Human Beings are NOT SANE

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Today’s topic addresses a pet peeve, which is how every single time some human-shaped monster attacks a school in America, the resulting commentary heavily features the line: “This never happens anywhere else!!” Really? Nowhere else? In no other country, in the entire world.

But here’s the linguistic game they play. Any time an incident involves a gun, it’s no longer a massacre. It’s a shooting. I insist on pushing back with that one. Of course they can say “it never happens elsewhere” if they make sure that it exclusively refers to only one specific type of massacre.

As for the argument that it makes the killing easier, therefore there will be more killings — that presumes some population of people who are a hair’s trigger away from killing everyone they see, but only stopped by the fact that they don’t have an “easy” way to do it. No, I argue that the important part is the line between “peace” and “killing”, and that once someone crosses that line, the weapon matters little.

Emma Hankins
October 17, 2025
guest post by Emma Hankins – According To Hoyt

She gives several examples, including her childhood in China, which disprove the assertion that “This never happens anywhere else!!” And, more importantly she offers some suggestions to deal with the fact, “Human beings are NOT SANE as a general rule and sometimes insanity leads to serious problems.”

Intelligence is a Social Construct

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Believing this is even possible is about one step away from naziism. Intelligence is a social construct.

warrbo @warrbo
Posted on X, October 21, 2025

This was in response to this post:

I can see the potential risks of Eugenics but believing intelligence is a social construct is proof positive this person is an idiot.

I am increasingly of the opinion that if someone uses the phrase, “is a social construct” you can and should disregard everything such person says.

While I not as enthusiastic about this as Aella, I am far closer to her point of view than this warrbo character:

This is maybe the most exciting technical development we have right now

Aella @Aella_Girl
Posted on X, October 21, 2025

Useless Idiots

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Being out of actual new ideas, they’ve spent the last quarter century or so simply reflexively opposing anything a Republican President does. Bush and the Gulf War set them on the path of taking the side of the Muslim world.

And once they got on that tiger they had no choice but to keep riding it. Hope you are sitting down, but I’ll say that even Joe Biden must have been repulsed by the atrocities of October 7th. But by then he needed the Electoral Votes of Michigan more than he needed to have a soul.

Lost ’em both anyway.

Tacitus
October 18, 2025
The New Old Fashioned Hate – Chicago Boyz

I think I have posted something similar to this claim before. Democrats in this country reflexively opposes anything the Republicans say or do. This makes them vulnerable to manipulation and the current administration has been utilizing the vulnerability. It is not quite this simple but it illustrates the point, if President Trump says the sky is blue the Democrats feel morally obligated to claim it something other than blue.

This has led to President Trump claiming reasonable positions in the middle ground, such as trans women should not be competing with biological women in sports. And the Democrats lose several percentage points in the polls because they are compelled to oppose this position.

And what was the point of the “No Kings” protest? Did they think President Trump would change his behavior because of street protests? He got 312 electoral and 77,303,568 popular votes last year. Those are all that are important to him. The Democrats express all the emotional energy they can muster, and he just trolls them to urges them to even greater heights. Democrats believe they have accomplished something profound. Trump and his supporters get stomach aches from laughing so hard.

They are saying aliens in the country illegally are not criminals. They are shutting down the government to give free and/or subsidized healthcare to illegal aliens. Are they aware of the U.S. debt is approaching $38,000,000,000,000? Can’t they cut aid to criminals to help reduce that debt? More and more people are coming to believe they are deliberately trying to destroy this country.

I wish they would engage in a constructive debate. If they really tried, they probably could contribute some decent ideas and/or tweaks to the administration agenda that would be good for the country. But they cannot allow themselves to “collaborate with the enemy.”

It is no wonder they are polling at the lowest approval rating in decades. They have earned and continue to demonstrate their worthlessness nearly every day.

Sometimes I think they do not rise to the level of useful idiots. Perhaps, even, they cannot rise to that level. They are stuck at the level of useless idiots.

