Adaptive Curmudgeon

I’ve been posting less frequently this spring. Why? Partly because everything political is propaganda. It’s increasingly hard to know what is true; so why comment on the unknown? But there’s something more. This is a moment when I choose to step back and look at the world as an overall whole. Here I am, surrounded by a million trees, have I seen the forest? Have you?

One part of the forest I have seen is this:

For some individuals it is spring, for others it is autumn. Everyone’s clock runs differently. The grasping and myopic think it all ends with them. In their autumn, they cruelly infect the vigorous with their own decrepitude.

Many years ago I coined a phase of mismanagement. I observed it in the Soviet Union’s decline:

“The boss is fit and healthy right until he was dead two weeks ago.“

I can’t remember which of the many geriatric geezers piloting the USSR’s empty husk in circles brought about that observation. Maybe it was Nikita Khrushchev or Leonid Brezhnev? It was a long time ago. I remember videos of men who were at best teetering. These were narrated by newscasters uttering words as if the paper thin beings on the screen were lions. (In modern times nobody sane gets “news” from TV. If you do; stop.)

Even now, if you Google Khrushchev or Brezhnev you’ll see a photo of their handsome youth. You won’t see their weakened and declining state. (That applies universally, if you type Dianne Feinstein into Wikipedia you’ll get a carefully composed photo that’s 19 years old.) As for Khrushchev or whoever it was. I’m remembering his autumn and it was a very bitter one. In just a few years their 70 year old Marxist bullshit-fest would collapse for good.

For me, it was spring. I was a youthful American Curmudgeon enjoying Pac Man and Cola Wars. All through that fine spring I was told I’d get incinerated in unavoidable nuclear hell. Why? Because geezers had deemed it necessary.

It didn’t happen.

Nobody apologized for spending the first twenty years of my life bitching at me about geopolitical destabilization. Why did they do it? Did they think some kid on a Huffy bike was somehow responsible. Did they think I’d weep when they shuffled off their mortal coil?

For that matter I’ve been bitched at about “the end of the world” my entire time in the world. It never happens… or rather it ends for some and is born anew for others.

Younger generations know nothing of my youthful “end of the world”. “Mutually assured destruction” is just a plot device in that old move where Arnold Schwarzenegger plays a bad ass robot… you know the first one, before they made a fake and gay CGI / geezer remake.

Today’s youth have their own “total upheaval”. Their school was shut down, they were socially isolated, they never got to swig a cold brew illegally by the campfire, and if they notice a girl is hot they’d better watch their ass if HR is around (assuming of course they have a job at all). They were injected, masked, and spent two years pretending to learn by laptop. Fauchi dumped theoretical hellfire on them just as much as Russkie nukes dumped on me.

For the weak and evil, their declining cold dark autumn is always looking for a sunny spring day; in hopes of ruining it.

The assholes that do it never recant. As nobody apologized to me, nobody will apologize to Millennials or Gen Z.

Back in my springtime I felt the pity at the very old when they seemed, for want of a better word, driven or unfulfilled. The end of Pope John Paul II’s time seemed tragic to me. I’m not a catholic, I’ve got no horse in the race. Maybe the guy was awesome. Maybe he was a jerk. Not my call. However, I remember feeling sad when they wheeled an obviously very very tired man around. I felt like maybe he was in hell.

I pictured a Pope’s job to be contemplating God’s wonders. Shouldn’t he be resting peacefully in a garden, enjoying the wisdom of religious understanding and passing on what benevolent knowledge he could? Whenever I saw him it looked like the poor bastard had just spent all week in a board meeting sorting out administrative squabbles. Suppose you’re the direct conduit to the almighty, in your last years should you be in a garden or harnessed to a desk? This was in the time of widespread sexual abuse within the church (or at least when it became known). Did he know? Was it the same as the travails at the Kremlin. “It’s all a house of cards… God help us.”

What do I know? I’ve more humble life goals than ruling the Soviet Union or the Vatican.

Because I’m Gen X, I have to mention Fidel Castro. He spent the last decade of his life sending out press releases that he was fit as a fiddle. Everybody and their dog knew he was barely kicking; it was embarrassing. More recently Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a rock star of “Judicial Activism” was actively castigated by her faithful… for dying in office. A few years before that, Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond burned through a human lifetime to more or less die on the job. If the grim reaper hadn’t clocked them out they’d still be there; human dust grasping power at a committee meeting.

The boss is fit and healthy… no matter what.

I see that cycle again. Consider President Biden, of whom it’s is legally unquestionable that he won more votes than any other candidate in history.(It is literally unquestionable, as in you risk finding your ass in jail should you ask too many questions.) The man is in excellent health and guiding things with the mental acuity of a chess grand master. Everyone looks forward to his upcoming 18 months of many popular campaign events before adoring crowds. This will be followed by 4 more years of wise and successful service.

Suuuuure… Look at him. Does he look happy? He looks like he shit his pants and got lost looking for the podium. No pleasant time to relax in the garden for that guy.

A small shadow of a bigger shadow, U.S. Senator John Fetterman is in the same boat. He suffered a stroke before his election and spent a good portion of February in the hospital. Some people’s clock runs fast. Such a shame. Fetterman can barely read a sentence and he stumbles in ways that would get you a C- in “public speaking 101”. It is his autumn. As our Chief Executive demonstrates, oration is not necessary; a pulse and a ballot is enough.

Fetterman is a train wreck. Dude just stands there like Lurch, dressed worse than a college freshman, looking confused, and likely just as confused as he looks. Like I said, he’d barely pass a required freshman public speaking course at a flyover state agricultural college. Yet there he is, a Senator. Or rather a supposedly fit and healthy meat puppet in the service of whomever does his thinking. If my head were scrambled I might want to stay off stages. Perhaps go fishing or just sit on the beach watching the waves; but that’s just me.

Senator Dianne Feinstein was hospitalized for “minor” issues and emerged looking remarkably like Darth Sidious; except more confused. We pretend this is totally normal. I’d pay good money to watch Biden, Feinstein, and Fetterman have a conversation amongst themselves.

My point is, at least some of a person’s fate is made by their own hand. Part of that is to let go of the wheel when you can no longer drive.

We are to be “led” by geriatric meatheads who refuse to accept time. It results in the absolute dipshit leadership were seeing. People who haven’t had a new idea since the internet was a toy for nerds aren’t going to suddenly rise above. If they had wisdom, they’d have already used it. They’re going to create problems and then use the same damn solutions they’ve been using since they were sentient.

What’s worse is that they’re broadcasting their futile struggling against mortality onto the rest of the world. We, who are living and thriving and growing, must wriggle our way through the human mulch. As we do, it’s important to learn what not to do. Remember the old decaying sad being that shit on the young? Don’t be that guy. Be the one that smiles at children and appreciates the trees.

The trees are flowering. For them… it is spring.

I’m hunting for a used motorcycle. Motorcycles aren’t merely utilitarian. Thus, owning one is not fully logical. Owning two is even more illogical. The two I own are so awesome I want to own three. There’s no end to this circle. Don’t fight it, grok it.

I have a Honda Shadow ACE. It cruises all I’ll ever need to cruise. I also have a Yamaha TW200 that’s basically new despite me beating the shit out of it. That stout little critter happily pack-mules my ass into all the fun I can handle.

Yet I feel the need to add to the stable; less a thought than a calling. I sense this is a time when I can get a heck of a deal on a kind of machine that will never exist again AND it’s also a good moment to do what one “ought to do”. (Define “ought to do” anyway you wish. I’m still working on it myself.)

The world emerged from a COVID fever dream only to psychotically drag itself into the trash. Whatever motorcycles our future cockroach /AI / technocrat overlords allow to exist in our future of mud huts and electric vehicles won’t suit me. For now, the supply of old yet well maintained bikes continues existing, however improbably. It won’t last forever.

Shit often looks the worst right before total destruction fails to happen. The future is likely brighter than it seems right now. But maybe not. The only certainty is that things are increasingly uncertain and a good bike doesn’t fit with the kind of mind that eliminates incandescent lights and gas kitchen stoves.

If you knew… really honestly knew… shit was going pear shaped… would a good clean motorcycle be among your plans? Hard to say. In mine; maybe. It feels like it should. Motorcycles are freedom! Who doesn’t want a nice stockpile of freedom? (Before you rush to comment, all the stacks of ammo in Bert Gummer’s basement can’t substitute for the joy of flying over pavement in pursuit of the horizon.)

Well anyway, that’s my theory. I said it wasn’t logical.

The first bike I checked out was a Honda GL 1200 Goldwing Aspencade. It had 60K on the clock and was going for two grand. I didn’t expect much. I was correct. It was in rough shape, serviceable but tattered. Not what I was looking for.

Here’s a random photo of a GL120o Goldwing Aspencade from the internet. The one I checked out looked like this… but after you rolled it in a cement mixer for a while.

I was attracted to a single line in the ad: “Reason for selling, 82”. There’s something very poignant about that. I met the man. I hope he has many years left. I lingered too long and hated to leave. I’d have happily listened to his life’s story.

