Rage Against the War Machine Rally
Posted On: Saturday - February 18th 2023 3:52PM MST
In Topics:   Liberty/Libertarianism  US Feral Government

I am not able to go to this one due to obligations. I'm sure if you are, you didn't need to see this from Peak Stupidity the night before. Hopefully we'll see a big crowd on video.
Ron Paul will be there. Per his latest column:
The “Rage Against The War Machine” rally promises to be the first large-scale rally against Washington’s aggressive war lobby in many years. I am looking forward to sharing the stage with my good friends and former House colleagues Dennis Kucinich and Tulsi Gabbard, as well as my good friend and fellow libertarian Judge Andrew Napolitano, and so many more speakers from a broad political spectrum.I am glad to see this happening. Good luck to all in attendance!
Comments (17)
The Solution to Pollution is Dilution
Posted On: Saturday - February 18th 2023 3:31PM MST
In Topics:   Media Stupidity  Environmental Stupidity  Geography  Science  Zhou Bai Dien

The Chemical Engineers really like this expression. There are some really nasty pollutants, and if you want to call them pollutants too, long 1/2-life radioactive materials, that take a hell of a lot of dilution to be safe, which we're really better off not creating in the first place. Most times this "solution" works though, at least in the long run.
There's been some BS written about that E. Palestine, Ohio derailment and mess of pollutants released from those on the right even. I do get that what they see is a government that doesn't care* about ACTUAL down-to-earth (and into the water and sky) pollution that has hurt a town full of White people**. This is while for decades now, the ctrl-left especially has spent many orders of magnitude more money, screwing with the whole energy sector of the economy, and caused little children and mindless adults tons of worry on, for, and about a non-existent problem, that Climate Crisis™. We discussed this great distortion in priorities here yesterday.
I'm hearing my wife quoting people telling their anti-Social Media friends to not buy food from Ohio, don't buy bottled water from anywhere around, etc., etc. First of all, I had to explain to her that Ohio is not a big irrigation State. They get plenty of rain, unlike the western Great Plains.

All that great soil in central and northern Ohio is not lost. East Palestine is right up to the border of the W. Virginian panhandle, and, besides 1/2 mile strips of bottomland in a few places, the Ohio River is surrounded by hills, not farmland. In this town a small creek, Sulphur Run (they call them "runs" in that part of the country), merges with another creek, Leslie Run, which flows south to the Ohio River ~10 miles south (10 miles directly, not river miles).

Though it's being dug out up to 7 ft. down in places, locally there may be some nasty, ruined land. We're talking mostly within a few hundred yards, I'd guess. Particulates may land further away, but that's not a big problem. The air clears up quickly, though that's no consolation for those there in the thick of it on that day. The water? The local creeks might be damaged for a while. But, yeah, the solution to pollution is dilution. This is not a continuous polluting process, such as in the future-rust-belt cities that commenter Adam Smith mentioned back through the 1970s. Could you detect any of this stuff way downstream on the Ohio River down to Paducah, Evansville, or even Cincinnati, even right now? (Or when it gets there via the flow.) How about in a month?
Another thing I've read is "see, they (Bai Dien) blocked the pipeline construction, so this stuff had to go by rail, and look what?" Nah, nobody's going to build some long pipeline specifically for transport of Vinyl Chloride from this point A to B. It doesn't work like that.
This is not Chernobyl II. I don't like hearing the hype on the right side of the usual political divide any more than the ignoring of the story while spouting the Climate Crisis! stupid on the left side. Suffice it to say that we are not past getting harmed by actual pollution, and this story is bigger, yes, than some Chinese balloon. The fact that the Bai Dien administration has been ignoring East Palestine, Ohio says something else, something about their priorities, who they care or don't care about.
PS: Now, about Transportation Secretary Pete Buttedge and this story. Yeah, there's a story there involving the continual downsizing of personnel in the rail business and likely shoddier operations due to that AA thing cropping up again.*** (I didn't want my post to get so long, but I will say that Andrew Anglin did get into this last aspect nicely at the end of his post - the one I linked to before.)
* I should say still doesn't but now pretends to. Donald Trump is good for some things. What I've read is that since he made his plans to visit the town of East Palestine next week, the Bai Dien administration decided to release some funds. Trump's mouth is worth a lot more than his actions, kind of contrary to the old saying.
** From the '10 census, per Wiki: The racial makeup of the city was 98.2% White, 0.2% African American, 0.1% Native American, 0.3% Asian, 0.4% from other races, and 0.7% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.9% of the population. Whewwhooo!
*** We've been on this too, with Harvesting the fruits of a half-century of Affirmative Action: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3: Andecdotal Interlude - - Part 4 and Part 5.
Comments (8)
Rent control during inflationary times
Posted On: Friday - February 17th 2023 8:12PM MST
In Topics:   Economics  Inflation  Zhou Bai Dien

