you a failure if you are not a billionaire by age 30? What about 40?
  • Ignoring diminishing returns on information – Smart people are often voracious readers and can absorb huge quantities of information on any subject.  They get caught up in reading every last bit of information on subjects that interest them, like investing, lifehacking, or tech specs of products they’re planning on buying.   While some information is useful in making a decision, poring through the vast amount of information available online can be a waste of time.  They end up spending a lot of time gathering information without taking action.
  • Elitism – Smart people often use smartness as measure of the entire worth of a person.  They fail to see the value in or even relate with people who are different.  This is illustrated by the Yale professor who doesn’t have the slightest idea what to say to his plumber: http://www.theamericanscholar.or….  And questions like Am I an elitist to think that most people are stupid?
  • Try to click on the red links above
They become arrogant. They forget they aren’t really the smartest person in the world and flaunt their intelligence to others to the point where it’s annoying and it loses them friends and can hurt a lot of people.On the flip-side smart people can also sacrifice their smarts to fit in by trying to appear dumber than they really are to please others, talking about low-intellect topics which require no thought.Others over-estimate how clever they really are and use what they think is an almighty amount of smarts to pick on others, leaving themselves open to huge critiquing and losing a lot of potential friends.Some even think they’re smarter than they really are when it comes down doing certain tasks which would be much simpler had they taken the time to develop a proper approach to whatever they are doing.
Focusing on thinking to the detriment of doing.Smart people love to think.  It comes naturally to them, and they’re good at it.  But thinking only takes you so far, especially when you’re trying to make an impact on the world.  At some point, you have to do.Because thinking comes so easily to smart people, doing becomes relatively* harder. Research and planning are great in moderation, but can offer the dangerous illusion of progress. In the end, the only way to make a difference is to do something.  Start now.* Note that I say relatively–doing is generally easier for smart people than stupid people.  But thinking is so much easier that smart people tend to fall back on where they have the greatest comparative advantage.

Here is the opening ofSlavojZizek’s magnum opus, Less than Nothing. He is a self-described idiot, imbecile, and neurotic. Others call him the most important philosopher alive:

There are two opposed types of stupidity. The first is the (occasionally) hyper-intelligent subject who just doesn’t “get it,” who understands a situation logically, but simply misses its hidden contextual rules. For example, when I first visited New York, a waiter at a café asked me: “How was your day?” Mistaking the phrase for a genuine question, I answered him truthfully (“ I am dead tired, jet-lagged, stressed out …”), and he looked at me as if I were a complete idiot … and he was right: this kind of stupidity is precisely that of an idiot. Alan Turing was an exemplary idiot: a man of extraordinary intelligence, but a proto-psychotic unable to process implicit contextual rules. In literature, one cannot avoid recalling Jaroslav Hašek’s good soldier Švejk, who, when he saw soldiers shooting from their trenches at the enemy soldiers, ran into no-man’s land and started to shout: “Stop shooting, there are people on the other side!” The arch-model of this idiocy is, however, the naïve child from Andersen’s tale who publicly exclaims that the emperor is naked— thereby missing the point that, as Alphonse Allais put it, we are all naked beneath our clothes.

Sequester Stories

A man stopped at a local gas station and after filling his tank, he paid the bill and bought a soft drink. He stood by his car to drink his cola and watched a couple of men working along the roadside.

One man would dig a hole two feet deep and then move on. The other man came along behind him and filled in the hole. While one was digging a new hole, the other was 25 feet behind filling in the previous hole. The men worked right past the guy with the soft drink and went on down the road.

“I can’t stand this,” said the man, tossing the can into a trash container and heading down the road toward the men. “Hold it, hold it,” he said to the men. “Can you tell me what’s going on here with all this digging and refilling?”

“Well, we work for the government, and we’re just doing our job,” one of the men said. “But one of you is digging a hole and the other fills it up. You’re not accomplishing anything. Aren’t you just wasting the taxpayers’ money?”

“You don’t understand, mister,” one of the men said, leaning on his shovel and wiping his brow. “Normally there’s three of us: me, Elmer and Leroy.  I dig the hole, Elmer sticks in a tree, and Leroy here puts the dirt back. But Elmer’s job’s been cut on account of the sequester… so now it’s just me an’ Leroy workin,'”