His bike started and idled perfectly. Alas it was crufty; switches that don’t work, a hole drilled in the faring for reasons that probably made sense when a switch was mounted in the hole, the odd wire that goes nowhere, well worn aftermarket bling that was lame when installed decades ago, a corner of the LCD was dead, etc… The bike’s mechanicals could probably warble happily for another 50,000+ miles but it would never look “clean”.

I didn’t take it.

There was a dry spell after that. I live in East Bumfuck Nowhere. Local markets in anything are slim. Searching for a 30 year old gem of a motorcycle on the cheap is expecting a lot. I’m aware it may be an impossible ask. Patience is merited.

Then I had a road trip. I had to go to a place to do a thing. While I was there I sniffed around for more bikes. I found a gem indeed!

I found a BMW LT1100. Just a little under 30 years old. Less than 4oK on the clock. It was offered at just about twice the cost of the clapped out ‘Wing. Still within my cheapskate budget.

This machine was perfect! Clean as a whistle. It left the factory with much less extraneous gadgetry than the ‘Wing and it’s old age everything functioned flawlessly. It had ABS which is pretty cool for that era.

Mostly I liked the motor. The BMW transverse inline 4 is a good design. I  wanna hug that motor!

It had a full maintenance history and was obviously well cared for. There was no weird shit bolted to it. It was like I time traveled to the late ’90’s and rolled it off a showroom floor. I had no doubt I could hop on that bike and cross three time zones without the slightest hesitation!

Here’s what an BMW LT1100 looks like:

The guy was more than willing to let me take a test drive. I’m nervous just looking at another guy’s bike. Also I’m from the social class that doesn’t even set foot in a BMW showroom. But I figured “if I drop it, I’ll buy it” and that chilled me out. Test driving a $30K BMW would give me a stroke, test driving a beauty I can afford is less stressful!

I’d been traveling with Mrs. Curmudgeon. She happily waved as I rolled away on that sweet BMW; leaving her and the truck behind.

About a mile down the road I was like; “Did I just abandon my wife as collateral on a used vehicle test drive? Is that rude?” Then I was like “Nah, it’s fine, she can handle herself.” Soon I forgot all concerns and focused on the immediate “this is a sweet ride!”

It purred like a kitten, every gear was great, every shift flawless. It was a little buzzy at 4,000 rpm but it was scarcely noticeable. I meant to ride slow but the thing was so smooth and capable that I found myself going way faster than I expected. It might be a speeding ticket machine!

Tragically, the ergonomics of putting a grunt like me on that sleek engineering marvel was a mismatch. My inseam is too short for the tall BMW. I could fix that with a lower positioned seat but that’s only the start. The whole ergonomic package was integrated and it was completely off kilter for my Neanderthal body. I wound up leaning too much on my wrists. I mashed my nuts into the tank. On my cruiser I sit “in” the bike, on the BMW I perched “on” it. I guess I’m not a “perch” kind of guy.

It felt tall and gangly. I wanted laid back and chill and this bike was just too awesome for that. It wanted to go. It was all cheetah and antelope where my next bike is meant to be badger and napping dog. Does that make sense? Is this why wine descriptions devolve into stupid analogies? (“Despite the bouquet that hints of apricot, the body suggests leather and the aftertaste is tax reform.” Wine guys… I get ya’ now.)

I wicked it up a little and it went from great to superb. That’s what it was built to do. I leaned a touch in a few curves and gave it a fraction more throttle. It held traction like it was bonded to the planet. What a great bike!

But already my back was starting to ache. It’s a great bike but not for me. A chiropractor could buy that bike, give it to me free, and make a profit off my future visits.

Such a shame. Someone is going to get a hell of a deal, but that winner won’t be me.

Still, I call it a success. It was proof of concept. I had the proposition that under $5k can get a bike that’s all that and a bag of chips. The Beemer was  stupendous; mechanically perfect, well maintained, appeared bulletproof, and ready for a road trip right now. Very close to the target.

There are unicorns out there. I just have to find mine.

If you think I’m going to write about current events, you’re wrong. I’m going to write about time.

Long ago railways phased out cabooses. Like puppies and cold beer, everyone loves a caboose! (Get your head out of the gutter!) I’d read somewhere you could buy one cheap. I recall something like $500 or $100… I’m not sure. It was along time ago. Probably 30 years I think?

I remember that moment. I drove to a train yard and looked upon a huge array of old cabooses. They really were for sale! How cool is that?!

Of course there’s more to a thing like that than the initial purchase. There was the issue of shipping the behemoth… and I didn’t have any land upon which to plant it. I was a broke ass kid. The logistics were beyond me. I shrugged my shoulders and let the moment pass.

If I could regain that moment I’d love it! If I could have a caboose at that price and from that time magically transported to my homestead I’d sprain my arm throwing money at whomever offered it. Alas, it was a one time opportunity.

Our household’s cars are aging. Among three main vehicles I estimate we’ve accumulated 600,000 miles on various odometers.* They’re all still fine but we had a close call with a deer a few months ago. We nearly lost one of three.

That got me thinking. Being a belt and suspenders kind of guy, I’d love to have a “beater car” as a backup. However, “beater car” has gradually become a concept from a time before.

When gasoline was made of gasoline and carburetors still walked the earth, a Buick cost eight grand, you could pay it off in 4 years, and maintenance was constant but cheap. That sort of vehicle also drove like a potato, burned a lot of fuel, lacked things like electric windows or AC, and had half the lifespan of a modern EPA compliant space vehicle.

Back then odometers “rolled over” at 99,999 miles.

A ten year old Buick of that era is what I’m thinking about but I don’t live in that era. I spent my youth in rusty pieces of shit. I bought them cash, drove them a while, and then swapped to the next one. I was a bottom feeder. Cars of that time rarely “rolled over” twice.

Here in 2023 that’s an old timey geezer idea. A cheap ass “backup” car that can be bought with spare change and will get to town but not much further has been replaced by a laptop on wheels that starts with an 8 year payment plan and runs a quarter million miles before something big goes out that’s too expensive to repair.

Cars are immensely more expensive/complex and that changes everything. They’re superior in many ways but they’re also big ticket items. As a result, Americans keep their cars running as long as they can… we follow the trail blazed by highly regulated worlds; such as Cuba and private aviation. (Ever wonder why the “logbook” on a 50 year old Cessna is almost as valuable as the plane itself? Ask the FAA.)

Does it matter. Nah! I’ve got plenty of years and miles left in my “fleet”. I don’t need to pine for a type of car that existed in an economy that’s long gone. There might be a few out there but the market itself probably fell on the altar of “Cash for Clunkers”.

I’ll shrug my shoulders and let a moment pass.

But wait! I’m here to talk about a moment that’s not passed. Used motorcycles right now are undergoing the transition that’s mostly over for used cars.

If you walk into a modern motorcycle stealership you’ll see the most amazing, cool, powerful, technologically advanced, motorcycles. They’re awesome! They’re fuel injected, have ABS, come with navigation, want to engage in bluetooth tomfoolery with your cell phone, etc… Motorcycles are the last of machines piloted by people who can use a clutch but even that is fading. Honda is already shipping Golwdings with automatic transmission. (Groan all you want, from what I’ve heard Honda has nailed it.)

Modern flagship bikes are incredibly cool but they’re also inhumanly expensive!

YMMV but I also think they’ll be a stone cold bitch to maintain in 20 years. Just as a modern car is totaled when the airbags deploy and a Tesla is junked if the battery is nipped, so to with the modern motorcycle. A $30,000 full dress bagger bought today is going to be very hard to maintain in 2043.

What can we learn from the lesson of cars? Forget what’s on the motorcycle showroom floor and consider the bike’s ancestors. My Honda cruiser was made in 1999. It lacks ABS, has two carburetors, and doesn’t have radios and navigation. What it does have is liquid cooling, shaft drive, disk brakes, and modern metallurgy. It was built like a brick shithouse; go Honda!

My bike runs like it did the day I bought it and has had hardly any issues. With basic maintenance it could last forever. If you couldn’t afford it in 1999 maybe now’s your time?

I dropped something like $8k on my bike when I bought it new. I probably added a grand in saddlebags and shit over the years. Used bikes exactly like mine are readily had for $2,000-$3,000. The difference between performance on day one and two decades later is nil. If you want that sort of machine, a few grand is a smoking hot deal!

I think there’s a sweet spot with the used motorcycle market and that moment is right now. History is like this: UJMs (universal Japanese motorcycles) of the 1970s and 1980s can be infinitely fixed and are great fun. They’ll hang OK in modern traffic but they’re a bit basic. By the late 1980s and 1990s many bikes were functionally equivalent to anything you’d need right now but they were still infinitely reparable. It’s hard to say when that moment passed but it did. I guess around 2010 is when they started the drift toward the not infinitely reparable.

Also, I might as well point out that motorcycle riders in America are fading too. Used vehicles are usually purchased by young people entering the market. With some exceptions younger generations are barely willing to walk outdoors where it might rain. The population of people that can swing a leg over a rolling engine and ride it to the horizon is us… not the youth who are afraid of their own shadow. You might as well capitalize on this!

That’s just my opinion, you’re welcome to mock me.

