Posted On: Saturday - May 18th 2024 4:58PM MST
In Topics: University Humor
Harvard Business School* graduate Chris Pan gave an ... interesting and different commencement speech for the '24 graduating class of Ohio State University. Conservatives, such as The Gateway Pundit (actually taken from The Western Journal), Townhall, etc. thought along the lines of Ohio State Graduates Suffer Through ‘The Worst Commencement Address in the History of Commencement Addresses’. I don't know about that.
Indeed, this Chris Pan is ... yeah, a little different. Per his "About" page on his website, Mr. Pan was a Facebook employee at one point, even having taught Zuckerberg some Mandarin (helped Zuckerberg in understanding his wife and the Poontang Dynasty, etc.), he always wanted (to pretend?) to be a motivational speaker, he's helped millions of people "live with intention", and he's launching another "platform" to help people with their finances. Granted, finances are easy when you luck into a Deep State supported "platform", run by a soon-to-be mutil-dozen-Billionaire.
If you've got 20 minutes and haven't already watched this whole thing, see what you think. I found that Mr. Pan has a transcript of his talk on his site too. Possibly, he wrote the transcript beforehand or afterwards, at a time when he was not already or still allegedly high on a psychedelic drug called Ayahuasca. (I've never heard of it, much less taken it - sounds sort of Indian, so safe for work, I suppose... for the casino, not the call center. Things are bad enough in there without these kinds of "enhancements".)
I disagree strongly with the Conservatives who've ragged on this talk. First of all, Mike Landry (Western Journal) and Kevin McMahon (Townhall), I'm pretty sure this is nowhere NEAR the worst commencement speech in history! There was a time called "The 1960s". During that time, many people graduated college and many people spoke in front of said people's graduations. Peak Stupidity does not have enough space in our host company's database to list all the lying Commies, Black! racist agitators, and other Kings and Queens of Stupidity who gave speeches worse than Chris Pan's this year in Columbus, OH.
Secondly, though different from the normal fare, what else truthful would one have to say to the graduates nowadays? Do you tell the $80,000 in-debt Comparative Literature graduates that "The World is your oyster"? (I don't even like oysters, or else I don't know WHAT that means.) Do you tell the graduates they'll be the next Captains of Industry, running their very own Starbucks someday, the one they're returning to work at next week? Maybe they can come up with wonderful new ideas to help the world, say, novel, oyster-based Frappuccinos or something.
You could get away with all that when I graduated. The university in question had a very well-known guy speak at my commencement ceremony, which was their thing for many years. I'm not so enamored with the guy now ...
I don't like standing up and singing, but other than that, I thought this motivational talk by Chris Pan was not bad. Maybe Harvard has something going for it after all... it's called Ayahuasca. "Party on, dudes!"
Yes, this has been (unplanned, of course) video week here at Peak Stupidity. There's one more - a LONG one - that I want to feature next week.
PS: Sorry all I could get for a video was one taken "through the air", a video by one device of the playback on another. There's got to be another better way to do that. Then again, Apple likes to really lock their stuff up.
* ... the very place where you run into people like this
Comments (3)
Climate: The Movie
Posted On: Friday - May 17th 2024 9:40PM MST
In Topics: Movies Global Climate Stupidity Science Scams
"... coming soon to. theater near you"? Nah, I've really noticed the decline of "going to the movies" over the last decade, especially due to the effects and after-effects of the PanicFest. I can't recall anyone recently including "when we went to the movies" in conversation.
Anyway, this is an hour and 20 minute documentary that you can enjoy on your small or big screen at your leisure. I am glad I saved the link a week back, because the basic "Climate the movie" youtube search comes back with some really worrisome stuff. That is, if you worry about people that readily fall into panic based on repeated ridiculous media lies, the clips that appear should scare you. I wish that Climate: The Movie actually could come out on the silver screen in front of an America that still attended "the movies" en masse. It could be labeled something else... what kind of creative titles have they got now... I got it: Star Wars LXIV: 5th prequel to the 43rd sequel... or something.
This stuff is right in my wheelhouse. I'm not a climatologist and I haven't worked out the physics myself, but I understand the complexity in mathematical modeling, and I LUV graphs, There are a half dozen or so scientists shown herein who don't get into the math but clearly and simply explain how the models are based on bad data and how wrong their results are. Climate: The Movie (The Cold Truth), released in '23, was written by Martin Durkin and directed by him and one Martin O'Toole (most likely NOT any kin to Peter).
If spending an hour and 20 minutes listening to scientists with no action scenes or CGI is not your thing, PLEASE, if nothing else, skip to just over 29 minutes in and watch through 0:31. Sure enough, Physics Professor Will Happer of Princeton brought up El Nino and La Nina. Don't say Peak Stupidity didn't tell you about this years ago.*
Here are my general impressions and some more highlights of this feature film. First off, in addition to the pieces of interviews with the scientists and then the many graphs and diagrams, there are still scenes and video clips that well fit the more political nature of the subject matter. These are well placed and often very humorous. The narrator is a guy with an accent very much like that of John Derbyshire. The scientists interviewed are calm and well-spoken.
Fans of the old The Office TV show, a Peak Stupidity favorite, will be enjoy seeing Geologist and former Los Alamos lab employee Tony Heller. He looks and talks like a 10 years older Toby Flenderson. Did Toby finally realize the evil he had wrought as an HR associate at Dunder Mifflin and get into something constructive? Perhaps he enrolled in Geology soon after his return from Costa Rica. You can see alt-Toby at 41:45. (For some reason, he doesn't get top billing on the IMDB page.)
Korean born Astrophysicist Willie Soon is my least favorite character, as he comes across too pop-science Carl Sagan-like. Dr. Will Happer is my favorite.
At 32 minutes in, Dr. Happer talks about the relative importance of the C02 "greenhouse effect" versus the effects of cloud cover, i.e, the average of cloud cover comprising the albedo of the entire planet (its reflectivity). He see the latter as being MUCH bigger of a factor in the energy balance. The amount and location of cloud cover must be understood very accurately and be already predictable for it to become a part of any mathematical model of the whole climate. Yet, it most certainly IS NOT.
