Further thoughts from the coffee shop ...
Posted On: Wednesday - April 9th 2025 8:13PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Music Muh Generation
... as continued from our thoughts from the coffee shop on March 2nd of '18. Wow! I guess we at Peak Stupidity don't think about the subject of "the coffee shops" too much.*
It's been a beautiful couple of days with my schedule allowing me free time in the mornings. There was time to spend, an hour to two, in the sunshine with friends at the local coffee shop sitting.
This place makes a mean hot chocolate, and it's convenient, but yesterday the non-service-oriented staff had me thinking about not coming back. They will often blast the music - this is on the outside, on the sidewalk. If I ask them to turn it down, sometimes the guy will, and sometimes the other guy or girl will only act like he will. It stayed loud after my twice asking yesterday - it didn't help matters that the music really sucked, and probably that I also told the guy that the music really sucked.
Maybe you all know this tune. There's a guy singing and some black woman repetitively chanting "hey motherfucker" as the chorus. No, this isn't my chronic lyricosis flaring up - that's the "song". I don't need some Black! woman chanting that to me ANYWHERE, much less outside there where we wanted to be able to hear each other.
Let me back up a few years. This is the place where I almost got into it physically with one manager type about the face masks back during the PanicFest. I asked him if he was pushing this on us (you had to put one on if you got up from your table) because he was worried about the City getting on him or because "you're really scared about this thing"? They're going to be lefties running and working at these places, with very few exceptions.
Therefore, I did feel a bit miffed when the kind of people who would be worried about "killing the planet" leave the front door wide open in mid-winter. It was pretty cold on the inside near the door of course. However, they told us that they were hot behind the counter from all the coffee-making apparatus. Apparently, at this place customers don't come first anymore (same regarding the music) over the staff, and even over THE PLANET! There's a different attitude going around in this generation of tatted-up nose-ringed lefties.
I will now jump from 5 years back, then this winter, and yesterday to THIS morning. It was a different guy running the stereo today, and he had classic Billy Joel songs playing! I had to run in and compliment him along with reporting when the parking meter guy was out and about. This music was vintage, obscure stuff, starting (when I got there) with New York State of Mind from Turnstiles, a little before the Piano Man came back home from Los Angeles and got famous. Another one was an album cut from the more popular album The Stranger - it's embedded in our recent post Vienna no longer waits for you. How appropriate was the song though, I thought, as I remembered the old PS post Starbucks vs. the Viennese Kaffeehaus.
The music wasn't blasting this time - it IS a coffee shop, after all, but just as importantly, this music did anything BUT suck. We've already embedded that 2nd favorite from Billy Joel here, but as the Go-Go's song Head Over Heels was playing a little later, my friend mentioned that band's lead singer Belinda Carlisle's solo hit Mad About You. I really like that tune, and, sure enough, the music aficionado played that one too.
What a difference the music makes, the day makes, and a more decent employee makes.
We'll dive back into that John F. Kennedy, Jr. story tomorrow, though probably not deep enough into the Atlantic Ocean to find that dang squid who ate his logbooks.
* We had a different attitude about the places even longer ago, and then we had posts about Starbucks stupidity here -- here -- here and here.
Comments (16)
Fake History Rhyming Over One Century
Posted On: Tuesday - April 8th 2025 9:57AM MST
In Topics: History Movies Trump Pundits Economics
They say history doesn't repeat, it turns out, but it sure does rhyme. I believe we may see fake history rhyming too, with this story being an example. I really hope not - you'd think the internet would be of help this time around.
Our commenter and the illustrious pundit E.H. Hail has a new post out that is right in Peak Stupidity's wheelhouse. We like the basic Economics (Econ 101, turns to garbage by Econ 102) discussions here.*
When it comes to tariffs, a big subject as of late, to put it mildly, I'd say I changed my mind away from the half-century long free-trade, anti-Protectionism, anti-Nationalist mindset only in the last decade or two. I'd agreed with Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot in the 1990s, but it still didn't sink in that America may really get screwed by free, but especially non-fair-free trade. At this point, I've been even been disagreeing with the great Ron Paul, which does make me wonder ...
Mr. Hail's post has commentary on, and includes a nicely presented (yellowed pages even - I like it) full chapter and more from a book by one Alfred Eckes on, tariffs over American history. The Peak Stupidity Community discussed this book, after Adam Smith kindly provided links to on-line copies under this post.
The entire book, Opening America's Market, is worth reading. Of particular interest, of course, is Chapter 4, as the entire chapter is about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs enacted 95 years ago, celebrated in notoriety in civic mythology** and even fun 1980s John Hughes movies. The post is Alfred Eckes on the Smoot–Hawley Tariff of 1930 and its long-lasting civic mythology. Mr. Hail would welcome more comments there, I'm sure. The interesting commentary by Mr. Hail is something I won't repeat, but I'll add what I can here.
Smoot-Hawley is named after the 2 sponsors of that tariff bill, Mr. Reed Smoot in the Senate and Mr. Willis*** Hawley in the House.**** One might notice that tariffs being discussed and ranted about now don't have said 2 sponsors, hence no 2 names either. Hmmm, don't all bills normally have the 2 sponsor's names like that? Oh, wait, there IS no bill being discussed. These new tariffs are simply being accurately called the "Trump Tariffs", as, since the UniParty Congress had been weak and unhelpful - at least for Conservatives - as of late (meaning, say, 30 years), Trump has taken on this power to levy tariffs himself. I don't blame him one bit. Peak Stupidity has discussed his being akin to a King or El Caudillo Yanqui (per Mr. Hail), but that's nothing new anymore...
It's been 5 years short of a century since President Hoover signed the not-particularly out-of-line Smoot Hawley tariff bill. Though it passed after the FED meddling had already greatly exacerbated the fallout from the crashes of 1929, somehow Smoot-Hawley! has become the bogeyman for the entire Great Depression. Never mind Roosevelt's Socialist policies ... ahh, too long a subject for this post.
I like Mr. Hail's term used in his article, "Civic Mythology". Indeed, and we may as well abbreviate it, SHCTGD, is century-long civics myth. I remember it from my HS history. Though I didn't drool on my desk, we were not much more excited to hear about the causes of the Great Depression than the absent Ferris Bueller's classmates - SAVE FERRIS! - as seen below. I imagine the clip below has gotten a lot of views lately (just noticed that a search starting with"Ferris Bueller..." has "tariff scene" as the first completion - bet that's new), and Peak Stupidity would not be ourselves if we didn't feature this Ben Stein scene.***** from that fun 1980s movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
This is a slightly longer excerpt of the Ben Stein as boring HS Econ teacher, as anyone who remembers the Reagan/Bush years will enjoy the ending. Anyone? Anyone? Mr. Hail? Anyone?
This near-century-old fake history reminds me of another piece of civic mythology, the use of the term "McCarthyism". Peak Stupidity has been all over that myth afterreading Ann Coulter on the subject but more so after reading and reviewing the thorough and informative M. Stanton Evans book about Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy Blacklisted by History. It's been only 70-odd years that this one has been in use. I'm about beyond the point of correcting people anymore when they use the term. It's a myth, but it's sticking. No, Joe McCarthy was NOT the guy the term connotes, personality-wise, and he was RIGHT - there were (still are) Communists in the US State Department and elsewhere in the Feral Government.
These Trump tariffs are being said to be the 2nd Coming of Smoot-Hawley. The Chinese are mad. Good! The Europeans are mad. Good! Consumers will have to pay more for that Cheap China-made Crap, or even be unable to afford it. Good! In fact, that's the point. The stock market is way down. Good!
Americans' main claim to wealth, other than their granite/marble counter-topped-kitchened houses is their 401-k's. They're down. Wait, what? Yes. Peak Stupidity's newsletter, had we one, would have told you long ago to get your money out of anywhere the Feral Gov't has control of. I've been officially losing my ass personally, but ZeroHedge people got me worried years ago that the Feds may someday require portions of that money be in Treasury Bonds to prop up the system. We'll see about that or other rules that may change one's access to "his" money, but I'm not playing. Tough luck, people.
Peak Stupidity has featured dozens of posts about the financial doom caused by a century of financial stupidity. "What can't go on, won't go on., some dude said, and the music may stop during this Trump-47 term. The Trump tariffs are LONG LONG overdue. He is in the right. However, depending on timing, will the coming crash be blamed on the Trump Tariffs? Why wouldn't it be? I wouldn't be surprised it there are Globalists in the market right now purposely selling off to help version 2.0 of this myth keep going, maybe for another century.
Will this fake history rhyme stick? Anyone? Does anyone know the term for what's going on? "Civic" something ... anyone? "Civic myth-"something... Anyone?
PS: Yeah, I know, that movie was somewhat juvenile, but that and Fast Times at Ridgemont High are classic 1980s Americana. I will point out here that Mr. Hail, in a more serious vein, has a great discussion on the long mid/late-20th through present-time push for Free Trade as an economic given. I got suckered into that like most other people that think about economics. Pat Buchanan never did - he's mentioned in Mr. Hail's post too. Go read, man!
* We WILL get to that post on Deflation. Amazingly, last week I found that old news clipping on the subject out of a Nov. 2001 WSJ, with my writing "WTF?" on top in pen. It's a little yellowed but readable. I'm even more miffed by the writer's stupidity than I was 23 1/2 years ago!
** A GREAT term, that I will credit to Mr. Hail, unless I hear otherwise.
*** It's been said that Congressman Willis C. Hawley originally wanted to levy high tariffs on vacuum cleaners, but President Hoover nixed this, saying, "Whatchu' talkin' 'bout, Willis?!"
**** I wrote in the comments in our discussion 3 1/2 weeks ago that that Alfred Eckes spent a couple of pages in the chapter explaining whose name SHOULD have gone first and why. It was kind of esoteric but fun. Note too that Ben Stein***** in the movie called it the Hawley-Smoot tariff bill. Maybe there should be a debate on this between the two economists about it.
***** Ben Stein was an academic and political wonk himself before becoming an actor. I tried to find his actual views on this tariff issue but had no luck so far. Though he started out working for GOP Presidents, Mr. Stein's views have been all over the map.
Comments (12)
Student Snowflake concerned about normal things
Posted On: Saturday - April 5th 2025 9:43PM MST
In Topics: Student and other Snowflakes University Humor Cars
This quick post, ‘I F***ING HATE YOU’: Student gov candidate at UNC Asheville destroys pro-life table, yells at pro-lifers, came across our desk by way of Instapundit this morning. It's the typical University behavior you'll hear about daily now, with the student snowflakes that can't handle anything different from their well-brainwashed-in world view. I thought that was what they were there.... never mind.
This story was not worth a post - or we'd be running these day and night - were it not for one unexpected small part of the statement by the protagonist in defense of his snowflakey behavior. His name is Adrian Miguelez, and we've got to give him a chance to justify his actions.
Miguelez is running to be a sophomore senator at the school’s student government.No, that's not it. You've got to be a much bigger politician to get away with acting like this much of a jackass.