This is a point that should have been made in our initial post on the effort of Zhou Bai Dien and the Congressional Commies to implement national rent control. Those pushing this obviously unConstitutional - but who cares? - rent control will be the first to tell you the purported reason* for it is that, due to inflation, the rent is too high!
Well, we know, but they may be too stupid to know, price inflation is a given when you increase the money supply without a corresponding increase in productivity. Whatever, that "wage/price spiral" deal is not the cause but a symptom, and the rental market is not immune to that sort of thing. Costs go up, so the rent has got to go up. What are the biggest costs? Property taxes are right on up there, other than the initial cost of the property, which, of course, must be considered. You've got maintenance costs, and you've got insurance, and sometimes utility bills. (I think it best to leave those for the tenants or they will naturally be wasteful with said utilities.)
It so happens, Peak Stupidity has calculated some numbers that apply in various old posts. In Checking in on Housing Bubble 2.0- Bubble or just high inflation?, we saw a 7.6% annual compounded** inflation rate in the '12-'20 period for housing in 20 American big cities. You've got to cover your payments, or if a rental house has been paid off, get your money back out in a profitable manner.
In the post Real life inflation anecdotal-data(?) beside some bean and soup calculations***, we did a calculation on the ubiquitous 2x4, as a stand-in for building materials, and came up with 3.5% - 4% (Note, this was before the recent HUGE price increases.) In On Inflation, Oil, and Roofing Shingles, we came up with a 7% average yearly increase over an 18 year period. Well, you need drywall, and paint, but I can guarantee you, especially for the latter, that they've gone way up too.
In case you cover utilities as a landlord, Peak Stupidity covered that, with just our own local example over a 22-23 year period, in Inflation Note: Utility Bills. Water/Sewer: Base Fee up 6.9%, Charge per ft3 up 4.2%. Electricity: Base Fee up 4.5%, Charge per kW-hr up 2.6%.
I haven't done house insurance calculations, but I can give you a number now based on apples-to-apples over a few decades. I got 3.3%. "Yeah, but the house has gone up." Yeah, but you still gotta pay it.
So, before the recent inflation surge due to the recent US Gov't higher-spending spree, a landlord's costs were going up 4% to 6%. He's gotta raise the rent accordingly to keep up financially. Zhou Bai Dien and the Commies are trying to prevent his doing so, just as costs are going through the (expensively-shingled) roof. This would take houses off the rental market and keep many a small guy from even getting started.
What about the big guys, the Blackrocks and the institutional investors? Won't they have a problem too? No, the lawmakers will make sure that they are exempted, because anyone who follows the new rules will be, except that these new rules will specify special legal or financial requirements that the small guy can't handle. That's the way ya' do it. Moova, moova.
* The real reasons are to gain more control of the population and help wipe out the small businessman, oh, and get votes and grift money.
** For all of these calculations, compounding has been included.
*** That's at least the 2nd time I wrote a post after having forgotten I'd written about the same point. Our recent post Inflation Note: Chicken Soup for the toll was about Campbell's soup as was one section in that "Real life..." post. I used different time frames, hence, prices, but the inflation numbers matched - average 3.5% to 3.9% yearly.
Comments (12)
Derailments and Bai Dien's coming, Pollution in Ohio
Posted On: Friday - February 17th 2023 2:58PM MST
In Topics:   Global Climate Stupidity  Pundits  Environmental Stupidity  Zhou Bai Dien
... actually, Bai Dien is not coming. He's tried to ignore this disaster, along with the Lyin' Press, the latter per the pundit described herein. Bai Dien does "vow accountability" however, something kind of at odds with all the diversity and stuff ... so there's (not) that ...

