Hail to You - Sexual Sexual Suicide vs Family Formation
Posted On: Monday - December 18th 2023 11:47PM MST
In Topics: Feminism Pundits Big-Biz Stupidity
Sexual Suicide is the name of a 50 y/o book by one George Gilder, written less than a decade into the modern wave of feminism. Its cover blurb says "Can we survive the rising tide of feminism? Or are we doomed to a life without family and marriage"* At 50 years later to the month, pundit and frequent Peak Stupidity commenter E.H. Hail presented the long New York Times essay that preceded the full book, in its entirety, (well, sure you can) and thoroughly discussed it a couple of months back. His post is George Gilder’s essay “Sexual Suicide” (1973), a landmark attack on feminism and warning for the future, revisited and reappraised at its 50-year mark.
Starting off from the words of one comment of a naysayer under his Sexual Suicide post, Mr. Hail has a new long essay up on his Hail to You blog titled Who is responsible for the decline in family-formation in the U.S. and the rest of the West?. I'd first thought that the comment instigated this essay and that is was a just a follow-up to the essay on the George Gilder book (due to its cover being displayed early in the post). However, there's a whole lot to this one, and I'll enjoy reading it tomorrow, with comments to follow.
Mr. Hail presents a number of important questions relating to family formation:
* Why did family-formation (stable relationship-formation on a “family” trajectory) decline so precipitously?Since I haven't read it yet, I cannot say whether Mr. Hail answers or attempts to answer, all of the questions. That 3rd question of the first item, whether any of this is a problem, goes along with the slow-moving Peak Stupidity series on the "Depopulocalypse"**.
* What went “wrong”? Who or what is responsible?
Is the decline in family-formation a problem at all? Can it be said to have “gone wrong”? Or is it really better now after all?
* On the other hand, if the drop in family-formation is a problem, how could it be solved? Who has the power to change it?
* What ideological- or personality-driven forces are at play in keeping up the low-family-formation norm of our time?
* Can family-formation happen in a healthy and sustainable way if women are direct competitors in the “job-market” and social-status market, with “their” men?
* How many social and political problems emanate from the weakness of White family-formation, including (e.g.) the much-commented-upon rise of a political class of educated, single women? And such things as the opioid epidemic?
Starting from the commenter's argument, the question of equal pay for equal work between the sexes comes up, but not in the usual apples-to-oranges complaint form out of the modern Feminist ctrl-left. Nope, this goes the other way, in a manner that is older in fashion - OK, more old-fashioned - than we've heard discussed seriously in public since, well before I've heard ANYTHING discussed, because I wasn't around. This goes back to real Conservatism, with the point that the role of men should require more pay for employment as to enable that family formation.
Even asking that question would be unheard of in any modern day discussion. As a Libertarian, I say government mandates would be anathema to me, but that's not necessary. Then there's also the economic argument that has been applied to the modern version of the equal pay for equal work question. If an employer really were paying more to the men, in a truly apples-to-apples situation, i.e., there were no effects of different dedication and working hours for salaried employees, no differences in long-term employment (as with maternity leaves coming at any time for highly-paid doctors), etc., wouldn't another employer come out ahead hiring ONLY women to save costs and outperform the former in the market?
Conservatives say it's NOT all about money in the long run, but then Big Biz is no longer the Big Biz of yester-half-century with non-diverse Conservative White men who might actually understand the value of family formation. It took not just understanding, but a concern for the long-term health of society. That doesn't seem to be a factor now for Big Biz. If anything, they are not just uncaring but working hard to destroy themselves, along with any healthy society, via Wokeness.
I didn't mean to get into that discussion at all. I will leave more for comments under Mr. Hail's post.
* Oh, and the image of the book cover says $1.95. We'll leave that be ...
** Term coined by blogger John Carter in his Postcards from Barsoom site, from which came a series of essays from which we, yes still, intend to discuss depopulation.
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Projection by the ctrl-left in it's purest form
Posted On: Saturday - December 16th 2023 4:09PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Trump Media Stupidity ctrl-left
I don't go for a lot of psychological mumbo-jumbo, neither believing much of it nor even using the terms. However, after pooh-poohing the idea of psychological projection and chalking it up to just normal stupid or evil behavior, I came across a textbook example of this phenomena. I mean, were I writing a textbook, I would have to find some way to include this video!
Per the website Psycho Central (wait, that's Psyche Central), I get the following:
From the expert:Here's that 3 minute mix of TV news talking heads that perfectly demonstrates psychological projection. It's titled Media Warn If Trump’s Re-Elected Every Bad Thing They Can Possibly Imagine Will Happen. Because I am not a TV watcher, I'd never have believed someone if I hadn't seen this with my own eyes here:
“Projection is seeing something unconsciously experienced inside and placing it on someone else,” explains Timothy Yen, PsyD, Bay Area, California. “In some cases, projection can be something that bothers the individual about him, but he may be unable or unwilling to deal with the issue.” [Gender mistakes in original fixed.]
I couldn't tell if the youtube poster went for the projection out of the mouths of these talking psychos. The commenters sure don't.
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The fat fingers of Mayor Wu
Posted On: Friday - December 15th 2023 8:51PM MST
In Topics: General Stupidity Race/Genetics ctrl-left
Boston has a Chinese* lady for a Mayor. Wiki says "She was the first woman and first non-white mayor of Boston." Still, is, unfortunately. This is another way of saying that Boston has held its own for a long time in electing White Men as Mayor. With this bi-fecta, things were bound to get stupid quickly. Here's who the City of Boston has been dealing with for a couple of years:
While on the Boston City Council, Wu authored several ordinances that were enacted. This included an ordinance to prevent the city from contracting with health insurers that discriminate in their coverage against transgender individuals. She also authored ordinances to have the city protect wetlands, support adaption to climate change, enact a plastic bag ban, adopt Community Choice Aggregation, and provide paid parental leave to municipal employees. As a city councilor, Wu also partook in a successful effort to adopt regulations on short-term rentals.Except regarding that last one, which might actually benefit constituents, one can see that she is pretty hard-left.. There's lots more beyond this. I'll leave most of it, except for the near and dear subject at Peak Stupidity of the Kung Flu PanicFest. Again, from Wiki:
In December 2021, Wu announced a city COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Under the mandate, people ages 12 and older, in order to enter indoor public venues (bars, restaurants, gyms, theaters, and sports venues) in Boston, would be required to show proof of at least their first COVID-19 vaccine dose by January 15, 2022, and of full vaccination by February 15, 2022.Oh, yeah, some of this is coming back to me. Didn't Boston residents all spend that winter in Florida? I remember the pushback too:
The mandate promoted opposition, and in an interview with Boston Public Radio, Wu stated that she received racist messages in response to vaccine requirements.I'm guessing they went something like "Your people spread the Flu Manchu, so screw you, Wu!"
Some opponents circulated false rumors about Wu being hospitalized for panic attacks while in office.Whaddya' mean, rumors? The whole thing very obviously WAS a panic attack! Shoulda' put HER on the ventilator. It's not just the Kung Flu though, with this lady. She's HARD LEFT, through and through. How does THAT happen to a (formerly) pretty Chinese lady?
Michelle Wu grew up on the south side of Chicago, so she ought to know about race. She's either on some life-long guilt trip or she figures if you can't beat them, and you don't want them to beat (the hell out of) you, join them... for a party.
Yes, yes, I can't eat dog meat due to my faith's stance on specieism. Will there some horse d'Oeuvres available or something?
Now, Mayor Wu has said some blatantly anti-White things before and got called out on it. This latest kerfuffle, her inviting only non-White City Councilpersons(?) to a "Holiday" party, was not MEANT to be as blatant. In fact it was a girls' high-school style clique thing, meant to be announced in secret, but Mayor Wu fat-fingered the [Reply to All] button.
Now, listen, don't get us wrong here at Peak Stupidity. We are nothing if not strict Constitutionalists here. One ought to be able to invite anyone he wants to, and discriminate against anyone he wants to, when it comes to party invitations, just as with anything else. (Except possibly if said party is held on the taxpayers' dime. The taxpayers ought to be invited.)
I would hope Michelle Wu wouldn't have had a problem with the rest of the Boston City Council taking advantage of the email list to email the lot of them about a Whites only Christmas party. Right, Mayor Wu?
The New York Post reports that Mayor Wu has apologized for, well something - Boston Mayor Michelle Wu defends ‘electeds of color’ holiday party after invitation backlash: ‘Honest mistake’. Wait, so she's apologizing for fat-fingering the controls in Outlook but not for having a "Whites need not attend" Christmas party.