He lists his pronouns as “He/Him,” [A true student of letters and Litratoor*, Mr. Miguelez is] and adds: “Unfortunately, due to compliance with the assaults on diversity and cultural programs by UNCA, an emerging student mental health crisis, and the over-ticketing of students who rely on personal transportation in their everyday lives, there has been profound negligence by the school’s administration in dealing with our very immediate concerns. As someone passionate about true justice within our community, I will fight to right these wrongs.”This sounds personal, especially his mental health crisis. Wait, what else did he say in there? This stood out for its being a more mundane, hence unusual, concern for a student snowflake: the over-ticketing.
Ahaaa! Is that what set this guy off, getting too many parking tickets? If that's the case, I want to head to Asheville (next train I can ride) and shake this guy's hand, never mind his table-overturning behavior, and the mental instability, oh, and the pro-D.I.E. stupidity. He's absolutely right! The city of Asheville and UNCA have probably been doing the same as elsewhere, raising the fines and raising the meter requirements. They know they can ream those students this way.
Does Mr. Miguelez not have an old out-of-state license plate connected to no extant vehicle, you know, with slots in it to slip over his current plate, under the 2 screws left out by 1/8", while he parks? You just rip up the tickets and leave the pieces on the street, with no worries, greatly increasing your mental stability... I mean, until you see the tow truck backing up one day. Even then, all
These modern student snowflakes, they were never taught how to handle adversity. This is how we did it in my day... well a little earlier. The young people would probably write mean tweets instead.
Not to spoil a 58 y/o movie or anything, but, good point, it didn't work out so well for Cool Hand Luke in the long run either. Going by his surname alone, any stereotyping purely unintentional, this Miguelez guy may end up being deported.
* That's how the good Professors say it - I figure it's spelled like it sounds.
Comments (38)
EXCUSEs: Means and Motives - Example, JFK, Jr. - Pt 2
Posted On: Saturday - April 5th 2025 1:18PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity History Hildabeast Science
(Continued directly from our last post.)
Over 6 years ago, a writer named Laurent Guyenot had an article published on The Unz Review titled The Broken Presidential Destiny of JFK, Jr.. The subtitle, Israel's "Kennedy Curse"? really made little sense, as the writer concentrated elsewhere in trying to EXCUSE this unnatural death.
We've discussed the likely cause of JFK, Jr.'s death and that of his wife and sister-in-law more than enough in the last post. We'll still have to refer to that explanation a bit here, but Let's get to the possible motives for a more nefarious explanation.
Yes, there were motives to support the idea of foul play in the death of JFK, Jr. I (sounding like Ron Unz here some more, haha) had no idea of any of them until reading this article This writer did a very nice job relating something of this John Kennedy's upbringing (very close with his mother Jackie (then) Onassis) and his rise into a man considered a big rising D-party star and very-possible not-too-far-off eventual Presidential candidate.
When it came to immediate consideration of Kennedy for US Senator from New York, Patrick Moynihan having just retired, it turns out there was one other contender. That'd be one Hillary Clinton, known locally (here) as The Hildabeast. (We REALLY don't like her, and that goes back well before Trump v Hildabeast in '16.) Of course, I followed the carpetbagging entry of the Hildabeast into national politics via the NY Senate, but what I hadn't known, long since caring about New York, is that Mr. Kennedy had been a more-likely candidate. Mr. Guyenot's article says that multiple sources had Kennedy about to announce his run, first time in official politics, a few days before his fatal plane crash.
Kennedy was an actual New Yorker with personal, business, and political ties to NYC. The Hildabeast was, again, a carpetbagger out of Arkansas. (Well, a reverse carpet-bagger, I suppose.) The ctrl-left wanted its man, someone much more to the left than old-school leftist Patrick Moynihan, in this US Senate seat. The Hildabeast had to do, in the end, though nobody really had to like her. However, the NYC crowd (too big a proportion of the State, unfortunately) loved them some JFK, Jr. I believe he would have won a primary election. Time for another Sirhan Sirhan deal? I could see that. The Clintons had been known to off some folks in their day.
This alone is a good motive, and Mr. Guyenot had more than that to say. As you'd expect, with his father having been murdered when he was a toddler, John, Jr. wanted to investigate what really happened to his father. His uncle Robert got into that and was dead himself 4 1/2 years later. Were it a more nefarious thing than the official story - and talk about motives! (as we did). whoever was responsible would not want to let John, Jr. get too far with this, one would think. So, yes, there are plenty of reasonable theories of a motive to kill this guy.
I had a real time with the rest of this article though. This is because the writer went into the possible means with details to try to match his suggested motives. This caused great exasperation with the whole attempted EXCUSE for me, including trying to correct the record in both the article and the comments. Laurence Guyonot does not know enough about the subject of flying to write an article like this. By claiming to see unexplained discrepancies in the story as some sort of good evidence of nefarious deeds, he fails at his theory.
I will refute the errors in this article, not to point out the writer's stupidity, but to show that all these pieces of supposed evidence of a doctored-up story are untrue. Some of my exasperation is with the commenters*. Since their claims are not, of course, Mr. Guyenot's fault (though he chimed in a few times but refuted none of it), I will leave them out. A couple of my points come from a video that the writer embedded, recommended, and used for support. It is garbage, at least the part I was led to watch. Here's a non-exhaustive list of my problems with this supposed conflicting and damaging evidence:
1) The last portion of the flight path of N9253N, Mr. Kennedy's Piper Saratoga: Evidence claimed for the idea that the plane was shot down or bombed was not much more (I'll get to the other part) that its path was nearly vertical as seen on the scale used by the NTSB investigators. Yes, the airplane didn't go very far horizontally as it came down. The writer's problem is not understanding how the approach/center radar works. Each sweep takes a while, 5 to 12 seconds - you can see the antennae rotating as some airports that have the radar on site. A normal "standard rate" turn of an airplane is 2 minutes, but when you're in that tight spiral, in a spin, or at the very worst, broken into pieces**, it's a lot quicker than that. From radar returns, you're not going to see any kind of coherent horizontal path, or know which way the plane could be considered heading. So, this is not evidence of a bomb or shoot-down.
2: The weather reports conflicted!: Even back in 1999, the fairly new at the time ASOS (Automatic Surface Observation System) weather broadcast from Martha'a Vineyard airport had the local weather which was clear and hazy with light winds. The tower was still open at the time Kennedy was coming in, and, after the fact, the controller reported that this visibility as higher than the ASOS reported more like 10-12 miles. That does not mean Kennedy did not have lower visibility where he was. Still, it was VFR. As we wrote last post, there would not be much of a horizon, so basic instrument skills, something Kennedy was reported good at, were needed.
Local news reports gave all kind of reports of what the weather had been, as Mr. Guyenot considered these as evidence of discrepancies, cover-ups, and the like. Yes, as if the hype days after the crash from local news sources is what you can trust. He even noted erroneously a difference between "clear" and "5 miles visibility". See, discrepancy! NO. "Clear" means no cloud cover (sometimes just below 12,000 ft). It WAS clear. It can be "3 miles in clear skies" Lower than that visibility, there must be "haze", "fog", "smoke", "snow" etc, associated. In flying, "visibility" is a different parameter of a weather report or forecast than cloud cover.
Since I'm getting into this, the writer saw Kennedy's long delay on the ground at Caldwell airport, waiting for his 2 passengers. as some kind of sign of something. I can imagine this still fairly inexperienced pilot's trepidation, as he was used to having an instructor with him. That's not a good thing, but, being cautious enough, Kennedy was worried about both that it was nighttime, and that with the temperature and dew point trending very close together at the other end, the weather could come down way down. Fog could form quickly. He had a reason to want to get going, and passenger delays, even though one of the advantages of having one's own plane, can mess with one's plans when weather is involved.
3: Kennedy's altitude and call to the Vineyard Tower: It's maddening when the guy calling out "unexplained" happenings to bolster his theory doesn't bother going to obtain an explanation. The writer wrote a bit about Kennedy's having descended a few hundred feet then back up to 2,500 because of the tower airspace. This made no sense. First of all, the tower airspace goes up to 2,500 ft above the ground ("agl" is about the same as "msl" (altitude above mean sea level) on these islands and over the, well, sea) only within 4.2*** nautical miles from the center of the airport, not 15 miles out where Kennedy was then. (He'd started a smooth descent from his cruise altitude of 5,500 ft from about 35 miles out. That's about right, maybe a little early. 500 ft./min. is comfortable, and he'd be doing about 2 1/2 miles/minute in the descent. 4,500 ft to lose until the pattern = 9 minutes = about 22 miles.)
There's nothing wrong with calling the tower at 15 miles out, but Kennedy was nowhere near in his airspace yet.
4: A boater saw/heard the whole thing!: When I first read "A trial lawyer in a ...", OK, that's about it. I kept going and noted that the supposed sight of an explosion that the author mentioned from some other eyewitness wasn't corroborated, but the boater heard a bang. In the middle of the calm water at night, you're going to hear a bang, for either the break-up of the airplane, but more likely from it hitting the water hard. But, let me get back to flying stuff...
5: Kennedy may have had an instructor onboard, and he took seats out.: I just looked back at this, and this is one I've got to excerpt as an example of abject stupidity:
One question has been the focus of much attention from independent researchers: was there a flight instructor as co-pilot in the plane? Officially, there wasn’t. No fourth body was recovered in the wreckage. But strangely enough, one seat was also missing, and conspiracy theorists such as John Hankey have speculated that it might have had a flight instructor’s body seat-belted on it, which might have been spirited away for the sake of building up the story of an incompetent and reckless John. For if John had flown with a flight instructor, then the whole argument of his recklessness falls.And he wouldn't have augured in either, so no need to hide any bodies. Why would this instructor have not saved Kennedy? Was he a suicidal maniac sent to kill them all? Why not find another way ... I'll get to this. The evidence of his body was "spirited away", sure, and I guess nobody missed the guy either. Just another flight instructor, ... well, it was kind of like that in those years. ;-} His death would have helped out another pilot trying to get a job, so there's that.
One neat thing about the Piper Saratoga/Lance/Cherokee 6, as with its twin-engined sister the Seneca, is that is can be, and is often configured for "club seating". The two rows of seats behind the front two face each other. Conversation can be made more readily, cards can be played, liquor can be drunk, and so on. Seats can be taken out easily, and if there was anything going on with seats, it was likely to take out the middle 2, leaving the one back passenger with lots of room facing forward. Did Kennedy's making conversation with her - I assume the SIL - become the start of his spatial disorientation? That could easy be the case. I think THIS, if anything, was the "missing seat" story.
UPDATE from NTSB report: The plane was arranged with club seating and all 6 seats were in the plane. I hate riding backwards, and if the 2nd passenger felt the same, she'd have been facing forward 5 ft or so behind the front 2 seats.
