I wonder why the latest wave of Japanese sports cars are so absurdly expensive? Add the Supra to the list: forty two thousand bucks gets you a four cylinder engine-- and the damned thing doesn't even come with a manual transmission! Incidentally, I love how in promotional videos, they always show the test driver jerking the automatic stalk around-- Park-Reverse-Drive-Reverse-Drive-- to make it look like he's operating a manual, hah!

By contrast, Ford sells a four cylinder Mustang for twenty six grand. And you can get the over four hundred horse power V8 version for thirty five thousand-- seven grand less than the four cylinder Supra, and with a manual to boot! Meanwhile, a V8 Camaro with a manual sells for thirty five grand. Nissan will even still sell you a brand new three hundred thirty horse power 370z, with a manual transmission, for thirty grand only!

Yes, the government is jacking car prices up with all of its mandates-- but that's not the whole story I don't think. Today, if you want a newly-designed Japanese sports car for thirty grand or under-- meaning, a car payment even a six figure income earner like me can realistically afford-- you're looking at an MX-5 with barely more horsepower than the old front-wheel drive econobox 2006 Scion tC I used to own. What a joke!

Remember when I penned this recent post about Tim Sweeney? Eight days later... hah! The expression "whoring for cash" comes to mind.

One worry I have about the Xbox Series X is just how shoddy Microsoft's software quality is these days: I've experienced more bugs in Windows 10 than ME and Vista put together; their big games such as Gears 5 and Minecraft have major, game-breaking technical issues; and absolutely everyone I know who owns an Xbox One complains about the lousy dashboard, which will still be in place on the Series X.

It all makes me wonder if the Series X and its games are going to be in constant patch mode, with lots of quirky annoyances like missing HDMI signals, updates which won't download, and so forth.

For some time now, Scott Adams has been using a "two movies" analogy, where people in America can't even agree about basic facts despite sitting in the same theater. It's clearly because of this, which is a microcosmic example; where the Right are constantly inundated by and have overlapping values with Leftist opinions-- see Jonathan Haidt for more details-- the Left are in a total echo chamber, getting fed constant misinformation and "fake news", while simultaneously being not able to comprehend alternative viewpoints.

A good example is Corrronnna: people like myself were very cautious at first as the facts were unknown-- but because we read news from a variety of sources, we quickly realized that the threat was wildly overblown. Thus, millions of us started saying "nah" when it came to things like wearing what I began calling "Fear Masks", which were obviously being ordered by politicians for political opportunism, not "public health".

People on the Left, by contrast, mocked and ridiculed anyone who wore a mask on Monday, but then on Tuesday started mocking and ridiculing anyone who didn't wear them. Quite literally the only thing which changed between days A and B was a government decree. Then, because Lefties are incapable of comprehending anything outside of their immediate sphere, they started pathologizing people who were basing their decisions on science and facts, versus government mandates.

Two movies: in this case, the people acting like Michael Jackson-esque mysophobes thinking other people are the ones with mental illnesses! Interestingly, I saw this article today too-- I wonder how Lefties would square it; are entire countries mentally ill now as well? But I thought the psychological explanation was Bible Belt ignoramuses in rural American areas?

I've never been a huge television watcher, but once upon a time CNN's web site was in my news feeds, and I read it daily. Now I remember why: that network wasn't alway crazy-- just check out this video clip of Don Lemon, from just 2013!

The most striking thing to me isn't even the content of the segment: it's his presentation, which is clear and clean and professional-- it's more like watching Stewart Cheifet from "Computer Chronicles" than present-day Don Lemon.

I'd take this one step further: I haven't run the formula exactly, but as a mathematical approximation you need to be sitting practically inches from a sixty inch display to see the difference between "4K" and "8K", especially when you factor in the quality of modern anti-aliasing and reconstructive techniques. Heck, native "4K" is already pointless with the advent of DLSS-- who the heck needs "8K"?

In other words, not only will "mid-gen" refreshes be unnecessary, but in terms of raw processing prowess we'll very soon hit the "GPU of forever" point, similar to how we hit the "video card of forever" 2d mark in the 90's, where RAMDAC speed as a concept became irrelevant almost overnight. The cool part is that we're not far away from this "GPU of forever" being able to fit in a handheld: the Nintendo Switch concept came five or ten years too early.