In her own words:
You'd expect this lady to have skinny fingers and be playing piano. Must be a stereotype.
It came across pretty clear, but it was just not supposed to come across. Got it. Again, how does someone get like this? I think that's a question that should be answered in a nice analysis by E.H. Hail, who hopefully has the funds for consultations with a psychologist, nay, a whole TEAM of crack psychoanalysts straight out of Vienna.
PS: I stayed off The Unz Review yesterday, so I missed that Steve Sailer had written a post on this. A few things I wrote are duplicated in the comments there - I swear I didn't plagiarize, so help me, Zhou Bia Dien... and that Gay lady... and Marty King, Jr.
iSteve wrote: "Second, “electeds” is a novel and funny word. It’s reminiscent of inviting “retardeds of color.”". I agree. I thought that sounded stupid. How about electards to keep in concise? That'll cover all of them.
* Lots of people would take issue with THAT, calling someone of Taiwanese ancestry "Chinese". Those people would be mostly Taiwanese. However, she can't say squat about this, not with as many mainland Chinese immigrants as there are now.
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That old Wage-Price Spiral phenomenon
Posted On: Thursday - December 14th 2023 7:43PM MST
In Topics: Music Trump Economics Inflation Zhou Bai Dien
Fool me once, shame on you, especially with my being a youngster and you all being PhD economists! Fool me twice, well, that ain't agonna happen regarding this old theory of the clueless on inflation.
Many of you readers will remember this. It was the mid/late 1970s through early '80s. Inflation was high. Per Paul McCartney and his old band*, prices at the grocery story were higher than the time before, wages had to go up to match prices, and mortgage rates were in the high teens. We are seeing this again, except for the mortgage rates in the high teens (much higher by the FED would bust the dollar)
Yeah, back in the day, these "experts" were saying on the B&W TV on Sunday mornings that it's a spiral, that's all. High prices mean wages must go up, so companies then must charge higher prices to make money, causing employees to demand higher wages, causing... [Hey, when do we get off this thing? - Ed] It sounded right to me. "Sure, if just wages or prices could be held constant for a few months or whatever it takes, then the whole inflation thing will be licked. #WIN - That's Whip Inflation Now. Whip it good! (No wait, Devo came around at the tail end of it, 6 years after the WIN buttons, and # signs were for "pounds", dammit!) I don't remember anyone asking how the spiral got started. Just a perturbation of The Force?
Well, what was a kid to know about the Federal Reserve and monetary phenomena? Didn't the economists know about this stuff nearly half a century ago though? Well there was Milton Friedman, back in 1970, saying "It [inflation] is always and everywhere, a monetary phenomenon." Yet, there was talk out of these heads** about price controls, wage controls, and wage and price controls. Though no Socialist even in that day, I still figured temporary measures such as those might stop the whole inflation thing.
Well, they've been controlling wages hard since that time by opening the borders and immigration depts. wide and high for that cheap labor. You'll still hear "I did that"*** Bai Dien calling out some company for being mean and jacking up prices, just, what, for the freaking hell of it? (Their inputs aren't all labor.) Prices go up very simply because Supply & Demand. For a given productivity more (FED created) currency is chasing the same goods and services, so prices of them will go up.
I really hope I don't start hearing about that Wage-Price Spiral this time around. It'd be nice if Americans could learn the simple cause of inflation from not just two guys! (Ron Paul and me, that'd be. Milton Freeman died in '06.)
Tell you what, I've got to repeat this song. Just due to the one verse, it fits this post, or any one of the many Inflation posts on this blog.
I took my bag**** into the grocery store.
The price is higher than the time before.
Old man asked me "Why is it more?"
I said you should have seen me with the poker man.
I had a honey and I bet a grand.
Just in the nick of time I looked at his hand.
Let's go, let's go, let's go, let's go
down to junior's farm where I want to lay low.
Low life, high life, oh, let's go.
Take me down to junior's farm.
Take me down, Jimmy!
Junior's Farm was not on any of the Wings great albums, except maybe a greatest hits collection. "Jimmy" is Jimmy McCollough, lead guitarist, one of a few in succession, in addition to Denny Laine, always with this band. This was, in fact, Mr. McCollough's first song recorded with the band. He died very young at 26, as many rock stars did, due to rock star causes, aka drugs.
* Yes, this guy was in a famous band before he was a solo artist, very long ago. It was called Wings
** Not to imply for certain they were indeed pot heads, as "heads" meant during those years, but ...
*** Now, I'm not at all saying it's all on Bai Dien here. That EXTRA $4,000,000,000,000 spent cause, GERMS!, was instigated with Trump in office and the Congress of the time. Additionally, Trump has been known to brag and deflect blame. Maybe you haven't noticed this ... he's so subtle ...
**** See, McCartney was nothing if not GREEN.
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Do you have a buddy?
Posted On: Thursday - December 14th 2023 9:04AM MST
In Topics: Genderbenders University Humor
This post may or may not be humorous for the reader, as some stories go over much better orally. It IS for me though, and I thank my good friend for letting me borrow this one for the blog. Anything for the blog...
About the image: Early in the lifetime of Peak Stupidity, a commenter suggested there be images with the posts, and I agree this is important.* It's nice to have some help envisioning the story.
This story is from an engineering classroom in the 1980s. B&W pictures were already just for artsy folks and those with low budgets in the mid-1980s, but that's all I got. Any pictures I pulled up of "Chinese professor American university classroom", or with "engineering" thrown in there showed diverse classes with lots of women and weird new furniture.
In those days, there would have been 85% to 95% guys in the class - occasionally 100%, almost all White, and old-fashioned metal/wood individual adult classroom desks/chairs. Oh, and at that point I'd venture that there'd be no more than 10-15% foreign professors, perhaps 5-10% of professors being Oriental. The kids, and I can vouch for this, may have seen NO, or just a handful of, Chinese people in their lives before** and had a hell of a time with the accents.
Finally, for this set-up. No straight man wants to be assumed to be gay. If not insulting, something is not right if people think that. Even today, that's the case, though things are different. If it's a hiring manager that makes that assumption, than, well, let it slide - that's nothing but a good thing, so long as he's not trying to pick you up!
SEE?! This is why it's hard to do this. Really, the biggest problem is that you can't envision my friend's facial expressions, but I can. I'm laughing already ...
Alright, so my friend came into the engineering class 5-10 minutes late. You get behind in there, and catching up is not easy, so the Chinese professor was concerned about this. After a while he came up to my friend's desk, wondering how he'd get the notes he'd missed taking.
"Do you have a buddy?" [Sounded like "body".]
"Errr, what?"
[Very slowly now.. ] "Do you have a bud-dy?"
[Getting pissed now, but this guy's the Professor!] "What?" [Looks around the room at the other students.]
"Do.. .you ... have ... a ... bud-dy?
"Whadda' mean?!!"
The whole class was cracking up, as I am now.
* Unless I have no opportunity to grab some image or present one of my own, I do this for each post. That is, unless there's video in the post.
** I knew a brother and sister only, but then there may have been 4 or 5 more at whatever Chinese restaurant there was around. (They would have been from Taiwan or Hong Kong. Almost no mainland Chinese people came to America in those years.)
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Dispatches from The Middle Kingdom: Internet Update
Posted On: Wednesday - December 13th 2023 7:46PM MST
In Topics: Internets Websites China iEspionage
That's what I get for depending on my memory after over 4 months. I'd wanted to do a comparison of website access in China in '23 vs the situation in '17, as covered here.
No, I didn't take notes, and I apologize for that. I'll just note the few things I do remember, which includes one important point. You can see that yahoo has been banned in China for a couple of years now. Yahoo news is nothing but Regime Narrative distribution, but I will say they took a stand when it comes to Chinese heavy-handedness and its Orwellian urge to control information.
Per this article from the time on a Chinese site, no it's not that, it's a...
... move that experts say is driven by its own business failure and has nothing to do with China's business and legal environment.But,
In a statement emailed to the Global Times, the company citied [sic] "the increasingly challenging business and legal environment in China" as its reason for exit. Yahoo's exit also prompted criticisms in some foreign media outlets about China's business and legal environment for foreign firms.Then again,
However, such assertions are refuted by Chinese internet and legal experts, who attributed the US company's failure to its poor competitiveness in the Chinese market.Sure, I'll believe a Chinese expert on internet freedom when I get done aptly listening to Anthony Fauci teach me about contagious disease.