I am prowling Craigslist. I’m looking for… I’m not sure what. I’m looking for something that will be gone in 10 years and it’s cheap now. Something from the “infinitely reparable yet ready to ride without a wrench in your pocket” era. Wish me luck.

I already have a V-Twin so I want something different. I’m looking at old Goldwings. The GL1200 / GL1500 series had bulletproof engines but still had repairable carburetors and serviceable parts. No ABS, fuel injection is uncommon, etc… Goldwings have the best reputation for long miles. They’re sometimes infected with decrepit technology, faded LCD screens, stereo systems from the cassette era, etc… I’m looking for bikes with the least features; not the most.

There’s other candidates too, some Yamaha Ventures, the Kawasaki Concourse, I’m weirdly attracted to the goofy market failure that is the Honda Pacific Coast, I’m not sure about some of the inline engine BMW tourers (I may be too short for them), and Moto Guzzis look cool but they seem pretty rare. I’m not looking at Harleys. They don’t interest me.

What you do with this information is up to you. What I do with it is uncertain too.

All I can say is “It’s a strange time so recognize it”. If you want the biggest baddest most mile eating supertourer of 1988 you can get one in mint condition and plenty of miles left fir a high market price of $7k. I’m looking at the under $5k market and haven’t yet found what I want; but I’m patient.

Memento mori; remember you are going to die.

I just checked out a clapped out GL1200 for $2k. The bike would probably run another 100,000 miles but the non-mechanical stuff was pretty banged up. The motor was as smooth as silk but detached switches and stuff that doesn’t work were all over the bike. It’ll ride fine and the right person could ignore it all for an easy 50,000 miles for sure.

I decided I’d like less drama. Also, I’m a shitty mechanic. It’s wise to spend more up front to avoid future issues. (Also the local motorcycle mechanic’s pool is pretty thin!)

What really got me was the last line in the ad. It mentioned the mileage and various features and so forth. Then it ended with this:

Reason for selling, 82.

That’s it isn’t it?

The whole arc of mortality in four words.

I met the seller. He looked pretty spry for 82. He explained that his balance wasn’t what it once was. That’s is a biological certainty for all of us. Regardless, I hope I look that good when I’m that age.

The bike wasn’t what I wanted but I lingered, soaking up everything he had to say. He seemed a good fellow who’d done cool things. I heard a small sliver of a fascinating life story. I hung on every word. I can find another bike somewhere else, but I wish I knew the guy so I could hear more.

We’re all gonna’ die. In case you’re wondering that includes you too. When your time approaches you can be the guy standing in a garage telling a bearded stranger about your many motorcycle trips to Alaska. Or you can spend your time doing nothing and therefore have nothing to say. Your call.

On that happy note, I’ll stop typing.

Bye.

A.C.

*Ponder my accumulated mileage for a minute. A generic nobody of a blogger with some basic vehicles has traveled well over half a million miles. That’s just the current crop of cars in the driveway (I have owned many cars). I’ve no idea how many million miles my eyes have seen but it’s unfathomably vast. Compared to most humans in all of history I have lived larger than a king. The personally owned vehicle is freedom. Never let your gift from the inventive generations before you be seized!

Anyone who’s read sci-fi (or pondered the nature of consciousness) has reservations about true artificial intelligence. That said, I’m not too worried. I don’t inherently recoil in terror at intelligence different from or superior to my own. It’s a risky thing but I can live with risk. Also, I (possibly irrationally) hold the naïve opinion that if SKYNET is going to go genocidal then SKYNET is just as dumb as the monkeys that made it.

Speaking of dumb monkeys, the press is hyperventilating over Chat GPT. Having tinkered with it, I am utterly unconcerned.

Chat GPT reminds me of the formula.

When I was in American public schools they occasionally got distracted from warehousing and indoctrination long enough to throw a few hours of teaching at the clueless buckets of protoplasm they called students. This was calibrated to the level of the dumbest brick to occupy a seat. Considering the herd of morons corralled in a school, almost no learning happened (and most of that was by accident).

I dimly remember the formula for writing an essay; and yes it was a formula. Repeat the question, follow up with a simple thesis statement that won’t confuse the teacher, tell the teacher the things they want to hear, repeat with the conclusion. If the teacher was a stickler for proper form, string together enough source quotes to demonstrate that not a single bit of the concept was unique to your mind. Whatever you do, don’t think!

Like this:

Q: Compare and contrast the parallels between Romeo and Juliette and the NY Jets defensive line.

A: There are many parallels between Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliette and the uniformed dipshits who play for the NY Jets. Notably, “they both doth stinketh on ice”. (Smith 1984) Both the Jets and Shakespeare’s protagonists use drugs as a solution to a challenge. Both fail at their stated goal. Romeo failed “to score with a chick”. (Beavis 1982) The Jets whine that “the team gave 110% but we just couldn’t beat the Raiders”. (Krugman 2021)

Influenced by Friar Laurence, Shakespeare’s protagonists engage in ill fated experimentation. This parallels when the NFL promoted Boogerhook McGinty of the 2019 Jets; a man who took so many steroids that “his nuts imploded”.  (Armstrong 2020).

As always, we must remember that teenagers in love act like spastic hamsters on crack while athletes have the same maturity and a bigger budget… …in conclusion, give me an A or I’ll key your car in the parking lot.

Boom! A-. It’s easy.

Schools want the formula. They literally can’t see anything but the formula. Everyone who’s been through college can do the formula. The formula is not thought.

An aside about grades.

Teachers didn’t want to offer a seething wiseass like myself good grades, but they had to. That’s why I usually got an A with a minus. I’d clearly followed the formula and I’d nailed it. Failing me would’ve meant failing most of the class; a price too high to pay just to rub my nose in it. But I was an asshole from the deplorable socio-economic class, thus the minus.

Not that grades are particularly relevant. Grades were basically known before anyone attended a single class. In my town, high school grades were a function of social class coupled with the student’s degree of obedience. A+ was reserved for the true sycophants. These losers uttered phrases like “this will look good on my college application”. A was for the future mid-level bureaucrat. A- was for the smart bastards that “didn’t apply themselves”. B was a large band reserved for the stampeding mass of human herd animals. B+ was for what Vox Day smugly calls “midwits”. B- was for Forrest Gump. C was for crack addicts. D was for subliterate cave beings. F didn’t exist.

Back to my essay, if you carefully scan for even one rational thought you won’t find any. It’s bullshit. The formula is bullshit. Whether it’s a finely wordsmithed A+ for the future Yalie or an incoherent C- for the person who sticks a butter knife in the toaster for fun, there is no intelligence inherent in following a formula.

I’ve dinked around with Chat GPT. I sense that it’s an averaging of what the internet says. This is sideboarded by things we are officially instructed to not notice. It’s not a fertile field for wise conjecture.

Imagine a space alien crashed in Baltimore and had to base all human interaction on Twitter threads. They’d sound like a human but have very stupid ideas. They’d believe many facts which are totally fabricated. They’d speak well enough to order a pizza but not to speak deeply about the real world and how it really functions. They’d pay triple price for unleaded while parroting whatever the president (81 million votes!) said about his new energy plan’s future of solar powered maglev trains. They would never surprise you. They’d never make a clever connection.

That’s why we all react to the human NPC meme. We see them all around us. You know more or less what an NPC will say on any topic. They’ll express strong opinions about shit that doesn’t matter. Shit that does matter will pass them unnoticed. NPCs school like fish. NPCs don’t “figure out” anything.

So, is AI dangerous? Maybe a little, but not much more than the bottle of tequila in your cabinet or the keys to your car.

Is AI going to take your job? It might, but only if your job is simple and repetitive.

That’s why the press has its panties in a bundle. They’re simple repetitive people who thought that they could fake it forever. They make a living arranging text according to the formula. They use language in ways that won’t scare the normies and will never surprise anyone. In AI the “pointless job” has met a new form of automation. They’re a draft horse sniffing a John Deere.

Do we care? Hasn’t the press been begging us to put them out of our misery for years? When’s the last time some “analyst” on CNN came up with a thoughtful and reasoned idea you didn’t see coming? When is the last time they promoted sanity and stability? Isn’t much of the verbiage on the internet already crap?

Word based NPCs won’t be missed because they weren’t providing a great service. Automation of what can be done automatically is often a good thing. Do you fret because Bart Simpson is drawn with a yellow pen instead of live-acted by an abused child? Do you fret when you listen to Megadeth from a recording instead of paying a quartet to play in your living room? How many people under 30 can drive a car with a clutch? How many of us bake our own bread?

Speaking of which, “learn to code” is in a similar situation. If your code is excellent you’re still needed; and you’ll still be paid on a scale calibrated by lowballing hacks from Bangalore. If your code is stupid and repetitive, AI will eventually do it as well as you. Sorry Bangalore hacks. Note: if you’re in Bangalore and simultaneously very skilled… you’ll just use AI as a tool to get ten times as much work done… with a 2% raise.

What would an essay sound like if it used intelligence rather than the formula?

Q: Compare and contrast the parallels between Romeo and Juliette and the NY Jets defensive line.