I Have a Mental Illness

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I have a mental illness that makes me think that people will change their minds if I present the correct arguments with the appropriate facts and data.

Pascal Anglehart @DemosKratosCA
Posted on X, October 17, 2025

I suffer from this too. I can sometimes overcome it for short periods of time, but it reoccurs in full force within a few hours.

It makes me want to just hole up in my underground bunker in Idaho and only come out for supplies, exercise, and grounds maintenance.

Schindler Factory Museum

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[On March 14, 1943] we found out that they were gathering a group of people that would be sent to the cemetery to dig a hole ( … ). There were 150 of us. We dug a hole that was several hundred metres long and few metres deep. After some time, flatbed carts began to arrive, loaded with the murdered people from ghetto B. The first few hundred of the killed were dressed, while the successive carriages were bringing along corpses that had already been undressed ( … ). The corpses were laid in the grave one by one, and when a whole layer had been laid, some soil was scattered around, and another layer of corpses followed ( … ). Some of the people were busy collecting the valuables found on the dead ones. The valuables were put into chests. Such was our 6-hour shift at the graveyard.

Jan Mischel
A clerk, aged 34
From an exhibit in the Schindler factory museum, October 4, 2025.

Earlier this month Barb and I went on an abbreviated WWII tour of Europe. The administration building of Schindler’s factory was our first stop after settling into our Airbnb.

From the same exhibit:

Our guide had numerous things to tell us I had not heard before. The following is my paraphrasing. We were not allowed to record the tour.

The Nazis regarded the Poles as subhumans as well as the Jews. We were all to be removed to make room for the classic Aryan Germany, tall, blonde, and blue eyed. They did not destroy Krakow as they did many other cities. In part this may have been because the Polish military did not defend Krakow. It was also a very nice city. The plans were to resettle the Aryan Germans to the city.

One thing that was different in Poland compared to the other conquered countries such as France. For example, in France, it was a death penalty if you were caught hiding a Jew. In Poland it was a death penalty if you were caught helping a Jew. Giving a Jew a glass of water or a slice of bread could result in you being killed. If a Jew was found hiding in a home or shop, everyone in the home or shop, even the current customers were murdered.

When the Germans took control, it was a death penalty to possess a gun or listen to the radio. They shut down the schools because Poles did not need an education to be slaves.

In the movie Schindler’s office was at the top of the stairs on the right. In real life it was in a different place.

The picture above is of the real office.

These are pictures of some of the Jews Schindler saved:

Schindler’s factory mostly made pots and pans for the military:

And Schindler:

After four years of occupation by the Germans Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union for 45 years. The Poles have some rather strong opinions about that. But other than the picture of Stalin, I will save that story for another day.

The Way to Victory is to Talk About Price

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The way to victory is to talk about price. You could talk about the planetary emergency and mitigation and adaptation, and you could throw in some environmental justice rhetoric, and by the time you’re done talking, people think you don’t care about them.

Brian Schatz
U.S. Senator from Hawaii
September 2025
Democrats Aren’t Talking Climate Any More

It is very telling that it is all about “victory”, not what is good for the people or the country.

I find it amusing that after decades of pushing what they admitted were higher priced ways of generating electricity they are now claiming “clean energy” is actually cheaper (from the same article):

“Sometimes our messaging in the Democratic Party — not great,” Sherrill said in a March interview. “For years we’ve said, ‘We need to move into clean power.’ And there’s almost been this understanding, ‘It’s going to cost you an arm and a leg, but if you’re a good person, you’ll do it.’ So now that we’re actually in that place that we promised — it was going to be cheaper than any other source of power — people are skeptical.”

They have this weird belief that if they say something is true then it is. They literally believe their own B.S.

Constitutional Rights Cannot be Redefined by Agency Decree

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The injunction is significant—not only for its immediate protection of NRA members but also for the precedent it sets in reining in agency overreach. Beyond striking down a single rule, the ruling reasserts a fundamental principle: that the power to make or change laws lies with Congress, not unelected bureaucrats.

