PS: Good morning, everyone!

https://fsymbols.com/text-art/

Here's a matched set of less than & greater than alt-characters...

＜ ＞

Looks more natural (less lopsided) that way.

＜a href="http://www.peakstupidity.com"＞Peak Stupidity＜/a＞

On my browser I do see a subtle difference between the alt-characters and the standard keyboard characters.

Alt-Char ＜ ＞
Standard < >

𝐵𝑇𝑊, 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠𝑛'𝑡 𝑑𝑒𝑓𝑒𝑎𝑡 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑡𝑟𝑢𝑒 𝑝𝑢𝑟𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝑜𝑓 𝑙𝑖𝑛𝑒𝑠 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑜𝑓𝑡𝑤𝑎𝑟𝑒.

Nope. This is a perfectly harmless and fun way to use less than & greater than or to give an example piece of code. These alt-symbols aren't recognized as HTML code tags because they're not.

I've thought about setting up a sock puppet at unz using some of these alt-characters to spoof an existing commenter or as a sort of duplicate Adam Smith that is actually a different account. I think it would work. I've also thought about using some sort of alt symbol like ✈ or ✡ to create a commenter at unz. (Not sure why I would other than to see if it would work.)

For example...

Adam Smith (standard characters)
𝙰𝚍𝚊𝚖 𝚂𝚖𝚒𝚝𝚑 (non-standard characters)
𝖠𝖽𝖺𝗆 𝖲𝗆𝗂𝗍𝗁
Aᴅᴀᴍ Sᴍɪᴛʜ
𝒜𝒹𝒶𝓂 𝒮𝓂𝒾𝓉𝒽
𝓐𝓭𝓪𝓶 𝓢𝓶𝓲𝓽𝓱

The first two look the same (in my browser), but are different character sets (they do appear different in my libreoffice writer program). They may look different in different browsers. I've never tried, so I don't know, but I think the alt-character sets could be used to make a spoof commenter account over at unz. Maybe I'll spoof Ron, Steve or Tiny Duck someday.(?)

That could be fun. ☮️

PS: "Adam Smith beats the system, finds a mysterious alt-symbol to bypass Peak Stupidity's antiquated "anti-Less Than" defense."

Yeah, and I need to save his links for those special characters. The keyboard shortcuts work on some keyboard/device combinations but not all of them, I've found.

BTW, this doesn't defeat the true purpose of the couple of lines of software.

For example, let me put a link in below to this site, with the alt-LT and alt-GT signs:

＜a href="https://www.peakstupidity.com">Peak Stupidity＜/a>

PS

covfefe, dammit !

PS

Does that go for

PS: Then, there's the OTHER Adam Smith yet, who said "There's a lot of ruin in a nation." Dark Brandon resembles that remark.

PS

Adam Smith beats the system, finds a mysterious alt-symbol to bypass Peak Stupidity's antiquated "anti-Less Than" defense.

It's no wonder that POLITICO went to Adam Smith, for his comments on whether Joe Biden should stay or go.

PS: Me again...

𝑊ℎ𝑒𝑟𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑒𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑖𝑟𝑠𝑡 𝑜𝑛𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚? 𝐼𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑔.

Well, I found this ＜ over here...
https://fsymbols.com/text-art/

It's the same website that I use for 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝, 𝑖𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑐, and 𝒃𝒐𝒍𝒅 𝒊𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒄 text. 𝓘𝓽 𝓭𝓸𝓮𝓼 𝓪 𝓯𝓮𝔀 𝓸𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓻 𝓽𝓱𝓲𝓷𝓰𝓼 𝓽𝓸𝓸.

(Though, I really don't know how these show up in other browsers and other operating systems. There is a chance that some people simply don't see some of these characters.)

Anyway... Happy Sunday! ☮️

PS: 𝐴𝑑𝑎𝑚 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑡𝑒𝑙𝑙 𝑢𝑠 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑐𝑘 𝑤ℎ𝑒𝑛 ℎ𝑒 𝑓𝑒𝑒𝑙𝑠 𝑙𝑖𝑘𝑒 𝑤𝑒 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝑛𝑒𝑒𝑑 𝑡𝑜 𝑘𝑛𝑜𝑤.

Will he though? ☮️

PS: I gots to know this too:

(Regular LT sign, some text immediately following, then GT sign right after. This was perhaps a test Adam did, but I can't tell by eye his LT sign from the regular one):



Text after that.

PS: Yup, Adam will tell us his trick when he feels like we have a need to know. Otherwise, copy and paste from this post's comments.