At 43 minutes in, Physicist Steve Koonin, Meteorologist Richard Lindzen, and one other academic describe very well the conditions that have been causing university scientists to jump onto the Climate Calamity™ bandwagon. They also describe the process of Big Biz hiring these academics to help them comply with idiotic policies laid on them.
After describing some of the scenes, I'm aghast, as I realize that I may have spoiled the ending of this dramatic film! Therefore, I'll go ahead and give you the ending, as if you've read this far I've already totally ruined the excitement for you. Here's the ending:
The Climate Calamity™ is a freaking scam! Scientists have been sucked in through their greed and yearning for fame and fortune into a political version of "science". Models developed aren't correct, data and data ranges have been fudged and are used even when proven to be erroneous, and yet politicians and their useful wackos sow fear and panic worldwide, all in the name of Global Government Control.
Again, I could have told you all this 7 years ago - hell, I did! Well, you don't have to feel bad spending the time to watch this anyway - it's FREE! Enjoy!
* Unless your complaint is about Peak Stupidity's lack of search functions, that is. We sympathize with your plight.
Comments (17)
Airbus lights up in SeaTac non-smoking area
Posted On: Thursday - May 16th 2024 7:18AM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Globalists
Let me say, first of all, that the Lyin' Press has made a special effort to single out mishaps that happen to/on Boeing aircraft lately. Don't misunderstand me. Peak Stupidity would be the first to agree with those who attribute real problems (door plugs popping out, wheels falling off*) to the change in Boeing corporate culture from engineering to mass bean counting. I'd also agree that the D.I.E. programs will have very bad effects in the long run.** The "suicides" of 2!*** Q/A personnel says something about the company too.
However, I see big corporate Globalism, something the big international (this excludes SouthWest) airlines adhere to almost by definition, as hating Boeing and loving Airbus. I believe they want just the one big company, Airbus, left. "You will eat zee bugs in your crew meal as you let zee plane do zee flyink." Airbus - I'm thinking the 350 here - is ahead in the near-complete automation.
Going back 40 years there were 3 companies building mainline jets in the US alone. Canadair, builder of regional jets, got bought by the conglomerate Bombardier, which is now part of Airbus. The Brazilians are still building big regional "jungle" jets (crossovers?). Is the goal of the Globalists to get Russia out of the large aircraft manufacturing business too via economic and physical war?
There are still a number of manufacturers, including American companies Gulfstream and Cessna, making business jets, but those are not for the Hoi polloi/
Anyway, though I'd missed this story till a friend brought it up yesterday, the jetliner in the video below is, yes, an Airbus - 321 model. I didn't see big headlines saying "Airbus!!", but then again, as was the case with some of the recent Boeing incidents****, this fire may not have been caused by anything wrong with the plane, and if it were, I imagine it's maintenance related.
Here's what I had to do to see what's what with the fire. Because the beginning and then another chunk later on of this clip were speeded up 16x (from my stopwatch estimate), I went to .25 speed on the handy youtube settings, so I've been watching at 4x speed. The plane stopped on the cross-line on the ramp at 21:25:25 local time (PDT). Things happen pretty quickly out there, in order to get the passengers on their way. The chock blocks were put in place around the nose wheels within 15 seconds.
Taking a look with time on our hands after the fact with a camera with the perfect view makes it pretty obvious what happened. The ground power, coming from the jet-bridge caused a short somewhere, at or near the plug-in point. Contrary to what I've just read, I am not so sure that the problem was in the power cord. There may have been a short due to faulty electrical parts or circuitry on the airplane.
In order to plug power from the jet bridge into the plane so that the aircraft's APU engine can be shut down, that bridge must be driven up. (There's an interlock system to prevent one from moving it with power plugged in. This prevents bent aircraft sheet metal over the years.) From 21:28:10 to :30, the one ramp guy has opened the small hatch, lowered the electrical cable to the ground , and plugged it in. There was no immediate spark or fire. The same guy made the signal to the Captain that power was connected at ~ :45***** He would cut off the APU and let the power switch to ground power after giving a thumbs-up agreement and "thanks".
There's no way to tell from this view exactly when the power actually switched, but it was only then that we see black smoke and then flames right afterwards. Here's when we can start judging the whole resulting scene.
I won't comment on the process of evacuation (good call to do it, of course). Commenters note the lack of anyone's use of nearby hand fire extinguishers for a good long time. This is an electrical fire and in an open space, so I doubt water or halon would do anything much, but did all these ramp guys know that? (In the words of the old Jaws movie, "Were they very, very smart or very, very stupid?")
Obviously, the power must be cut off and/or the cord unplugged. Within a couple of seconds after his having seen the flames, the same ramp guy does run under the bridge. I believe he went for the red stop button there, maybe an emergency stop button, and maybe even a real lever-type circuit-box switch. I can't see due to the smoke puff in the way. Then, the guy runs toward the First Officer's side to signal what was going on. He might have thought these guys could do something. The pilots could have cut off power to the plane systems, but I doubt that'd have done any good. The same ramp guy then ran back to the bridge, either to cut power the first time, or just to make sure there's nothing more he could do.
Pulling the cord out is not something I'd have attempted either, what with molten rubber, or metal even, dripping down. It was hot there! That ramp guy did a good job. The one guy backed the belt loader away after a little while.
Therefore, looking at this more than just with a quick glance at a bunch of people running around, I don't think this video shows anything close to Peak Stupidity. It's just ... I mean if the plane can smoke and all, why can't the passengers?
PS: How could the power not be cut off though, once someone went for the EMER button? That makes me wonder if it was indeed an aircraft problem. Was the APU not cut off, and it somehow kept current flowing in this area? There was no problem until the cord was plugged in though. Also, how'd this same jet bridge power do on the last plane at that gate, just an hour or so before?
I guess this will all be figured out. These things are expensive. Those slides cost more than car airbags, and we're probably talking hundreds of thousands of bucks in damage here.
* For both of those incidents - the Delta 757 on the ground at Atlanta Hartsfield and the United 777 climbing out of SFO - it's not clear to me whether the problem was design, Q/A, or maintenance, the first 2 being Boeing or supplier failures, and the latter being the airlines'.