For the firearm community, Butler v. Bondi is more than a courtroom win. It is a reaffirmation that the boundaries of federal power must be respected, and that constitutional rights cannot be redefined by agency decree.

Susanne Edward
October 13, 2025
Judges Rule Against Another Biden-Era Policy | An Official Journal Of The NRA

This is good, but it reminds me of something else I want the gun rights organizations to work on… How does anyone believe the 2nd Amendment allows restrictions on interstate sales of firearms? Why can’t someone in California legally buy a gun in Oregon or Nevada without it being shipped to a California FFL?

It is not that I think the interstate sales restrictions should be a higher priority than semi-auto rifle bans, standard capacity magazine bans, and the “sensitive places” B.S. But it should be on the radar.

Also, in an era of President Trump pushing the envelope with executive orders, this precedent will be interesting in its application to recent events.

Believe the Science

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The Left is admitting in surveys that they’re more politically violent. In Cygnal’s October national poll, 60% of young liberals said breaking the law is OK if you disagree with the government. And 41% of all liberals concurred. Only 14% of conservatives held this belief.

Brent Buchanan
Cygnal founder and pollster
October 16, 2025
Left greenlights political violence on eve of ‘No Kings’ revolts

It is in their nature (see also here).

I want my underground bunker in Idaho to be finished.

Power Over Principle

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They see this as a fight about how Democrats can start winning again, which makes it not merely tactical but also existential: Party officials, strategists, and activists have spent a year sifting through the wreckage of an election that was calamitous to the Democrats’ governing plans as well as their very understanding of themselves. And there is no shepherd to guide them. The party’s erstwhile leader, Joe Biden, is widely scorned. Harris, its would-be standard-bearer, is busy promoting a backward-looking volume of grievances.

Elaine Godfrey
October 14, 2025
The Democrats’ Heterodoxy Problem

As a libertarian/constitutionalist I’m always somewhat amused by a political party changing its policies. And here we have members of the Democrat party considering all policies up for revision as long as they can regain power:

“Permissive” isn’t a word you would use to describe Democrats over the past few years. The party has suffered from a perception that it has become intolerant of different perspectives and preoccupied with identity politics and language policing. Litmus tests aren’t just applied to gun policy, but to policies on LGBT rights, immigration enforcement, policing, and other matters.

But losing power has a way of shaking up party canon. And there are some signs that Democrats are ready to move past this era of ideological purity and rigidity.

I have my differences with Republicans, but the Democrats have been the sworn enemy of the Second Amendment for 60 years. To see them struggle with relevance, self-doubt, and even identity, invokes a fair amount of schadenfreude.

The Peace of the Dead

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Dozens have been killed in Gaza during violent fighting Sunday and within hours of the expected release of hostages in the war-torn region, according to local reports.

According to reports via Israeli outlet Ynet, the violence erupted when Hamas militants raided the neighborhood of Sabra in Gaza City, home to a clan called Doghmush, also known as the Al Doghmush family militia.

The report said the Hamas Interior Ministry had accused a militia of attacking its forces, while members of the Doghmush clan said Hamas had exploited the ceasefire to target them over alleged cooperation with Israel.

In total, Ynet reported 52 members of the Doghmush clan were killed and 12 Hamas militants were killed.

Emma Bussey, Efrat Lachter
October 12, 2025
Dozens killed in Gaza as violence erupts between Hamas and armed clans

One has to wonder, “Do these people know how to do anything other than kill people?”

This is from the “religion of peace.” I suspect the only peace they will ever see is the peace of the dead.

True Americans

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The true AMERICANS of Antifa, the justice warriors, are working hard to keep America SAFE from “nazis”. One Molotov cocktail and busted out storefront at a time. Today, they don’t wear all black. Today is the EMERGENCY Naked Bike Ride in PDX. Today, many an “anti-fascist” shows their ass.

Literally.