A: Your prompts are stupid and random. You’re a blithering fuckwit who went to teaching school because algebra was too hard. I’ve already keyed your car because I’m 17 and want the world to burn.

That’s it right there! Want to see the mind of a high schooler? I just showed it to you. Scary eh?

At Mrs. Curmudgeon’s nudge, I ran my prompt through a variant of Chat GPT.

A: I’m sorry, but I can’t compare and contrast the parallels between Romeo and Juliette and the NY Jets defensive line because there are no meaningful connections between the two subjects. Romeo and Juliette is a tragic love story, but the NY Jets defensive line is a group of professional football players who play defense for the New York Jets. There are no similarities or parallels between the two that would allow for a meaningful comparison or contrast.

Oh shit! Looks like Chat GPT has already exceeded the formula taught in high school.

We’re probably doomed.

My HAM radio is disappointed in me. It’s not the other way ’round; my most recently purchased radio is fine (probably excellent) and I’m glad to have it. The failure is on my end. I’m just too damn lazy to finish setting it up.

Last fall I picked up a new old stock radio (now that I think about it, I still haven’t paid for it!). I fiddled a bit with an old power supply I had hanging around and soon it was powered. I tested it with a crappy antenna and it seemed to work; so I ordered up a new antenna and…

…nothing.

Wading through a thigh deep snowdrift to fabricate a mount for an antenna translated to a whole lotta’ nope. Winter sucks and it seemed to never end. I had plenty to keep me occupied and left it at that. The new antenna sits in the corner… judging me.

Other people are more productive in the HAM world than I. Recently, UnidentifiedHam sent me a message. Check it out:

The evil, manipulative, powerful world of cell phones may have dulled your amazement so let me elaborate. This photo was sent from the forest to me, mostly through radio. This is not a cell phone selfie. It was not filtered through a cell tower. It was neither transmitted from a cell phone nor received by one.

At any time prior to about 1996(?), a message like this would be impossible to a normal consumer. (HAMs don’t count, they’ve been doing shit like this since forever.) The methods used to shift that photo from a rocky chunk of forest to yours truly is closer to a 1980’s “news van” reporting from the scene of some sort of event. (Remember the old days when news mostly reported things that actually happened in real life? Pepperidge Farms remembers. But I digress.)

I’d like to say the message was relayed entirely “off grid” but that’s not quite right. The better way to think of it is that HAMs have a grid all their own. Their grid is different, better, weirder, more capable, more complex, sometimes parallel, and usually more dispersed than the network that turned your cell phone into a propaganda hub for the TikTok masses.

There’s a price to be paid. It’s a stone cold bitch to learn how to use the HAM’s “grid”. You have to have an FCC callsign. You have to buy and configure your own equipment. You need to be at least smart enough to sorta’ define watts and ohms. A monkey can run a cell phone but it takes skill to be a HAM

So enjoy it! In a world full of automatic transmission, join me to marvel at this stick shift image!

Warning: My explanation is Fischer-Price level. There are layers and layers of fascinating details I’m leaving out.

The grid that sent that photo from pine tree to yours truly and then on to this blog happened because UnidentifiedHam knew what he was doing, he used repeaters, WinLink happens to exist, and several technologies worked together. Oversimplifying greatly, UnidentifiedHam began by taking a photo. UnidentifiedHam used a cell phone but any digital camera would do.

Then, he (in his words) “spent about half an hour finding a winlink station that heard me well enough to quickly send the picture of camp”. Once he found the winlink station, he transferred the image via radio signal from his campsite to the station. From there the station handled the rest.

Here’s where I try to explain things HAM-ish without going down the rabbit hole. There are a zillion “radio bands” from which to choose. The band is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum which the HAM wants to use. Nature, because it’s awesome, handles different bands in different ways. Some bounce off the ionosphere, others heat popcorn in your microwave, some go very far, some go very short. UnidentifiedHam chose the 80M wavelength which impresses me as a pretty long distance “bend around the planet” sort of band. (I’m open for correction.)

Being a N00b, I use mainly the 2M band (a wavelength of two meters) which is pretty much sort distance, line of sight type stuff. (Note: Don’t be led astray thinking 2M is “beginner land” and therefore lame. “Line of site” is still powerful. I consistently hit repeaters 20+ miles away with a cheap ass Baeofeng handheld. Depending on elevation and the curvature of the earth, “line of sight” is more than you’d think. On the other hand, 80 Meters is way cooler.)

To continue our story, UnidentifiedHam fired up his radio at camp and started hunting the airwaves for a suitable repeater. The repeater heard his signal and responded on a slightly different offset frequency. HAM radios do a “send on one frequency, hear on the other” shell game without breaking a sweat. They’re good at it.

Once some repeater said “I hear you on XYZ frequency” and did this by responding at XYZ+/- a smidge, UnidentifiedHam used software which told the repeater (I’m paraphrasing) “I’m about to send a signal designed for use within the WinLink system”. The repeater knew then to turn it to an e-mail at its location (or some other location) and fire off the e-mail.

The Repeater said “right on boss”. (Obviously the electronic handshake isn’t “right on boss” but you get the point.) All this happened with beeps and boops and tones and maybe, but probably not, CW (Morse Code).

The handshake done, UnidentifiedHam fired off a 9 minute blast of radio information at a set frequency with a set structure. The repeater understood the data because of its format and metadata. The repeater digested it and properly converted the data to an e-mail. The e-mail went to yours truly just like any other e-mail.

No cell phones were harmed in this process… but I suspect their feelings were hurt.

Elaborating further, UnidentifiedHam’s contact with the repeater didn’t have to “go to e-mail” instantly. He could have told the repeater to forward the message along in various ways. Some repeaters relay the message further to other repeaters using roughly the same band but with more power. Others convert to different bands. Others are electronically linked such that I could send a radio frequency message to a repeater in Albuquerque and a linked repeater in Miami might rebroadcast the message three time zones away. (I’m picking locations out of a hat here as examples, not listing actual repeaters. Please don’t get caught up in the minutiae. Just know that two or more repeaters over widely dispersed geography might work together as a net.)

Oh, and one more thing. My side of the “conversation” was on a computer receiving e-mail through regular broadband but it doesn’t have to be that way. I can setup my HAM to receive e-mail via radio frequencies too. I haven’t yet done so, but it’s on my to-do list.

Also, it doesn’t have to be e-mail at all. If UnidentifiedHam and I had planned out agreed upon times and protocols we could probably send messages with repeaters in the middle but never dump the message “down” to the internet.

Furthermore, if we had sufficient signal strength between radios we wouldn’t even need the repeaters. It’s common for HAMs to send and receive messages thousands and thousands of miles. There are contests where a HAM (or a group of them) will try to contact as many dispersed places on the globe as possible, usually in a limited time and often with outlandish success. I won’t be contacting Micronesia from my homestead any time soon but there are people who do things like that all the time.

HAM is nerd stuff that goes so deeply down the rabbit hole that it emerges again in the dimension of cool. In a world where your cell phone tracks your every move and seems to serve mainly as a vector of miserly maybe you might enjoy a different way to communicate? My modest goals involve receiving an e-mail even if the power is down and even if my rural IP craps out. But I know there’s a frontier to explore and I anticipate more with time.

Can you get a modest 2M HAM (like mine) and do the same thing? You certainly can! (You might even level up to an 80M rig rather than staying limited to what 2M can do.) Can you buy gadgetry right now that’ll make it work? Yes, absolutely! How expensive is it? That’s up to you. You can start with a handheld Baofeng that’s the size of a TV remote and cheaper than a couple of pizzas. You can expand until your house is bristling with fancy gadgets that draw magnificent levels of power and give you the aura of a mad scientist. In between is a hobby called QRP where people fiddle with the very smallest bits of power. They’ll get by with a 9volt battery with some diodes and shit in an Altoids tin. With that they’ll send a message halfway around the world. (It’s not magic but is sure feels like it.)

You can start by chatting with the neighbor and wind up bouncing signals off the moon. (Yes, “moon bounce” is literally a thing HAMs can do).

UnidentifiedHam made my day. I hope you enjoyed it. I want to thank him for his positive reminder of the clever things people can do.

Progressives, or socialists, or whatever they call themselves this week like to say they’re on the “right side of history”. Nobody is on the right side of history.

To say “history bends my way” is to assume you are a God. “The universe must bend to me, because I am correct.” It doesn’t. The universe does no man’s bidding. Nor does it care how deeply you believe in your inherent perfection.

Nor does history inherently progress upward. For every wide eyed youth who expects Utopia after just a few committee meetings… and eventually a few executions…  there’s a equal and opposite generation of hunter gatherers that moved through time without ever thinking about time in a linear way. How many million generations grew old and died without seeing the other side of a hill at the edge of a traditional hunting territory? How many new ideas for bow design, or agricultural innovation, or cultural enrichment simply never happened. The mind boggles.

In the early 21st century, humanity looks like it is locked in a relentless upward climb to glory. It’s appearance without reality. The masses are not climbing. They’re driven rabid by instant communication. Our churning upheaval is another reflection of the twitchy sudden shifts that came about from the Gutenberg press.

