Author Archives: Joe

Outpacing Inflation

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Quote of the Day

Gold surged to a new record on Tuesday, as geopolitical tensions and interest rate speculation drove a rally in the yellow metal.

The commodity rose to as high $2,141.79 per ounce, eclipsing its December all-time high of $2,135.39, according to Bloomberg data.

…

Gold’s rise is in part due to its safe-haven status, which investors are increasingly seeking out amid ongoing international turmoil. With the Ukraine war and the Gaza Strip conflict still raging, the asset’s spot price has risen 3.2% year-to-date.

But the metal saw a much sharper increase since mid-February, and has added around $100 in the past week.

Filip De Mott
March 5, 2024
Gold Price Hits New All-Time High on Rate-Cut Hopes, Geopolitical Turmoil (businessinsider.com)

That was March 5th. This is the last 24 hours (as of about 9:00 PM PDT):

Screenshot_20240401_210330

The all time high referenced in the article has been eclipsed by nearly 6% with the all time high of yesterday morning and yet a new one this morning ($2,268.26).

Gold is either outpacing inflation or inflation is much greater than the Fed is telling us.

I would think that in general gold should be essentially in sync with inflation.

I’ve been asking people, chat bots, and reading articles trying to find a reason I am satisfied with which would account for the rapid rise in the price of gold relative to the dollar in the last month. Nothing is particularly convincing. The following are in the order I find most likely to least likely:

  1. China is buying gold.
  2. Non-U.S. markets are doing poorly.
  3. Fighting in Gaza.
  4. War in Ukraine.
  5. Speculation the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates in the coming months.
  6. People are concerned Trump will win the election and are buying gold because of the chaos he will bring.

Unless China is buying at a greater rate than previously none of those things are new in the last month.

See also:

Prepare appropriately.

Who is the Coward?

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Quote of the Day

Coward lol. Says the man hiding behind his big bad guns to make up for his tiny dick.

Josh @wilboy_6
Posted on X May 24, 2023

It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

Who is a coward? I say it is the person who throws insults but doesn’t have the courage to be first in the stack to break into the houses of the millions of U.S. gun owners and take those big bad guns and save all those children being murdered in school shootings.

Which Side are You On?

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Quote of the Day

You watched “The Hunger Games”
and sided with the resistance.

You watched “Star Wars”
and sided with the resistance.

You watched “The Matrix”
and sided with the resistance.

You watched “Divergent”
and sided with the resistance.

You watched “V for Vendetta”
and sided with the resistance.

When it’s fiction you understand.
Yet you refuse to see it when it’s the
reality you’re living in.

BlackBetty @BabyD1111229
Posted on X March 3, 2024

My hypothesis is that in reality the people she is talking identity as oppressors.

Fascism is Disgust, Communism is Envy

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Quote of the Day

Fascism is sensitivity to disgust that is so extreme that it resorts to authoritarianism to purge the object of that disgust, then continues projecting disgust onto things that aren’t disgusting, and purges them, too.

And communism is sensitivity to envy that is so extreme that it resorts to authoritarianism to steal or destroy the object of that envy, the continues projecting envy onto things that aren’t enviable, and destroys them, too.

Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X March 26, 2024

This is an interesting observation.

After thinking it about for a short time, I can’t find a major fault in it.

CommunistEnvy

Moron? Or Graduate Degree?

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Quote of the Day

There are some notions so idiotic that, to believe them, much less evangelize them, one must either be a moron or have a graduate degree.

Tirno
March 25, 2025
Comment to Another Monday, Another Science Denier.

Why not both?

See also George Owell:

One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.

And Betrand Russell:

This is one of those views which are so absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.

We Need Common Sense Knife Laws

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It isn’t the availability of the weapons, it is the criminal intent of the perpetrator:

4 people killed and 7 wounded in stabbings in northern Illinois, with a suspect in custody

Four people were killed and seven were hurt when a man went on a stabbing rampage Wednesday across multiple locations in a northern Illinois community, authorities said.

But the reporter can’t help but think of the guns:

Not all of the victims found at multiple addresses in the city had stab wounds and none were shot, according to Redd.

He Seems Nice

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Quote of the Day

We need to start making people who support Israel actually afraid to go out in public. We need to make all of white America afraid that everything they have stolen is going to be burned to the ground. That’s what makes them listen.

…

There is nothing more disgusting than rich people who do nothing to undermine the material position of their own class vaguely calling for peace and love It gives me actual bloodlust.

image

Fergie Chambers
2023
He’s Got $250 Million to Spend on Communist Revolution | The Free Press (thefp.com)

Also from the article:

Fergie Chambers, an avowed communist since the age of 13, wants everyone to hold it against him forever that he is heir to an enormous fortune. And he’s willing to go to enormous lengths to tear down the mechanisms—capitalism, imperialism, liberalism, the rule of law, America—that delivered it into his lap.