** Maybe even in the short run. See those 2 (now!) big boat / bridge collisions.
*** That wasn't meant to be 2 factorial, but it's still correct if you take it that way.
**** For example, when that 737 broke its left main gear at the big Houston airport (KIAH), it was not the airplane's fault. Headlines: "Boeing 737 landing gear collapses and airplane goes into the grass." Well, "and" is not wrong, but it implies a sequence. What happened was "Boeing 737 goes into the grass and landing gear collapses." (This story is pretty clear cut.)
***** Unfortunately, the camera clock is gone from the video for a short while here. Using the youtube time is very rough.
Comments (2)
Peak Stupidity bested by superior browser
Posted On: Wednesday - May 15th 2024 7:19PM MST
In Topics: Internets Humor
I'd been proud that I've got 149 tabs open in Firefox on an old machine, but it gets bogged down pretty quickly. That may be due to my refusing all updates with extreme prejudice. On Safari on one tablet, I've got 250 tabs open or so, and it's hurting badly.
Peak Stupidity shamefully admits:
Comments (12)
Bai Dien flubs his line yet again
Posted On: Wednesday - May 15th 2024 12:26PM MST
In Topics: Humor Movies Zhou Bai Dien
Peak Stupidity is not about to give more clicks to encourage the dark side of Brandon, so we'll link to the Gateway Pundit post that has it - “Make My Day, Pal” – Joe Biden Mocks Trump For Being Tied Up in Court in Latest Biden Regime Lawfare Suit
Look, first of all, there's no way to know if the video of Bai Dien daring, haha, Donald Trump to debate him is not AI. If not, it may have taken a lot of "takes" to get this 14 seconds of lucid Brandon on video. They spent a lot of time on this, but I guess nobody did his research on the old movies.
Like mentor, like mentee, I guess. Bai Dien's old mentor Øb☭ma conflated 2 different 1970s Black! sitcom TV shows:
(Sanford & Son was much funnier and more authentic than The Jeffersons.)
The current guy flubbed the line too. Hey, Joetatoe, which is it? Are you tough-ass New York City detective * John McClane, aka Bruce Willis, or bad-ass San Francisco detective Harry Callahan, aka Clint Eastwood? Pick one, dude:
What's it gonna be, dude? Are you gonna be Dirty Harry or are you gonna be John McClane? First I'm gonna be Dirty Harry, and then I'm gonna be John McClane. Line!
To get serious for a minute, The Gateway Pundit writer Cristina Laila here makes a good point. Zhou Bai Dien's people know damn well he'd look like an senile ignorant fool in any live debate. They are hoping they can set up the debate dates to match up with soon-to-be-arranged Trump court appearance dates. Perhaps Zhou will be present on live TV as and the moderator (not me, the TV one) jerks Trump around, making him run through the streets of Mar a Lago from one pay phone to another. Wait, that was the 1st Dirty Harry movie. I'm getting confused too...
* He was visiting Los Angeles.
Comments (4)
iEspionage, Signals, and The Analog Kid
Posted On: Tuesday - May 14th 2024 6:34PM MST
In Topics: Music US Police State Globalists Artificial Stupidity ctrl-left Orwellian Stupidity iEspionage
A friend of mine got me onto the Signal app long ago. It has been touted to be an alternate to the standard Texting app* that encrypts one's messages - not sure about images and videos too. (That'd take a lot more capacity.) I've used it a few times, but, contrary to what people on the other end might reckon, I've always assumed that there's not much more security inherent in its use than in regular texting.
It's not that I think the cryptography in Signal is necessarily easy to crack. I have been under the impression that we're on the encryption side of the encryption/decryption waveform, meaning it's cheaper to encrypt (to keys with 100's of characters) than to decrypt. For those non-Derbyshire-level mathematicians, I highly recommend The Code Book by Simon Singh as an introduction to the history and basic theory of cryptography. (It's a very fun read too.)
So what if the messages are nearly impossible to crack? That's not the weak point for this phone software, the "secure" browsers, and what have you. The point to break in is in the software itself, with a backdoor to allow the Orwellian State to download all the messages in their unencrypted states to some people in the State of Utah, for example. Wouldn't the Signal software programmers know if something like this was in there? Maybe at the start, but who knows who can and did get ahold of the (programming) code at some point along the way. Perhaps these spooks hang out in their underwear in the basement of the Apple Store.
Well, anyway, the anti-Wokeness fighter Chris Rufo came at this concern from a different angle, which I'll get to after a short excerpt from his recent City Journal article Signal’s Katherine Maher Problem. Well, I guess that title gives away Chris Rufo's concern, but:
First, the origin story. The technology behind Signal, which operates as a nonprofit foundation, was initially funded, in part, through a $3 million grant from the government-sponsored Open Technology Fund (OTF), which was spun off from Radio Free Asia, originally established as an anti-Communist information service during the Cold War. OTF funded Signal to provide “encrypted mobile communication tools” to “Internet freedom defenders globally.”Who's gonna scrutinize this involvement, teams of Top Men sent by the UniParty? Sure ...
Some insiders have argued that the connection between OTF and U.S. intelligence is deeper than it appears. One person who has worked extensively with OTF but asked to remain anonymous told me that, over time, it became increasingly clear “that the project was actually a State Department-connected initiative that planned to wield open source Internet projects made by hacker communities as tools for American foreign policy goals”—including by empowering “activists [and] parties opposed to governments that the USA doesn’t like.” Whatever the merits of such efforts, the claim—if true—suggests a government involvement with Signal that deserves more scrutiny.
Heavy users of Signal, especially those who are software people, have probably had their concerns already. Mr. Rufo may not have concerned himself with this until seeing who happens to be the current Chairman of the Board of the Signal Foundation:
What the hell,
Then too, as with VPNs and such, the use itself of these is probably a great reason for the Orwellian State to enter such a user's information in that special database on special people. That'd be those who, for some paranoid reason, think the State is spying on them. That shows a lack of civic trust, a bad quality in a citizen, and a damn good reason to put a flag for him in one column of that "Special Citizens" table.
Chris Rufo says Signal users should be "cautious". That's putting it mildly. Then again, maybe Peak Stupidity is just "controlled opposition", as likely are these guys:
Signals was the band Rush's 9th studio album, from September of 1982. I know Peak Stupidity has featured a favorite, New World Man, before, so here's The Analog Kid instead.
Going back to analog signals evades lots of the new technology. Letters written in cursive, HF radio... "Papa Bear to Mama Bear, Goldilocks has left the building." Screw this digital bitch.
