Author Archives: Joe

Clickbait Predictions About Smartphones

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

I’m predicting that, by 2025, voicebots will become so prevalent, so powerful, and so useful in all areas of business and our personal lives that we won’t need smartphones anymore.

John Brandon
October 16, 2017
Why Smartphones Will Become Extinct by 2025 | Inc.com

I’m predicting Brandon’s prophecy will not come true.

My guess is that he did not use a lot of the apps in use by millions of other people. So many people use the cameras on their phone multiple times per day. They listen to music, podcasts, and audible books. They use them for GPS based location services. They use them for multifactor authentication. They use them for fitness tracking. They even use them for voice and video calls.

The multiple sensors in our smartphone cannot be easily replaced. The GPS and compass are used for navigation services. The accelerometer is used for fitness apps and bubble levels to exterior ballistics apps. The camera is used for the obvious picture, but also plant identification, text translation, and product identification by the Amazon app so you can buy “whatever that cool thing is.” The Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and even lower powered communication radios are used for accessories, sharing contact information, money transfer, and identification..

I think the article was clickbait. As is this similar prediction from last week: The End of the Smartphone Era Is Approaching (msn.com).

Smart phones are going to be around until the services they currently provide and even more amazing features are available via more direct connections to our brains.

Trust the Science!

Posted on by

Size Matters? Penis Dissatisfaction and Gun Ownership in America – PubMed (nih.gov)

In this study, we formally examine the association between penis size dissatisfaction and gun ownership in America. The primary hypothesis, derived from the psychosexual theory of gun ownership, asserts that men who are more dissatisfied with the size of their penises will be more likely to personally own guns. To test this hypothesis, we used data collected from the 2023 Masculinity, Sexual Health, and Politics (MSHAP) survey, a national probability sample of 1,840 men, and regression analyses to model personal gun ownership as a function of penis size dissatisfaction, experiences with penis enlargement, social desirability, masculinity, body mass, mental health, and a range of sociodemographic characteristics. We find that men who are more dissatisfied with the size of their penises are less likely to personally own guns across outcomes, including any gun ownership, military-style rifle ownership, and total number of guns owned. The inverse association between penis size dissatisfaction and gun ownership is linear; however, the association is weakest among men ages 60 and older. With these findings in mind, we failed to observe any differences in personal gun ownership between men who have and have not attempted penis enlargement. To our knowledge, this is the first study to formally examine the association between penis size and personal gun ownership in America. Our findings fail to support the psychosexual theory of gun ownership. Alternative theories are posited for the apparent inverse association between penis size dissatisfaction and personal gun ownership, including higher levels of testosterone and constructionist explanations.

Also, from the paper, this additional bit of irony:

Funding: The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The data collection for this study was supported by funding from Change The Ref, an organization that “uses urban art and nonviolent creative confrontation to expose the disastrous effects of the mass shooting pandemic.” Although Change The Ref holds a clear political stance with respect to the role of guns in society, this organization played no part in the planning or implementation of the study.

Yes, an anti-gun organization paid for this study.

And a final bit of irony is that there is more than one way to interpret the results of this study which I have not found mentioned anywhere. It could be that the gun owning men satisfied with their penis size are happy because they have successfully compensated for their small penis with gun ownership.

I was referred to this study by numerous people. Here are the ones I can recall. If someone else also brought it to my attention and I failed to give them credit, I apologize.

A Thin Veneer of Respectability

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

I’m sorry you feel you need an AR-15 to compensate for your tiny tadger. That’s rough.

Christina Zheng @Christilynw
Posted on X, May 30, 2024

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

I was referred to this by In Chains @InChainsInJail. Zheng then told me not to procreate. I suspect what she really meant was that she wants me dead, but even if she was just passing judgement on my fitness for parenthood, that she thinks she should be able to make a decision like that for others is very telling. Anti-gun people are tyrants with, at most, a thin veneer of respectability.

What Caliber for Four Inch Flying Venomous Spiders?

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

Giant, venomous flying spiders pose challenges for residents and local authorities. Fear and apprehension are natural responses to the sudden appearance of such unusual and intimidating creatures. Additionally, there are concerns about the potential for Joro spiders to harm humans, especially if they feel threatened.

