I'm reading the third book-- "Xenocide"-- in the "Ender's Game" series, and the author's incessant "white knighting" for, probably, his own real-life mother, through his fictitious character "Novinha" is absolutely maddening.

At age six, Andrew Wiggin was stripped from his sister-- who he loved as much as life itself-- and his parents, from his school, his classmates, and everything he'd ever known. He was then thrown into a military academy for the entirety of his childhood, where he was deliberately and systematically isolated and abused by his own teachers-- to the point where he was forced to brutally murder a classmate in self-defense, and was ultimately manipulated and tricked into destroying an entire alien species: total xenocide.

On the ACE test, that's like a 100 out of 10.

Meanwhile, young Novinho's parents died heroes-- they were even sainted by the Catholic Church-- curing a plague which saved the entire human population on her planet. Yeah, it sucks to have your parents taken from you-- but she wasn't brutalized and isolated: rather, she had an entire community to take care of her, and support her. Compared to what Ender went through, Novinha had a model childhood.

In "Xenocide", Andrew is using every fibrous ounce of his being to save not just the humans on the planet, and not just the piggies, and not just the hive queen, but the first-ever sentient computer program, in "Jane". In the process, one of his (loved) step-sons died, in the work of also trying to save everyone.

So does the woman Novinho double down with the man, Andrew and everyone else, using the death of her male son-- who courageously died on the front-lines a hero and a martyr-- as a motivator to finally solve all of these existential quandaries? Nope: she turns into a psychotic bitch, who leaves Andrew and abandons the whole effort.

And whose fault is it, according to the conversations the author writes into the supporting characters? Andrew's and the step-son's! It's the men's fault, that the woman is bat-shit crazy. "She had a rough childhood, it's not her fault she's a back-stabbing bitch!" And Andrew is broken up that he lost her-- he wants her back in his life!

Again, I'm sure there's a back-story in the author's own experience with his mother, and he's vicariously white knighting. It's a common pattern. Either way, if this book isn't the most "MGTOW" novel I've ever read, then I'd like for someone to show me a stronger example.

Remember my June post, where I hypothesized that Microsoft would flip Windows into just being a GNU/Linux distribution? Now I'm not the only one thinking along those lines.

Interestingly, he makes the identical arguments which I made: it costs lots of money to maintain but brings in less and less revenue, it's janky and buggy, they already offer a distribution for the cloud, GNU/Linux is already the leading OS on Azure by a wide margin, "cloud" is Microsoft's future anyway, and on and on it goes.

It's not the first time where I've wondered if my writing actually was read and mimicked by other authors. This site doesn't get a ton of traffic, but it gets plenty enough from nearly a dozen different countries-- so I know I have an audience out there, even if I don't know who is all in it.

The parallels between stuff like this and the "tax cattle" analogy are amazing: these "brainwave monitors" are exactly the kinds of harnesses a farmer would strap onto his cows to improve milk production.

The sounds of NFL culture. The sounds of Italian Serie A culture.

Say all you want about John DeFilippo's play calling these past few games-- yes, he's mentally on to his next job and isn't putting the effort in-- but Cousins had a shocking performance last night. He looked like me playing "NFL 2Kx" or "Madden", when I'm panicking: missing wide open players while staring down other, double-covered guys.

Here is one example. Incidentally, that was almost up there with the Mark Sanchez "butt fumble" in terms of dumbest actions I've seen an NFL quarterback execute. Another was the 4th and goal at the 1 yard line, where Cousins didn't see either Cook or Thielen for the easy touchdown, and instead forced the ball to Rudolph in traffic. Another was Diggs on a crossing route: Cousins instead waited too long, then had to force the ball-- once again, to Rudolph-- in the middle of the field, failing to pick up the first down. And those are just a few examples: if Cousins makes even two of the several plays in question, Vikings quite possibly win the game.

He also exhibited unfathomably poor pocket presence, for someone with his experience and physical talent levels. Pocket awareness is a weakness of his anyway, but it was magnified last night; I marveled at the play where he took a sack right up the middle, when he could have just side-stepped eighteen inches either left or right and gotten the pass off. The pressure was right in front of him-- how did he not notice it?