PS: One can't help imagine how much better it'd have been for the world and the sanity of Katherine Maher herself had she met a nice hardworking man and had 3 or 4 kids with him years ago. She'd be a happy Conservative that may or may not see the evil wrought by the Globalists like her alt-self. Either way, she'd have been doing good for the world. Alas, Babylon...
* To use Apple's terminology, every one of those icons on the screen besides "Settings" is an app, I guess, even the Phone app, on the
** Peak Stupidity didn't write a post about her current story, but we mentioned her in the recent post Roots Politics from Peak Stupidity.
*** Note, picture of hot chick in post is NOT Nina Totenburg, so no use clicking...
Comments (8)
Banking on nature over nurture
Posted On: Monday - May 13th 2024 7:40PM MST
In Topics: Humor Pundits Race/Genetics
The biological and psychological question of nature vs nurture in determination of physical traits of people, just as with other animals, is an interesting one that doesn't seem too controversial. For some reason, the bringing up the same question when discussing personality and intelligence, in people only, seems to be VERY controversial, Most Peak Stupidity readers already know just the guy to expound on the controversy, such as in a section of a book I've been reading lately.
I can't cover the Human BioDiversity (HBD) arguments as Mr. Steve Sailer can, but I did have one quick thought about people's "revealed preferences" as to the question. Revealed preferences are simply "what they do" no matter "what they say", in this case they being women who frequent sperm banks.
Actually, "frequent" might not be the best word for the business with the women customers. They can only make withdrawals and infrequent ones - probably no more than once every 9 months or so. Name notwithstanding, these banks don't pay interest, don't have drive-through windows with pneumatic tubes (though maybe that wouldn't be a bad idea), and don't even give away free toasters.
The thing is, it's very important to the customers who has made the deposits to be withdrawn. Certain ladies may say otherwise, but sperm is apparently not a commodity item. The women may want a tall handsome guy to have made the deposit. Why would they care whether he was a doctor or engineer though, or anything about his personality or intelligence? After all, not all, but most of the women customers would be feminist in nature, and that usually goes along with lefty opinions that don't include a belief in that Human BioDiversity.
That's what they say. What they do is seek out genes that are more likely to provide them smart children. It's pretty obvious what they really believe.
Otherwise, as per a commenter under this related post by Mr. Sailer about DNA testing and IQ:
Would they even let donors provide IQ test results (certified somehow) or let recipients see this info these days? Pictures and descriptions – background, career, and such would be pretty helpful, but all that is moot when you don’t know if all the sperm came from that one guy who runs the lab or maybe the janitor who has a Beyonce poster in his equipment closet.Bank fraud! So what? You should be able to raise the sperm of a janitor into the next International Chess Champion as well as you could anyone else. Just play chess with him a lot. You can take that to the bank.
I wrote in this 1st of 4 posts about the recent Lionel Shriver novel Mania that the main character in that book used sperm from a highly intelligent (145 IQ) Japanese man to conceive 2 of her kids. From what I've read about regression to the mean and just general probabilities, it's doubtful the boy and girl (Darwin and Zanzibar) would have those same IQ numbers within a couple of points. In fact, in the conclusion (not to spoil the ending here), narrator Pearson Converse herself finds she has an IQ of 107 or so. Lionel Shriver would have been well served to have Noticed some of Steve Sailer's writing.
Comments (10)
Machine Gun Kelly
Posted On: Saturday - May 11th 2024 6:26PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Music Americans Anarcho-tyranny Legal Stupidity Morning Constitutional
George Alan Kelly is the name of an Arizona rancher who was arrested last year and put in jail for allegedly shooting one of a group of illegal aliens who trespassed across on his land and threatened him and his wife. I imagine there have been plenty more instances of this sort of trouble over the decades but especially recently with the greatly increased level of the invasion. The January '23 incident involving George Kelly and one dead illegal alien in Kino Springs, Arizona - within 5 miles or so of the Mexican border (just east of Nogales TX/Mexico) - went viral, as they say. To me that meant that White American George Kelly had a lot to be worried about.
Peak Stupidity is neither a legal eagle site, nor one that watches court cases for enlightenment or entertainment. I saw this story and immediately thought of the railroaded Brunswick (Georgia) 3, George Floyd-responder Derek Chauvin*, and others whose cases have been put in the national, even world limelight. When it gets that big, and you're the White guy, your prospects are not good. I figured Mr. Kelly's outcome in a trial would be depressing to me, the same-old-same-old, so I'm only bringing this up because I happened upon the video below.
Not being a trial follower, so hearing only Mr. Kelly's side after his mistrial last month, with the word being he'd not be tried again, I will not try to argue about the case. I WILL say, however, that when your country is being invaded through your very own property, you have a right to shoot to kill, when threatened by an armed group. Yeah, and I don't care which way the 2 Mexicans that were found - one dead and one alive to testify - were headed.
I just now went to this AZ Central article , written before the jury deliberations, to read more of the other side of the story. It differs greatly from Mr. Kelly's story in the video.
It was difficult to find out who the News Nation interviewer was here - I believe, per that site, it's one Ali Bradley. She is sympathetic to Mr. Kelly's story and sounds like she's been following and supporting him during his long ordeal. That ordeal was 22 days in jail after being arrested by Santa Cruz County deputies when they'd responded to his call about the dead body, the mortgaging of about all he owned - his was a 170 acre cattle ranch - to pay the million dollar bail, and then the trial. I won't recap the hour-long video. I don't claim it's the most interesting thing there is to watch, but you may want to, as I did.
Note George Kelly's background as a Southerner, a biologist, the builder and owner of a Montana fishing lodge, and for a long time, a small-time Texas cattle rancher, at this point 75 years old and still married to his college sweet-heart. He seems like a good guy and a real American. Did he actually do something different from what he claimed in this video? I get the idea that might be the case to some degree. Since this was nearly the farthest type of location from the big city with cameras mounted everywhere and other people holding more of them, we can never know for sure what happened.
I find it hard to believe that George Kelly decided not to shoot with the AK-47 he'd had for protection as he was outside his doorway facing a group of these dangerous men (he says cartel members - no reason not to believe that), one who had a rifle aimed at him. He said he made a choice not to shoot. His wife was inside the house. I don't know about that.
