The Ragtime era is Ovah!
Posted On: Wednesday - January 1st 2020 11:18PM MST
In Topics: Music History
No, I mean even the 100th year later retrospection on this great musical genre is now over. I had no idea till just now, but the ragtime period was from roughly the very beginning of the last century through 1919 or so. Well, that just sucks for Peak Stupidity, as we really like to keep up with things, even if it is an even century later.
The most famous of all ragtime songs is The Entertainer, written by Scott Joplin. Ragtime is piano music, played by one pianist, so it's not like one musician's playing will be a whole lot different than another, contrary to classical music and, of course, The Dead. This recording could not be by Scott Joplin himself, as wiki says the 1st recording of the song was in 1928 (past the ragtime era) and Mr. Joplin died in 1917.
This song is especially famous due to its being pretty much the theme music for the 1973 Paul Newman/Robert Redford movie The Sting*.
For those with different tastes, let me just paste in a now-obscure Billy Joel song of the same title. This is from back when he really was "the piano man", off his 1974 album Streetlife Serenade. It's got really good lyrics too, if you've been into the music scene, back when there was such a thing.
* One of those ones you've got to watch 3 times to see "oh, that's how they got away with it!", at least for me.
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Teen-decade stupidity carry-over - our Neocon/reverse-psychology theory of the impeachment
Posted On: Wednesday - January 1st 2020 10:12AM MST
In Topics: The Russians Trump The Neocons
(I believe this stupidity will carry over well into the '20s, unfortunately.)
Peak Stupidity has tried to avoid this topic, both in our reading and writing. This Trump impeachment thing is nothing but ctrl-left infotainment. Don't get me wrong, many are deranged enough to really want to kick out of a office a President who really hasn't done a whole lot that they don't like, when it comes down to it. (Oh, well, he does SAY a lot that they don't like!)
Well, just part of the reason President Trump hasn't done that much constructive on behalf of patriotic Americans IS this Russia/Ukraine/whatever-the-hell-next/collusion continual accusation - it's coming up on three years now. For lots of Americans its a big piece of infotainment, keeping them tuned in to whichever channel, blue or red. It doesn't matter - I'll be voting for the guy because the alternative is bound to suck way more. We can always use more time to prep.
The purported problem, from what I gather, is that President Trump is conducting foreign relations. What's really bad, they say, is that he has been doing something called "diplomacy" with people from foreign countries:
Those of us who follow foreign politics to ANY DEGREE WHATSOEVER know that the Cold War has been over for 3 decades*. Wasn't the left all over The Gipper's ass about how he needed to not be "Ronnie Ray-gun" and use more diplomacy with our (at that time, true) enemies? Now, you don't hear much praise for having a cool head, breaking the ice with even the worst of them (say, that N. Korean Kook), bringing the troops home. The Neocons beg to disagree with that old "give peace a chance" crap.
Peak Stupidity has discussed the rise of the Neocons already, near 3 years ago now, in Toward Peak Neocon? (Part 1 - Definition) and Toward Peak Neocon? (Part 2 - Unavoidable, one of 2 ways). Granted, we haven't been following ANY of the details regarding the accusations by the Blue Squad about President Trump and The Russians, but we have a theory on just one more reason this whole impeachment shitshow has been pushed hard. It regards those Neocons.
There's a common behavior-control tactic used for the more gullible, but often the best of us, called "reverse psychology". It works great on kids and dogs at least, sometimes cats. Now, we'd be the last to call President Trump anything but completely sane**, but you don't need Sigmund Fraud for this sort of thing.
The Neocons seem to want to start up the Cold War again for various reasons, but if nothing else to get to use the US military like a toy set some more. They can't stomach the these two powers getting along, though there really is nothing that should keep America and Russia from being reasonably close allies (the Commies are not there anymore people - they left - many are over here!) Our theory is they are using the ire of the ctrl-left directed at President Trump in a form of reverse psychology.
The more accusations leveled at Trump for collusion, the more the President, sucked into all this stuff, will protest that, for one thing "I have been tough on the Russians". Just the fact that he wrote that in his letter to the old hag Pelosi (discussed here) is indicative that this assumed tactic of the Neocons would be working. See, they may not be in the forefront of the impeachment effort, but they can just be the ones "backing the President, but having our doubts." They come off as the good guys in the middle, but what they simple want is for Mr. Trump, with his big ego, to get tough on those Ruskies to prove the ctrl-left wrong.
Hey, it's just a theory from a guy that doesn't watch TV, so take if for what it's worth.
* Matter of fact, I really haven't read about any anniversaries of this... kind of strange. Is that part of the narrative too, to bury the obvious fact that the Cold War has been over and that's a good thing?
** Bullshitter, braggart, easily-distracted fool, incompetent hiring manager come to mind, but not anything that denotes a departure from sanity.
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Final stupidity of the decade
Posted On: Tuesday - December 31st 2019 7:42PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Music Humor Race/Genetics Holiday from Stupidity
(OK, yes, for the purists, since our calendar did not start in year 0, then the first day of '21 will really be the first year of the 3rd decade of the 21st century, but bear the hell with me here ...)
The following tweet came addressed to the Peak Stupidity offices. We don't get many, you know, with our subscription having expired, and a big balance due on our Amazon prime membership. So, when the UPS guy ran up to the door with this one, and subsequently ran like hell back to the van like they always do, we managed to grab it before the porch pirates, rather than find it crumpled up on the lawn. What a great communication method!
(At least this time I understand who's replying to whom.)
This is a great way to ring out the year 2019, with some champaign, Dick Clark reruns from NY City on the idiot plate*, our own fireworks from across the state line, and a piece of stupidity like that there tweet!
Yeah, that white supremacy is some powerful stuff. Better work against it, Erin, than notice who the thugs are, and that they are not particularly partial to you and your crowd no matter how many tweets you mail out. What will happen when there are not enough white people to blame for the violence? You'd better come up with something, and in 144 characters or less.
See, now this is why we don't go visit Times Square on December 31st, or the 31st of any month or any other dates of said months. The stupidity there is noxious. That will be one of my easiest New Year's resolutions to keep - stay away from NY City!
It'd be nice to be far away like this, in fact:
* Why not, right? The year ends the same time, you know that ball makes it down into the dumpster at the bottom the same way, Dick Clark looks the same each time, and the reruns of the Giuliani year ceremonies are free of the on-camera muggings that you're gonna get under the rule-by-crooks policy of the de Blasio mayoralty.
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Gun activism
Posted On: Monday - December 30th 2019 2:49PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Websites Hildabeast Liberty/Libertarianism ctrl-left Guns
I'd like to add just a bit more to the theme of this past Saturday's Peak Stupidity post on the good news about 2nd Amendment rights supporters getting organized in Virginia. There may be arguments about various selling-out efforts by the NRA over the years (pretty much all we've written on the NRA was in this and this post, regarding the proposed Red Flag laws). I see this huge organization, with 5 million members, and of course the bureaucracy and politics that go with that number, as still a force for good. If nothing else (though there is lots!), the NRA's support for the implementation of concealed carry laws, or for 13 states now, the lack thereof, has been extremely successful:
Now, after that aside, let me explain who the late Mike Vanderboegh up top was. I met him over a decade ago, and had been reading his Sipsey Street Irregulars Constitutionalist blog* for a few years during that period. At some point, summer of '11 or so, the blogger in question became fixated on the Øb☭ma administration's Eric Holder's Gun Walker scandal (dubbed that by Mike V. I'm pretty sure). Truthfully, I was getting tired of that one issue being the subject of almost all posts on this blog that I'd been reading daily back then. With help from Washington Examiner's** gun rights supporter David Codrea, along with an actual honest member of the Lyin' Press, one Sheryl Atkinson of CBS TV, he broke this story to the public. This was one lone blogger, OK with help and some luck, but lots of persistence, without even his own URL! A writer named Bob Owens wrote up a quick summary in this old PJ Media post.
