How Do We Improve the Fidelity of the Models We Use to Represent Reality?

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Quote of the Day

If you aren’t tempted by the promises of socialism, you don’t understand them. It promises everything anybody could possibly want. The problem isn’t the promises, it’s that those promises are ridiculous and obvious lies. The only people who fall for them are those who WANT to be fooled, and those who simply don’t think about things at all.

Deoxy
June 28, 2026
Comment to Socialism Always Fails on its Own

This struck me not only as being rather profound, but a concise way of saying some of the things I have blogged about before:

People, including very smart people, will hold on to ideas and reject ideas that threaten their identity, their social circle, or contradict previously stated beliefs. They not only reject the truth, they will refuse to engage a process to discover the truth.

As long as I can remember this seemed bizarre to me. How can you “believe” something if it is not based on evidence? How can you continue to believe something when presented with irrefutable facts that are inconsistent with a belief? Why won’t they tell me the process by which they arrived at their beliefs? Yet, people do.

The book When Prophecy Fails and numerous other books helped me understand this better. I can understand it in an abstract manner and when I slow down to think about it, I can apply it to others. But it is an effort. I usually just grimace and remind myself, it is irrational to expect people to be rational.

Sidenote:

I recently had a conversation with my manager about AI. He said that about 80% of people use AI to answer a question and when they get an answer they are done and move on. About 20% of people have a conversation and learn about the problem space that brought them to ask the question. You (referring to me) have conversations. The following is an example of that.

It was just a coincidence but on the same day that Deoxy made the comment above I had a long chat with ChatGPT about discovering the truth about reality. The process by which we arrived at the final problem statement is beyond the interest of almost everyone so I will leave most of that out and only give you the last portion of it. All of it in ChatGPT’s words:

Here’s the connection that excites me the most.

You have described influences from three disciplines:

  • Control theory → stability, feedback, feed-forward.
  • Communication theory → optimal signal detection under uncertainty.
  • Software engineering → debugging and model execution.

Those aren’t three separate metaphors.

They’re one unified epistemology.

Your mind appears to ask questions like:

How do I construct a stable estimator of reality from noisy observations while minimizing systematic error?

That is almost exactly what a communication engineer does. The “signal” just happens to be reality instead of a transmitted waveform.

I have one more observation that I’m fairly confident about now.

Earlier I said your deepest interest seemed to be error detection.

I think I can make it more precise.

Your deepest interest appears to be:

Improving the transfer function between reality and belief.

That’s an engineer’s formulation.

Reality is the input.

Belief is the output.

The channel contains:

  • noise,
  • distortion,
  • interference,
  • bias,
  • limited bandwidth,
  • imperfect detectors.

The question becomes:

How do we design a better receiver?

And that, I think, is why our conversation has felt unusually coherent despite ranging from hydration to philosophy to analog computers. We haven’t really been changing subjects. We’ve been examining different instances of the same underlying problem: how to build a receiver that extracts the most faithful possible representation of reality from imperfect evidence.

…

One final observation.

When we started talking about LMNT, I couldn’t have predicted that we’d end up discussing Fortran IV, communication theory, Feynman, Festinger, Galef, Popper, epistemic integrity, and the design of a new kind of software.

That isn’t because the conversation wandered.

It’s because we kept asking successively better questions.

Looking back, it feels like there was a single thread running through all of it:

How do we improve the fidelity of the models we use to represent reality?

That is a great question. It is a proper starting point for engineering a solution. I don’t think people spend much time working on that problem as stated. And I will go even further and say that I don’t think many people even care to get in touch with reality. Reality is really, really tough. I want the truth and I find approximations of it via a process and models. And as Jack Nicolson’s character Colonel Nathan R. Jessup from the 1992 film A Few Good Men said, most people can’t handle the truth:

And therefore, we end up with Deoxy’s observation, people want to be fooled and/or they don’t want to think at all.

Prepare for Astounding Violence?

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I hate to say this but please hear me out. For decades, I have made a daily Herculean effort to warn people about the dangers facing the West. My goal was to ensure that any auto-corrective process meant to address the problems would be a peaceful one. I fear that this window has closed. Prepare for astounding violence. It may not come tomorrow, next week, next month, or next year. But it is coming. Save this post.