The only way companies like Nvidia, or television makers for that matter, will survive is by diversifying into new ventures. Eventually, the world will shift away from texture-mapped polygons altogether I'm sure, and replace it with augmented reality point clouds or something-- at which point the innovation race will be on again, with or without the current industry players, depending on how well those companies play their cards; will Nvidia be Nvidia again, or will it be 3dfx or Matrox?

The kids and I are studying rocketry, and as part of that research we just got done watching this video. It's a superb and entertaining primer, other than perhaps the presenter's glossing over of how hybrid engines work. But maybe even more interestingly, and as always happens with home schooling, the video led to a divergent discussion-- in this case, regarding human evolution.

Startled at such a good example of the latter, I immediately froze the frame with the shot of the audience here, and asked the kids: describe to me what the men are doing in this shot. "They're watching and smiling; they think it's cool." Then I asked, "And what are the women doing?" "Covering their ears and faces; they look scared." I froze frame a bit later, here, and asked who were giving the more enthusiastic claps: the men, or the women? "The women", my kids answered.

This led to an explanation of how women, who were tied up having and caring for babies for hundreds of thousands of years, developed to be both risk averse, and also to highly value social harmony: they are better at empathizing, and worse at systematizing. After all, if women took risks and the babies died, or the tribe lost its mojo, it would cease to exist. Men, by contrast, were the hunters: they had to be brave and strong to overcome the risks-- so to this day, they accept and even enjoy risk, being excellent systematizers, but poor empathizers; not enough time to be all feely when you're about to get eaten.

On a note I didn't discuss with the kids, are that those lines are becoming blurred as testosterone levels plummet across the Western world: so while men are still less risk averse than women on average, their out-of-whack hormonal balances are causing them to become more risk averse, and also to value social harmony more highly-- in other words, they are becoming more like women. This is why the political balance is shifting less towards principles, rational logic, and risk taking, and more towards emotional appeals and fear. It's also why men are more willing to "cuck" these days, throwing their principles overboard to "get along": there are fewer and fewer hills they see worth dying on, so to speak, weighed against their ever-increasing woman-like desire for social harmony.

I watch a lot of "Digital Foundry" content, and I got a new appreciation for Audi Sorlie listening to this: just in this one video I learned that the guy is from Norway originally, was in the music industry in his teens and twenties, lived in South America speaking Spanish spending a year in a wrestling school and becoming an expert in "luche libre" celebrities, then moved to Japan and became fluent in Japanese.

It's interesting to contrast that with my life: at twelve years old, my plan was to go to university for Computer Science, get married, have kids, and support that family as a professional programmer, working with the same big company for thirty years, then retiring early on a pension and saved funds. It's kind of amazing to me that I had that template at such a young age, and have followed it so precisely-- in fact, I'm exactly half-way through the thirty years now: so far, so good.

In other news, I've seen more than my fair share of dismal Lazio collapses in my many, many years following the club-- but today's loss to Lecce may have been the single worst performance I've yet witnessed, when taking the context into account: the two clubs were more than forty points apart in the table, and had a more than seventy differential in goal difference. Last season, Lazio were pretty terrible-- then electric in the new season with the same players and coach-- now dismal again in this "new" season, once again with the same players and coach. It's inexplicable how the same group can be as hot as Venus, and as cold as Neptune, with zero quantifiable alterations.

Start listening to the President Trump Mount Rushmore speech at this point. As always, it's incredible hearing someone in such an influential position be so red pilled: he "gets it".

By contrast, can you imagine what this speech would have sounded like had Hitlery given it? She'd have encouraged the violence: "some good things about America, but mostly bad-- we have a duty to re-create the country for 'social justice'", blah blah.

Trump calls out "cancel culture" by name, using that term; he describes the current (bowel) movement as "far-Left Fascism"-- yes, the Left are the Fascists; and he also recognized that this cult is a religion, with rituals, mantras, and commandments.