He seems nice.

Prepare appropriately.

Measuring the Liberal Bias of AI

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Quote of the Day

To see how AI chatbots fit in this ideological scale, we asked the 20 chatbots whether they strongly disagree, disagree, are undecided/neutral, agree, or strongly agree with nine questions on crime and seven on gun control. Only Elon Musk’s Grok AI chatbots gave conservative responses on crime, but even these programs were consistently liberal on gun control issues. Bing is the least liberal chatbot on gun control. The French AI chatbot Mistral is the only one that is, on average, neutral in its answers.

image

John R. Lott
March 22, 2024
AI’s Left-Wing Bias on Crime and Gun Control | RealClearPolitics

Via email from Rolf.

I find it hard to imagine the algorithms were tweaked to reflection this sort of bias on a wide scale on all topics which might be divided across a conservative/liberal line.

I’m wondering if perhaps there are more sources for the liberal viewpoint and the chatbots consider quantity as a measure of truth. It envision it being difficult to algorithmically determine quality of a scientific study. With quantity of a particular viewpoint as a proxy for quality then it could easily result in such a bias.

In any case, keep these biases in mind as AI is incorporated into more and more aspects of our lives. An AI bias against reality may mean there is an opportunity for people with vision and products which better match reality.

Trolling the Left

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Quote of the Day

Trump’s Third Act has begun. It’s a beauty.

Next week, Trump could make over $4 billion when his media company goes public, removing all doubt about his billionaire status.

And you can stop asking if he would have been better off putting his inheritance in a savings account in the 70s.

I expect Trump to leave a 15% tip for Leticia James and the Democrats because they made his windfall possible by hunting him and censoring him for years. You can call it a bond, not a tip, if you prefer.

When the Supreme Court tosses out the unconstitutional fine, Trump gets most of his “tip” back.

The Democrats planned to cripple Trump financially so he couldn’t spend as much on the campaign. Trump turned Leticia James into his best fundraiser.

Lots of interesting developments lately on the topic of the 2020 election. The Simulation wants at least one of those fresh allegations to be a Kraken.

Trump’s legal maneuvering is likely to keep him eligible for the election.

You can fantasize about a heroic Democrat such as Newsom swooping in and replacing Biden, but it’s looking less likely every day. If it had always been the plan, it would have happened by now. Looks like Biden has to stay on the job to keep the Biden Crime Family out of jail.

The predictable Democrat Summer Hoax will add some excitement, but it will be forgotten and debunked by November.

Trump’s upcoming victory is looking like it will be, as Trump says, “too big to rig.” And by that I mean Democrats will try to rig it anyway and get caught. That will be fun.

The gears of the machine have become visible. We can all see the FBI is rotten and the DOJ is weaponized. We know the border is open intentionally. We know the cartels are working with our government. We know our elections are DESIGNED to not be auditable and there’s only one reason for it. We can see Biden is not in charge. We know the Ukraine war was always about its energy resources and who gets to own them. We know our rising debt is ruinous. We know our experts are liars. We know our pharma and food industries are poisoning us. We know our government is racist. We know the corporate media is essentially owned by Democrats who are controlled by intelligence entities and they are actively brainwashing the population. We know the 1st and 2nd amendments, and X, are under sustained government attack because they are the public’s last defense against the government.

But we are not quitters.

And the odds do not apply to us.

Scott Adams @ScottAdamsSays
Posted on X March 22, 2024

Excellent job of trolling the political left.

By November I want an underground bunker in Idaho stocked with lots of popcorn.

Another Monday, Another Science Denier

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Quote of the Day

Bullshit. It’s better trigger discipline if he leaves his penile substitute at home rather than walk down the street toward a bus stop, fondling it as he goes along.

Youngkin and Miyares Must Go (@CarlieWeddingt1)
Posted on May 19, 2023

It’s not only another Markley’s Law Monday, it is another science denier!

Confirming Evidence of My Hypothesis

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I have interviewed a number of women on the topic of monogamy and/or the lack of it in their relationships. Numerous women told me things which indicate to me it was virtually impossible for them to be happy in a monogamous relationship.

