I used to think there’d be no Civil War II: Electric Boogaloo in this country because nobody had any real reason to fight. The Left (retaining that term strictly for convenience) don’t know what they want. They have never known. Flipping cars and lighting shit on fire is the sum total of their political philosophy. As we call it around here, the Great Inversion — whatever is, is wrong, and since there’s a level of “what is” that is impervious to even the most nonintersectional, genderfluid level of make believe, they’d rather burn the whole world down than admit it. Still, while “burn the motherfucker down!” is a fun chant with which to replace the Pledge of Allegiance — coming to your kids’ kindergarten classroom, Spring 2021 — it doesn’t really rally the troops.
The Right, meanwhile (and again, strictly for convenience), had an equally impossible fantasy, since however it manifested itself — CivNat, BoomerCon, Normie, pick your Internet-speak — it was predicated on the “Left” being physically capable of leaving well enough alone. Alas, “the motherfucker” which the Left feels compelled to burn down includes institutions, infrastructure, the foundations of empirical knowledge, along with the idea of “knowledge” itself — in short, ambient civilization. It’s not that they won’t leave you alone, gang, it’s that they can’t, since whatever is, is wrong.
Will it be a nicely organized civil war, with Ordinances of Secession and neato-looking battle flags and stirring speeches and truly excellent beards on all the general officers? Doubtful. See above. The whole “secession” schmear takes some doing, and we’re living in a world where the mere ability to walk slightly faster than a reanimated corpse is an appealing-enough fantasy to keep a tv series running for over a decade. But people these days absolutely loathe each other, to the point that, when someone finally does pull the trigger — and someone will — the killing won’t stop for a long, long, long time, McDonald’s be damned.
Severian, “Random Thoughts”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-12-17.
June 17, 2023
QotD: Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo
June 15, 2023
Thursday tab-clearing
A few items that I didn’t feel required a full post of their own, but might be of interest:
- Justin Trudeau’s government is clearly interested in moving to a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), but “Canadians are not at peace with the idea of cash vanishing into thin air, with a consistent 80 per cent of respondents having no plans to go cashless“
- There’s an ongoing shortage of Adderall in the United States … and the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) is behind it.
- Alasdair Beckett-King explains what’s wrong with every time travel movie – https://youtu.be/zI0aBzA2K9s
- The man who visited Lenin’s Soviet Union and said “I have been over into the future, and it works.”
- Kim du Toit isn’t a believer in the official inflation statistics: “When the history of this era comes to be written, one of the most egregious falsehoods to be exposed will be the ‘official’ inflation rate.”
- Random meme of the day:
Sarah Hoyt objects to being an “imaginary creature”
Recent revisions to the quasi-official dictionary of the woke English language seem to have classified individuals like Sarah as “non-men”:
I was born female in a country that was profoundly patriarchal and, back then, patriarchal without guilt. So, it was acceptable to make jokes about women being dumber than men. And it was acceptable for teachers to assume you were dumb because female.
Most of these things amused me. It was always fun in mixed classes after the first test to watch the teacher look at my test and at the boys in the class trying to figure out what parent was so cruel as to name their son a girl’s name.
I enjoyed breaking people’s minds. And once I was known in a group or place, I was not treated as inferior. The only things that truly annoyed me were the ones I thought were arbitrary restrictions, like not going out after 8 pm alone. Took flaunting them a few times to find out they weren’t arbitrary. Or rather, they were arbitrary but since culture-wide flaunting was dangerous, and I was lucky not to pay for the flaunting with life or limb.
Yes, I went through a phase of screaming that I was just as good as any man. Then realized it was true and stopped screaming it.
Then got married and had kids, and realized I was just as good but different. I could do things men couldn’t do. Parenthood is different as a woman. And none of it mattered to my worth, just like being short and having brown hair doesn’t make me inferior to tall blonds. Just different.
And even though I’m a highly atypical woman, at the beginning of my sixth decade, I find myself completely at peace with the fact I am a woman and not apologetic at all for it.
Imagine my surprise when I found out women don’t exist. There’s only man and non-man.
This nonsense, from here, has got to stop. When you get so “inclusive” you’re excluding an entire biological sex (but curiously not the other) you might want to re-evaluate your principles. Also, your sanity.