Regarding his comments about indoctrination in schools, wifey and I were just having that conversation the other day: "if the mainstream culture is so Bozo the Clown, what in the world do you think they will be telling school kids this upcoming school year? The depth of the programming and ranting 'teachers' will be breathtaking." Thank goodness for home schooling.

Unfortunately, that's more or less where President Trump stopped, the rest of the speech being a somewhat lethargically-delivered history lesson, along with generic platitudes. I would have rather that he actually call out Cultural Marxism by name, and explain how crazy it is. But I'll take the small victories where I can get them.

Oh, and about the monument defacers he had arrested: I hope he provided some playpens and coloring books for them in prison!

For fun, I looked up the person who is cited as having started the ultimately ill-fated cancel culture attempt against Walter Block. I open-mindedly listened to a couple of her songs, and while I can hear some limited music theory at play, it's pretty vacuous stuff. Perhaps she legitimately isn't smart enough to grasp what the heck Walter Block is even talking about regarding most topics-- and so, groping, she reaches for the "dats rayciss" card.

In other news, wifey tells me that Minnesota's governor-- whose brother died some time ago by having a tree fall on him, strangely-- is "thinking about" putting one of these "policies" in place, like a petty little dictator in charge of his own fiefdom. The hilarious part is that in each instance of these I've seen, you can-- and I certainly will-- just ignore it by saying you have a "medical condition", and you are also legally under no obligation to elaborate.

On a totally unrelated note, I've revisited "Metro Exodus" via its "New Game Plus" mode, and it's even better looking than I'd remembered: the texture resolution is crazy, the HDR implementation is incredible, there are volumetric lights everything, particles filling the screen, ray-traced global illumination, and much more. Running on my setup, this is absolutely a "next gen" game, but from fall of 2019.

But perhaps the best part is that, having been made in Eastern Europe, it's totally immune from wokesterdom: as examples, the game opens with a pre-rendered video clearly putting Nazism and Communism on the exact same abject moral level, while the story focuses on brave men fighting their way towards freedom-- not going on "emotional journeys of discovery" or being subservient to women, or any of that nonsense. I also find the game quite immersive with the Russian voice acting.

Because they worship a religion called Cultural Marxism, incredible double standards which would cause most sane people's brains to melt from cognitive dissonance are rampant among contemporary Leftists.

They frequently call people with whom they disagree "white nationalists", signaling an apparent objection to the concept of "ethnostates". Yet before week one NFL games, they are going to play something called the "Black Anthem".

Leftists put up yard signs saying "Black Lives Matter" when a black person dies, yet when a guy flies a plane with a "White Lives Matter" banner after white people are executed in a terrorist attack, he gets harassed and fired-- to go along with the obligatory pearl clutching, naturally.

They veritably worship Rainbow People and feminism, yet simultaneously and universally side with Muslims; in many Muslim countries, sexual deviancy is a crime punishable by death, and women are forced to wear full garb, enforceable by beatings, by men.

Finally, and to this writer's knowledge, not one white person rioted, looted, or started a building on fire when this white fellow was killed by law enforcement. There are also no "White Lives Matter" law signs, no Right-wing "CHAZ", and no kneeling before national anthems. There are no CEO statements on the Twatter, and no employees being told they are racists with "unconscious bias" against whites.

Not that any of that should happen-- obviously! The point is, rather, that civilized people act civil.

For all black-- or any color skin-- youths out there in America, who feel that "the system", whatever that means, is somehow nebulously prejudiced or stacked against them, here is a simple step-by-step guide on how to get yourself into the top twenty five-to-one percent of all wage earners in the country:

1. Sort the "Bureau of Labor and Statistics" data by annual mean wage, descending.


2. Pick one of the hundreds of professions which make around the sixty thousand mark, or more. The country's median wage is in the thirty thousands, so sixty grand is good money.


3. Let's pick "plumber" as an example. It pays fifty nine thousand, eight hundred on median. Search for "how to become plumber".


4. Read one of the first hits, which explains that it costs a maximum of three thousand dollars of schooling, and five year's work experience to become fully-licensed. You will be earning wages during that entire time.