Anyway, youtube was still off the air there, with nothing but black frames of whatever size the webmaster made them. I really, really wish I'd tried, or remembered what the deal was with bitchute or rumble.
I was able to read and comment on The Unz Review with no problem other than the same sporadic blockage that I see in America. Peak Stupidity was up too. With all that I write about China, you'd think some cadre over there in Peking would have found us. (Maybe it's because I write "Peking", and that evades their searches.)
Here's the big point: The Chinese can't seem to block anything downloaded on smart phones. Yet that's what many people (not me, because it's exasperating!) use as their primary means of getting on-line, from what I see, most ESPECIALLY in China. As most besides the high-status Government types pretty much missed the whole Alexander Graham Bell landline era, I doubt many Chinamen had much in the way of desktop computers for very long before the time of the Apple iCrap.
The Chinese Government controls The Peoples' iEspionage devices in many ways, the most basic being the registration of the SIM cards. A National ID card - no simple piece of laminated card stock anymore - is needed to get a SIM card, and the number of them one may get is limited. We needed to borrow a phone belonging to a Chinese woman for some apps. I didn't want to get her in trouble looking at this or that, so I can't be sure it could also get any website I could on mine. I could see there possibly being a difference, even though we were, of course, using Chinese networks. Does my carrier have a deal with them in which the data is downloaded outside China on our normal network here, then sent along?
I don't know enough about it, so I'll stop here. Is there some fundamental computer-technological reason the Chinese Gov't can't block websites on phones?* It'd be cool if there were.
* Yahoo is a different story, as it was yahoo's call to NOT be accessible from China.
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Fall of Minneapolis - Last Responders
Posted On: Monday - December 11th 2023 7:04PM MST
In Topics: Lefty MegaStupidity Race/Genetics Legal Stupidity
(Caution: Reader discretion advised! There are references in this post to pieces of video containing very bad memories of plexiglas and face masks. Rated PG-19.)
I've read questions and discussion about the "First Responders"* and their role in the life and death of National Martyr George Floyd, that otherwise ordinary (for black reprobates) Monday in May of '20. We'll just go old-school here and call them EMS or ambulance drivers and firemen and -women.
That firewoman above is at-the-time 2-year employee of the Minneapolis Fire Department, one Genevieve Hansen. The screenshot above from The Fall of Minneapolis was taken in the courtroom during the criminal trial of cop Derek Chauvin. (The reader should start at the 55:45 mark.) She doesn't look good in it. I don't mean that just her non-girlish figure and the various dumb looks on her face. She comes across as completely for the Narrative of George Floyd the Martyr. Well, I suppose she was a witness for the prosecution (as far as I know), fair enough, but she can be seen as a bullshitter, to say the least.
The cops called a dispatcher for EMS 36 seconds after finally getting this guy pinned down. That's when they were sure he had medical problems, though they must have had a real clue since the time he rolled down the window of his car long before. At some point later, maybe a couple of minutes - no more than 9 - Miss Hansen was at the scene, but not on duty. She made an effort to ask the cops about EMS, and they told her something about it. At that point she became one with the on-looking harrassers, both unprofessional in actions and looks. The documentary shows all this.
Back to the trial, Miss Hansen told the attorney questioning her that she knew there was a Fire Station, #17, just a couple of blocks away. The question put to her was whether the cops were supposed to arrange that or the dispatchers. Of course the dispatchers do, and she had to know that already. I do, and I'm not a first, second, or even third responder (unless it's by accident). (Go to 57:12 in the documentary for this.) My question as the defense attorney x-examining this piece of work would have been "If the fire station is only 2 blocks away, why didn't YOU run down there yourself to alert someone, since the dispatchers were having miscommunications with the firemen?"
That was the deal - there was a delay (over 8 minutes) in the arrival of the ambulance - which came before any firemen, who had arrived, but at the Cup Foods, which was no longer where the cops and George Floyd were. It couldn't have been far, as the guy never ran, and the whole reason this controversial knee on the shoulder/neck move was done was because they never could get him fully into one of the police cars. Was that delay and miscommunications due to AA in the hiring of dispatchers? That's very possible, but I don't know.
The video shows transcription of a few calls related to this delay on the police radio. (@ 58:50.) See what you think.
Peak Stupidity will not analyze the whole Derek Chauvin/George Floyd story. There's the documentary, and our readers likely have found many sources and already formed solid opinions. There's one more small piece of the story I may write about, but it's only tangentially related to the whole thing.
It's time for something different tomorrow. Back to China? Not physically, but yeah...
* Actually he cops are considered to be First Responders too, but they are what this story is all about, their being there the whole time.
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The falls of Minneapolis and South Africa, and Alex Jones "on" Brian Seltzer
Posted On: Saturday - December 9th 2023 7:07PM MST
In Topics: Websites Humor Movies Pundits Race/Genetics Anarcho-tyranny Legal Stupidity
First off, it may seem like Peak Stupidity is nothing but a spin-off, as they used to say in TV land, of The Unz Review. I do take a lot of idea for posts off that site. I wouldn't say that's where all our news comes from, but it leads me pretty well to stories. Also, it's my go-to site for entertainment, especially for the posts from iSteve (Steve Sailer, that is.)
The first 2 of these 3 items today come from that site, so make of that what you will.
Jared Taylor is a race realist and the guy we featured in a short interview clip at the beginning of this week.* He puts together weekly posts on his American Renaissance site that get crossposted here on The Unz Review. I wrote "puts together" rather than "writes", as these are a mixture of short pieces of text, some pictures, and some video clips. I realized that his own video show does the same job of putting the same things together. Mr. Taylor speaks in a soft civil manner, always calm, collected, and reasonable.
This latest one about the fall of not Minneapolis (yet), but South Africa is only 13 minutes, but he does an excellent job in that time. The ruination of that once 1st-World country was the subject of an 8-part series here on Peak Stupidity earlier this year called Cry the DeConstructed Country. (See Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - 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 video goes right along with what we had to say, but his format is perhaps better.
From Jared Taylor's post Mooncalves at Harvard Think They Understand Africa:
What a sorry shame it is, all brought on by do-gooder Whites of the Western world, for the most part. It's just under 3 decades since White rule ended, and South Africa has first gradually, and lately, suddenly, gone to ruin. Please take the time to watch that short video.
Next, for those interested in The Fall of Minneapolis documentary, in addition to that review of ours, you will probably want to check out this review by one Anastasia Katz**. This one is so much more comprehensive than ours that we feel a bit embarrassed. However, I don't usually have time for something like that - yesterday's post was just a quick overview, and the idea was to help spread the video around. The comments under Miss Katz's review are fairly lit.
Finally, via a friend's link to ZeroHedge, I got to the Tucker Carlson interview of Alex Jones. They too, were pretty lit, as apparently, previous to the interview Mr. Jones made a prank phone call to one Brian Seltzer (of CNN) while drinking with Tucker Carlson. I'd never heard of the guy before, but Alex Jones has. This is not typical of the whole 1 hour, 35 minute interview, but, yeah, Alex Jones most definitely had heard of Brian Seltzer.
(Rumble lets one specify a start time, but not an end time, apparently. Give Tucker a chance to come back on and then give him ~20 more seconds.)
Whatever meds he's on, I want the opposite, Doc! OK, look, I like Alex Jones. He speaks a lot of truth. Besides all of the discussion in the whole interview, which I can't get into here, Mr. Jones has been a stalwart Constitutionalist in the past, back when there was still more of a point to it. His voice has improved a bit, part of the time too. However ... he can get a little, errrr, carried away? Nah, I think this is entertainment, and he loves it so. So does Tucker, So do I. I am smiling as I write this.
Is he even using a phase shifter at one point, you know, like Paul McCartney used to?
That was a busy blog week! We'll never run out of material, folks. Thanks for reading and writing in. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.
* Additionally, we've written about him here and here.
** I had to guess on Miss vs. Mrs, as I couldn't find out much about her. She is wisely pretty anonymous. What I did find out is that, lo and behold, he writes for American Renaissance too here. In fact, I realize I'd read her previous article.
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Another Year, another dud
Posted On: Friday - December 8th 2023 5:23PM MST
In Topics: Movies Socialism/Communism
Since it's turning into movie week here at Peak Stupidity, we continue with a review of an actual fiction movie. This review of the '11 Cannes Film Festival-featured* Another Year will be fairly brief. "If you can't think of anything nice to say, ..." hasn't stopped us in the past, but this will be closer to taking that advice.