Going into the game, Cousins was 0-6 on "Monday Night Football". Now he's 0-7. I have to wonder if he just can't very well handle the pressure of a nationally televised audience. I think the coaches-- next season, this one is a wash-- need to scheme game plans to make things "easy" for Cousins, for big games: do their best to help him keep the game "in front" of him, so he can relax and feel in control.

I love how roughly eighty percent of video game stories involve "evil corporations" who "experiment" on their customers, with no reconciliation between that totally bizarre fiction, and the real-life need for companies to serve their customers, else they go out of business. I work for a massive corporation, and after just one or two mis-steps in the market, even they are struggling mightily for relevance.

The other aspect which makes these fictions funny is that, for every Marxist claim made in video games about businesses, I can point to a real life example-- from the Nazi State to the Japanese Imperials during WWII-- of where a government did exactly that thing! For instance: mind control experiments on living subjects, and the US government.

"But... but governments are held accountable by elections!" Nope.

During an election, people are given the choice between no more than two or three alternatives. One or more of those choices are utterly, idologically incompatible with their world view. So, they either don't vote at all, or vote "by default" for the only option which makes any sense. And even then, more often than not that singular "choice" is wildly incompatible with their beliefs, which is why you without-fail hear these widespread "I don't like any of the options" complaints. What's worse, the elected bureaucrat then appoints unelected people-- clerks, advisers, council members, judges, police, regulatory officials, and so on-- who do most or all of the law creation and enforcement heavy lifting.

In a purely abstract sense, the State represents the "will of the people". But in real-world terms, the correlation between peoples' wishes and the States actions is so tenuous as to sometimes be diametrically opposed. This is true in a Democratic Republic, a parliamentary setup, a Constitutional Monarchy, or any other system.

Governments are monopolies. Pure and simple. That's why they can get away with extorting protection money from millions of people, waging wars all over the globe involving trillion dollar armies, and doing cruel and inhuman experiments against living subjects.

Whereas with a private business, if people get sick of ketchup, they buy mustard. Or ranch dressing. Or sriracha. Or salsa. Ditto goes for anything on the market: there are near-infinite substitutes. And there is zero compulsion to choose one over the other; you just grab a different bottle off of the grocery store shelf, no questions asked. The second a company makes people unhappy, a small upstart knocks them off.

The past eighteen months' parallels between Lazio and Vikings-- the two sports teams I support-- are almost bizarre. Consider the following:

• Both teams have had inconsistent squad building, leading to great strengths-- Lazio's goal scoring, Vikings' defense-- to go along with crippling shortcomings: the former's inability to concentrate at the back, the latter's offensive line.


• Despite the potentially fatal flaws, both teams greatly overachieved last season by maximising their strengths, with Immobile's 40-some goals leading to Europa League quarterfinals plus a fifth place finish, and Vikings making a run deep into the playoffs compliments of one of the best third down defenses of all time.


• Both teams absolutely disintegrated two inches short of the finish line in a ten mile marathon: Lazio crushingly missed the Champions League spots, falling to pieces in the last ten minutes of the entire season; Vikings imploding in almost identical fashion one game away from the Big One.


• Despite having practically the identical squads this season-- even upgraded in fact with players like Milan Badelj and Kirk Cousins-- and still somehow hanging around "in the hunt", both teams look like completely disjointed shadows of last year's versions, totally unable to beat good opponents, while padding their records against the bad teams.


• Both sides have beloved coaches who have been around their respective games forever-- Simone Inzaghi, Mike Zimmer-- but whose honeymoon periods are beginning to end with the arrival of scrutiny and criticism.

What's next? For Lazio, they are still somehow levitating around the fourth position, and have the Europa League knockouts soon; for Vikings, they are floating around the last NFC wildcard spot, but really need a result against Seattle tonight.

Both teams' seasons are on the precipice, and given the amazing recent parallels, I wouldn't be surprised to see them both fall off the fence on the same side-- for better or worse!

Every so often, Henrietta revisits the original "Pokemon" anime series. This time, she was inspired by the suspiciously Switch game case-shaped present under the tree...

In any event, she watched an episode today where there is a trainer-- "AJ"-- who works his and his Pokemons' butts off, in special muscle-building suits, with carefully-mixed custom food recipes, up at the crack of dawn and working all day, and with the jointly-shared dream of becoming the best ever.