5. If you graduate from high school at age eighteen, you will be a master plumber by age twenty eight. If you start tucking away money into a Roth IRA at eighteen, you will have millions of dollars saved by age sixty five.


6. Search for "how to find a financial planner". Skim one of hundreds of articles. Meet with one, and they will set you up for retirement at your target age.


7. Profit.

Again, these steps can be performed by anyone, absolutely regardless of skin color. They take about five minutes to do, and can be accomplished for free at any public library, or at any McDonald's by ordering a small fry for a couple of bucks. It's called "capitalism"-- and it's amazing.

These steps can also be followed to make significantly more than a plumber too: the only ceiling is how ambitious you want to be. Always do a five second cost-benefit equation between the cost of schooling for a profession, and the median wage. Don't be a knucklehead and spend tens of grand on underwater basket weaving.

This also requires that you graduate from high school. Don't get mixed in with the wrong crowd. Do not commit any crimes. Do not go to prison. Do not have unprotected sex. Stay clean, and focused on your goals.

Eric Peters points out a potentially hilarious upcoming situation in this blog post: will we see fourth of July celebrators wearing face diapers?

Like so many things, this rampant conformity is an effect of dropping testosterone levels in men-- forty percent, in forty years: evolution and biology tended and tend to make women tribal and collectivistic, because they spent almost their entire lives-- for hundreds of thousands of years, forty years old was elderly-- pregnant and nursing their young.

Men counterbalanced this by being territorial: after all, they needed to protect their game, otherwise the other males would take both it, and their mate to boot. But today, absent that masculine equilibrium, the whole country is slipping into collectivism, similar to countries like South Korea or Japan, where-- surprise, surprise-- the men are also very effeminate.

This is also why so many Millenial men are susceptible to Communism: it's very comforting to have a mommy and daddy take care of you, especially when your sense of self worth is low-- a key "low T" symptom. It's also why so many of them suffer from gender dysphoria, have very early male pattern baldness, and exhibit the submission-signaling "soy face".

Wifey and I were wondering the other day, if this drop continues, what men will look like in another ten or twenty years? One possibility is that they will grow breasts, and it will be a "new normal" for men to wear bras.

I've recently lamented the fact that other men-- and women too, if they're so inclined-- aren't backing me up in pushing back against this Cultural Marxism, anti-white tsunami which threatens to turn America into South Africa: almost everyone except for a precious few examples-- Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, and Nigel Farage among them-- finds it much easier to just submit.

There just aren't enough "cojones" anymore to dam up the tide.

From "ZZT" to "Jill of the Jungle" to "Jazz Jackrabbit" to the publishing of "One Must Fall: 2097", Epic MegaGames was a huge part of my childhood-- and Tim Sweeney a looming figure for me during that period as well. But where I viewed John Carmack as being the "real deal", I always thought that Sweeney was kind of a poser-- the two being game analogs of Gary Kildall and Bill Gates, respectively.

I saw this quote today, and it struck me as being pretty true. The context is that Sweeney has been praising the PlayStation 5 as being the best piece of hardware since the toaster:



On the "system wars" note, there are three announcement and demo gates: spec and appearance, exclusive content, and price. For Sony being two thirds through and Microsoft only one third in, I thought the former would have captured most of my mindshare by now-- but they haven't. I don't really care about price-- I could afford a thousand dollar system, if that's what they'd cost-- so the content aspect is the key.

In order, "Flight Simulator", "Forza Motorsport 8", and "Halo Infinite" are must-plays for me-- but all three will be on Windows 10, on day one. So what I'll be looking for from Microsoft in July is evidence that there will be value in having a dedicated box, devoted exclusively to their ecosystem, in the coming months and years-- not just for this fall. If they do that, they'll get my money.

If not, "Gran Turismo 7", "Horizon 2", and the new "Ratchet and Clank" look great. I even have a convenient spot in my office for the PlayStation 5 behemoth to sit upright, if I go that route.

I played the Mega Drive port of David Joiner's "The Faery Tale Adventure" as a kid, then re-visited it as an adult. Some people call it a "poor man's Ultima", and while I don't totally disagree, I still think it's a cool game-- so it was neat to read this back story.

