Every so often I'll encounter a niche Conservative who advocates for the a quasi "Nazi Germany" model, as the solution to preventing a Leftist take-over of any future civilizations. For example, here is a fellow named "Brett Stevens", who proposes a Statist idea based on these four pillars:

1. Nationalism
2. Aristocracy
3. Capitalism
4. A Transcendental Goal

He goes on to remark:



To me, this is quite literally the definition of State Fascism: a strong national identity, a ruling elite class, and State-directed capitalism which is guided towards the nation's mission.

And I don't say "State Fascism" as a dismissive pejorative: I'm not employing an ad hominem-- I'm merely using it as a descriptive term. After all, there are pros and cons to any system. Further, Stevens has very reasonable commentary regarding competing models which you can read here-- including a valid critique of my own beloved liberalism.

That aforementioned criticism, incidentally, reminds me of the old book "A Critique of Pure Tolerance", which made the rational argument that pure tolerance, including of those who are intolerant, will simply result in the intolerant taking over the society, and destroying the tolerant.

Stevens gives a hypothetical example involving the Amish: if the Left wanted to destroy them, the Left would simply send a gay black orphan into the society, followed by a single New York Times article: "Meet Lars, the boy the Amish hated just because he was gay." The Amish would be gone within a month.

The problem I have with these "State Fascism" kinds of solutions is that they-- by definition-- are totally repressive towards anyone who deviates from the narrative. Heck, the Left is instituting Stevens' own model right now:

They have their transcendental goal-- the enforcement of the "victimhood olympics" religion-- and are using State political power plus directed capitalism ("it's no longer enough for corporations to just make money-- they need to be 'a force for good'"), while violently putting down people with values contrary to "SJW Nation"-- such as Brett Stevens himself.

If my reading of him is correct-- and I think it is-- Stevens should be endorsing what the Left are doing at the moment, not lamenting it: they are instituting his own model!

That's not to say that pure liberalism-- "cuckservatism"-- is a great model either. I suppose what would be best, would be a modification of Libertarianism, which would consider anti-liberal espousings to be some kind of threat of force, in and of themselves: this would keep the society "purely liberal", which would prevent a takeover by illiberal collectivists such as Leftists (or Brett Stevens!).

At the same time, it itself wouldn't be a "cure worse than the disease", with soul-crushing police state apparati and gulags-- because those aspects would also be illiberal.

In other words, it'd be a society with one inviolable Mega Law: "Everyone is an individual." Espousing any kind of collectivism would be the one thing which the society would immediately squash.

Naturally, all of these musings are moot: every society, no matter the model, tends to collapse in two or three hundred years at the longest; and, societies and political systems arise from the bottom up, not the top-down-- whereas the above discourse is all prescriptive: purely academic.

Every time I read an article on a video game or tech web site-- which is becoming increasingly infrequent, by the way-- I look up the author to see what their political affiliation is. So far, I have ten people in my notes: nine of them are complete, absolute, and extremely vocal libtards. The tenth-- some guy named "Fraser Gilbert"-- didn't mention politics anywhere I could find on his Twitter feed, which tells me he may be a Conservative.

And that's the closest you'll find to a Conservative in game or tech journalism today: someone who doesn't say anything one way or the other-- a sort of "theoretical Conservative". Either these people are apolitical, or are afraid to speak their minds for fear of inevitable reprisal.

This is happening across all of journalism, incidentally. In 1971, Republicans made up 25.7% of journalists, whereas 35.5% of them identified as Democrat. By 2018, it was found that in financial journalism at least, only 4.4% of them identified as Right-of-center. With tech and game "journalism", I'd be surprised if the number was even that high.

I gave up reading "professional" game reviews many, many years ago. Someone told me recently that out of all the issues which "Cyberpunk 2077" has-- and believe me, the problems are myriad-- all the "journalist" class could talk about is how poorly the game allegedly "represented" trannies. That, of all things, was the key talking point for them!

I should make a flow chart of what a Leftist sees when they look at someone, it would be quite hilarious-- that exercise can be for another day. But when it comes to video game and tech web sites, they ceased being useful to me long ago, because rather than talk about the actual topic, they discuss how the subject matter filters through their political lens instead.

In my previous post, I wrote that wifey and I "police what comes into the house" for our kids' consumption. Today, I found out that a co-worker of mine started a not-for-profit which distributes man-hating, Afrocentric, Black Supremacist "woke" children's propaganda.

That's how little I share in common with my coworkers!

But I digress: the real purpose of this blog post is to comment on a very recent Tucker Carlson monologue. I've already written about him, a couple of weeks ago in fact-- but now he's explicitly spelled out his world view. Behold:



Holy smokes.

I had a better grasp of Lockean civic and political theory by second grade!

If you would have shown me this text and posed to me, "Sniper, pop quiz: which cable TV news host said that?", I would have guessed "Wolf Blitzer", or maybe "Joe Scarborough". It's so silly, and so nonintellectual, and so nonsensical, that I can scarcely believe it wasn't on CNN or MSNBC.

Where to even begin?

For starters I suppose, Tucker places laws against murder, and laws against jaywalking, in the same moral category. That should set the alarm bells ringing right away. But then he goes on to "clarify": "the dividing line is your conscience, don't you see?"

"Muh feelz!"

So, the Left's "conscience" is telling them that Fox News should be forced off the air. What the heck are you complaining about Tucker?

He then declares that the role of government is to "control citizen's behaviors". You see, you're not negatively delegating your God-given right to self-defense-- you're being positively prevented from taking actions, like murdering!

Makes my head spin.

And this, my friends, is why Conservatives have done nothing but lose over the past several decades: they are "Democrat-Lite".

I listened to this talk last night, which judging by the political references therein took place somewhere around thirteen years ago: my does time fly. The premise of the talk can be summarized like this: "Culture Wars? What Culture?"

He interweaves plays and dialog from eons past to explain how "culture" is the ability to have leisure, which is different from "free time", and how this leisure is playful, like a feast, where people enjoy each other on the basis of their shared stories, heritages, and points of reference.

He argues that America quite literally doesn't have a culture: holidays like "Armistice Day" were moved and renamed for commercial purposes, if he were to give a talk about an American figure like John C. Calhoun half the country wouldn't even know who that was, religious values have been supplanted entirely, and so forth.

For anyone who has been reading this blog for any amount of time, these are all familiar themes.

Like so many software development groups today, at work we employ daily "stand up" meetings as part of the abomination known as "agile", and at the tail end of them one woman in particular always asks, "Did anyone do anything interesting over the weekend, or have anything fun to share?" This is universally met by crickets: silence so thick you would carve it with a cleaver.

The reasons for this is because no one on the "team" has anything in common, and they know that no matter what they say, someone else on the "team" will hold the opposite value. Inevitably then, the awkward silence is eventually salvaged by someone mentioning some vacuous modern television show, which will be forgotten in five minutes, followed by a "lowest common denominator", vapid exchange regarding the supposed merits of the show, followed in turn by the meeting ending.

It's sort of like this:


If that doesn't sound like video games or music or video games these days-- "bland and not effective"-- then I don't know what does. Today, it's impossible to even make a television commercial which appeals to "Americans", because there is no such thing as an "American" anymore. Interestingly, "get woke, go broke" is even taking hold: right now, you'd think we live in Nigeria, the ads have so many black people and so few white people in them, something which will probably begin to revert soon.

Of course, this societal implosion is all the fault of the Left, which has been deliberately subverting its own nation's culture for decades now-- 2:05 mark of this video:


I wonder if there has ever been a culture before now which was intentionally subverting itself? "The greatest threats are often from within", as the saying goes.

My particular household is completely atomized: my wife and I constantly police what comes into the house, and our children are only allowed to watch shows or YouTube content which wifey and I have explicitly reviewed and whitelisted. It's also why we home school, as we violently disagree with much of what is taught in schools today. It's like we're foreigners in our own land, with our home being its own little country!

Even for introverts such as ourselves, this never-ending social isolation is distressing.

Of course, radical Leftists will read this and celebrate: "Ha ha, look at the poor little snowflake white supremacist Nazi, he should feel isolated!" Except that the Leftists are even more atomized than are Conservatives: cultural demolition is a blade which cuts both ways; the most miserable people I know are on the Left, and this huge vacuum they've created in their own souls is why they are so susceptible to so many idiotic ideas and ideologies.

This also explains why the Left have gone full-on authoritarian:


Contemporary Leftism is the administration of faux "shared" values, enforced by a bayonet for lack of any other option.

Let's end with a personal anecdote: as a child growing up in the 1980s, my very favorite people were those who were in their sixties and seventies at the time-- so, those born in the 1910s and 1920s. "Old people" back then had this sort of quiet wisdom about them, a sort of rational calmness. For example, my first grade school bus driver and I used to talk about "Star Trek", and all sorts of other things, as he shuttled me and the other kids to and from school.

At one point as I aged-- I was probably in my twenties when it really struck me-- I remember wondering to myself, "What ever happened to all of the old people? The ones today aren't like the ones I remember as a child." Now at just shy of age forty, it's only gotten worse: today when I have conversations with people presently in their sixties or seventies, they're just as dopey and inane as the "Millennials"!

It's like instead of living sixty years, they've lived one year sixty times over: they have no wisdom to share, no richness of experience, no interesting stories to tell...

Maybe those now long-dead elders from my childhood were the last of their kind, the final carriers of culture...

In any event, time to wrap up this post so I can return to my sedentary day job of increasing the share price of a multi-billion dollar international conglomerate by one thousandth of one cent.

Metal Jesus guy sees the light: there is absolutely no substitute for a CRT; it's tough to even describe how much better games look on one to people who haven't used one in a while. Hopefully some day a niche company will start manufacturing them again.

And I never thought I'd say this, but I'm one hundred percent switched over to emulation these days. There were four developments which drove me that way:

1. Cost. Old games are a fortune: even crappy games for systems like the Genesis are ramping up to the fifty dollar-plus range-- it's absurd. Good games will run you at least eighty bucks, all the way to a thousand-plus!


2. 8bitdo. Their controllers are so insanely authentic, yet have nice modern touches like menu buttons. And for systems they don't mimic, such as the 3DO, there are USB adapters.


3. Retroarch via S-video. Hipster name, great product-- and running 480i out of my video card to my CRT gives every system that 3DO or DVD-esque crispness. I love the way they look. And with Retroarch, you get unified screenshots, recording, the ability to create custom cheat codes, and even streaming to Twitch, right from the menus.


4. Reliability. My old systems are breaking one-by-one, and it's tough to find dependable people online who can fix them without charging an arm and a leg. With emulation, everything is running off my Manjaro Linux setup, on my PC, which is one hundred percent reliable.

In short, with my Retroarch-CRT tandem, using authentic controllers across-the-board, it feels absolutely genuine, while also bringing with it the incredible array of benefits which running from a PC brings-- including having the entire library of games ever made, gratis.

Below are truly bizarre things which huge swathes of the people around me believe, and who never hesitate to remind me at every opportunity: at work, in video games, in movies, in music, in my neighborhood, and everywhere else.

When I very politely point out the myriad flaws in their arguments, they call me a crack pot, a white supremacist, a conspiracy theorist, or try to get me fired from my job and get my web site cancelled. If I drank, I could make that joke about people wondering why I do:

• Theft is wrong. Taxation is ok.


• A mob of people committing violence outside of the government is a mob. A mob of people committing violence inside the government is "democracy".


• Because 50.000001% of people vote for something, the State has the "consent of the governed" to put a gun to the heads of the other 49.999999% and force them into compliance.


• People do not have a right to make their own choices. But I have the right to make my own choices-- like forcing you to do what I want!


• Reality is subjective. Everything you say is objectively wrong.


• Everyone should dress like Michael Jackson in public, in fear of a virus which causes zero symptoms in most people, and has a 99.9% survival rate.


• Mentally ill mysophobic people are the sane ones, and can force the mentally healthy to play pretend sick in public, at the cost of being denied access to health care and groceries.


• Debt has no meaning, because it's just money we owe to ourselves.


• A governor can sign a decree onto a piece of paper, and it is magically authoritative. Politicians have authority because they had a big enough mob behind them during "election" season.


• Someone who loots a Walmart and burns down a Wendy's should be bailed out immediately. A blind elderly man like Irwin Schiff who won't pay taxes should die chained to a bed in prison.


• Celebrities and multi-billion dollar corporations are good sources of moral guidance.