Ash gets there, all cocky-like, and gets his ass handed to him. He starts whining, "animal abuse!", and "you must have cheated!", and "your Pokemon are going to leave you once they see how nice I am to Pikachu!" Some stuff happens, and the episode's final message is delivered: "Stop being a pussy Ash, get your ass moving, and git gud!" And so, Ash befriends "AJ", learns, and becomes a better trainer for it.

So, in the 90s they still had things right. Can you imagine if this show was done today? First of all, Ash would be a "trans" who is actually female (like the voice actress), cis-Brock would be staring at men's butts instead of fawning over hot women, and episodes like this one would be replaced with conflict-free, PETA-approved participation ribbons.

Yes: even 90s children's television shows cause today's Left to run for their coloring books.

Remember my TAG model from 2013? For years I've thought that the Left-Right-- or "liberal" and "conservative"-- models were so ineffective at representing reality as to be almost useless. Here is a concrete example proving my point.

Tim Cook is nominally a West Coast "liberal"; he has a homosexual metropolitan social outlook, was in the tank for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and is a big environmentalist. And yet, in the video excerpt he is actively espousing overt, forceful censorship of people who question the current American societal pillar of fawning idolatry for sexual deviancy. Censorship is not a liberal value: it's a conservative one!

In fact, the whole Democratic party now represents the closed-minded conservative wing of American politics: they support the status quo establishment in Washington; they back the status-quo Fascist/Socialist "public-private cartel" model of economics; they enthusiastically endorse and spread the status quo American Imperialist propaganda, mocking and ridiculing anti-war sentiments; they are near militant supporters of Big Business tech companies; and having won the culture war, they are endorsing violent, Stasi-style suppression of anyone who questions the status quo societal norms and mores.

And in true turn-style fashion, the Republicans are now the open-minded liberals: they support classically liberal ideas such as free speech and near-or-absolute laissez-faire economics; they are actively questioning and protesting against the present values embedded in society; they are opposed to the Big Business tech companies; and they are vehemently anti-war, anti-centralization, and "down with the man" anti-establishment.

So tell me now: which is the "Left-wing" party, and which is the "Right-wing"? The traditional, dichotomous model is hopelessly confused.

I'm not even remotely racist: regular readers will remember the several times I've recounted the "When Obozo ran for President I didn't even notice on my own that he was black" story, so I won't bore with another retelling. But the fact is, I was raised absolutely color blind, and was that way well into my twenties.

But it's gotten to the point where every time I'm behind a black person in line at a store, it's some totally crazy combination of them not knowing what to buy, sitting there arguing about some pretend coupon they imagined in their heads but which doesn't exist, or something else which causes them to take four times longer than anyone else, just to get through a checkout line.

Sure enough, I hit up Leeann Chin for lunch today, and in front of me was a black guy with dreads, accompanied by a tall, fat white woman-- the type who is in the relationship for... the endowment; let's just leave it at that. I immediately thought, "Oh, great..." And sure enough, they sat there for minutes on end holding up the entire line trying to figure out what they wanted, arguing, asking about every last menu item, and so on. Then I got up there and order in like three seconds-- gee, that was tough.

After we're all done paying, I set my food down on a table so I could get my drink. As I'm filling up, the black guy got up and walked towards the counter. I turned around to make sure he didn't swipe my food as he went past, thinking "Man, am I turning into a racist? Hah!" But nope, my perception was validated! The guy asked the cashier for a container of sauce, then stole product off the counter as the worker had his back turned!

The worker saw it compliments of his peripheral vision, and had to shout at the guy three times-- "Hey, that cost money!"-- to get the fellow to acknowledge. Finally, in a reluctant "why are you inconveniencing me" kind of tone, the black guy responded-- while still not returning the merchandise to the counter-- "how much does it cost?" Meanwhile, I could hear the fat girl friend-- not the words, but the tone of her voice: annoyed, but not angry. What does that say about her, that she wouldn't dump someone who just attempted theft?

Black people like to complain about racism, and in the 1950s I think they had a great claim. But today it's their actions which cause otherwise color-blind people like me to watch their backs whenever black people are around. Or in the words of even Al Sharpton, "When I hear people behind me on the street at night, I'm relieved when I turn around and see that they're white." It makes me very sad, but the statistics and my own lived experiences don't lie.