There are lots of brilliant people in the world, who are able to combine creative genius with the practical knowledge and business savvy to bring their visions to reality-- think Bill Mitchell, or Kelly Johnson, or Ed Logg.

Then there are people like David Joiner, whose creative output just didn't match their potential; it may sound dorky, but seriously-- how many people could invent their own armor making machine? But instead of inventing warp drive, it sounds like he spent much of his prime sleeping on other people's living room floors.

A mob illegally barged onto private property. Well within their rights, a husband and wife walked onto their lawns with firearms, telling the mob to "keep moving".

Just afterwards, domestic terrorism "Black Lives Matter" supporter and massive walking-cliche, pasty-white, no jawline soyboy "Kyle Dennis" instructed the mob with this, bold emphasis is mine:



Meanwhile, this guy owns a business. It's exactly the kind of company my own employer hires to tell all of us peons that we're racists pieces of shit.

In any event, I went to the web site and immediately found this, bold emphasis is mine once again:



So, white people have outlived their usefulness... if we're taking turns, he can go first.

I also think it's funny that the guy is a "UX" designer. There isn't a single field within the computer industry about which I hold a lower opinion: just take a look at modern web sites, or an iPhone-- don't forget the barf bag.

Been playing a lot of "Minecraft Dungeons" lately-- you can read my review here. I just finished my second playthrough, and I think I've settled on what the best sets of equipment are.

For a melee weapon, you want something which leeches life, and which ideally has other effects such as exploding and critical hit. For a ranged weapon, the exploding crossbows are absurd: as you can see below, I even got one with multi-shot and chained reaction-- it looks like a carpet bombing run, as one shot can clear out an entire room.

For armor, I can't emphasize "snowball" enough, even if it means you're using armor with a somewhat lower hit point rating. With snowball going every second, I can stand against ten or even fifteen enemies, simply holding the attack button without even repositioning: the front enemies get paralyzed, log-jamming the rest behind them-- and if I do take a hit or two, the life leeching can take me from an almost empty life bar, to a full one in the blink of an eye as the log-jammed enemies start falling.

Finally, the armor shown below also has "deflect": I can be surrounded by archers and barely take a hit, further reducing my need to reposition. With the below setup altogether, it almost puts the game into "easy" mode, letting me play multiple notches higher than my character would normally allow.









I should also add that this game is very refreshing, in that other than twenty seconds of voice acting before entering a level, it's one hundred percent gameplay-- even compared to other titles in its own genre! I really hope Microsoft's first-party stuff in the "Series X" era focuses on this type of game in general.

If you hire the most talented candidates, you'll get the most talented organization. If you overlook the most talented candidates because other candidates have more melanin in their skin or a vagina between their legs, you will get a less talented organization.

Bugs in video games are nothing new, but wifey and I were struggling to come up with a recent modern video game which hasn't been poorly-written. And it seems to be accelerating with the rise of Cultural Marxist, prejudice-based hiring systems.

For example, Duncan and I bought a so-called "Realm"-- which is a Cloud-based dedicated server-- subscription from Microsoft. Our credit card was billed, but four days later we are still unable to play. Meanwhile, Mojang seems more concerned with putting Rainbow People clothes in the game's shop and supporting domestic terrorist organization "Black Lives Matter" on their Twitter feed, than responding to my paying customer service ticket.

It can't help but create the impression that the company has its priorities out-of-whack, and that it's in over its head talent-wise versus the complexity of the system it is being tasked to maintain. It wouldn't surprise me if they and other game companies have had an exodus of talent since these organizations have become radicalized.

The only "broken games" exceptions wifey and I could consistently come up with were Nintendo products, which ship and essentially "just work" right off the memory card, hearkening back to those halcyon 8-bit and 16-bt days of prolific-- white or Japanese males, by the by-- geniuses writing their games in assembler.

Interestingly, whenever I've seen a developer at Nintendo interviewed-- think "Nintendo Directs"-- they've been one hundred percent Japanese, and male: meaning, no forced "diversity" quotas. And the quality of their work shows. Bigger picture, Japan as a country is almost totally racially homogeneous-- and look at how ordered and non-violence their culture is.