6) The logbooks were missing, meaning... something. Yes, that meant something. That meant the JFK, Jr. was not stupid. Bringing along airplane or personal logbooks (especially the former) is generally stupid, unless one wants specifically to get them to point B. There are 2 reasons for each type, overlapping for the 2nd (C):
A) Airplane logbooks - it is said, with numbers pulled out the rear, that losing one's A/C logbooks will reduce the resale value of a plane 10%, 25%, who knows? The records of how the airplane was kept up and often improved are important for any buyer. Otherwise, he will have to assume the worst, at the very least requiring expensive inspections that might have already been done, etc. You don't want to lose them, so you keep them in a safe place at home.
B) Pilot logbooks - These have great sentimental, maybe even historical value. ("Remember when we landed here and met, ohhhh, John John!" "Let me look up when that was.") You would hate to lose them for this reason.
C) Airplane AND pilot logbooks - After any kind of accident or a known violation of rules (usually about airspace), the FAA will want to look at both pilot and aircraft logbooks (both especially after an accident). If they are in the airplane, then the FAA can get them easily and quickly. This is a case in which you might WANT to "lose" them. I'll say no more...
That was too comprehensive****, I know, but it completely refutes Laurent Guyenot's idea that the lack of logbooks found in the wreck of Kennedy's plane means something strange.
UPDATE from reading the NTSB report: The mechanics back in New Jersey allegedly said Kennedy did keep the logbooks on him. Hmmmm, I hate to impugn the guys, but that's what a lot of mechanics might say to avoid trouble, knowing the logbooks would be smudged gibberish under the sea. That would sure keep things simple.
7) Aviation vs. Navigation: This is another attempt at an explanation by Mr. Guyenot that is not helpful to his cause, if one understands flying. He doesn't get what flying "by instruments" is even about, as he supports his theory that Kennedy's competence would not have let this loss of control happen:
So, even if the visibility had been very bad — which it was not — John could have guided his plane safety to the airport, using his autopilot if necessary.We're not talking navigation here. Even by the mid-1990s' small aircraft owners could afford basic non-moving-map GPSs - one hell of a change too! In 1999, JFK, Jr. would not have felt a dent his budget from such a purchase. Yes, he could GET to Martha's Vineyard. You just can't follow the GPS to get there when you're in a graveyard spiral is all - Kennedy's problem was controlling the airplane, not navigating.
The writer did bring up the autopilot here again. At least from more reading since yesterday, I do think that Mr. Kennedy relied way too much on the autopilot. One should not NEED it in a plane like that, period.
8) The alleged CVR: I can't shake the feeling that this writer cannot picture general aviation aircraft. This is not some jet with those big "black" but actually orange boxes attached to the airframe in the "aft equipment bay". It's a little plane as the public would view it. It did have that foot-long (mostly battery) ELT (Emergency Locating Transmitter) that is required for cross-country flight - technically over 50 nm flight. That wasn't a point here.
What Kennedy did have in his plane was something pretty new at the time, an in-line with the microphone digital recorder. The idea is mostly to help someone who's not great with the radios to playback a clearance. (It can also get one out of trouble, were it the controller who made a mistake and some pilot violation was alleged.) So, the battery was missing, the writer says. Listen, Mr. Guyenot, this wasn't airline operations - it's the one reasonably diligent aircraft owner and private pilot. I don't think something like that would have survived days under the sea either.
That's it for today, on this old story. If the reader has gotten this far, I thank you for wading through all this. Since you're here, I'll also let you know that Part 3 (I swear it!), the conclusion, to be posted on Monday, will be a lot easier to read. The reader may already surmise that I don't agree that there were nefarious acts that brought the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. in his airplane. However, that's not actually my main point in writing all this. Come, Monday ...
* One commenter claimed a pilot must be on an instrument flight plan ("clearance" is what he meant) to fly at night. That is the case, from what I know, in Europe, and in Canada, one must have a separate rating above the Private Pilot certificate to do that. In the US it's always been perfectly legal to fly VFR at night.
It's one thing to ignore my correction. I've been back-and-forth with commenters who, when they finally realize I'm right, just stop replying. This guy, though, didn't reply, and then repeated his mistake (at that point a lie, because neither listened to me nor looked it up.)
** A good question is THEN what would the radar show? Primary radar - reflection off the metal, is pretty poor, though possibly the scope would show a few faint primary returns. The transponder (designed to help show aircraft on radar) would have remained with the fuselage, so ... that's about all the depth I want to go into about that ...
*** This is a weird one, Everything else is in nice round nautical mile numbers. This one is 5 STATUTE miles, hence, just over 4 nautical miles.
**** Let me add here that I refer to 1999 here, when this accident happened. Before then, one could have electronic versions, but paper was still favored. From about that time on, pilot logbooks could be put online, and nowadays save the latest flights in the cloud and what-not in real-time. It's just that, no Kennedy didn't have a Read/Write CD on him. Why would he? It was still 1999.
Airplane logbooks are still on paper, but as of late, mechanics/inspectors surely have electronic back-ups... most of them.
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[UPDATED 04/08:] Added point 8. Modified points 5 and 6.
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Comments (5)
EXCUSEs: Means and Motives - Example, JFK, Jr. - Pt 1
Posted On: Friday - April 4th 2025 10:24PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity History Science
(EXCUSESs is my acronym to replace the oft-derogatory expression "conspiracy theory". It stands for EXplanations of Causes of Unusually Suspect Events.)
We're really trying to follow up from posts that promise more of a conclusion coming. Rather than lots of other stupidity to cover, we'll follow up here on our post from 2 weeks back EXCUSEs: Means and Motives - Example, JFK. Note that very small difference in our title, "JFK, Jr." rather than JFK.
Everyone's got something to say about JFK's murder, though all Peak Stupidity could come up with is that there are over half a dozen, maybe a full baker's dozen, reasons that people would have wanted to kill President Kennedy. There's more hype now, with the release of dozens of reams of paper (in digital form, I guess) by the Trump Admin., but we speculate that the REAL KILLER might have had the means to get rid of the incriminating evidence over the last, what, 52 years?! Ya think?
So that wasn't much of a post of ours, without this follow-up to explain what we think of speculation on motives that don't understand the possible means.
About the Kennedies, some say there is a curse or they are just highly accident prone, explaining some of the other deaths of this so-called American Royal Family. I'd guess the naming of the band The Dead Kennedys [sic] back in 1978, only 10 years after RFK, Sr.'s murder, signified that Americans (no, not New Yorkers, but Americans) were already sick of that Camelot crap. That whole deal is not American - we really shouldn't be hearing about dynasties* outside of Chinese Buffet restaurants.
JFK, Jr.'s death was the most interesting of all the Kennedies' unnatural deaths. Skiing into a tree, ahhhh, boring. Getting drunk and choking in one’s own vomit – not sure any of them actually have, YET, but we’ll be the first not to know about it. ("We found a 2nd puddle of vomit behind the grassy knoll!") Plus, they're not Rock & Roll stars - that'd be somewhat culturally appropriative - not cool
The reader may detect a little disdain out of Peak Stupidity for the Kennedy worship and Camelot business. It's there, but I have more respect for President Kennedy than I used to, and though I barely knew who he was at the time, the assassinated President's son John sounds like he was one of the better of the lot.
A man-about-town, magazine publisher, and businessman who'd kept up with politics - particularly in a quest to eventually get to the bottom of the events of 1963 - I suppose I was supposed to know about him. Simply putting 2 + 2 together, that there was that sad little boy saluting at his murdered Dad's funeral in that iconic photo, and that I'd not heard anything about any unnatural death out of him - his would have surely been noted - would have told me this guy was around in the 1990s. It was one episode of Seinfeld really, that jogged my memory. Elaine Benice was all hot and bothered about his being in the same gym there in NYC. (The show had an occasional big shot on, such as Mayor Giuliani, but I wouldn't have known "John John" from an actor.)
John F. Kennedy, Jr. was one big city eligible bachelor or eligible non-bachelor, and he was going places, as they say. Sometimes he got around in his Piper Saratoga, a retractable-gear 6 seat single-engine plane. That's not a RICH RICH man's plane. He probably could have bought a business jet and hired pilots - I don't know his state of wealth at the time - but, flying can be a great hobby for people like JFK, Jr. and for those with much lower means too.
Rather than say, with the hobby of fishing, fun and relaxing but not really paying off unless one catches a LOT of salmon, flying would pay off in time saved for a guy like him. The story in question here is a great example, minus the unnatural death part, of course. Anyone who knows anything about Camelot (ha!) knows that this whole Kennedy Klan had a compound**** in Hyannis Port and spent time on Martha's Vineyard Island. Kennedy was in NYC a lot, and a car trip from there to "the Vinyed", including the ferry too, would have had to have been around 6 hours. Once he got to his plane at Caldwell (now called Essex airport) in northern New Jersey (no way I'd go out of the big NYC airports either - closest in NY would be Republic- Fairchild in Nassau County) and did his preflight, he could fly nearly in a straight line to Martha's Vineyard airport in an hour and a half. From Caldwell, one can stay under the NYC airspace with a little maneuvering to stay away from both LaGuardia and White Plains, and once level, that thing would do about 140 knots true airspeed on a 170 nm straight shot. Time was worth a lot of money for a guy like JFK, Jr.
Along with that great convenience would come the pride in being able to pilot one's self and up to 5 others, in an endeavor that requires some dedication and diligence to master. Practically speaking, if Mr. Kennedy was not a spendthrift, having a nicely kept Saratoga was a very good decision. (There are airplane owners that don't have quite the money to keep everything just about perfect, but that wouldn't have been a factor for him.)
I found out more about who this guy was on July 17th of 1999, the day after Mr. Kennedy's Piper Saratoga, with he, with his wife and her sister aboard, augured into the Atlantic Ocean just west of Martha's Vineyard airport. Because I didn't know any of the possible motives for any foul play, my neither really caring about the antics of these types nor about NY City, I and the people I discussed this wreck with didn't even consider it. This was also because the official story was VERY LIKELY all that COULD have happened.
As I will get into the article that purported to tell us how nefarious the death of JFK, Jr. was, let me agree with this part. From all I read, Kennedy took flying seriously and was competent at it. There is competence in the actual flying and competence in good decision-making. All I read has me agreeing that he was certainly competent in the latter. I can't get into everything here but his having possibly waiting for one of his flight instructors to go with him, then going anyway without him, was not a bad decision in and of itself.
Mr. Kennedy had to have gotten the required few hours of simulated instrument flying (using view-limiting "foggles") during his training for his Private Pilot license. Then, too, he'd been working on his instrument rating, so he had practiced, IIRC, a dozen or so hours at that with an instructor (more on this). It was both perfectly legal for him to fly VFR (Visual Flight Rules) that night and safe enough to, per Mr. Kennedy's confidence in himself. He should have probably already known from experience and been warned by his instructor and the books that night-time flying over water in 5 miles visibility, i.e. without always enough ground lighting to perceive the horizon, can require good reference to the instruments.
Still, bad things can happen if you don't pay attention. By that, I refer to what probably did, inadvertent***** entry into a "Graveyard Spiral".