Just to clear it up, this Holder-DOJ deal was NOT a botched effort of any sort, as that just chalks this program of forcing gun stores to sell certain arms to members of Mexican cartels (or their minions), against the onerous Federal firearms laws themselves, to incompetence. Nope, it was a deliberate effort to implicate American guns as being a cause of the drug cartel violence in Mexico. Just a little while before this program, I can remember myself the Hildabeast having used a number like 90% to describe the arming of these cartels with supposedly American guns. The ctrl-left wanted to prove out this number by sending loads of guns down there to be found during investigations of killings.
About the only think I fault Mr. Vanderboegh for is using the death of Border Patrol agent Bryan Terry not just to prove out the effort to walk these guns to Mexico, but to also say, "this gun killed Officer Terry". That's at odds with the correct idea that "guns don't kill people; people kill people". Still, it was all an amazingly successful effort by Vanderboegh, Codrea, and Miss Atkinson to dig out this scandal of the "Department of Justice".
It's not often one man can make a difference. The 2nd Amendment is also an area in which making a difference often implies making use of the rights specified therein with danger to oneself attached.*** Members of the right often woefully cry "all these guns aren't doing us a bit of good, are they?" Yeah, well it's almost suicidal for one guy to personally make an effort against the myriad violations of our Constitution with use of this last resort implied by Amendment II by our Founding Fathers. Even with the efforts of a few dozen, it can end up suicidal, as seen in Waco, Texas back in 1993. It went a little better at the Bundy ranch a few years back, but the Feral Gov't can just re-group. As incompetent as it is, it has all the resources we can provide it.
This is why the Virginia efforts to define gun sanctuary counties and cities is such a great thing. There have got to be dozens to hundreds of citizens involved in each jurisdiction. This power in numbers, even medium-sized ones, at this point, is heartening. This is the 2nd example Peak Stupidity has seen near the end of '19, as earlier we noted some serious vocal (for now) pushback against the "refugee" racket in Bismark, N. Dakota a few weeks back.
In both cases, the ctrl-left globalists and commies have had their minions go too far off-narrative. Guys, you've got to get the social media control nailed down some more. People shouldn't be able to talk to anyone about gun rights or fake refugee importation. People have not been isolated and targeted yet. They need to be afraid to open their mouths in fear of losing their jobs within minutes. We've got to have them ready to rat out their best friends on our retroactive gun bans after we take a few in and give them the James Fields railroading or even Koresh their families to, you know, discourage the others. Please, guys, follow the script! You blue-squad young turds, you Soros-implementation local pols, slow it down. We will tell you when you can talk "confiscation" and "felony racism".
Whoa, that was the evil side of Peak Stupidity coming out. I'm all better now. Luckily, as again, we don't want to disturb the enemy when he is making a mistake, we have no Communist readers. They have all been summarily banned as of today. So let it be written, so let it be done!
Lastly, I would like to give a shout-out to Peak Stupidity commenter Joe Stalin, no relation, and pretty far-apart in ideology, from his more-infamous namesake, one can be assured. It's been a while, and I forgot to include him in my thanks in the Christmas post. This has been fixed. Mr. Stalin concentrates his writing (and hopefully other efforts in Illinois) on this most important issue.
Granted, Peak Stupidity has called out the Immigration Stupidity as the most existential issue. It's kind of reverse chicken-or-egg deal here, as will the immigration stupidity soon result in too little support for gun rights as to make us ineffective in this respect, or will our lack of guns allow the immigration stupidity to go on to the bitter end without any method of resistance?
* I linked to it as an archive. It's still there on blogspot, but after Mike died, his son (I think) wrote for just al few months afterward, and it's been dormant for 3 1/4 years.
** It's another site I don't go to anymore, one of a series of many of these Examiner sites. At one point, it was another pop-up nightmare, 2nd only to the current Zerohedge, but also, I've heard other bad things about the content lately. Admittedly, I haven't bothered to check.
*** Even the efforts to demonstrate the right to open carry guns (exercising the right being the only way to keep it) can get dicey. I applaud all the efforts in this regard that I've seen.
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The Good News from the Commonwealth of Virginia
Posted On: Saturday - December 28th 2019 9:40PM MST
In Topics: Commies Elections '16 - '24 Immigration Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Music Liberty/Libertarianism
This may be only temporary good news (yeah, you knew the bad news part was coming). It's just that, after all, demographics is demographics which are part of this story to begin with. Most foreigner residents don't really care about these "rights of which you speak", passing grades on their citizenship tests (if any) notwithstanding.
(Map and short story on this are from/on Gun Rights Watch. I had to shrink this, so if you can't read the legend: Dark green is good - means ADDITIONAL measures! Lightest green means "hearing soon".)
The new D-squad party rulers of the Commonwealth of Virginia have been on the warpath about guns lately. It's only through big changes in demographics that Virginia has flipped over the last few years from "red" to "blue"* In general the newcomers have neither any history of giving a damn about the Founding Fathers of America nor inclination to take this most important of rights, elucidated in Amendment II of the B.O.R., too seriously.
The government of Virginia is being resisted in its efforts and its dangerous talk about gun confiscation by a method originating in Oregon and Illinois, that of the creation of "Sanctuary Counties" (and cities). This is a damn smart idea. It uses the same terminology that the ctrl-left use with their resistance to Feral Gov't** enforcement of immigration law (funny that, cause there's nothing at all against that stuff in the Constitution). Also, this will hopefully bring out thoughts about the county Sheriff being the highest law of the land, other than the Constitution itself, which, again, is pretty damn clear on this matter.
The most important thing is that this is getting gun owners and other Constitutionalists organized. There are a subset who are ready to go to the mattresses for this right, were the confiscation to really get started. The problem is, it hasn't usually gone this way, with any direct attempt to grab guns. It's always been a slow-boil-of-the-frog deal, where certain guns/ammo/accessories have been banned or further regulated, just a little bit more at a time. It's not worth it for a man to get put into prison or killed trying a rebellion against the latest little "common-sense" "save-just-one-child" law, especially because he will have few standing behind him.
It's not just Virginia, but the Federal-election level blue squad candidates that are getting bold with this confiscation talk. I'm not surprised to hear it from the "young turds", but even the "old pharts" are making noises about having Commie-style confiscations, Butt's-his-name being one I have in mind particularly. I believe they think this demographic change*** The Party has been implementing for 55 years now has met its goal in eliminating the patriotism and Constitutionalism. They are pretty close, yet ...
... I don't know whether it was Sun Tzu, General Tso, Colonel Sanders, or Bill Ayers who said it, but "you don't interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake." By stupidly using the c-word at this juncture, the ctrl-left in Virginia, just like at least the young turds of the blue-squad presidential candidates, is really screwing up the plan of the Globalist elites. See, you gotta go slow and easy, one little common-sense step at a time. Don't get ahead of the Lyin' Press narrative about that latest shooting, keep some candidates on the roster that duck hunt, and NEVER, NEVER say "confiscation", dammit! (OK, you can say "retroactive common-sense limits", but that's where you draw the line.)
Peak Stupidity will readily put down our entire website beautification budget against our having any long-term Communist readers, but still, one can't be too careful. This post is for your eyes only. Let's continue to let the ctrl-left make these egregious errors. This stuff is both waking up and organizing patriots of the Commonwealth of Virginia. Bravo!
Here's a blast from the past from Aussie country singer Steve Lee. He had to come to America to shoot parts of the video. You know why. I Like Guns got a lot of views on youtube right at 10 years back, maybe a significant number from yours truly.
PS: Note on the map up top that it's the surrounding areas of the old 2 capitals, only 120 miles or so apart, of the nations during the War Between the States, that are NOT resisting the efforts of tyrannical gun-control nuts. The big cities, and the suburbs thereof, contain lots of the newcomers.