…

The pest company described the spiders as “hard to miss,” as they have a leg span of up to 4 inches and “a vibrant yellow and black coloration.”

image

JESSICA A. BOTELHO
June 5, 2024
Joro Spider Invasion: Giant venomous flying spiders spreading across East Coast (komonews.com)

Assuming you don’t have a good pesticide and an airplane to deliver the chemicals, what caliber do you use when the sky is full of these things? I could see using a 12 gauge Saiga with LOTS of 12 or 18 round magazines loaded with #8 shot. Be sure to have the explosives laid in case you need to clear your escape route.

But, I’m thinking I want an underground bunker with supplies to last until the first freeze. Then a tractor to work under those on the ground and use the handheld wand on the farm sprayer to thin out those in the brush and trees.

Freedom is a Constant Struggle

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

The best way to tell whether someone wants to end American freedom for good is to check how angry he is about the separation of powers in our government. Anyone who says out loud he wishes he could disrupt the system of checks and balances that has prevented tyrannical government overreach for nearly 250 years, is showing that what he really wants is a dictatorship. Of course, they all believe that said dictatorship would be benign to them and vicious to their political opponents, forever. Always an apparatchik, never a kulak!

There’s something in the human psyche that longs for a king to follow. Perhaps it hearkens back to our prehistory, when our little tribe had one chieftain and we just did what he said. Perhaps it’s a subconscious desire to submit, to let someone else worry about the details. It’s a system that may work out okay for small, family-based groups, but it has never produced a nation that respects human rights.

Mo Rockwel
June 6, 2024
Anti-Gun Pols Try to Delegitimize Supreme Court before ’24 Elections – Freedom’s Lodge (freedomslodge.com)

While I think this is accurate and a great point, it is not just a desire for a king. As an alternative path to essentially the same thing, many believe a majority vote is sufficient for the creation of an enforceable law as well. As if 50+% voting to enslave the minority of a population is entirely reasonable.

As pointed out in the quote above the deeper truth is probably that people want someone else to take responsibility for most of their actions. In essence, they yearn to be slaves in return for a promise of the necessities of life. How else do you explain the persistent popularity of socialism and ultimately communism?

Whether it is a tribal leader, a king, or the “central committee”, “Someone” should decide what is best for all of society and force everyone to work together for “the greater good.” The problem is that while this was almost certainly true at the tribe level it does not scale as the group size grows into the thousands, millions, and billions. Religion and then governments came to replace the tribe and mostly solve the scale problems but these create new problems. Here are some hints of how these problems manifest themselves.

I further suspect that because of the evolutionary advantage this gave tribes over individuals it now has some genetic component that can only be overridden by a conscious application of rational thought and examination of historical data. This means there is a constant yearning for the “freedom” of no responsibility and the “comfort” of slavery.

Combine the masses yearning to be told what to do, a few claiming they were born to rule and you have the conditions for tyranny and justification for genocide.

Hence, freedom is a constant struggle.

Microsoft and Privacy

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

Microsoft has reaffirmed its ban on U.S. police departments from using generative AI for facial recognition through Azure OpenAI Service, the company’s fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI tech.

Language added Wednesday to the terms of service for Azure OpenAI Service more clearly prohibits integrations with Azure OpenAI Service from being used “by or for” police departments for facial recognition in the U.S., including integrations with OpenAI’s current — and possibly future — image-analyzing models.

A separate new bullet point covers “any law enforcement globally,” and explicitly bars the use of “real-time facial recognition technology” on mobile cameras, like body cameras and dashcams, to attempt to identify a person in “uncontrolled, in-the-wild” environments.

Kyle Wiggers
May 2, 2024
Microsoft bans US police departments from using enterprise AI tool for facial recognition | TechCrunch

It may be a “home town” bias since I worked for Microsoft for 10 years and my daughter has worked there for almost 20 years, but the culture I saw there and have read about since indicates Microsoft takes privacy a lot more seriously than other big tech companies.

