Adaptive Curmudgeon

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.

On 357 Magnum I found a post called Cops Have No Sense of Humor. Click over and check it out.

I’ve never heard of the rapper called Afroman but the dude’s got the right attitude. The cops kicked down his door (literally), burst in with weapons drawn (literally), rifled through his stuff (literally), found nothing illegal (literally), and took his cash (literally). None of that is exaggeration.

What a bummer! I was born in a nation where such a thing never happened. I live in that nation’s hollow shell where police routinely seize assets (the word is stealing) and our president who got more votes than any other candidate in history keeps political prisoners and periodically circles the White House with concertina wire.

Afroman is a clever fellow. He didn’t freak out. He used the most powerful force on earth against totalitarians; humor.* He wrote a happy little song and added the video from his home security system. It couldn’t be more beautiful. So of course the cops sued him (literally). I find it funny that the home security system did exactly what it was supposed to do (document unwanted home invaders). The uniformed invaders disabled the cameras, just like any other home invaders.

I guess the best that can be said is the cops didn’t kill anyone or shoot a dog. (No word if Afroman has a dog.)

We can learn from Afroman’s mellow song. I would never have heard about some rapper in Ohio. I never would have known that cops were acting like dickheads in his vicinity. Now I have and I’m spreading the fun. Lets make these cops the most well known twerps in their state. The Streisand Effect can be a force for good:

The Streisand effect is the way in which attempts to hide, remove, or censor information can lead to the unintended consequence of increasing awareness of that information. It is named after American singer and actress Barbra Streisand, whose attempt to suppress the California Coastal Records Project’s photograph of her cliff-top residence in Malibu, California, taken to document California coastal erosion, inadvertently drew greater attention to the photograph in 2003.

*I’m serious about humor. The Soviets were evil totalitarian monsters. They were terrified of the slightest mockery. The same applies to modern day totalitarians. Lets go Brandon! 

I’ve been quiet. You might think I’ve been inert. Nope! I’ve been doing my own thing. Society is crawling up it’s own ass too deeply. It’s gross. I can’t watch.

Topic #1: What the fuck?

The cure for a world of brainwashed morons deliberately faffing about in a performative chaotic frenzy is to step out of their arena. Reality is the proper locale for a sane human. Remember before social media? That place still exists. I welcome you to join me: the sky is blue, gravity works, physical objects persist (unlike your money’s invisible decay through inflation), beer tastes good, the sun rises in the east, your dog isn’t trying to put on a dress, a tree won’t pretend it’s a goldfish, and I recently saw top notch northern lights.

The water’s fine, come on in!

I do have one question. What the fuck are people thinking?

The mix of bad ideas repeated on a loop and growing weirdness is unstable. The Bidenverse’s inevitable decay has gone to ludicrous speed.

When will we cross the stupid event horizon? Perhaps we already have? Each yeas is dumber than the last. The election cycle in 2016 was dumb and yet it was smarter than 2020. Twenty years ago people were idiots too but that feels like a long lost era of erudite philosopher kings compared to the medically assisted meat zombie we have now. Last week was dumb even by 2023 standards. At what point does it all collapse? I assume it has already collapsed. When will people accept the collapse their eyes are seeing but their mind won’t grasp?

Most things I see on “media” wouldn’t convince gullible houseplants or persuade lawn furniture. The only people who buy it want to believe. They don’t actually buy it either. They just pretend. Even your cat knows it’s bullshit.

The chaos accelerates. In 2023 I can make a ham sandwich that will outlast the shelf life of a news “scoop”. Consider anything that was important a month ago. Ask yourself “what happened to that”?

If you fret over something but forget about its final resolution, all you did was participate in someone else’s performance art. The world is awash in events. What happened to all that shit?

Everything dumb from an month ago has rifted from conspiracy theory to known fact. Yet all issues remain unresolved.

The Hunter laptop is now officially real. As we always knew. What happened with that? What happened to the 51 people who swore on the front page of a newspaper that it was Russian propaganda?