• Borders are racist-- all are welcome! This is why I fenced in my front yard, keep my door locked, and have a security system which instantly calls the police if it goes off.


• The police are bad. And if you argue with me, I'll call 911.


• Prices are set by how much labor went into something.


• I hate inequality, so I'm going to institutionalize an infinitely powerful ruling class.


• A man can literally become a woman, and vice-versa.


• Animals are just "people who can't talk". So I cut off their genitals and imprison them in my home.


• White people are oppressive because of their skin color, regardless of their personal life's experiences.


• Men are oppressive because they have a cock and balls. But "men" are also just a social construct, and there are actually seven hundred "genders".


• Women and minorities should be hired because they have vaginas or are black. Proponents call critics of their policies "sexist and racist". They put Martin Luther King Jr. signs in their front lawns.


• The Earth is about to hit life-of-the-planet unprecedented levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, causing it to become the solar system's second Venus.


• Fossil fuel-burning internal combustion cars are bad for the environment. Fossil fuel-burning external combustion cars are good for the environment.


• Words are violence. Silence is violence. Burning down entire neighborhoods is a peaceful protest. Taking a selfie in Nancy Pelosi's chair is "insurrection."

Someone let me know when this ride is over.

I've seen several pieces of disparate evidence, including this article most recently, that the Left are preparing the military to directly take violent action against Conservatives: they are pruning the ranks of people politically opposed to the establishment, while also training that the "enemy" are "extremists at home."

Cities will be militarized ala DC, and the Demoncrats will be sending storm troopers door-to-door to ensure everyone is "in compliance" with the WuFlu vaccinations, and who knows what else. It's clearly inevitable at this point.

Presently, I'm waiting for some kind of a sign, an indication of where to flee. Lots of my friends are choosing Florida, but I'm leaning Texas so that I would have the option of seeking asylum in Mexico. I've also been stocking up on crypto.

Remember when Ron Paul warned about a border wall? "Some day it might be used to keep you in!" Prescient.

Under the "Technologists... Please" header in this post, I implored the makers of technology to think about the societal ramifications of the things they create. Turns out, there is a whole software license dedicated to that notion!

The only problem with it is that its ethics are based on this document, which is filled with insoluble contradictions: it tries to shoe-horn together United States "Bill of Rights"-esque liberalism-- negative rights-- with "Communist Manifesto" positive rights.

Saying that "no one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property" and "no one may be compelled to belong to an association" in one breath, followed in the next breath by "elementary education shall be compulsory", "everyone has the right to a standard of living" including "medical care" plus "social services", and also that people have a right to "protection against unemployment", is a lesson in hilarity. It's the "Pontiac Aztec" of charters!

Good luck trying to legally resolve this contract in a dispute!

Welfare states are authoritarian by nature: they require slaves-in-all-but-name against their will to service other people's needs, according to terms that a pseudo-arbitary middleman enforces at gunpoint. By contrast, a liberal society is one based on negative rights, which precludes "welfare" and even taxation, unless the taxation services only delegation of natural rights-- and even then it's a gray area.

You can't mix the two models: you have to pick one.

There are some articles I do like however, such as: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." The Left won't touch this charter with a ten foot barge pole due to this clause!

It's difficult to believe how terrible the quality control is in modern software: every time I try to do basically anything-- especially but not limited to Microsoft products-- basic functionality just doesn't work right.

My latest one involves trying to get screenshots and video clips off of the Xbox Series X. You can't just plug a USB thumb drive in and copy files to it, like you can Sony's systems-- so your only option is to use their "upload to OneDrive" menu option.

"Ok, fine". Cue dial-up quality upload speeds...

It takes about half an hour just to upload a screenshot. It was doing this a few weeks ago, then suddenly worked fast two weeks ago, now it's slow again. The Series X's "test network speed" option shows 354 Mbps up, so it's not my internet connection, or the router, or anything like that.

I tried going on to the "Microsoft Store" to look for a file manager, and the application authors can't even bother to spell text correctly in their app titles or descriptions. Reviews are all one star for pretty much every program on offer: it's that "race to the bottom 'app store'" model, yet another great gift to the world from Apple.

It was a lot of fun watching this 1999 match between Lazio and Milan. Lazio really deserved to win this one: Abbiati kept them in it. Seeing young looking versions of Mihajlovic, Nesta, Ambrosini, Salas, Inzaghi, Maldini, and especially Abbiati, whom I only ever knew as a grumpy looking bald old man... surreal.

The most striking thing about football from this period was how direct it was: not just as a percentage but period, very few backwards passes were played, in entire matches: almost every ball went towards the opponent's goal, often times by just thumping it forward.

The players also looked so loose and casual, and I think it reflects how society is different: everything today is so obsessed with safety, today they don't even let people into football stadiums because they might get the sniffles, and if they do the fans have to wear hazmat suits. And today's football is obsessed with having seventy, eighty percent pass completion, which means three quarters of the passes go backwards or sideways.

The same is true if you look at NFL statistics; take people like Troy Aikman or Dan Marino: physically two of the best hall-of-fame athletes to ever play the quarterback position-- yet if you look at their career numbers, they threw almost as many interceptions as touchdowns, and had completion rates in the mid-fifties. The style in that sport as well was much more direct, risk-oriented, and aggressive.

On that same "safety" note, this match illustrates how much I hate "VAR": when Shevchenko went down, or when it looked like Maldini's arm stopped a cross, players complained for like ten seconds, and then just got on with the game.

One player I could see being almost unplayable in this era of football is Sergej Milinkovic-Savic: his height, physique, and obsession with little flicks and tricks, while being less accurate with today's style of passing game, shows me he's really a man out of time.

The "dark horse" player who surprised me the most from this match was Sergio Conceição-- he was like an even better version of Massimo Oddo: super solid defensive stature, phenomenal crossing ability, great on the dribble, highly technical, and with good pace too. He must have been considered a world class fullback in his day.

Part of what makes football such a fun game is how much continuity it has had: unlike the NFL, which hyper-knee jerk changes the rules every five minutes, outside of the abomination that is "VAR" FIFA, the confederations, and the league governing bodies have done a phenomenal job of resisting temptations to mess with the formula: from a rules and flow standpoint, this 1999 match looked just like one from the past couple of years.

To end, a real shame: when I finally got the chance in America to start watching Italian Football in the 2005 season, huge parts of this Milan side-- Shevchenko, Ambrosini, Gattuso, Costacurta, Serginho, Maldini-- were still in place. Milan finished third. Whereas, other than Ballotta and Inzaghi I think this entire 1999 Lazio side had been liquidated due to the debt by 2005, with Nesta even switching sides-- Lazio finished three points from relegation.

Before the vaccine, to people who proposed taking a "net human life" approach, which includes counting deaths by suicide, drug overdose, and so forth: "The lockdowns are worth it if they save even one life."

Now there are reports of individuals dying from the vaccines, and those same "if it saves one life" people are now proclaiming: "Everyone should get the vaccine, because we should look at it as net human lives."

Which is it?

Of course, the WuFlu is less of a risk to my being comfortable than catching a cold-- instantly making any risk from a vaccine not worth it. I like my cell DNA the way it is, thank you very much.

Here are some disjointed thoughts which occurred to me on my morning walk:


Proper and Constructive Attitudes

"Racism" is judging an individual unfairly based purely on their membership to a given racial group, as opposed to getting to know them personally. "Racism" is not citing statistics about how black people are a tiny percent of the population, but commit a huge percentage of the violent crimes.

"Anti-Semitism" is judging an individual unfairly based on the fact that they are a Jew, without getting to know them personally. "Anti-Semitism" is not observing that and wondering why the minds behind the radical ideologies and the institutions destroying the world today-- feminism, Cultural Marxism, giant banks, hedge funds, and so forth-- are overrepresented by Jews to a mind-boggling degree.

The "is" items above are manifestations of closed-mindedness, cowardice, lack of curiosity, and intellectual dishonesty. The "is not" items above are manifestations of open-mindedness, bravery, curiosity, and intellectual honesty.

Therefore it follows that adopting the "is" attitudes above will lead to a rigid, authoritarian, theocratic society hell bent on destroying intellectualism-- while the "is not" attitudes will lead to a flexible, anti-authoritarian, liberal society curiously seeking truth and understanding.


Technologists... Please

"Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should." Any time you have some zany idea, especially but not limited to Machine Learning and AI, or any time you are asked by your employer about a zany idea, think very carefully about what society would look like if your idea gained mainstream acceptance from the "powers that be."

Car technology that makes it trivial for "authorities"-- who may on your side today, but not tomorrow-- to track and remotely shut down automobiles for wrong-think? How about "digital passports" which could prohibit political "dissidents"-- you, if not today then when the next regime is in charge-- from traveling, having access to health care, or holding a job? Or how about facial recognition technology which will profile people for political affiliations or "potential for 'terrorism'", without even asking them as individuals?

Roughly five percent of the society are sociopaths. As much as people rightfully point fingers at that group, it's huge swathes of the other ninety five percent who are doing the bidding. As it was with the "election", the problems come from the bottom-up, not the top-down. As non-sociopathic technologists, you have a choice to say no, or to not pursue your zany pet project-- or at least you keep the outcome of the hobby to yourself.


Video Game Music Over the Years

Video game music from 1993, versus video game music from 2020. From a music theory standpoint the former is like Mozart, the latter is like banging two rocks together.

People might accuse me of cherrypicking: you're wrong. I've reviewed over six hundred games and counting-- releases from the late 1970s all the way to present day triple-A ray-traced and indie titles, and everything in between. The links above are highly representative of the video game music from their respective eras, and if anyone is qualified to make that judgement, it's me.


Changing Assumptions

In March of 2018, I wrote about what I thought were the gravest threats to the world. I should make a revised version: China is still the greatest threat, but with "Bejing Biden" in charge, the risk has morphed from war into the institution of a "CCP"-like model, right here in America.

Additionally, the "Cultural Marxism" risk should be shifted one slot higher: these people are in the process of installing a theocratic, totalitarian monoculture police state.

Several years ago I bought the "bug out house", thinking that a move to a fairly remote rural area would insulate me to some degree from social unrest and give me a fighting chance against the nightmare scenario of nuclear fallout. But now, it's looking increasingly like I may need to minimally flee Minnesota to a "pro-secession" "Red" state, or perhaps even seek political asylum from a South or Central American country.

In other words, the "bug out house" is better than nothing-- but doesn't feel quite like the correct hedge in 2021's reality. I've been stocking up on crypto lately: a crypto wallet can be backed up onto dozens of USB thumb drives and smuggled over a border-- where upon arrival, the crypto can be converted into regional fiat.


The Derby

This is not to take anything away from our own players: Lazzari for example was quite literally unplayable: but what in the world was Paulo Fonseca thinking with his tactics?

Every other Serie A coach has more or less figured this Lazio out: play a deep line, man mark Luis Alberto at all times, don't give the ball away cheaply in midfield, and force Lazio's counters out wide. Fonseca by contrast had the exact opposite setup, and it made his team look like a Serie B side.

It was the most lop-sided derby I think I've ever seen. There was zero chance Roma were going to take anything with the tactical approach they employed.


Site Growth

Over the past twelve months I have grown unique site viewership by one hundred and seven percent. That's growth from a relatively small starting point naturally, but it's trending in the right direction nonetheless.

People have been saying for the better part of one hundred and fifty years, if not even longer, that one can deduce someone's personality simply by looking at their face. I've always thought the notion was maybe twenty five percent true-- but it turns out it's more like seventy two percent accurate.

Their use of the "Big 5" personality traits might be causing some of the twenty eight percent inaccuracy: one thing I've noticed over the past several years is that the Left and Right have become muddied on some of those.

For example, the Left used to be known for their openness to new experiences-- but today, they are intensely terrified of new experiences, opting for crayon books, nostalgia, and "safe spaces." Whereas, people on the Right today are the ones "peeling back the onion", challenging their own perceptions of-- to borrow a book title from Murray Rothbard-- "Man, Economy, and State".

As for anecdotes, I've noticed on the male side that the more square jawed someone is, the more likely they are to be on the Right: in the cities it's effeminate hipster types, and they are almost on the Left; up North while meeting with contractors, it was striking to me how masculine they looked, and I could tell from their demeanors and little off-hand remarks that they were on the Right.

On the female end, Leftist women often have that unmistakable look of taught skin and thin lips-- whereas women on the Right often have more robust facial features and expressions.