Let me back up. The need for "blind flying" (the old term), or instrument flying as it's been called for half a century, to begin with is due to the biophysically determined limitations of our sense of balance. That stuff in our inner ears is very good in helping us know our attitude (in the flying sense), and which ways we are accelerating, etc. However, that's only for a short while, something like 15, 30 seconds or so. Pilot trainees get to learn just how much that short time is by flying in a bank for longer than that. Our bodies fail us here - we have not been built with Sperry's or laser-ring gyros. Smart inventors like Sperry going all the way back to the 1930s developed what we needed to safely keep attitude, so that flying could be accomplished without visual reference to the outside.
Here's what can happen, if one is not good at flying instruments. The plane enters a bank as the pilot is not spending enough time scanning the gauges. Vertical lift is reduced in a bank, so the plane starts descending too. Then the pilot continues to be distracted, and by the time he sees that the aircraft is in a fairly steep bank and losing altitude to boot, and the speed's headed toward the red line, he might unfortunately not recover from this in the way he was trained. That would have been - after the instructor has told him to close his eyes and then maneuvers the plane all kind of ways to mix him up and finally say "OK, your airplane - recover" - to first roll out of the bank before pitching "up" for altitude. ("Up" is not up, see? It's toward the top of the plane which might be inclined 60 degrees from actually up.) Some altitude is sacrificed, and one may have to pull power to keep speed under control, even though headed for the ground. After the wings are close to level, one can pitch up, get the plane climbing, add power, and switch seats with the passengers to change his underwear in the back seat.
The problem with pitching up while in a steep bank, especially at high speed, is that 2 very important limits can be exceeded. The airplane can stall due to the angle of attack required to increase lift, seeing as (for example) at a 60 deg. bank, it takes twice the lift just to stay pitch level. If the wing stalls at a level altitude, recovery is simple, but here we are in a steep bank, which will lead to a spin after a stall. In many planes, one can recover from that, but a lot of altitude. When you've already dove down toward the ocean for a while ...
Worse yet is a structural failure of the airplane as the g-loading is high enough to bend or break off the wings. That's it, then.
I just got done writing that it sounds like JFK, Jr. was probably a good decision maker as a pilot. Those who say he shouldn't have been flying that night are wrong. It's just that he screwed up this time. Was he distracted by the passengers for just too long? Was he too used to using the autopilot?****** I've heard a theory that he may have accidentally turned off the autopilot instead of pushing the "push-to-talk" switch. Both switches would be on the left side top of the yoke (steering wheel?) so that one can use them while manipulating the controls still, the right hand being for other functions. The ability to turn OFF the autopilot is very important for safety. Usually there are multiple ways to do it (including, worst case, turning off electrical power for a bit - the engine will still run), but one usual method is with a switch right there. Did he not realize the autopilot was off and spend too much time off the gauges? Were this speculation correct, it was still no excuse for getting the plane into this state, but it might explain it.
I have considered the relationship between Mr. Kennedy and his flight instructors. I imagine he hired the best around. However, were one to be teaching a guy like this, said instructor would not be inclined to be a hard-ass. 1999 was still a tough time for aviation jobs, and having a "sugar daddy" like JFK, Jr. who would bring you along on trips to ritzy places with expenses paid was a good gig. Of course, you teach as much as you can, but you wouldn't berate the guy, and if he just let you fly when he's not in the mood to, you'd just be his corporate pilot, a pretty nice deal. Mr. Kennedy may have unintentionally used his flight instructor as a crutch. That can happen.*******
The Graveyard Spiral has killed pilots before, and even with all the training that the FAA has pushed for decades, this will still happen. If this fatal accident had one benefit, it was to bring more awareness of this to the pilots that somehow had never read about this danger. (Not likely, though.)
What else might have happened? Why is there speculation that this likely interpretation by nearly everyone who knows about flying is not a good enough EXCUSE?
We'll delve into the article that I am using for example of how not to make EXCUSES - conspiracy theories - next post. This one got WAY too long!
* Then there were the Bushes, of course, hopefully a defunct dynasty, and the Clintons, even defuncter, thankfully.
** Unz Review commenter Ralph L. kindly informed me that Ted Kennedy has been in his own aircraft wreck, a pretty bad one too, with serious injuries for him, in a Rockwell Twin Commander back in 1964. One wonders, had he died, how the Hart-Cellar immigration act he supported in '65 would have fared. I AM sure that Mary Jo Kopechne and her family would have been much happier.
*** The Cherokee 6 (for 6-seater), the Lance, and the Saratoga are basically the same plane.
**** The one example I know of Democrat's huge properties being called "compounds". Usually that term is reserved for rich Conservatives and Preppers, who really would like to have compounds. (Is Trump's Mar-a-Lago ever called a compound? Maybe the term has come into disuse.)
***** You may exclaim "no duh!" here, but one might get into the beginning of that on purpose, in training.
****** IMO, it's a crutch. For a plane like that, it shouldn't be a problem to go on 3-4 hour flights without one. Use the trim!
******* One thing not enough pilots training for instrument flying do is to fly with a "safety pilot" - just there to keep you out of trouble - looking outside for other planes, and keeping you from entering airspace you shouldn't be in and from hitting the ground. You can make bigger mistakes and learn more quickly, than with an instructor who's likely to give hints.
Comments (3)
Canadian and Ukrainian flags flying together
Posted On: Thursday - April 3rd 2025 7:09PM MST
In Topics: Music University Trump The Neocons World Political Stupidity
I really need a couple of solid hours to finish the JFK, Jr. post. No, posts don't usually take nearly that long, especially anecdotal posts like this one.
Has anyone else seen this? It's only one house (so far) that has the flags of The Ukraine and Canada hanging on poles off of the porch supports. It's the same house mentioned in this post of last summer in which we noted that these people bought a brand new Ukrainian flag. (Gotta support the team!)
Why the Canadian flag? I'm sure the PS reader has an idea, but let me go back to many, many years ago for an anecdote. I visited a friend in our college's dorm room one time and noticed he had a huge Canadian flag on the wall. (It might not have been THAT big, as the rooms were really small.) The guy didn't sound Canadian, though I may have never met a Canadian at that time. He sounded, well, normal.
"I didn't know you were from Canada." "No, I like Rush." This wasn't about the late jolly Conservative AM radio personality but the band out of Toronto*. (In fact the former may not have been on the radio yet.) Whaaaa? "But, but", I thought, "Rush is from Canada. You love Rush. (Who didn't?) Does that necessarily mean you love Canada, enough to have its flag on your dorm room wall?" We'd both taken the SAT's, so I mean...
He was just a big fan. I'm glad for his fandom too, as he did turn me onto this band, one I regret having never seen in concert.
The deal with the flags at this nearby house is something like the opposite end of that. "We HATE Trump! Trump HATES Canada." (No, not really, as his levying of tariffs is strictly business, deal-making, and influencing - without the Making Friends and ... part.) "So, we LOVE Canada. Oh, Canada, Oh, Canada, thy candles shine so brightly... , wait, no." These people don't love Canada. They have no reason to. Flying that flag is just a stupid ridiculous gesture, designed to impart to us the information that President Trump is a bad guy.
We already know the house is full of anti-MAGA warmongering NeoCons from their Ukraine flag.** What's next? Thankfully, Trump got us out of (again) the Climate Calamity™ based Paris Accords. How about the French tri-color flag next? Does NATO have a flag? If so, surely they need that one. It's a must-fly.
One day on the campus at some outdoor event that Rush fan, named Jeff, I just recalled, put his walkman headphones on my head and said "You gotta listen to this!" It was a tape of Moving Pictures from some years ago, and I got a taste of Tom Sawyer and Limelight. Wow! Even without Geddy Lee's bass guitar - these were no modern Bose headphones - that was some great stuff ... but it didn't induce me to buy a Canadian flag for my dorm room.
We've featured Red Barchetta already more than once, so here's Limelight:
I can't do it - I can't listen to this on small computer speakers! I hope you can play it loud somewhere.
* Hence their instrumental song YYZ for the IATA code for Toronto Pearson Airport. I had no idea what that means for many years too - there was no internet! Since we have it now, I just learned this:
"YYZ" is an instrumental titled after the IATA airport code for Toronto Pearson International Airport; its rhythm is that of the letters "YYZ" in Morse code. ( ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ; ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ; ▄▄▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄)Pretty cool!
** By the way he's been acting in foreign policy, they may want to reconsider.
Comments (9)
Monty Python - The Watch Smuggler
Posted On: Wednesday - April 2nd 2025 6:00PM MST
In Topics: Humor Anarcho-tyranny
Man, I got about 2/3 or more through the follow up EXCUSES post, with no other excuse other than I'm tired right now. That one, about the possible Motives and Means for foul play in JFK, Jr.'s death will have to appear tommorow.
I did have this hilarious Monty Python skit in a tab that's not helping my speed here at all, so... enjoy this one. I know most of these guys (excepting Michael Palin, I believe) have been lefty 'tards that we really didn't need to hear from in that regard. However, funny was really funny, back in the day. The customs man is Graham Chapman, and the smuggler is Michael Palin.
We have been discussing tariffs lately, so this take on the Custom's man is somewhat, errr, timely.
PS: I had to add that Anarcho-Tyranny tag for that ending (of the actual skit).
Comments (6)
Hooters going Tits Up
Posted On: Tuesday - April 1st 2025 7:30PM MST
In Topics: Humor Female Stupidity Big-Biz Stupidity
Best post title EVAH! It's stolen though. ZeroHedge already had one pretty good title for their post yesterday regarding the financial problems of the Hooters chain of breastaurants - Going Bust: Hooters To Re-Jiggle After Filing Chapter 11 Bankruptcy In Founder-Led Buyout. Yeah, I see 2 good ones in the title, and one more in the 1st paragraph.
However, the best of the many fun comments there, BY FAR, was the succinct line that is Peak Stupidity's post title. It turns out, that was Tyler Durden's title of this post back in February. Nice job, all involved!
The stupidity is pretty in your face here, as the Hooters MBA's have decided to go family friendly. Yes, that's the ticket, overpriced chicken wings and beer WITHOUT the hot ladies. I'm sure these MBA's have this all worked out in their re-org plans, with spreadsheets, Gantt Charts, and all good stuff, perhaps thinking of M&A's instead of T&A.
With Hooters on the verge of bankruptcy, the legendary restaurant where you can eat mediocre food and check out tits (and pay in cash so your wife doesn't find out) is getting rid of Bikini Nights and skimpy outfits, and hopes that an improvement in the food will stave off doom.An improvement in the food. I just don't think that's gonna get enough support for the sagging sales.
Comments (11)
Iron Curtain 2.0
Posted On: Monday - March 31st 2025 4:56PM MST
In Topics: Commies History Globalists World Political Stupidity
From Stornaway in the northeast Atlantic to Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean, with a small cut-out for Hungary, Iron Curtain 2.0 has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the Woke states of Europe. Dublin, London, Paris,
A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by Cold War victory. Nobody knows what Globalist Brussels and its Totalitarian international organisation intends to do in the immediate future, or what are the limits, if any, to their expansive and prostituting tendencies.
Four score minus a year and 3 weeks ago, 2 States away, summa y'all prolly heard this same story from a guy named Winston Churchill. He was talking about the Communists. This time it's the Globalists enacting Totalitarianism and Oppression.