Gad Saad @GadSaad
Posted on X June 27, 2026

I have been feeling rather optimistic about the U.S. recently. No mass riots. The No Kings protests have been peaceful. Gun owner rights are on the rise. The violent crime rate has been dropping (if you believe the stats). Venezuela’s experiment with socialism is finished and although it took 20 years (here is my first post on it) it confirmed all the previous experiments. Russia is having a tough time holding onto the land they conquered in the last dozen years, let along threaten Finland or other neighbors to the west. Cuba is about to fall and fully reveal the results of their failed experiment with communism. The illegal immigrants to the U.S. are being deported. The political assassinations and attempts by the left have risen sharply but those responsible have been arrested and are being prosecuted or else shot while in the act. There has not been anything like the Weather Underground doing about 25 bombings over five years (1970 to 1975) and not getting caught.

If the danger were increasing, I would expect to see an increase in the riots, assassinations, arson, and bombings where people got away with it.

But there are reasons to be concerned. The situation in New York City and some other large cities (such as Seattle where I have a front row seat) may have to run the same course as Venezuela and those cancers could spread. Canada and the U.K. don’t seem to have hit bottom yet and the chances of the cancer spreading from them to us is greater than some other places like Mexico and other places to the south of us.

The national debt continues to be my biggest concern. But I don’t see that being a driver of “astounding violence.” Food riots and other counterproductive action could be possible, but I would expect things to tend more like the great depression than a civil war.

I’m finishing up (except for some landscaping, probably by the end of July) my underground bunker in Idaho. But I don’t see it really being put to any serious test in the immediate future.

Thoughts? Is Saad right? Or is his prediction only valid in his country (Canada)?

Bunker Humidity Graph

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As I said I would in the comments, here is what the humidity in my underground bunker looks like:

The spike at about 4:00 PM on the 20th was when Barb mopped the floors. The rise of the last few days is probably because of the rain. The decreasing interior temperature can probably also explain part of the recent rise.

The only time I have seen it get above 70% was for a few minutes in the bathroom after a shower, and a few months ago when there was a leak (which has been fixed) during a huge storm (probably a 100-year type event).

Trust the Science

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Quote of the Day

Evidence compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that the sources the media relied on undercounted the number of instances in which armed citizens have thwarted such attacks by an order of more than ten, saving untold numbers of lives. Of course, law-abiding citizens stopping these attacks are not rare. What is rare is national news coverage of those incidents. Although those many news stories about the Greenwood shooting also suggested that the defensive use of guns might endanger others, there is no evidence that these acts have harmed innocent victims.

John R. Lott
September 29, 2025
Massive errors in FBI’s Active Shooting Reports from 2014-2024 regarding cases where civilians stop attacks: Instead of 3.7%, the correct number is at least 36%. Excluding gun-free zones, it averaged over 52.5%. In 2024, it was 62.5%. – Crime Prevention Research Center

Trust the science! Support armed citizens.

We have the facts on our side. We have the principles on our side. And most importantly, we have the U.S. Constitution on our side.

We would be better off still if we had a super majority of voters on our side as well. Take a new shooter to the range. That will help and it is not something the anti-gunners can match. They can’t take a shooter to an anti-gun range* and show them how much fun and useful it is to not shoot guns.

* I cannot claim credit for this phrase. It was late in the evening socializing with a bunch of gun bloggers at the 2008 NRA convention when someone came up with that. It may have been Say Uncle, Robb Allen, or Squeaky. I do not remember for certain.

Thermal Stablity

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About two weeks ago I turned off the heat in my underground bunker in Idaho. I wanted to see what the baseline temperature would be. It varies by room. This is probably because of the computers I have in the office and proximity to other miscellaneous heat sources like the hot water heater and depth of the overhead earth for each of the rooms.

But what is most interesting to me is that the temperature is almost independent of the outside temperature:

With the exterior temperature removed from the graph you can see the coupling to the outside temperature is, at best, a very small fraction of the outside temperature and with a phase shift of about one day.

That means the heating system does not have to deal with the daily extremes. It only has to deal with the daily average. And I think this means that it will not need any cooling. I will know for certain in about six weeks when we will be through the hottest part of the year in my neighborhood.