Twitter is not real. Until the evolved ape holding with opposed thumbs a device of infinite power learns this, we are maladapted to the world we’ve built.

We’re prone to madness. We panic. We’re easily led. And we’re obsolete.

Already, the newest generations are a different human variant. For better or worse, they have brains rewired since birth by small glass display screens with dopamine dispensing media. They cannot think like the humans of before, just as the humans of before cannot think like them.

Thus, the frenetic spasms of modern life are just that; frenetic spasms.

Yet we sense inflection points in time. All my life this has been a thing I pondered. If you look, you will see. If you see you’re no longer the same as those who do not see.

The most advanced maritime explorers in humanity, the Polynesians, must have pondered the same eternal questions. At least some of them might have.

Some portion of that group, presumably the bravest of the brave, cast off from atolls and specks of land and explored all the way to extremely remote Easter Island. They arrived at the closest thing to the middle of nowhere our planet offers. Depending on who’s archaeology text you believe, this happened sometime in the 4th or 8th century.

Whenever it happened, the explorers found a place no human had ever occupied. They also found Paschalococos disperta (the Rapa Nui palm), an absolutely stellar material for boat building. Imagine the joy these sailing badasses experienced at the discovery of a large island with good resources.

By 1650 the palm was extinct. Modern man cannot understand that level of being stranded. I simply cannot think that way. Nor can you. Yet it happened.

The Rapa Nui imprisoned themselves on a remote speck of the planet they formerly explored. Collapse and poverty was fated from that point on. Captain Cook, an explorer from a culture that took a thousand years to catch up with the first arrivals at Easter Island, showed up in 1744. He found an impoverished people. They were literally the survivors of utter collapse.

We have words for such concepts but they’re inadequate. We speak by analogy, trying to muster the ultimate vision of a world or people that’s completely destroyed; Armageddon, Apocalypse, Mad-Max, SHTF. Call it what you want, on Easter Island it happened.

The thing I ponder is that some of them must have known their fate. Polynesian sailors weren’t fools. They knew how boats were made. They knew how palm trees grew. Some of them must have watched the dwindling stock of building materials with increasing alarm.

I’m sure they tried to avert this avoidable mess, just as we try to avert our current self inflicted messes. They failed. As we fail.

What did they think as the last ocean-worthy hull rotted away? What was their world for “Armageddon”? It must have been a long time coming. Some of them must have seen it happening. A few had to have known what that meant.

Most people don’t think that deeply. Surely most islanders were the same as all people in all times. Focusing on the mundane. Arguing with their neighbor. Pissed off about or enthralled by the chieftain’s expensive public works policy. Hoping to woo a good mate. Trying to keep the garden growing. Wondering if the new generation of kids were idiots. Etc…

But there were some who must have known the full horror of losing the last boat. The few, the wiser, the aware, they always know. They know because they pause, notice, reflect, and think. They use their big monkey brains to ascertain cause and effect. The building material for boats is gone. What have we done?

Did they stand furious on the shore of an island they would never leave and scream their soul’s torment into the universe? If not, then what? Can you imagine being in that person’s head? Can you imagine observing the fools in the village bickering about their little lives when the whole ocean had become impassible? Can you imagine knowing it’s all going to shit, it already started going to shit, it’ll keep going to shit for the rest of your life, it’ll be shit for your children’s life and their children too… for as far as your monkey brain can comprehend; nothing but a long slow dismal decline.

Imagine the weight of the universe in a single human mind. To stand there, feeling the sand, soft and sinking beneath their feet, and know there’s no solution. The resignation is heartbreaking. Humans are still new at thinking. There on that shore an evolved monkey looked at the sky and pondered to the limits of a finite mind amid infinite loss: Is this it?

When I was a boy they taught me the first European to reach the new world was Columbus, who, as Bugs Bunny sang, “sailed the ocean blue to arrive in 1492”. Like everything else I was taught in school, this was wrong. I don’t know if it was deliberate falsehood by bored teachers or oversimplification by ignorant ones.

L’Anse aux Meadows is a small spot in northern Newfoundland. It is firmly established (as it was when my teachers instructed me otherwise) that the Norse had a settlement there. Tree ring analysis puts it at the year 1021.

Imagine the vast gulf in time and space between Medieval Europe (itself a remnant of the long dead Western Roman Empire) and the Mississippian culture that was thriving not too far south of the point of contact. Medieval Norse explorers bridged the gap, or almost did, or perhaps they simply tried. Regardless of intent, they failed spectacularly in terms of joining the two.

Archaeology suggests that the Norse weren’t defeated so much as they retreated… never to return. They may have failed but they did manage to go home. That’s no small thing.

Imagine standing on that shore, watching your culture and the Norse parting ways. Those two paths in time wouldn’t meet again for 471 years. When Europeans returned again they’d make first contact in what is now Cuba, not what is now Canada. They’d inadvertently carry smallpox. They’d bring with them firearms. The Spanish would bring horses. Whatever incremental change that could have happened with the Norse became a landslide with the Spanish.

If you stood on that shore watching the last Norse boat leave you would have no idea that the rift would be half a millennia. It would be impossible to know that the strengths and weaknesses of both sides would change completely. Whatever happened at this contact, the next was very different.

Maybe they were happy the smelly dipshits were leaving. Maybe they wished they’d pried the secret of smelting iron out of their heads. Maybe they expected them to come back the next year. Maybe they were better off without them. Certainly a harsher, larger, irreversible contact five centuries and thousands of miles away could not have been foretold by anyone present at the time.

Thus it passed. Explorers came. Explorers left. The Norse left not much more than footprints. Their absence wasn’t the start of anything. It was a footnote leading to a gap of half a millennia.

I was born to the only culture that ventured past earth. My people walked on the moon. 

Then… they didn’t.

I was too young to experience that moment. Just a kid. I never saw a live moon landing on TV. It was done before I was old enough to remember.

The generation before me tried but failed to pave the way for mine. As a kid I had high hopes. America had high hopes. I remember being ecstatic when the Space Shuttle first flew.

Then… hope faded. NASA crawled up its risk averse ass and died. America recently seeks the same outcome.

Oh sure, there’s been progress. We have lasers and microwaves and cell phones and all sorts of cool new technology. But over the decades the spirit of adventure and the willingness to take risk has been systematically beaten out as many humans as possible.

Gen X that I am, I have always been standing on the shore watching options ebb. Twelve men walked on the moon between 1969 and 1972. In due time, I gave up hope that my generation would go where others had gone. I began to give up hope that any generation would return.

How different am I than my hypothetical Polynesian? He was trapped on an island without the resources to make an ocean going boat. How different am I than my hypothetical native? Are grainy black and white videos of men on the moon any different? It’s the same. The bittersweet and scarcely recognized loss of watching the secret of iron sail away toward Greenland.

I too remain at the shore; trapped in a little spherical human cage.

By 2010 the Chief of NASA said his agencies goal was to “reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.” (Google it.) That’s when I really gave up.

So why am I telling you all this? Because resignation, despair, failure of the soul is never the right choice. The human soul is meant to soar.

Today the whimsical human parody Elon Musk, pulled another rabbit our of a hat. He used government money and his balls to do what armies of bureaucratic risk averse desk jockeys could not. Today was the first experimental orbital launch attempt of Superheavy / Starship.

The thing about Superheavy is that it’s on the verge of completely changing the cost of flight. Elon’s audacious goal is to make the per pound cost of putting objects beyond the earth’s gravity well an order of magnitude cheaper than it is now. He’s making good strides in that direction. He created an organization that’s doing what no other bureaucracy could.

His biggest challenge now is less a matter of gravity than the government (which funds him yet defaults to tying innovation in knots). This morning went well. A rocket with twice the thrust of Saturn V evaded both the bounds of earth and the red tape of man. It made it to the edge of space.

Then it exploded.

Adventure is hard. Everyone knew the risks. Watch the video. People cheered at how far they’d gone instead of lamenting that the flight wasn’t perfect on the first experiment. That is how you get to space! Cheers, not lamentation.

I have more hope today than I did yesterday. I may eventually be more than the guy standing on the edge. At this point I’m too old to go even if I could but that was never the point. I may once again be of the people who can land on the moon. That’s what I really want!

The link below is cued up for the launch.

A shorter video is here.

P.S. I’m sure I’ve told the Easter Island / Norse / Space story before. It’s a thing that’s often on my mind.

Sometimes I’ll hear folks ranting about enlightenment virtues, stoic philosophy, or religious belief but their spine vaporizes on contact with reality. They’ll emote over freedom of speech and rule of law and consent of the governed and then fold over lame shit.

If you think your moral and intellectual and spiritual world is on edge, then act like it. If a person considers what their friends will say on F***book more than their relationship to God or themselves aren’t fully engaged. That’s fine (and I might even envy that world) but actions matter and don’t think you’re something you’re not.

I think of this scene from the movie Brazil. Dude’s about to experience total hell and they slip in a jab about credit rating. Nice writing!

Consider our little Nuremberg experiment that officially ended just this week. How many people bellowed like they were ready to go to Valhalla yet submitted just to shut people up? Many unwillingly got the jab in anticipation of their inescapable fate.