There was really no excuse for my having sat through this entire motion picture. True, it was free. However, after the first minute of the movie, I realized that this was one I'd borrowed from the library before. The first scene, which didn't really have squat-all to do with the movie plot, if you could call it that, showed a black lady doctor at the British National Health Service, or so I assume. (The characters spoke British English, and there being this doctor and the one very depressing insomniac patient, it must have been the NHS. That was depressing due to the Socialism alone.) Due to this politically correct scene at the very beginning, I had almost nothing invested, so I ejected this sucker last time.
Why did I venture further this time? I don't know. Even though the movie was free to watch for me (thanks property taxpayers!), my 2 hours and 9 minutes was worth something. Didn't the producers of Another Year realize that?
Here's the plot, such as it is: There's this older happily married couple. They do some gardening at a plot a drive away from their house, they have a son that visited later on in the movie, and their 35-40 y/o friend Mary from the lady of the house's workplace - that health service office - comes over a lot to share her troubles. There are four seasons of this in the movie.
Let me just say that Another Year may be a "slice of life" and very artsy and true-to-life. Sure, but, I really thought that, in those 2 hours and 9 minutes, something was gonna freaking happen! Nope.
The reader who has seen this picture may differ greatly in opinion. If you haven't seen it, you may want to read the synopsis and the high-rating reviews there on the IMDB page linked-to above. I went the other way for my after-viewing perusal of reviews. A guy named Gerry wrote:
2 hours and 5 minutes of an utter suicidal, depressive, boring image of life in the UK. I know its bad here in the UK but if this were a true example of life in the UK, then, I think there would be a huge outcry to legalise assisted suicide in this country.From a few more not-so-impressed reviewers:
No plot, no story development, no character development, characters come and go without warning and without any conclusion. How this can be nominated for an Oscar is beyond me. Yes we all know that award ceremonies these days are politically motivated, but what is the motivation behind this? 'Don't complain about life, it could be like this'.
It is like having a webcam on a series of uncomfortable gatherings that you can only be thankful you are not attending, except that you are paying to witness them instead. Two hours of my life that I will never get back and I would like a refund!You paid money, as in real British sterling? Sucker!
Having had 2 friends fall asleep whilst I watched it with them (one of which has never before fallen asleep in a film) proves my point at how excruciating this film is to watch.Welcome to the .... zzzzz... party(?), pal! I only fell asleep 2 or 3 times, but that's not unusual.
This film certainly aged me. 2 hours of plodding wooden drama with minimal interplay between the principals and almost no story development at all.Not every IMDB user thought these reviews helpful. Believe you me, they're helpful.
A great sense of relief came over me when the fade to screen indicated that it was over after a penultimate excruciatingly slow morose scene between 2 near mute characters.
My idea of hell would be dinner with the director of this leaden effort.
A totally joyless experience all round, in keeping with most of his body of work.
Thankfully it was half price day at the cinema so we only felt 1/2 cheated of our hard earned cash.
PS: I almost forgot - the movie was filmed in Derby and Derbyshire, England. Good job, John, getting out!
* Note to self: This year, spend more time at the gun range instead.
Comments (6)
The Fall of Minneapolis
Posted On: Thursday - December 7th 2023 9:33PM MST
In Topics: Movies Media Stupidity Race/Genetics ctrl-left Legal Stupidity
The astute, on-the-ball Peak Stupidity readers will have probably all heard of this documentary and many likely already watched it. I'll just refer to The Fall of Minneapolis as a movie here, and this will be a review, for those not sure if they want to spend the 1 hour and 42 minutes watching. The video appears below, but the link here goes to the movie on rumble in case you have any problems here (such as not being able to view full-screen, etc.)
There's no reason for me to go over the whole case here, of the death of fentanyl-overdosing, violent, reprobate George Floyd, the excuse for a summer or more of violence, looting, burning, and destruction, then the racially-motivated show trial. I'd learned a lot within a few days of what real story was more likely than that this poor innocent George Floyd was the victim of murder.
What really miffs me when I read arguments on-line today (with the news of Derek Chauvin having been stabbed 22 times in the Federal prison in Tucson) is that it’s taken 3 years for people to get the story! Maybe it’s because I DIDN’T watch TV news on the story that I DID know what really happened – not all details, mind you, but the gist of it – within a couple of weeks.
I’m not a cop, forensic expert, lawyer, any of that. I just read things and pulled up video at the time. Some of it has indeed been censored. Maybe the public will SOMEDAY, EVENTUALLY learn that they will be more informed if they don’t watch the standard Lyin’ Press Narrative Infotainment. It shouldn’t take this long, to where the man got railroaded in a coerced Stalinist show trial after pressure from months of Black Looter Mayhem and antifa Commie destruction and threats.
OK, about The Fall of Minneapolis now: The title doesn't really fit well, first of all. This movie is not so much about the decline of the city of Minneapolis due to the the death of St. Floyd and the resulting mayhem. It's about the actions that took place that May 25th of '20, the initial portion of the rioting and destruction with an emphasis on the 3rd Precinct police station, the railroading of Derek Chauvin in his trial, and interviews with many people involved, including Mr. Chauvin himself (only audio, from prison).
I would apportion the duration of discussion in the movie as such:
20 minutes: The arrest and attempted booking of George Floyd, with bodycam and other footage. This footage was tedious just watching, much worse for the cops trying to put this dumb, drugged-up reprobate into the cop car. He wouldn’t let them put him in the back, and he is a big guy. It was that, or I guess, as Steve Sailer says, you don’t arrest Black! people if they don’t want to be arrested, and too bad about the counterfeit twenties being passed around… and the woman threatened by Floyd with a gun to her pregnant belly.
The cops called the EMS early on, but the firemen went to the wrong location (quite likely due to incompetent AA dispatchers that can’t communicate well) and the ambulance took forever.
20 minutes: The first few days of destruction - protesting, looting, and burning. This included a pretty long segment about the abandonment then of the 3rd precinct (police station). I gotta say, though that evacuation under pressure from a violent mob must have been stressful, I really didn't appreciate seeing the police officials involved breaking into tears in the interviews. That'd be the women for the most part. Come on. I'm sorry, but I can think of things to cry about later, but that wasn't it. Perhaps these women shouldn't be involved next time. Its' one thing for the Mayor of Minneapolis Jake Frey to make big fake sobs at St. Floyd's funeral - he's a politician - but those big men doing that fake tear-wiping thing... please stop.
10 minutes: The movie focused on the Lyin' Press infotainment that stirred up the mob, politicians such as that evil Mayor Frey and Bai Dien himself, and then the Black! Reverend grifters and that crowd.
5 minutes: The question of exactly how George Floyd died is important, and the first autopsy that showed he didn't die by
20-25 minutes: Derek Chauvin's trial was a big part of the movie. I'll write about a few aspects of this in another post.
15- 20 minutes: There were interviews with cops involved with the trial and the Moms of both Derek Chauvin and Alex Keung, one of the other 3 cops present - he was sentenced to 3 years behind bars, I believe. Then, there were short phone interviews with both Mr. Chauvin and Mr. Keung from prison.
As I noted in the beginning, the whole event of this convenient excuse for BLM/antifa to run amok about the city of Minneapolis (first) was not the story here. The movie was mostly centered on the happening on the street that one day, and the things that the Minneapolis cops, especially the one guy, experienced in the aftermath. It is a movie made from the viewpoint of the cops.
That doesn't mean it's not worth watching for anyone else. The 01:42 was not a waste of my time, even though I'd known a lot of it. I'd not followed the court case though, so that part was somewhat new to me.
One would like to think that those who have pushed the black awokening business to near the brink since the Summer of '20 would have something to gain by watching this movie. I know better. They don't want to learn something, for lots of them, something that they already know. They are not interested in the truth, just power. They gained a lot of power by taking advantage of the death of that stupid worthless reprobate George Floyd. Lots of Americans are complicit in giving them this power by acquiescing to the following years of bullshit.
Here's the movie:
Comments (13)
Spies Like Us, starring Manuel Rocha
Posted On: Wednesday - December 6th 2023 7:50PM MST
In Topics: Commies Immigration Stupidity US Feral Government
I don't know if anyone cares anymore, people under 40 knowing pretty much nothing of the Cold War, or any history not on twitter, but the infiltration of Communists into the US Feral Gov't was a Big Thing. I'd heard of the House Un-American Affairs Committee (HUAC) of the House of Reps from its heyday in the 1950's. (This resulted bitching Hollywood stars who were on blacklists, because ... they were Communists.) I'd heard of the Venona Transcripts, important evidence of espionage in telegraph form, a small percentage of which was released in the early '90s.