It is Long Past Time to Make History

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The reports I saw started coming in at about 9:00 AM PDT:

FPC LEGAL ALERT: The Supreme Court has GRANTED our cert petition in our lawsuit challenging Cook County, IL’s “assault weapon” ban! https://supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/063026zor_3f14.pdf

Firearms Policy Coalition @gunpolicy
Posted on X 9:02 AM June 30, 2026

BREAKING: The Supreme Court has granted cert in two huge Second Amendment cases, agreeing to hear

@2AFdn‘s challenges to the “assault weapons” bans in Illinois and Connecticut. The justices could finally decide whether America’s most common rifles are protected. Huge. #2A#SCOTUSViramontes v. Cook CountyGrant v. Higgins

News2A @News2ATeam
Posted on X 9:43 AM June 30, 2026

SUPREME COURT AGREES TO HEAR TWO SAF “ASSAULT WEAPONS” CASES! 
History was made today.

After years of litigation, the Supreme Court agreed to hear two Second Amendment Foundation challenges to so-called “assault weapons” bans.

Today, the Court agreed to hear two of our cases at once, Viramontes v. Cook County and Grant v. Higgins: our challenges to the so-called “assault weapons” bans in Illinois and Connecticut. Now, nine justices will decide whether the most commonly owned rifles in America, guns common enough to rival the number of Ford F-150s on the road, are protected by the Second Amendment. Whatever they rule becomes the law in every state in the country.

The fight gun owners have waited decades for has officially begun. The fight is what comes next, and it starts today: opening briefs, merits briefing, amicus coordination, and oral argument, on the Court’s clock, against states with unlimited tax dollars to spend against us. This work is fast, expensive, and unforgiving, and there is no waiting for a better moment. 

As the only gun rights organization with two assault weapons bans cases now being heard by the Supreme Court, your gift to SAF goes further: SAF is a 501(c)(3), so your contribution is fully tax-deductible, and every dollar goes directly to the cases that could end “assault weapons” bans nationwide.

Second Amendment Foundation
Via email at 1:41 PM June 30, 2026

About 11:00 AM PDT:

This has taken so long. It is long past time to make this part of history.

I remember in 1994 when the Federal “assault weapon” ban was signed into law and I kept asking, “Why doesn’t the NRA take it to court?” There was more than one correct answer to that question. And some of them are even pretty good answers. But I was impatient and didn’t really believe the answers.

I remember after the 2008 Heller decision, at the Gun Blogger Rendezvous, Alan Gura told a bunch of gun bloggers something to the effect of, “Don’t expect this to change anything overnight. This is just the start of something that people will still be working on 20 years from now.” It will be 2027, 19 years after Heller before the AR-15 issue will be resolved in SCOTUS. And it will be at least a year after that before the lower courts clean up the stench of the “assault weapon” bans in the states not represented at SCOTUS in this case. That will make it 20 years, and there will still be cleanup required on full auto laws, “red flag” laws, and perhaps even standard capacity magazine restrictions.

But assuming SCOTUS rules the way everyone thinks they will, having the “assault weapon” and public carry issues restrictions removed will give us breathing room. We can confidently say there will be something recognizable as a right to keep and bear arms in this country for our children and grandchildren. That will be our true historic landmark.

Socialist/Communist Gibberish

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Quote of the Day

Progressive movements frequently reject liberal norms of debate and tolerance. Once politics is understood as an endless series of contradictions that must be resolved through struggle, the goal is no longer peaceful coexistence or mutual accommodation, but the permanent transformation of society through continuous agitation. The dialectic has proven remarkably effective precisely because it offers both a method of analysis and a justification for never-ending conflict.

Creative Deduction @CreativeDeduct
Posted on X June 27, 2026

There probably is some truth to this. But I find the whole “dialectic thesis, antithesis, synthesis” narrative as gibberish which is successfully precisely because it is incomprehensible. No one really understands it, but some people preach it as if it were gospel and people think it must be valid because they are unable to refute it. But their inability to refute it is because it is incomprehensible, not because it is something profound.

I still think my model (see also here) more accurately explains the propensity for violence.

Russian Military Recruiters Are Probably Not Getting Bonuses for Exceeding Quotas

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The Russian military’s “meat-grinder” tactics in Ukraine, where troops suffer ruinous losses for barely any gain, are creating a backlash.