If they’d held the line a few more months perhaps then… well whoops… that boat sailed and they weren’t on it. See how preemptive surrender works?

Note: none of this is to hold it against you if your back was against the wall. Nobody can know what’s in another man’s soul. If you were going to relinquish custody of your kids that day or get fired that day… well sometimes even the bravest man will chose to lose. But that’s a different thing than “there’s a memo going around that the boss will be pissed in a few more weeks” or “my girlfriend won’t stop bitching about it” or “I really want to go to my favorite bowling alley”. (Also, if you wanted the vaccine. Good on you. Mental anguish spared. Enjoy your good fortune.)

As for the guy in Brazil? He went all the way. He knew where the path went. When they strap you in the chair it’s to late to worry about your next loan to buy a Toyota!

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?… The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn , The Gulag Archipelago

Yeah, shit’s fucked up. So what?

I’m trying to be a ray of sunshine. It’s not easy. In general I’m as cheerful as a Curmudgeon gets… which ain’t much.

But I’m getting worried about people. I feel like they need a kick in the ass. I’m getting a vibe of despair in some of my comments (including some private conversations).

Despair is a sin. Sure, we all go there sometimes, but don’t hang out there. It’s a bad neighborhood.

Didn’t you read Dune? Don’t you know fear is the mindkiller?

Too much fear, and misery, and resignation, and you’ve already built your own cage. Don’t do that. Don’t give up on yourself. More importantly don’t infect others with defeat. Never make the world a worse place.

Some of y’all are clinging to misery like an alcoholic clutches his last can of gay Bud Light. (See what I did there? Never pass up a potential punchline!)

I withdrew (incompletely and temporarily) from comment about current politics. Why would a sane person stay engaged? Right now politics is deeply unserious. It’s stupid fractally. It’s stupid at scales large and small. It’s stupid as seen from a thousand miles away and it’s stupid at the molecular level. It’s stupid in milliseconds and it’s stupid in years.

Rather than let that shit clog my colon, I’m trying to take the high road. I ponder in good faith. What can one learn from all this stupid? What does the accelerating pace of chaos really mean? Is a person who says provably stupid things actually deluded or acting in malice? Is there anything linking dipshit NPCs to Jaynes’ Bicameral Mind? If you took a monkey and shoved a cell phone up its ass would it get as messed up as a Gen Z who cuts off their dick after watching TikTok? What is the true meaning of someone wearing a mask alone in their car?

One thing I came to, through cognition while sitting under a sacred fig tree, is that our enemies are hollow. Look at ’em! Do they look healthy, bold, strong, clever, intelligent? Do they look like they’re growing and becoming more excellent in their evilness?

Hell no! They’re droolingly stupid! Many are geriatric losers and others are clueless waifs that will be eaten by reality.

The geriatrics are losing steam fast. Why not be happy about that?

Pissed off about California’s left coast’s politics? Then look at their two most powerful politicians. Nancy Pelosi has been in Congress since 1987 and her husband has been having gay naked hammer fights in the living room. She’s going to resign soon. To what end? To spend more time with her husband? Diane Feinstein has been a barnacle on humanity since ’92 and she’s toast. She’ll either resign or die pretty soon. Kamala Harris is half their age and is reputed to have sucked dick all the way to the office of the Vice President. Have you noticed that there isn’t a single living human being that likes her?

Speaking of uniparty toads, Mitch McConnell has been in the senate since 1985 and he’ll probably be gone soon. People of his own party call him “Turtle”.

The press lied hard to drag candidate John Fetterman across the finish line despite his stroke. So now the guy is missing in a hospital somewhere. Fetterman reminds me of a guy who won more votes than any other candidate in history without having to hardly campaign at all. He can barely complete a sentence.

I’m supposed to be driven to despair by that crew of losers? Call me back when you’ve got Stalin on the line.

The point is, none of us like where things are or where it’s going, but we are faced with enemies that… well… just look at ’em. Things could be worse. The bitch who’s fucking up some kid’s mind in a university literature course looks like this:

But she isn’t the same as a fucking Terminator:

I get it, things are dire. They could be better. We could have teachers that teach, doctors that cure, police that enforce laws as written, and judges that show judgement.

But we don’t. So embrace the suck. It could be a lot worse!

It feels like our side is slowly getting addicted to misery. Nut up! Look at the miracles that abound. Look how damn good we’ve got it.

Even as western societies in a dozen countries teeter on the edge we’re pretty damn close to the richest, happiest, fattest, laziest, most well treated human beings ever to walk the earth. The grid is still up, the roads are mostly paved, the McRib might come back this summer. This is not the end of everything. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

The HOA Karen might bitch about your yard but when is the last time Genghis Kahn burned down your garage? When I sail my little homemade boat will a Viking Longboat  show up and attack? If they ban gas stoves and incandescent lights is that really Orwell’s vision of a boot stomping on a human face forever?

If your work is annoying because six identical psychotic green haired lesbians harpies make you sit through a Powerpoint about diversity… isn’t that still better than dying of black lung from the coal mines?

Considering the baseline level of horror that is human existence, $5 eggs and bumbling mis-rule by geriatric morons isn’t the worst of fates. Things are still much better than they could be. Shit is damn near fabulous!

Don’t focus on the negative and potential. Focus on the positive and actual. Here’s a real world example, guns:

There’s a dozen tools in DC right now fiddling with lawfare. They’re re-interpreting some policy somewhere in a way that makes a dictionary cry. What’s new? They’ll write a memo that’ll somehow function in a law-ish way. So what? They’ll make a register of folding bumpstock plastic Glock assault revolvers based on some spastic interpretation of the word “infringe”. We live in a world where more than half the states have Constitutional carry and we’re acting like it’s the end times.

The various infringements are dumb but it’s not Stalin’s minions kicking down the door… yet. Enjoy the liberty you have.

In the big picture, stupid rules have accomplished the opposite of disarmament. The more they squeeze the less they grasp. The Clinton “Assault Weapons” Ban of 1994 faffed about with dipshit cosmetics like bayonet lugs and folding stocks. This made us thirst for those particular gadgets. 30 years later everyone and their dog has a closet full of AR-15s. Americans buy enough of them annually to equip an army. And we practice with ’em too. If you go to a range and some dude whips out an AR, you don’t even notice. The nightmare military style death reaper is as rare as a Honda Civic. Thanks Bill!

Whenever you feel like whining, do something. Think they’re going too far? Then get off your ass and walk into a shop and pick up another firearm. In 20 minutes you can pick out a bolt action 300 win mag, top it with a scope that’ll pick out the ass-hairs on a gnat, and spend the weekend putting six shots out of six into the diameter of a DVD at 300 yards. Can you imagine how pathetic the gun grabbers would feel if they new how little an arm brace really matters?

Regular generic rednecks like me will pick off a poker chip at 100 yards and it’s not even worth noticing. Meanwhile we’re bitching about some marginal restriction so that the NRA can muster up more funding.

I get it. The gun control shit never stops and it’s infuriating. In a perfect world, I’d have a fuckin howitzer. I’d paint “shall not be infringed” on the side, pick off elk from a half mile away, and carry out the quarters with a bulldozer. But if you look at it honestly, our world is closer to that than other options. We whine about things a disarmed Soviet peasant in 1983 would weep to ponder.

Buck up folks. None of us has yet had to charge a machine gun nest or do a Rambo style evasive forest run. Shit may suck, but it’s all paperwork and mindfucks. Rub some dirt on it and go back to enjoying life.

As always, thanks for listening.

A.C.

OODA…

Observe. Orient. Decide. Act.

Originally coined by Air Force Colonel John Boyd, it’s a concept originally intended for military combat. Since then it has been applied in any environment where two forces are in direct competition.

Oversimplifying greatly, the idea is that you must complete your OODA loop before your competitor does. If you succeed at this, you have taken initiative. This forces your opponent to react to your actions instead of initiating his own. Options that might benefit your opponent are lost to him. You maintain control as they flail about trying to react to whatever you choose to do.

OODA is a loop. As soon as you have performed an action you try mightily to complete the next OODA loop. You always want to be first. Stay inside your opponent’s loop. Always react just a little faster than your opponent. Keep them reacting instead of initiating.

Done properly, the person with the quicker OODA loop will almost always lead the slower, confused, hapless, opponent around like a puppet on a string. If you want a practical demonstration, watch mismatched marital artists sparring. The higher skilled practitioner will know what his opponent will do almost before his opponent has the idea. The master will always complete his OODA loop first. He will benefit from that sliver of time he’s created. He can easily disrupt his opponent’s half-executed action, he has time to setup and block like a brick wall, should he wish to attack, it will be devastating, minutely targeted, and appear lighting fast. He will dominate the situation not merely through physical prowess but through mental prowess as well. A master anticipates and out maneuvers a novice like he’s got mind control (which in a way, he does).

Why do I mention this? Because there’s power in understanding the pace of events. Forget about karate masters and Boyd’s aerial combat and look around you. Have you noticed that the pace of events has accelerated?

Recall that in 2020 a pathogen appeared and became the fire that lit so many fuses. At the time, I knew nothing more than anyone else. We all started at roughly the same level.