Mr. Kelly talked a lot about what would have happened to him if he'd been convicted. It is said that a 20 year sentence for a 75 y/o man is a "death sentence". (You can alter the numbers, of course.) It's true that he'd almost assuredly die in prison, but it's not an actual death sentence by definition. Then he described the scene in jail, with many prisoners, I'm sure of the Hispanic persuasion, telling him he was a "dead man walking". If he'd gone to prison, he may have indeed been killed, so in that manner of speaking, yes, it pretty much would have been a de facto death sentence. After his long sentence, Derek Chauvin has already been stabbed multiple times, maybe maiming him for life in an Arizona prison.
Toward the end, he told his interviewer that he'd refused a plea bargain for a 4-year sentence, simply due to his convictions. He wasn't guilty, so he was not going to say he was. Just after that, he brought up that these prisoners that want to kill a White man that dared defend his land and people (what he was accused of, anyway) would probably end his life in those 4 years, so this plea deal wouldn't help him. These 2 statements are contradictory.
Interestingly, as he recounted his problems with trespassing illegals in the area over the years, he noted very specifically when the problems were few and far between and when the became frequent. The timeline fit very well with President Trump's under-the-radar successful efforts to slow the invasion and then Bai Dien's deliberate encouragement of the massive surge going on now. Yet, not until the very end did Mr. Kelly say something to relate his observations to the political scene. Maybe he doesn't care about these politics, but just HOW can that be? These Americans like George Kelly have been on the physical front lines for a long time. Still, he shied away from saying anything political. A lawyer would tell one to do that in the courtroom, but his was an interview with a sympathetic follower of his case.
This is what I get out of the interview, and it's maybe the only point I'm making here. George Kelly talked as if he was still lawyered up, being very careful of what he said. I can see his reasoning.
With a mistrial having been declared by the County Superior Judge and the case being claimed over with, one might figure that's the end of this. Who knows about that? Then, even had had that last juror not refused to acquit, and the verdict were clear, that whole Amendment V thing ("... nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb;") has long ago been shredded.
It used to be rigorously applied. Go back 40 years and you could get acquitted of something horrendous, and the next day exclaim to the world "Yeah, I did it! If it wasn't for the good lawyerin' by my brother man Jackie Childs here, I'd be down for life. Too bad. See y'all!"
That's no longer the case. If the State wants to get you, they try Case A. If that files, there's Case B, Hate Crime. Then, they'll go to another jurisdiction. There can be a civil case to bankrupt you if nothing else. Oh, and before all that, if the local guy declined to prosecute at all, the State and its $PLC and other minions would go shopping for a different prosecutor who would take up the case.
George Kelly is right to keep mum and stay in that lawyered-up mindset. As he said himself, "That cloud’s still over my head," Right. Whatever way those happenings in January '23 went down, he's one of the guys that the people who run things here want to put an end to. He's one that they want to use to discourage the others. They do not like Americans taking care of themselves and their property, and maybe even their country, on their own.
So, this is not a time for levity. Do you understand what happened to Machine Gun Kelly?
I'll
Peak Stupidity posted this one before, but it's one of my favorites by James Taylor. I do know an AK-47 is not a machine gun, as in full auto., unless modified. One thing I didn't know till today was that, happily, the "Machine Gun Kelly" in the JT song was also George Kelly. (From wiki:) George Kelly Barnes was a gangster from Memphis, Tennessee, active during the Prohibition era. His nickname came from his favorite weapon, a Thompson submachine gun. He is best known for the kidnapping of oil tycoon and businessman Charles F. Urschel in July 1933, from which he and his gang collected a $200,000 ransom. James Taylor does a nice job in providing the "human factors".
Watch out, Machine Gun, don't let them put you down.
Don't let a woman put you 6 feet in the ground...
Well, this Machine Gun Kelly was only in the hole for 22 days, and his wife doesn't seem like THAT type. I'm happy for him.
OK, folks, we got only 1 of the 3 posts in that we mentioned last Saturday. Other stupidity just pops up! We eventually get to most that we plan on... eventually, remember. Thanks so much to our PS readers and especially the commenters. Happy, restful Sunday.
* Peak Stupidity featured a long video documentary on his case too. See The Fall of Minneapolis and Fall of Minneapolis - Last Responders.
Comments (9)
How can you have any treat, if you don't complete our spreadsheet?!
Posted On: Friday - May 10th 2024 12:41PM MST
In Topics: Curmudgeonry Artificial Stupidity Customer Care
The reader may or may not be sick of these continual AOC's (Anecdotes Of Curmudgeonry), but well, I write these for
I came into the drugstore for a box of candy. The way it goes now, you have to get someone to come to the counter to ring you up, unless you have good timing. I guess so many people are making purchases online, for anything, that these stores can't afford to run with more than 1 employee, excepting those at the pharmacy. This lady had just left the counter when I walked in, so my after 30 seconds of shopping, I had to tell her - don't know a nice way to say it - "Hey, I wanna' buy something." I apologized for interrupting her duties though. Really, the way they put them to work, I imagine it is a real interruption of one's work flow to go all the way to the front and sell some stuff.
I had cash in hand. An additional good thing about paying with cash - one of our big campaigns here at Peak Stupidity - is that one should not have to interact with any software. The lady did, of course.
Old-timers may still use the term "cash register", but it's a computer with a screen and a cash drawer. If you come to pay for something and you hear that "I've got no 'drawer'" or "We don't have a 'bank'", that means there's no cash drawer. The latter term confused me the first 5 times. Either way, my answer is "See ya."
Drugstores till take cash, so that's good. She asked me if I had the whatever card. (We've been though that one here 6 years back. See BIG DATA can kiss my ass.) I didn't have one, and it wouldn't have helped. Then, a bit oddly, after I gave her a $5 bill for what should be $1.99 + tax, this cashier never repeated the full amount or the change amount. Is this a new thing? She just took the bill and gave me change, which was the right amount.
"Oh, and put in your ...." something - she was pointing at the little screen on my side of the counter off to the left. I was headed the other way out the door. "Nah, I bought this. I'm good. See ya'."
After thinking about this later, I'm pretty sure she just wanted me to input an answer as to how I wanted my receipt: paper, emailed, or whatever else, texted? OK, if I needed a receipt, I suppose I would have started touching the screen. She could have just asked me, but then that'd have required more human interaction. That's not a thing so much ...