It wasn't until I read M. Stanton Evans' Blacklisted by History a year and a half ago that I got a bigger picture. Much of the espionage and Communist influence was happening within the US State Department, a natural thing to have done if you want to have changed the policy of the most powerful nation in the world.
Well, it STILL IS! It's not one of their normal reporting subjects, but since the guy, one Manuel Rocha, was an immigrant, VDare's A.W. Morgan posted yesterday: Immigrant Former U.S. Ambassador Spied For Cuba Since 1981. That's 42 years of a naturalized citizen working against his adoptive nation!. Surely he was vetted ...
Spy Manuel Rocha started in the State Dept. He ended as head of the military Southern Command, one of 11 unified Combatant Commands (COCOMs) in the Department of Defense. He headed up the portions of the military operating in Central and South America and the islands of the Caribbean. No conflict of interest there, I assure you.... A.W. Morgan included a long biography within the US Gov't that anyone "serving" his country may consider a distinguished career. That's not the case, though. It's been learned finally that this was a career that only Mr. Rocha's Mother, the old Commies Senator McCarthy was after, and Fidel Castro would have been proud of.
Again, doing the jobs that (most) Americans just won't do ...
PS: Rocha stared his career just a year or two after Castro's Cast-outs, the Mareil boatlift. One may wonder if he was one of those 125,000 mostly criminal Cubans who came to Florida to help America, or something. OTOH, most of them would have hated Castro.
PPS: Peak Stupidity has posted info on Chinese spies, here, here, and here, also using information reported on VDare. From my personal knowledge and other reading, they don't seem to concentrate on the State Dept. It'd be more like industrial spying from both private industry and university and National high-tech labs and such.
* Ha, history.com says here that this was going on "... during the anticommunist hysteria of the 1950s." Oh, Communism was real enough, Ministry-of-Truth Channel.com!
Comments (4)
ThreeCranes on a not-so-glorious future
Posted On: Wednesday - December 6th 2023 1:51PM MST
In Topics: Commies Globalists The Future Bible/Religion
Unz Review commenter ThreeCranes, a technical guy, as I recall, wrote a long gloomy comment about Wokeness and the future that was pretty interesting to me and worth sharing.
Here it is in its entirety:
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The current establishment throws stones at “the Far Right” secure in the knowledge that their police and military will protect them from reprisal. They truly ARE privileged in that they exist in a feedback free world.
But one day, the soldier or policeman wakes up, sees clearly and decides not to open fire upon others like himself who are not privileged with immunity and instead turns around and confronts those behind him who had been goosing him on.
The entire propaganda effort of all the establishment news sources is dedicated to putting off that momentous turnabout. Will they succeed? Can reality be denied forever? Can the grain of the Universe be perpetually plowed against?
Taoism tells us, “No.” But is Taoism correct?
The Communists thought, “Yes. If we control all sources of information available in a society, we can dictate the thoughts in the HiveMind so thoroughly that none can wander off the plantation.”
This is the reason Wokeness must be constantly upheld, the battle joined against the unwoke every moment of every day, the incessant pressure inside the minds of the Woke that drives them half nuts to the point that they need to medicate themselves with anti-depressants washed down with a twenty eight dollar bottle of red.
Their need for conformity is so great that they will gladly kill us just to relieve the tension throbbing in their brains that is caused by their religious yearning for Absolute Peace and Silence for God’s sake “What is wrong with you people?” as they listen to NPR telling them that if you get the shot you will not, repeat NOT, catch Covid.
And then the whole stinkin’ lot of them, the Royal Families, the Biden Crime Family etc. come down with the disease so there’s no one left to blame but they push the shot anyway as though no one could grasp, understand that the damn thing was a hoax and useless and, amazingly enough, the same gullible Fools lined up for yet another booster even after the curtain had been pulled aside.
What is wrong with the people who ask “What is wrong with these people?” is that they are asking the wrong people about the wrong people. They side with their jailer. They are Kapos who act as though their privileges were dependent upon the degree to which they keep their charges, the irredeemable basket of Deplorables, in line.
But the day will come when a liberating army appears on the horizon and the Officers and camp guards will flee, the Kapos will be left to take the blame and they will be strung up by their heels in the public square and for just one moment the Sun will stand still in the sky at high noon and the world will enjoy a moment’s respite from the free for all catch as catch can that is our daily run of affairs and all will take one deep breath.
Well, one can dream.
I believe our current system is the perpetuation of the prison camp system which came into widespread usage before, during and after WW2. Virtually all combatants took part in this phenomenon, became adept at it and carried it forward into what we live in today, the present era.
We live in a work camp, where labor is herded around by the needs of the Machine as it is administered by lab-coated technicians, their efficiency now augmented with computerization of practically everything, supplemented by vast data collection capabilities which can see into every nook and cranny of an individual’s life. “Individual” is the wrong word here since there are none. The system relentlessly hammers down the oddball nail that sticks up.
There are still pockets of freedom where one can live free from the prying eye of the all powerful great Eye in the Sky, but they must be sought out. Most inmates have no interest in doing so, voluntarily wearing their prisoner ID bracelet i.e. carrying their cell phones, with them at all times, voluntarily beaming information up to their Father God, please forgive us for we have sinned, just our mere existence is sin, we were born into it through no fault of our own yet we are still responsible for it and not You, oh Great One who has made us in your image but not quite because thou art perfect and we stand in need of Your benevolent redemption so watch over us and the group of Shylocks who invented this steaming bucket of crap laugh as they defraud these poor lost souls, deprive them of their dignity and feed them media swill and insect slops and whip the poor buggers to death as in Dostoevsky’s novel the poor horse till it drops to its knees and the enraged Master whips it all the harder to get it to stand back up in the traces.
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The last paragraph, starting at "up to their Father God..." is not something that I particularly agree with. It may have a different meaning, depending on whether the writer meant to put a comma, where I have one [in bold] here:
"... and we stand in need of Your benevolent redemption so watch over us [,] and the group of Shylocks who invented this steaming bucket of crap laugh as they defraud these poor lost souls, deprive them of their dignity and feed them media swill and insect slops and whip the poor buggers to death...I like the part about Communism, of course. As for this last part, I don't see our getting out of this mess easily without some strong beliefs in forces greater than ours.
Comments (3)
Nimarata, the Koch brother, the AFP, the Donald, and some dude on my lawn
Posted On: Tuesday - December 5th 2023 6:54PM MST
In Topics: Elections '16 - '24 Trump Globalists
(Image copied from VDare.)
VDare's Washington Watcher II put together an article connecting 4 of those 5 entities. The last one is from me. WWII explains that Kochtopus Endorsement Of Haley Shows Its True Open Borders Colors—And Hers. We explained the Nimarata moniker before, and the regular Peak Stupidity should know that we are not at all fans of this Globalist traitor to South Carolina and wannabe traitor to America.
VDare cares nearly only, and above all, about the immigration invasion, and this lady is all for it. (Yeah, she decried the importation of Moslems on account of the current excitement level of people her ilk have imported. She doesn't mind inviting in all the rest of the world and even those types again when the heat is off.)
One of the pro-open-borders Koch brothers has died a while back. ("Koch" rhymes with coke, the soft drink or the drug.) We can't say Koch Brothers now, and since I don't know the one guy left's name - don't wanna know - we can, per the article, at least be aware of his organization. That would be the AFP (Americans For Prosperity - a dumb name if I ever heard one - hey, Koch, who the hell ISN'T for prosperity?)
The AFP has never made an endorsement for a Presidential candidate before, they say, but, because, per this announcement of theirs a week back, "Donald Trump and Joe Biden will only further perpetuate the country’s downward spiral in politics.", they endorse Nimarata Randhawa Halley of Dillon,
Anyway, the same day that this article came out I saw someone on the walkway headed away from the house. It turned out he'd hung a flyer on our doorknob that advised us to vote for Nimarata. By the time I saw it, I had already walked out to see what the young guy wanted. There was no point in being rude, so I just asked him if he wanted the flyer back. This guy's golf-style shirt had the letters AFP. Whaddya' know, I'd just read the VDare article that day. These people are fast!
The young man admitted that he knew not much about Mrs. Haley, but this AFP organization had just put a lot of money into her campaign, so that's good, right? Well, I had to fill him in, as he told me straight up that he didn't know who he would vote for, and, this is just a job, because the campaign has all that money now. I explained things. After giving the guy a bottle of water and offering him a banana (he's paid by the hour), I went through just a little bit of politics with him. I explained what was completely wrong with Nimarata Haley, and gave a him short run-down on the pros of Ron DeSantis and the pros and cons of Donald Trump.
