Archive for the 'Think about it.' Category
28th September 2020
Larry Correia.
I posted that last night on Facebook, and sure enough, this morning my feed is filled with people who don’t know shit about taxes retweeting the stupid opinions of other morons who also don’t know shit about taxes. This is just as annoying as last week when these same idiots all suddenly became Constitutional Scholars. Or the month before that when they were all experts on use of force laws and police tactics. Or the month before that when they suddenly got their epidemiology degrees from the University of Internet and turned into infectious disease experts.
Holy shit, you Dunning-Krugerands are annoying. Of course the comments are all about the “morality” of paying your “fair share”. Which isn’t how any of this works in real life. Just stop it with your vapid hot takes already. You clearly have a child-like grasp of a complex topic, and your words are making America dumber.
As a former accountant, please allow me to explain why all of today’s newly formed tax experts are fucking morons, and we should metaphorically put a brick in a sock and beat them over the head with it until they shut up.
I love the term ‘wokesplaining’ and will be using it henceforth.
I highly recommend Larry’s ‘Saga of the Forgotten Warrior’ series.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on No, You Idiots. That’s Not How Taxes Work. – An Accountant’s Guide to Why You Are a Gullible Moron
28th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
28th September 2020
Read it.
Simon Leys was perhaps the pre-eminent Western chronicler of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, and it is worth returning to his work for its vivid first-hand accounts of life in Beijing during this period. But Leys was also interested in the process by which, under the right conditions and with the right ideology, a society can collapse into insanity and murder. His description of the Cultural Revolution showed how political hysteria and the legitimization of violence and hatred combined to ravage a nation.
These developments, however, are by no means unique to communism in general or China in particular, and Leys explored similar themes in his retelling of the harrowing true story of a ship wrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629. His book on the topic, The Wreck of the Batavia, is a short masterpiece about how the small society that the ship’s survivors tried to construct in the wake of the disaster was plunged into apocalyptic madness and murder by a psychopathic leader operating according to his own deranged totalitarian ideology. The parallels to Maoism—although Leys was too elegant a writer to belabour them—are obvious.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Analyst of Totalitarianism—Reading Simon Leys Today
28th September 2020
ZMan takes a gander.
A popular theme in science fiction is one where the human explorers stumble upon alien technology and they are baffled as to what it does. It’s not that they know the purpose but cannot figure out how to make it work. It’s that they don’t understand the purpose of the technology. The implication is that the aliens were so advanced that they were creating tools to solve problems humans have yet to contemplate. The gap between the aliens and humans is so great that it cannot be bridged.
It is a useful thing to keep in mind when thinking about the modern world. The evidence is pretty good that Western man is dumber than his ancestors. We have more overall knowledge than our ancestors, but our ability to add to it is in sharp decline along with our ability to use it. The people in charge now struggle to do the basics of government, like maintain order and the infrastructure. In America, streets are crumbling and there are regular power failures in parts of the country.
Preventing riots and looting is the essence of government. Any government that cannot do that is ipso facto incompetent. Yet the sheep on the Left Coast will continue to vote for them, until the place falls into the sea.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Great Stagger
28th September 2020
No one would live as a knight and role-play as a marketing consultant.
— Curtis Yarvin (Mencius Moldbug)
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Quotation of the Day
28th September 2020

Not to mention the free long-distance phone calls.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
28th September 2020
Audacious Epigone deals with some inconvenient truth.
If Trump were a tyrannical dictator, nobody would be able to get away with calling him one. If so-called white privilege was beneficial, non-whites would be trying to pass as white to cash in on that privilege. Instead they run from the liability, pretending to be non-white because of how lucrative it is. Hell, if it were okay to be white it would be okay to say it’s okay to be white, but it’s not okay to be white so it’s not okay to say it’s okay to be white.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on It’s Not Okay to Say
27th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
27th September 2020
Severian discusses the Supreme Court nominations in a global context.
There’s some pretty stiff competition at the top, I’ll grant you, but if I had to pick the Top Five Stupidest Things the Human Race Has Ever Done, I’d go with, in ascending order:
- Proclaim “peace in our time.”