Someone really, really wants me to keep interfacing with computers. I'm not gonna. Please let me buy things without those kinds of interactons.
PS: I've got a quick follow-up to my story of computer bureaucracy at the YMCA. I talked to a much younger guy about this. He told me that all he wanted to do was to work out when out of town one time - he must be a member or he was going to pay. All that I experienced was too much for him too. He didn't bother working out. It's a thing with "The Y", apparently. BTW, maybe that should be "Compocracy" or "Bureauputing". Anyone got a better one?
* Coined by John Derbyshire, or at least that's where I got it from.
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[UPDATED 05/11:] Oh. As I talked to a friend about this, I realized what that last request for my input was almost surely about. Added a paragraph about this.
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Comments (6)
Tough question posed by noted financial news network
Posted On: Thursday - May 9th 2024 10:31AM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Humor Economics Media Stupidity
I was just watching The Office, see, on one of those seat back TVs on an airline flight. After I turned the thing off, I glanced at the screen of the guy sitting next to me.
He was watching the news. The headline read... WAIT FOR IT! ...
That's verbatim, from CNBC. A few days later I tried to look up the story, yeah, "story" is what you call them, on the CNBC site. It's not there.
Anything to support the narrative, I suppose.
Comments (13)
Haiting on Haiti
Posted On: Thursday - May 9th 2024 7:09AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity History Race/Genetics
In our recent post Massholes and Emotional Rescues*, we pointed out the following, as part of story of the Massachusetts front of the immigration invited invasion:
According to a report, Massachusetts currently has more than one million illegal aliens residing in the state. It is expected to cost taxpayers over one billion dollars by 2025 to house them.See, it's not like this is 1884, and the (legal!) immigrants have to make their own way or go home. We need to FUND them now. Population Replacement does not come cheap, people!
This number doesn’t include the 14,000 illegal Haitian immigrants Massachusetts has funded since 2022.
I bolded the Haitian part because this is such a superb example of stupidity. Peak Stupidity is one thing - we'll get to an overall maximum as averaged across the world - a gentle smooth function ... till the discontinuity, that is ... No, but the stupidity in inviting people from arguably the worst shithole of a place in the world and having been for a couple of centuries, is some type of extreme effort in taking acute stupidity to a new level.
It's been 220 years since the end of the Haitian slave revolt. I don't blame anyone for wanting out of slavery - who was the guy who said "Let my people go" or something... Charlton Heston...? However, in reading just a bit on Wiki, I came across the following tidbit:
The revolution was the largest slave uprising since Spartacus' unsuccessful revolt against the Roman Republic nearly 1,900 years earlier and challenged long-held European beliefs about alleged black inferiority and about slaves' ability to achieve and maintain their own freedom.220 years, call it 11 generations, of "maintaining their own freedom" should have Haiti up there as a Beacon of Light to the World - a great shitty on the hill. [I keep forgetting to correct that typo - Ed.]
Instead, even on the same damn island, not exactly your peaceful, prosperous, egalitarian Scandinavian civilization itself, you've got the Dominican Republic, controlling its REAL BORDER with that hell-hole for dear life. For more than a century, America and Americans have tried to straighten out the place on occasion.
Politically the US Gov't has tried to organize governments and elections** over there. On a personal scale, American missionaries have found the place the closest and most challenging destination to try to help "the least of their brothers". It has to be one hell of a learning experience. (I've heard reports from a friend.)
Some would say, if we bring all the Haitians here, they'll be better off. (Don't ask "Will WE be better off?" Nobody asks that. It's rude.) Let's see, Massachusetts, just on that estimate, because we don't really know with illegals, has got 1/10 of a percent of the 11.5 million Haitians taken care of. So, we all need to up our game. But then would Haiti not still populate itself and remain a shithole? Should we not just put everyone there on big barges, then bring in dozers from around the world and environmentally remediate this Tragic Dirt site, bring in Magic Dirt from, say, Massachusetts, de-barge the population, and watch the country flourish?
There is that observation that the problem with Haiti is not any Tragic Dirt that the people occupy, seeing as the other side of the island has done a lot better. No, it's not, and it won't be a pleasant thing for the Massholes to learn, but bringing in a bunch of Haitians means bringing in Haiti. I wonder if Governor Healey has ever been there.
I will now combine these unpleasant thoughts with something I've had on the back burner for a few months. I was looking up information on the deportation flights of the hard-core criminal illegal aliens by iAero, aka, Swift Air. (See Joe Biden is a criminal Human Trafficker! for info. on their taking people in the other direction. That's old news now though. It's a flood.)
The picture above shows a US Marshall's Service aircraft parked in Haiti to drop off some of the scum de la scum. I also came across an article about the subject from just under 4 years ago today - remember what was going on then? Yes, the Haiti Liberte*** was all worried that In Haiti, ICE is spreading COVID-19.
Without any serious border control, ICE has been shipping back only the hard-core criminals. I've talked to pilots who tell me how these Con-Air "customers" behave both on-board and upon arrival back home. These are violent people, potential murderers, rapists, thieves, what-have-you. Yet, Haiti was worried about America spreading that dreaded Kung Flu. Come to think of it, Haiti is the voodoo capital of the world. Isn't there some kind of voodoo doll that you can jab to kill this bad juju?
No. I'm sorry, but I don't know how the COVID-19 could have done anything but improve the place. Yes, it's THAT BAD.
As Stewie envisions it:
PS: After reading back through that Haiti Liberte opinionated article, I came across this gem:
Much of Haiti’s economic devastation can be traced to France and the United States making Haiti pay, time and time again, for the Haitian people’s “original sin” — carrying out history’s first and last successful slave revolution from 1791 to 1804, then founding the first black republic.It's always someone else that's caused the Haitians to be in such a sorry state. Payments of gold Francs to Frenchmen a couple of centuries ago, earthquakes, peacekeepers spreading Cholera, fuel price hikes, bad leaders ... Yes, we SHOULD leave the place alone. On this specific story:
Mass protests in 2020 have been curtailed by the pandemic, but there’s awareness that Haiti has the right not to receive people the U.S. deports. Haiti’s Foreign Minister last month politely asked the U.S. to refrain from deportations at this time. The Family Action Network Movement (FANM) sent an Apr. 22 letter to President Jovenel Moïse requesting that he stop accepting these deportations in order to restrict the spread of COVID-19 in Haiti.It does sound like Mr. Moise learned something from President Trump.