None of this is fool proof, and everyone should be treated and understood as an individual-- but it's a good starting point.

From the first time I sat in front of my father's "Osborne 1" in 1983 to about four or five years ago, I was really passionate about computers and technology. I knew as young as ten years old what I "wanted to be when I grew up"-- and I made it happen.

But since then my interest has been rapidly flagging, to the point where more recently I wished and wish I could nuke the whole concept of computers off the planet: the ratio of technology being used for good versus evil is probably 1:1000, at best.

Just in one day I've encountered both this and this.

These types of findings are on a daily basis rate for me. Meanwhile, the apotheosis of computers being "peak helpful" seemed to be around 1996: you could materially do all of the same useful things on them then as now, but they weren't so powerful that they could be abused.

Technology is setting the stage for such unprecedented evil that one of the options wifey and I are exploring is buying a totally remote piece of land somewhere, maybe even without a listed address if possible, and living in an assembled log home kit, totally off the grid.

To be clear, I don't blame the technology, just as I don't blame the gun when someone commits murder with one: I still love technology in isolation: but the world is being run, from the top of the totem pole down to my peon neighbors, by wacko authoritarian nutjobs.

They can't be trusted with technology any more than a two year old can be trusted with a box of matches. Wishing the technology gone seems more kind than wishing the people dead.

A friend and coworker asked me a bunch of questions related to the capitol event, and I decided to post my replies here for everyone to read:


For the majority of those who attended, what do think the purpose was for the march in DC?

For the majority of people who were there, I got the sense via both on-the-spot interviews compliments of "The Epoch Times" coverage and via my own feelings and the sense of like-minded others around me in my own life, that it was an exhibition of pure frustration.

The Left are constantly putting out their yards signs, their bumper stickers, standing around en masse with signs, while Conservatives by contrast sit in their houses and stew. A critical mass of people on the Right have had enough of this sensation that they're not being heard: that's why they showed up in the tens of thousands to Trump's rallies over the past few years, and that's why they made their way to DC.

I've seen the mainstream media describe the events as an "insurrection", which is absolutely hilarious: an "insurrection" is an attempt to completely take over an institution and install an interim government-- not spend five minutes taking selfies with your foot on Pelosi's desk, and then leaving.

What do you think the expected outcomes were for this? Any attempt to influence voting?

I don't get the sense that the average person there had a specific expectation at all: they just wanted to show up and be seen. Most Conservatives I talk to, and I share this attitude myself, are pretty "black pilled" regarding the prospect of future elections being any less fixed than this one appeared to be.

Mostly, I think people just wanted to do something, and to be heard. A couple of people I heard interviewed on location thought that election reform might be possible, but that it would be uphill sledding given the current Republican leadership.

What do you think Trump's expectation was for the march in DC?

Certainly not violence of any kind: for four years the mainstream media has tried to paint Trump as some kind of dangerous, coup-prone revolutionary, but in reality he was a Democrat most of his life, and his policy positions aren't that different from Bill Clinton's in the 90's, or even Bernie Sanders's populism from just a handful of years ago. There was never any chance that Trump was going to park tanks on the lawn of the White House.

Today our CEO said it was essentially about failed leadership that caused the 'rioting' in the Capitol. In your eyes, does Trump have anything to do with the breaching the Capitol building?

No, I don't think so, on two counts.

First, Trump never explicitly called for violence, and in fact told people to go home and stay peaceful. In fact, I wish he would have been more forceful in his language, like that astonishing "truth-to-power" speech he gave in 2016. If Trump proved anything it's that people value honesty, and "go home and peacefully wait for the next election" is a dishonest message: in the word choices of Martin Luther King Jr., we're at a juncture where "direct action" is needed, as the election system is provably broken.

Second, Trump never even implicitly invited violence: he'd been having peaceful rallies and other events across the country for the past four years, and since all of the violence in the country recently has been perpetrated by people on the Left, specifically "Black Lives Matter" and "Antifa" who have been burning down entire swathes of cities with the active support of governors, mayors, and multi-billion dollar corporations and their CEOs, it's unclear to me how anyone, including Donald Trump, could have anticipated his supporters getting into the capitol building.

And on that note specifically, video evidence strongly suggests that the "breaching" was executed by a combination of "Antifa" plants, and complicit security forces who combined were trying to put Trump supporters into tempting and compromising situations, where the optics for the movement would look bad.

For all of their pearl clutching, Democrat leadership and CNN anchors would have been privately beside themselves with joy had Trump supporters set the building on fire: it would have meant the political death of Right-wing populism. Instead, those corrupt power brokers got selfies, which is why they've sounded so absurd in their overplaying and exaggeration of the events.

Do you believe that there were any 'bad actors' that caused this riot to happen?

Absolutely. I've watched dozens of Trump events over these past four years, and my mother and brother even went to a rally here in Minneapolis. I have never seen a Trump supporter break windows, or push police officers, or scale walls like a real-life Sam Fisher, or scatter papers all across office floors.

Once the doors were opened, many actual Trump supporters made their way inside: most of them walked neatly on the carpet between the velvet posted areas, while some did engage in totally harmless and actually quite humorous antics, like taking selfies carrying the lectern around, or propping Trump flags on the statues.

After the harmless fun, they walked out of the building and went home.

Do you think there was a setup to allow this to happen?

I've watched lots of video footage of that day, and it appears that not only did security open a gate allowing people to approach the building, but that people were more broadly allowed inside. On this, there is agreement from both the Left and the Right-- but the explanations are different.

Because the Left blames everything on "racism", they explain the obviously lax security on racially-oriented "pro-white" sentiments, even though the primary guard who seemed to be quasi-leading people throughout the building was a black guy. A more plausible hypothesis is that the people were let in, so they could compromise their own optics. That is a very common tactic, dating all the way back from antiquity, so it wouldn't surprise me if it was employed here.

A third and more innocent option is that the complete lack of past violence from Trump supporters led to the weak security in this instance. But I find that difficult to believe, considering Congress was actually in session, and we're discussing the captitol building of the United States, for Pete's sake.

If you were writing the headlines for last week, how would you write them?

"Capitol Building Breached" would be a sufficient headline, since it more or less objectively describes what did happen. As part of the news story's contents, I would have interviewed as many protestors, counter-protestors, people who obviously appeared to be plants, security guards, and police officers as possible, and then try to paint as clear and as objective of a picture as I could.


My Friend's Thoughts

Here are the thoughts my friend shared:


"All I know is that the core Republicans did not want and did not support Trump from the beginning and now through the end. He certainly wasn't perfect but how can you be when you are the only one fighting. After last week, I can't really blame the guy for wanting to essentially walk away from this mess.

It's funny that the Republicans seem to think things will go back to 'normal' after Trump is gone. That piling on or distancing themselves from the fight will somehow make things better. In my opinion, I think the Republican Party is finished. Many voters saw them as the path to fight against Obamacare, illegal aliens, high tax rates, uncontrolled spending/borrowing, etc. What everyone has seen is that, there are virtually no elected Republicans that showed up to fight for the most important fight of all - fair & honest elections.

As you pointed out, if that contract between the elected and represented in broken, what use is a paper document called the Constitution. For the majority of Republicans, they look at the election losses just like any other losses (i.e you win some, you lose some).

As imperfect as Trump was, he has been really the only Republican who actually fought for the American people and against the Democrats & their propaganda media. That's why I don't see Trump supporters voting for any Republican again. It's like watching Charlie Brown and Lucy with the football!

There really is a swamp and it's likely not possible to drain. By the time people realize how bad things are, it will be too late to do anything about it (look how quickly Venezuela went down)."

Far-reaching interview here regarding China, from a subject matter expert. Incidentally, if you are not a paying member of "The Epoch Times", you absolutely should be.

I wish I could be as optimistic as the guest about countries, including the United States, pushing back against the CCP: in fact, I see it going exactly the opposite direction-- in America, they call him "Bejing Biden" for a reason. I think the guest is also missing or underestimating the pressure corporations will put on governments to "open the doors": think of Disney, the NBA, Blizzard, and so forth.

There is no limit to how far corporations will bend over for the CCP, censoring their products, censoring their consumers, directly implementing civilian censorship systems for the CCP in the case of Google, and so forth.

He also has commentary beginning around the 17:03 mark, ostensibly regarding the Trump Administration's relationship with China-- which I will take in another direction. More after the quote:



Conservatives in America need to come to grips with the fact that what they've conventionally thought of as "their government", is most certainly not: rather, they should frame it in their minds as a foreign State, like France, or Zimbabwe, or China. They should view it as an absolutely repressive regime, which just so happens to be operating on North American soil: they should abandon naive notions that this regime can be negotiated with using words; rather, they should be deciding on which hard-line measures to take, both on a small scale to protect their families, and also on a larger-scale mobilization to action.

All of this makes me think of this self-described "paleocon" guy I used to talk politics with: at first he seemed pretty bright, but after a bit he started to strike me as extremely naive. After a bit more, I was able to put my finger on it: it's like every time he had a conversation, or observed some phenomenon, it was like the first time: in other words, he was unable to either remember or apply the lessons he and others had learned, sometimes even the very previous day.

He was very frustrating to communicate with: "didn't we just go over this yesterday?" After a while, I essentially stopped replying to his messages, and he sort of disappeared into the ether. But he's by far not the only one I've encountered like this: so many people are so emotionally blinded by prior loyalties that they are unable to process when those loyalties have been betrayed, so they never adjust their perceptions.

I got a huge laugh out of this; it's like on time when my mom was in a local Target store, and they played an announcement something to the effect of "Target would like to help you overcome your implicit bias and racism." Nothing like getting lectured about morality from multi-billion dollar corporations!

In other news, I had to re-upload the video related to my previous post: it ran overnight and was still stuck in "processing": BitChute must have some background daemon or service which gets hung up occasionally, I've had this issue before. In any event, I updated the link in the post to the new video's id.

I also owe replies to several people via encrypted chat, email, and elsewhere: I will respond to everyone! It just seems like there is never enough time in the day. I think that's part of why I've only been sleeping four to five hours per night, for seven or eight nights in a row now: so much to do, and sleep feels like such a colossal waste of time.

For the sake of trying something different and novel, I attended what I suppose one would frame as a "Black Lives Matter", or "Anti-Police" rally, in a small suburb of Minneapolis, in my home state. Very recently, a man was shot there after he twice ran at police trying to stab them with a knife-- you can see a citizen recording of the incident here.

In the spite of the fact that it appears the police not only did nothing wrong, but were probably too lenient-- personally, I would have shot the guy the first time he tried to stab me-- it brought out organized protestors. I missed the very first portion of the protests, but managed to record the rest.

You can watch my entire coverage here.

The video is broken into three segments: the first section took place at an intersection a few blocks from the police station; the second short segment was me asking a question of a guy who was directing traffic-- and not particularly well, at that; the third part took place at the police station itself.

Some observations of my own:

• The megaphone lady was very careful to reiterate numerous times that all lives matter: the skin color of the victim is irrelevant.


• In the very next breath though, she condemned any and all criticism of her positions as people speaking from a position of "privilege" based on their skin color, even though she has no clue what personal experiences the people there have had.


• That contrast set the tone for the entire event: a mix of liberalism-- "[individual] cops who commit unnecessary violence need to be held accountable" with collectivistic rhetoric, like "it's white people in the suburbs who are the problem!"


• The "guest" speakers followed the same pattern: one speaker represented people with disabilities, where the police wind up beating people who don't understand and can't respond to the directions. That's a good thing about which to raise awareness.


• But then the next "guest" speaker told the audience that somehow blacks were owed "reparations" for the War on Drugs-- even though I personally know many white people who have been hauled away for minor drug possession.


• The excerpt read from the "Letter from Birmingham Jail" sounds an awful lot like my criticism of Republicans, and I found it extraordinarily relatable: in my case, sitting around "waiting for the next election" is a ridiculous notion, when it's obvious more "direct action" needs to be taken; the Left are certainly not going to sit idle.


• Lots of "victim" names were enumerated. I'm not familiar with them, but I've seen so many B.S. high profile cases-- Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, and George Floyd-- that I'm suspicious. I'd guess the list is a mix of valid and invalid examples of police brutality.


• I conducted a quasi-interview of a so-called "counter protestor", which you can hear at the 31:15 mark. The man with her-- husband?-- was the biggest cuck I've ever encountered.