* I'm using the quotes because I pretty much HATE HATE HATE these designations, seeing as it'd be a whole lot easier to remember that the Red squad is the Commie wing, and the Blue squad is the pretend-to-be-holding-off-the Commies wing, of THE PARTY. I know that the Gov't Media didn't want us to think that way, so they have the colors reversed. I still often screw it up in my head to this day!
As another aside, I do see the two wings as differing at the local and state level more than as just the 2 squads that they seem to be at the Federal level.
** As Peak Stupidity has noted before ... somewhere ... it's not like the left are any fans of States or local rights. This just fits their agenda. They have no principles but that of "destruction at the highest rate".
*** This is the deal that they've been telling us we're paranoid and xenophobic about ... until about a year back, now that it's done. Their story now is "nyah, nyah, what are you gonna' do about it?"
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Censorship - a job REAL Americans just won't do.
Posted On: Thursday - December 26th 2019 6:28PM MST
In Topics: Liberty/Libertarianism Orwellian Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity iEspionage
This is a good one, straight off of VDare from just over a week back. I made up my headline, and then realized it almost matched James Kirkpatrick's Another Job Americans Won't Do; Censor The Free Speech Of Americans. This article is what pushed Peak Stupidity into finally getting onto the iEspionage topic, as with our 2nd-most-recent post.
Like a lot of the electronic/internet-based espionage done mostly to ourselves with no concern by the "if you have nothing to hide ..." crowd, nobody HAS to participate. There are some alternatives to youtube, but I'm not sure I know anybody between the ages of 5 and 65 that has not used youtube. There are people making a living via that virtual venue - it's called having your own channel and "monetizing".
For us music embedders and late-night full-ELO-album listeners it's the easiest thing. (Thanks go to commenter Ganderson for pointing me to some other Grateful Dead sources. Keep in mind, though that The Dead are different. They always made an effort to let all fans share their music.) I've seen how to fix a car window regulator, fix what could have been an expensive transmission problem, and, how to unsuccessfully take apart a nerf gun. At this point, most of us feel we NEED youtube.
Yeah, but to "keep us safe", youtube's goolag owners have a whole
Google’s largest content moderation facility in the US is in Austin, Texas. Hundreds of moderators who work there serve as YouTube’s police force.Really, $18.50 an hour to watch videos is a kid's dream come true. Oh, poor dears, no raise. This is a case in which I really wish there weren't any Americans that could be hired to do this job, just out of principle. That is hardly likely though. Mr. Kirkpatrick notes:
Google created a dedicated queue for videos believed to contain violent extremism and staffed it with dozens of low-paid immigrants from the Middle East. Moderators make $18.50 an hour — about $37,000 a year — and have not received a raise in two years.
Austin moderators are required to view five hours of gruesome video per day. This comes despite the fact that YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki promised to reduce their burden to four hours per day last year.
Workers on the site describe feeling anxiety, depression, night terrors, and other severe mental health consequences after doing the job for as little as six months
Of course, there is actual "violent extremism" that is put up online. ISIS propaganda videos, drug cartel violence, open calls to incitement and murder, etc. However, what the MSM is really interested in purging is speech they don't like. Essentially, Middle Eastern immigrants are being given veto power over what Americans are and are not allowed to say on the dominant online media platform.Yeah, and I wonder how slanted the censorship is regarding all matters Islam. Just as with hiring Moslem soldiers for the US Army, cough, Nidal Malik Hasan, cough, cough**, for these goolag censors, are we sure about the loyalty of these individuals to the US Constitution and the truth, respectively? Above all else, don't give them access to guns.
This probably doesn't matter to the people that operate this office in Austin, TX, as Goolag does not care about truth. They can use these guys to implement whatever agenda they want, suppression of nationalism and patriotism being most of it. You get a few Americans, and they may just get wise after a few months of 5 hours daily moderating to what is really going on. For the foreigners, these arcane concepts of freedom of speech and Constitutionally protected rights are not a factor. If you think that's bad, this is they do the same thing in the US military.
As stupid as this all is, do we really want to take this censorship ability from goolag and Facebook and give it to the US government? Oh, Trump will pick some good people, you say? Maybe, but then the next administration comes in, and like the Hildabeast's firing of everyone up through the White House travel office staff, now you got another thing coming.
* The whole Verge article, THE TRAUMA FLOOR, subtitled "The secret lives of Facebook moderators in America", by one Casey Newton, is very interesting itself. It concentrates on a contractor in the "moderation" business named Cognizant, which does this work for Facebook out of Phoenix, Arizona. It does not get much into the Moslem aspect, except to note that the company has forbid them to use break time to Head East and pray.
** No, no joke there regarding the reluctance to bring up this mass murder - it's just that, as far as I can tell, coughing is a part of speech in the Arabic language. Maybe I'm taking it out of context ...
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Merry Christmas from Peak Stupidity
Posted On: Wednesday - December 25th 2019 8:57AM MST
In Topics: Music Websites Bible/Religion Holiday from Stupidity
The lack of posting over the last 2 days, even with 4 on the front burner, is due to family obligations. The rest of the week may be the same, but we'll see. "The stupid you'll always have with you." or something like that, is what I've read* ...
If you are not a long-term reader, I recommend you click on "TOPIC KEYS". Of the 70 topics, you are are bound to find something you like, and you could probably peruse the stupidity through this entire holiday season and well into 2020.
The Peak Stupidity Moderator (OK slash-blogger-slash-site-admin) would like to particularly thank the great commenters that we have. We go for quality here, not quantity, as the reader can probably tell at a glance! Thank you BernCar, Dtbb, Ganderson, Rex Little, Bill H., MBlanc46, Dieter Kief, Clyde, Hail, Kikz, Peyton Fahrquahr, Working Class, and from way back, Joe Stalin, Buck Turgidson, Boris Putin, and Fiddlesticks. I look forward to any and all comments. Even just one a day boosts my spirits, so long as it is not a Russian-bot viagra ad meant to boost something else.
Hey, of all the Enya music I've listened to, inculding during some sort of New Age phase I underwent back in the day, I have never heard her sing Adeste Fideles! before. (Keep in mind that Enya often sings in some odd language that often sounds like either Klingon or Gibberish. This time, it turns out that it's Latin. Who knew?)
* Yes, it was "the poor you'll always have with you." that Jesus said in Matthew 26, and so as not to take it out of context, the King James version quotes Jesus thusly: "For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always."
My line above could be taken as a Libertarian/Conservative take on the continually-moving official BLS poverty line. If "the stupid" is taken as referring to people, same as with "the poor", then I gotta say that that's pretty cynical, and I need to be more forgiving, speaking of Jesus this morning. However, I use "the stupid" as referring to a phenomena.
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Government Positive Control of your "phone"
Posted On: Saturday - December 21st 2019 10:00AM MST
In Topics: Artificial Stupidity Orwellian Stupidity iEspionage
"Phone" is in quotes, because this is really not about just information spread by voice on your phone calls, the recording of this being bad enough. However, our iEspionage devices keep much more information than that. Don't ask whom the mark is, the tone rings for thee.
As long-ago and often promised, Peak Stupidity will start cranking out some post on this iEspionage topic. Recent events had me very aware of how much information is out there even on those of us who lay pretty low.
Upon signing up for a new phone plan a while back, I wondered why the big need for background information. After all, almost everyone does "autopay" or you lose $5 a month, every month, with these people now if you don't.. That means, one gives them a credit card to keep on file, and payments are billed. I guess they don't trust anyone anymore, or, OK, they will trust you to mail in a check each month (I've paid months ahead to avoid the hassle, but then ended up getting out of some of it), but only if you pay $5 for the "privilege".
What I don't like about this is that you lose any leverage if you've been overcharged in any manner. You can get through the voice-activated customer-"care" BS and then argue with them, but, hey, hey've already got the money. No longer can you threaten not to pay if they don't fix the problem. Well, we're going the new way, as sending them 60 bucks a year doesn't seem like a way to fight the system.
