Category Archives: Quote of the Day

The Necessity of an Accurate Problem Statement

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Quote of the Day

If lifespan increases simply because one major disease is delayed, then longer survival does not automatically mean that aging itself has slowed. For example, an intervention that extends the lifespan of mice by delaying cancer is fundamentally different from one that slows the gradual decline of many body systems, even if both produce similar survival curves.

Genomic Press
March 13, 2026
Scientists Say Conquering Age-Related Diseases Could Dramatically Extend Human Life

When stated this way it is obviously true. One might be tempted to make light of this. But correctly expressing something obvious can be very difficult when no one has ever had the viewpoint from which the truth is obvious.

The article this QOTD came from is an example of something I have talked about before: The necessity of an accurate problem statement. You can call it a simple thing. But it may be a profound change in mindset which enables rapid progress toward a far better solution.

I would like to thank my engineering professors from several decades ago for this enlightenment. One of the first things taught in Engineering 101 was how to write an engineering report. And the first thing in a such a report was the problem statement. That problem statement was to be written before you took your slide rule out of its case or looked up the gain bandwidth product of the cool new operational amplifier you heard about a few days ago and were itching to find a use for.

This can be illustrated more simply with the adage, “Give a small boy a hammer, and he will find that everything he encounters needs pounding.” Technically, this tendency is a form of cognitive bias called Law of the instrument. Writing an accurate problem statement is one means to overcome this bias.

This simple thing can make a huge difference in every problem you need to solve. It is not limited to aging, gun owner rights, politics, interpersonal relationships, or engineering. First, think about what you are trying to solve, not how to make a solution work.

Mistakes we Both Make

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Quote of the Day

The mistake pro-2A people make is that we assume that if only we could explain how none of their proposed “solutions” would prevent crime they would stop trying to ban guns.

They fucking HATE you. They want you disarmed so that you can’t tell them “No.”

They must be defeated

Sean D Sorrentino @SorrentinoSean
Posted on X, March 16, 2026

This was in response to:

I have nothing to add.

Socialism is Bad

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If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.

Walter E. Williams
May 1, 2015
American Contempt for Liberty

And you know what that leads to, right? Among other things a much lower productivity and standard of living for everyone without an “in” with the political leadership.

I was recently in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (see below) and will share pictures in a later blog post.

No Connection to Food

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Then you go to the grocery store, and it’s like 90% of the people are just in a pack. They don’t know. They have no connection to food at all. And so it’s very nice. You know, we were raised with it to know that thing that you took is gonna be your dinner meal.

Wyatt Russell
March 12, 2026
Kurt Russell offers ‘no apologies’ for traditional hunting lifestyle

As I have said before, seeing how food is grown and harvested on the farm is an alternate reality. The same applies to the harvesting of domestic animals and wild game. I work in an office overlooking part of a city. There are nearly 200 people in a large office each with huge computer screens each doing their part to prevent, track, and stop bad guys attempting to gain access to our nation’s critical infrastructure. I then visit the farm in Idaho and find the differences incredibly profound.

See also: Riley Green finds reality at home farming and hunting in Alabama over fame | Fox News.

A Lighter Topic for These Dark Times

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For heterosexuals, rates of infidelity are four times higher than the rate of open relationships. By contrast, for sexual minorities (with the exception of lesbians), rates of open relationships are higher than the rate of infidelity.

Justin Lehmiller @JustinLehmiller
Posted on X, March 7, 2026

See also Rates of Consensual and Nonconsensual Nonmonogamy Among Heterosexual, Gay, and Bisexual Adults – Sex and Psychology. This article gives us the numbers:

  • Overall prevalence of infidelity: about 8% of heterosexual participants, 14% of gay participants, 6% of lesbian participants, 18% of bisexual participants, and 6% of those who described “other” sexualities reported nonconsensual nonmonogamy (defined here as agreeing to be sexually exclusive with a partner, but one or both partners cheated or had an affair).
  • Overall prevalence of open relationships: 2% of heterosexual participants, 32% of gay participants, 5% of lesbian participants, 22% of bisexual participants, and 14% of those who reported “other” sexualities.