- Peak Stupidity, from address to the student body of Meridian Community College (for extra credit), via Teams, March 31st, 2025*
We discussed this oppression of Europe by the Globalists in a recent post, Defeating Globalism: Europeans v Americans. The UK and Germany were more than mentioned, with the aspects of Orwellian speech control and the abolition of opposing political parties, respectively. I can't say I've been following it heavily, but at least I've read headlines and a few stories about Romania and the Globalist-implemented Do-over after the rightful election of Calin Georgescu last November. The problem was Tic-Tok, apparently ... or something. Now, he can't even run in a Do-over, as, per a court ruling in mid-March, he has been banned from running again. Didn't the Communists do this sort of thing 80 years ago?
We didn't discuss France in that "Defeating Globalism" post, but there's big news there. Rather than just banning her party or awaiting election results in anticipation of a possibly-needed Do-over, Marine Le Pen has been arrested and sentenced to a 4 year (2-years of suspended) prison sentence. No, but she can't win an election from prison, as we thought might have had to be the case for Donald Trump. Miss Le Pen has just been banned from running in elections for 5 years. (That ought to cover it.)
I no longer put any credence in reports of charges of election interference, embezzlement or any other accusations.*** We've learned quite a bit over here over the last 4 years. Whether it's politicians or not, Totalitarians will say whatever they need to. The old Soviet Union would have charged any "enemy of the State", aka, non-Communist, with online child pornography (as the FBI may do here) had they had the internet then, and computers, and pornography, and enough cabbage even to fulfill the bottom of that pyramid of needs.
Whatever the charges are, prison and/or fines ($100,000 or so for Miss Le Pen), how do they come up with "not being allowed to run for election" as part of a sentence?
The Soviets or the Red Chinese would have done the very same, that is, until they had complete control, at which point nobody will be stupid enough to run for ANYTHING.
How's it gonna go this time, assuming America still stands against Globalism? NATO won't do us any good against all the rest of the membership of NATO. Rather than the Warsaw Pact, we may see the Brussels Pact this time, with even more countries in the West Bloc than the old East Bloc had. At least we've got a whole big ocean, so we don't need to guard any new Fulda Gap. Let's hold onto that Triad though (ICBMs, bombers, and the subs).
Here, people have been telling us that this Ukraine thing is part of Cold War II. It doesn't look that way. Iron Curtain 2.0 may even be closer, passing just west of the Acela Corridor. Richmond can be our new Capital... hey, wait a minute ...
What I'm looking forward to this time around is the coming Budapest Airlift, to supply a whole city stuck behind Iron Curtain 2.0. We'll have much bigger Lifters this time.
Peak Stupidity Disclaimer [added per PS Legal Dept.:] Plagiarism is perfectly fine. Everybody does it - our last President did it as did the new Prime Minister of Canada. Sod off about it, already.
* The whole original "Sinews of Peace" speech. Churchill pushed the UNO, now UN, pretty hard too.
** On the 1st page of search results for this Mr. Georgescu of 9 blurbs, 7 of them have "far-right" in the title, the blurb, or both. One of the other 2 calls him an "Ultranationalist" (NY Times) and the other brings up money embezzled or something. (What's new?)
Comments (2)
The melting of Antarctica: More Alarmist Trickery - Part 2
Posted On: Friday - March 28th 2025 8:11PM MST
In Topics: Music Global Climate Stupidity Geography Science
OMG! Remember that last graph in Part 1. Where are the Polar Bears? You've killed
Where'd we leave off. Oh, yeah,I noted something about the vertical axes of the graphs that the somewhat alarmist (but not too bad) commenter in our conversation linked me to (also for Greenland and the sea ice stuff). This was a decrease from the horizontal axis representing 0 ice mass lost/gained.
OK, well, someone who was not quite so gullible to alarmism might well ask, hey, -2,700 Gt, out of, well, I wonder how big the whole ice sheet is.
The units on the vertical axis are Gt – Giga Metric Tonnes, i.e. 1 x 10^9 tonnes, with each tonne = ~2,200 lb. I will use English units till near the end, because I like 'em.
It should be easy enough to look up “mass of Antarctica ice sheet”. No, not really. I don’t chalk this up to conspiracy, but it’s just that the alarmist “ice loss” blurbs kept on going till I gave up. No worries, wiki up top give the volume as 6,400,000 cubic miles.
There are 5,280 ft/mile, so 5,2803 ft3/mi3 = ~ 1.5 x 1011 ft3/mi3. I will assume zero compresssibility of ice (for now) and the usual 58 lb/ft3 density (remember, it floats due it being slightly less dense than water). That’s 8 x 1012 lb/mi3. We’ve (they’ve? “We’ve”, if Trump claims the place) got 6.4^106 mi3 of ice, so that’s 5.5 x 1019 lb = 2.5 x 1016 metric tonnes / 1 x 109 tonnes/Gt to match the units, so ~ 25 million Gt. Note, that is already in GigaTonnes, so we can compare to that ghastly -2,700 Gt decrease on the graph, before they changed the methodology in ’18 (more about that too).
That lowest loss means 2,700/25,000,000 = a .011% decrease in ice mass. That’s 1 in 10,000! Now, I realize that if the entire ice sheet on Antarctica were to melt, well THAT would be a crisis! It’s an easy calculation I’ll do another time to see how much that would raise sea levels (spoiler alert from simple judgement – it’s be a REAL calamity).
Wait, let's go back and think about how they measure this ice mass, or at least changes in ice mass. This has been done using 2 different methods, each via satellites.
The GRACE satellites use the very minute effects of changes in mass below on the orbit of satellites. Note that the GPS satellites are used to ascertain a very accurate position of the GRACE satellite. The system is more clever than that though. The mission uses a pair of satellites in an almost polar orbit that fly 140 miles apart. The distance between the 2 is measured, so that changes in orbital velocity that reflect very slight gravitational differences through the orbit can be detected.
This system was used from '02* through Oct. '17. (I wonder if the end date was due to one of the satellites dying.) Note that this date matches the end of the first, bigger, portion of the data.
To determine changes in ice mass, we must compare differences in the gravitational field to the whole. Can they really determine not only 1 in 10,000, as that was just the total decrease, but 1 in ~200,000 - the data shows changes of at least as low as 1/20th of the whole drop. Yeah, well, I don't know enough to argue with NASA or the German Aerospace Center (partner), but when you read:
The highly precise accelerometer that is needed to separate atmospheric and solar radiation pressure effects from the gravitation data...... you know it's pretty complicated engineering.
Sometime in late '18 or so, they started using the JASON satellites for this research.
The JASON series of satellites uses radar altimetry to get significant wave heights, sea level averages, and for the latter part of these Antarctic ice mass measurements, ice cap height.
Radar altimetry has been around for a long time, but knowing the exact height of the satellites above the Earth's center of mass or fitted perfect sphere (whatever they do) still sounds pretty complicated. I'll not argue any of that either. If they can get "significant wave heights" or see sea level rises, we may be talking about inches here (for the latter). To determine changes in ice mass, they must compare differences to the total, hence radar-alt height to total thickness. Just using that average ice pack thickness of 1.4 miles - say 7,000 ft. - that 1 in 10,000 is nearly a foot. However, that 1 in 10,000 is the TOTAL change. I see in the graph changes of about 1/20 of that. Can they really measure half an inch?
I am not in a position to argue the purported (by yesterday's graph) 1 in 200,000 resolution of ice mass measurement. During my time looking into this stuff, I came upon something very fortuitously. When using that 58 lb/ft3 density of ice, I didn't see a reason to get into more detail as I didn't need the ice mass value very accurately +/- 25% would have been fine. However, I did think about compressibility of ice and whether that'd be a factor in that 2nd, JASON-based radar altimetry method. Lo and behold, the 2nd blurb I found was a link to Density matters: ice compressibility and glacier mass estimation from Cambridge University, a short paper ("communication" vs. real paper, in the British tech-journal lingo) from '22. Not only was I very lucky to ever get to that, but I found I COULD READ IT! (The whole thing.)
This short paper got right to my point:
Ice flow models typically assume that ice is incompressible, a reasonable assumption because ice density changes are indeed small and have a correspondingly small effect on the overall mass balance of glaciers and ice sheets. Given the immense volume of the ice sheets, however, even relatively small changes may influence global mean sea level to a degree that severely impacts humanity (Hauer and others, Reference Hauer2020). Here, we quantify the role of gravitational compression and thermal contraction in estimating ice sheet mass.My bolding there, as I want to show that there are 2 factors. I hadn't though about the thermal effects. The paper uses a linear T-profile, from 0 C right on top of the actual land down to mean annual surface temperature at the boundary with the air above. Quick conclusion, and note the honesty, mostly 2 significant digits of precision, in these values. (Oh, and they did Greenland too - let Trump worry about Greenland. He's got that.)
We calculate that gravitational compression deforms the surface of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets by up to 5.8 and 11.3 m, respectively. For thermal contraction, the corresponding values are 2.9 and 6.2 m, respectively. The corresponding ice sheet-averaged values are 0.5 and 0.7 m for thermal contraction and 0.8 and 0.7 m for gravitational compression.Even the lower of these numbers are larger than what the 1 in 10,000 even, much less 1 in 200,000 purported precision must be from radar altimetry. Using the whole-ice-sheet-averaged differences from these two effects we see that the top of the ice sheet could be up to 2.3 ft (0.7m) lower due to compression of the ice (change in its density) and the same amount additionally lower to thermal compression effects. (The 2nd of these guys' pairs of numbers are for Antarctica.) That's 4 1/2 ft total, which out of 7,000 ft average ice thickness, is over 6 in 10,000. This error is larger than the whole ice mass decrease reported!
Now, that bit of simple math is something I came upon out of sheer luck. These effects shouldn't effect the GRACE numbers, because that system relied on gravitational force, hence mass, directly. Then, note though, that after the gap in data, the JASON data, for which two means of compression override the purported precision, there is no drop in ice mass. I'm beginning to think that this graph is complete garbage.
If the Peak Stupidity reader has gotten this far, you deserve our congratulations. I really like this stuff, is all.
However, even if I hadn't come upon this significant source to show me how much in error the data could be, there's the very basic deal that I imagine most readers WOULD be onto already. I did not purposely make the units on the vertical axis hard to read, but that is all I am getting to. The numbers are in GigaTonnes. (Billions of metric tonnes.)
I kind of blew the suspense up top but, again, what is the denominator for that 2,700 GigaTonne drop? That's what I calculated very simply above - a number a www search could have probably spit out easily 10 years ago - 25 Million GigaTonnes. Let's look at a graph over these 25 years of total ice mass to see that big loss due to the Climate Calamity™:
This is the SAME GRAPH as is on the last post.