To get to the point, if they aren't worried about your credit, seeing as they can cut you off as soon as the card doesn't put out, why DO they need the driver's license, SS #, and all that jazz. Oh, yeah, I guess they want to absolutely, positively know who exactly is the one making these calls. They want to know what exact individual is where at what time, as the GPS information is damn precise.
"I'm not doing anything wrong, so why would they want to know, and why should I care?" you (not YOU) ask. As to the former, no, it's just data on your phone that can be kept for years, or sent up to a database regularly, so, no, they don't necessarily care right now. As to the latter, you may not be doing what is considered wrong now, but what you do now may be considered wrong later. What you may want to do later is something you already know is "wrong", as it may take you that long to get wise to how much of an Orwellian world we live in and want to put an end to that world.
I'll grant China this: they've had a big head start on this business. 10 years ago, it was still the wild, wild East, in which one could purchase a SIM card on the street that'd let one make phone calls from any phone. Now, going back at least 3 years, they must be registered. At least they don't pretend over there that's it's some kind of credit check.
Burner phones, bought with cash and no ID, while wearing a ball cap and 3 bandaids due to that "bad shave that morning" may be de rigueur for any man trying to live free in the near future.
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National Geographic - 21 years back
Posted On: Friday - December 20th 2019 8:23PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Media Stupidity Geography
Long term readers of the Peak Stupidity blog will know that we are not enamored with the current era National Geographic. That's not the whole Cambrian era, mind you, and not even the entire epoch we're in, it's just the last coupla' decades in which the formerly great National Geographic Society publication has turned to something resembling fossilized shit. Yeah, we have issues with these issues.
We picked up a copy early in the Peak Stupidity age and reported on "National Geographic, no more girly pics of the natives ..... Then, we had a more serious two part series on "Nat-Geo and the once great Royal Scientific Societies" --- Part 1 and Part 2. I haven't seen a reason to subscribe or even pick up that magazine in years, but I had a long wait in a waiting room, so ...
The issue shown above is from 1998. My perusal of it a few days back has strengthened my case that this magazine used to be OK. There was not a single one of the main articles that mentioned Global Climate DisruptionTM. I don't think you'd see an issue like that today. No matter where in the world these people go, they see CO2 doom on the horizon and blame everything going wrong on that poor innocuous trace gas.
As far as that subject goes, apparently there had been a recent article on it, as a number of letters to the editor mentioned it. At least one of them mentioned how fair and balanced the article had been.
The article on Catherine the Great of Russia (you may need to enlarge the image to make out the titles) did have a feminist slant to it, but seemed otherwise pretty fair. On the Greenland Sharks, well, what could be so controversial? (I still say we ought to eat them all.) Oh, yeah, nowadays, whatever animals you read about are doomed, doomed, I tells ya'!
Then there was the article on Romania that I read most of. Nope, there were no Global Climate DisruptionTM worries, but yes, there was some PC. A bunch of pictures featured the Gypsies, called "Roma" in Europe because they may have originated in Romania. The thing is, just like everywhere else in Europe, these people don't even try to fit in and are not well liked. I'm not sure the real Romanians would agree with the Gypsies being included in an article about their country, without a big asterisk and some nasty remarks.
Oh, yeah, none of the letters to the editor railed about the need for more women, people of colors, or those of different orientations in the fields of Paleontology, Russian history, or Marine Biology. It was a different, saner time, you understand ... a different epoch, if I may ...
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RIP - Maria Ladenburger
Posted On: Friday - December 20th 2019 12:09PM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Lefty MegaStupidity Globalists Race/Genetics
Peak Stupidity has not posted anything about the Tessa Majors murder, which we do realize is a big story in the news. It does matter to people, even though it's not "fair", per se, that this was a beautiful 18 y/o student that some violent black* teenagers snuffed out from this world. The usual terminology is "robbery gone wrong", but does it matter whether the motive was a mugging, rape, or just some "hate gone wrong"?
I just want to compare the Tessa Majors story to something I've had on one of those old tabs, being linked-to long ago by a commenter somewhere. This other murder, including a rape first, of another bright young lady happened in Germany. It was also perpetrated by non-whites, but also non-Germans, INVITED IN!
A Breitbart article reports, in "Asylum Seeker Jailed for Rape, Murder of 19-Year-Old Maria Ladenburger":
Khavari pushed her off her bicycle as she was riding home alone from a party, then bit, choked and repeatedly raped her and left her on the bank of a river where she drowned.The trial of Hussein Khavari, "of uncertain age and origin"**, was 2 years later, and the article says Mr. Khavari, this "asylum seeker", would get what's called life imprisonment in Germany, meaning 15 years in prison.
It's gotta be the saddest thing imaginable to lose any child, much less an 18 y/o just staring out. The German people are hip to that, and plenty of talk (that was allowed, at least) about the contributing factors to this murder was heard. The Globalist/Commie scum Angela Merkel was mentioned, though at trial prosecutor Eckart Berger admonished:
"on trial is a criminal offender and not Germany’s refugee policy”.You want a fair trial, sure. What happened to that "if it saves just one child" stuff we used to hear when gun control is pushed, though?
Reckless endangerment - 1 million counts?
The thing is, with the Tessa Majors' murderers, their ancestors have been in our country as long as most of us. Yes, it was a very big mistake, and the violence from a (fairly large, when you think about it***) subset of the black male population has had to be dealt with for a long time.
You don't go purposely importing this violence! As we've written before, the Europeans used to have a habit of disparaging America for its racial conflicts. You won't hear much of that anymore. They may "feel our pain" a bit now. It's sad a whole continent (at least the western portion) had to learn about this stuff the hard way.
Yes, we're now following the Euros in this, with not nearly as many Moslems, but some of the very violent gangs, with ancestry going back to the pre-Columbian savages, from down south.
* Yeah, black - you read it here first(?) ... well, damn close, I'd guess.
** There's your extreme vetting, folks.
*** Maybe 12 to 45 y/o's?
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Trump's letter to old lady Pelosi
Posted On: Wednesday - December 18th 2019 7:48PM MST
In Topics: Trump US Feral Government The Neocons Legal Stupidity
(I really can't put up another picture of that broad, for fear of crashing the server.)
Honorable? I'd have expected at least "Execrable". Maybe that's on the envelope.
Peak Stupidity has tried its damndest to ignore the Bread & Circuses operation that has taken up the last 3 years of 24/7 airtime. At this point, I suppose the rubber meets the road and we'll see if the kibosh can be put on this charade. However, the D-squad has already won, just in that they have distracted President Trump and a whole lot of the American people for 3/4 of his first presidential term (yeah, I think this impeachment effort will bring out the vote in '20).
I just read the President's 6-page letter to Congress-scold Nancy Pelosi, lambasting her and the Blue-squad for abusing a last-resort power that was not meant to be used for political means. Our favorite literary pundit, Miss Ann Coulter, just explained this better than Trump did in the letter (see Article I—Remove This Beast From My Sight!), making me wonder if she's back in his good graces and had some influence on the very decent writing in it.
I am so glad to see some writing out of President Trump more serious and readable than one of his tweets. Ann Coulter aside, he probably did get a good deal of help in wording this letter, as most Presidents have.* This letter does go around in circles somewhat, though not nearly as much as his campaign "speeches" did and still do. That makes me think Trump may have written a bunch of it. Here's a good excerpt:
Any member of Congress who votes in support of impeachment—against every shred of truth, fact, evidence, and legal principle—is showing how deeply they revile the voters and how truly they detest America’s Constitutional order. Our Founders feared the tribalization of partisan politics, and you are bringing their worst fears to life.Of course, as he writes, this impeachment effort has been going on since a week or so after the '16 election. I will never know, and the President didn't write about, how much of his time was wasted getting distracted by this vengeful effort.