Anyway, Mr. Hail has a new post up, so I'll go back to reading that - something perhaps a bit more constructive than what I've been doing just now. ;-}

PS: OK, let me get in on this (though maybe at this point easier to look at the line of programming.):

Adam's got lots of tricks though. (Question is, that alt-LT-sign - does it make for an HTML tag?)

Let's use that one - same stuff:

＜abcde

＜ abcde

＜100

＜ 100

PS: OK, let me get in on this (though maybe at this point easier to look at the line of programming.):

OK, my very first test wiped out everything following, which was a NORMAL LT sign immediately followed by letters. Let me wipe that out:

< abcde

LT, space, and then letters)

PS: OK, let me get in on this (though maybe at this point easier to look at the line of programming.):

PS: Yes, folks, the "less than" and "greater than" sign characters are taken out along with some characters* afterwards as a way to prevent HTML tags. Now that may sound evil or something, but I left these simple functions in because I don't know - or didn't take the time to learn, I should say - what it takes to positively prevent functions of some sort being inserted that could mess with the database or do some other damage. This is a brute-force solution, unfortunately.

Will it ever be changed? When I get to changing the site, I'm sure I'll remember all the stupidity inherent in the system, errr, software [/Monty Python], such as this stripping business, disallowing links, which were pretty much the basis for the www. When I get to ... there's a Linda Ronstadt song, this one taken from Buddy Holly with the timetable.

Anyway, no matter what, please mash the browser back button, IF IT'S NOT TOO LATE, to get back to your comment, so you can take out the "offending" characters.

Sorry, guys!

* I can't look up the code just now so easily, but Mr. Hail's 5:41 PM MST test showed that it must strip up till the next space char. OTOH, we don't know what Test 3 tested, haha.

PS

Adam Smith's "less than" sign:
＜

Normal keyboard "less than" sign:
<

Where does the first one come from? Interesting.

PS: 99＜100

Hmmm... 🤔 ☮️

PS: ＜100 ☮️

PS: Greetings, Mr. Hail!

(with the under-18 population in California being ＜20% White-Christian for some time already, possibly pushing ＜15% by now.)

＜This is only a test.> ☮️

PS

(Peak Stupidity writing department guideline...)

"Until we figure out what the hell is going on, there shall be a shutdown of all reckless use of the "less than sign." A space shall be inserted after every use of the < sign. Thank you; and, remember: remain vigilant against Stupidity, wheresoever you may find it. -- The Management."

PS

"lessthansign100" It didn't work.

Second test, with space:
< 100

Third test:

PS

I think the problem is using the < sign with any number next to it. The PS system interprets it as a code and, not knowing what to do with it, just drops it cold.

Test:

Less than one hundred (digit version to follow)

PS: ＜ Here you are, Mr. Hail.

＜ You can use this one... ＜
＜ Copy and paste

☮️

PS

-- On the loss of California and the inability to "communicate across time," 1920s vs 2020s, continued --

There are many answers to the question I posed in 2019, the question of "Who Lost California.: The question's great interest is not about that one state, as large and significant as it is; the interest is, rather, that it's a few-decades-earlier version of Who Lost America, and a small version of the loss of the West generally.

One answer to the loss of California is psychological. When Whites stopped believing, lost optimism for the place, felt excluded. This is the reality of California actually for some decades running now.

If we "check in" at intervals of 25-years: 1875, 1900, 1925, 1950, 1975, 2000, 2025. The interesting thing is how there was all-but NO sign of anything bad on the horizon at most of these periods, at least at the scale we now see it (with the under-18 population in California being --LESS THAN-- 20% White-Christian for some time already, possibly pushing 15% by now.).

In terms of wholesale "loss" of the state, or the Third Worldization socio-cultural-racial "brazilianization" of the state, it seemed an implausible-to-impossible sci-fi-style nightmare vision in 1900, 1925, even 1950. Though certain signs were already there even in 1950. By 1975, the foundations have started to wobble, but it was still possible to dismiss the alarmists if one wanted to. By 2000 it was clear that California was finished; and that even if George W. Bush had emerged as a major immigration-restrictionist (which he definitely was NOT), California was still probably doomed.

But in the Coolidge era of the 1920s? No way! No one had such thoughts. It was such a very different world. Not because the White men of the 1920s were better than we are (though maybe they were, for various reasons). In part, it is because a feedback loop of perverse-incentives got locked in, forming the world we live in. Once mass-immigration of non-Westerners begins, and multiculturalist ideology settles in for the long haul, anti-white-anti-male-anti-everything Wokeness emerges. It would seem like a bad dream to psychologically normal White men of the 1910s, 1920s.