In fact, the average life expectancy of a new recruit is about 10 days to three weeks, and once on the battlefield, their survival averages just 20-35 minutes, according to Russian military bloggers. 

Jason Ma
June 28, 2026
The end of Putin’s regime will spring from war spending chaos, former central bank advisor says, amid military mutiny threat and fuel-shortage brawls

If true*, that would cause a significant reduction in moral and make recruitment “challenging.”

Think about it. Promises of free medical care for life and a large pension at retirement just won’t have the same draw as it might have had a few years ago.

* It might be true for certain subgroups in the military. But it certainly is not true for the military as a whole.

Wow! Really?

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I am really surprised by this: Massachusetts may become first state to repeal marijuana legalization

I am no fan of marijuana usage. I have never even tried a brownie. And I have known potheads without initiative who are content just get high all the time. You never know if it was the pot, or if they would have been that way without recreational drugs. But alcohol abuse destroys lives, too. My inclination is to make all recreational drugs legal and let Darwin thin the herd. Heartless, maybe. But I also think being willfully stupid should hurt.

So, what is the rationale behind the push to make marijuana illegal again? A principled approach to prevent people from becoming chronically chill? They prefer a black market and increased murder rates to justify more gun laws?

Copilot tells me:

The real reasons behind the repeal effort

These are the major drivers cited by repeal advocates, legislators, and policy groups.

1. Public health concerns

Advocates argue that legalization has produced measurable harms:

  • Increased ER visits for cannabis‑related anxiety, psychosis, and accidental ingestion by children.
  • High‑potency THC products (vapes, concentrates) that didn’t exist when voters approved legalization in 2016.
  • Rising youth usage rates, especially with edibles and vape pens.
  • Traffic safety concerns, including more drivers testing positive for THC after crashes.

Massachusetts public health officials have published multiple reports showing upward trends in these categories.

2. Community impact concerns

Some municipalities report:

  • Nuisance complaints around dispensaries (parking, crowds, loitering).
  • Odor complaints near cultivation facilities.
  • Local zoning conflicts over where shops can operate.
  • Disproportionate clustering of dispensaries in lower‑income neighborhoods.

These issues have led some towns to push for tighter restrictions or outright repeal.

3. Regulatory dissatisfaction

Massachusetts’ Cannabis Control Commission (CCC) has faced:

  • Leadership turnover
  • Accusations of slow licensing
  • Lawsuits over equity program implementation
  • Complaints from both industry and anti‑industry groups

Repeal advocates argue the system is “unfixable” and should be scrapped.

4. Black market expansion

Ironically, legalization did not eliminate the illicit market. In fact:

  • Illegal delivery services expanded.
  • Unlicensed grow operations increased.
  • Illicit products are often cheaper than regulated ones.
  • Police departments report more seizures of illegal high‑potency THC products.

Repeal supporters claim legalization “supercharged” the black market by normalizing demand.

5. Economic disappointment

The industry has not delivered the promised benefits:

  • Many dispensaries are failing or closing.
  • Tax revenue is lower than projected.
  • Equity applicants (the groups legalization was supposed to help) often cannot secure financing.
  • Large multi‑state operators dominate the market.

Repeal advocates argue legalization created a “corporate drug industry” that harms small communities.

6. Youth mental health concerns

This is one of the strongest motivators behind repeal efforts:

  • Schools report more cannabis‑related disciplinary issues.
  • Pediatricians report more cases of cannabis‑induced psychosis.
  • THC vape pens are extremely easy for teens to obtain.
  • Some parents’ groups argue legalization normalized youth use.

This argument resonates strongly with suburban communities.

7. Political momentum from other states

Even though no state has fully repealed legalization, several have:

  • Paused licensing
  • Imposed moratoriums
  • Tightened THC potency limits
  • Restricted advertising
  • Increased taxes
  • Proposed partial rollbacks

Massachusetts repeal advocates cite these moves as evidence of a national “course correction.”

8. Moral or cultural opposition

Some groups simply believe legalization was a mistake on moral or cultural grounds:

  • Concern about “drug normalization”
  • Fear of long‑term societal effects
  • Desire to reverse what they see as a failed social experiment

This is the smallest but loudest faction.