I took immediate action. I retreated to Curmudgeon Compound and did a genuine no-bullshit self quarantine. I’ll note that this was a real quarantine, not “follow the arrows in Walmart” faffing about quarantine-theater. You can’t be half-quarantined any more than you can be half-pregnant.

Self quarantine was my choice. I was well prepared for it and I didn’t hesitate. Why would I? A week too early is better than an hour too late. Besides, it wasn’t that big of a deal. If I was wrong I could always quit quarantining.

That’s an action I can and did on my own in a way that many others did not:

I chose to initiate my own quarantine at will. Should the action be unwarranted I could cancel it. When further data showed it to be unnecessary I did cancel it. I was in charge of my own fate far more than most people in the same situation.

That’s how the OODA loop works. Those first few weeks while morons were fighting over toilet paper I was safely at home. I’d done OODA loop properly.

OODA is an iterative process. While everyone else was sitting around waiting for the CDC to interpret sheep’s entrails or whatever dumb thing it does in lieu of true research, I was already doing the next loop. The first actual non-bullshit data I found were reports of the Diamond Princess cruise ship. It had an outbreak of COVID and was quarantined at sea. Could there be a better experimental design?

Everyone had opinions to voice loudly; none of which mattered. Opinion based on no data is never a concern to me. I simply tune it out. The cruise ship data was pretty good news. Of 3,711 people on board only 712 became infected. As expected, some number of people died; either by happenstance or because of the virus. How many died? 14.

14 / 3,711 = 0.00377

Nothing uttered by anyone anywhere was more useful than that simple “experiment”. Reality is that which exists regardless of your opinion and the reality wasn’t too bad. Nearly every human on earth was in a vastly better situation than a concentrated floating Petri dish filled with people of the health, vigor, and age of cruise ship passengers. When geezers packed on a boat have a 99.6% chance of survival it’s not the end of the world.

That’s what they call… a clue.

My quarantine ended around then. Sure, various governors and CDC dipshits and store managers did whatever they did… but none of it mattered to me.

Also I’d figured out a worst case. I’m not sure the average rate of death for 3,700 people on a boat but it has to be more than zero. Any group of people will have a few that stroke out or blow an aorta. Those unfortunate souls were part of the 14 deaths. Thus, 0.00377 was the maximum danger from the pathogen. Fourteen dead isn’t a happy thing but it’s not the black plague either. Another OODA loop complete.

In another OODA loop I gradually understood that people don’t know humans are mortal. Oh sure, they know it as a statement, but they don’t know it in their heart. Any risk of death anywhere and they lose their shit. “If it just saves one life!”

They had an unreasonable expectation that nobody should die ever. So they overreacted. They also failed to weigh alternatives. Kicking everyone out of hospitals because of a COVID freak out killed off how many people from deferred medicine? Fucking with kid’s lives caused how many suicides? They didn’t care because someone dying invisibly didn’t really happen in their way of thinking.

From my point of view, whenever people calmed the fuck down and counted knowable things, they got reasonable answers. 99.6% survival isn’t Godzilla eating Tokyo. It’s four in a thousand. Part of the uncertainty that all mortal beings face. Memento mori motherfuckers! I don’t know the odds that I’ll die when I take my morning shit, but know it’s not zero. If Karen at the HOA hasn’t come to grips with that, I don’t care. That bitch can wear three masks and hide in her basement until her dozen cats eat her. I sure as hell won’t let a fool like that change my life’s decisions.

Another OODA loop taught me that people couldn’t tell the difference between 0.5 and 0.00377. Dire clickbait articles flooded the internet. “It’s a disaster! Six people died in Iowa!” Guys like me ask “how many people in Iowa die normally”. Sheep don’t ask questions like that.

Another OODA loop was realizing that people can’t assess an “expert’s” track record. Fauchi, cretin that he is, relived his glory days of being wrong about the AIDS panic. If Paul Krugman ran his own checkbook and Fauchi ran his own health like the advice they give others they’d be broke and sick in a week. Governors unearthed “experts” as needed. They made speeches flanked by dweebs in lab coats.

Here’s a hint, if you’re wearing a lab coat while standing at a podium; you’re a prop and the coat is a costume. A lab coat is for when you’re in a lab.

People using words like “depopulate” and “black death” made bad decisions and tried to force it on others. Tent hospitals were erected. A Navy hospital ship was docked at New York City (it was never used). Schools were closed and kids were scrambled. If you wonder what kind of mess happens to a kid who lost 2 years of social interaction, look for the ones cutting off their dick and tits.

Everyone seemed so certain of things that simply weren’t true. I looked hard for information to verify their stupid actions; to reject my contrarian ideas. I found none. I drove around looking out of my car windshield. I didn’t see dead bodies. I saw things shut down not by illness but panic. If you turned off social media and walked around the earth you’d be hard pressed to find actual proof a pathogen existed at all. (I’m not saying it didn’t exist, I’m saying you can’t easily detect 0.00377. Hell, you can smoke Pall Malls for 20 years before you get cancer and then maybe none at all.)

OODA loops include “Act”. I quit my quarantine after a few weeks. It was unnecessary. I was confident I’d arrived at that conclusion through reason. I’m not dead; which isn’t proof I was wise but it’s a good sign. Others never came to their own conclusions and never came up for air. They shit themselves and they’ll probably never be the same.

Three years and two months later, my last post was about repealing the “state of emergency” that has been continuously in place. Last week I spoke with a nurse who experienced her first day without a mask in 38 months. She was giddy with joy.

I never wore a mask. Nor did I get the shot. My OODA loop was three years faster than society.

Remember I was talking about acceleration. The Hunter Biden laptop was unearthed in 2020. I knew it was real in late 2020. My OODA loop was short. Three years later it’s completely verified fact. A few Kool-Aid drinkers still think it’s a misinformation but they’re unteachable and therefore irrelevant. Elapsed time on that mess? Maybe 2 years. Faster than the two weeks becomes three years that was the COVID panic.

What about the spy balloon? In February, I wrote America let the Chinese Balloon drag its geopolitical nutsack across America’s face. At the time the Biden* administration said that the spy balloon had collected no spy data. What gibbering fool believes that?

My OODA loop on rejecting that spin was about eleven seconds. Now, the scuttlebutt is that by gosh by golly a giant spy balloon might have been equipped with a radio to transmit collected data. We got some real geniuses on the case! At least it only took them two months to figure it out.

See the pattern of fabrications with decreasing lifespan?

“COVID will mow us down like mice in a blender.” 3+ years.

“51 lying jackoffs assert Hunter Biden’s laptop is a Russian fabrication.” 2 years.

“The spy balloon inexplicably didn’t do any spying.” 2 months

Those who lie are facing people with a “Let’s Go Brandon” attitude. They’re trying to throw new lies so fast that old ones are forgotten before resolution. It gives the appearance of a society in collapse; because that’s what it is. So long as your OODA loop is inside theirs you are initiating rational responses. If you’re just reacting to the bullshit of the day, you’re still their puppet.

Here’s a test: what was going on while the nation spent a week freaking out about Trump’s arrest? Also who didn’t know this was coming? It’s 2023! A rational agent can’t get to 2023 and yet be shocked that Trump is again mired in lawfare emanating from a biased source. Your OODA loop should have seen that coming years ago!

Stay cool while those that would oppose us throw more and more chaos at us. They’re trying to get inside our OODA loop but they’re just too fucking dumb. The best they can cause is misery and panic. You may not be able to avoid misery but it’s inexcusable to panic. You already know their track record for lying and obfuscation. Stay frosty as society collapses; it’ll happen first slowly and then all at once. The “slowly” part is already over.

This isn’t your fault. It’s not your cross to bear. If the whole of society insists on shitting its own pants, that’s not on you. Your OODA loop should not be in service of some scumbag allocating tax dollars, it should maintain yourself and your soul. Not acting like incontinent fucking sheep is the first step to sanity and you probably already mastered that. Now repeat the loop.

As I thought about the ever accelerating rate of stupid things I remembered blipverts. The current shit hitting the fan is going to close in on that speed. Instantaneous cascades of disasters are in our future.

Back when Hollywood wasn’t entirely sub-literate gay losers with political agendas, they did creative things. One of them was Max Headroom. In 1987 an irreverent little sci-fi TV show with a glitchy talking AI wiseass had the concept of micro-fast commercials.

In keeping with the show’s dark premises, the “blipverts” made people explode. In keeping the the show’s sense of humor, only lazy, indolent, morons who watch too much TV were injured. Part of the joke was that anyone with the sense to watch only reasonable amounts of TV was fine.

Witness the glory of a blipvert!

*Biden got more votes than any other candidate in history and he’s got the political prisoners to prove it.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on March 13, 2020, in Proclamation 9994 (85 Fed. Reg. 15337) is hereby terminated.

Passed by the House of Representatives February 1, 2023.

Passed by the Senate March 29, 2023 (yesterday).

The bill will pass. It’s very unlikely Biden will veto it.*

Did you hear about it in the news? Why not? What could possibly be more important?

I want to pause here. Please join me. Please join me to think.