One time my pushback on a privacy issue was ignored. My co-workers and manager acknowledged my points but felt it wasn’t all that important and the decision was beyond our control. I reluctantly made the requested changes. About a month later the word from much higher on the food change was to reverse those changes. And that is what happened without whimpering from anyone I knew.

Gun Rights Politics is Not a Spectator Sport

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

Gun rights politics — i.e., defending your Second Amendment — is not a spectator sport. The people determined to destroy your rights play dirty, because in their book the end justifies the means. When you are in a nasty fight, expect somebody to accuse you of hitting “below the belt.”

Your response can be a simple: “Well, I didn’t think there was anything down there I was going to hurt.”

Dave Workman
April 26, 2024
Confront The Lies (jpfo.org)

The end justify their lies. It is part of their culture.

Quarterly Debt Interest Payments of $1 Trillion

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

Dimon recently stated that stagflation was unavoidable for the United States. Therefore, he predicted that high inflation and unemployment would be a massive concern for the country. That is a dire statement, as the employment figures have been a stabilizing factor in the US economy amid its two-year inflation fight.

The pressure of these impending realities is only made more concerning with government spending continuing to grow. The US quarterly debt interest payment has recently surpassed the $1 trillion mark. That details the incredible global concern regarding the continued viability of the US dollar as a reserve asset.

Joshua Ramos
May 30, 2024
BRICS: JPMorgan Forecasts Unavoidable Crisis for the US Dollar (watcher.guru)

See also U.S. Reacts To BRICS De-Dollarization Agenda.

And don’t forget the country is adding $1 Trillion in Debt Every 100 Days as well.

We live in interesting times. Prepare appropriately.

It Will Not Be Gradual

Posted on by

Privately I have been talking about the collapse of the dollar since at least 2008. So much so that people sort of roll their eyes when I mention it these days. They don’t use these exact words, but it amounts to, “You have been saying this sort of thing for 15 or 20 years now and nothing has really changed. Why should anyone worry now?”

I have asked financial advisers if I am crazy thinking this is something to be concerned about. They don’t seem to think I’m crazy, but they never give me advice which would appear to take these concerns into account.

These concerns are why I watch the price of gold so closely. My hypothesis is that a rapid increase in gold price will be an indicator that “the end is near”. And my model is that once nearly “everyone” realizes the end is near the collapse will be scary fast, perhaps in weeks or days.

This may be another indicator:

BRICS: China Dumps The Largest US Treasuries in History

BRICS member China dumped a record number of US treasuries and agency debt bonds worth a staggering $53.3 billion. Historically, this is the largest sell-off initiated by China ever recorded and occurred during the first quarter of 2024.

…

China and other BRICS countries have been offloading US treasuries worth billions since 2022. The Communist country has a record of dumping the highest in the last two years. The development indicates that BRICS and other developing countries want to move away from owning US assets in their reserves.

The uncontrolled debt of $34.4 trillion is worrisome making BRICS rely on local currencies and not the dollar. In addition, even a close ally of the US, Belgium dumped $22 billion worth of treasuries during the same period. This shows that even European nations are beginning to distance themselves from the US economy, including selling off bonds and treasuries.

Prepare appropriately.

Why Do People Support Socialism?

Posted on by

Via Tamera on Gab:

image

While not entirely true, there is a lot of truth in this.

Bullet Wordcraft

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

Today the currency is in dollars. Soon it could be in bullets. With the threat being hyper-velocity instead of hyper-inflation.

MTHead
June 1, 2024
Comment to Hyper Inflation May Be Avoided.

It will take more to convince me this is plausible in the near future. But I like the wordcraft.

And I want an underground bunker in Idaho just in case.

Small Imagination and Narrow Mind

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

It’s not fear, it’s cock swinging when you don’t have the junk to swing.

SloneK. @king_sandirella
Posted on X on Jjune 21, 2023

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

They must have an exceptionally small imagination and narrow mind to believe those are the only two options to own and carry a gun. Especially, since one of the people in the picture is a woman.