Yes, I know, saying this makes me a TERF, which is nonsense. Maybe a TERNF, since I’ve not called myself a feminist since I was 18 and realized feminism aimed for making women “win” at men’s expense. It wasn’t aiming for equality but for “equity” and since I never needed a movement to outcompete males, I decided it was spinach and to h*ll with it.
Also I’m not trans-exclusionary. If women don’t exist, what the heck are men who are trans trans TO? Non-man? Uh … what? What are drag queens imitating? Is it just non-man?
QotD: Incels
Freddie deBoer, “Some Reasons Why Smartphones Might Make Adolescents Anxious and Depressed”, Freddie deBoer, 2023-03-07.
June 14, 2023
Wednesday web-droppings
A few items that I didn’t feel required a full post of their own, but might be of interest:
- “Teacher, leave them kids alone!” – Middle schoolers staged a revolt on the day they were told to wear rainbow colors to celebrate pride. They wore red, white, and blue, and said their pronouns were “U.S.A.” Woke faculty is freaking out.
- Sir Humphrey answers the question “Is the Royal Navy still a truly ‘blue water navy’?“
- Brendan O’Neill is nostalgic for a long-distant past before everyone started sounding like off-brand Unabomber disciples.
- Tim Harford on “Giffen goods“
- Random meme of the day:
June 13, 2023
Liberal woman frustrated she can’t find non-conservative but traditionally masculine men
Tom Knighton responds to a progressive woman’s lament:
Originally found on fark.com about 15 years ago, artist unknown.
She is at a loss because she wants to be with a masculine man but doesn’t want to compromise her morals and values. She asks her followers if she is asking for too much when she requests a man she can be “equal” with while he still provides for her.
What she doesn’t seem to get is that it was women like her that basically destroyed manhood to the point that there’s little chance she’ll find a liberal guy with traditional values.
See, liberal men are basically obligated to take the subservient role. They’re required by their ideology to accept that the woman is just as capable — and obligated — to be at least an equal in providing for the family, if not the provider herself.
Failure to act according to this, at least in their minds, is to undermine the feminist values the left claims to hold so dear.
It didn’t have to be this way. It was always possible to empower women without trying to tear masculinity down, which is what has been happening.
Opening doors for women, for example, is one of those things guys used to do all the time. It wasn’t that women were somehow incapable of operating a doorknob. It was because it was just something a gentleman did.
Now, if a man opens the door for a woman, he’s taking a chance. Will she appreciate it or will she launch into a feminist diatribe about the patriarchy?
Leftist men already know which they expect, so they do no such thing. Guys with more of a traditional lean, however, can and will open that door because they’re not impressed with feminist screeching.
The surprisingly authoritarian reflexes of the “true” anti-authoritarian
Chris Bray surveys the “anti-authoritarian” stances and actions of Professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a dedicated opponent of all things Trump:
I’ve called the NYU professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an “expert” on authoritarianism, an inversion blender, a narrative-producing machine with an astonishing gift for turning meaning upside-down. Your decision to drive north is ironclad proof that you intend to travel to the south! You’re spraying water on that fire to make it bigger! You gave me a sandwich because you want me to starve to death!
Currently, Ben-Ghiat’s frantic production of anti-authoritarian messaging on Twitter, the preferred platform of true intellectuals, is tightly focused on the dangerous authoritarianism of the megafascist Donald Trump, who is doing what all true authoritarians do: questioning and criticizing the government. Go stroll through Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s Twitter posts. It’s like having lunch with Felix Dzerzhinsky. Only the guilty and the fascist elements resist the cleansing power of the state and its gloriously pure-hearted investigative apparatus!
A suggestion up front from the maître d’hotel: What you’re about to consume is the filet mignon of dimwitted propaganda. Chew it slowly. Savor. Let’s start with a light appetizer, a mere retweet, to tease the ironic gustation:
Archie Bunker and Meathead have become one, united by the power of the Trump. If a prosecutor charges you, the case is airtight, full stop. Government never charges innocent people with crimes. To criticize a prosecutor is to oppose the rule of law, which can only be defended by the immediate presumption of guilt. Here, let’s try it out:
Prosecutors wouldn’t be charging Rick Perry with crimes if they didn’t believe they had an airtight case.
Prosecutors wouldn’t be charging Kyle Rittenhouse with crimes if they didn’t believe they had an airtight case.
Prosecutors wouldn’t be charging Tom Robinson with crimes if they didn’t believe they had an airtight case. Atticus Finch is an authoritarian!