(Side-note, something non-political: It was some ambitious California kids who 'invented' the "skateboard" in about 1963, by attaching roller-skates to and a plain wooden board. A simple-seeming innovation, but someone had to do it and run with it and popularize it. Within a year or two it became a big craze across America. Later it became a big and enduring part of the subcultural scene in America. An enduring legacy for whoever those White California youths were in the early 1960s. That was the enduring early-20th-century White spirit at work, still present in the early 1960s in full force. It's hard to imagine that kind of trend coming out of the depressed and dispirited California of the 2010s, 2020s. Look at the youth trends out of the place now. We see little that people want to emulate.)

One reason we cannot 'communicate' across eras, even though the same geographies and nominal racial-national-cultural-language groups are involved, is that "the 1920s vs. the 2020"s feels like alien-worlds, worlds separated by more space and time than a mere one century. The White men of the 1920s could NOT have imagined a transmogrified version of the USA that turned it into a multi-racial Frankenstein Monster. Only a few alarmists were out there warning of anything like it, including the well-connected man who wrote Rising Tide of Color in the late 1910s, but people laughed it off. "It couldn't happen here."

PS

Ahh, my old PS-comment nemesis, the "less than" sign, has struck again and cut off half the comment... Will try again

PS

-- On the loss of California and the inability to "communicate across time," 1920s vs 2020s, continued --

There are many answers to the question I posed in 2019, the question of "Who Lost California.: The question's great interest is not about that one state, as large and significant as it is; the interest is, rather, that it's a few-decades-earlier version of Who Lost America, and a small version of the loss of the West generally.

One answer to the loss of California is psychological. When Whites stopped believing, lost optimism for the place, felt excluded. This is the reality of California actually for some decades running now.

If we "check in" at intervals of 25-years: 1875, 1900, 1925, 1950, 1975, 2000, 2025. The interesting thing is how there was all-but NO sign of anything bad on the horizon at most of these periods, at least at the scale we now see it (with the under-18 population in California being

PS: My guess on Illinois was not so sound. From 29 to 20 out of a 1.3% higher total. It's lost 30-something % of its influence.

PS: After taking a quick look at the 2020 map, I see that I was right - California dominates now with more than NY State and Penn combined!

California has 55 now, while NY and Penn have 49 between them. This is out of 538 total now vs. 531 in 1924, a difference of only 1.3% (Alaska and Hawaii).

OTOH, NY and Penn together back in 1924 had 83 EVs! That's the point I made in that other comment. That's 15.6% (albeit 2 States) for NY/Penn in 1924 vs. 10.2% for Cali in '20. They need more illegal aliens to up their game, even if they don't get them to vote... which they have been.

PS: Mr. Hail, I did think of going back to '21 just because some VDare writer mentioned that that year is when immigration got seriously curtailed - before the bill. Those VDare writers have their shit together, but OTOH it was almost an even 4 decades OFFICIALLY. As you said, if Hart-Cellar didn't get implemented till '68, that's 3 more years. I might say '21 to '68 then, so 47 years.

True, on the aft end, there was a slow build-up that was not noticeable to your average non-(trying to find a magazine here)-reading American until the late '80s to early '00s, depending on where he lived. I did spend time in California. I can say that even in the mid-'80s, people were well aware of the huge Mexican component of Southern Cal. The Central Valley, well, you could read about it, as most people didn't have a reason to go there. (Maybe just through on the I-80 or down the 99, etc.). So, to me, it was just LA and environs known to be heavily changed from immigration even in the 1980s. However, it was still White enough to be very nice, other than say, traffic and smog.

On the forward end, I suppose The Great War slowed immigration way down. I don't know about those couple of years just after. There are graphs out there I need to check out.

Mr.Hail. I know you wrote about the loss of California in one of your posts on your blog. I read through that one, and your are the expert. I'll find an appropriate post to paste that into. Thanks for the commentary here.

PS: Mr. Blanc among all those comparisons, I did mean to call out Kentucky and Cali having same number of EVs. That's unimaginable.

Yeah, a comparison of maps from '24 and '24 would make a good post. I didn't look it up yet, but perhaps NY State and Penn combined in 1924 was more dominant even than California is today.