One other thought came up, after I read the following:
I would think that you would personally be appalled by these revelations, because in your press conference the day you announced impeachment, you tied the impeachment effort directly to the completely discredited Russia Hoax, declaring twice that “all roads lead to Putin,” when you know that is an abject lie. I have been far tougher on Russia than President Obama ever even thought to be.See, now the Cold War has been over for 30 years. It's not the Soviet Union, it's Russia. Why do we have to be tough on Russia to begin with?
Has the 3-year-long impeachment effort also been pushed by the Neocons as reverse psychology? This guy does have more ego than strategic smarts. Could it be that the tie-in to the ludicrous "collusion by Russia" was done at the behest of the Neocons, in order to get Trump to get tougher on what should be an ally country in order to show the D-squad up?
* As good as Ronald Reagan's own words were, from back in his Illinois radio station days, through his years at GE, and on to politics, he still had (unfortunately) the moronic would-be bimbo Peggy Newman to write speeches for him. Why??
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Hacking the Nerf Nitro Throttleshot.
Posted On: Wednesday - December 18th 2019 10:24AM MST
In Topics: Cheap China-made Crap Curmudgeonry
The term "hacking" really ought to only apply to the dismantling or kludging of software, so this is the one reverse cultural appropriation Peak Stupidity will do. That is as opposed to all the terms the software geeks misappropriate from real life hardware (which I believe ought to be another post). Don't worry, then. This post is not what you might think from the title. It won't be too geeky.
"Disassembly not recommended."
The Nerf Nitro products shoot out foam cars. Why? Ask a boy. I just looked up some of these to find the name of the toy in question here, and I believe Nerf is trying to combine guns with Hot Wheels. Nerf has the market saturated as far as foam toys go. (I think they started with the footballs.) NerfCorporate says it's high time to diversify some more, so, yes, let's have guns that shoot foam cars. Ours, shown above is just the basic stocking-stuffer $10 item that my boy received well before Christmas. From the topic key Cheap China-made Crap above, the reader may be expecting a report of some bad or missing parts. Well, it's sort of like that ...
See, per NerfLegal, I'm assuming, this car was made with a couple of interlocks to force the kid to shoot it only at ground level - the cars will speed on out - and it's made to only shoot out the Nerf cars. The former mechanism is simple. We noticed there's a button (basically) sticking 3/8" out on the bottom, and the pushing of it due to the resting of the gun on a surface will enable the trigger mechanism.
The 2nd interlock is damn tricky to figure out. We were not even trying to hack it - well, OK, my boy wanted to shoot out some other stuff first - but he was resigned to foam cars only. No, I could not for the life of me see how that one worked. While trying to teach the kids not to look down the barrel of ANY kind of gun, I put it in the light, but damn if I couldn't see how Nerf had this working. The cars obviously pushed on something in some way, but I couldn't explain it.
Well, what do you do but take it apart to find out, right? That was my (bad) idea, not the kid's, but I like to encourage the taking apart and study of mechanical things. We took out 6 screws, and things started to fall apart right away. "That's what you want." one might say, but no, plastic parts were rattling around before we could really get a view of what we were interested in (that 2nd interlock mechanism). 3 parts ended up on the floor besides the body of this gun.
Straight to the trash with them after this post.
One of them, top right in the picture, was obviously the of the 1st interlock - simple. One spring was going nowhere, but you know the end has to go to a hole or pin. I figured out where the 2nd part, the hook/latch at the top of the photo, OUGHT TO go, but it didn't ever fit. The 3rd part, the small cut-off-rectangular one, was a complete mystery.
I told the boy that I was sorry, but we were never gonna use that thing again. Man, it didn't even have a chance to break! Still, I didn't give up, and played with this for 1/2 an hour. Finally, really pissed, at myself really, for not getting it, I went to
Yes, there was a guy taking apart one of these Nerf Nitro Throttleshots. This guy WAS "hacking" the thing, as he put in a stiffer main spring for a higher foam-car-exit-speed. This one spring shoots the car, and I'd had no problem with it. I always admire those guys who put up a demonstration videos. It's very selfless of them. I doubt he was gonna monetize his efforts, as NerfLegal probably does not like that video one bit. (Come to think of it, I doubt they'd like this post, either. Read on a bit more.)
Unfortunately, though we watched it a couple of times, the lighting and angle in the video did not allow me to figure anything out. As I was about to start throwing things away, I had an idea about just putting together what I had and seeing what exactly wouldn't work. After all, the trigger mechanism itself was OK. I put the screws back in and, Wallah!, as the kids say, this gun would still shoot foam cars.
What did those parts do? All 3 of them were just part of the 2 interlocks (the 1st I already knew about), but surprisingly did not have any other functions (support of anything else) to stop the thing from working! Not only that, but who wants those constraints anyway? Serendipity, I tells ya'!
After all, why should you have to shoot foam cars on the floor and not in the air?* Why can't you shoot whatever will fly out of this thing? We paid our 10 bucks, well, a gift-giver did! We don't neeed no steeenking feeetures, man!
What were once vices are now habits, and what were once features are now bugs.
* We could have disabled that one by simply taping the button.
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Chinese tourists taking their
Posted On: Tuesday - December 17th 2019 8:36PM MST
In Topics: China Economics Geography
(Zerohedge has become pretty much the De Beers of stupidity, nay, it's the mother lode itself. I'll try not just to keep going there for material - I may end up reading comments there for an hour. This one is kind of up their old-fashioned financial alley, partly.)
Note that these are Jan-May numbers only, just for year/year comparison of the busiest season. There are a lot more than 1.6 million Chinese travelers outbound to the US per year, then.
Zerohedge says "China Tourism To US Expected To Drop During Lunar New Year", the slight drop seen supposedly attributable to the trade war*. Whatever. Zerohedge is not good with details, unless it involves some magic numbers for stocks or funds, based on that technical stuff. Therefore, I'm not sure if these outbound bookings, taken from airline information, include visa information. Can return travel by Chinese people in America who come back to China for vacation be part of this? That's a big thing during the 2 week Chinese New Year period.
Really, I don't care much. Peak Stupidity wrote our post about the Chinese tourists, dubbed "The Ugly Chinaman" last summer after seeing the tourism in Europe. As I wrote, more power to these middle-class Chinese people for working hard to get the cheap deals in order to learn about the rest of the world. However, for America, tourism of any kind is not really something that ought to be the be the be-all/end-all for a real economy. Sure, NY City (because "... I wouldn't wanna live there" and all that), Charleston, SC has lots of old stuff, and then there's that biggest** ball of yarn in Cawker City, Kansas.
Tourism is called an "industry", but it's not, by definition. Tourism requires lots of service jobs, which are mostly not high-paying. It requires the population to be told to be nice and have smiling faces. That's not my job though - I have a job. To this day, I can still remember a bumper sticker I saw more than once in central Florida in the '80s that said "Welcome to Florida - Now go home!" Tourists are annoying, and if you have a beautiful place going, why would you want to share it with picture-taking, bad-driving tourists? Maybe one can get a slight bit more peace and quite in the national parks this year. (Granted, if you're a real hiker, this tourism thing shouldn't affect most of your trip. There are no phone chargers on the trail, weeding out 99.8% of the tourist set.)
You're better off having manufacturing of all sorts of things as the basis for your economy. That is what the "trade war" with China is about anyway. Let the tourists go elsewhere. Per ZH:
Chinese middle class, some of the richest in the world, is expected to abandon the US for Japan, Thailand, and South Korea, during the holiday week next month.Oriental tourists are going to visit places in the Orient? Well, sure French people go to Spain, and so forth, but that seems somewhat far-fetched that this "abandonment" will go that direction. I have a feeling that the travelers to Thailand and Korea are not your low-budget tour group people, but more your low-budget hooker aficionados.