- Hand Austria-Hungary a blank check for war
- Invade Russia in the winter
- Start a land war in Asia
- Listen to Karl Marx.
That was prior to this week, though. When you consider that we’ve got our ongoing COVID response, a Presidential debate with Pedo Joe Biden, and now a Supreme Court nomination fight on the schedule, we might be edging into “Chamberlain at Munich” territory, idiocy-wise. It’s gonna be a wowzer.
…
Think of it like an iPad. “Abortion” doesn’t make sense as a political issue, because BCGs don’t have politics, or issues. They do have lifestyle accessories, though, the latest and greatest ones. That’s how they compete with each other — the cutest shoes, the trendiest Starbucks drink, the #wokest attitude. Threatening to take away Muh Abortion! is, to them, like threatening to take away their iCrap Mini Pro 7.2, the one with the cute heart stickers and the unlimited data plan. It’s an identity thing, and they’re about to turn into screaming fucking banshees over it.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Barrett Redux
27th September 2020

If it works, don’t knock it.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
26th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
26th September 2020
Eric S. Raymond has some ideas.
The two most intriguing developments in the recent evolution of the Microsoft Windows operating system are Windows System for Linux (WSL) and the porting of their Microsoft Edge browser to Ubuntu.
For those of you not keeping up, WSL allows unmodified Linux binaries to run under Windows 10. No emulation, no shim layer, they just load and go.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Last Phase of the Desktop Wars?
26th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on NLRB Files Complaint Against Socialist-Themed Vegan Meat Company That Fired Union Organizers
26th September 2020

For further details read ALBION’S SEED.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
26th September 2020
Freeberg shares it with us.
I have an unpopular opinion that this “rules solve everything” mindset is not only in error, but may in fact be a serious mental illness. It would have been officially diagnosed as such if we lived back in the days where your continuing survival was fastened to your ability to think clearly. My opinion is that it’s not being officially diagnosed because, and only because, this is not the case. Everybody’s continuing survival is everybody else’s responsibility, and this has driven us crackers. I think there are people out there who simply cannot recognize that these useful technological innovations we enjoy, are the products of independent thinking. Chaotic, ramshackle roughshod thinking, in some kind of “Frankenstein’s Lab” — some cloister in which rules did not apply. We have new things we didn’t have before because someone had to say “I’ll do this because I’m not seeing any rules telling me I can’t do it”; maybe they even broke a rule to do it! And there are people who can’t even consider the possibility of that. They are so far gone that they think we have electric light because someone made a rule that we should have it. They think we put men on the moon because JFK expressed the desire that we should do it. They think we’re going to hit “climate change” targets in 2050 or 2100 because of these unelected, unappointed, unaccountable busybodies on commissions and panels make their “accords” and other rules saying we should hit them, and once we hit them the credit should go to the busybodies…who’ve never produced a thing someone else would want to buy, or helped to so produce, ever, for a single moment in their entire lives. I think there are people who don’t acknowledge the ones who sweat out the details, who go through the trial & error to see if something works, because they’re simply unaware of the necessity. They think forming the “vision” is all of the hard work that has to be done. I think they’re that far gone, because we’re in the Idiocracy now, not chased by any natural predators or threatened by any natural threats. I think the entire human race, at least that part of it that manages to make some noise, is a failure-to-launch kid who doesn’t know what a farm is, doesn’t know how food is grown, slaughtered, processed, and thinks the process of acquiring it consists solely of yelling at your mama that it’s time for her to bring a Hot Pocket to your bedroom.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on ‘My Unpopular Opinion’
26th September 2020
Periscope podcast. About 8 minutes in.
- If Biden ‘has a lid on it’ until Tuesday, he won’t participate in the debates for whatever reason.
- If Biden survives one debate in reasonable fashion, they will find some excuse to cancel the rest.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Predictions from Scott Adams
26th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
25th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
25th September 2020
Read it.
Hammer tech.

Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Watch a Tesla Fail an Automatic Braking Test and Vaporize a Robot Pedestrian
25th September 2020
Bethany Mandel.
The last six months have proved a few things: Americans are not as strong as we once were and our national past-time isn’t baseball, it’s complaining. I’ve been extremely disheartened to watch how we’ve responded to the COVID crisis; with little critical thinking and questioning of the narrative we’ve been fed on everything from masks (from they’re completely unnecessary all the way to you have to wear one outside alone in the woods) to the logic of a nationwide, indefinite lockdown.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Misery Loves Company
25th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
25th September 2020
Read it.
The state Supreme Court unanimously agreed with the Broward County School Board that the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — which killed 17 students and staff members and injured 17 others — should be viewed as a single incident, the Miami Herald reported.
Attorneys for the plaintiffs argued each gunshot from alleged gunman Nikolas Cruz were separate incidents and that their clients should each receive $200,000. The justices disagreed, saying mass shootings should be viewed as one incident, thereby placing a limit on how much government agencies can be forced to pay under an under a state sovereign-immunity law, according to the newspaper.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Florida Supreme Court Rules Against Parkland Families
24th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
24th September 2020
ZMan looks at the coming civil war.
Up until not so long ago it was possible to argue that the political divide in America was over means rather than ends. Both sides had the same general goal, but they disagreed upon the course needed to get there. Alternatively, the debate was over the best possible end, which is an extension of the same debate. The fights that ensued were over the facts and the interpretation of the facts. Somewhere along the way, that changed and the debate is now centered on propaganda.
A good current example is the Breonna Taylor issue in Louisville. For the longest time, the mass media has claimed that cops murdered her for no reason. They executed a “no-knock warrant” and just opened fire, killing her in the process. This led to riots in Louisville and contributed to the summer of mayhem. It turns out that none of that was true and the Breonna Taylor story was a complete lie. The only thing true about it was the names of the people involved.
This is a familiar pattern in these cases. First, we get the incident, which often goes unnoticed by the mass media. Then sometime later the story bursts on the scene with an official narrative and a media kit, which always includes images of the victim from when they were young. In an instant, every hair-hat in the media is chanting the same lines over top the same canned video. A mob is then ginned up wherever it happened and the authorities then rush to jail some white guy.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Psychological War
24th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
24th September 2020
Read it.
The boyfriend of Breonna Taylor, the Black woman who was shot during a police raid on her apartment, got his girlfriend killed when he shot at Louisville police detectives, Joe diGenova, former US Attorney for the District of Columbia, told Newsmax TV.
Exactly so.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Joe diGenova to Newsmax TV: Breonna Taylor’s Boyfriend Is Responsible for Her Death
23rd September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
23rd September 2020
Read it.
I would be fascinated to learn what rationale Twitter uses to decide which messages are acceptable and which are not. Twitter explains that its rules “prohibit the glorification of violence” and that its users “may not threaten or promote terrorism or violent extremism.” On these grounds, Twitter recently appended a notice to a Donald Trump tweet about Minneapolis. The site has also suspended users for making claims about the coronavirus of which it does not approve, on the grounds that such claims “could place people at a higher risk of transmitting COVID-19.”
#MeToo.
Posted in Think about it. | 2 Comments »
23rd September 2020
Read it.
During the September 23 edition of Mornings with Maria on Fox Business, anchor Maria Bartiromo addressed Bloomberg raising $16 million in donations to pay the court fines and fees of Black and Hispanic convicted felons in Florida so they could vote in the November elections. Bartiromo told Gaetz, who also happens to be an attorney: “You’re calling for a probe into bribery for Michael Bloomberg to spend all that money in Florida alone. Tell us about it.”
Gaetz responded: “I’m the former criminal justice chairman of the Florida House of Representatives. I know this area of law well. I spoke to the Florida attorney general last night, and a criminal probe may already be underway in Florida.” He continued: “Chapter 104, Florida statute says that it is a felony for someone to either directly or indirectly offer something of value to impact whether or not someone votes.”
Don’t think of it as buying votes — think of it as renting them for a bit.