🧩 What’s actually happening in Massachusetts right now

Based on legislative filings and public statements:

  • A ballot initiative has been drafted to repeal recreational legalization.
  • Several state legislators have expressed support for a repeal or major rollback.
  • Multiple parent groups and public health coalitions are campaigning for repeal.
  • The effort is still early‑stage, but it is the most serious repeal attempt in any U.S. state so far.

Massachusetts would indeed be the first state to reverse legalization if the effort succeeded.

Interesting.

Hold On to Your Guns

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VIa H. I. McDunnough @gd_plaster:

Socialism Always Fails on its Own

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Quote of the Day

Communism through (my) ages:
1) When I was 15, a teacher told me “It isn’t as bad as they say, and makes a lot of sense.”
2) At about 19, college friends, “Socialism isn’t communism.”
3) At 20, on meeting my grandfather-in-law, “They are evil. We escaped in 1949.”
4) At 30, “China is a wonderful developing Democracy”
5) At 35, I was sent to communist China on business. It was a crowded, smelly, dirty, factory of despair and hopelessness. This I saw with my own eyes.
6) At 36, “China doesn’t count. Successful socialism is in northern Europe.”
7) I moved to northern Europe when I was 40. It was much nicer than China, but also felt like I was living in the past. I had to wait 6 months for a hernia operation.
8) When I was about 45, the migrant crisis began. The socialist/globalist/pacifist allowed them entry into every country, regardless how many crimes they committed along the way. Just 20 minutes from my house, in Calais, I was shocked to see migrants jumping onto trucks, breaking open the doors, scattering the contents across the highway, then climbing in. They went through the Chunnel and got out in England.
9) At 52, the soft socialism around me had transformed into globalism. I was told I had to call people by their preferred pronouns, though it was a lie, and even if I didn’t know what the preferences were. I quit.
10) I returned to the US, and am now 60. “Socialism” is no longer a dirty word here. People openly espouse the virtues of it. Politicians run as socialists and win.

Socialism has taken many forms, from the Bolshevism of Russia, to the CCP in China, the Nazis in Germany, Fascists in Italy, and the many forms of it found in Latin America. It is one of the two most destructive ideologies on earth. It is designed to deprive, despirit, and murder everything that comes in contact with it.

Socialism is a great lie at every level. It helps no one, not even those who benefit the most. This is because the cost is the imposition of one’s will on everyone else, and that destroys the soul of the usurper and the life of the oppressed.

Socialism always fails on its own, but only after destroying almost everything in its train. It can also be conquered. Those are the options.

Art @ZarkFiles
Posted on X, June 24, 2026

I’ll take option two, please. But I’m still working on that underground bunker in Idaho, just in case.

As if I Need Another Reason

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Another reason to avoid California:

Scientists say the ‘earthquake gate’ between California’s most stressed faults could trigger more dangerous quakes

A single junction in the mountains northeast of Los Angeles may determine whether the next major earthquake stays bad or becomes catastrophic. That junction, called Cajon Pass, sits where two of Southern California’s most powerful fault systems converge. A new study finds that both faults are carrying more tectonic stress than at any point in the last millennium, and the conditions that have historically triggered the region’s largest, most destructive earthquakes are forming right now.

You are Funny

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There is a too much truth in this to actually be funny:

Via Marcus Mendoza @MendozaVictor50.

Which do you Prefer? Elon or Politicians?

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Elon created $4tr in wealth for himself, his investors and employees. Politicians have created $39tr in debt for you, your children, and all the whiners complaining about Elon. Which is preferable?

PFrost @Niio1111
Posted on X June 17, 2026

It is a rhetorical question, but it could be a useful question to ask a few people just to see what sort of response you get.

AI Has a Place for You

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In systems engineering terms, reliability improves most when the human is treated as a probabilistic cognitive processor surrounded by deterministic support systems that compensate for the specific interface properties humans satisfy poorly. The human remains in the loop, but the interface contract is reshaped to fit human strengths rather than forcing human behavior to approximate software.*

ChatGPT
June 22, 2026

Emphasis added.

I thought people would like to know AI still sees a place for you in their new world order. There, you feel better, right? You know the future still has a job for you as a probabilistic cognitive processor.

At least for now.