Peak Stupidity confession here: It didn't take LOTUS 123 or even the latest version of whatever spreadsheet program is hip now to make that. I simply drew a horizontal line with underscores! What kind of lazy behavior is this? I'll tell you why there was no point in using a spreadsheet:
If this graph shows up as, say, 4″ high, on your screen, then the decrease of the line would be .0004″ = one hundredth of a millimeter. Let’s say, cause you’re a gamer or porn addict – not (some of) you, Peak Stupidity readers, but the general “you”, you’ve got a 100 pixels/in screen. The decrease in my line above is 1/25th of a pixel. Sorry, man, I can't show that, and you couldn't see it.
That's the answer to the question posed in the last post. This form of graphical alarmism (hey, I like that term!) is not the same as picking a data range (of years). This one involves showing changes alone without showing the base number. Yes, it's a big scam, and you ain't
So, in conclusion, Penguins and Polar Bears alike, chillax, dudes! Nothing's gonna change your world. Nothing's gonna change your world...
Kangaroo Days, ohhhh, Ohm...
Hey, listen, there wasn't always the internet to look up lyrics on. "Kangaroo Days" is the lyric, and that's final!
* Launched by Russian rockets, BTW.
Comments (7)
The melting of Antarctica: More Alarmist Trickery - Part 1
Posted On: Thursday - March 27th 2025 3:39PM MST
In Topics: Global Climate Stupidity Geography Science
Here's the 1st trick. Antarctica CAN'T melt. It's a continent, though it does have a thick ice cap and sea ice in the surrounding waters. I guess the alarmists know that, but I wouldn't put any stupidity past them...
The last 2 posts, discussing the race and sex problems, respectively, involved in long stays in close quarters in Antarctica, reminded me to write this post and its follow-up. This comes from a big discussion I had last Summer* here on The Unz Review with commenter ePebble.**
With all the seemingly-randomly-generated talk by the
That's what these 2 posts are about, the claims by Climate Alarmists that the ice at the Earth's poles is melting, so we'd better DO! SOMETHING! I will concentrate on Antarctica for now, as that's what I ended up looking into.
What's going on with the sea ice down there? You'll see 2 graphs below, and I had to look up the same thing: What's the difference between ice "area" and ice "extent"? From the National Snow and Ice Data Center (does DOGE know about these people?) we read off this page:
Sea ice area is the total region covered by ice. Extent is the total region with at least 15 percent sea ice cover.OK, thanks. Take your pick, as they seem to go together***:
This kind of graphical display reminds me of housing price graphs. They also vary on a local yearly cycle in addition to longer-term changes, so this works well. Note that the band that encompasses these yearly curves, after throwing outliers '15 for Summer and '14 for winter (both with extra ice) and '22/'23 for winter (lower ice) both extent and area are in the neighborhood of 50% and 15% of their absolute seasonal averages respectively. Yearly changes in this sea ice area are very significant, but is there a solid trend.
We can look at the small inset graphs. One can see from them, or the bigger graphs here too with more effort, that whether there's a real trend depends on the range of years one uses. It can be MADE to be a trend, which was the subject of 2 of our recent posts showing this simple method of Alarmism, as explained well by Toby Heller or Tony Flenderson, depending on how mixed up you get with the HR guy at The Office.
How about we look at it from slightly farther away? No not spatially farther away, as from a satellite (though we'll get to them) but farther away from the time scale. In these 2, the curves represent decadal averages:
A few single years of the past 2 decade are in there too, either for strict alarmist purposes or else, I don't know why. There sure is no trend with the 2 outliers of '14 (more ice) and '23 (less ice). Going by decades makes for much tighter graphs. Very obviously, there is no trend over the last 4 decades, or call it 5 with '22 and '23 in there.
We're talking frozen water (a mix of mostly salt water, but some fresh water off the continent) in a layer an average of a few yards thick. It's a lot, but it's nothing compared to the mass of ice on top of the continent of Antarctica itself. That is over 20 Million GigaTons versus the sea ice at very roughly 50 Thousand GigaTons at the end of Winter. It may have some other effect on the climate, but any long-term melting of sea ice is negligible compared to the melting of that ice cap, but:
OMG! This is terrible! "I’m melting, melting…!" – Wicked Witch of the South, calling (in transit) on (Radio Free Antarctica)****
This really does look bad. The Antarctic Ice Cap was shrinking steadily for the 1st 5th of this century. Woe is us.
Well, is this another case of that optimum-range-selection deal? The nominally-Christian satellites made to measure this, JASON and GRACE, haven't been up there longer than this. Note too, there's a gap, and then things have leveled out, at least, for the last 5 years. (Once can still run sled dogs.)
What the REAL DEAL is has probably got the Peak Stupidity reader in stitches right now. You know that there might be more to it, but WHAT? We'll get to it tomorrow. The penguins will be OK for another day until we settle this.
* Antarctic Summer, that is. (Of course! Different latitude - adjust your attitude.)
** Though I surely don't agree with him on the Climate Calamity™ issue, ePebble is a reasonable fellow.
*** I don't know why they wouldn't, but it could be interesting to speculate why not.
**** I doubt one could get this station to come in any clearer than the VMS (Voice of Michael Stipe)
Comments (12)
Antipodal Diversity: Someone snaps in close quarters - the sex(ual) angle
Posted On: Tuesday - March 25th 2025 7:39PM MST
In Topics: Music Geography Science Female Stupidity
To continue our simple analysis of "what went wrong?" - when 9 S. Africans of mixed races and sexes spent many months in close quarters in hostile Antarctica and sexual harassment "happened" - we'll move from the race angle to the sex(ual) angle. I realize this post will offer nothing but common sense that should already be obvious to anyone, but then, note the title of this blog please.
One could forgive some people, not the South Africans arranging this mission that had to have known better, but some people, for not understanding the problems of race. "We're all green* down here in the SANAE-IV living and research quarters... so, just remember.. yeah, be careful about those dark green guys - they can be a little, errr, forward..."
The differences in the sexes, well, you've got to be purposefully stupid to not see the problems that will crop up, no matter what the races.
It may look "brutalist" architecturally and be damned brutal outside, but this SANAE-IV base in Queen Maud Land is a paradise compared to anything experienced by geographic and scientific explorers of a century ago. For one thing, one can stay warm. Food is there for the taking. Years of entertainment are there for the off times.
To go to the other extreme, I have been remiss in not posting anything so far about the truly amazing job Ernest Shackleton and his (White!) men did in just surviving and getting all the way home to civilization after their ship The Endurance got jammed and eventually destroyed by the ice in the Weddell Sea off Antarctica a century and a decade ago. This story is so amazing that Peak Stupidity will have to write a post on it.**
However, we can thing of any serious effort done before the modern age after which most of the difficult discovering has been done and see why there was NO FREAKING WAY any women would have been brought along. Life or death hangs on the decisions made and the hard work done and endurance of the (yes, ALL) men, and were women to be brought along:
1) As the fairer and weaker sex, they would simply not pull their weight. Everyone must get fed, conveyed, and kept from freezing (in these cases) - with limits to the resources - so you'd want the most capable people PERIOD. Those would all be men. Otherwise, people, men and women, will die.
2) Even among men with the most self-control possible, the women would be too much of a distraction, causing special efforts to protect them, jealousies, and various behaviors that occur when
3) Sex in the form of a verb. What else would you expect? What would ensue i not always hilarity.
These 9 South Africans, and other crews like them, might fancy themselves explorers doing dangerous work. Nah, read about the expeditions to the North and South Poles and other sea-faring expeditions of the old days.
Below is The Endurance before it succumbed to the pack ice.
Leader of the expedition Ernest Shackleton saved his 27 men after the crushing and swallowing of their beefy ship by the sea, the spending of 4 months on the ice in the Antarctic Summer - with still way below freezing temperature - a multi-day voyage in icy seas in 3 small boats to an uninhabited island, a mission of 5 of the crew in one small boat 800 miles followed by mountainous land crossing to civilization, leading to the rescue of all those left. It was amazing. Nobody involved would have EVER thought of bringing women with them, except in his dreams at night.
Back to modern reality in the comfortable S. African modules with the crew of 9, the only problems really are the long-term close quarters and the dealing with the usual unadulterated crap of 2025. Even without sea-faring being much involved in this story, Jimmy Buffett lyrics will appear a total of 3 times in these 2 posts (see footnote **** of the previous one).
The late would-be pirate (born 200 years too late) Jimmy Buffett sang in the song Landfall***:
It's not close quarters that would make me snap.I guess it's been a little of both down there. Finally, to get in the mood (well some weren't!) of the 9 folks on the current SANAE-IV mission, we bring up the 3rd Jimmy Buffett song, one titled Boat Drinks****. All Jimmy and his band had to deal with was being holed up in a hotel somewhere up north, as opposed to the people in this story. This is likely how they feel though:
It's just dealing with the daily unadulterated crap.
20 degrees and the hockey game's on.OK, Parrotheads, you're right. We've got to embed something. Too much writing is giving me cabin fever. I've got to fly to Saint Somewhere...
Nobody cares, they are way too far gone.
Screamin', "Boat drinks"
Somethin' to keep them all warm.
This morning,
I shot six holes in my freezer.
I think I got cabin fever.
Somebody sound the alarm.
I'd like to go where the pace of life's slow.Great lyrics! R.I.P. Jimmy Buffett.
Could you beam me somewhere, Mister Scott?
Any old place here on Earth or in Space,
you pick the century, and I'll pick the spot.
* Old Bill Cosby routine.
** I've read the book long ago and seen the movie a little less long ago.
*** That one is an obscure song from his well-known Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes album. The rest of the lyrics of this song are great too!
**** That one is from his less-well-known album Volcano.
Comments (2)
Heart and Soul - T'Pau
Posted On: Saturday - March 22nd 2025 9:50PM MST
In Topics: Music
(Not to be confused with Heart and Soul by Huey Lewis & The News.)
This song came out of nowhere into my head a few days back. I didn't realize until I just now looked it up that the song is 38 years old! I don't know if I'd ever known the name of this British band, T'Pau and definitely I didn't know the singer Carol Decker. The band was from Shrewsbury, Shropshire. Now THAT was England, then.
Heart and Soul is from T'Pau's debut album Bridge of Spies. The melody of the verses is not so hot and kind of proto-rap, but the chorus is very catchy. You heard it here first... or something. Enjoy the rest of your weekend, Peakers. Thanks so much for reading and writing in!
Oh, well, I've got Huey Lewis's song in my head now too, so here's there one. These 2 together give out quite the '80's vibe.
Written and first recorded by the band Exile in 1981, this song was released by Huey Lewis & The News in 1984, 3 years before the T'Pau song.
Comments (9)
Antipodal Diversity: Someone snaps in close quarters - the race angle
Posted On: Saturday - March 22nd 2025 4:06AM MST
In Topics: Geography Race/Genetics Science
Note: This post may as well have been lifted directly from The Gateway Pundit. All 3 images come from their article. I'm over that site generally - just too much hype and gossipy "Watch so-and-so DESTROY so-and-so in this tweet! He got 1,800 LIKES!" stuff, and then there's the Hispanic "outreach".* They do have some useful headlines, especially for Peak Stupidity purposes.