Lisa Carr
October 12, 2025
Antifa Thinks They Are The True Americans – Victory Girls Blog.

It is good to know that looting stores, throwing bombs, and beating people are the acts of “True Americans.” When someone takes their stuff, returns a Molotov cocktail, or beats the crap out of them for looting, they will know they have met a kindred spirit.

Democrats Accept Reality and Choose to Pretend it Does Not Exist

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In her recently released book about her presidential candidacy, former Vice President Kamala Harris admits that she, too, shares concerns: “I agree with the concerns expressed by parents and players that we have to take into account biological factors such as muscle mass and unfair student athletic advantage when we determine who plays on which teams, especially in contact sports.”

But she added, “There was no way I was going to go against my very nature and turn on transgender people.”

And there it is. Tension unmasked. When reality collides with allegiance, the Democrats choose allegiance.

Macy Petty
October 10, 2025
High-ranking Democrats admit to knowingly abandoning women

Determining what is real is tough. Accepting reality can be almost as tough. Ignoring reality after you have determined what is real and accepting that it is real is insane and/or evil. In this case I am going with “and”.

Fun for Headline Writers

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Wolford is gonna be so much fun for headline writers when the SCOTUS ruling is published.

“Supreme Court drives stake through the heart of Vampire Rule”

“Court majority throws holy water on gun control dreams”

“Garlic may keep away vampires, but Hawaii’s Vampire rule cannot keep away legal carry.”

Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X, October 6, 2025

If only the headline writers in legacy media could see the humor as clearly as we do. But they are becoming increasingly irrelevant, so I suppose it does not matter that much anyway.

Ideological Purity Only Works if Strongly Correlated with Reality

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Rapidly transforming the American public’s beliefs is a daunting task—all the more so if you dismiss their current values as unacceptable. The Democratic Party’s pragmatic wing has been pleading to broaden the tent, ideally before the Trump administration stamps out all opposition. The party’s progressives seem determined to reeducate the public rather than compromise for their votes. This is a seductive approach if the goal is ideological purity. It is a problem only if the party hopes to win elections.

Jonathan Chait
October 6, 2025
Democrats Still Have No Idea What Went Wrong

Ideological purity only works if the ideas have a strong correlation with reality. The problem Marxists have is that Marx’s ideas were found to be at odds with reality within a few years of him articulating them. His central concept, the labor theory of value, was rejected along with the incoherent fluff built upon that. He was a nobody until Lenin came along and concluded the incoherent fluff was actually genius.

Lenin brought Marx’s theories back from the dead, where they belonged, and laid the groundwork for the deaths of tens of millions in the Russia and U.S.S.R. As the Marxist infection spread worldwide over 100 million were murdered by their own governments. There have been hundreds of attempts to tweak the implementation of Marxist theory to create the promised utopia. While some of been far less deadly than others, the bottom line has always been that free markets and free minds outperform the Marx model of government.

Yet, 150 years after Marx’s ideas were first dropped into the dustbin, we have a major political party still trying to claim they have relevance. If they want to win elections (gain power) then they need to be at least somewhat content will a little power rather than a lot of power. They need to give up the authoritarian model of government. I suspect this is unacceptable to them and they would rather destroy the evidence they are wrong than accept the truth and exercise power within the confines of reality. The current government shutdown is only the most recent data point supporting this hypothesis.

Prepare appropriately.

Socialist’s Unquenchable Thirst for Power

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This is a painful lesson that a lot of us in the Palestine solidarity movement have been learning is that we don’t have power… what we don’t have is power… the question I’m asking myself, and I’m asking you to ask yourself, ‘is where can I actually build power?”

Eman Abdelhadi
Associate Professor of the University of Chicago’s Department of Comparative Human Development
At Socialism 2025, July 5, 2025
Far-left University of Chicago professor charged with violent felonies during anti-ICE riots in Broadview

As if you didn’t already know, socialists have an unquenchable thirst for power. And, of course, all Marxists know that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

I leave the remainder of this lesson as an exercise for the reader.