This is why criminal defense lawyers are all so infamously right-wing, by the way. Especially public defenders.
[…]
Nothing says progressive anti-authoritarian like the sacralization of national security as a preeminent value. If government says that something has been done in the name of national security, you must accept it and support it without question. Or else you’re an authoritarian, doubting the state security apparatus. Fascists always do that.
There is, of course, a long and deeply established tradition on the American political left of criticism directed at the FBI and DOJ — and at federal law enforcement in general, and at law enforcement in general, and the “carceral state” — as hegemonic instruments. Historians and activists on the left have long viewed the FBI with political suspicion, and with reason.
Until pretty much right this instant, because Trump.
Why The Far Side is a masterclass in storytelling
The Gaze
Published 26 Dec 2019The Far Side by Gary Larson is one of the best and most praised cartoons in history. But what makes The Far Side so good? What is the legacy of Gary Larson? And most importantly: what can we learn from The Far Side?
0:00 Pixar and Storytelling
1:22 How Gary Larson tells a story
2:42 The Far Side facts and figures
3:22 The level of detail in The Far Side
4:04 Telling a story with one image and a punchline
5:09 What is The Far Side about?
7:11 Gary Larson and naturalism
7:40 Controversy over The Far Side
8:10 The legacy of The Far Side
9:00 Conclusion
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June 12, 2023
Why Modern Movies Suck – The Strong Female Character
The Critical Drinker
Published 10 Jun 2023One of the most tiresome tropes of the past ten years in moviemaking is the “Strong Female Character”. Not women who are smart, capable, well written and complex, but bland, boring, superficially “strong” characters designed to pander to simplistic ideals of female empowerment.
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June 11, 2023
The Invasion of Normandy begins! – WW2 – Week 250 – June 10, 1944
World War Two
Published 10 Jun 2023The Allies’ gigantic amphibious invasion of France begins and by the end of the week they’ve carved out a decent-sized beachhead. Meanwhile in Italy the Allied advance takes Rome. The Soviets are launching new attacks of their own — now against the Finns, and the Japanese at Kohima … have just plain had enough.
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Ask Ian: Why So Few Reproduction Historic Guns?
Forgotten Weapons
Published 22 Feb 2023From Paul on Patreon:
“I’ve always thought there were a lot of older guns that deserve to be reproduced, many of which could be really simple to manufacture. PSA is planning the release of their StG44 repro which is exciting. But why don’t we see this sort of thing more often. I suppose not everyone in the firearms community is going to want this sort of thing, but I think there are a lot of guns that would sell well enough to justify their reproduction.”Fundamentally, we don’t see more reproduction firearms because they are actually a lot harder and more expensive to make than people would think, and the market for them is smaller than people would think. Re-engineering old firearms for new production is a really substantial project, and the original data required rarely exists. The guns must be cheap enough and reliable enough to attract modern buyers, which will often require compromises on authenticity — which immediately reduces the already-small pool of potential buyers.
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QotD: The revolt against “meritocracy”
When we say “merit” and “meritocracy” they think we’re using “code words” to say “white males”. There are reasons for this, besides the fact that the left is heavily into Manichaean thought systems that go something like: identify problem — find a person who MIGHT be responsible for/benefits from the system as it exists — assume that if that person were removed, the problem would be gone. See, French Revolution.
The initial confusion on the left arises from the fact that they might never, in fact, have witnessed meritocracy in their dealings or those of people around them.
This is because, as part of the long march, and to secure absolute control of all fields and institutions, the left has a mythology (the Manichaean thing again) that anyone who disagrees with them is evil. And of course, you don’t hire evil people.
The problem with that type of hiring is that you’re NOT hiring the best. And most people know they’re not the best. And hire someone less bright than they are. This in four generations takes you to the level of management/operation that takes monarchies twenty generations of inbreeding to achieve.
Right now, in everything but the hard sciences and STEM (and they’ve gotten into some of those, and can’t always be routed around.) the people in power would consider pouring piss out of a boot with the instructions written on the sole a feat of unachievable genius.
Most of them are so vacuous they don’t even know they’re incompetent. Or, like Michelle Obama in her essay on why everyone was mean to her at Harvard, they assume everyone else is just as incompetent.