U.S. Reacts To BRICS De-Dollarization Agenda

Posted on by
U.S. Reacts To BRICS De-Dollarization Agenda

The Feds Christopher Waller acknowledged that the BRICS de-dollarization campaign has grown bigger but has not affected the U.S. dollar. He explained that Americans need not worry as the U.S. dollar is still the world’s most traded currency for all transactions despite the de-dollarization threats.

This completely eases my concerns. We can trust whatever he says. We have nothing to worry about in regards to BRICS.

Censorship Warning

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

It is foolish and naive to believe that censorship will be “temporary” or “restricted.” Once a government succeeds in establishing a Ministry of Truth and dictating what can and cannot be said, it will inevitably use these powers to silence any genuine opposition. When governments arrogate to themselves the power to determine what is true and what is false, they open the door to tyranny. It is a slippery slope that leads inexorably to the suppression of dissent and the erosion of democracy. Until recently, this was a point of consensus among liberals and conservatives alike. It appears that is no longer the case.

Paulo Figueiredo
May 24, 2024
Lula’s Brazil: A Cautionary Tale For Free Speech In The West

Emphasis in the original.

Canada, England, and don’t forget: Joe Biden’s Disinformation Board Likened to Orwell’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ – Newsweek. See also: Quote of the day—Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke | The View From North Central Idaho.

And that doesn’t even count all the private “censorship” by Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, etc.. We are in some dark times.

Prepare appropriately.

Hyper Inflation May Be Avoided

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

This contrarian sees a strong consensus around the notion that hyper-inflation is the inevitable end-game of nation-states / central banks issuing fiat currencies, i.e. currencies that are not restrained by being pegged to tangible assets such as gold reserves. The temptation to issue (via “printing” or borrowing new currency into existence by selling sovereign bonds) more currency becomes irresistible to politicians and central bankers alike. as the means to mollify every constituency, from elites to the military to commoners dependent on state-funded bread and circuses.

This unrestrained creation of new money far in excess of the expansion of goods and services (i.e. the real economy) devalues the currency, as “all the new money chases too few goods and services.” Gresham’s law kicks in–bad money drives good money out of circulation–as precious metals, fine art, gemstones, etc. are hoarded and the depreciating currency is spent as fast as possible before its purchasing power declines even further.

The Cantillon Effect also kicks in: those closest to the spigot of new money get first dibs on converting the depreciating currency into tangible goods, leaving the non-elites to sweep up the “trickle-down” shreds left as the currency loses purchasing power daily.

The consensus holds that there is no way to stop this decay of purchasing power to near-zero, i.e. hyper-inflation, once it starts. As in a Greek tragedy, the fatal flaw of the protagonist–in this case, fiat currency–leads inevitably to its destruction.

In the real world, things having to do with money tend to occur because they benefit powerful interests. This leads us to ask of hyper-inflation: cui bono, to whose benefit? Exactly which powerful interests benefit when a currency’s purchasing power plummets to near-zero?

Charlies Hugh Smith
May 27, 2024
Of Two Minds – Is Hyper-Inflation that Destroys a Currency a “Solution”?

Emphasis in the original.

I found his alternate version of things may turn out intriguing. But as I read his post I became more and more concerned with the question, if things will go a different way because of the “powerful interests” will steer it to something to their advantage, then why has there ever been hyperinflation? Wouldn’t those “powerful interests” have taken those previous (except perhaps the first example of hyperinflation) instances down a different path?

Still, something other than hyperinflation as the reset button is something to consider and prepare for.

California’s New Tax on Gun is Based on Lies

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

As a professor who studies the economics of violence and illicit trades at the University of San Diego’s Kroc School of Peace Studies, I think this law could have important ramifications.

That agency, part of the Justice Department, is tasked with making American communities safer.

The ATF focuses on those products because, while legal, they can cause significant harm to society – in the form of drunken driving, for example, or cancer-causing addictions. They also have a common history: All have been associated with criminal organizations seeking to profit from illicit markets.

Alcohol and tobacco products are thus usually subject to state excise taxes. This policy is known as a “Pigouvian tax,” named after 20th-century British economist Arthur Pigou. By making a given product more expensive, such a tax leads people to buy less of it, reducing the harm to society while generating tax revenue that the state can theoretically use to offset those harms that still accrue.