The way I initially read the post on X was that open relationships result in lower the rates of infidelity. But reading the article I find that even with a higher prevalence open relationship as sort of a “safety valve” the infidelity rates are actually higher.

I’m not sure what to conclude about this other than, “That’s interesting.”

Is Your Opinion Irrelevant?

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If you don’t own a rifle, your opinion is mostly irrelevant.

Devon Eriksen @Devon_Eriksen_
Posted on X, August 14, 2024

There is a surprising amount of truth in this. This is particularly true in the political arena.

A Solidly, Aggressively Patient Threat

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I want the American people to understand that if it was not an imminent threat, it was a solidly, aggressively patient threat waiting to pounce at any moment to do great damage to American interests.

Nazee Moinian
March 11, 2026
Iranian-born scholar warns regime was an ‘aggressively patient threat waiting to pounce’ on America

The contribution of Iran to the U.S. war in Iraq in the 2000s was far beyond “patient” and “waiting.” I personally know servicemen killed and severely maimed by Iranian supplied weapons.

I don’t talk about work much for various reasons, but I will say that cyber-attacks from Iran on U.S. critical infrastructure are, for all intents and purposes, continuous. I cannot imagine the attacks are any less frequent on U.S. allies. The attacks have mixed success, but it only takes the right one to cause great harm.

Hence, Moinian is only wrong to the extent which she implies Iran had not yet done or attempted significant damage to U.S. interests.

When Vigorous Assertions are Their Native Language

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Peace is possible: through superior firepower and willingness to use it in the most devastating and efficient (and sparing) way achievable.

We should try that.

Sarah H. Hoyt
March 6, 2026
All We Are Saying Is Give Peas A Chance – According To Hoyt

I never understood people who insist that in order to have peace we needed to disarm. Or the variation where they thought the Mutually Assured Destruction policy was insane. Whenever I tried to engage with people like this, they would either “prove their point” via vigorous assertion (raising their voice and repeating themselves) or go silent. I took the silent treatment as they had not really thought it through and were attempting to engage their brain when I asked them to explain how this worked. I was fine with this. But the vigorous assertion type annoys me. They are all emotion without no data or logic. Those types are a disgrace to humanity and a significant number of animal species.

As much as I dislike violence, I realize that sometimes it is the only way. Particularly with those “vigorous assertion” types. There are non-emotional types you need to worry about too. People can have faulty data or drastically different fundamental principles and arrive at conclusions which involve the elimination of “the rich”, “the poor”, “intellectuals”, “capitalists”, etc. But it seems at some point they, or at least their useful idiots, morph into a version of the “vigorous assertion” class.

If they get themselves worked up into a high enough emotional state, they become physically violent. And with enough numbers they become genocidal.

You can only communicate with these in their native language such that they truly understand. And there are very few more vigorous assertions they understand better than bullets and bombs.

Run Away! Run Away!

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I was invited to do a panel at La Verne University on Bruen.

State Senator Portantino, who pushed a ton of CA gun control bills, was also set to appear. I told them I was happy to do it, but didn’t want my presence to cause their higher profile invitees to drop out and ruin their event. They were confident they wouldn’t, so I agreed.

Portantino dropped out last minute, appearing only for a few minutes on Zoom and taking no questions. Another gun control professor also dropped out. So it was just me, a pro gun prof, and a middle of the road guy.

I torched Portantino as a coward and rebutted every point he asserted.

Antigunners are, generally, cowards.

Kostas Moros @MorosKostas
Posted on X, March 6, 2026

I’m not certain I call it cowardice if you know you will get slaughtered and cause damage to your cause in the process.

There is a lot of evidence to support the claim this behavior is common. They know they cannot win on legal, principle, or practical grounds. They can only win on lies, deception, and emotional manipulation. They are evil.

Ages of Mass Shooters

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Mass shooters in the U.S. range in age from 11 to 72. Twenty-year-olds committed more mass shootings and injured more people than any other age group from 1966 to 2024.

Twenty-eight-year-olds committed more mass shootings than any other age group, but the deadliest mass shooting in history was committed by a 64-year-old man. Therefore, there is no apparent direct link between the number of victims and the perpetrator’s age.