Anyway, this is not a worrisome development. Even tourists from the other side of the country are an annoyance lots of the time. With the exception of the chamber of commerce and service industry people most residents of tourist area enjoy getting a break for part of the year, with NY City being an exception:
* Kind of misnamed, just as our "Civil War" was more a war of northern aggression, or at least "the War between the States" than a true civil war. How about we call this thing the "Crusade for Fair Trade"?
** That's by diameter, not necessarily mass, mind you.
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The ctrl-left has a problem with democracy
Posted On: Tuesday - December 17th 2019 11:14AM MST
In Topics: Commies Elections '16 - '24 Lefty MegaStupidity Trump ctrl-left
(Image straight off the Zerohedge article)
Aren't these the same people that call the alt-right and conservatives Nazis and the like? They want fairness and openness, and everyone and his felon brother should be able to vote.
The left has been pushing the franchise (voting rights) for all for a century now, starting with non-property owners and culminating with the really big screw job of forcing the States to allow women to vote. The denouement in America was Amendment XXVI to the US Constitution in 1971, letting 18 y/o know-nothings vote, because anyone over 30 should not be trusted. Should we be listening to those lefties that have gotten well past 30 y/o now, pushing 80 or so?
They needed this in the 1960s when the establishment, that is academia, government (for the most part), and even part of the media was still conservative. More votes were required to change the establishment and stick it to the man, at least for those of the left not prone to violence at the time. Well, it's not working out perfectly for the ctrl-left, STILL. WTH, man?! Someone like Trump was not supposed to be able to get elected anymore. The time-wasting and distracting 3-years-running impeachment infotainment is what they have reacted with.
In England, though he's not much to write
There's more to this that I'd like to write about in another post. I don't think it's any grand conspiracy, the people involved being too stupid to operate one, but what has happened for years is this: The ctrl-left will call Nazis, tyrants and the like appellations, Presidents and others who are really not that awful far from their own positions to begin with. George W. Bush, not any kind of Conservative, is a perfect example of this. Let me explain this in a post to come.
Look at these idiots out in the street. It's not like Boris Johnson is the 2nd coming of Maggie Thatcher - we wish! He's just slightly to the right, on that one issue of independence, than the other fool. Listen, lefties, if you don't shut up and respect the decision of "the people", we'll sic Jimmy Carter on you next time!
* Ha! Zerohedge even censors its own titles with the asterisks now. Sure, I don't want the whole thing full of profanity, but the comment section has become less inspiring with those computer-generated *** inserted into the cuss words.
** BTW, I'm not enamored at all with most of it, as the original idea of the United States of America was for it to be a Constitutional Republic. I distinctly remember hearing about that. It requires some voting, sure, but mostly by local individuals that we trust to decide for us AND adherence to that often pesky US Constitution.
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Grid Girls Gone
Posted On: Saturday - December 14th 2019 7:08PM MST
In Topics: Music Political Correctness Feminism
(This is one of the last few of the open tabs i meant to comment on. Dang, it's from 6 months ago.)
Per a click-bait* article on Zerohedge called "F1 Grid Girl Ban Infuriates Dutch MP: 'Only An Idiot' Sees Beautiful Women As Problematic", just one more bit of fun has been "cancelled" by the influence of feminism.
These girls are hired for their looks, of course, with, per ZH, requirements as to circumference at the chest of 95 to 100 ... no CENTIMETERS. I guess the fact that not every girl is beautiful enough to show (a lot of) herself at these Formula 1 races has certain other women upset - more likely jealous. Is that a reason to ruin guys' fun everywhere? Yes, apparently it is, and that's the way things are going. It just takes a few, weak corporate folks that cave, and it's over, usually for good.
I've been to a Formula I race once, but with seats that we could barely view the racing cars from, much less any of these grid girls. The window is closed now. Well, if Peak Stupidity is going to go the click-bait route this evening**, we may as well put up some good music that also features some hotties, as far as the video goes.
This is the British band Sweet, earlier known as The Sweet with their 1974/5 song Fox on the Run from the album Desolation Boulevard.
Sweet was:
Mick Tucker - drums backing and lead vocals, percussion
Steve Priest - bass, backing and lead vocals
Brian Connolly - lead vocals
Andy Scott - guitars, backing and lead vocals, keyboards, synthesizers
* Gotta watch Zerohedge on this though. Many of the articles with thumbnail girls pictures have NO pictures in the article ... very disappointing.
** Actually, it's not really, as you know we don't have headlines, just the articles themselves, but you are welcome to click top or bottom to comment, anytime.
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Faucet Shark and Customer "Care"
Posted On: Saturday - December 14th 2019 10:12AM MST
In Topics: Websites Salesmen Curmudgeonry
I don't mind at all showing this logo here, but I won't link to them. I hope they somehow read this post too, the idiots!
This anecdote is about the importance to us curmudgeons of human beings being involved in customer service and the beauty of the free market. It involves an old shower mixer that has been leaking enough water to cause a 25 to 50% rise in our water bills for many months now. Yes, I have fixed it before with rubber washers that I was able to find 16 years back (from looking at a receipt), but my money-losing procrastination was due to my knowing about how poor American industrial and DIY infrastructure*, and how much trying to find parts would raise my blood pressure.
This whole assembly was going to have to be replaced, as we were torquing on it enough to mess up the power-screw threads. This put an urgency to it, meaning, I got on the web. No, first, I called the original manufacturer, Kohler, in Wisconsin. After 5 or so key-presses and some hold time, you do get a live human being. That was a relief. The bad news was that it was a lady who knew nothing about the hardware and wanted pictures sent - that's fine, but I still never heard back and was pretty sure she didn't give much of a damn to figure it out either.
Water was still heading down the drain, so I did get on the web. Wow! There, before my eyes, was this 50 y/o assembly for $160. Why didn't I do this months ago?! I'll tell you why. I needed to talk to a person still. Wait, the young reader may say, "you just click on this, enter your card, and Viola or Violins or something. If you've got a question, send an email."
Listen, young people, this may sound like it's because I just can't keep up**, but let me explain why that's not the reason. The unit was to come from China obviously, not just manufactured there, like everything, but drop-shipped, as the delivery time was in weeks. That's what I wanted to know about, exactly. Then, I had a few questions to make sure this was the right mixer, that any savvy mechanical sort could answer quickly.
It really comes down to the following though, not just for this specific shower/tub faucet, but for all dealings on-line. For most websites out there, I initially have no confidence in what I see on the screen. I don't know for sure that the information I input will really result in the right things going into the database and the right things being shipped to me. I have no confidence that an email will be read by a human who will actually think about it and answer, rather than be replied to by a piece of software or by a human that simply pastes in stuff from the FAQ. (I've read the FAQ, assholes!). No, automated stuff does what it is programmed to do, and I have no confidence that anyone or thing on the other end will do what I paid for until I talk to a live human being, period. That's what it comes down to for me.
For amazon and a number of other sites I know, such as internal company ones, well, I've seen them work right, over and over, and I also know that I can call people when something doesn't. For some unknown "Faucet Shark" supplier, I just wanted to get a person to nail down that delivery time (might have been a problem, as the current faucet was getting precariously close to failing completely, running water through with no shutting) and get a little more information to be confident this was the way to go.
There's that phone number on the Faucet Shark website you can see above. I called it.*** Sure I got the treatment that one mostly gets from small business today, as humorously related in "Please continue to hold .. a Peak Stupidity blogger will be with you in a moment ...":
The next anecdote is fairly amusing, as I had called this small operation that makes, or at least probably just sells and ships anymore, a type of specialty battery. The thing is, it'd be a 3 year-period before I'd have any questions each time. Hey, I learned after some time it's always Hector! I started remembering every few years that, yeah, he's the one guy, he knows his stuff, and he's a pretty fun guy to talk to. "All of our associates are busy right now. Please press 1 for a call-back or stay on the line.", I'd get some of the time. "Hello, Hector, what happened, did you have to go take a dump?", I'd inquire, when he got a chance to talk. He was kind of amused and in no way did he deny that either.Fine, act like you have 50 cubicles with Indian guys named Josh, Jeremy, and Justin with headsets on answering 100 calls a day on rotating 8-hour shifts. That's amusing, I know better, but just answer. Nope, you go through (mercifully) only 2 button presses than hear hold music for a minute, then get voicemail. "OK, I got it", I thought, "it's just the one guy who's at lunch or in the bathroom." He didn't call back the one day. I called 5 more times with 2 more messages left over 2 business days ... while the water was dripping, dripping, dripping. Nothing.