* You can see how these posts tend to proliferate.
** Well, yeah, I mean, we can't really teach them anything at this point.
*** It's got some French accent marks... not my problem.
Comments (10)
Sign language distraction
Posted On: Wednesday - May 8th 2024 5:48PM MST
In Topics: Humor Curmudgeonry Media Stupidity Zhou Bai Dien
Fellow Peak Stupidity curmudgeon readers might have also noticed something in the image atop the post Massholes and Emotional Rescues from yesterday. The fellow on our right is signing, that is, making sign language for the deaf with his hands. Or he just saw a heckler, got done pointing him out, and is fixing to lay a beat down on the guy. No, we (haha, OK I) should not stereotype people here - it's the former thing he's doing.
This is a fairly new thing, isn't it, the deployment of signers at press conferences, speeches, and so on? It's damnably distracting, I gotta say. I see this service as something that was more important in the past, before software-generated closed-captioning. The info could easily be sent to an "app" on any deaf attendee's phone nowadays. I have an idea why it just started up recently - the minoritarianism* and virtue signalling factors - but is it necessary now?
You're trying to watch and listen to one guy, yet there are hands waving wildly around right nearby. I'm sorry, for any deaf PS readers, to say this, but I wish they'd cut this out and find another method. I get that lipreading is very difficult. I do have a feeling we all do some of that though, as I noticed within myself** during the ridiculous mask-wearing phase of the Kung Flu PanicFest. That must have been a tough time for lipreading deaf people.
I wonder how it works for the signer that works for Zhou Bai Dien.
(Just an image - does not play. That'd have been rude.)
It's gotta be tricky. Are you supposed to make signs for his words "pause" or "face to the audience" or "get really angry here" off the Dementiaprompter? Can you even understand the guy enough to make signs to represent Bai Dien's stuttering and slurring? Will anybody in the deaf audience ever spill the beans that you've been making complete fun of the guy for the last 3 years?
Because we're talking signing and lipreading here, the following Seinfeld clip is a must-see:
That show was aired in October of '93. I don't think the joke would work now... for various reasons.
* It's a phrase from Unz Review iSteve crowd commenter AnotherDad, though, come to think of it, Mr. Sailer used that word in one of the articles in his book. I'll try to find it again - it may have been well before AnotherDad the commenter. It means the idea that society must cater to the minorities OVER the majority of the people.
** That post is about other nonverbal cues, masked by the Kung Flu masks. I know I wrote about lip-reading somewhere though ... For another post that was close, see Lost Comms From near the end: "You try not to be rude, but it's hard to converse with someone who sounds pretty much like Charlie Brown's Mom." Boy were those times nuts!
Comments (8)
Gag Orders of the corrupt, extra-legal New York legal system
Posted On: Wednesday - May 8th 2024 11:20AM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Trump Anarcho-tyranny Legal Stupidity
Listen, I don't follow all of this stuff. As much as the Gateway Pundit site goes nuts with new posts about what lawyer said this and what judge ruled that, I have neither the time nor the mental capacity to keep up with the Lawfare process against Donald Trump.
I know the gist of what's going on: The ctrl-left-run New York State legal apparatus, and others in Georgia and wherever, have never let Constitutional due process, rule-of-law-not-men, and all that get in their way of persecuting Trump. They want him in jail (or dead, as MTG has said).
Failing that, all of this Lawfare can keep Trump distracted through election time. As Peak Stupidity stated last summer in our post Donald Trump Arrested, surges in polls, the completely bogus but highly-publicized legal battlers are not hurting Trump one bit support-wise. Voters like me will only sympathize more and work to show the State of New York who's in charge.
Thing is, it's not like Zhou Bai Dien is out there, rallying the left with encouraging rhetoric - they can barely keep him focused long enough for quick, slurred statements to the press. Trump wins the campaign part - the voting process is another deal - even without speaking a word, but he does anyway. He speaks a lot of words.
Every time I go ahead and click on a clip of one of Trump's statements, it starts off great and then it deteriorates quickly into his usual egotistical BS about how everything was great when he was last
The latest tactic by the ctrl-left-run
How do I get Trump’s attention? How do I maintain the integrity and the respect of the court? How do I protect this process? How do I protect the trial? And at the same time, do I fall into the trap of giving Trump this big political gift of putting him in jail? Because of the fact is he’d never be in jail in a place where any common person might serve any amount of time.”I thought a gag order was only meant to keep someone from spoiling the jurors of a trial, as in keeping information from them that they're not supposed to know (the question being "Why?"). I'm pretty sure everyone knows what's going on, most of them more than I, on both sides of this legal sham.
I mean, he would be isolated, he would be put in a secure facility. He may never even see another inmate, it’s not like he’s going to have to shower in the shower room or use the toilet room with everybody else. That’s just not the way it would work. And so it would really be a gift, I think, for Trump. And that’s why he’s playing this card because he knows that the likelihood of him being incarcerated is slim to none, but the poor judge is sort of like the boy in the dike, he’s got his finger in the hole trying to stop the flood, but he can only do so much, the hole being Trump’s mouth.Haha, that gets to the bottom of it. An enforced gag order would be akin to the death sentence for Donald Trump. If he can't run his mouth, I mean, what's it all for anyway?!
PS: I haven't heard anyone say "Gag me with a spoon" in a long while.
Comments (2)
Massholes and Emotional Rescues
Posted On: Tuesday - May 7th 2024 6:15PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Music Female Stupidity
The latest Masshole
The ambiguous wording on numbers like that is something that I've seen a lot and occasionally used myself when I wasn't so sure of a number. That's not the case here, as the writer DOES know - we're not talking "millions" like, say, 5 of them or 87 of them. We're talking 426 of those millions of dollars. Why not say "... approves large fractions of Billions in new spending ..." However, the word "million", singular, does apply to the number of illegal aliens in that State.*
Despite residents fleeing Massachusetts, Democrat Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) signed a bill welcoming hundreds more of illegal immigrants into her state.Oh, and right now existing shelters are full, with all of 3,500 illegals in there. That's peanuts. Do people like Maura Healey have any feel for the numbers?