This reads like a gold mine's worth of advice to modern-day companies.

I wish my employer would take up this approach-- specifically, the one about setting up a team completely outside of the current business, to rapidly iterate through ways to disrupt that business. I've argued long and often within my workplace to whomever would listen, for the company to do just that.

Instead, they are one of those "run by people who have been with the company for thirty years", and the business is built for "efficiency and predictability". As this author would anticipate then, this firm has been one of Minnesota's highest profile corporations to be in a perpetual state of struggle, for several years in a row now.

What's funny is that the executives acquired a hot, relatively new company in their market, with a West Coast-styled visionary CEO. Shortly after the sale went through, the guy gave the first-ever great speech I'd ever heard from a company leader. Almost immediately thereafter? The board "disappeared" him, relegating him to some meaningless desk job, until he left. They couldn't tolerate a speech, much less actual change.

On the other hand, perhaps this author's take is merely based on the ephemeral "late stage empire collapse" moment in which the world presently lives? Stuff like "don't own assets" is so far from what has been basic common sense, that this trend towards a "sharing" economy might be temporary.

"Valkyria Chronicles 4" has been a massive disappointment so far. I'm heading only into the third chapter, so hopefully it will pick up-- because to this point the game has been ninety percent tutorial prompts, and cut-scenes. Then when I do get to play, the difficulty is so low that it borders on absurd!

The game's structure and mechanics also feel really dated, and not in a good way: poor animation transitions, character running animations going while snagged on geometry, and even the menus smack of 2006. There is nothing present mechanically or technologically which couldn't have probably been done on the Gamecube.

That, and the series' writers are still hung up on pushing so-called "social justice" messages with the character designs. Thankfully, you can relegate those toxic deviants to the bench and so never have to use them again-- which was the very first thing I did, mercilessly banishing the ugly bald "feminist", and the creepy cross dresser with the baritone voice.

I've never been able to wrap my mind around the almost universally-expressed notion that a video game should be judged via a "number of hours divided by price of purchase" Excel equation. Weird! Especially because it's simultaneously espoused that "games are art". Those two views are totally incompatible.

When "Blade Runner" came out, did people walk out of the theater assessing the film with, "Let's see, the ticket cost me $7, and the film was two hours long..." Or when people bought and acclaimed "Moby Dick" in the 19th century, did they simply evaluate the book based on the ounces of gold by the number of pages?

It's just as bizarre to look at video games like that. In fact, I'd argue that the inverse is usually true: shorter games are usually better, because that means the designers spent a lot of time in the cutting room removing what didn't work. Long games, by contrast, are almost always unnecessarily padded.

In today's money, the original "Sonic the Hedgehog" cost $111, and once learned, it takes 45 minutes to play through. Yet given the joy that game has given me, and the pure artistry of it, I would spend $300 on it today to be able to experience it again, with new eyes.

Wifey swears that I have the conservative corollary to "Trump Derangement Syndrome"-- "SJW Derangement Syndrome".

In a way, she's right.

Every time I play my Nintendo Switch, I get very real urges to grab the thing by one of the edges, and smash the screen as hard as I can onto the nearest sharp edge; I have a difficult time disconnecting the couple of things I like about it, from much of the crowd who buys them. I can scarcely stand to watch Minnesota United games, because the crowd pan shots are so disgusting. And I don't consume any television shows or books written after the early 1990s-- I've had more than my fill of corny anti-capitalist "obligatory quota black people and women" drivel.

"So why", she asked me, "do you hate SJWs and hipsters so passionately?" To which I respond: "Oh I don't know... maybe it's because they quite literally want to destroy my life?"

Here is the Twitter feed for one of the most prominent Minnesota United writers: look at how militant she is! She makes absolutely no qualms that she is going to do everything in her power to use the State to make my life, and the lives of people like me, as miserable as possible.