I guess it must be advantageous for most businesses to seem like larger operations than they are in reality for customer confidence reasons or what-have-you. Myself, I am glad to hear a business is small, most times, as I know I can deal with them as human beings and not corporate drones. Ever try to get 10% off your meals at McDonalds, even if you are their best customer*? It won't work.
This was the 3rd message: "Nice job losing the $160 order. I'm getting it elsewhere." I did a little more searching and got another site showing this old Kohler assembly. It was 30 bucks more. I tried the phone number. Bingo! No button presses, no holding, just a freaking guy on the other end, and of all places in downtown New York City, Manhattan, that is! Wow! What a pleasure it was, and I told him so first thing. Then we chatted about the items in question for 2 or 3 minutes****. The part was on hand and came in 3 days (no tax, free shipping). 15 minutes later, it's all fixed.
It was 30 bucks more. Time is money. Stress costs money (in the long run). NYRP.com, you guys rock! Faucet Shark, you don't wanna answer the phone? Go fuck yourselves!
* See China vs. America and the local hardware store and DIY and mechanical aptitude in Americans vs. Chinese - self rebuttal.
** No, I am fairly computer savvy and even worked in the business for a while. Yes, I can "chat". Yes, I can send emails with attachments. Yes, I can tab through an html form quickly. I can even make my own emoticons ;-} Read on, back up there ^.
*** Try it, readers. If you get someone, please let me know in the comments (Type in "PS" before any other writing, in the comment body.)
**** Think about it. Even if you are just one guy in a studio apartment with a website and manufacturers in China that you drop ship from, or more likely, a small office, get one guy, just one guy! (OK, it could be a girl if it's nothing too technical.) It could even be someone who just carries the specific cell phone around and works elsewhere or in other aspects of the business. You just lost $160 that you probably made $100 on. Do you know how many times that happens a day? I guess not, if you don't check the voice mail.
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An exercise machine, Tal Bachman, and a Controversial Commercial
Posted On: Friday - December 13th 2019 9:36AM MST
In Topics: Music TV, aka Gov't Media Feminism
Thanks to commenter Dtbb for pointing me out a quick silly story that is pretty much right in my wheelhouse. Peak Stupidity has a sub-fixation* on exercise machines. we like Tal Bachman (or at least the one song that we know, which is involved here), and well, we hate TV. OK, "2 out of 3 ain't bad", said a guy named after a hedonic substitute for top sirloin.
I watched the controversial commercial in question, and could not for the life of me figure out what the problem was. Of course, it's a little over the top and sappy, but that goes with with the territory, sales to women. Here, watch it first, and note the great Tal Bachman song, She's so High, featured here more than a year ago on Peak Stupidity:
This Peloton exercise bike is a normal sit-down one versus the recumbent ones that are easier on your back, if you do this stuff a lot. I just looked on a site called exercisebike.net, along with the rest of the web, and I don't think they make the recumbent type. That's gonna be a problem for me, but I don't think it's the problem here. Oh, and the lady is shown watching some silly TV shows, which is a problem for me only if you can't turn that shit off and just see the numbers. No, that's not it.
"This commercial is controversial!
AND, the rent is TOO DAMN HIGH!...
HIGH above me ... 🎵♬
See, Jesse Jackson and his Jackson 5 Race Hustlers ought to get in on this, as at least I've come up with an original chant for them that rhymes. It doesn't matter how stupid, "if the chant rhymes, we'll extort those dimes."
My thought above, about the sales to women, likely explains the controversy over this exercise bike commercial. See, the man who bought this machine for Christmas has done it to help keep his woman in shape. She's not at all overweight to begin with, but maybe they couldn't find a stunt double for this. Could it be that the husband wants to have his wife a little firmer, as that is better for reasons of, well, sex? Could that be the problem? I know that anything that is done just to please men is a big no-no for the feminists. I believe that's what this comes down to.
It's not cool to show women doing anything to get their bodies in better shape to please their men. Fat is supposed to be no problem now. Ask anyone. I would say the Fat is Beautiful crowd could be behind this protestation, but then, again, the woman was not any fatter at the beginning of the commercial. Maybe the machine doesn't work.
Seriously, though, you won't see any men protesting a commercial that shows a guy doing some hard nasty work in order to make a living to support the family**. It's what he's gotta do, and he doesn't do it just for himself. The converse, a woman improving her assets for her husband, is not to be shown on TV. Don't worry people, I hadn't watched it ... until Dtbb pointed it out. I think the controversy, which I don't see how Peloton could have intended, in a New Coke fashion (but it would have been damn brilliant), can only bring the brand name to the forefront and help sales in the long run.
What is perhaps intentionally missed here, is the thought that, even though it's not as likely, women can have heart trouble too. The commercial husband could have gotten the machine for cardio workouts for both of them, though, no, I didn't see him get his ass off the couch. It's not always about calories - gotta get that heart rate up, I mean toward 150-175 bpm, often.
I'll tell you what gets my heart rate up. It's that cutie in the Tal Bachman song in the video for the song in this commercial. As much as I am pleased to see this song get what I imagine will be a big revival in listening***, it sucks to hear only part of a great song like this. Besides the excellent melody, it has a guitar riff that is like a slightly-slower Peter Buck (REM) sound, in addition to good lyrics, and that video from a time when they still cared about making cool ones. (Started in 1980, ended 20 years later?) I read my post with that song again. Haha, while I'd spent that 10 minutes searching through my musical memory from the lyrics, that "like Marlon Brando .." part was obviously not from this song, but from a David Bowie song. The "Aphrodite" and "Cleopatra" parts are what finally got my brain to pull out "she's so high" and let me look it up 20 years later. The internet is good for something, after all!
Oh, yeah, my own version of the commercial follows, as I've got a minor in marketing****: We have the husband grab another package off the porch. It's also from Peloton and is a plug-in (in the REAL sense of the term) to the bike that's an electrical generator. After a call to an electrician (don't do this at home, kids), one of the house circuits can now be powered by this slim lady in a Soylent Green- like manner, as she simultaneously works on getting a firmer ass. It's a win-win. The little girl is seen learning abc's on her Kindle thanks to the power, and the husband is sitting on his ass on the couch playing Call of Duty. "Hey, honey, torque up a bit, and I need you to ride 20 more minutes - I want to watch the college football highlights." The camera pans to the UN auditorium in NY City and fades out on a smiling Greta Thunberg ...
You want controversy, you got it, bitchez!
* Read here, here, and here, for starters.
** maybe even saving a little extra for that Peloton bike.
*** I'd say "air play", but what does that mean anymore?
**** Just kidding.
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Ann Coulter column - Law & Order - Stupid Viewers Unit
Posted On: Thursday - December 12th 2019 11:53AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity TV, aka Gov't Media Race/Genetics
Peak Stupidity's #1 literary pundit gets another line drive hit and this one is at least a double. That is, she nicely explains 2 forms of stupidity in one column - it may run to two posts here (yes, I've put off a couple of original items for this).
Just typical. It's always the young white ladies in that Gap to Prison Pipeline.
In "Who's Doing The Raping? Immigrants—But Don't Ask 'LAW & ORDER SVU'!", Miss Coulter expresses thoughts about the TV-show agenda that have appeared elsewhere, including right here.