• The snide language and rhetoric directed towards the "counter protestors" from megaphone lady were interesting to observe, considering-- as I found out-- the "counter protestor's" position was essentially inches away from megaphone lady's: they hardly disagreed!


• There was an Antifa-looking guy who told the "counter protestor" that he was going to "fuck her mother", to which she made a retort. As soon as I turned my camera on the guy, he backed down from the counter-retort he was about to make-- seemingly out of embarrassment at being filmed in the act!


• In the spirit of trying a journalistic approach, I adopted a conversational, neutral tone with everyone, and just tried to capture the facts and essence of the event. I found it to be phenomenally enjoyable: maybe a career change is in order.

We can't have this! We're the party of law and order! None of this violating the law crap: who does this bar owner think she is, some kind of domestic terrorist? Are we on the side of "Black Lives Matter" or "Antifa" now? Where is the rule of law? Shut her down! Hear that Tucker? Shut her down!

On an unrelated note, I was playing "Assassin's Creed Valhalla" a little bit ago, this is how woke the side quest writing is: there is a part where you help kids in your little village rescue a tame wolf. One of the kids says, "She didn't even say thank you, she just ran off! Maybe she ran off to her husband?" Then another kid replies: "Or maybe she ran off to her wife? We don't really know, do we?"

So yes, in Woketopia, there are now lesbian wolves.

There was another part where this super ugly lesbian in your group-- yes, every character in every video game has to now have a declared sexual orientation, apparently-- helps you slaughter a bunch of male guards, then says "the only shame is the smell: nothing like a bunch of men shitting themselves!"

Can you imagine if they'd written that in reverse-- slaughter a village full of women, then have actual dialog in the game: "At least this is the last month their blood will flow!" I'm tempted to make a game like that: put some token black people in it just so my dialog can call them "negroes", have all the women be helpless damsels baking cakes in kitchens, and so forth.

Blowback is a bitch.

I started discussing this idea in my previous post where I talked about the Right's love of "democracy", but I've just encountered the problem again. Tucker: "we're in favor of law and order: break the law, go to jail." In other words, "refuse to return an escaped slave, go to jail."

This is why I've always had such a hard time with Conservatives: we agree on so many things, but I always get this vibe from them that they are, at heart, as despotic as the Left-- they want different man-made laws than the Left sure, but are just as ready to enforce those pseudo-arbitrary mandates at gun-point as their Commie second cousins are.

In other words, we sometimes agree coincidentally.

I hate to quibble or sound pedantic with people who should be my allies, but I'm finding that in this moment in time, this "quibble" is becoming such a serious problem that I fundamentally can't trust these people, when push comes to shove, any more than I could an Antifa member: fundamentally, intellectually, morally, many-- most-- Conservatives don't "get it".

It's Allen West kicking his deputy out because the latter cited the "Declaration of Independence."

I've been harping on Libertarian principle for years-- just check out the editorials page-- in preparation for just a moment as this. Those principles are everything: cargo cultism won't cut the muster, because then you're combating "Authoritarianism Major" with "Authoritarianism Lite", and at the end of that day you've still no discernible rubric for determining right from wrong.

Man-made laws are just that: man made. Men aren't gods! No amount of voting can magically give someone the authority to boss someone else around, unless a contract has been voluntarily entered into by both parties. Authority has to be derived from somewhere: it doesn't arrive from thin air, just because you and ten of your buddies say so! As soon as you say "law and order", you're tossing the same magical unicorn fairy dust into the air that Communists do.

In fact, even in his own segment, he quotes the Left throwing his own words right back at him! "We support 'rule of law'." Fundamentally, what's the difference between his view, and theirs? They just have different subjective sensibilities which are getting offended, not any fundamental moral view disagreement of how the world should work.

I appreciate Tucker bringing this censorship stuff to the masses. But if push really came to shove, I know he'd throw me and others like me off the cliff as soon as possible. "Can't have any pseudo-arbitrary, man-made rule breaking! Gotta' have 'rule of law'! Better to go to the gulag than have perfectly ethical civil disobedience, if it means committing a crime!"

I have ears on the ground in one of my home state of Minnesota's largest, multi-billion dollar corporations, and every so often I hear things which may interest my readers.

The CEO there parrots whatever propaganda is being fed to him by CNN, so he's a useful conduit into the mainstream Leftist thought. Apparently today he was asked about his thoughts regarding the "capitol riots", and gave a three-pronged response:

• Orange man bad: He claimed that Donald Trump called for his supporters to "fight on the steps of the capitol", and that the capitol is the "center of Democracy". Of course, this CEO is conflating quotes from two different people: Ted Cruz said that he would "fight on the floor of Congress" to get an election audit, while Donald Trump said that it was his supporter's rights as Americans to "protest at the capitol". So this CEO had roughly the right words-- albeit not sure where he got "steps" from-- but jumbled them into an imaginary salad, then mis-attributed the made-up quote, to validate his pre-existing world view. Of course, if you doubt me just look at why Twitter banned Trump, roughly: "some people are interpreting his words to be a call to violence", not because Trump actually called for violence.


• Racismus: Taking the reality of the past twelve months and quite literally turning it completely upside down, claimed that there was a double standard between the capitol protestors and "Black Lives Matter", against "Black Lives Matter"! You can't make this stuff up. "You see, black people were stopped at a monument by police in riot gear, whereas a bunch of white people were allowed to walk into the capitol!" These mind-bending mental gymnastics bring to mind that old quote: "Who do you believe: me, or your own eyes?"


• Inclusivity: "We need to be mindful that employees will have different opinions about this, so we need to stay respectful to each other." Then you realize that he's referring to the Leftist employees at the company, who are of course repressed despite having control of the entire executive leadership, the entire HR department, the backing of the CIA and FBI, every single media company, every single multi-billion dollar corporation, every supra-national organization, and so forth.

The head of the company's HR department was then asked whether the company would mandate vaccines to its employees. I know I have readers who are curious in which direction this aspect of American society will go. She replied to the effect of: "Oh no, no, we wouldn't mandate that employees get it! However, we are in very close contact with local governments, who may mandate it." She also lamented the fact that it was governments, and not corporations like hers, who were in charge of distributing the vaccines. Then the CEO chimed in: "I would encourage everyone to get it. My mom got it! My son got it! Now, I'm not going to skip in line, but I'll get it when it's offered to me. It's a personal choice, but I'm leading by example."

Finally, an anecdote that's so pathetic it's sad, and so sad that it's pathetic: they had a quote from a female employee who said, "I have no children and live alone, so work is my only connection to other people. The 'pandemic' has been really hard on me." This is exactly what Feminists and Leftists have been pushing for, for decades: family is bad, getting married is submitting to the patriarchy, having children will interfere with your career, and so forth. So yes, now there are good little empowered independent strong womyn corporate serfs, wearing their WuFlu Muzzles, getting shot up with experimental vaccines, and whose only point of existing is their connection to a multi-billion dollar corporation.

The good news in all of this, and changing gears a bit, is that I have found something about which the Left and Right agree: bi-partisan consensus! I've been watching the "John Ross" videos, such as this; one, and while I think the humor is hilarious and I agree with many of the points made, this worship of "Democracy" is something I'm hearing from radical Leftists, like the above corporation's "I'm the 1%" CEO, and "Constitutionalist Conservatives" like John Burk, who says wistfully that "Democracy is in the balance!"

Let's say you live in a household with your parents, and you plus your mom think your dad doesn't clean up after himself enough in the kitchen. So, you plus your mom put it to a vote, and your dad is two-to-one barred from ever using the kitchen again. Do you think your dad is going to walk away from that situation harboring major resentment, or will he just shrug and say "Oh well, Democracy has spoken!"

In any setting, voting should be the absolute last resort to resolving a conflict: it's the nuclear option! Because even if the vote is properly counted, whomever winds up being the sheep voted against by the two wolves is going to walk away embittered. But instead of treating voting as a sort of quasi-violence-- "too bad, we'll just out-vote you, nyah nyah!"-- it's treated as a first principle by the Left and Right both! It's really bizarre that I'm one of the only people who seems to notice this totally obvious reality.

Mark Dice does a good job of covering the latest here. The development which was new to me was that "Airbnb" has banned not just politicians, but private citizens from using their app, if those citizens were known to be present at the capitol protests, because those people are purportedly associated with "hate groups".

Like when I got banned several years ago from a gaming forum for being a "white supremacist", for explaining the history of Cultural Marxism, of all things.

This "Airbnb" thing is a huge deal, and I'm a little surprised Mark glossed over it: because to my knowledge, this is the first time we've seen a company banning people from essentially traveling-- booking a house for a vacation, in this case-- due to their political views. I'm wondering if this is even legal: but then again, man-made laws don't apply in this "new normal"; the courts would probably just strike down opposition to the bans no matter what the written laws say.

Never forget: there are two sets of laws-- those passed by man, and the higher body of rules which transcend man. You can call the latter "natural rights"; they can be logically arrived at in a secular way, or can be considered "God's law", whichever you prefer. You are under no obligation to follow man made laws which contradict the natural laws: but you are under a 100% obligation to follow the higher laws, at all times.

This following of natural rights and transcendental laws needs to be our beacon: it's our tether to morality; it's what seperates us from the Left, who are essentially hedonistic pack animals at this point.

Let's apply natural rights to the issues facing us now:

Regarding the ever-present "it's private companies" issue, on a moral level I support companies doing all of this: go ahead! And if a store wants to ban blacks or Jews, go ahead as well: it's like Peter Schiff used to say-- "I'd rather they put up a sign saying they don't like Jews, so I don't inadvertently give them money." After all, it's their property, just like your house is your property, and you obviously are allowed who to vet who enters.

But what these companies are going to find is that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction: not only will people boycott them, en masse, and not only will new competitors step into the arena, but a massive civil war will probably break out, and all of their infrastructure, not to mention the economy upon which they are dependent, will get destroyed collaterally. Ultimately, all of their present actions are self-defeating.

Regarding political violence, there are two principles at play, one moral and one consequential.

On the moral front, the initiation of force is wrong, but self defense is more than ok. This is natural rights-- the higher law. Pulling a "BLM" and attacking private businesses is domestic terrorism. On the consequential front, while taking over a government building is morally ok-- after all, it's "the people's" building, right?-- it's a waste of time if done in isolation; all you'll do is get arrested, and in prison you're of no use to the cause.

However, if a plan is come up with, where multiple states form a sort of alliance, and private armed militias become a part of that plan, and these militias are attacked, then by all means engage in "violence" in the form of self-defense. In fact, that is what I propose: the Right need some kind of a holistic plan to unite under and execute, which has some kind of realistic chance of success. Otherwise the movement will become lost, morally and pragmatically, as individuals' frustrations boil over.

Some people are saying the Right shouldn't do anything physical, because the Left will use that as an excuse to "crack down". But the Left are going to do that anyway, no matter what happens or doesn't happen! All we'd do by inaction is invite the gulags, and go down with a whimper.

I'm all registered for this year's "Freedom Fest"! The Z and I will be making a little road trip out West. Hopefully I can meet and shake hands with both Tom Woods and JP Sears. I really want to attend the Mount Rushmore tour too, the day before the conference starts-- but being a national park, I need to verify that they don't require a WuFlu Burqa. Ditto for my lodging; I'm looking at all of the area motels which have direct outdoor access from the rooms.

Worst-case scenario, I have a camouflaged balaclava and a pair of sunglasses along with a police-style ammo vest, which essentially make me look like the WuFlu-spreading terrorist the Karens think I am, as very little of my face is exposed, and I look like I'm about to head into a war zone: why not live up to their expectations? If I had my carry permit, I could even loop my rifle over my shoulders and bring that around with me-- open carry of long guns is legal in Minnesota, with a permit.

I should take a picture of my outfit: it's pretty funny.

On that note, if I were Jeff Zucker I'd troll people by changing the narrative every week: one week I'd run a full-time ticker showing all of the car accident deaths, and have my anchors breathlessly report on how many "cases" there were-- then observe as nation-wide petitions start overnight to ban car travel. The next week, I'd shift to deaths in the home like falling down stairs or slipping in the shower-- then watch as everyone scrambles to ban stair cases; and so on.

It'd be hilarious! The American public is so brain dead, gullible, and eager to delegate their thinking and follow orders, I frankly don't think there is any limit to what they would push for or condone.