Are there any Democrats that are bothered by the fact that apparently felons can be assumed to vote Democrat?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Rep. Matt Gaetz Calls for Investigation into Michael Bloomberg
23rd September 2020
ZMan draws a moral.
The old expression, “idle hands do the Devil’s work” is one of those phrases that has lost much of its meaning in the modern age. One reason, of course, is the steady removal of Christianity from daily life. Few people attend church and Christianity has been removed from the public square by the ruling class. People look up for cultural cues, so a society run by secularists will be stripped of religious references. Still, the expression offers some insight into what currently vexes western societies.
Look around the typical large enterprise and what you will find is a lot of people engaged in what is best described as busy work. In the private sector, there are hundreds of job titles that have been invented for tasks that have very little, if anything, to do with the mission of the enterprise. These roles have either been created to meet a demand from government or they have been created to inoculate the firm against current cultural fads like diversity.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Idle Hands
23rd September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
23rd September 2020
Read it.
Because he isn’t Fully Woke, and therefore must be cancelled.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on As Joe Rogan’s Platform Grows, So Does the Media and Liberal Backlash. Why?
23rd September 2020
Steve Sailer.
Center-left Vox pundit Matthew Yglesias’ new book One Billion Americans: The Case for Thinking Bigger is actually two contradictory polemics. The book is both a sensible call for making family formation more affordable for younger Americans, and a demented demand for tripling the population of the United States (currently one-third of a billion) via immigration, thus ruining the chances of tens of millions of actual Americans to afford marriage and children.
There’s really no way to reconcile Yglesias’ two requests….
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on 666,666,666 Immigrants
22nd September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
22nd September 2020
Read it.
The liberal media love to pose as the Defenders of Science, and part of the game they play is by turning to medical experts with left-wing political backgrounds that they hide. CNN hides the losing Democrat political campaigns of its doctors Rob Davidson and Abdul el-Sayed. NBC and MSNBC have hidden that their “global health policy expert” Vin Gupta is an adviser to the Biden campaign.
In ten NBC News appearances and 31 MSNBC appearances found in Nexis from July 15 to September 15, these networks never, ever mentioned a Biden link.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on NBC/MSNBC Routinely Hide That Dr. Vin Gupta Has Advised Biden Campaign
22nd September 2020
Read it.
New Jersey finally passed a tax on millionaires fulfilling a long-running dream of governor Phil Murphy and Democratic leaders.
Facing a fiscal crisis of epic proportions, Murphy finally convinced holdout lawmakers to raise the tax rate on earnings over $1 million to 10.75%, up from 8.97%. As we noted last week, it remains unclear how quickly this decision will prompt an exodus of the state’s richest residents. What was clear, however, is that it was only a matter of time before other Democrat-run, fiscally-irresponsible states would follow NJ’s lead now that the seal has been broken. After all, progressives in Albany have already been pushing governor Cuomo to consider a variety of bills, including one to raise the tax rate on those earning more than $100 million to almost 12%.
Plenty of room in Texas. Nicer people, too.( Except in Austin, of course, but you can avoid there.)
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Millionaire Tax Coming to New York Next?
22nd September 2020

He’s got a point.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
22nd September 2020
Read it.
Over 90% of Indian techies in the US are upper-caste Indians and many of them are allegedly making life a living hell for Dalits, those who are classified as the lowest of the low in India, whose horrifying historical persecution has continued in the cradle of tech.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on India’s Ancient Caste System Is Ruining Lives in the Valley
22nd September 2020
David Cole (who is Jewish) has an adventure.
There are certain “firsts” we all remember from youth. Our first kiss. Our first car. Our first time being chased off a college campus by an angry mob of Jews shouting, “Never again!”
Okay, that last one may be unique to me.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Never Again! (Some Restrictions May Apply)
21st September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
21st September 2020
ZMan sorts it out.
One of the defining features of post-Cold War America is that public policy no longer reflects public sentiment. Washington passes plenty of laws every year and spends plenty of money on various programs. State governments have also grown like a weed in their size and scope. Plenty is done in the name of the people, but precious little is favored by the majority of the people. Instead, public policy debates are about breaking down majority opposition in service to minority interests.