From Washington Watcher II's article again, I will demonstrate one of the cons of the latter guy to the Peak Stupidity readers. This is his reply to the news about the AFP and Haley.
Hey, it starts out good. Nah, I don't like "DeSanctimoneous", not because it's any kind of insult, but more like because it's NOT. It's just lame, because it means nothing, as that's not a DeSantis trait at all. Stick with the simple stuff like "Birdbrain". I like that one, as it fits, and not enough people use "birdbrain" anymore.**
Yes, "Americans for China [sic] Prosperity" and Making America, not the outside, World Great Again!", I like that. Hit 'em hard with the truth. After "birdbrain", it goes wrong. She said a lot of shit, and your dumb ass appointed this NeoCon Globalist as head of the UN, remember? Don't take it personally. "She better start running FAST!" It's not a horse race, man. Bragging about your "standings" is not helpful. Brag about not starting wars. Brag about slowing immigration way down and being ready to shut it down and start deporting. FOCUS, Trump, FOCUS!
I wish I had more time to talk to the young guy passing out flyers who didn't know much about politics, but he had a 1" stack of them still to hand out. I gave him mine back to save the planet.
* h/t to Steve Sailer
** "Jackass" too. Not enough people use "jackass". I hope that will come back in vogue some time soon.
Comments (12)
Chedderflation
Posted On: Tuesday - December 5th 2023 9:58AM MST
In Topics: Humor Inflation
Yes, these inflation posts (and titles) are getting pretty cheesy.
One last inflation by deflation observation before we get off this kick for a while. Geeze, Louise, have you looked at the prices of cheese? Yeah, well, this name brand cheese from the fancier grocery store is what I'd been getting semi-regularly a while back. Besides the many delicious varieties, there were variations in what you get in a package.
My 12 y/o noted that the number of slices varied, but I explained we'd best compare them by weight. "Those 12 slices here might still be less cheese than the 10 slices there." He got it. The packages were either 8 oz (1/2 lb) or 1 lb. The lb. packages were usually a slightly better deal, and sales would often be only on certain types of cheese. Anyway, beside prices having gone up 25%, I'd guess, selection was easy, cheesy.
Not anymore, it isn't. You may have to perform gay gestures with your fingers or mash ctrl+ on a real computer to zoom in, but you'll see that now the package weights vary... always lower, of course. There is an 8 oz package, a 7 oz package and a 6 oz package. Note that the number of slices isn't linear with weight, just as it wasn't before.
OK, how are they going to do this? Does a computer program work out the best way to fool people or at least get them on-board. I could see a pretty sophisticated program, written by John Derbyshire with his higher math background, being used. With the input of massive amounts of sales data for the various sizes, sharpnesses of the cheddars, elasticity of the Swiss*, different store chains where people are known to be dumber or smarter, 1st derivatives - changes in sales per rate of decrease in mass, 2nd derivatives... it might take 25,000 lines of optimization code written by the best geeks Bombay has to offer.
Great work, marketing gurus, but now shopping for cheese is NOT easy. Cheeze whiz, I hope, still comes in similar weight cans as it did in my day, after subtracting propellant:
* Economists say that demand for Swiss cheese is inelastic, but I say that theory is full of holes.
Comments (6)
Jaredai Taylorsan on the rights of the Huwhiteodomo
Posted On: Monday - December 4th 2023 4:06PM MST
In Topics: Pundits Race/Genetics
OK, so don't nobody wanna talk about 2 by 2's and Moments of Inertia. Fine! (I don't blame ya'.) Though I have one more inflation by deflation post coming - nothing to do with lumber and there will be no math - now for something completely different.
The following 7-odd minute video is part (it can't be all, I'm sure) of an interview of Racial Realist Jared Taylor some members of the Japanese press. Mr. Taylor is founder of "AmRen" or the American Renaissance organization. It is strongly and unabashedly pro White people. Mr. Taylor is a tough bird, I gotta say, not just to say certain obvious things publicly - when they let him, but to always stay so calm under pressure.
In the comment thread of the Unz Review link above, I found a tweet with this pretty cool video. The way I am with searches - I try the obvious first - doesn't freaking work - I feel lucky to have gotten this one on bitchute.
As soon as you get started, you may be shocked to see that everyone is speaking Japanese. Usually, everyone around the world caters to English speakers, but Jared Taylor speaks fluent Japanese. I know he lived in Japan for quite a few years (don't know at what ages), but this is still impressive. And, yes, the two Japanese women are pretty cute - does that explain Jared Taylor's having lived in Japan for quite a few years?
I can also say that is really nice to see these three journalists hear Jared Taylor out. OTOH, boy do they come into this with a plethora of ignorance*, well, it must be blissful.
* @ 01:20: "But man's equality is written under the Declaration of Independence." Dude, please! First of all, "under" it? I know Olde English is not your first language, but that says "John Hancock' under there. Secondly, the Declaration was a statement - it's not the law. Finally, I guess plenty of Americans don't understand that Jefferson's point was about equal treatment under the law and endowment of natural rights either so what can we expect?
Comments (6)
Inflation by Deflation - building materials Part 2 x 2: Tables
Posted On: Monday - December 4th 2023 8:53AM MST
In Topics: Science Inflation
(Continued from here.)
Yes, this stuff will end, I promise. After all, this site is called Peak Stupidity, not Peak Solid Mechanics. I just want to finish what I started. The "table" in our title today has 2 meanings:
1) 2 x 2's are not thought of as structural lumber, but they can be used as such, and my use of 1 x 2's and 2 x 2'sfor a table I made* is an example.
2) I wanted to put my numbers from Saturday in a couple of nice tables.
2 points should be mentioned. One is that my rounding is off (1% pt) from my previous post.
Secondly, note the last row. If one doesn't care about any of this structural stuff, that is just the decrease in material in mass and volume. Because that's just based on cross-sectional area (they surely won't change length off of the Nominal, will they?), the numbers are the same as for Axial Loading "strength", also based on cross-sectional area. The point is just "how much wood am I getting for my money?"
Just as in the last post, let me tabulate the decreases from a mythical piece of wood with a 2 inch by 2 inch cross-section
OK, fine, last week was inflation week, carrying over into this week, so what about all this? Wood is still not so dear (British terminology) that we don't build nice solid outdoor furniture, for example, that is surely not going to fail, just based on common sense. I.e., it's not something we need to do this engineering on, probably.
That's if you don't build thousands of some item like this as a business. At that point, one may calculate that he needs to use more wood in his structure. That would be this inflation by deflation in action. If nothing else, for our general readership, at least we can look at that last row - how much wood for our money, and think of it just as with containers of Dannon coffee-flavored yogurt. They're making it smaller, so if it's a regular purchase, we're going to have to buy more of it to keep up.
But wait, there's LESS! Adam Smith brought up a good point, using the image below. (A description is in the original. Look at the difference:
Let's talk solid mechanics for just a little longer. Yes, pulling a nail out may demonstrate the difference it inherent strengths of the new vs old wood. I used no quotes this time, because that's just it: inherent "ultimate strength" and other values are obtained by testing material samples in the simplest loading - Axial. A tension test is done using a big machine to pull the sample apart very slowly while taking both load and deformation (stretching) readings.
The breaking strength, a property of say, yellow pine or oak, but also, per Mr. Smith's point, lumber from older vs newer trees, can be compared to the stresses determined by the type of work seen in Saturday's post. It gets a lot more complicated than this, but to put it simply, when stress = strength, it breaks.
Let me digress to that "deformation" measurement. It's important for other reasons, but note that there is that E (Modulus of Elasticity) in the buckling formulae. Also, stress (to compare to strength) does NOT appear. As I said, buckling, being a phenomena of instability, is an odd duck. The critical buckling load is not a function of the inherent strength of the material, but it IS a function of that Modulus, a property that represents elasticity, that is the inverse of stiffness.
We get values of E from tensile tests. Interestingly, E does not very much at all for a same type of material. For example, an alloy of steel can have 3 x the ultimate strength of another alloy of steel, but their E's will not be significantly different. For wood loaded in the grain direction, as both the new and old would be, I also wouldn't expect much of a difference in E, so the buckling "strength" for columns made out of each would be close to the same.