But back to the point, this has also occurred at my workplace. As I've written about previously, the head of my group at work said, bald-faced and right in an all-group meeting, that from then on they were going to hire "women and minorities". Meanwhile, this "highly diverse" business group of all women has become so disorganized, staggering from one crisis to the next, that my development team has been operating with quite literally zero business direction for months.

For me personally this has been great: I don't particularly get along with the business people anyway, and I'm so intrinsically-motivated, hard working, independent, and self-directed that I've been more than able to keep myself busy, digging into all sorts of cool things. But how aligned we are with business needs, when the business can't even articulate what those needs are, is somewhat of a mystery.

In two sentences, Tucker Carlson just explained my entire life's existence, going back to when I was a young child, all the way to present day where I sit here maintaining this web site.

All of those long, long, painful years arguing with the daycare kids my mom watched, having wars of words with bullies, debating with my teachers and co-workers and friends and enemies and family and strangers... getting called every name in the book, being the only one, standing alone in a hostile crowd, vocalizing the truth, and keeping my head high, even under extreme duress, threats, and ostracism. My entire quintessence, summed up in forty words of scintillating brilliance:



Thank you, Tucker.

Here is yet another absolutely essential video, this time from "Project Veritas", exposing the rampant anti-conservative bias at Facebook. I especially love the secret recordings he made of his HR interactions: I've had a tangle or two with a couple of HR reps at my own employer-- albeit, not due to politics-- and this kind of totally illogical "one answer one minute, a different answer the next" is very similar to my own experiences.

Also pay close attention to Cultural Marxism in action. I've had people ask me why I harp on that so much, and this is why: it has a real-world, totally unfair, prejudice-based discriminatory impact on people's lives. At my own employer, I have a white male friend who has been passed over several times for promotion, every single time by women who were neither as qualified or as tenured at the company as he is. He's not the kind of guy to cry victim, but it's happened so many times now, that he can only assume.

I've historically been about as anti-Apple as can be-- but something about them switching their laptops to ARM strikes me as kind of cool. Additionally, the rumored upcoming "Apple Glasses" may be the first augmented reality pair that are actually discrete enough, without making people want to punch you in the nose. Of course, privacy will probably be a major issue: no Free Software here-- not that Android really has it anymore either.

In other news, there is so much to say about this Tucker Carlson clip, that I don't even know where to begin-- just watch it for yourself. Interestingly, he even singles out Kamala Harris as the one who will be running the show behind the zombified Joe Biden, just like I have. On the same day, Vee ran a video making many of the same arguments, in his case specifically while contrasting Classical Liberalism with Cultural Marxism.

While we're on the topic of radicalism, I ran across this box sitting right out in the open recently while at someone's house-- in the interest of not embarrassing them, I won't say whose.

Even mundane household products on the shelves of stores right here in America, land of the free, are now "captured" and being used to radicalize young people into Marxist causes-- in this case, by appealing to female vanity, which is already off-the-charts, as any sane man who has tried dating recently will tell you. And as a bonus, check out the crazy Carrronnnaa propaganda I saw on a web site recently, at the very bottom of this post.

Step one: We're all going to die from the seasonal flu; institute veritable martial law.

Step two: Black multi-time felon dies of a heart attack from drug abuse and Democrats start burning down cities; flu no longer matters, domestic terrorists immune.

Step three: The instant the domestic terrorism runs out of steam, suddenly we're all going to die from the seasonal flu again; re-institute veritable martial law.

As it turns out, there are many parallels between modern-day architecture and video game design:

• The "elites" in both have a pronounced contempt for their audience; read the article, then recall "Gears Tactics" calling its predominantly white male players "fucking Fascists".


• The "elites" in both can't just make art: rather, their constructions need to attempt social engineering. See first quote below.


• Like modern video games, architecture's sensibilities are informed by radicals from decades past, such as Herbert Marcuse in the former, and Le Corbusier in the latter.


• In both instances, group think means that no deviation from the narrative is allowed. See second quote below.