Leftists want to use the State to censor any speech they disagree with-- imagine bans from gaming forums or Twitter, but in real life form, like blacklisted from the ability to become employed; they want to explode the scale of what they call "social programs"-- which means "violently steal money from white men and give it to minority welfare mamas for abortions-on-demand"; they want to abolish the concept of borders, to let as many people as possible-- many of them violent criminals-- into my community; they want to combat home schooling; they want to eliminate the concept of private car ownership; I've even read that there are pushes to tax meat, to force everyone onto a vegan diet!

I don't think these kinds of violent freaks would emerge at all in an anarcho-capitalist society, which would probably be made up of small, self-sufficient, socially-conservative agrarian communities. But even if they did, what could they possibly do to me? They'd be toothless! What makes them scary though is that they have the Federal State apparatus-- the biggest mafia organization ever conceived by mankind-- behind them. And governments only grow: there is no way to stop the snowball, other than for things to run their course. "Running their course" is going to mean 1930s Germany, but with rainbow-colored Swastikas instead of red.

So, "SJW Derangement Syndrome"? You bet.

I saw this coming; regular readers will perhaps recall my post from earlier this year, where I discussed the concept of the "solar minimum".

This article has given me some great new ideas for things to teach my kids. For example, "survival and first aid", "self-defense", and "household and basic car mechanic repairs" are three things we're weak in, as a family. Most of the rest of the list, we do already to varying degrees.

I would love to take a survivalist class-- I wonder if I could find one which is designed for parents and their kids, together? H is so athletic, I've been trying to talk her into trying a martial art. As for repairs, I think it would take me getting more interested first-- when I learn things, I naturally pull my kids in and teach them too.

I'm not a fan of "art", "it's a journey!" non-games generally, but holy buckets at the graphics here! It really makes me itch to go play some "Road Rash" on 3DO-- there's nothing quite like pre-rendered sprites, and it's a style which has been almost totally abandoned today.

You know the world's State actors couldn't give two hoots about the environment when they are taxing diesels at higher rates than other kinds of cars.

I used to work with a guy who had a "TDI" Volkswagen, and it got 45 miles per gallon on the highway. Deliberately killing diesels is all about the mafia governments shuffling money to their "electric cars" cronies, and not about "saving the planet", or any of that absurd rhetoric-- because the market had spoken, and the Europeans especially wanted their diesels.

I also agree with this commentary. My 350z was sold in 2002, as a 2003 model, and it's essentially just a car-- a pure driving machine. It even has a physical throttle mechanism, which is greatly superior to the very artificial, indirect "rev hang"-sensations of cars like my wife's "drive by wire" 2014 WRX-- which I still can't shift smoothly due to the unpredictable RPM behaviors.

Other than the purely mechanical "limited slip" differential, the only electronic assists my car has are in the form of anti-lock brakes, and what Nissan was at the time calling "vehicle dynamic control", or VDC-- which is a combination of traction control and stability management. And guess what-- for track days, it can be completely disengaged with the press of a button.

And I personally know people who will gobble up all of this stuff. It makes "1984" laughably wrong, in that the novel didn't go far enough-- the State doesn't even need to mandate the spy apparatus, because people are opting into it voluntarily, to gain like two seconds' worth of convenience!

I'm seemingly one of the few people who not only likes "Fallout 76", but who simply can't stop playing it! Wifey and a joint-friend of ours have been having a blast, sometimes literally. The extreme negativity is yet another one of those classic cases of the "toxic internet hive mind" at play-- even the "professional" reviews all parrot the exact same three bullets; no independent thought at all.

As much as I've been enjoying, I have been having problems getting video recording to work from the game, and I've missed some achingly hilarious ludonarrative moments because of that. But thankfully, I've got it sorted now.

The problems stemmed from, when I'd run the game in true full-screen mode-- where it very nicely lets you pick which display to use, right in the game's graphics menu-- the Xbox "Game DVR" feature videos were all black, while the Nvidia "instant replay" mode wouldn't turn on at all. And when I'd run the game in borderless window mode, it would stretch really strangely from my 1080p monitor, up to the 4K TV, with the game half-and-half on both screens!

The solution was to, before I started the game, flip the TV in Windows' "personalize settings" menu to be the "primary" device-- then the game's borderless window option would properly "anchor" the graphics to the top-left of the 4K TV-- not the monitor-- and fill out the entire 3840x2160 pixels: native 2160p, plus working Xbox DVR video recording!