Wise people reflect on the world in which they live. Join me at this juncture for intelligent, purposeful, thought.

Try hard to remember March 13th, 2020. Don’t fret over the panic of the day. Whatever Biden or his handlers are up to, the war in Ukraine, your taxes, what you want for lunch, or when you’ll plant your garden… that can all wait.

Concentrate. Free your mind of short term concerns. Try very hard to focus on one thing. Put away your cell phone. Turn off the TV or radio. Grant yourself a few minutes to think.

What has happened in your life since March 13th 2020?

Life revolves around what I call “points of inflection”. Often these are for you alone. They’ll become sealed in your mind; the birth of a child, the day a divorce was finalized, a car accident, a wedding. You will remember those moments because at that very moment, you committed them to memory with your whole heart and mind.

Depending on your age, you might remember different societal events; the first time man walked on the moon, the death of JFK, the fall of the Berlin Wall. You will remember because it marked a change between before and after. You can tell a person’s age by what they remember. Is it the day the Twin Towers fell, or when Truman dropped the bomb on Japan?

Here’s a thing to ponder. The youth have learned the COVID lesson deeper than you have:

A new generation will remember the day their school closed. They will remember it until they die. They will remember the experience stronger and deeper than you because they had no adult life on which to lean. Their experience had disruption in a way you cannot share.

Life is short and many voices vie to distract you. The moments you lose through distraction or inattention make you less aware of the world.

The less aware you become, the less human you become.

I was traveling on March 13th 2020. I knew that day was a big deal. I watched with care.  During that day, I saw people in many places and observed every detail. What were they doing? How did they look? What was the moment like?

I’d known March 13th’s stampede was possible. I saw it coming. I’d bought a huge pile of groceries two weeks prior. I was prepared to self-quarantine according to my own rational logic. I had prepared as well as anyone could be.

On March 13th, I knew a day of inflection had arrived.

I didn’t know where it was going but I knew it was going all the way.

Up until that day, we could have pulled back from the precipice. After that day it was freefall. People were overreacting right at the gate! They hadn’t decided to use this new situation as a weapon against each other but it was inevitable.

People hadn’t started tearing their own nations apart. I believed nations, unlike people, would persist through inertia if nothing else. I was incorrect.

Nobody knew how far the pathogen had spread but the panic was already a nearly unrelated thing. It spread at a different rate to different places. Eventually the panic (and pathogen) spread to every developed nation. I saw the spread of the pathogen as a certainty. That’s just biology. However, I was shocked by the global range of panic.

I made a mistake that day. I underestimated the pain and division that would ensue. I overestimated human reason. I overestimated spiritual capacity. I overestimated societal resilience. I thought most people were, for want of a better word, adults.

I wasn’t aware of the vastness of human mental and emotional frailty. I had no grasp of the limitations of people in groups.

I’d read a lot of history. I was always baffled how whole nations stumbled into obvious blunders; World War 1, concentration camps, the fall of Rome. I was too limited to understand. In the last three years I have grown to understand. I learned how deeply and completely unreasonable people can be. Auschwitz, Caligula, the Salem Witch Trials, Barbarians crossing the Rhine in 406… these I understand in a new way.

I was not capable of imagining what the next three years would hold. Were you?

“Two weeks to flatten the curve” officially lasted 158 weeks. Nearly everyone figured it out years ago. A few poor fools will wear masks until they die.

The world is utterly changed. March 13th, 2020 is the other side of a vast gulf. I can’t return. You can’t return. The previous world is gone. At the core, my understanding of humanity has changed. Hopefully your understanding grew too.

We live in the aftermath. Not an aftermath of the pathogen but of the panic. There is no resilience in anything. In my nation shakes and sways. Elections look sketchy not just occasionally but often. Cities finance and foment their own riots. The dollar fades. We get used to shortages and swings in our food supply. Police don’t default to enforcing laws, nor do courts. The FBI does domestic spying. It either encourages or creates domestic terrorism. It does this openly. Every electronic device is built to spy on citizens. Young people have never had a privacy in their entire lives. For this reason and others, they’re emotional wrecks.

The changes of the last three years were baked in the cake. They were going to happen anyway. All they needed was the triggering event.

On March 13th 2020 the panic (not the pathogen) made things which were impossible into things that were coveted by the fearful, and subsequently inflicted upon them. Those who tried to use reason were stampeded; as was always intended.

This isn’t limited to America. Every human endeavor was shocked. Some were more resilient than others. No country was unscathed; except maybe Africa. Weaker countries (many of them) drift towards authoritarians and centralized control. Some countries (perhaps my own) collapsed. Weaker people fell apart. Families broke apart. Unworthy neighbors lost trust and worthy ones were embraced. Strong people were tested as well as the weak. Strong people, like strong societies (such as the Amish) emerged perhaps wiser and more stoic. The weak acted shamefully.

Everyone knows what they did during the last three years. We all gained the priceless gift of knowing our true nature.

Governments didn’t fare well. Countries are no longer nations. Government no longer obtain the consent of the governed. All hell breaks loose. Governments do things to which the people don’t consent. Governments themselves are hard pressed to know why.

Citizens to petition their governments for redress of grievances and are ignored. Some become subjects; trading freedom for the luxury of being someone else’s pet. They look to bureaucrats for instruction on how to live. Others become a nation unto themselves; rightly recognizing they answer only to themselves or God. Bureaucracies become more powerful and also more irrelevant.

Lacking reasoned lawful political discourse, chaos breaks out in unpredictable ways. France has riots. Not just occasionally but during most summers. So does America. So does Europe. So does Canada. So does Brazil. Riots are common everywhere. Several nations, simultaneously, teeter on the edge. It will continue so long as the question of honorable governance is neither addressed nor resolved.

Canada drifts aimlessly under Trudeau. Nobody knows who’s running America. Denmark persecutes farmers until there’s a wild shift in governance. Iran struggles to keep the lid on their self-made caldron. Israel is having riots this week. It’s not a question of “if” there will be more riots; only “how many”, “how destructive”, and “for how long”.

Governments everywhere fail to govern wisely. The UK flails about for years; trying to Brexit or not Brexit. Australia built quarantine camps and imprisoned people. Canada froze trucker’s bank accounts. America has 500+ political prisoners and periodically encircles its seat of governance with concertina wire. The next generation of New Zealand’s citizens (subjects?) will never be legally able to buy tobacco.

None of these were within the realm of imagination on March 13th, 2020.

You might think this is a sad moment. I think the opposite. It’s probably for the best.

My fellow human (at least many of them) would gladly put me on a cattle car. It was just as true before March 13th 2020 but I was too dumb to know it. I have earned that knowledge. I feel like God wanted me to know.

I also witness that evil fails as soon as it has power. Everyone bitches about America’s past president but nobody on any side claims the current American president has done well. Nobody responds well to corruption; of the soul or of the mind (dementia).

I formerly expected corruption to lead to defeat. I see now it’s self correcting. Every sketchy election or bureaucratic mess creates more failure. Instead of consolidating power systems just dissolve. Things look dire but it’s an illusion. Not a damn thing is well clenched in an iron fist. We can all see it. No failure is truly hidden. Gasoline and eggs cost triple what they did three years ago. People can’t avoid knowing what bureaucracies hide. People know why Portland has riots and Haybale Nebraska doesn’t. People know what a college degree means and its relative value compared to a good welder. People know what to think of 3:00 am shifts in elections. People laugh at headlines. People (perhaps grudgingly) learn.

I didn’t enjoy the last three years but, like a visit to the dentist, it was pain with a purpose. God didn’t create us to be idiots. He wants us to rise. He gave me a lesson I won’t forget.

Misery might be temporary. That which can’t go on, won’t. The dream before the fever breaks is the worst dream of all. I believe in my heart (and my mind) that things will be OK. Well mostly OK. Or rather they’re OK for me and I hope the same for you. They’re OK no matter how it goes because I don’t value the external like I once did.

I’m optimistic because I didn’t fail the test:

All through the COVID madness I did “the right thing”. I never oppressed anyone and I never let myself be oppressed. What more is there?

A world in turmoil is not my problem. It’s not your problem either. We are not the source of turmoil. Given a chance to stampede like an unthinking animal. We didn’t. I did nothing which I regret. How awesome is that?!?

Consider most politicians. Look in their eyes. They don’t have my feeling of optimism. They had the same options I did but they acted like beasts. They know it. I know it. Everyone knows. They act like the damned because they are.

Hopefully, the peak is over. (I can hope.) Think of it this way, Congress is the dumbest, most irrelevant, immoral, geriatric, gathering of corrupt blithering idiots to walk the face of the earth. Even they are reeling from the madness they did over the last three years. As the morons in Congress slowly gain some level of understanding in whatever protoplasm they use for a mind, there is hope for the rest of us. We were never that craven.

So please observe your world today. Take a look around and remember. This may be the day you recall as “before” when you’re living in the next (and possibly better) “after”.

A.C.

* Biden won more votes than any other candidate in history. I repeat the official truth every time I refer to Biden because I want everyone to hear it and face what they heard. Biden got 81,283,501 votes and every single one is unquestionable. Don’t look away. Watch it play out.