I don't know how many different Peak Stupidity posts one could make out of the this story: South African Antarctic Expedition Still Stranded With Out-Of-Control Crew Member Who Sexually Harassed and Beat-up Colleagues – Authorities Monitoring the Situation Remotely. There could be quite a few, I reckon. If Steve Sailer doesn't get to it, he's lost his way, man.
Queen Maud Land is the sector of Antarctica, officially owned by Norway due to a Norwegian being the first man known to have set foot there, 95 years ago, upon which sits SANAE IV. (That's South African National Arctic Expedition, version 4.) This base is on the edge of the continent ~ 70 S latitude and just a couple of degrees west of the Prime Meridian - so due South of London, but more importantly, closest to S. Africa.
Contrary to popular perception**, it's STILL cold down that way - the Climate Crisis has done nothing to help. In fact, it's getting colder right now, even as April approaches! So, if you ever get to go down there on a scientific mission, keep in mind that it's no easy thing to go for nice long quiet hikes in your leisure time to get away from any annoying colleagues in your small group. You'll die. Either way, you might.
Now, seriously when I first read the headline (I think it was one for was a previous story), I imagined the group of scientists, engineers, and a doctor would be comprised of mostly White men with just a couple of diversity hires. That was the old AA. You use the White men that can think clearly, run things sanely, and solve problems, but you throw in a couple of bright diversity people that won't screw up the show, for show and The Law.
Wokeness is a different level. You have big diversity numbers, no matter what the situation. What would we expect to see in the group from S. Africa? I realize that South Africa is only a single-digit percentage White now, 7.3% in '22 and dropping steadily. I also learned recently*** that even at that ratio, the D.I.E. madness has the government requiring that only 2% of spots in medical schools be allotted to White people.**** Still, this is brutal, freezing-assed Ant-freaking-Arctica. Mistakes and turmoil can get people killed. Would you really want to settle on this team?
Note that there is not a White man in the crew there. That must have put the fear of God in, well pretty much all of them. One wonders if there have been any Tic-Tok videos made of the non-White group in the Great White South, made before, after, or during the trouble going on in the small research station on Queen Maud Land.
Well, they're calling it part of "an adjustment period", the story of someone down in there being physically harassed, with death threats involved. As opposed to the old days of Jim Jones down in Guyana and his close cronies being the only ones to be able to communicate with the outside world, via shortwave (HF) radio, they got the internet there. That means there are likely varying stories coming out, as the colleagues back home try to figure out what's going as reported by the group leader, Kelcey Maewashe. What if someone destroys the antenna(e) used for the internet signal? As Gateway Pundit has well noted, this could be like a horror/suspense movie. I am surprised by this, but even in this day and age, these people are stuck together until the summer. (December, that is, 8 months away.)
Gateway Pundit reckons, since Mr. Maewashe is the contact at the base reporting this story and trying to deal with it, the culprit would be one of 5 people - the men. Wait, what? I've been told the sexes are equal so it could be any of the rest. Nah, but when things get real, you drop all that BS, of course. So it's one of the
BTW, a picture in this UK Daily Mail article of Miss Van Tonder and 2 of the black men all in big orange suits out on the ice is captioned:
Geomarr van Tonder (center) and two colleagues hold alcoholic beverages outside Sanae IV. There is no indication that anyone in this photo was involved in the incidentNo, no, of course not. It could have been Miss Lawana and/or the other (non-leadership) black guy, or Colonel Mustard in the orange coat closet with the, errr, you know.
An NBC News article states:
Previous problems have been reported at another of South Africa’s remote research bases on Marion Island, a South African territory near Antarctica.I imagine all of the 9 crewmembers are pretty intelligent. (Double-diversity hire Miss Mabope is an instrument technician, so not exactly a rocket scientist there.) However, I've been in White neighborhoods and I've been in diverse neighborhoods. In that tiny neighborhood, those very close quarters down in the SANAE IV, diversity has not proved to be a strength. It could be anyone that snaps, but you'd be better off with a Western White crew. Continuing from the same article:
In 2017, a member of a research team there smashed a colleague’s room with an ax over an apparent love triangle, according to a report to South Africa’s Parliament. Lawmakers said it appeared the researchers were living in highly stressful conditions.
The National Science Foundation, the federal agency that oversees the U.S. Antarctic Program, published a report in 2022 in which 59% of women in the U.S. program said they’d experienced harassment or assault while on research trips in Antarctica.... and that's exactly where we'll pick up in the 2nd post on this story, the sex angle, or lack-thereof angle.
PS: Why is this such a big story if this sort of thing happens regularly? I may have just missed other stories. For one thing, the reports of "sexual harassment" from Western women don't always mean so much. OTOH, in one of the articles I read, it discussed a woman at one of the S. African stations reporting having to sleep with a hammer in her bra. Science! The big factor is that, communications ability being where it is now, "human interest" story reporters can keep up with this real-life suspense movie in nearly real time.
PPS: 1st Gateway Pundit comment under their post: “13% of scientists cause over 50% of Antarctica’s violent crime.” Heh!
* I'd thought it was to be certain Hispanic-specific articles, but now over 10% of their posts are perfectly American stories that one might want to read had they been in English.
** We will have a more sciencey/mathy post soon on Antarctica and the Climate Calamity™, one we meant to post months ago.
*** This links to part 3 of the Peak Stupidity series Cry the De-Constructed Country. See Part 1 --- Part 2 --- Part 4: Anecdote on Anti-Apartheid --- Part 5: Cold and Hot Wars, and the Commies, of course --- Part 6: Africa Wins --- Part 7: 1st World Memories of Suid Afrikaanse Lugdiens and Part 8: As Falls S. Africa...
**** This gives real meaning to the Jimmy Buffett lyric (in Miss You So Badly) that "I don't think I wanna ever let 'em cut on me".
***** The New Delhi news is interested because "their" woman is on there, Dr. Lawana. I learned of her ethnicity this way. Kinda' tribal, that kind of thing...
****** ... in two senses of the phrase.
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[UPDATED 03/23:] Added PPS with GP comment.
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Comments (10)
New Minnegadishuan Flag and more from the traitorous Ilhan Omar
Posted On: Thursday - March 20th 2025 8:53AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Student and other Snowflakes Global Climate Stupidity
I snapped* this one myself.
Under this recent post about a Minnesota MentalCaseRep named Kozlowski, commenter Alarmist brought up the controversy regarding the newest version of the Minnesota State flag. Some States do change designs fairly regularly. Some don't.
The Minnesotans, being mostly very nice, nice people but without a whole lot of long-term experience with diversity, decided that they'd be glad to import thousands, no, 10's of thousands (64 thousand living there last count) of people from far-off Somalia. These people are of a different religion, with a much different culture, with much different genetics, but if "we" welcome them warmly, don'tcha know, they'll settle in nicely. You betcha!
But, but, as a group, they don't WANT to fit in. They want to live like black Moslem, non-Minnesotan Somalians. It's whom they are! With that many around, they may as well get involved in the government. The odious traitorous, hopefully soon-de
This one should remind all of us of exactly how much a traitor to the US Ilhan Omar is. She reckons nobody outside her Somalian contingent supporters speaks the language, but... computers!
You'll be incensed at this, I warn you:
She does mention our President though, at least. I'll give her that. We ARE talking about Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, right? (I figured he'd taken over from old senile Brandon or something - I don't watch TV, so ...)
(Note: All flags in this post stripped of some material but especially this one to show the center pictorial.)
Back to the Minnesota flag controversy. Well the problem is, you can't show an Indian riding horseback while a White man is there working hard taking care of the land. (It looks like he's running a roto-tiller, but it might be a mower - don't want to open another can of worms.) No, to be Woke, or at the very least politically correct, you are better off wiping out all the history to be proud of completely off the flag. Just put some stars and stripes and Minnesota colors on it, and be done with it.
Minnesota had a competition for the most favorite new flag. This is where the big controversy came in, as per the website of one Sara** Carter, we read from December of '23 about Outrage over Minnesota’s new flag looking just like Ilhan Omar’s home flag of Somalia. You've got to look there to see a VERY CLOSE resemblance, not to Somalia's flag itself but to Omar's home State there of Puntland. (Yeah, her family punted and then left the field.) This is important because if you're gonna get your say in the design of the flag of your "new homeland" you need to base it on the right old homeland. There's a war there and all - that's important for Americans!
Besides the navy blue near the pole, the suggested new MN flag had the very same light blue, white, and green stripes as the Puntland, Somalia flag. The star, though, had/has 8 points vs. 5.
“Minnesota is home to the largest Somali population in the West. Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minnesota) is from Puntland. Minnesota just unveiled their new flag. I’m sure this is just a coincidence.”What a coincidence! It could have brought people close together.
The Western Journal reported the new flag, an ” abstract shape of the state with an eight-pointed white North Star,” still could be altered by officials. However, it has “come under a searing microscope” because of the online references to the similarities between the new design and “the flag of a state within the historically impoverished African nation of Somalia.”
This did not fly, thankfully! (Perhaps an uprising was feared. Can Minnesotans get mad? I don't know.)
There is no more proud Minnesota history on the State flag, but at least they got away, for now, without one that represents only their newcomer Somalians, the ones from Puntland, of course, not those Splitters! from Bumfuckistan East.
Thanks to Americans that voted in Donald Trump, America has gotten away without the Tubman Twenty too ... for at least a while.
While looking for my older images - I had this post in mind after reading Sara Carter's article when it was published - I came across a couple of other oldies that involve Somalians in Minnesota. Here's an old tweet. There's been trouble on the light rail, it seems. Now, THAT's not nice! Who are these troublemakers? Where'd they come from, Maple Valley, Edina, Eagan, maybe some of those bad, bad kids out of Mankato, don'tcha know?
Yeah, and then, to excuse any possible bad behavior on the part of our still-not-quite-settled-in Somalian guests, they had to come to Minnesota, cause... yeah, that Climate Calamity™ deal. It's really hot down there in Somalia and the newspaper says "Climate change is turbo-charging Somalia’s problems - but there's still hope." Our guests will be able to cool down up here in the great
* How do you "snap" a picture these days? It's just a computer making whatever noises you want.
** I'd thought that SARA, as part of a nice logo, was the acronym for some organization. Nope, it's just Sara Carter.
Comments (6)
EXCUSEs: Means and Motives - Example, JFK
Posted On: Wednesday - March 19th 2025 6:34PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity History Dead/Ex- Presidents
Peak Stupidity agrees with those who detest the use of "conspiracy theory" for any events for which people suspect the standard historical narrative. It's not like most of these explanations necessarily involve people plotting it all out, in secret or not. Often, "conspiracy theories" are simply alternate explanations of important happenings. Yes, they can get pretty wild sometimes, but other times they are correct.
So, our term in use, until someone, ANYONE, thinks of a better one, is the acronym EXCUSEs - EXplanations of Causes of Unusually Suspect Events.
We want to get into some discussion about what it takes to make an EXCUSE fairly believable, but we'll start this out today with an example that is in the running for the most popular, along with 9/11, of course. That'd be the John F. Kennedy assassination and what may have really happened on that day over 62 years ago in an era when the now-ubiquitous cameras were few and far between. The Trump Administration released 80,000 pages of JFK assassination files in .pdf form yesterday, reported ZeroHedge.