That's not the same for their ultimate strengths, so as to Inflation, the nominal(?) point here, the older stuff gives more for one's money if used structurally and not just for its decorative value at the lodge. I will say that those older 2 x 2's I bought and used in the '90s were probably similar to the current ones in this respect, but who knows? That's just another form of inflation (decrease in value).
I will leave that strength reduction out here and even all the reductions in loading, and get back to the basics. Even here, I will unfortunately have to guess a price for a '90s 2 x 2, but I'll try my best and be conservative. I know that 8 ft. 2 x 4's were in the range of a buck and a quarter or so. (Chime in PLEASE if you have some hard memory on this - I'll change this post.) 8 ft. 2 x 2's couldn't have been more that 75 ¢. Those were not pressure-treated, so I'll compare apples to apples. Let's use that and the current 1.3215" square vs the '90s 1.5" square - a reduction in material to 78% - and the $3.35 (yikes!!) I saw on the Lowes website.
That's 4.7 x the price for a piece of wood, but with the material reduction, 5.7 x the price per volume of wood.*** Over to the MoneyChimp site calculator for the compounding bit: After plugging in 30 years (1993 to 2023) the Chimp says: 6.0% average inflation rate compounded.
Yep. Much of it was recent. You really did that, Zhou! "Awww, shucks ... I had lots of help, from the FED and the PanicFest."
* There were 4 at one point, but some went missing.
** The reason for the quotes was explained previously, but it should be more clear from material later in this post.
*** I was about the write "weight", but, as discussed above, the wood just may be less dense than the '90s stuff.
Comments (4)
Inflation by Deflation - building materials Part 2 x 2.2
Posted On: Saturday - December 2nd 2023 9:23AM MST
In Topics: Science Inflation
This post is a follow-up to both Thursday's Inflation by Deflation - building materials Part 2 x 2 and our 5 y/o post Inflation by Deflation - building materials version. Why is it "2.2" in the title? We're still talking wooden 2 x 2's [sic] here, but, (call it) the 2nd, "2" is now on its 3rd iteration from my adult recollection of dimensions, 1.5" to 1.4" to, now 1.3125" (1 5/16"). (You too may be wondering about the 1.4", which is not a round English unit value. Perhaps it's off by a slight amount, but it wouldn't be much.)
OK, if I'm going to get into structures a bit, I have to put down a number of caveats here. These slides I found have "formulae" for 3 types of loading. Please realize that there is indeed a lot more to it. A non-Engineer who figures "I can design an experimental airplane because I have a copy of this Finite Element Analysis software" is not necessarily the guy to ride along with on the first test flight. There is much more too it, and blindly following analysis software or formulae without knowing more of the theory usually gives bad numbers.
Firstly, no, 1 x 2's and 2 x 2's are not considered residential structural lumber, as was argued to me in comments on The Unz Review. I get that, but that doesn't mean I haven't used it as such. The table top I mentioned had both types in it, and the idea was to support things. That's structural. Many other uses may be structural. Mostly, sure, these are "furring" strips, used for spacing and attachment* of siding or whatever - even that spacing difference screws things up for us though. For the 2 x 2's, since 2 of them don't match up to a 2 x 4, their use around window framing or whatever may be precluded.
Secondly, regarding the engineering calculations, when it comes to using wood (or anything) structurally, usually we're talking about a more complicated arrangement. 2 x 4's are spaced inside sheetrock as a wall, and columns are made of multiple pieces and all that. Still the basic strength differences, new v old, hold when we go from the simple case to the complicated, i.e. real, application.
Thirdly, I've been writing "strength", but it's not the theoretically precise way to discuss structures, just as, well, good luck getting a mechanic to say "36 psi" is your tire pressure rather than the colloquial "36 pounds". What follows is the same as the footnote in that old 1 x 2 post. This is in regard to discussion of bending, but it applies generally:
Technically, the highest stress in the wood in bending occurs at the outside, it's this stress that goes up inversely with the square of thickness (linear with the other dimension, BTW). We should think of the strength of the material as a property of the stuff, whether, in this case, say yellow pine or poplar. We end up with higher stress in the same strength material which means colloquially "lower strength".Finally, these calculation are based on homogeneous, isotropic materials. The first means material with even properties throughout, and the second (this IS different) means that these properties are equal along all three directions. Well, guess what, wood is neither. As far as homogeneity, on the scale we're using it, it's just a matter of knots and such that make it non-homogeneous. That's part of what safety factors are for. Wood is most certainly NON-isotropic, but these kinds of loading will have the grain direction as the important one. Therefore, we can get a fairly decent number for strength of yellow pine, poplar, whatever it is and a somewhat decent number for that "E" (Modulus of Elasticity, the inherent stiffness of the material) used in the buckling formula.
I'm sorry that ALL THAT had to be said before I get started. Were I knot to (typo intended), it would be fair for someone to give me grief about that. Also, in the calculations below, keep in mind that I'm not taking material strength of the wood itself - see Adam Smith's link under the recent post, as that has gone down too. Let's hold that all equal as the same quick-growth lumber, which IS probably the case from the 1990s on. When I write "strength" here, I really mean the ability to hold a certain loading with a certain geometry vs using the older and bigger material.
Now, for the fun part:
Axial loading, whether compression (with a caveat to check for buckling) or tension is very simple. Stresses are the same throughout the cross-section. The simple "normal" (away from or into the surface) are F/A.
Simple, so let's do this. That X-sectional area of these 2 x 2's has gone from 2.25 in2 in the '90s (call them size "A") to 1.96 in2 at least 5 years back (B) to 1.72 in2 recently (C). Therefore, in axial loading, buckling (of long pieces in compression) excluded for now, B pieces are 87% of the strength of A's, while C pieces are only 77% as strong. Now, if we compare to that mythical(?) ACTUAL 2" x 2" cross-section, we get a reduction to 56% axial loading strength A's, to 49% for B's, and to 43% for the newest, the C's.
There is quite a bit to analysis of bending, not least the loading itself, which comes in in that "M", the bending Moment. Some may prefer to think of a torque, but torque is usually thought of about an (almost always) round axis. Moment is more general. That "moment" is not to be confused with the name for the capital "I' terms. That is Moment of Inertia, which is a geometric property of the cross-section. There's a nice little piece of Calculus behind it, but for a rectangle, I is 1/12 bh3. Wait, which side is "b", the base, you ask, and which is "h", the height"? "b" is the side parallel to the axis about which the beam is being bent. For most uses of 2 x 4's in bending, for obvious reasons, b is the short side, the 1.5". (Note which "b" v "h" gives the higher I.) I wrote that for the general rectangular case, but then we have a square here. I = 1/12 x actual dimension4.
That "c" is the distance to the outer "fiber" (they call it), where the highest normal stress is produced. (It's 0 at the centerline.) For this simple rectangular cross-section, c = h/2.
All other things equal besides our having gotten cheated out of material year by year, the bending stress, hence the reduction in strength, goes inversely with the base (b), and inversely with the square of the height (h), of the cross-section. (Note that I goes as the cube of h, but then c, hence h, appears again in the numerator of the formula.) For a square, then, strength of the structure very simply goes down inversely with b3.
Let's do the calculation for bending normal stress for the 3 square cross-sections. B's have 81% of the bending strength of A's, and C's have 67% of that of A's. Starting from that old mythical wood straight outta Sherwood Forest, we get reductions to 42%, to 34%, and to 28% for A's, B's, and C's, respectively.
As a type of loading, buckling is really an odd duck. If you note the formulae, stress in the material, to be compared with its inherent strength, is not in there. That's because buckling is a phenomenon of instability not strength. At a certain critical loading of a column, any slight offset of the load from the centroidal axis** results in bending, but generally columns don't "do" bending. The more the bending deformation (deflection), the higher the offset becomes, increasing the bending moment more, an unstable situation that's really not good for anybody. (Ha, but, there's a lot more to this also. The end "conditions" - how the column is attached to the other structure - are important, as we see in our nice graphic.)
There's that Moment of Inertia for the cross-section again. That's where the changed dimensions come in. Same thing, I = 1/12 bh3 = 1/12 b4 for this square cross-section.
For other things equal, the end conditions, that material property, E for the type of wood, etc, we'll do this buckling load comparison. In this case, I really shouldn't use the word "strength" at all. I'll just refer to how much that critical buckling load - the max limit - is reduced.
Critical load for buckling for B's is 76% of that for A, and for C's it is down to 57%. As compared to the 2 x 2's used in that old mead lodge, we're talking 31%, 24%, and 19% for A's, B's, and C's, respectively.