Please prepare appropriately.

Running on Fumes

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They’re [Democrats] not succeeding in persuading the American people that they’re up to a leadership role, which is why, after me being a Democrat for 60 or more years, I am now going to campaign very hard for the Republicans to maintain control of the House and the Senate. Not because I love the Republican agenda. It’s because I’m totally frightened if the Democrats were to gain control of either House. Who they would appoint as chair people? Who they would put in the position of inquisitors, and how they would deny rights to people, and how they would introduce a kind of McCarthyism that we haven’t seen since I was a college student in the 1950s?

Alan Dershowitz
October 7, 2025
‘I’m Totally Frightened’: Lifelong Democrat Dershowitz Says He’ll ‘Campaign Very Hard For Republicans’ In Midterms

When the Democrats have lost Dershowtiz, you know they are running on fumes.

We live in interesting times.

Substitute/Shortcut Method Used to Determine Truth from Falsity

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Make no mistake; we have a year before this country becomes a full-on autocracy, and democracy completely leaves us. And we’re looking at the election in 2026, and Donald Trump knows that in a free and fair election, he will lose. He will lose the House, the House will flip and will become in Democratic hands. There will be committee chairs who will be able to hold meetings, and this is the last thing he wants.

Don’t be surprised when polling booths are surrounded by American military in the guise of making sure that the elections are fair and that nobody is tampering with anything.

And when you see violence breaking out, which there’ll be protests, there’ll be inciting violence, there’ll be some violence, and they’ll keep that. Then you’ll see the commandeering of voting machines, ballot boxes to make sure that that election is secure. Well, what that means is that he will then commandeer the election.

Rob Reiner
October 5, 2025
Rob Reiner warns US has one year before becoming ‘full-on autocracy’ | Fox News

If Reiner were sharing his opinion on directing or acting someone might be able to learn something from him. But if he is offering his opinion on engineering, heart surgery, or politics you can be certain his prophecy is of zero, or negative, value.

In a perverse sort of way I find the psychology interesting.

It was in high school someone I knew told me something I thought was unlikely to be true. In attempted to convince me they pointed out how popular her source for the information was. This was incredibly confusing to me. How did the popularity of someone affect the truthfulness of something?

Later I saw it all around me. Adults with no hint of sarcasm or insincerity believed things based on the popularity of the person making an actual or implied claim of truth. If a politician said the cause of some bad situation was corporate greed, racism, or government regulation, people would believe it without evidence. If a sports figure had their picture on a cereal package, people would believe the contents of the box were empowered with special characteristics they would not have claimed the day before the picture was featured on the box. Toothpaste quality was judged by the teeth of the actress holding the box rather than the contents of the tube. In reality, the opinion of the next-door neighbors was probably just as valid.

People apparently have a hardwired propensity to believe a well-known figure. Evidence tends to be a hard sell in their struggle to discern reality. I get it that reality is hard. But wow! The substitute/shortcut methods used to determine truth from falsity are mind boggling messed up.

Accepting Reality

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Are we accepting the reality that we might already be at war, or are we still believing we are in control? We are allowing higher and higher levels of escalation with no proper answers.

If that continues, we need to expect a Pearl Harbor day for Europe, when the escalation will be so impossible to ignore that it will bring about a Western reawakening.

Instead of asking will we risk starting World War Three, the question is: will we risk stopping it?

Gabrielius Landsbergis
Former Lithuanian foreign minister
October 5, 2025
Europe is facing its ‘Pearl Harbor moment’

Accepting reality is almost as difficult as determining what reality is. And keep in mind that in war, truth is the first causality. Furthermore, people have a very strong tendency to believe what they want to believe.

So where does that leave us? If Russia really is intent in rolling up Eastern Europe to recover its lost glory from the peak of the Soviet bloc, then Western Europe will delay longer than they should have. If Russia really only wants Ukraine, then a case can be made that the path of least human suffering (after you add in the human cost on all sides of Western Europe going to war with Russia) is to let them have it unopposed.