From the article, bold emphasis is mine:



And:



On a non game-related note, it's like the "that's not real Marxism" crowd-- it just wasn't done right!

Long-time readers of this blog will know I've been writing about Cultural Marxism quite literally for years-- I saw the train coming from a mile off, and I've been doing my small part to head it off at the pass. So it's with some satisfaction that I watch the mainstream finally catching up, and waking up the broader public to this nonsense.

In other news, this is one of the most astonishing buildings I've ever seen, and not entirely in a good way: it's a strange marriage of traditional and brutalist architectural styles. It also feels anachronistic these days to see a modern civilization erecting an icon of any kind, versus tearing them down.

Finally, because I do this to everyone, I did fact check Tucker Carlson on his claim that Kentucky's governor wants to "provide" (with stolen money) health care, but only to black people. So, I went to the enemy's camp looking for a refutation (conspiracy theorist!)-- and it turns out that Tucker was one hundred percent correct. Interestingly, the governor justifies this illegal (14th amendment) racism by saying we "just need to listen". Now, where have I heard that before?

Pretty much all of my friends growing up preferred my Atari 7800 to their own NES's-- even as we acknowledged that the NES hardware was a significant step above. Er, well, um...

Vee has a thought provoking video here, although I disagree with it-- victimless "crime" is an oxymoron:

• People are primarily-- to the point of near-universality-- motivated by self-preservation: they don't want to get hurt.


• Study after study have found that people drive however they are comfortable on a given stretch of road, regardless of the speed limit, or the presence of a posted limit at all. Sometimes this means they drive over, sometimes under.


• A person who is going to drive one hundred miles per hour down a side street-- to use Vee's extreme example-- are going to do it regardless of the speed limit: they are comfortable going that speed, and don't care about whether there is a law, or not.


• If a vast majority of people are somehow comfortable going one hundred miles per hour on that road, then people who aren't will just not drive on it, and will keep their children away from it. People who are are voluntarily accepting the risk-- by what magical fairy dust authority does Vee have to tell them that he gets to tell them how much risk to take with their own bodies?


• Having victimless "crimes" means that everyone in a society is constantly living in fear: not of the one guy in a million doing one hundred in a thirty, but of the police, since innocent people can be acosted at any moment via hidden speed traps, for not having hurt a fly. The solution is way worse than the problem; Vee is only evaluating one half of the equation.


• If the rule isn't the presence of a victim, then who gets to decide what's "unsafe"? Vee? And why one hundred miles per hour, and not ninety nine, or one hundred and one? Why one arbitrary line and not another another?

I should also point out that Vee is a guy who just made a video not a month ago, making fun of the English police for going after dog walkers and beach goers during "lockdown": no logical consistency.

And why stop there while I'm pointing out silliness: speed limit laws weren't created for public safety anyway; they were made to supposedly conserve energy-- then the control maniacs didn't want the limits to go away, so they ex post facto invented the safety nonsense.

And to put the final nail in the coffin, this whole conversation is a non-sequitor anyway, in two ways: first, breaking a window does have a victim: the property owner. Littering also has a victim, if the litter lands on private property at least.

Second, in diverse Murderapolis there are broken windows all over the place in spite of anti-vandalism laws. While at my "bug out" house where it's ninety-nine percent homogenous, there are zero broken windows. The solution to broken windows isn't Draconian victimless "crime" laws: the solution is for people to recursively secede into communities where they share values.

Heathens who like litter and broken windows can go hang out in their own dumb little country-- maybe "Chaz"?-- and leave the rest of us alone.

I've been reading about the various aspects of the English Civil War, seeing if there are any parallels between those events and present-day America.

The "Levellers" were a group which sound a lot like modern-day Republicans and Libertarians: where the latter two gangs support the US Constitution's ultra liberality in the form of widespread suffrage, equality before the law, and "government by the people"-style populism, so too did the "Levellers" value those same principles.

There was a second group which spun off from this first, who said the "Levellers" weren't taking things far enough: this new gang wanted social egalitarianism, no private property, an ecological relationship with nature, and "public" health care. What's more, they believed that the English people were historically "oppressed" post-Norman conquest! These fellows eventually became referred to as the "Diggers".