Cassandra McBride
March 6, 2026
Average Age of Mass Shooters in the U.S. (Updated 2026)

Note that in the first sentence “Twenty-year-olds” refers to people in their twenties, not just people who are 20 years old.

There is more to the story at the link if you are interested. But the bottom line for my intended use is that prohibiting people between 18 and 20 (inclusive) years old from purchasing a gun is not justified from a practical standpoint of reducing mass shootings even if such a ban could pass constitutional or philosophical barriers.

Rationalization of a Poor Situation

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Beyond the links to sexual satisfaction and positive emotional reactions, research indicates more complicated findings surrounding women’s feelings about orgasm. When women are asked directly about the role orgasm plays in their lives, women often explicitly state that they do not care whether or not they orgasm. However, indirectly, another story emerges. Women who orgasm are much more satisfied with encounters than those who do not. Indeed, women are five times more likely to enjoy a sexual encounter if they orgasmed during the experience. In sum, orgasm is strongly related to sexual satisfaction, even though women indicate it is not important for them.

A great deal of this incoherence may be explained when considering expectations and the importance women attribute to their own orgasms. Regarding orgasms as relevant for one’s sexual well-being was found to be one of the strongest predictors of orgasm frequency. So, in turn, the relationship may be simple: if I experience orgasm then I expect orgasm, and if I expect orgasm, it becomes more relevant for my sexual satisfaction, desire and pleasure. This implies that orgasms are not irrelevant for female sexual well-being, but rather the lower frequency of their occurrence may lead women to alter their expectations, and say that they are fully satisfied even if they orgasm “only” 60% of the time.

Marie-Feline Dienberg, Tanja Oschatz, Jennifer L. Piemonte & Verena Klein
August 17, 2023
Women’s Orgasm and Its Relationship with Sexual Satisfaction and Well-being | Current Sexual Health Reports | Springer Nature Link

Via Peri-orgasmic phenomena: Why some laugh, cry during climaxing (side note from my own related survey: one woman told me her nose itches uncontrollably after she has an orgasm. Another woman said the “Oh god!” cries were uncontrollable because “It feels so good I think I’m going to die.”).

For me, most of the paper was “blah, blah, blah <nothing really new, did you need to write a paper on this?>.” But the information above was new and interesting to me. But it does make sense from a broader psychological perspective.

People rationalize their situation. People without much money will tell themselves and others, “Money can’t buy happiness/love/etc.” Or, the old adage, “I felt sorry for myself when I did not have shoes until I met a man with no feet.” Or the ancient Aesop’s tale of the fox and the grapes.

And closer to my usual topics, people deprived of their inalienable right to keep and bear arms will claim they are safer without guns in the hands of private citizens, discounting or oblivious to the many genocides of unarmed citizens.

The Reason We are Facing this Moment

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You are angry about the present moment, but you are the one who voted for decades of executive overreach that allowed this regime to grow like a cancer.

You do not get to acquiesce to forty years of executive actions and suddenly discover constitutional outrage only when it fits your partisan narrative.

My heart breaks when I see the city I grew up in flames. But what breaks it even more is knowing that this suffering—borne by generations of Iranians, paid for by American blood and treasure—was compounded by years of your denial about what this regime is.

You cannot stabilize a government whose ideology requires bloodshed. And you cannot postpone confrontation forever without multiplying the eventual cost.

The world is not facing this moment because we finally acted.

The world is facing this moment because for decades many refused to acknowledge the true nature of the Islamic Republic regime.

Tahmineh Dehbozorgi @DeTahmineh
Posted on X, March 5, 2026

There are many people who still refuse to acknowledge the true nature of the Islamic Republic regime. Most of them seem to be affected by TDS. Such mental health cases are probably beyond help and there is no point in having a discussion with them.

There are reasons to consider in opposition to the moral necessity case which I think is well proven as in above.