Persistent rumors suggest that the "Switch Pro", or whatever it'll wind up being called, is going to stick with the existing "Tegra X1" variant currently in the "Lite", but then somehow supplement it with a "Realtek UHD SoC". Wondering what exactly that means, I did some digging.

My initial reaction to these rumors was that the Tegra portion of the system would remain for backwards compatibility purposes only-- but it appears as though my assumption was not quite right.

I found two Realtek press releases, both discussing a pair of chips-- RTD1319 and RTD1311-- which have silicon for video signal encoding and decoding at 4K, with HDR. They don't appear to have any kind of 3D processing at all: meaning, the chips are strictly for producing video output, not for doing any kind of actual rendering.

This leads me to believe then that rather than introduce faster hardware-- like any of the plethora of more modern Tegra designs, including one even based on Ampere-- Nintendo will simply feed the system's existing output into this new chip, which will do some kind of fancy upscaling, perhaps even adding HDR somehow.

Of course, this would be pretty lame in a couple of ways: first, it wouldn't increase the capabilities of the hardware at all-- so framerates would still be rubbish, and this new chip would be upscaling blurry messes with some kind of sharpening, I suppose; second, this setup would preclude the use of DLSS, which is something people have been hoping for in a new Switch model.

I've been using Mozilla since the original bloated, memory hog suite, in maybe 1999 or 2000. I still have old hard drives laying around, with the standalone Phoenix and then Firebird browsers on them-- so I've been a Firefox user since before the browser was even called that.

For those who don't know, the only reason the Mozilla group even exists at all, is because every so many years, Alphabet re-ups the contract to have Google be the default engine in Firefox's search bar-- so I watch for those periodic cycles, where the Mozilla leadership is hand-wringing: "What if Google doesn't re-up this time? It's like 90% of our revenue!"

Of course, Alphabet always does: they basically keep Firefox afloat as "controlled opposition", to keep anti-trust legislation at bay.

So it's with much humor that I read this today, coming from Mozilla's extremist psycho Left-wing nutjob CEO, making threats to Conservatives, from her perch which Google could literally yank out from her tomorrow. How she's in any position to be saying any of this is beyond me-- it's pure hubris. She'll be living in a box under a bridge the instant Mozilla stops being useful to Google.

The only risk here is that Mozilla contributors could start inserting back doors into Firefox which would leak history, circumventing VPN usage. Normally with Free Software, that kind of thing isn't a threat, since so many eyes are on the pull requests-- but in today's climate, where I'd guess 95%+ of people contributing to the code bases are lunatic radical Lefties, it might be on me to police all of that myself. That's a huge time commitment, since I'd need to also review my GNU/Linux distribution's specific build of the browser, too. I guess I'd just need to maintain my own build, and just re-compile it every so often.

I mean, Mozilla's founding principle was an "open internet anyone can use"-- and now they've totally thrown that under the bus. I even question if someone as principled as Richard Stallman will succumb to the mental illness infecting society today, much less the millions of tech people less principled than him.

Things have come to a point where Conservatives almost can't trust computers any more, frankly. That's what you get when one side decides to go full-on Stasi-- because East Germany was such a great model for a society.

This is exactly what I was writing about here. But you know what, I was wrong: the elites were right to be indignant that the plebes got in and sat in their chairs-- just listen to these heinous crimes, I bolded the especially horrifying parts. This was a coup! A coup! Right here in America!



He moved a piece of furniture, he's like... like... Charles Manson! And if that's not bad enough, listen to this domestic terrorism!



A-hah, now we have the smoking gun weapon, which was to be used to carry out the coup! I bet this spear would have gone right up Skeletor's ass had the brave officers and security guards, like the one who shot the unarmed woman in the neck, not been there to evacuate the Holy Priestly Order of Congress, Saint Greta bless their souls! Amen and awomen!

As I've said many times before, the Democrats are planning-- and now executing on their plan-- to turn the "USA" into the "CCP": here they are instituting a "Great Firewall of America", even trying to take down websites like Parler, which don't even belong to them!

They already control Wikipedia, and even modify dictionaries in real-time for political purposes. I'm pretty secure, as this blog runs on a server in my living room, hooked directly to a fiber line-- but how long before the Left go after the DNS system itself? Better start memorizing IP addresses, like in the early Quake days!

Eric Peters gets it: it's exactly as I've been saying. The "rules" no longer apply, because the other team isn't following them! Playing a football match when the other guys are picking up and running with the ball is how you lose. The problem is, Mr. Peters is literally one of the only people who get it.

Totally off topic, but I've been studying not just Ancient Chinese history, but Japanese computers from the 1980s. This is one of the coolest video game songs I've ever heard: the NEC "PC-88" models which had these FM chips can produce amazing stuff-- imagine if IBM PC XTs and ATs would have had sound capabilities like this, as an option?

One thing which was very different in Japan is that, unlike in America where there was a linear progression from 8088 to the 286 to the 386, and from CGA to EGA to VGA, is that the "PC-88" and "PC-98" co-existed as continuously-manufactured products, sold to different types of people: and they had whole libraries of games and other software produced for them, concurrently, over a decade-plus period.

Best I can gather so far is that the "PC-98" was more of an upscale business machine, whereas the "PC-88" was more home consumer-type oriented. And both series not only were manufactured and supported in parallel, but were updated in parallel with new processors, more RAM, and other capabilities. Very weird!

Eric Peters makes the cut, and even has a hilarious article for everyone regarding that silly Mustang E Mach bucket of bolts I wrote about here a little over a year ago, making more or less the same points I did. Peter Schiff gets the passing grade as well. JP Sears too.

But back to the issue at hand: I've barely slept each of the past two nights-- not because of anything the Left has done; Commies are gonna' Commie, I'm at peace with that-- but because of how the Republicans have reacted!

I quite literally can't tell the difference between Donald Trump and Little Girl Sniffer-in-Chief: "let's have peace and reconciliation guys!" Meanwhile you have others like Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell getting one thousand times more upset that someone sat in their chairs at the capitol building than they did at an entire national election getting rigged.

In fact, I struggle to find almost anyone "in power" who is getting it right! The fake consensus forming group think is as strong with this one as it is with the WuFlu nonsense, the George Floyd heart attack, the acceptance of Keynesianism, and a countless myriad of other totally unfounded and illogical assumptions taken for granted.

I have a friend who has just recently started reading this blog, plus undoubtedly other new readers, as my audience seems to be expanding little-by-little. For their benefit, let me repeat something I've said many times before: Democrats didn't used to be bad people.

Growing up, I was best friends with the son of a man who held a major political office in Minnesota. I spent many a summer weekend hanging out at their house, even tagging along with them up to their cabin a couple of times. Heck, I even hung out at the campaign office when my friend's dad ran for mayor once. My own father-- a staunch Republican!-- volunteered with the campaign to do their IT work. My dad and my friend's dad used to debate politics: you know what they argued about? What percent the tax rate should be.

That was it. The ideological divide between the average Democrat and the average Republican was like splitting hairs.

Back then-- we're talking the 1990s, not that long ago-- pretty much everyone shared the same values: free market economies by-and-large, free speech, free press, freedom of religion, the right to bear arms-- yes, my hardcore Democrat friend supported firearm ownership-- and treating everyone like the unique individuals they are.

Today, the Democrats don't believe in any of those things!

They believe that the color of your skin or your sex determines your worth as an individual; they believe that people should only be able to speak their minds if it's an approved message; they believe that words justify physical assault, and will burn down your business and ruin your reputation if you hurt their feelings somehow; they believe in a global, top-down takeover of the entire economy, because Earth's temperature has gone up a fraction of one degree Celsius; they support foisting government-mandated burqa outfits and vaccinations on everyone for a virus with a 99.9% survival rate; they believe that men and women are biologically the same.

These people are nuts! They've adopted crackpot intellectual theories from 1920's Europe, and actually think those theories are true!

And I'm not just talking about the fringe Left: these are mainstream views of every day, run-of-the-mill Democrats-- my co-workers, even people I get into conversations with on the street. It shows up in polls; it shows up in HR policies at work; it shows up in yard signs; it shows up in the city council members who get voted in; it shows up in the DNC convention as their national platform planks.

Long gone are the days of the 1990s: I can't even have a rational conversation with the average Democrat anymore! It's like we're from different planets! We're so far apart that it's impossible to even find common ground: in part because our values are literally incompatible-- I'm sorry, but no "percentage" of racist hiring policies are "ok"-- but also because every time I try to have a rational conversation with them, I get emotionally blackmailed by getting screamed at, like a little toddler throwing a temper tantrum!

One can only get called a "white supremacist" by quoting Martin Luther King Jr.-- for real!-- so many times before one throws up his hands.

Vertically split, there are now two parallel Americas: the Conservative one, and the "Liberal"-- anti-liberal theocratic-- one. But it gets even worse, because America is split horizontally too.

On the "bottom" are working class Americans: the farmers, the guys and gals running their own paving companies or housing construction businesses, the people running their own restaurants-- plus the urban low-income Lefties, like "GrubHub" drivers, waitresses at pretentious restaurants, or childless single women cat-owning baristas at "Starbucks".

On the "top" are the politicians and everyone in their circle: the media "personality" talking heads, the "news" reporters, the military contractors, the "think tank" members, the crackpot "thought leader" editorial writers, the people running the various cartels like "healthcare" and "education", the CEOs of multi-billion dollar corporations, and on and on.

Listen again to how the media reported the events from a couple of days ago, and pay close attention to what they're actually upset about: to them, the concept of a plebe getting to walk freely around in what, to the people "on top", is essentially a sacred building, is beyond the pale-- they're breathless and sputtering, gasping like a fish out of water, just trying to process what they're seeing. What they see is pure and utter blasphemy!

That building is for the King and Queen and their court! Not body odor-wafting peasant farmers! Get on your knees! Kiss the sceptre!

They not only didn't care about the Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists burning down businesses, but actively cheered it, because it was not only ideologically supporting their paths to power, but because it was "plebe-on-plebe" action: it was compatible with their internal world view hierarchy model: there is no sacrilege when a black serf burns down another black serf's hair salon. Let them eat cake!

They have no problem telling coal miners to "learn to code", yet explode like raging volcanoes when people suggested the same thing to laid off journalists. How dare someone suggest that they should move "down the totem pole" and become some kind of programmer serf-- how dare they! It's like that Fox News lady: utterly incredulous that someone would question her authoritah.

Stepping back then, America is split into quadrants: an elite ruling class on top, the plebes at the bottom, with a vertical line separating the Conservative and Liberal serfs, and also separating the Republican and Democrat elites at the top, but whose ties at this moment as elites are much stronger than their separation into partisan camps.

Back to the "bottom": the Conservative quadrant totally get what's going on; those were the people in DC two days ago, or the seventy five million strong who voted for Trump. The "Liberal" quadrant are so dumbed down that they not only don't understand what's going on, but actively endorse it! They're like pathetic little kapos and Karens, policing their own fellow plebes.

Meanwhile, within the "elite Republican" quadrant, you've got a little subdivision of politicians who actually empathize with the plebes, and are willing to stand up to do the right thing.

And it's not enough-- yet, at least. One can only hope-- pray even-- that the numbers in that latter-most segment grow. Otherwise it's "run for the hills" time for the plebes. Or "brush up on your Mandarin" and "start learning how to forge watermarked vaccination certificates" time.

Another name to chuck overboard: Tucker Carlson. I was always suspicious of him and his twenty million per year contract or whatever it is, with a multi-billion dollar media corporation, always referring to the "mainstream media" as if he isn't a part of it-- but now we know for sure. He at least acknowledged the reason why people are upset, which is more than CNN would do-- but then in the same breath he emphasizes how "horrified" he was by the "violence".

He's probably hedging for a future run at office himself by trying to have his cake and eat it too. And he just saved us the trouble of deliberation in the future should that run materialize, by showing his "I'm just an opportunist" cards now. Great!

Back to the "violence": we're talking about a broken window and door hinge, part of a tax payer-owned building-- not private property!-- so a guy could put his foot on Skeletor's desk while some jokers hilariously had fun with the Speaker's gavel in the House chamber. The hilarious part is that these broken doodads were actually busted by Antifa plants, as caught on video. Hah! There were several Antifa dudes there interestingly, like the "Viking shaman" weirdo, with the hammer and sickle tattoo on his hand.

The only actual violence I saw was perpetrated against the people, like the woman getting shot in the neck by a security guard.