This is yet another example of something which flat-out works better under GNU/Linux: Nvidia's control panel there is much easier to use than the Windows one, and under Arch I never have a single issue getting stuff on the correct screen. As I wrote about here, this overall phenomenon of Windows being clunkier than GNU/Linux is surreal.

Here it is: the very first-ever benchmarks of production ray tracing code, via Nvidia's RTX hardware and Microsoft's new API!

The 2080 Ti loses 44% of its frames with ray tracing on; the 2080, 52%; the 2070, 56%. I don't know what I was expecting, but in looking at the graph it seems more than reasonable to me, given that this is the equivalent of a first-gen 3d accelerator, from 1995. This real-time ray tracing is that pioneering, and unlike a Matrox Millenium, it's already usable!

Now that the dust has settled, the star in this three-product lineup is the RTX 2070; while I don't regret my 2080 purchase at all-- it's presently running Fallout 76 at native 4K, with HDR, at Ultra detail and 60 fps-- the 2070 is easily the best value for money. Especially in games which will utilize "DLSS", the 2070 will deliver phenomenal performance even in 4K.

But back to ray tracing: the first title I'm going to buy which uses it is the upcoming "Metro" release. After that, it will be the new "Mechwarrior" game.

Hah, the Counterfeit News Network made a video about "MGTOW", which you can view here. It's really disjointed, you can tell how heavily edited it was, designed to dismiss the movement's observations as just a bunch of angry men, while painting the self-described feminist journalist as the clear-headed rational one.

What "MGTOW" is really about-- note how the video didn't approach any of this:

• Men are biologically wired via millions of years of evolution to want to mount and mate females, and to hunt for and defend the tribe. All men have this kind of plumbing, to varying degrees. What's more, no one disputes any of this, least of all feminists. These facts can lead to healthy or toxic behaviors: they are the driver for modern civilization and practically every major invention in the history of the human race; they are also what motivates a man to provide resources and protection for his wife and kids. It can manifest in toxic ways too: violence, and rape.


• Women are also biologically wired towards certain behaviors: their motivations are to "shop around" for a mate, who will provide them with free resources, so they can have babies. Just like how all men have varying degrees of the same wiring, so do all women, hence the term "AWALT"-- "all women are like that". In a healthy context, this plumbing is what causes women to make good mate choices: picking a dependable, reliable, moral man, with whom she can raise beautiful, healthy children. It can be toxic too: women who have dozens of sex partners before the age of thirty, or who simply use men after marriage by raking them through divorce courts, and stealing half of the man's wealth.


• It used to be that American society had values which minimized the downsides of both men and women, and which maximized the upsides: men worked, women raised the kids; men and women who slept around or cheated were shamed; most people were religious, and the Bible is clear regarding both the roles of men and women, and adultery. Thanks to sleazy Democrats like Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson, the welfare state replaced men as resource providers, while feminism told women that it was ok for them to sleep around-- to be like (toxic) men.


• Once men were no longer needed to provide resources on the one hand, and the sleeping around behavior was socially encouraged on the other hand, combined with the rise of secularism and the downfall of religiosity, women who were "slutty", superficial, and disloyal went from being a small minority, to a critical mass-- to the point where good, honest men are having a tough time even finding women who don't exhibit strong degrees of the "toxic" behavior patterns described above. This is how "MGTOW" was born.

Obviously, there is a huge genetic gulf between the strengths of the average man or woman. Even in my personal situation, my wife is not a small female-- 5'8" and 140 lbs-- yet she is only a fraction as strong as I am, and I'm a sedentary 5'9" computer programmer. I just naturally have substantially more muscle mass, better stamina, and larger bones than she does.

But, I didn't realize that the gap was this large! And it wasn't just this one match: apparently, young teenage boys of mediocre club sides routinely obliterate professional, adult femalt footballers. People are dredging up dozens of examples of, let's say, FC Dallas' U-14 boys crushing women's national sides.

One fellow here says he was a member of a U-15 club side which was winning against the number one ranked US Women's National team 5-0 at half-time, to the point where the coach started playing everyone out of position, just so the score wouldn't become too humiliating. He said from his experience, women's teams are about the level of the average boy's high school side, if that!