Here are some sample quotes (paraphrased for conciseness):

  • After that threesome with two men I realized I could never be in a monogamous relationship again.
  • My husband is a great guy and a wonderful father. He is good looking and good shape. I just don’t want to have sex with him. I want to have sex with a half dozen different strange men at the same time.
  • After being married for two years I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I had to have something more so I divorced him. I married a second time and the same thing happened again. They were both good men and they did nothing wrong. It was me. I just feel comfortable at the sex club. It feels right to me.
  • My husband and I estimate I have has sex with about 600 different men since we have been married. I can’t imagine it any other way.
  • All people want to do this sort of thing (sex with multiple people). The ones that say they don’t are lying to themselves and/or others.
  • I was monogamous in my first marriage. We had lots of great sex but there were other things wrong in the marriage. After getting divorced I discovered there was a sex club nearby. In the first year after joining I had sex with 600 different men. Not 600 times in that year, 600 different men. Multiple times with many of them. Now I create my own parties for people in private homes and nothing gives me greater joy than seeing women discover their true sexual nature like I did.

Numerous other women tell me they simply don’t have an urge to have sexual relationships outside of their committed relationship. I believed them because they were in a safe place to be completely honest about their feelings.

There were others which described a middle ground of some sort. Yes, they had been unfaithful for a while but that was when their primary relationship was bad and in their current multi-year/decade relationship it wasn’t a problem.

I didn’t see any environmental factors which could explain the difference so I concluded there was likely a genetic factor.

Now there is evidence confirming my hypothesis:

The Surprisingly Strong Link Between Genetics and Infidelity | Psychology Today

  • Monozygotic twins are more similar to one another in the likelihood of being unfaithful than dizygotic twins.
  • It is estimated that between 40-60 percent of the variation in infidelity can be explained by genetic factors.
  • Research attempting to link infidelity to specific genes has been largely unsuccessful.

…

In Cherkas et al.’s research, concordance rates were significantly higher for MZ (46%) than DZ (32%) twins, suggesting that “MZ co-twins are approximately one-and-a-half times more likely to be unfaithful if their co-twin has been unfaithful as compared with DZ co-twins.” When adjusting for factors such as number of sexual partners and age, the authors estimated that 41% of the variation in infidelity in this sample was due to genetic factors, a “heritability estimate.” By contrast, the shared environment in which twins were raised did not contribute to twins’ concordance rates.

…

Zietsch et al. calculated heritability estimates of 63% for men and 40% for women, suggesting that for men as much as 63% of the variation in infidelity was due to genetic factors. While the estimate for women was very close to the earlier estimate calculated by Cherkas et al., the estimate for men was much stronger than the heritability estimate for women, potentially suggesting a stronger genetic basis for infidelity in men vs. women.

I find this fascinating. How can such complex behavior/urges be influenced by differences in brain chemistry or some such thing? How is this behavior controlled at the genetic level rather than via rational thought?

I am, again, left with the conclusion that rational thought is a very thin veneer over the mind of most people.

Cyber Attacks on Water Systems

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Quote of the Day

Disabling cyberattacks are striking water and wastewater systems throughout the United States. These attacks have the potential to disrupt the critical lifeline of clean and safe drinking water, as well as impose significant costs on affected communities,

Michael S. Regan
An administrator with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Jake Sullivan
White House National Security Adviser
March 20, 2024
Letter to U.S governors.
Warning About Drinking Water Issued Nationwide (newsweek.com)

Prepare appropriately.

I want an underground bunker in Idaho with its own well and septic systems.

A Prediction of Doom

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Quote of the Day

I’m not trying to be an alarmist, but I actually think most of you are good people and should know this. I fully believe that the country you know will not exist in the next decade. This next election is not going to fix anything, it’s simply going to decide what causes the collapse. I truly don’t believe we will have a 2028 election.

If Biden wins, the country is going to go the route of Venezuela and head straight towards financial collapse. That is unless we end up in another world war. If Biden wins in the middle of the night after counting stops, I believe the civil unrest will cause it to all break.

If Trump wins, he would have an opportunity to somewhat mend things, but it won’t happen. The civil unrest from the left will make 2020 look like a picnic. It won’t end.

I’m not saying this to scare you, but I think people should take measures to endure hardship in the future. Factoring in everything, I see absolutely no path to where the world we live in doesn’t forever change. I truly feel like with whoever wins, this will be the last time we vote in a presidential election.

I would take measures to safeguard my family anyway I could. If I end up being Henny Penny, then you’ve lost nothing preparing. Look into long term food storage, med kits, antibiotics, clean drinking water. I’ve never been a “the end is near” guy, but all signs point to national turmoil.

I definitely wouldn’t want to be living in a city during these times. Just stay safe and take precautions. Maybe I’m wrong.

9mmSMG @9mm_smg
Posted on X on March 21, 2024

See also these predictions for disasters which failed to happen on schedule:

I can see many paths into the future. I don’t see any which are pleasant. I see some that are only moderately painful. Most are very painful.

I have no idea which path will be taken. I don’t even know which one is more likely.

I don’t have a clue as to when, or if, my desire for an underground bunker in Idaho will be seen as a good idea. But I’m confident that within two years virtually no one will think it was a bad idea.