The southern border was open and thronged by illegal crossers. What happened with that? If Trump’s wall sucked, why is this solution better?

Two banks (three if you count Credit Suisse, which I do) have gone tits up. What happened with that? What has been learned from their failures? Did anyone mention the repercussions of extending FDIC insurance to infinity? We all know more banks will follow.

The J6 videos were pried out of the hands of congress-beings and shown on regular TV. You can see for yourself it was tamer than the crowd at a golf tournament. So what happened with that? We have political prisoners in the USA and it’s directly related to the videos. Those videos are exculpatory evidence. Withholding exculpatory evidence is a crime. What about that? Who is Ray Epps? Why are American taxes paying to staff American political operatives on American soil?

Musk blathered the details behind all sorts of hidden (but obvious and suspected) dirty censorship and propaganda. So what happened with that?

The Air Force spent a week ignoring a monster spy balloon and the next week shooting down hobbyist toys over Canada. What resolution has come of that?

In January, there were classified papers coming out of Biden’s garage, old offices, and various other orifices. What happened to that?

Are the plucky Ukranians still just days from total victory? Are they still heroically shooting down Russian jets with deer rifles? Someone blew up the Nordstream pipeline. If it was America, then Americans are the bad guys. What about that?

I’d like to see something that began… finish.

Topic #2: I’ve seen this show before:

When I turned my on computer after only a few days off grid I found out they (whoever “they” might be) spent all week on another Trump hunt. You know the guy who officially hasn’t been president for over two years? The guy who lost to the person who got more votes than any other candidate in history? That guy.

To damaged minds the period from November 2020 to February 2023 never happened. But I have a calendar so I know the truth. For better or worse, Trump is not president; it’s not his war in Ukraine, it’s not his inflation, it’s not his spy balloons, it’s not his southern border, it’s not his propaganda on Twitter.

The people who drove their own car into a ditch are blaming the car’s previous owner. Orange or not, Trump handed over the keys to a functioning society. We had a thriving economy, a secure border, a stable and minimal presence in Afghanistan, and oil independence. All that is gone. Trump is not why it’s  gone.

Some folks died in the election of 2016; Hillary lost and they never recovered. They don’t know they’re zombies but that’s what they are. They haven’t successfully lived since.

Others got exactly what they want in 2020. Biden got more votes than any other candidate in history and if you question it you may be thrown in jail. They got what they want and are miserable. They’re zombies; unhappy and dead. Shuffling around seeking some external force upon which to blame their own failures.

Folks who have accomplished nothing hate to see others thrive. They pursue Orange Man Bad as the avatar of their inner demons. They have nothing about which they can be proud. They’re nothing but the pursuit of and destruction of things others have built. Like him or hate him, Trump did stuff. They hate that.

People who still have their panties in a bundle over the Orange Menace are human train wrecks. (That reminds me… the mushroom cloud of chemicals over a train wreck in Ohio. What happened with that?)

Sane people get over things. I hated the AMC Gremlin, the 55 MPH speed limit, and disco. But they’re all gone now. If I spent my days burning junkyard Gremlins on a stack of disco LPs you’d know I was mentally ill. I don’t. Because I’m sane. To hate others without doing something of merit with one’s own abilities is the mark of someone who has no value. Deep in their heart they know it.

Last week, the perpetually aggrieved were going to indict Trump? Again. Why? The other dozen bullshit attempts didn’t flame out quite stupidly enough? They wanted to bolster his chances in the next run? They won’t feel complete until they’ve made him a martyr? They hope one more bite at the apple will finally heal their wounds? They’re getting old and want one more cycle of power? What good can come from bad intentions?

This round of the story that never ends didn’t even pretend to be solid. A legal non-disclosure agreement with a porn star is… and I know this may seem irrelevant to many… LEGAL.