California, for instance, imposes a US$2.87 excise tax on each pack of cigarettes. That tax is higher than the national average but much lower than New York’s $5.35 levy. California also imposed a vaping excise tax of 12.5% in 2021.

Of the three ATF product families, firearms have enjoyed an exemption from California excise taxes. Until now.

Topher L. McDougal
University of San Diego
May 28, 2024
California is about to tax guns more like alcohol and tobacco — and that could make a dent in gun violence (goodgoodgood.co)

Even if you want to ignore the unconstitutional taxing of a protected right, I find the following things very telling:

  • He claims the BATFE has the control of those products because of safety issues. This conveniently ignores the history of starting out under the Department of Treasury because it was all about the taxes on alcohol, tobacco,and NFA firearms.
  • If you read the source article, while tallying all the costs he ignores all the benefits of private firearm ownership.
  • He uses the total number of homicides as a cost while ignoring many of those homicides are justified. Which means each of those justified homicides represent one or more innocent lives saved.
  • He includes all suicides by firearm as a cost, which assumes none of them would have occurred if it had not been for the access to guns. I.E., he is assuming no other means of suicide would have been substituted in any of the cases.

In other words, he is lying by omission.

Of course he lied! You should not be surprised. It is part of their culture.

Good news!

Posted on by

Supreme Court Unanimously Rules for NRA in Free Speech Case | The Epoch Times

The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the National Rifle Association plausibly alleged that a former New York state official violated the First Amendment by pressuring insurance companies to cut ties with the gun rights organization.

“A government official can share her views freely and criticize particular beliefs, and she can do so forcefully in the hopes of persuading others to follow her lead,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in the majority opinion on May 30.

“In doing so, she can rely on the merits and force of her ideas, the strength of her convictions, and her ability to inspire others. What she cannot do, however, is use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression,” she added.

This isn’t the end of the game. This just means it goes back down to the lower court to go through the trial process.

Of Course They Lied

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

I spent an hour putting the data together. If I figured out that guns ownership has an insignificant effect on the murder rate then so did the researchers paid for by anti-gun billionaires. This data means that they knew. It means they lied to please the people who paid them.

Rob Morse
May 26, 2024
See for Yourself if Guns Cause Murder (jpfo.org)

Of course they lied! It is part of their culture.

Roll the Dice For All Humanity

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

So let’s keep sending messages to the stars. Now that we can finally say something to aliens, maybe they’ll be curious to converse with the creatures in this zoo.

John Tierney
May 24, 2024
Instapundit » Blog Archive » WHY ET WON’T WIPE US OUT: Humanity Shouldn’t Be Afraid to Say Hello to Aliens. I enjoyed the “3 Body

Read the whole thing and beware of the False Consensus Effect.

Saying, “Hello” to aliens may have wonderful results or cause the extermination of our species. I don’t even have a guess where on that continuum the dice will land. What I do know is that we cannot logically know the answer ahead of time. Any rationale you come up with will have the bias of assuming they are somewhat like us. This, almost for certain, is a false assumption. And even my assertion they are different could be wrong.

Still, I am willing to roll the dice. I am an optimist.

Revolutionary Honesty is Gone

Posted on by

Quote of the Day

I miss the 1970s sometimes. Not just the music. And the sex. And the drugs. I miss the terrorists. The old-school terrorists. Or, OK, maybe not the terrorists, but the revolutionaries who cheered on the terrorists.

I miss the clarity, and the honesty, of that era.

Maybe you’re too young to remember, but, back in the day, you didn’t get all this hemming and hawing about murdering civilians. The terrorists, and the revolutionaries who supported them, were not ashamed of murdering civilians. The Revolution demanded that they murder civilians. Murdering civilians was one of the fundamental strategies of the Revolution.

CJ Hopkins
May 22, 2024
Asymmetric Idiocy – Consent Factory, Inc.

The clarity and honesty has been abandoned because it doesn’t work all that well when you are attempting to sell Communism. They still need to murder lots of innocent people, but saying that up front hurts their sales pitch.