You can see this in other sports too: I remember a highly ranked professional woman's tennis player saying that she was no match for her high school teenage little brother. And yet, we're supposed to believe that sex and gender are merely hand-waved social constructs?

When the Fed was instituted during a lame duck session of Congress, when Russia annexed Crimea in just a few weeks, or when the European Union was formed, it was all over and done with quickly.

But when power is to be decentralized, there are either armed government goons in assault rifles arresting and shooting people, or it becomes a multi-year, heel-dragging, 585 page red tape debacle.

No inflation here; as recently as 2009, Arshavin was Arsenal's record signing. The fee? 16.5 million Euro.

Only nine years later, Arsenal have thirteen players worth more than that, with Aubameyang valued at 75 million Euro all by himself! In terms of English football as a whole, top dog Manchester City's squad is worth over a billion Euro!

And that's just the thing: when central banks expanded the global money supplies by trillions following the last financial crisis, that money went straight to the richest people on Earth, which is why "income inequality" has become so incredible. You can see it directly with massive price inflation of play things for the rich, like football players.

I thought I had heard of-- and parried-- every known criticism of Liberterianism. But for the first time in several years, I just heard a new one! Bold emphasis is mine:



This one is easy to refute, simply because it's not even a true statement!

Libertarians have long pointed out, with huge lists of concrete examples, that "regulations" are created because one group is trying to get the upper hand on some other group by leveraging the State's monopoly on force. In fact, recognizing this tenet is central to why many people are drawn to Libertarianism in the first place: the philosophy best describes both current and historical events, with regards to the nature of "regulations".

I would posit that the opposite criticism of non-Libertarians is in order: their default position is that a given law is created for the "public good". It's so pollyanish and naive that the term "clover" was invented to describe these people.

Speaking of my Alpha Male father, I asked him to not call me this weekend, yet he's done so seven times just in the past two hours. I anticipated his behavior, so I'd blocked his number ahead of time: but I still get notified when the voicemail messages hit.

Two of my close, male family members are simultaneously going through strange identity crises-- that's why I've been doing so much research regarding masculinity-related phenomena, such as "soy boy" syndrome, and so-called "trans-genderism", where men are so dysfunctionally effeminate that they start to think they are women.

These issues in my family have utterly consumed both of my parents, to the point where they are hardly even the same people: my mother has basically stopped sleeping and seems hopelessly paralyzed and conflicted, alternatingly battling and enabling; while my incarcerated-and-hence-absent father-- in true Alpha Male fashion-- is continuously hounding me to be the focal support point for the rest of the members in question, to the point where it was beginning to impact my career and my relationship with my own kids.

Because of this, I explained to my mom that for Thanksgiving and Christmas, the kids and I will hang out with her separately from the rest of the family-- not out of anger or frustration, but factually because the family baggage is weighing too heavily on me: I can't really be around either parent without getting bombarded!

What's amusing is that my father's incessant attempts to contact me this morning, against my stated wishes, are cases in point of how all-consumed my parents are with these problems.

Hah, I've become addicted to the site "Urban Dictionary". There is an internet term which describes me exactly; bold emphasis is mine:



People have asked me why I seldom locked horns with my controlling, Alpha Male dad growing up-- the reason is because I was content to let him do his leadership thing, where he was generally very competent, then just go behind him and trim around the edges where he'd make mistakes.

It's the same pattern professionally: my managers, who know what I'm doing every day, always describe me as a leader-- but no one else realizes that aspect of me, because I'm "engine room" quiet about it. I recognize that others need the recognition, so I let them have it. But to the degree which they make mistakes or become incompetent, is the degree to which I consciously take on more active leadership myself.

Of course, another major aspect of my reluctance to be an overt leader is my intense introversion, or my "high level autism" traits, as they could be described: once I "appointed myself" project manager when the actual person was utterly inept and absent in her job-- after about six months of constant meetings and socializing, I essentially melted down into nothing. But that's neither here nor there.

As a follow-up to my previous post, there is mounting evidence that the mass consumption of soybean-based food products is what is causing the armies of effeminate men. Here is an entertaining video on the topic.

I should really start a game review site for conservatives: I've never seen so many cucks and freaks in my life! It's no wonder that contemporary game reviews are so worthless.