In theory, democracies should operate on the principle of majority rule. Fifty percent plus one carries the day on every issue. This is certainly true in the small scale, where a simple show of hands is enough to decide an issue. That does not scale up very well, so countries have representative bodies like parliaments and legislatures. Still, in a representative democracy, with some exceptions, the majority will should be reflected in public policy debates in the parliament or legislature.
Posted in Think about it. | 2 Comments »
21st September 2020
Read it.
The COVID recession has caused tax revenues to plummet, forcing cities and states to make painful budget cuts. But as they struggle to fund schools, parks, public safety, and other essential services, there’s one simple and painless way for governments to save money: Rethink recycling. The goal should be to transform the practice from a virtuous-seeming exercise that drains funds from core public services, to one by which price signals assure taxpayers that diverted materials are actually recycled.
When recycling programs became common three decades ago, they were sold to taxpayers as a win-win, financially and environmentally: Cities expected to reap budget savings through the sale of recyclable materials, and conscientious taxpayers expected to reduce ecological destruction. Instead, the painful reality for enthusiastic, dutiful recyclers is that most recycling programs don’t make much environmental sense. Often, they don’t make economic sense, either.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
21st September 2020
Read it.
Barrett has some experience of the storm. She was on Trump’s list of possible nominees in 2018, when he was considering who would replace Anthony Kennedy, a justice who retired. But the president had other plans for Barrett.
“I’m saving her for Ginsburg,” Trump said, according to an Axios report last year.
He could do a lot worse.
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
20th September 2020
Joel Kotkin.
The long-rising blue tide that has colored American politics and values may have crested, but it could still have enough momentum to make it through the election year. Even if Trump is somehow reelected, the wielders of power and influence — academia, media, Wall Street, Hollywood, the big-tech oligarchs, the dominant nonprofits, and the governmental apparat — will remain deep blue for the foreseeable future.
The prospect of untrammeled progressive power, particularly with a malleable Joe Biden in the White House, may seem depressing for conservatives or even old-style liberals, who are concerned by the Left’s increasingly censorious and authoritarian bent. But there is also a silver lining of sorts. Everywhere blue policies — generally now referred to as “progressive” — have prevailed, they have failed miserably, particularly for those parts of the population, such as the working class and minorities, that they purport to serve.
Over time, these failures will open up an opportunity perhaps not for a resurgence of traditional conservatism but for a reshuffling of political loyalties away from those whose policies don’t work. Many core constituencies associated with blue politics may become aware that their interests, prominent on the progressive menu, will never in reality be served. Ultimately, results, not memes, matter most. Progressives have demonstrated monumental incompetence in addressing everything from social equity to education, culture, and energy policy. Even in postmodern America, failure cannot forever be sold as success.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Blue Today, Bluer Tomorrow
20th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
20th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
20th September 2020
Read it.
One can almost understand the “we’re all gonna die’ reaction in the Spring of this year as it became apparent that this new virus was a killer. However, as more information became available, it also became apparent that the public reaction and hysteria were misplaced, and that whilst certain groups were vulnerable, healthy people under 60 had little to fear.
Then came the vested interests.
The MSM fanned the flames, and the COVID bubble got bigger and bigger as the whole thing got more and more political rather than medical, and rational science had left the building.
The medical profession, backed by big pharma, have virtually created the religion of ‘Science’ where the ‘deniers’ are deemed delusional idiots who need to be shut out and deplatformed, and where free speech should only be allowed to supporters and co-religionists. Criticism is banned and books should be burned. Sieg Heil!
The new social crime of Scientific sedition has now been created.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Karen’s Lives Matter
19th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
19th September 2020
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Do the Media WANT Post-Election Chaos and Lawlessness?
19th September 2020
Steve gives us an update.
First, I made biscuits with White Lily flour, and they were no good. Second, Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, taking us one step closer to civil war.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Justice Delayed? Doubtful.