As far as I can tell the porn star (who admittedly has a righteous rack) has already lost to Trump in court. She owes him (Trump) $300,000 from her ill advised and failed legal attack. Pause and savor the fact that a slut and a real estate showman fucked (allegedly) and the slut winds up owing money. How funny is that?

The slut’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, has been convicted of an array of crimes. He’s doing a 14 year sentence. (Possibly more, I get confused trying to tally up his multiple convictions.)

Someone looked at this mess and thought; “The slut went bankrupt and the lawyer is in jail. I want a piece of that action!”

Trump did the right thing. He said, “let’s do it”. That’s all it took. The whole thing evaporated.

The willingness to do the right thing is exactly how American citizens killed power-mad Biden’s vax mandates. Biden freebased power until he decided to force his will on the people he should respect. Remember when Presidents said “my fellow Americans” and didn’t list off “people with whom they’ve lost patience”? Biden intended to put me on a list of people who were forever unemployable. Imagine that! America creating a caste of “the unemployable”! Picture that chapter in future history books. “President Biden who got more votes than any other candidate in history is credited with creating the biggest number of American political prisoners. Then he made a list of over 2 million Americans who could never have a job. His was the first legal apartheid unambiguously targeted to economically ruin his enemies. He’s a true hero of democracy!”

I don’t do victim. I told the bully “fire me if you can, but I will never bow the knee”. To my surprise and relief it ended. Poof! Gone! Just like Trump’s most recent arrest. Me and a couple million others stood up like true citizens and the fever broke. Biden talked big about imaginary Corn Pop but retreated behind concertina wire as soon as people told him they wouldn’t obey his will. Whiny bitches like Biden are bullies that never grew beyond high school.

You gotta’ hand it to Trump, he’s the glasses from They Live. Trumps enemies do shit that show you what they themselves are.

Topic #3: Plowing is a job that doesn’t pay:

Reality (unlike the panic on the media) has been all about plowing snow. I bought some gear (I’ll elaborate later) in anticipation of a happy fun-time summer. This apparently angered the Gods! Every 2-3 days since that optimistic gamble I’ve been in the tractor plowing snow.

I’ve been pushing mountains of snow on top of the towers of snow I’d already amassed. From a practical perspective, it’s like I picked up a part time job for 10-15 hours a week. There’s no pay and all I get out of it is a driveway that’s passable (sometimes).

I know spring will come but it’s dragging its feet!

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to tell Filthie to “DO IT!”

In the middle of the lingering snowpack I dragged Honey Badger (my Yamaha TW200 dirtbike) into my shop. I meant to get it ready for the riding season. I need to change the oil and I want to wire in some farkles.

I got plans y’all!

I spent all winter thinking of cool shit to do this summer! Me and Honey Badger will have all the fun I can survive.

Who knows if I’ll do all the cool stuff I dreamed? At least it’s a start. You must dream before you can do.  I’m optimistic because I know that Honey Badger is up for it. That little bike is always ready to go for anything on the trail.

Here’s a picture of my trusty steed. (The photo is a couple years old, the bike has more survival shit bolted to it now.)

Unfortunately, it snowed and my plans for mechanical tinkering were delayed. Then it snowed more. Delays compounded. I wasted a whole tank of propane heating the shop while I was busy plowing snow.

Meanwhile, the author of Filthie’s Thunderbox (a fine blog and ray of Canadian sunshine) mentioned he might someday like a TW200. He did so with a half assed tone indicating he probably won’t go for it. I can’t ignore that!

I implore y’all to go to Filthie’s site and comment. Tell the man “DO IT!”

If there’s anything a cranky woodsman needs it’s a little wheeled mule! It’s amazing the old carbureted thumper is still in production. Anyone with an itch of a molecule of curiosity should embrace the opportunity!

Filthie needs one!