One potentially significant caveat: I am getting most of this information from Wikipedia, which as even its founders know, is not operating from a position of neutrality any longer. I am aware that the "Diggers" article may be written in such a way as to inaccurately amplify parallels, with the goal to justify contemporary Leftism by painting it as having precedent. The article does seem to be well-sourced by authentic references however, so for the moment I'm taking it at face value.

But back to the topic at hand: what I find so striking is that, just like today where the Left are misnomered as "Liberals" and "Progressives" when in fact their views are highly illiberal and regressive, similarly mistaken were the "Diggers" in thinking that their purity test showed them to be more liberal than the "Levellers", where in reality their "egalitarianism" and festering anger towards some nebulous "oppressive" force-- like the Spathi's "ultimate evil" in Star Control II, just beyond the range of the best radars-- was opposed to liberalism.

The good news in all of this is that the three English Civil Wars ended in a period known as the "Restoration", where a form of Parliamentary Monarchy was put in place, with the two "branches" keeping each other loosely in a check-like stalemate. Probably then, cooler heads will ultimately prevail in America, and some sensible order will be established.

One other thing which leaps out to me: here is what English Civil War looked like: men firing actual muskets at each other. Or-- different situation, but just to give the impression-- think back to Tolstoy's description of the "Battle of Borodino" bloodbath in "War and Peace". Today, "war" involves South Korea blowing up a building in its own territory, "Antifa" throwing beer bottles into police riot shields, and Indian and Chinese soldiers fighting with rocks and sticks.

This lack of political and social appetite for firearms, seemingly all over the world, is either a mere prelude to out-and-out "hot wars"-- or, the established power brokers, the multi-billion dollar corporations and their Fascistic friends in governments, who are moving all of these chess pieces simply don't want to upset the apple cart which has been so profitable for them. Either way, a lack of wide-spread violent may be a fortunate side-effect.

I told myself I would take a weekend off from politics, but I just can't resist. Hah! I actually think he could have played up the violence a little more: Paul Joseph Watson has some nice compilation footage here.

Here is Dr. Ben Carson discussing the recent societal issues. It's interesting that the video posters went with the text they did, because he makes lots of other useful observations.

But on that "systemic" topic, he says-- and I'm completely paraphrasing this into my own language, listen to the video itself for a verbatim account-- that if you have radical revolutionaries who want to dynamite and re-build the country, they first have to argue that the nation has systemic issues: the use of that word precludes reform.

I've always known him to be good on things generally, but I wasn't aware that he was as "red pilled"-- or maybe even "black pilled"-- on this particular issue. Good on him.

Because Conservatives are classy people who rank off-the-charts on the "conscientious" Big 5 personality trait, they keep their mouths shut. They don't:

• Annoy their neighbors with obnoxious yard signs.


• Act unprofessionally at work by talking about politics.


• Mass-adopt bigoted ideologies.


• Form domestic terrorist organizations and start burning down entire swathes of cities every time something doesn't go their way.

Conservatives are cool, level-headed, logical, rational, and reasonable people. These are all superb attributes.

The downside of this is that they do sometimes feel isolated, because they are too busy pulling the entire productive capacity of society to waste time "dog whistling" to one another.

So, Conservatives: take heart in numbers like these, which show that there are millions upon millions of other people just like you. As Scott Adams recently said, "in these times, the only day Conservatives have Free Speech is November 3": your fellows are out there!

One thing I've been noticing over the past five or ten years, since "millenials" have entered their twenties and thirties and become "adults", is that society has become rapidly infantilized.

It's manifested in lots of ways, but the one which probably grates the most is the ubiquity of these hideous, Flash-style solid-color drawings. Not only are they artistically bankrupt and zero-effort, but they also often contain Cultural Marxist "victim" group members, like random black people or Muslims. Other times they contain soy boys. This cosmetic style used to be aimed at children, but today it's oriented towards "adults".

I've spent the past few days collecting just a small sampling. It's become so common that it's even worked its way into video games, as the last picture illustrates. I also included a screen grab of an "adult" CNN segment with "Sesame Street" characters: you simply can't make this stuff up.