The reason they get hired, stay hired and continue to get push/accolades/power is that they have the “right picture in head” by which you should understand “the left picture in head”. They view the world exactly as they were taught to view it by their Marxist teachers and professors. Reality is Manichean, and if there is any issue at all, you find the person who might be causing it (hint, usually you find the person who is a heretic to the left, even if in a minor thing) and you attack that person. If the person is not immediately obvious, you look for deviationism or examples of hidden thought crime.
It’s appalling, and in a society with no protection for the individual, it fills mass graves, but it is the way their minds — for lack of a better term — operate. They’ve been trained to operate that way. Not to look at human nature, or the conditions in the world, or even the limits of engineering and materials (what’s holding us back on batteries, for instance. They prefer to think oil executives, personally, are holding back the all-electric solar cars we should already have.) No. “Find the culprit” “Eliminate him/her” “Everything is beautiful in the garden”. Seen in this light, the Green Nude Heel makes “perfect sense”. And is a genius work in scope. Which is why she got all upset at criticism and thought that it only meant people wanted her to find all the little subculprits and work out all the details of the pogroms necessary to make it work. Not getting that people were saying “Not in this world, not with these humans, not in this REALITY”.
Sarah Hoyt, “Just Deserts”, According to Hoyt, 2019-06-06.
June 9, 2023
Putting an end to “stakeholder” capitalism
The Streetwise Professor explains what “stakeholder capitalism” is and why it needs to be staked through the heart to save western economies:
A graphic from Wikipedia showing typical internal and external stakeholders.
At its root, stakeholder capitalism represents a rejection – and usually an explicit one – of shareholder wealth maximization as the sole objective and duty of a corporation’s management. Instead, managers are empowered and encouraged to pursue a variety of agendas that do not promote and are usually inimical to maximizing value to shareholders. These agendas are usually broadly social in nature intended to benefit various non-shareholder groups, some of which may be very narrow (transsexuals) or others which may be all encompassing (all inhabitants of planet earth, human and non-human).
This system, such as it is, founders on two very fundamental problems: the Knowledge Problem and Agency problems.
The Knowledge Problem is that no single agent possesses the information required to achieve any goal – even if universally accepted. For example, even if reducing the risk of global temperature increases was broadly agreed upon as a goal, the information required to determine how to do so efficiently is vast as to be unknowable. What are the benefits of a reduction in global temperature by X degrees? The whole panic about global warming stems from its alleged impact on every aspect of life on earth – who can possibly understand anything so complex? And there are trade-offs: reducing temperature involves cost. The cost varies by the mix of measures adopted – the number of components of the mix is also vast, and evaluating costs is again beyond the capabilities of any human, no matter how smart, how informed, and how lavishly equipped with computational power. (Daron Acemoğlu, take heed).
[…]
Agency problems exist when due to information asymmetries or other considerations, agents may act in their own interests and to the detriment of the interests of their principals. In a simple example, the owner of a QuickieMart may not be able to monitor whether his late-shift employee is sufficiently diligent in preventing shoplifting, or exerts appropriate effort in cleaning the restrooms and so on. In the corporate world, the agency problem is one of incentives. The executives of a corporation with myriad shareholders may have considerable freedom to pursue their own interests using the shareholders’ money because any individual shareholder has little incentive to monitor and police the manager: other shareholders benefit from, and thus can free ride on, any individual’s efforts. So managers can, and often do, get away with extravagant waste of the resources owned by others placed in their control.
This agency problem is one of the costs of public corporations with diffuse ownership: this form of organization survives because the benefits of diversification (i.e., better allocation of risk) outweigh these costs. But agency costs exist, and increasing the scope of managerial discretion to, say, saving the world or achieving social justice inevitably increases these costs: with such increased scope, executives have more ways to waste shareholder wealth – and may even get rewarded for it through, say, glowing publicity and other non-pecuniary rewards (like ego gratification – “Look! I’m saving the world! Aren’t I wonderful?”)
H/T to Tim Worstall for the link.
QotD: The Fundamental Paradox of Internet Liberalism
- If you were smart enough to understand what I’m saying, you’d be a liberal, too
- You aren’t smart enough to understand it, because you’re not a liberal
- And yet here I am, arguing with you anyway.
So who, exactly, is the dumb one?
Severian, “Alienation II”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2020-10-30.
June 7, 2023
German Counterattack – D-Day [Part 4]
World War Two
Published 6 Jun 2023When the amphibious landings begin, they run straight into Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Eisenhower has predicted a third of his troops may fall. While they land, the news breaks across the world.
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