Then you have Allen West, the very guy who proposed an alliance of states which would uphold the Constitution, kicking some other dude-- Walter West, unrelated-- out of the Texas GOP leadership for posting stuff like this. I guess quoting the Declaration of Independence is too "radical" for Republicans now. Maybe I need to look up and contact this Walter West guy-- could be a useful future ally.

Backing up a bit, can you imagine if the Boston Tea Party were like, "Well you know, maybe we shouldn't dump this tea overboard... it is against the rules, you know!" If the line hasn't been drawn by now, then where will the line need to be drawn for people to say "we're past the point of no return". For me, between the WuFlu Burqas and this logic, we're there.

I'll put it another way too: people have started revolutions for a tiny fraction of what Americans are putting up with today, including what led to the formation of this very country: feudal warlords took a less share from the peasantry than what we pay in taxes-- in the Qin empire for instance, it was 10% of their grain, plus a month of military service annually-- and ditto socially: can you imagine the pre-American patriots putting up with the prospects of even two or three of these list items?

Which is a shame, because Allen West has the right idea, and in fact it could be a non-violent way for Conservatives to play a trick right from Leftist playbook: don't actually secede-- just have an agreement between several states to refuse to enforce Federal laws via nullification. It'd be like a "soft secession"-- plus then you have plausible deniability; you can gaslight just like the Lefties do! "What are you talking about? We're still part of the US, duh! Stop being such a tinfoil hat Flat Earther!"

The only key for this plan to work is that the States involved would need to have balanced budgets without Federal monies: because the first thing "Kneepads" Cameltoe or whomever would do is say, "Fine, no highway money, no FEMA, no education bucks", etc. One solution to this would be for the states involved to initiate international trade themselves: as long as the states are contiguous and one of them has a port, it's game on.

The big problem at this point is finding enough Republicans to get on board: I'm going to need to stay patient; I think people will come around like the "early doors" individuals, such as myself or Mark Dice, once they've had time to "process their emotions" or whatever nonsense the average human requires, before they can think rationally. Time... patience...

I should have gone to this, it's such an important statement to make, in my words:



Instead, we have essentially every Republican politician throwing their own constituents under the bus, "condemning the 'violence'"-- yeah, people milling around the hallways, hanging Trump flags from statues, in their own building, paid for with their own tax money. That's a mighty strange perversion of the word "violence" if I've ever heard one.

And here is the final list of who we can trust, and who we can't-- when push came to shove, who still stood up, and who rolled over like a coward: I see people like Rand Paul sharing the "coward" list with such luminaries as Mitt Romney, Bernie Sanders, and Marco Rubio, and Amy Klobuchar. I hope he's very proud of himself. Time to jettison him overboard.

Take a long hard look at the "good" list though: I see a lot of great names there, like Ted Cruz, Rick Scott, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, and Jim Jordan. It's always fascinating to see, in the moments when things actually matter, who makes the cut and who doesn't. Now we know.

You know who else didn't make the cut? Donald Trump. Some revolutionary leader he is: all talk and no action. He called in the National Guard on his own people, and is rolling over on January 20. "Go home peacefully." In other words, it was all theater.

But let's end on a little comedic note, to lighten the mood: apparently Little Miss Ballot Harvester herself, Ilhan Omar, is suddenly "very concerned" about "preserving our Republic". Go see for yourself!

A true patriot, in Nancy Pelosi's office:



Another good thing which came out of today: now we get to see who are the good guys, and who should go choke on whatever dick they're sucking. Let's make some lists.

On the latter list: Turtleman for too many myriad reasons to enumerate, and the pirate "Dan Crenshaw", who was on Fox saying how upset he was that people got into the capitol building-- sniffle!-- and how the people who work there "aren't the enemy." Tell me then Danny old boy, who is the enemy? Apparently his wisdom is as good as his depth perception.

And back to Mike Pence: his official statement is essentially an exercise of the scientific method. "We have a legal process for these things." He's implicitly saying, "I believe the election was stolen, my hypothesis is that the legal process will sort it out."

Ok, great! Let's see how that goes! And what if it doesn't work, little Mikey? I can already tell you it won't. What then? Will you create a new hypothesis since your theory was proven wrong? Or are you being paid off by the CCP like Creepy Bejing Biden?

I had someone earlier today say to me, "just because some people aren't following the rules doesn't mean you get to ignore them too." What was missed in that statement is that "the rules"-- the "Constitution"-- are no longer "the rules":

• The United States Federal Government is chartered by a constitution.


• As stated in the Declaration of Independence, this chartered government's legitimacy stems from the "consent of the governed."


• The rules laid forth in the constitution are specific to the government's having consent. If the consent is withdrawn, the government dissolves, and the charter becomes a piece of toilet paper, since the entity it describes no longer exists.


• The form of government laid out by the charter is a Representative Republic.


• According to the precept then, "the people" consented to a Representative Republic.


• A Representative Republic is dependent on a functioning election system: hence the "representative" part of the description.


• Ergo, if the election system ceases to function, then the government is no longer a Representative Republic.


• If the government is no longer the Representative Republic, then the assumed consent is withdrawn, because the terms of the contract have changed.


• If the consent is withdrawn, then the government and its charter dissolve into the wind.

Evidently, Mike Pence will not selectively read electoral votes, correctly citing the Constitution's clear intent that his role be "ceremonial". The part that he's missing however, is that the Constitution is no longer relevant.

The Democrats have already started and are going to continue to cheat and steal their way to an authoritarian, CCP-modeled uniparty system, with gulags in place of a Bill of Rights. They are one hundred percent open about their intentions. Saying "I can't fight back because of legal procedural issues" is beyond silly.

One side has already thrown legality overboard! It's literally meaningless to them. You can't play a football match when the other team has openly said they won't follow the rules.

The only way forward is for the shootin' to start: I'm just waiting for everyone else to catch up to my conclusion, like usual. And the sooner that business is gotten over with, the better. I don't relish a Civil War, but it's coming whether anyone likes it or not.

My advice to Mike Pence then-- do like Vladimir Putin in 1991: "When it went down, I knew immediately I had to pick a side, so I did."

I know I have.

I've always been confused as to why the two dimensional "The Legend of Zelda" games are drawn in such a bizarrely incorrect perspective, something I even mentioned in this review-- or more specifically, why I've never heard anyone else make this observation.

Well, I just heard Linneman say that in a three dimensional overhead "Zelda" project, you can "break" the game so you can move the camera around freely-- and here all of the game's models are leaning way back, to fabricate the physically impossible perspective of the two dimension games.

As someone who has been following and respecting John Linneman for several years, it's fascinating to see him as a real-life "case in point" of what happens when you push someone too far.

I couldn't get enough of this live stream; it was like hanging out with a group of good friends. But for the first time ever, I heard Linneman take the gloves off: he explained how modern-day gaming, with its culture and style, is such a turn off that he can't even bring himself to turn on his PlayStation 5; it's old games, full time, all of the time for him now. It was shockingly and refreshingly authentic from someone who has always seemed to have this mask of mild-manneredness on.

For those who don't know, he got too caught up in the toxic waste dump of human interaction that is The Twatter. That prompted a melt down from him a few months ago, which seems to have morphed into a healthy acknowledgement that expecting meaningful connection to random, anonymous people over the internet is completely unrealistic, as well as a frank and overdue assessment of the state of modern games and culture. It's the former realization that's also probably driving the impulse to do these "let's connect with people who actually matter to me" streams.

More recently, the "Fuze Player" came out, and suddenly the "everyone gets a medal" regular Fuze users were having their games compared with the broader medium-- with some of the back seat critical takes being less than flattering.This triggered a hyper-emotional "come to Jesus" moment on the Fuze forums from people who just couldn't take the sudden heat in the kitchen. It reminded me of Linneman these past few months.

I'm of mixed opinions about all of this: I can see it from multiple angles.

On the one hand, I've been a member of the Fuze forum from almost day one, and I really enjoy the culture and people over there: it's easily the most friendly anonymous internet "community" in which I've ever participated. Meanwhile, most of the internet is detrimental to one's sanity and happiness, as studies regarding "social media" web sites have repeatedly shown.

Would it be great if anonymous people you don't know through a hole in the wall would be nice to others? Sure, who wouldn't want that.

At the same time, an entire generation of people have grown up with skin so thin it's practically translucent, and it astonishes me on an almost daily basis-- from college students needing coloring books and "safe spaces" to cancel culture threats of gulags for people who hurt someone else's feelings to people on the Fuze forum shedding tears because someone didn't like their game.

I just don't get it. Why so sensitive?

Maybe it's because of my personality: I'm practically a walking Android when it comes to data intake-- I process everything on a very analytical level, assessing things for factual accuracy, not whether it "sounds friendly". I guess that's why I've always liked people such as Yngwie Malmsteen, Donald Trump, and Randy Moss: they tell you exactly what they think; why would I want them to lie to me? But most people aren't wired like that: they place a huge emphasis on form-over-substance, and would prefer faux-friendliness over authentic disagreeableness.

It could also be because I've had a lot of practice: while I've also had a large group of friends growing up, most people have been nothing but a pain in the ass to me, saying all sorts of "mean things" to me from Kindergarten to present day; so what? I learned at a young age that bullies are going to bully, it's pathetic and pitiable that they need that kind of attention, and that if you just tell them which lake to jump in, they'll go away and bother someone else.

Most of the times it's not even personal: the haters are trying to cope with their own deficiencies and issues-- so don't take it personally.

I think the solution to this is exactly what the Fuze people and Linneman have been doing of late: find the random people who will be friendly and hang out with them, plus connect with-- via video live stream, to make it more personal-- and focus on real friends; meanwhile, unplug from the rest.

I've been having fun playing "Dirt 5" on the PlayStation 5, going through my usual process of writing a review, collecting screenshots, and creating a video montage. As usual, click on any of the screenshots for the original size versions.

All of the paint jobs on the cars below are liveries I created, in-game. I also made a "Playground" stage called "Icicle Balloon Jump Run", those who also own the game can search for it. And if anyone wants the full 4K HDR ".webm" version of the montage, let me know.

One of my favorite people is Glenn Greenwald, and here he is with a typically great piece.

A big part of what I like about him is that I don't agree with him about certain things, yet his positions are always thoughtful and articulate. For instance, the tale he crafts in the aforelinked editorial is one of evil corporate monopolies boxing the average American into a political and economic corner. He cites lots of evidence in support of his position. However, in my view he also lumps many disparate corporations into this the same giant basket.

From my perspective, Amazon is on top because they really did innovate, taking retail to the next level. People don't shop there because they have no choice: they shop there because of the superb item selection and excellent low prices. If Amazon lost those advantages, they'd start to collapse overnight: the free market is still functioning in retail, although it may not be for much longer if governments around the world continue these so-called "lockdowns".

In other words, I don't think it's fair to lump Amazon in with Google, the latter of whom have done nothing to innovate since probably the advent of Android twelve years ago-- which itself was merely a clone of Apple's iOS-- or Facebook, or many of these other companies.

In general, the biggest political threat comes from the bottom-up, not the top-down: at the end of the day, corporations can't make me do anything I don't want to do-- rather, it was my neighbors with the radical yard signs who are causing me the pain, by voting in the government we see today. It was millions and millions of SJWs and Wayzata limousine liberals voting, lying, and cheating their way to electoral "victory", at the grass roots level: "People get the government they deserve."

It is true that the "social media" tech companies influence people's opinions-- but even that has its limits. So far as I can tell, most of the indoctrination happens in universities, not via corporations. And as I type, there is a mass-migration to alternative tech platforms like BitChute and Parler anyway. So the "monopoly" argument doesn't hold water: there are tons of viable alternatives out there, and people are flocking to them.

And this is the problem I always have when people start throwing out the "monopoly" word: in every single instance they are demonstrably incorrect-- and in my view, it's their latching onto that word that is causing them to overlook the real proximate cause of some problem.

America today is an ochlocracy, not an oligarchy.

My brother sent me the following discourse regarding Israel, and with his permission I decided to just turn it into a blog post. The first section is what he wrote me, while the second section is my first shot at trying to answer the questions. Enjoy!