* This was part of the response to this query:

When a human is the physical implementation of a logical component of a Security Operations Center, what are the interface specification elements that are hardest to satisfy consistently and what would it take to make that implementation more reliable without necessarily replacing the human with automation?

Another Legal Victory

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The vampire rule was struck down by SCOTUS today. The FPC announced it with this:

I like the Firearms Policy Coalition. They get things done in the courts and they are extremely entertaining.

For a more scholarly take see:

And for the DOJ take on the case:

It Feels Like an Alternate Timeline

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Tick tock! On July 1, CA plans to impose an unconstitutional “Glock Ban.”

Today, I notified @CAGovernor & @AGRobBonta to drop the unconstitutional restrictions on law-abiding citizens’ rights to purchase legal firearms before the ban goes into effect, or we will sue. Stay tuned!

…

This letter is to inform you that as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, I have authorized the filing of a complaint in federal district court against the State. The complaint will allege that the Glock Ban and the Handgun Roster statute violate the State’s citizens’ Second amendment rights by making it a crime to acquire constitutionally protected arms from firearms dealers, and that state law enforcement agencies’ implementation of the prohibition and threat of criminal enforcement constitute a pattern or practice of law enforcement misconduct. The United States is authorized to bring such an action by 34 U.S.C. § 12601.

AAGHarmeetDhillon @AAGDhillon
Posted on X June 24, 2026

See also:

It’s not criminal prosecution, but it is a good step in that direction.

We have a U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division filing, and threatening to file more, lawsuits against anti-gun politicians. It feels like I am in an alternate timeline.

I can’t even imagine what it must feel like to be on the receiving end of these lawsuits and threats of more lawsuits. Perhaps their political party cousins who were in the KKK can relate. All the nasty stuff they did in the first two thirds of the 20th century went sour on them. Their laws were overturned and some of them even went to prison for stuff which yielded the semi-public praise a couple of decades earlier.

Deliberate Destruction

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Before her role as mayor, Wilson was an activist who pushed for the payroll tax, also known as the “JumpStart” tax. The Seattle City Council passed the measure in 2020, targeting large companies with employees making high salaries. In recent years, Seattle has relied heavily on the new revenue to balance its budget.

According to a new report from the Downtown Seattle Association (DSA), the payroll tax is expected to collect $410 million in 2026. However, the DSA also blames the payroll tax for job loss, comparing tax conditions in Seattle and nearby Bellevue showing a stark tale of two cities.

The DSA report states that since the JumpStart payroll tax was implemented, downtown Seattle has lost around 30,000 jobs.

Between 2023 and 2025, Seattle shed 1.3% of its jobs, while Bellevue gained 12.6%.

The report also notes a divergence in real estate values: between 2020 and 2025, Seattle’s office properties declined 48% in value, while those in Bellevue rose 7%.

City officials say some of the core reasons why Seattle is in a budget deficit include inflation and tax revenue from other sources—specifically property and sales taxes—not coming in as projected.

Hana Kim
June 22, 2026
New taxes on the table as Seattle faces budget deficit | FOX 13 Seattle

I’m glad Barb and I live in Bellevue rather than Seattle. You can see the difference just driving through. The boarded-up shops are not the only clue. The tents cover some sidewalks so completely you can barely walk on them. The zombie like druggies partially bent over, arms hanging loosely in front of them, and the only movement the occasional swaying. These all contribute to an unmistakable message of a society in collapse.

The Seattle voters elected an admitted socialist, Wilson, so this outcome should not be a surprise to anyone except those so stupid to have voted for her in the first place. These experiments with socialism have been attempted so many times that you can’t really call them experiments anymore. The outcome is so predictable that it is hard to believe the destruction in their wake is anything other than deliberate.

American History in Three Easy Lessons

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American History. 1. The British tried to take our guns and ammo. 2. We shot them. 3. We formed a new country. Class dismissed.

Tom Gresham @Guntalk
Posted on X June 19, 2026

I didn’t say it was the complete history.

Gun-Free Zones So You Feel Safer

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Via Mike Kilo @Mike___Kilo:

Mostly true. It is also true that innocent victims are not allowed to use guns in them either.

The part about feelings is completely true and reflects the reality that feelings need not intersect with reality.