The dilemma is that letting Russia have the Ukraine with even moderate support from the West runs a high risk of telling Russia they can get away with the roll up. Hence, even if they did not originally intend to roll up Eastern Europe, they will be incentivized by the inaction of the west to do what they had not planned to do. If the west does crank of the temperature dial on WWIII to HOT, then history will forever haunt us with the deaths of millions that might have lived if only we had listened to the appeasers.*

It is very nearly a lose-lose situation.

I think predictions are extremely difficult. Especially about the future. Think of it this way, you want to “accepting reality?” The problem is, no matter what reality you “accept” you change the reality.

Prepare appropriately for me means an underground bunker in Idaho.


* I forget who I was talking to recently who asserted that Russia will not attack a NATO country. Russia is close to being number two when they are only up against Ukraine. NATO, he asserted, would have a busy week, but Russia would cease to exist. Hence, there is no real downside for non-Ukrainians to let them have Ukraine.

You Are Infected with the Pro-Human Mind Virus

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The whole school of thought can sometimes feel like the ultimate revenge fantasy of disaffected smart kids, for whom the triumph of their AI proxies amounts to sweet victory over lesser mortals. Lanier suggested to me that some people in elite AI circles seemingly embraced the ideas of the Cheerful Apocalyptics because they grew up identifying with the nonbiological villains in science fiction movies, such as those of the Terminator and Matrix franchises. “Even if the AIs in those movies are kind of evil, they’re superior, and from their perspective, people are just a nuisance to be gotten rid of.”

Weizenbaum recognized this problem early on, denouncing the idea that “the machine becomes the measure of the human being.” In 1998 he told an interviewer, “I believe the essential common ground between National Socialism and the ideas of Hans Moravec lies in the degradation of the human and the fantasy of a perfect new man that must be created at all costs. At the end of this perfection, however, man is no longer there.”

Like some other radical doctrines, those of the Cheerful Apocalyptics amount to a closed system. If you resist belief, your views can be dismissed: either you’re infected with the pro-human mind virus or you’re biased by human arrogance. Fortunately for humankind, our biases in favor of our species would indeed be a powerful barrier to the acceptance of human extinction, provided that its proponents proclaim them in the open and not just at parties and salons and behind laboratory doors.

“Do we really want more of what we have now?” Moravec once asked. “More millennia of the same old human soap opera?” 

David A. Price
October 3, 2025
AI Apocalypse? No Problem.

If the book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All, is anywhere close to correct then that the attitude exposed above exists says our doom is sealed. I would have thought an existential threat to our species would be almost universally opposed. Only the a few nutcases such as those in the Human Extinction Movement or a Rainbow Six type plot might support an AI wiping out all of humanity. But there are people with power, money, and tremendous technological capability almost eager to see their “children” bury us and take over the planet with the rest of the solar system and the galaxy next on the list. One or more of those people or others in their cult will find a way to build it. It may take the form of a Dr. Evil in an African volcanic cave with a fusion reactor and an Internet connection to avoid an International ban on a super AI, but they have the resources to do that.

I cannot help but see the parallels between the National Socialist Workers Party of the 1930s dead set on creating a superhuman race and the present-day AI titans working to create their own version of a superhuman.

Prepare appropriately.

Terminator Says, “Make yourself human again.”

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That’s how most of the real world outside of the internet is. If you find yourself falling for the anger, go out in the real world and make yourself human again.

Arnold Schwarzenegger
September 18, 2025
Arnold Schwarzenegger shares honest view on why Charlie Kirk was killed

There are extremely few situations where you should make important decisions when you are in a highly emotional state.

I find it very telling that successful politicians are extremely skilled and practiced at creating highly emotional states. It is what political rallies are all about. And you can see them demonstrate this skill in all their speeches.

For me I find all political speech to be irritating. Show me a politician’s policy details. This is how to determine their worth or lack thereof.