The plucky TW is unlike any other motorcycle on the market today. It’s a slow, obscure, obsolete farm bike from a simpler time. It’s fun, unbreakable, street legal, trail ready, and relentlessly upbeat. It absolutely loves abuse. It has plenty of balls to ride in/through/over/across anything in its path. It’s crude and cheap. It’s cheap to buy (though it does have a cult following in the used market). It’s cheap to insure. It’s cheap to register. It’s cheap to fix what you break and it only needs repair if you did something that you knew was utterly stupid to break it. (Or like me you want to tinker on a dirt simple machine until it’s the ultimate bug out toy.) They’re said to last forever. They get great MPG.

I treat mine like a hammer. I’ve sunk it, hit things, got lost, flogged it, babied it, idled it, used a tree stump to adjust the chain, chased a bear, buried it in mud, run it hot, run it in snow, hammered the skid plate (aftermarket), and it has never skipped a beat.

Despite all that firebreathing bravado, the best part is that it’s silly fun. It’s a hoot even if you’re just sightseeing. I’ll spend all day puttering along forest service roads with a big grin on my face.

I load it with a ton of gear and it never bitches. It’s easy to ride and adapts to most terrain. It’s happy on a forest road, it’s happy when you flog it through a swamp, it’s happy when you wind it through trees, it’s happy when crash through brush, it simply doesn’t care what you do.

It’s (probably) EMP proof. When Putin has had enough of our shit and nukes us back to the stone age, the TW will still run perfectly well.

It’ll go anywhere I’m brave enough to steer. If the terrain is too tough for a TW you’ve made bad decisions in life. You don’t need an off road machine so much as you need a helicopter.

TWs are so uncool they’re cool by accident. A total lack of style and technology lets it cross over and come out the other side. Instead of regular cool, it’s beyond cool. Compared to everything in the market, there’s no bike that simply doesn’t give a shit about appearances like the TW.

When you ride a TW like you ought to, you aren’t a motorcyclist, you’re a moose trapping lost cowboy wolf-being fishing camp-beast that just came off the endless trail. A full dress Harley Road Glide may give an anemic soyboy dentist the aura of cool but it’s just an aura. When I park my muddy TW, even if it’s next to machines that cost five times as much, it’s the TW that gets noticed. It’s simply the cooler object because it’s molecularly incapable of pretention. People think: “What kind of lunatic rides a potato like that? Is the fender covered in moose shit? Is that a shotgun strapped to the back? Why is it loaded with MREs and a hatchet?” There’s only one conclusion; “That dude is bad ass!”

Dentists tremble before my tiny death bike!

The beast horrifies young hip speed demons who rove in packs on single track. (But it can still do single track and I had the bruises to prove it.) A TW will never impress the owner of a BWM R 1250 GS Adventure bike (or rather the owner of the payment plan that comes with a BMW). That’s because the only time I’ve seen a BWM R 1250 GS Adventure bike on a trail is on YouTube. If I encountered a one of those space technology super machines on the trail, the BMW rider would see a geezer like me pick up my fallen TW with one hand. That single easy lift would make the owner of twenty grand in very heavy and expensive ABS enabled fuel injection sorcery weep in envy.

It’s easily as good as any ATV yet it’s street legal in a way ATVs never quite attain. It’s the smallest thing that’s not too small. Women call it cute, kids like the cartoon-sized tires, deer don’t overly mind its sputtering engine, and I’ve used it to drag firewood to camp.

Before the TW, I had (still have) a cruiser. That limited me to half the motorcycle picture. The Sturgis and chrome crowd has a good thing going on but it’s not the only thing. The TW taught me other activities. I coined the term mechanical hiking. Think of a TW as a backpack that carries itself. It’s a mule that never needs hay. It’s a hunting rig and camping toy. It doesn’t mind if to strap fishing poles and chainsaws to it. The lawnmower sized power plant will never let you down. The fat goofy tires will hold traction for anything you’re willing to try.

The only place a TW doesn’t belong is the interstate. Keep your cruiser for the slab where it’s happiest. Get a TW as a little wheeled beast for different things. Its a friendly dog that can’t wait to go camping with you.

If wonder if you want a TW, you do!

Do it!