Miss Coulter is her usual extremely witty self, as she describes the pure racial agenda of this TV show, one that I don't watch, but do know that there are multiple versions of, or am I confusing it with CSI? I neither know nor care. The point is that the race/ethnicity of the perpetrators of the crimes in the shows do not at all represent who they are in real life.
In one episode titled “Zero Tolerance,” a white American male sells illegal alien girls to other white American men in a sex trafficking scheme that was somehow enabled by Trump ... SEPARATING CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS AT THE BORDER!!!Haha! There's lots more great stuff.
(The theory of causation is a little vague, but it was definitely Trump’s fault.)
Yes, it's an agenda, but for what purpose? Is it to convince viewers, as with those burglar alarm commercials, to think that the normal middle-class American white people are the people to worry about when it comes to violent crime? Unless there are some really stupid viewers, this ain't agonna work. Nope, I think the idea is to rub this stupidity in our faces, wait, in YOUR faces, if you are one of the viewers. I want no part in this.
Yeah, those were the perps, all right. Nice work.
It's very much like the genderbender nonsense. WE know it's stupid, most of THEM know it's stupid, but they show their power by pushing it and telling us we will be in trouble for stating that, yeah, this is stupid.
Oh, before I that last excerpt Ann wrote this paragraph:
In fact, the modern American white male is the least rapey, most gentle, protective, chivalrous creature God has ever created. Get ready for a gigantic I TOLD YOU SO when American women realize that, from 1620 to the day Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act kicked in, they never had it so good.Do you understand yet why Ann Coulter should be our next President?
Ann Coulter's column gets the more serious problem in the second half. Please read and enjoy her column - TRUTH - feels good, man!
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One Second After - Belated Book Review
Posted On: Wednesday - December 11th 2019 11:19AM MST
In Topics: Preppers and Prepping Books
This is a new thing here at Peak Stupidity, the belated book review. I read the prepper novel One Second After, by William Forstchen, at least 5 years back, maybe 7 or 8. It was a fairly decent book (I'm gonna recommend it), so I have the gist of it and a few details still in my head. I don't feel like going to get it again, so, WTF, here goes. (If this works, maybe I'll write reviews from only Sally, Dick, and Jane material.)
Our Preppers and Prepping topic key on Peak Stupidity is not one we have spent much time on. Perhaps this is because we don't think getting prepared for some pretty bad scenarios to come in America is any kind of stupid. We do have some prepper music - it's not a big genre - here from almost 3 years back that you may want to play in another tab, as you read.
One Second After is titled based on the worries about an EMP (Electro- Magnetic Pulse) whether from an attack on the country, by accident, or just due to nature. Hey, it could happen, and this is one of those SHTF scenarios that COULD be prevented with a lot of long-term work. Hardening, or just different designs, of electronic components in vehicles, important computer hardware, etc. is something that can be done, and I think Mr. Forstchen wrote this book as a warning. Yes, one second after one of these happenings, much of our electronics wouldn't work*. Things would get ugly, first quickly, and then more slowly. I don't dispute the premise of this book.
The foreword by, of all people, Newt Gingrich**, noted that he had encouraged the writer, or all writers, to write of what they know. That's part of the problem that I did have with this book. The writer, just as with Mr. Gingrich, is a history professor. He's no technical guy of any sort and is a man of letters rather than a man of action. Mr., OK, Professor Forstchen did not try to describe too many technical details that he wouldn't know about. However, in this novel, the narrator professor (yes, write of what you know) had happened to get placed in the N. Carolina mountains*** when the event hit and all vehicles newer than non-digital-electronic 1970s models quit running. He just happened to be the man of the hour (many months really), as his history professor skills somehow made him the leader that was needed during the grave crisis. I think this is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of William Forstchen and not something that I could really see happening. The history professor would become history during a SHTF.
The author seems to have put a lot of thought, or reading, into all the problems that would occur, from the lack of working machinery to the problems with diabetics getting insulin, which must be kept refrigerated. Most serious preppers have thought of all of this and more, but this book could clue in those non-preppers, who haven't. The story goes into detail about the struggle and paints no rosy picture of how many people would survive and how. It's pretty good reading with some suspense, and yes, a romance between one of the hotter women who has ended up in Black Mountain, NC and, well, you guessed it, the history professor narrator! Maybe William Forstchen is looking forward to an EMP event.
One quirk, and something I sure wouldn't expect from a professor in the Humanities, is the author's use of the bad English phrasing "he should of" and the like instead of "he should have". No, this is not the characters' talking here. This is the way the book was written, and that erroneous English appeared dozens, maybe hundreds of times. He should of wrote it better than that, right? ;-}. How an editor would not catch all the instances of that same mistake is a mystery to me. I only remember this from > 1/2 a decade ago, because it's pretty egregious for a published and somewhat-known novel.
Lastly, the author showed himself as a Statist at the conclusion of the book. Go figure, but from a would-be prepper no less? This is something of a SPOILER, but the first contact from the outside world (outside of the Black Mountain environs) is from the US Navy, trying to help (as I just barely remember this book). Yeah, right! When the SHTF nation-wide, I don't think you wanna' be counting on the US military. With all the hands-on ingenuity performed by the local men to save their civilization, I doubt any real preppers would count on anyone but themselves and their ammo supply.
If you've read books such as Alas, Babylon or Lucifer's Hammer and liked them, you will probably like One Second After also. I recommend it, but with the qualification that you don't imagine you will be the leader who saves the village and gets the hottie, unless you have the skills - not usually obtained from a career as a history professor (engineering - different story).
* Imagine the GPS signals somehow going out - or being TAKEN out. It's not only position, but just the accurate time signals alone, that a whole lot of machines used in our daily lives depend on.
** This cocksucker seemed like part of the solution to America's political problems in 1994, with his "Contract with America", coming as a great relief and bulwark against the Clinton Socialism, including the Hildabeast's attempt at government-run health care. Alas, Newt and company GOPes broke the contract, and things went downhill continuously, and much faster from that point on.
*** Likely to be one of the better places to escape the madness, as the area is full of white people with the Scots-Irish background, hillbillies, basically, that may be of the stuff to survive a SHTF scenario. This is excepting Asheville, as it's artsy-fartsy-ville at this point.
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Antifa Punch-Out Porn
Posted On: Wednesday - December 11th 2019 10:21AM MST
In Topics: Humor ctrl-left
This is good stuff. In this 45 second video, some antifa asshole has blocked a white SUV on the road. The driver starts off just cussing at the guy. When this brave antifa warrior starts beating on the door of the guy's vehicle, the driver gets out, pushes this warrior for Social Justice to the ground and punches him a copious amount.
This stuff is great to watch. Now, see, this driver is a lone guy. He may yet get in trouble, but I kind of doubt it, since this happened in Texas. Once the antifa guy started grabbing at the door, this good old boy had every right to defend himself, even it's just a lawyer-talk of "I feared for my life." I know the guy didn't fear for his life, but when the lawyer says say that, you say that!
Still, the establishment, even in Texas, is infested with the ctrl-left, so you never know how a situation like this, one-on-one, will turn out in the blind eyes of the legal system. That's why, per Peak Stupidity's continual admonitions, "there is great power in numbers". Get your whole neighborhood or half the town to show up at the courthouse, and you'll have a much better outcome.
"Two thumbs up ... our asses ... " - Iskel and Sebert
"I love that uppercut at the end." - youtube commenter Bobby Old Chedda
"A wonderful, feel-good story for the whole family ..." - Peak Stupidity
"Best Indie short of the year..." - Movie Reviews
"You said that in March, and again in July and October. Why don't you wait until the freaking 31st to decide?! - Chief Editor of Movie Reviews.
"Great casting! Superb set design! Next time, just hold the damn camera sideways ... - New England Journal of iFilmmaking
Here is a link to the Liveleak website page on which I first saw this video. The credit should go there, as it was hard to find on youtube (but I don't know if I can, or how to, embed something off of Liveleak.
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