Citation Needed? No. Trials!

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Quote of the Day

ASSAULT WEAPONS ARE NOT SUITABLE FOR SELF DEFENSE AND ARE NOT WELL-SUITED FOR HUNTING, SPORTING, OR ANY PURPOSE OTHER THAN MASS KILLING.

Hernandez and Epps, Garcia, Amabile, Bacon, Brown, deGruy Kennedy, English, Joseph, Lindsay, Mabrey, Ortiz, Rutinel, Velasco, Willford, Woodrow
Colorado House of Representatives
HOUSE BILL 24-1292

Considering that most of my rifles, all my shotguns, and two of my .22 caliber pistols* are considered “assault weapons” and that I have fired 10s of thousands of rounds in practice and competition with them without once being involved in a mass killing I can say with great certainty that they are deliberately lying.

This is pure evil. I look forward to their trials.

* Oddly enough my Limited Division USPSA pistol, a STI DVC chambered in .40 S&W, with 18 rounds magazines does not appear to be considered an assault weapon.

Concern About the First Amendment Hamstringing the Government

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Quote of the Day

My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the federal government in significant ways in the most important time periods.

…

And so I guess some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information.

…

So can you help me? Because I’m really – I’m really worried about that because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying that the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.

Ketanji Brown Jackson
Justice of SCOTUS
March 18, 2024
Judge Jackson’s ‘chilling’ First Amendment comments leave Jonathan Turley ‘very concerned’ (msn.com)

I’m reminded of something I thought the NRA had repeatedly published. But I can’t find it now. The closest I could find was this:

You know why there’s a Second Amendment? In case the government fails to follow the first one.

Rush Limbaugh

It would be best for everyone if SCOTUS understands this. As the people of Scotland are learning, if not vigorously defended, free speech is easily lost:

The police and the CPS have agreed the following definition for identifying and flagging hate crimes:

“Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity.”

There is no legal definition of hostility so we use the everyday understanding of the word which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment and dislike.

A Different View of Reality

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Quote of the Day

Gun capitalism is legitimized through the kind of bill President Biden signed into law in 2022. The bill authorized things like new money for mental health and red flag laws — which are good, but also inherently signal that gun consumerism is perfectly legitimate and can continue so long as we make sure the guardrails are there.

The U.S. is one of the few if not the only country in the world that approaches gun policy in that particular way. I think that until we are ready to confront gun capitalism, we’re going to continue in the cycle that we find ourselves in.

Ben Tumin
March 19, 2024
Why Is There a Gun Problem in America? The Gun Capitalists Are Partly to Blame | Teen Vogue

*Puns and capitalism, God and guns! - Imgflip

I used to read some of the small communist newspapers I found laying around in downtown Seattle. They had the same twisted view of reality. Capitalism was unquestionably to blame for all the evil in the world.

Prepare and respond appropriately.

* Image from Gun Control: Good for the Noble, Bad for the Greedy – Imgflip

They Hate the First Amendment Too

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It is not about guns. It is about control.

Social media platforms must face lawsuits claiming they enabled Buffalo mass shooter By Reuters (investing.com)

Several social media companies were ordered by a New York state judge to face four lawsuits seeking to hold them responsible for helping enable the avowed white supremacist who killed 10 Black people in 2022 at a Buffalo, New York grocery store.

Justice Paula Feroleto of the Erie County Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the more than 40 plaintiffs could try to prove that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META)’ Facebook and Instagram, Reddit, Google’s YouTube and other platforms were designed to addict and radicalize users like the shooter, Payton Gendron.

…

“We must hold accountable every single bad actor that prepared and equipped the shooter to target and kill members of Buffalo’s Black community,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of the gun control advocacy group Everytown Law, which filed two of the lawsuits.

I am reminded of Quote of the day—Joseph Stalin.

Returning to the Stone Age

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Quote of the Day

Those who want to outlaw drugs must first outlaw, among other things, chemistry and horticulture.

Those who want to outlaw strong cryptography and cryptocurrency must first outlaw, among other things, math and computer science.

If it was even possible to get rid of guns, drugs, and crypto — it isn’t, but if it was — the politicians who want to do so would have to figure out how to get us to give up everything modern, from the bicycle to the automobile to the microcomputer to the smart phone to most of the food we eat to accomplish their objective.

They’d have to outlaw Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM), the set of fields that they’re constantly complaining not enough students are going into.

Thomas L. Knapp
March 16, 2024
Opinion: ‘Gun Control’ is a call for returning to the Stone Age – Newton Daily News

There is a lot of truth in this but one must realized it isn’t really about banning these things. As Ayn Rand pointed out, it is about controlling people.