That's a lot of numbers, so I may make a nice table elsewhere, take a screenshot, and put that in another post. Suffice it to say that, not only are we getting screwed by obvious huge price increases in lumber, but this cross-sectional-dimension version of inflation by deflation is bringing the strength of our wood down, meaning we need more to do the same job.
... and this was to be a short post. Ya' see what I mean?!
* Attaching siding or whatever to a narrower piece can reduce strength of the project too, depending on the application.
** This involves another Calculus-adjacent property of areas (the cross-section again, in this case), the Centroid. It's all cool stuff, IMO.
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[UPDATE 12/02 Eve:] Oops, I = 1/12 bh3. Had left out the 1/12, very important, of course to get the actual number, but it washes out in the comparisons anyway. [NOBODY CARES! - Ed.]
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Peter Brimelow speaks
Posted On: Friday - December 1st 2023 7:42PM MST
In Topics: Commies Immigration Stupidity Pundits Anarcho-tyranny Legal Stupidity
Of the 2 videos embedded here, only the 1st one is really about Peter Brimelow (along with VDare, the castle, etc.) It is an interview OF him, while the second one is a video BY him. I meant to post something about the first one when I first saw it, about some specific point important to me. (... which I'll add when I watch it again and remember what it was!)
What does link these 2 videos is that both of them talk about Communists, using the term liberally, well Classical Liberally, how about?
I can't say I'm responsible for many more VDare writers calling the ctrl-left of today what I call them, but I was ahead of them on this anyway.
A little over 2 weeks back, James Fulford posted Full Video Of Peter Brimelow On Infowars Discussing Letitia James’ Attack On VDARE.com. InfoWars' Harrison Smith is the interviewer for this 20 minute segment.
Then, yesterday, Pat Cleburne posted Wondering Why U.S. Immigration Policy Is Run By Communists? LISTEN To Diana West And Peter Brimelow!. Though it's more of a conversation too, Peter Brimelow asks lots of question of Diana West here. I had never heard of her before (or don't remember hearing...), but I sure like her opinions! The two talk about the connection between the Communism of old and that of today. Mrs. West doesn't see much difference at all between the left of today and that of yesteryear. I beg to differ: Hair dye, tattooes, large-sized yoga pants... The Bolsheviks didn't have any of that stuff.
Here's the first video in which the Lawfare by the Commie Letitia James of NYC against VDare is discussed, along with other Anarcho-Tryanny:
Here's the second video in which Diana West and Peter Brimelow converse about her work and then about the history of leftist infiltration into American Gov't and then all the Institutions.
I haven't finished this one - I will later on. It's very enjoyable hearing people you like discuss the truth.
PS: I felt lucky to get either of these, much less both, to embed here. The first is on rumble, and the second is on bitchute.
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Inflation by Deflation - building materials Part 2 x 2
Posted On: Thursday - November 30th 2023 10:10PM MST
In Topics: Economics Inflation
After that long treatise(?) about the Great German Hyperinflation of one century ago, I figured this would be Inflation Week, here at Peak Stupidity. In other words, for the same donations, you'll get fewer posts. No, that's not ...
Time really flies! It's been 5 years since I wrote this post about the shrinkage of 1 x 2's, and that came out of my having purchased some pieces of 1 x 2 [sic] for the top surface of an outdoor table. It seems like I did that work recently! You can read that post, but I'll just say here the change was marked and very obvious, even before I broke out the calipers.
Anyway, I started a way O/T discussion on an iSteve thread about the shrinkage of bigger lumber, such as some 2 x 8's, being under the mistaken impression that they had shrunk in width (the "8" inch dimension) recently. I was about to write a post here, but, as much as he won't stop arguing, I'm glad Jack D (along with commenter Res, but he with less certainty) corrected me. I had been wrong for years in thinking that all the "Two by" lumber had actual dimensions of 1 1/2" x [nominal - 1/2"] That is true for 2 x 4's and 2 x 6's, but the wider stuff is 1 1/2" x [nominal - 3/4"]. OK, fine, but I have another example that IS true and is pretty damned egregious.
That would be the cough, cough, 2 x 2's, spit. Maybe a reader here would have a more recent and/or precise date, but I do know that through the fairly late 1990s, I would use these on projects, and they would be 1 1/2" x 1 1/2". Because I'd used a few pieces for that same table 5 years back, I can say that the size of this wood has been reduced significantly before that time. I just don't know how long beforehand. Yes, it's significant when they used to look a bit like lumber, and now they look more like walking sticks.
To get data on the old stuff, I went out to the garage with my nice dial calipers I "obtained"* long ago. After scraping the edges and some dirt off, I got just a couple of thousandths under 1.5" for the one dimension and 20 thousandths over for the other. (You could tell these things were ripped, as in sawn the long way, so that explains the difference. I'm not sure if other 2 x 2's of the day were milled on all surfaces, but ones on my old porch are ripped too.)
Then, I found I had a perfect example of the modern 2 x 2 vs the older ones, side by side:
They are both 2 x 2's. The reason the front one looks like it has a rectangular x-section is because I have a 45 deg. cut there for looks.
That's that very same small table. This holds some firewood. It used to be inside, but the wife demanded it go out, so I replaced the maple top, luckily just screwed on, with those spit, 1 x 2's. I had the old 2 x 2's as part of the structure way before, but 5 years ago put 2 little sections for support (with diagonal cuts for looks), screwed right on. The old and the new are happily both flush with another surface at their tops. So I got to use the depth gauge feature of my nice calipers. They showed 0.098 on the dial. Yep, down from 1.5" square to 1.4" square, old to new.
But, WAIT, as they say, there's MORE! MORE inflation, that is, meaning even less material. I went to the Lowes website:
I enlarged it this time. Wow! They're down to 1 5/16" square now.
Wait, at least one more exclaimation point is needed. Five oh freaking eight?!! (Yeah, 2 will do.) That piece would have been 45¢ or something 30 years ago, and with much more material to boot! (One more.)
I'm too pooped tonight, but I'll do some axial loading, bending, and buckling calculations tomorrow. I'll also figure out an inflation rate based on both price and mass of material. Can't they just up the price but leave the dimensions alone?! This is exasperating.
PS: Sorry to the readers who can only deal in SI units. Being a curmudgeon and an American both, I am happy to stay in English units for most things. Also, though, this wood is all dimensioned both nominally and actually in round numbers in English units.
* There is a story behind that which might be worth a post here. It's about bureaucracy and patience.
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Let the candy floss your head, on Sugar Mountain
Posted On: Wednesday - November 29th 2023 6:00PM MST
In Topics: Music China
Not Sugar Mountain, far as I know. This is in China, where they're not big fans of sugar. They sure do have some hairy terrain though. From one direction this wall looked over vertical.
We'll do that song-out-of-the-blue thing again today, as in the old days of the blog. When he wrote this great folk song in 1964, Neil Young was referring to his home in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but this makes me think of North Carolina. There is a Sugar Mountain there.
This song never made it to an album until long after, with Mr. Young's big (3 vinyl record) Decade compilation. From wiki regarding this song:
On the bootleg album Live on Sugar Mountain, released just days after the concert at which it was recorded (on February 1, 1971, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles), Young talks at length about the lyrics. He says that when he first wrote the song, he wrote 126 verses to it." Now, you can imagine that I had a lot of trouble figuring out what four verses to use... I was underneath the stairs at the time... Anyway, this verse that I wrote... It was the worst verse of the 126 that I wrote. So, I decided to put it in the song, just to give everybody a frame of reference as to, you know, what can happen. What I'm trying to say is, by stopping in the middle of the song, and explaining this to you, is that... I think it's one of the lamest verses I ever wrote. And, uhh...it takes a lotta nerve for me to get up here and sing it in front of you people. But, if when I'm finished singing, you sing the chorus 'Sugar Mountain' super loud, I'll just forget about it right away and we can continue."As Peak Stupidity's been telling ya'll for a long time, good lyrics can be nice, but with a great tune, they just don't matter. This is such a case. Without an internet and all earlier, I did not know this one line until today, when I finally looked it up:
It's so noisy at the fair,For the life of me, all I could make out of it was "...and the candy floss your head.", cause well, I get that they were at the fair and all, but... look, why didn't you translate it into American, if you're gonna move here, Neil? It's cotton candy! Ohhhhh... duh!
but all your friends are there,
and the candy floss you had,
and your mother and your dad.
I used to be able to play this on guitar - not too hard. I like the hammer-downs that Neil does on acoustic guitar, but his way of using the guitars for both melody and percussion is something I couldn't do.
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