A more principled opposition would be, the US Constitution does not grant our government the power to be the world’s policeman. Or a practical opposition would be our history of regime change for the last 80 years has been very poor. I keep wondering, was there something fundamentally different about how we handled Germany and Japan post WWII? Those were two extremely different bloodthirsty cultures and yet the U.S. helped them reconstruct their societies into productive and comparatively free nations. More recent efforts have been far from anything approaching satisfactory. Is it that we completely eliminated the toxic cultures in Japan and German? If so, then that may mean the eradication of Islam is required to enable the incubation of national neighbors fit for a civilized world.

This would be the most important acknowledgment of all yet to be realized and the reason we will face this moment again and again until we do realize it.

Gun Control Failure in Iran

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Iranian civilians certainly have a legitimate need to arm themselves. It is difficult to understand the horrors they face under the current Islamic regime. They can be arrested, jailed and tortured on mere suspicion. Their security forces can shoot them dead on the street for no reason without any fear of a legal response.

While a $440 Turkish-made Colt .45 doesn’t provide the firepower required to save its owner from dozens of Iranian security forces armed with AKs, at least it offers the owner the ability to take a few with them.

Lee Williams
March 5, 2026
Gun control in Iran was failing even before our first strike – Second Amendment Foundation

Imagine a world in which the Iranian people had all the firearms they wanted before the 1979 revolution. Even if the Shah had not seen the light and implemented needed reforms before the citizens took up arms to persuade him, having arms after the revolution would have enabled “second thoughts” on the nature of the revolution.

And, of course, having them now would make the removal of the current leadership much easier.

Sure, as pointed out by Williams, the black market is supplying a few arms to the oppressed citizens. But having plentiful ammo and especially open training and practice opportunities is vital to having the skills to confidently put those tools to work.

Krugman Test

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One shouldn’t exaggerate the economic fallout from this war. But it isn’t occurring in isolation: There are many stresses on our economy, and this could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back — a straw that becomes heavier the longer the war goes on. Furthermore, if Trump is this erratic now, what will he do as the midterms get even closer?

Paul Krugman
March 04, 2026
Reality Sets In on Trump’s New War – Paul Krugman

My general rule of thumb is if Krugman makes a prediction, then bet against whatever he said. Let this post be a marker to test my rule of thumb. I’ll add a post to go live in six months to see how his prediction turned out.

The Skynet Smile Has a Human Component

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Researchers at Australian start-up Cortical Labs have taught human neurons grown on a chip to play the classic Doom game. In 2021, they had already used 800,000 neurons to play Pong. Now, with four times fewer brain cells, they can play a much more complicated game.

But the wildest thing about it is probably the “Cortical Cloud,” an interface that allows developers to program the neurons using Python. Using this API, independent researcher Sean Cole was able to teach the cells to play Doom in about a week.

…

The technology making this possible is the CL-1, a “biological computer” chip. The biological component of the CL-1 system consists of human neurons derived from induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs). These cells, typically repurposed from adult skin or blood samples, are differentiated in a lab into functional cortical neurons. Once matured, approximately 200,000 of these living cells are integrated onto a high-density microelectrode array (HD-MEA), essentially creating a specialized silicon chip featuring thousands of interface points.

Mihai Andrei
March 2, 2026
200,000 living human brain cells just learned to play Doom and this is just the start of it

With only a two hundred thousand neurons Copilot says this is comparable to the CNS of:

A small crustacean (e.g., a copepod or amphipod) is the best biological analogue to a 200,000‑neuron system.

  • More complex than worms
  • Less complex than insects
  • Within the right order of magnitude
  • Capable of simple learning and coordinated movement

I could support a claim the ethical issues are nonexistent at this level. What about when it is comparable to a small mammal? Or a primate? A human? An order of magnitude larger than any mammal?

What will be the capabilities of a Cortical Cloud requiring a warehouse the size of a city block?

We live in interesting times.

Profoundly False

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I am convinced that war will begin and Iran will be at the center of that war. The problem is that Iran is much stronger than Ukraine or Palestine, and therefore a proxy war against Iran will have unpredictable consequences. Among these, the least unpredictable is the generalization of the war when China concludes that, with the defeat of Iran (which is very likely), it will no longer have access to the energy resources essential for its expansion. It should be borne in mind that China has just suffered a huge defeat in Venezuela and that Latin American countries are to China what Middle Eastern countries are to the US. Their loyalty stems from convenience and, moreover, they are under increasing US pressure to reduce their relations with China.