Original Message

Unfortunately, I was exposed to some article by Ben Shapiro the other day, and it got me thinking about his favorite country, Israel (not America). My mind wandered down this train of thought, and I was wondering what you'd think of it:

• Regarding the "nation of Israel" - is this the same thing as the "Jewish nation", or not?
• If not, then what is it? What authorizes this country's existence, if not a historical/religious Jewish claim to land?
• If so, then what does it mean to be a "Jewish nation"? Are the Jews a religion or a race?
• If a religion, then is Israel a state founded on religious law, i.e., a theocracy? If not, then what is it?
• If a race, then is Israel a racial state? If not, then once again, what is it?
• To my knowledge, everything outlined in points 1. and 2., such as theocracies and racial states, are completely illiberal - and if that's the case, then why is Israel called "our greatest ally"? Are we supporting a theocratic/racial state, or a synthetic liberal-democrat puppet state, or is there a third option that justifies the existence of the so-called "Jewish nation"?

• In any event, if we assume Israel to be a legitimate country, and this country belongs to all Jews, and all Jews belong to this country, then haven't we conflated Judaism with the nationhood, citizenship, politics, sovereignty, etc. of a foreign country (Israel), in which event Jews are no longer protected by America's laws of freedom of religion, as Judaism is, by our own admission, no longer simply a religion?
• If so, then shouldn't we demand that all Jews in American government positions renounce their Judaism or else be expelled from those positions? Would we allow a citizen of Communist China to be elected to the US government?
• The same question applies to all so-called American Jews: are they Jewish or American? Or does some sort of dual-citizenship apply to them?
• If dual citizenship applies, then should they, as foreign interests, be allowed to vote in US elections? Elected to office? If so, why?

My Thoughts

I've often heard nations described as "groups of like-cultured people", not necessarily tied to a given landmass. But a couple of dictionary checks insist that a "nation" is tightly coupled to a geographical territory. This could be a case of dictionary activism though, since they seem to grant a seemingly random exception for Native Americans.

Let's take a look then at what a "The Times of Israel" author has to say about the matter:



A-hah! So here we have a perspective that the "Jewish nation" is separate from the geographical landmass of the nation state known as Israel. Further, he cites several pieces of research showing observable genetic commonalities between "transnational worldwide Jewish People", from as disparate places as Georgia, Yemen, and Iraq.

Even though the author also discusses that Jews-- as in, the religious ones-- accept outside converts as being "Jewish", and that it's not generally acceptable to ask people if they are-- and these are my words now-- "real" Jews or not, the implication is clear: being a "Jew" is mostly a genetic or ancestral function, since even non-practicing or even atheistic "Jews" are still considered to be "Jewish".

The short answers then: "Jews" are a race. Which means that Israel is a racial ethnostate. And, yes, ethnostates are generally considered to be "illiberal" by just about everyone; I don't even feel compelled to cite sources for that claim, just ask anyone.

Thus, the United States government is supporting an ethnostate.

Of course, we already know by now that their claims of wanting to "spread Democracy"-- i.e. "liberalism"-- are false, first in the sense that "Democracies" don't typically seem to result in liberal outcomes over time, which can be a topic for another day, and second one can quickly find long lists of the US State overthrowing duly elected foreign leaders: incidentally, a fact upon which even Anarcho Capitalists and Marxists agree.

As for the relationship between the two countries-- the US and Israel-- it seems to me that it's symbiotic: powerful Jews in the US collude with non-Jew politicians and military contractors to provide both defense for Israel, at US taxpayer expense, and a foothold for covering US oil interests in the region.

The next part is interesting: should Jews be allowed to vote or hold office in the United States, if they are technically "citizens" of an alternate global "nation"?

There are black people and even Middle Easterners in Congress, so the idea of having a variety of "races" in elected office has precedent. Regarding the "nation" bit however, I've always phrased the question in this way: can one serve two masters?

From my experience, the Jews in charge of most of the major banks, most of the major media companies, who essentially invented and propagated Feminism and other far-Left social theories, seem to consistently do their utmost to attack Western institutions by donating obscene amounts of money to radical political candidates.

Just like I wouldn't be a fan of having a Chinese Communist voting or holding political office-- even though we're essentially about to get just such a person in Creepy Bejing Biden-- I often question whether Jews should be allowed to hold elected office in the United States or potentially vote, in the sense that-- rationally-- they would prioritize Israel's interests over the those of the United States, where the two sets of interests are in conflict.

Long time readers will know that I'm a philosophical anarchist: accepting that someone has sovereignty over another's body implies that they don't have sovereignty over their own body, which makes no sense.

Nonetheless, I've gone along with paying taxes all my life, even though that money is being used to bomb the hell out of innocent people overseas, to spy on American citizens, to provide the power levers for censorious tech companies, to grope elderly people and children at airports, plus all manner of other insane ventures.

But the State finally drew a line I wouldn't cross when Minnesota's governor, with the stroke of a pen, denied me access to health care and the ability to buy food for my children, unless I wear a "Star of David" armband.

For the first time, as a citizen of America, I refused to comply.

"But Sniper, what's the big deal? It's just a piece of cloth."

The problem is the precedent it sets: because not enough people were strong enough to resist as I have, now we live in a world where governors can deny people access to a doctor and food, unilaterally, for any reason they make up.

Minnesota's governor could decree tomorrow that to be allowed into Hy-Vee, people have to wear GPS ankle bracelets, live in camera monitored cages in their homes, and engage in self flagellation like Sancho Panza. And what could anyone say, as they'd already accepted the principle?

In fact, if he did make such a decree I'm positively certain you'd see searches on eBay for cages and ankle bracelets explode.

But perhaps I'm no better: how many mistaken principles did I accept while spending my whole life paying taxes, following "speed limits", getting permits before I purchase firearms, and all sorts of other things?

Principles matter, and Pandora's Box is wide open now.

Five years ago, I wrote this post, documenting a bit of the nonsense my brother was going through at the time in high school. Any of that sound familiar here? In fact, this particular case is a perfect example of how the "Cultural Marxism" model collapses immediately: the student in question is "half white, half black."

Interestingly, this Frankfurt School virus isn't just limited to schools anymore: I've been pushing back on this exact same ideology in my workplace, where both the head HR and the CEO positions have been "captured" by radical Leftists, and where the heads of departments openly declare that they don't want to hire or promote white males.

Lots of people have been wondering why young people in this country have recently been so susceptible to crackpot theories, which were once rightly relegated to the corners where Cheeto-filled beard crazies hung out. Those asking this question haven't put themselves into "Millennial" and "Gen Z" shoes-- shoes which have been subjected to some or all of the below:

• Raised from birth in atheistic secular homes, in so-called "gender neutral" settings, by parents who often have hedonistic tendencies. Often, especially in the case of blacks, have no father figure in the household.


• Told relentlessly from children's books and television shows from as young as one year old that property is collective: "share, share, share!"


• As early as pre-school, explained to by "caretakers" that everyone is a special snowflake who deserves a medal for participating.


• Starting in Kindergarten and all the way through the end of high school, relentlessly "taught" the noble savage myth, double standards like Hitler was bad but Mao was misunderstood, that "capitalism" simply resulted in kids chained to machines, and that "white invaders" were the epitome of evil.


• Instructed non-stop for entire childhoods-- parents, teachers, "guidance" counselors-- that the only way to be successful is to go to college, and that it is a guaranteed entry into the middle class and beyond.


• In high school and college, told that religion is bad, men can have periods, "race" and "sex" are false constructs, yet simultaneously that a person's value as a human being depends on their racial, religious, or sexual group memberships.


• Unlike when I was a teenager, very few young people today have jobs. So, they sit at home playing video games and smoking pot.


• Thus, it isn't until age twenty two that the person finally enters the real world: they graduate from college with degrees in underwater basket weaving, then find that they are only able to get jobs making ten dollars an hour-- while trying to pay back the tens of thousands of dollars they were fleeced by the university meat grinder, for having provided a "service" with a lousy ROI.


• Meanwhile, they were never taught how to make a basic budget, how interest rates on loans work, the subjective value theory, how supply and demand sets prices, and other real world knowledge.


• They rapidly find that in the workplace, real production needs to happen, which means it's meritocratic: in fact, they aren't a special snowflake-- they are a person with few practical real-world skills.


• Rather than point the finger at the teachers, parents, school counsellors, and mass-media who perpetrated this two-plus decades fraud against them, they double down on the other things these same people taught: crackpot Marxist "labor theory of value" concepts, and how they are being abused by the "patriarchy" which is why life is so hard.


• With no religion, and having been "taught" that all social glue norms, mores, and institutions are evil, this lack of cultural structure leads to intense atomization, which in turn leads to an inability to cope with stress. Feeling a need to belong to something bigger than themselves, they become radicalized, putting "BLM" and rainbow signs in their front yards-- if they can afford a living above of their own in the first place. They further take over schools and HR departments, spread this diseased thinking to even more people.

This is why the Left puts so much energy into maintaining such an aura around and the careful and highly selective curation of "experts": if young people started to ask, "hold on a second, maybe the 'authorities' in my life have had it wrong"...

Hit the 1992 "Computer Bowl" episodes, and for that year's event they had a live satellite feed to Xerox PARC, a second live satellite feed to Microsoft's headquarters, ear piece communication to Stewart Cheifet, plus more than a dozen microphones, all working at the same time, with zero delay in getting them working initially, and continuous, flawless, uninterrupted functioning for well over an hour-- all of which was simultaneously being broadcast on television.

Can you imagine them trying to do that with today's technology? "Can you hear us? No? Check your microphone, is it muted? Ok, we still can't hear you. Oh oh, the feed just dropped, let's see if they can reconnect. What happened over on this other screen now? Video feed two just went dark, are you there? Sorry, now it got all garbled, I couldn't make out your answer."

It's sort of like the constant battles I've been waging with HDMI over the past ten-plus years: sometimes the handshake doesn't work, or there are bugs in television firmware, or who knows what else. S-video from my Sega Saturn, by contrast? Always works. Or how about modern phones, with their insistence on employing touch screens, versus the reliability of physical keyboards? I once read that a new American aircraft carrier uses a touch screen on its bridge, and I will not be at all surprised if it winds up launching missiles at its own allies by accident, or drives into a barrier reef.

In other news, apparently the State wants to send me another thousands of dollars, I think it's over four grand now. Imagine people on an island, where no one is producing food, but the king keeps shoveling them money: what are they supposed to eat, the paper? At this phase I have more cash than I even know what to do with, but a country socially, economically, and politically collapsing around me. This is how Zimbabwe went: at least with this new money I'll be all set with toilet paper for awhile, even if it does turn my butt green.

This article is nominally about the guy who tried to blow up the AT&T building in Nashville, but lets slip this definition of "domestic terrorism". Sound a little like a couple of your friendly neighborhood Leftist groups?



I also found this article to be an interesting recounting of the WuFlu nonsense of the past year. One of the comments nails what this is really about:

Those rare glimpses into "what would cars look like sans regulations" are always fascinating: sixteen grand, light weight, manual transmission, and-- ironically-- fifty miles per gallon fuel economy: far better to drive and significantly more eco friendly to manufacture and operate than the "official" State-sanctioned cars!

And in other news, the long-discussed "Fuze Player" launches tomorrow: Skatey-Cat is included, in fact my submission was the very first game sent to them for inclusion in this "player" software, several months ago! The Fuze guys wanted to give the "player" away for free, but Nintendo made them slap a price on it, so they went with the minimum: ninety-nine cents.

Those who own a Switch but haven't checked out Fuze really need to: after "Minecraft" and "Flight Simulator 2020", it's the best piece of game software I've played in the entire century so far. It's a GCS in the same vein as "ZZT", "Megazeux", "RPG Maker", "Dreams", and so forth-- strictly, it's a spiritual successor to "STOS" and "AMOS", with a fully-functional "Basic"-like language, and with built-in utilities such as a sprite editor, the ability to do chip music, and many other things.

I wrote the following here:



Zero Hedge is pointing out how we're suddenly hearing from the media that that there are other WuFlu strains, and that they are preparing the public for the possibility that the new vaccines won't work; most predictable development ever.

In other news, Rand Paul is one of the few sane people left in positions of power-- although, the ship has sailed on ever "paying back" the debt: future generations, including my own children, will "pay for it" instead with a complete societal collapse.

Actually, the collapse is underway presently: as it turns out, I'll live through it myself. People don't understand that these things happen slowly, as they're in fact taking place-- it's only in history books that they appear to have been sudden.