Illinois seems to have held it's own proportion-wise (again, I didn't look at it yet - will later). Chicago was and still is a big city, but not the "2nd City" anymore. I was just watching Al Hitchcock's "West by Northwest". There are scenes in Chicago - please, nobody tell me any more details after that (famous) scene with the bi-plane cropduster, as that's about where I stopped for now, and I really have not seen the movie - 1956 was indeed a different country! You were right there the whole time, Mr. Blanc, right? (I'm going by the '46 in your handle and that you live in "Chicagoland")

Thanks for than handy link, Mr. Smith, for our discussion! Yeah, very interesting.

PS: Thanks, Mr. Hail...

I'll try not to let my new found fame go to my head. ☮️

PS

POLITICO headline, 5pm EDT, Sunday, July 7:

"Jerry Nadler, Adam Smith call on Biden to stand down from reelection bid"

Wow, Adam Smith.
Your influence is rising
to surprising new heights.
Congratulations!

PS

From the entry: "...ushered in a real unification of the American people over the next 41 years, till the Hart Cellar Act was signed in December of '65."

The new immigration law only went into effect in July 1968. The mass-immigration cutoff really dates to August 1914 and the huge disruption in normality and cross-Atlantic passenger shipping and everything else, with the strange decision some people made to fight a continental war for no reason. Temporary restriction measures were in place most of the time from the late-1910s until the iron-clad 1924 law, which in effect replicated the 1924 law.

So the period of little-to-no immigration into the USA lasted from mid-1914 to mid-1968, 54 years.

And mass-Third World immigration as a phenomenon didn't REALLY start to 'bite' in most places for decades to come. By the 2000s, there are real bridgeheads almost everywhere. Even if numbers were small in many places, the chain-migrant pipeline or whatever other processes were enough to guarantee they'd eventually 'tilt' over into something post-Western, post-White, at least in part. There were still all-White, zero-immigrant areas all over in the 1970s, 1980s, even 1990s. There even still are a few even in the 2020s, of course, but not many outside super-rural areas that are completely without bridgeheads by Migrants.

The first place to "fall" at large scale to post-1960s Migrants was California, of course. I've never lived in California. I have passed through, or paid short visits, a number of times. I've known many who are from there. They invariably are pessimistic. I dare you to go out there and try to find an optimistic White Californian in our time. They cannot be found. Or, if you do find a White Californian without Migrant ties who is optimistic, it'll be some "exception that proves the rule," like a Gavin Newsom-style elite.

The loss of California is, though, something I think about a lot, because it was the template for the partial or wholesale loss of many other places. I am convinced Steve Sailer became an extremist and racist because of his ties to Mid-20th-century California. I am sure he feels a deep sense of loss over the loss of California he witnessed. And it's so obvious what caused it: Migration policy. Even before the "1965 law" and the early years of non-Western people entering LEE-GUH-LEE under the new law, there was some strain on the old White California. But it really broke by, maybe, some time in the 1980s, as in going past a Rubicon of Third Worldization.

Actually, going back to the Calvin Coolidge era, there are many, many stories of an all-White California that remind you, reading today, of some king of sci-fi story, or some strange Norman Rockwell parallel world. This California -- which existed from the mid-19th century until the late-20th when it was subsumed into a Migrant mush -- produced interesting things all over the place, including a template for 20th-century White American norms and ideal (for better or worse). The products of California in this time include Richard Nixon, as of 1924 still a youth, the son of a Quaker citrus farming family, iirc, a normal person, a 'nobody,' whom the system saw was bright and rewarded his hard work. A White-child version of Richard Nixon TODAY would be crushed, the life-force strangled out of him by today's version of the place, with its aggressive Multiculturalist ideology and anti-white, anti-male policies and tone and LGBTQIAX+ ideology and all the rest.

By the way, what would Calvin Coolidge think of LGBTQIAX+ ideology and the Transgender Movement, including the holy right to Transgenderify children?

PS: Greetings, Messrs. Blanc and Newman!

🎶 Mister we could use a man like Calvin Coolidge again. 🎶
https://www.self.inc/info/us-debt-by-president/

𝐻𝑜𝑤 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑐ℎ𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑑.

Indeed Mr. Blanc. What an interesting map. How about Missouri and Indiana having more and Kentucky having the same number of electoral votes as California? (Crazy.)

Here's a 2020 electoral map for comparison...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/49/ElectoralCollege2020.svg/1200px-ElectoralCollege2020.svg.png

Happy Sunday! ☮️

PS Jeez, Illinois had 29 EVs (now it’s down in the low 20s) and California had only 13. How times have changed.