It is therefore very likely that World War III will begin. As I said, the signs are evident, but that does not mean it will not come as a surprise. Just as Cuba is the same as Gaza, but without bombs, World War III could begin with any weak link in US-EU-Israel imperialism. I suspect that this weak link is the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The war begins with the loss of economic power on a global scale and escalates with the collapse of dollar-based financial capital. Bombs can be used as causes or as consequences. The only way this will not happen is if the gold reserves that countries have been frantically accumulating prevent it. I highly doubt it.

Boaventura de Sousa Santos
March 2, 2026
World War III is about to begin

I quote Santos here not because I think he has something profoundly correct to say, but because I believe it to be profoundly false. Yes, there is a nonzero possibility of WWIII breaking out. But with the major military support lining up on one side of the current fight, I do not expect it to spread worldwide or major players to take what is almost certainly going to be the losing side. Sure, the U.S. having control over China’s oil supply will be a problem for them. But I don’t see China thinking that is justifiable cause for war. I expect the U.S. will use it for bargaining power in trade deals, not for the destruction of China. I expect Iranian oil to be flowing again in a few weeks to any country that is reasonably friendly to the West. Venezuelan oil is also going to be available to reasonably friendly countries. The U.S. is a net exporter of oil and to a certain extent the addition of oil on the world market will be bad for U.S. oil producers. Expect prices to drop in a few months as the conflict settles and the supply lines are reestablished.

As further evidence of Santos being out of touch here is his recipe for avoidance of WWIII:

Is there nothing we can do to prevent World War III?

Yes, there is.

1- An international petition asking UN Secretary-General António Guterres to resign immediately in view of the high probability of war and the UN’s inability to prevent it.

2- Take to the streets in defense of Cuba and Iran as we did in defense of Palestine.

3- Organize protests in front of the US and Israeli embassies and EU representations.

4- Considering that the most repugnant (though not the weakest) link in the US-EU-Israel triad is Israel, boycott Israel through the BDS movement.

He thinks protests change things. No, protests are for virtue signaling. Trade (or lack of it), diplomacy and physical force change things.

Persuasive Writing

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Scrolling through the internet, people remain really fucking stupid, are totally incapable of critical thinking, and they’re completely divorced from any sense of history.

So… Iran’s been fucking with us since I was born, has funded, trained, and enabled some of the most heinous assholes of the last several decades, destabilized an entire region of the Earth, and generally been total pricks.

Previous administrations going back to Jimmy Carter have had problems with the Iranians being total pricks who routinely do evil shit. Each of them did a little something, or nothing, or went full quisling sucked up and bribed them, but mostly they kicked the can down the road to be someone else’s problem for political expediency. Because due to the situation at those times there’d be no overthrowing the fanatics without getting into a protracted ground war that would result in lots of American casualties.

But today, due to a cascading series of current events, the situation has evolved and the American president most likely to say Fuck It YOLO, was presented the opportunity to dog walk this regime without invading. That hadn’t really been an option before.

This was all caused because one of Iran’s many proxy bands of terrorist dickheads flew their waxy terrorist wings too close to the sun and got their dicks blown off by pagers. As that escalated Iran decided to launch a shit ton of missiles which weren’t nearly as impressive as everyone was scared they would be, so then they lost a whole bunch of their leading boss assholes, and the whole world saw that Iranian air defenses were wishful thinking when some B2s buttfucked their impenetrable super bunker.

So then the populace of Iran got really uppity, because they’re sick of these religious fanatic death cultists too. Their asshole government then provided a demonstration of why we’re never ever giving up the 2nd Amendment here.

Except the FAFO president told them not to massacre all those people, and he was sick of their shit. This is the same guy who has made a rather impressive list of military operations that get in, fuck shit up, and then get out fast with minimal American casualties. This man is not George Bush. He does not have a Colin “You Break It You Buy It” Powell. Trump apparently does not seem to give a fuck about “nation building”, which works out because the American people do not want another twenty years of bullshit like Afghanistan or Iraq.