Wifey and I were cracking up yesterday at the fact the State wants to hand us another twenty four hundred dollars. Meanwhile, our weekly grocery orders these days-- not extravagant by any stretch-- are costing us one hundred bucks, or more! So yes, just what we need: more cash. How long until Americans start using money as toilet paper, ala Zimbabwe?

Speaking of Zimbabwe, I'm surprised they're not getting money from the US State apparatus as well-- seems like every other foreign country is.

Maybe I should start converting my cash into Bitcoin or something: another totally telegraphed development is that people won't be allowed to travel, have a job, go shopping, and so forth if they don't get the WuFlu cocktail injected into their bloodstream: this is already being proposed in France, in the context of mass transit.

Bitcoin, or some other mechanism, would be useful if I need to take my family out of the country. I've been using "Flight Simulator" as a way of touring parts of the world: I did a full-state tour of Texas yesterday, in case we were to stay in the US, but move there.

Incidentally, during the "Great Conjunction" my son and I took off from the local airport in "Flight Simulator", ascended beyond the clouds over my Muderarpolis home, and took in the spectacle in game: turns out the night sky is totally accurate.

But back to politics and speaking of money, here is a tiny sampling of to whom Creepy Joe will be beholden. This isn't including the illegal stuff, like the "Beijing Biden" operations. Notice George Soros on this list: I realized a couple of days ago that one of his sons runs an organization dedicated to "keeping money out of politics". Hah!

And finally, a virus of another sort-- but I plan to do a whole blog post just devoted to why certain groups, such as Millennials, are so susceptible to crackpot theories.

I haven't been writing about sports much lately: in part because I no longer closely follow Vikings, while I dropped Minnesota United and its Antifa crowd completely-- I can't even name three players on the latter's team; but also because the posts don't age well, so rapidly does the sporting landscape morph.

And yet, I've been thinking a lot about this Lazio iteration, which I once described as "my least favorite Lazio team of the Lotito era", and how I've come to peace with them, shortcomings and all-- and maybe that's the problem.

I don't have access to the team, or its players, nor do I have any insider information-- so everything I write is pure conjecture. But, it's conjecture based on materially having watched every minute of every match for years, while following team news on a daily basis during that entire duration. It's also based on my own long-term experiences working in a high-intensity professional environment.

Qualifications given, now starting with Inzaghi: this is a man who was a bit of a joke during his last several years as a player, where despite his obvious talent, was something like fifth striker choice, behind not only Rocchi and Pandev, but also lower than such luminaries as Igli Tare and Stephen Makinwa: Simone barely played, but liked picking up the check so he could enjoy the night life.

Meanwhile, there are three kinds of coaches: the "as soon as the players lose their fear of you, you're done" Helenio Herrera types; the "I can recite the entire history of Ancient Rome in thirty seven different languages" polyglot intellectual kind like Vladimir Petkovic; and the "I pile on at the corner flag with my players when they score, and live every kick", like... Simone Inzaghi.

The upside of this is that the players love him: he's very easy to get along with, players can come to him with their problems-- he's just another one of the gang. And this gang has been together for years: Sergej; Luis Alberto; Patric; Ciro; Acerbi; Strakosha; Lulic; Parolo, and Inzaghi himself.

I've been on teams at work, where a core group had been together for a few years: it transcends "knowing each other's weaknesses"-- in fact, everyone automatically covers for each other, without even needing to discuss or articulate it. It's part and parcel of being intimate, spending huge swathes of your lives together, day in and out.

The nice side of that is comraderie: it's like a little family, and everything settles into a lovely routine, where things go smoothly, everyone mostly just gets along because all of the individual idiosyncrasies have already been acknowledged and settled, and people are relaxed and at ease around each other. And with a coach like Inzaghi, himself part of this tight-knit group, there is little threat of looking over one's shoulder.

Further, there's no real desire for promotions: people are happy-- why not stay put? Guys like Milinkovic-Savic or Luis Alberto could have forced big money moves abroad, but why bother? They own mansions or giant flats in one of the most historical, beautiful cities in the world, kicking a ball around with their best friends every day.

No fear of demotion, and no desire for promotion: happiness! And this Lazio group do seem to me to be very happy. I'm glad for them, and it's hard to find fault with people who love what they do.

The downside-- and this comes from my own professional experiences-- to this kind of chemistry, is that effort levels take a precipitous decline: Lazio's players quite literally acknowledged that they simply threw in the towel on Europa League last season: not only did they not care about the competition, but they didn't mind publicly saying as much!

Well, it appears this season as if they don't care about anything: they frequently look despondent and bored in the league, and they've been scraping by with the most minimal of efforts in Europe, where one centimeter of crossbar separated them from group stage success, and an unceremonious dumping out against a vastly inferior opponent.

It's not that they don't want to do better: just today I read that Luis Alberto led a team meeting to try and get them back on track. But in professional sports, where results come down sometimes to millimeters, or just a couple of two-second incidences during certain matches, the intensity has to be more consistent-- who can know when the pivotal moments will occur?

It doesn't help that Simone Inzaghi is violating one of the key tenets of the "Art of War"-- that of making yourself flexible and unpredictable. He just doesn't strike me as the kind of worker who is going to take sixteen hours per day custom tailoring tactics for each opponent through vigorous film study: it's the same setup, with the same system, with the same strategy every game for four years.

It is possible that they can arise out of this myst: under Inzaghi, a man they trust and love, they never give up, and thanks to Felipe Caicedo often snatch results at the ends of matches-- while in Europe, they battled their socks off during a period when half their squad was absent due to the WuFlu. These examples are very much to their credit.

But more likely, some kind of a jolt will be required: either a relegation battle, Lotito losing patience and pulling the plug on Inzaghi-- and I really hope that doesn't happen-- or a massive roster shakeup, to "reset" the culture. Otherwise, it could wind up being a season mired in mediocrity: like an extended vacation.

Digital Foundry has been my favorite source of game tech-related information over the past several years, but I'm not sure I trust them anymore: I'm increasingly running into these situations where what they're saying in video doesn't jive even with their own companion footage.

In my "Cyberpunk 2077" review, I mention that the ray tracing looks "maligned and malfunctioning": for instance, shadows and ambient occlusion are almost totally missing from many objects and character models, making it look like objects are floating over the level geometry.

In a video put up today by Alex Battaglia, he shows side-by-side screenshots with ray tracing disabled, and enabled, where you can clearly see on both sides that the shadows are broken. His voice-over narrative, paraphrased-but-barely: "You can see that ray tracing revolutionizes things, it barely looks like the same game!"

This reminds me of the "Fiery but peaceful protest" CNN moment: "who do you believe, me or your own eyes?" It really makes me wonder why so many recent Digital Foundry videos have that "paid promotion" disclaimer at the beginning of them.

I've also seen all three of Battaglia, Linneman, and even "the man" Leadbetter himself downplaying deficiencies in games, skipping frametime graphs which obviously should be shown, or otherwise censoring their commentary. I get that Linneman is sensitive and doesn't like people criticizing him on the Twatter, but at the same time it defeats the purpose of their channel if I can no longer count on it being objective.

Here is a college professor with a multi-decade academic expertise and teaching history in propaganda, explaining how he was ratted out via a "bias hotline"-- I wonder if it's a flashing red phone, and comes with a bat signal in the air?-- for having created an "unsafe learning environment", for having criticized the cancel culture rampant in the transgendered community, followed by asking students to read both sides of the argument regarding Face Diapers.

If I was laughing my ass off at the "bias hotline" vernacular, can you imagine what a world-leading expert in propaganda thought of it?

And just to add to the meta-ness, right below the video as I listen to it on YouTube, is a little blue propaganda box informing me where I can get the "right think" regarding the WuFlu! It's sort of like that "Twilight Zone" meme Mark Dice started recently, which was getting infinitely and recursively "fact checked" by Facebook's automated system.

I'm looking forward to "Monster Hunter Rise": it will be fun having a graphics engine, in that series, built explicitly for the Switch's chipset, and my primary weapon appears to have had some nice additions too. I wonder what they'll do with my secondary weapon, the horn, which never ceases to crack me up?

There is something to be said for the Nintendo Switch in general: the Series X and PlayStation 5 are replete with these involved open world games, which take months to play through-- then I flick on the Switch, and even the bigger budget releases tend to be less story driven, and more action-oriented.

The only fly in the ointment there is that it's tough to go, for example, from "Assassin's Creed Valhalla" on the Series X at dynamic 4K and HDR, with all of its incredible splendor, back to a middling tablet chipset from 2013 which can barely maintain 720p and thirty frames per second in many titles. Part of me wishes Nintendo would just go third party, but I do see value in the portable aspects of something like the Switch.

This reminds me of Tesla's "autopilot" feature: beta testing in the wild on real, live people. The statement "the cure is worse than the disease", true since at least March, is ever growing in stature.

Here is a well-written WuFlu piece from Eric Peters. On that subject, there is increasing evidence which suggests masks increase the spread of the WuFlu, because they serve not as shields, but collectors.

I just asked my daughter what her watch is worth, to which she replied that she wasn't sure. I followed this up by posing the scenario where she offered it to me for one hundred dollars, and I declined, making a counteroffer of fifty dollars-- but then she offered it to her brother for one hundred dollars, and he accepted.

"I see: the watch is worth fifty dollars to you, and one hundred dollars to my brother", she correctly clarified. I followed this up by asking her whether the value of her watch is the same for all people, or different for each person-- to which she again correctly replied, "Different for each person."

One of the silliest things I've read lately is the news that some pandering, manipulative politicians-- are there any other kind, really?-- in the UK are pushing for "anti scalper" laws, because some soy boys weren't able to buy a new video game system for themselves, like the kind mommy used to placate them with.

"Scalping", of course, means selling something for above its "value". But how can that be, if the value of something is different to everyone as even my ten year old daughter knows, and even changes from moment-to-moment? Selling "above its value", according to whose value exactly, and as of when?

The answer-- never expressly stated in these terms, mind you-- comes from Karl Marx, who thought that the value of something was the sum of the labor which went into it. And if the object was sold for more than that value, you see, then that "excess value" was being "skimmed" from the exploited laborers.

Of course, the value of the labor itself is also subjectively defined, moment-to-moment and differently by different people: if Karl Marx walked into three different McDonalds restaurants today, in three different geographical regions, and tried to establish the "objective" labor value of identical cheeseburgers, he'd find that the costs to make them were different, and perhaps had even changed in the time he was standing in line.

How to know then whether to buy the cheeseburger, or not? How can one even know if it's being sold for an "excessive" value? Is poor old Karl supporting slave labor by eating a bacon McDouble for dinner?

The answer, of course, is that he'd weigh the asking price of the cheeseburger against his own subjective notions of what the cheeseburger is worth to him, in that moment: in other words, he wouldn't even operate by his own theory in real life. The cheeseburger is worth to him whatever he'll pay for it, and that amount will be different for a different person, regardless of how much the cheeseburger cost to make.

So back to the UK law: I could go onto eBay right this minute and probably get eleven hundred bucks for my PlayStation 5. In January, maybe twelve hundred. In February, perhaps nine hundred. It's still the same PlayStation 5, with the same amount of labor which went into it. Am I "scalping" in December? How about January? Or what about February? Should people still be asked to pay the same price for my eighteen year-old car, as when it was brand new, because the labor which went into it never changed?

On that note, what if I wait a year and sell my PlayStation 5 for only two hundred dollars? Isn't the buyer "scalping" me now, by buying it for less than the amount of labor which went into it? Should the price of a PlayStation 5-- nay, all knowable objects in the universe-- be set by the government, to make sure no one is "scalping"?

Even further: isn't Sony selling the PlayStation 5 for less than it cost to make? Aren't the workers exploiting the company, and should have to pay some of their wages back, to make up the difference? And yet further: these "anti scalper" laws use the MSRP of the product to determine if a reseller is "scalping". In other words, they are using the already "excessive" price set by a multi-billion dollar corporation, as the moral holy grail for determining what that product's "value" is.

What about labor itself while we're at it? I bet each and every one of the people cheerleading the creation of these laws tries to get the highest paying job they can, without a single iota of thought given into how much "labor" educated them in the first place. Can you imagine them in a job interview saying, "I'm sorry, you'll have to pay me less so I'm not scalping." And I bet when they go to sell their Honda Civic, they put it up on Craig's List for the maximum amount they think they can get.

All of this is purely academic, naturally: the politicians behind this are pandering for votes from brainwashed Millennials, a fact of which I'm fully cognizant-- this post is merely a thought exercise.