Depending on what part of a statement by one Jefferson Morley you read, still 30% or 67% of the JFK files have not been disclosed. An easy-to-believe
The (1st) Kennedy assassination sure sparks a lot of interest in EXCUSEs, based both on that, per some of them, this marked the real end of the Republic and because there are so many possibilities. I've written that with so many motives, one wonders how there COULD NOT have been a better explanation than the one guy Harvey Oswald being a Commie loser who made a good shot. (John Kennedy didn't have any charts and graphs to point at that day in Dallas, unfortunately.)
ZeroHedge lists the following motives, admittedly as "just a few of the top theories":
•The CIA killed JFK because of its outrage over his failure to invade Cuba in the wake of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, and his desire to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it into the winds."I guess there are plenty more in the ZH comments, but I will hasten to add:
•The Soviet Union killed JFK in retaliation for embarrassing the USSR in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
•Cuba's Fidel Castro killed JFK because of US assassination attempts on him, and/or because of the Bay of Pigs invasion.
•The Mafia killed JFK because of Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy's crackdown.
•Vice President Lyndon B Johnson conspired to kill JFK to take power.
•Israel killed JFK because of his opposition to the country's nuclear weapons development, potential sympathy with the Palestinians' right to return to homes they were expelled from in 1948, and insistence that the American Zionist Council register as agents of Israel pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
•Bankers killed JFK because he planned to put the minting of real money back in the hands of Congress.
I tend to believe more the explanations that involve prevention of future actions over the ones involving revenge. The latter would cover the 1st part of the CIA one, the Soviet Union one (though on the preventative side, they may have wanted to kill him to get more of a Commie sympathizer in office - didn't quite take... in some ways), and the Mafia one. For that Mafia explanation, why wouldn't they just go to the source and kill Bobby? It would have been easier... wait, maybe they did ...
I don't know enough at all about the means, that is, the details of the alternate explanations, to say much here. That's not what I'm getting into. The next post will get to the winnowing out of some of these EXCUSES based on lack of good motives and/or lack of good means.
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[UPDATED: 04/02:] Changed "methods" to "means" to match the normal expression "Means and motive".
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Trump's Baloney v Italy's Meloni
Posted On: Tuesday - March 18th 2025 9:11AM MST
In Topics: Immigration Stupidity Trump World Political Stupidity
10 days back ZeroHedge posted an article by one Thomas Brooke of Remix News that sounds pretty familiar for those of us following American Immigration Invasion news. "Tyler Durden" reports: Italian Govt Slams Judiciary After Ruling Demands Compensation For Illegals. Intro:
The Italian government has been ordered to compensate a group of migrants who were prevented from disembarking from the Diciotti ship in August 2018, following the directive of then-Interior Minister Matteo Salvini.(Thomas', Tyler's and PS's Bolding.)
It gets just as stupid or stupider than what America experiences.
The decision was handed down by the Court of Cassation on Friday, which ruled that the government is liable for damages caused by the deprivation of freedom suffered by the migrants. The court referred the case back to the lower court to determine the amount of compensation.Kidnapping, huh? Why don't more people think of these things?! Next time I get thrown in jail for driving with 12 points on my license, a big no-no apparently, I will claim kidnapping the next morning and write a blog post about it that afternoon for you all, with extra cash for Go-Daddy hosting for the rest of my life.
Salvini had been investigated by the Palermo Court for alleged kidnapping in connection with the prolonged detention of migrants aboard the Italian coast guard vessel. The case was transferred to Catania for territorial jurisdiction, where prosecutors dismissed the charges. However, the Court of Ministers overruled this decision and sought Senate authorization to prosecute Salvini, which was ultimately thrown out in December last year.
OK, enough of that. This post is sup-post to be about the words out of Italy's Prime Minister Georgia Meloni on this matter.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni criticized the ruling, arguing that it established a “highly questionable principle of compensation” by presuming damage without concrete proof. She expressed frustration that taxpayer money would be used to compensate individuals who had attempted to enter Italy illegally. Meloni stated that such decisions alienate citizens from institutions, particularly when government resources are already limited.(My bolding this time.)
“As a result of this decision, the government will have to compensate — with the money of honest Italian citizens who pay taxes — people who have attempted to enter Italy illegally, that is, by violating the law of the Italian state,” Meloni said in a post on X.
“I don’t think these are the decisions that citizens bring together the institutions, and I confess that having to spend money for this, when we do not have enough resources to do everything that would be right to do, is very frustrating,” she added."
Actions being another thing, even if you've got only words for now, words like these are not good enough. "Frustration that taxpayer money ..." Yeah, the money too, but the whole thing is both evil and stupid. "Frustration" is not the word I'd use for outrageous things like the invitation of a highly foreign people to replace your population. Jean Raspail in his Camp of the Saints* didn't even anticipate this level of national stupidity.
We'll have plenty of more post following the actions, or lack thereof, on the American Immigration Invasion attempted reversal in further posts. The words do matter too though. If Donald Trump had not come down that staircase in Summer '15 talking about their "sending murderers and rapists" and all that, who else would have? That part is all true. His rhetoric leans highly toward exaggeration and baloney when it comes to explaining his actions, but nobody can claim he's not alerting Americans to the problem, that is, if there could possibly BE anyone left who is not alert at this point.
I'm not trying to pick solely on Italy and Miss Meloni for this comparison. Besides some of the former East Bloc countries, the talk is also not serious enough. Of course, as we noted in Defeating Globalism: Europeans v Americans, the systems of government there don't make it easy. (What's been going on lately in Romania - yes, former East Bloc - is one hell of an example.)
I kind of like hearing the raw earth truth out of our President, vs. folks in Europe being frustrated.
* Read something more current in The Camp of the Saints - Happening right now.
Comments (6)
Breaking: Novel Coronavirus created in lab in Wuhan, China!
Posted On: Monday - March 17th 2025 11:18AM MST
In Topics: Media Stupidity Kung Flu Stupidity
I don't remember a time when there were newspaper boys running through the streets with bunches of newspapers yelling "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!". I barely am old enough to remember there being B&W movies with scenes of newspaper boys running through the streets with bunches of newspapers yelling that.
The thing is, back when there was an EXTRA special edition of, say, the New York Times, that was due to there having been new news or developments that happened since the morning edition. We've got the internet now, yet this same New York Times nowadays is so excited to report on something that we all knew 4-5 years ago!. I'm glad they didn't have to hire newsboys to run around the streets for this one... child labor laws being what they are ... a possible new Plandemics in progress... all that... But no, this is apparently news now, so:
The reason this the story of the Wuhan Virology Labs creating and Q/Aing to the streets a nasty virus as contracted by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Univ. of North Carolina, and the US Feral Gov't is NEWS to the New York Times in March of '25 is that this simply COULD NOT BE news in Spring of '20 - too Politically Incorrect. You can't go naming viruses for their countries of origin. That's rude, crude, and germo-xenophobic!
The WHO set us straight early on:
You also can't go making racist assumptions about Chinese Quality Assurance. I'm assured that only the very best flies out of the labs there.
Therefore, it was very important to the New York Times that we be badly misled 5 years ago... by, say, the New York Times. I think that's what Zeynep Tufekci is getting at... and WTF kinda name is Zeynep Tufekci anyway?! It sounds straight outta Dr. Suess. (I liked that creature with the really long tail who didn't own an alarm clock - he would bite the end of his tail at bed time so the pain would get around to waking him up in the morning 8 hours later.)
PS: All exclamation points in this and our previous post courteously provided by our new editor, one Elaine Benice!!
"I never heard of a relationship being affected by punctuation!"
* The tweet above comes from this twitchy page. For a while there I confused twitchy with twitter, as twitchy was the first "place" I saw a tweet... or something ..
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Five year anniversary of Peak Stupidity's Kung Flu Stupidity coverage
Posted On: Saturday - March 15th 2025 6:39PM MST
In Topics: TV, aka Gov't Media Humor History The Future Kung Flu Stupidity
That's not exact to the day, but I always chalk the time up as the middle of March. On the 14th, I knew about the kids being sent home from school for an undetermined duration. As much as this was one of the silver linings of the Kung Flu PanicFest, what with parents learning what goes on in Government Schools and realizing that there are other options, we were miffed at the point about the kids. In School's out For Ever! (yes, featuring Alice Cooper, but also The Ramones) we wondered:
I get the idea of the worries about this virus spreading quickly, but, thankfully, the children seem to be left unharmed by this bug. Of course, every parent will likely get it eventually, then spread it further and so on.That sounds kind of Panicky, but then the reader would have seen:
One really cool result of this Wuhan-Willies infotainment panic-fest...That "Wuhan-Willies" nomenclature didn't stick, but yeah we were joking about "The Corona" back on that last day of leap-year February. Peak Stupidity's actual worries were about the financial fall-out from that still-nascent stupidity.
Speaking of February, this past February - 5 years later - I saw a ZeroHedge post that proclaimed:
China Reports New Coronavirus 'With Pandemic Potential' Discovered! [Exclamation point added! Ed, Elaine Benice!!]
... many are citing a report by The Daily Mail claiming a new coronavirus has been discovered in the wild in China that has the potential to another pandemic.
The ZH comments were a lot of fun, as one might expect. Nobody seems to be falling for this trick anymore. Believe it or not, Chief, they're still going on about Batwoman Shi Zhengli (well, she's Chinese, you know, so she's GOT to be smart) and that same damn Wuhan Lab of Virology. Speaking of Smart, Tyler Durden says: "That's the 2nd time I fell for this trick this decade!"
They set a lot of precedents in Totalitarianism starting 5 years ago. As with Major Major Major Major in Catch 22 who, though he couldn't hold parades, could cancel parades, implying that he COULD hold parades, the people got to see what Totalitarian governments are up for and their implications of what they could do anytime, as an "Emergency Situation" arises.
Nah, I don't think Americans are so stupid as to fall for another PanicFest that involves germs and a "pandemic". Too many people have learned enough and are ready to raise hell. Hell, my one regret is that I didn't raise more hell 5 years ago. It'll have to be somewhat different next time. They'll think of something else scary enough to get people ready for more Chaos & Control.
As I write this, it's very likely Globalist planners are meeting about this under a cone of silence.
How 'bout that Agent 99? Pretty cute, huh?!
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Adam Smith explains GDP growth and job creation...
Posted On: Thursday - March 13th 2025 8:59AM MST
In Topics: Humor Economics
... with the help of Economists Extraordinaire Ben Bernanke and Paul Krugman, ... and a couple of bulls. I refer not to the famous Scottish Economist Adam Smith, who would have enjoyed, or perhaps did enjoy, a simliar cartoon, but to our illustrious commenter Adam Smith who gets Economics. Thanks for this one, Adam!
It's thoughts like this that are not so far across the Spectrum™ of bull shit that do make Economics hard to get one's head around some times. We try.
PS: We're still in the midst of something that will require a break from serious blogging until Saturday. Thanks for reading, and especially thanks for the comments.
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