When given the opportunity to kill a ton of bad people, allowing the Iranian people to do the rest, and this opportunity has never come along before, of course Trump is going to go for it. And despite the screaming from the schizophrenic podcaster crowd of the griftosphere, most conservative Americans are very much of the attitude fuck Iran.

(of course libs are gonna lib, so get ready for a bunch of rainbow dipshits to march with Iranian flags next week)

Larry Correia
February 28, 2026
(20+) Larry Correia – Scrolling through the internet, people remain… | Facebook

Correia is an excellent writer and can be very persuasive. When confronted with someone with extraordinary persuasion skills I am immediately on guard. Is it reality they are explaining with exceptional clarity or are they selling a fiction?

After spending a fair about of time thinking about it, I’m inclined to believe Correia is correct as far as he goes. These clowns deserve every ton of high explosive persuasion they get.

I do have some concerns about what things are going to look like a year from now. Are the Iranian people going to be able to clean up the mess after the bombs and missiles stop raining? Will they try and then get machine gunned into hamburger as the military takes control? Will China see this as the most opportune time for “reunification”?

There are always tradeoffs and risk in whatever path chosen. I see the military action as morally justified. I don’t think it really should have been our responsibility to do it, but Israel couldn’t really do it on its own and no one else was stepping up to help them.

As is usual when violence is the correct course of action it is not a good thing. It is merely the least bad option available. I hope the U.S. made the correct tradeoffs.

An Appropriate Conclusion

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HAPPENING NOW! Israel bombed the building hosting the voting for the Iranian leadership succession AS THEY WERE VOTING! I guess that means they won’t be having any leadership for a while.

Who is the wise person who thought of all meeting in one place?

Houman David Hemmati, MD, PhD @houmanhemmati
Posted on X, March 3, 2026

If there were wise people in the group, they would not have a theocratic death cult for the leadership of a country. But the death cult getting put to death is appropriate conclusive end to situation. Will it be the end? Perhaps not. But it is going to make it more difficult to find hard line leadership. After all, how many levels of decapitation does it take before no one wants to be the head?

Via email from Paul K. who referenced BREAKING: Iran Supreme Council Bombed While Gathering to Choose New Leadership.

The System Absorbed the Hit, Now What?

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Khamenei is dead. Good.

But I have family in Iran. My dad is there right now. And I’m not celebrating yet. Here’s why.

Iran built the most layered contingency plan on Earth for this exact moment. Four levels of succession for every key position. Pre-authorized military strikes. Regional commanders who don’t need orders from Tehran to act.

As you read this, there is already a new Supreme Leader. We just don’t know who.

This isn’t Maduro. The government didn’t get overthrown. The system absorbed the hit. That’s what it was designed to do.

Every credible intel assessment says the same thing: a post-Khamenei Iran is more likely to get harder, not softer. More IRGC. More dangerous. Potentially worse for the Iranian people than Khamenei himself.

Don’t breathe yet. There’s a long way to go.

Iman Jalali @Stealx
Posted on X, February 28, 2026

Yes, with a death cult in control of Iran and knowing they are in an existential fight they are unlikely to give up easily. But that is not all there is to this story.

With posts like this indicating internal support for crushing the Iranian theocracy, three Gulf states preparing for combat against Iran, and verbal support from France, Germany, and the U.K. it would seem that Iran will be inclined to fold more quickly than some had anticipated. If true it will also narrow the opportunity window and reduce U.S. military munitions drain. This is important if we are to have credible support for Taiwan against action by China.

It is Good to Have Clarity

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As an Islamic theocracy, Iran serves as a role model for the Islamic world. And as a role model, we cannot capitulate.

Hamid Reza Taraghi
February 28, 2026
Why Iran resists giving up its nuclear program, even as Trump threatens strikes

The sponsor of terrorist activities for many decades considers itself the role model for the Islamic world? And that is ignoring the whole theocracy thing, the treatment of women, death to Jews, taxing of non-believers, death to protesters, mistreatment of women, and forced sexual transitions (or death) to homosexuals.

If they really are considered a role model in the Islamic world then that does not bode well for a civil relationship between the non-Islamic world and Islam. That makes certain decisions much easier.

Thank you Taraghi. It is good to have clarity.