Healey signed the state budget this week that includes an additional $426 million to house illegal aliens in correspondence to the state’s “right to shelter” law that requires the government to put illegal immigrants and homeless people into homes.
The Democrat governor’s move comes as Boston declared a state of emergency after it exhausted its resources last year due to the massive influx of illegal immigrants coming to the sanctuary state.
I had the image above of this same piece of work saved from back in January from another GP post, Democrat Massachusetts Governor Turns ‘Emotional’ as She Announces Conversion of Roxbury Recreation Center into Shelter for Illegal Immigrants (VIDEO). Though already tired of that site's clickbaity "This journalist/public figure was shocked! (VIDEO)" posts - this one from Jim Hoft himself - I care about this issue, so I bit the bait and watched.
Around that time, I'd seen some clip of Megan Kelly, on the other side of this issue, going emotional upon seeing those NYC Venezuelan illegal aliens flipping off the camera after being released after beating up some of NY's not-so-finest, I guess. That sick attitude from violent invaders that should not have been let in pissed me off too, but we have to look at the big picture and use reason. I don't watch or get any of the TV channels that Megan Kelly might or might not be on, so I don't know if she really knows the whole score.
Instead of emotion we need cold reason and action. That's not coming from these women on TV. I think of Herr Merkel of Germany (C - East Bloc) and her allowing a million mostly young male invaders to her country based originally on pictures of a dead boy on the beach. Because of the poor dead kid, 10,000s of thousands of additional Germans and other Europeans would be and were, attacked, raped, murdered, what have you. That kid had been taken across the Mediterranean Sea to illegally break into Europe. His Dad was directly responsible, but, because, feeeelings, Herr Merkel opened up the gates. There was no logic to that emotional rescue.
Speaking of Germans though, Peak Stupidity can do this emotion thing too. See this post about a murdered 8 y/o boy and also RIP - Maria Ladenburger. We've also written about the story of Laken Riley. As MTG did, we can also exclaim "Say her name!" to push the President of the US to at least feel ... well, get it close anyway.
Yes, all that is using emotion to sway readers/the public, but there's a difference. Logic and reason say that these dead Americans and Germans would not be such had we been following a sane policy - controlling our borders and entry points. Maura and Merkel there are/were letting their emotions block all decent reason. One would think these women would get emotional about the worsening lives of Mass residents and the 8 y/o boys and Maria Ladenburgers, respectively too though. Why not? Are they too White so privileged, deserving no sorrow?
We really can't have women in high office. I don't want them voting either. Until all that comes back to pass somehow - and hopefully not due to turning Moslem - we've got to up our game with our own sob stories, along with the reason and action.
Well, this could have been a time to embed an old Rolling Stones song called Emotional Rescue. I won't, because it kinda sucks. Mic Jagger sings in this falsetto voice, and the tune is not good at all. Only the short bridge going "... you think that you're the only girl in tow-oww-oww-own." is good. So, we'll present something better from that same Emotional Rescue album. She's So Cold:
Contrary to those in this post, the woman in question here is not emotional enough... or she just didn't like Kieth, Mic, or either of them.
Yes, I tried re-wiring her, tried re-firing her.Women! Whadda' gonna do? Short distance dedication from (the few) Mass Patriots to Maura Healey anyway?
I think her engine is permanently stalled.
She's so cold. She's so cold.
She's so cold cold cold Like a tombstone.
Who would believe you were a beauty indeed
when the days get shorter and the nights get long?
Night fades when the rain comes.
Nobody will know when you're old.
When you're old, nobody will know
that you was a beauty, a sweet sweet beauty
A sweet sweet beauty, but stone stone cold.
PS: Some of the bad writing on that original Townhall article bugs me. A Governor is not designated "(D-MA)". " ...in correspondence to the state’s 'right to shelter' law..." should be "...in compliance with..." and what's this welcoming hundreds more of [sic] illegal immigrants"? The writer is one Sarah Arnold - sounds and looks as if she ought to be able to write proper English. Yeah, I know, but we don't have paid editors.
PPS: Oh, and per the GP excerpt from the Townhall site, "This number doesn’t include the 14,000 illegal Haitian immigrants Massachusetts has funded since 2022." Haitians, OK, got another post coming here ...
* Who really knows? How much of that BDB (Before Dark Brandon)
Comments (3)
Mass Deportations support by State
Posted On: Tuesday - May 7th 2024 9:30AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity US Feral Government Geography
Pretty encouraging?:
VDare writer Patrick Cleburne stated that he did not know the origin of the map above or polling data from which it's been generated. Mr. Cleburne included the map to illustrate a more particular but also important point about Maine, as his article warns Mass Deportation Opinion Map Explains Rep Jared Golden’s (ME-2) Vote Stunt: Immigration Is Turning Maine Red.
The numbers in the map above are more encouraging than what I'd have guessed. However, firstly, I don't know the exact poll questions - having been polled before, I don't trust this data too much. Secondly, yes, as per Peter Brimelow, "Go West Virginia!". Thirdly, let me state why there's no reason to be seriously encouraged by any of this.
It doesn't matter what the American people want. The US Gov't is and has long been* out of our control! They don't care a whit that their programs are completely against the wishes of Americans as may be shown by maps like this.
PS: I do have to mention minor problems with this work. Sure, the one typo (S/B "state's"), once it's out there on a viral tweet, stays there as a permanent error I guess.
One might wonder why New Mexico is colored yellow. Yeah, 50%, in the middle - I get that. However, as it has with lots of people in my workplace, the distinction between Integers and Real Numbers seems to have been lost. I guess it's possible that, with small numbers, N. Mexico data could be exactly split. Just pick one side or the other then, but it's more likely that the rounding of the data to 2 significant digits was the problem. It's either above or below with real number - no such thing as exactly N.
The guy should have made the shading symmetric. There are 3 shades of red, from within 10 percentage points of 50%, within 20 points, and greater than 20 points away. Therefore, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Rhode Island, Maryland, Colorado, and Washington should be the lightest blue shade, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and California should be medium blue, and the rest dark blue. Hell, make Oregon and Vermont black!
Well, the whole blue/red thing has been backwards for this entire century anyway, so screw it.
* Part 2.
Comments (11)