As weird or even perverse as it may seem to the average American, the staff of Peak Stupidity is proud of our ignorance of the daily stream of Infotainment projectile vomit emitting* from the mainstream media, aka, Lyin' Press. So, we don't know what has officially been the big story recently, other than by gathering the gist of it 2nd-hand off blogs. However, the pundit Andrew Anglin does. He says The Entire Ohio River May be Poisoned for Generations and the Media Is Talking About Balloons** No, probably not, regarding the former, but, regarding the latter, I will take his word for it.
I'm guessing Andrew Anglin is on the internet for more time than the time most people sleep, shower, eat, and rake leaves combined. I've written about this well-known pundit before - see Andrew Anglin and Anti-Social Media - and if I didn't expressly state it, let me here state that he comes across as a juvenile know-it-all. (Yeah, we get juvenile here on occasion, but not full time, and we neither know it all nor claim to.) Mind you, I'm glad a guy like this can still be on the internet - thanks, Ron Unz. His writing is mostly Conservative, and he speaks a lot of truth that most pundits won't touch.
I don't read him for his personality as I described, in addition to my experience that he'll have posts consisting solely of a series of tweets. That's just worthless to me. However, I was drawn to this one post, as Mr. Anglin will have a good point here, a know-it-all piece of erroneous stupidity there, and then come back to another good point.
I think Mr. Anglin's error in his point per the title is in not understanding what Infotainment is all about. No, the Ein groß weißer Luftballon story was not the modern-day Sputnik. It was almost pure entertainment and likely more interesting to the public than the nasty polluted mess from the East Palestine, Ohio tank car derailment story, cause, pretty balloons! That would be the public far away from East Palestine, Ohio.
Yes, the spilling and emitting of actual pollutants into the air, water, and onto the soil SHOULD be a big story. Would it not have been were this 1973, 1983, or 1993? It would most certainly be bigger because real, ACTUAL environmental concerns were one of the big issues from the time of the first Earth Day in 1970 and before. Peak Stupidity has seen the other side of that huge movement, in which entire industries were nearly destroyed, such as logging in the Pacific Northwest, due to the great excesses of the movement. That's not to mention that there were people, as usual, that none dare to call by the proper term, whose basic goal is to destroy industry in America. However, the discussion was about reality, not fantasy, at least.
Back to the story, there were 20 tank cars full of hazardous materials in that long (3 Locomotives, and 150 cars, all but 9 loaded) Norfolk Southern northbound train passing through E. Palestine, OH. 14 of them were filled with Vinyl Chloride, used for making a material we all know, PVC plastic. That harmful pollutant spilled out, and then Phosphene and Hydrogen Chloride gas were emitted, along with Dioxins into the soil and Ohio River. Additionally, and the only thing visible in the picture, there were big plumes of particulates when the material burned, accidentally, then on purpose to avoid a possible explosion***.
I want to point out in a quick post later my thoughts on the overkill regarding coverage from the Right regarding what I don't really believe is any new Chernobyl. Yes, it's a mess though, and isn't it strange that it's those on the Right, Conservatives, who think this is a bigger story than the Left? There is that definition of Conservatism and the term Conservation (of the environment) ought to make Conservatives the biggest of the tree huggers. In some ways, they DO conserve, as per Ducks Unlimited and other wildlife and hunting organizations. The Left likes to mouth off and won't put any of their money down.
The main thing is, back 50 years ago, the Big Biz big polluters that had Lake Erie, Love Canal, etc. nasty enough to be able to be set on fire (not really) were part of the Conservative establishment. Conservatives didn't want to mess with success, economic success that is. The Left was glad to bring Big Biz down whatever the excuse, and some of it was legitimate. Now, it's a whole different story. Big Biz is just one of all the Institutions of the Left Establishment, not to be criticized now by the Left. They'll let this stuff slide ... just dioxins, you know, and just Ohio... do you remember when those chemicals were brought up by environmentalists all the time?
Here's my big point, which is much more important than balloons vs. train explosions. Let's compare this type of ACTUAL environmental disaster to the long-term FAKE environmental disaster known as the Climate Calamity™****, aka, Global Cooling, aka, Global Warming, aka Climate Change, aka, Global Climate Disruption™****, now known outside of Peak Stupidity as The Climate Crisis!
There in eastern Ohio, the W. Virginia panhandle, and western Pennsylvania, people will be dealing with real, known, dangerous chemical pollutants. This is not even the more vague but still actual polluting substances like Sulfur, compounding with Oxygen to make acid rain, general particulate matter out of smoke stacks, and Nitrogen oxides produced from not-so-perfect combustion. We'd have heard all the names of the acute pollutants from this train derailment daily, were this the 1970s.
Instead, for the last 20 years, going on 30, we are barraged with talk about Carbon Freaking Dioxide. It is a part of the atmosphere, and it's simply NOT a pollutant in any way. The term "carbon" (rather than CO2), "pollutant" and "emissions" are used to fool the non-Chemistry-inclined (or those whose chemistry involves the intake of chemicals with very long names) into thinking we're talking soot or that stuff that people inhale to die in their garages, something you should NEVER inhale, and the production of said substance, respectively.
I will write another post about the subject in the last paragraph, as it deserves more explanation, and there's an AC/DC song involved. Let me give the reader some links - in footnotes - to posts Peak Stupidity got on near the beginning of the blog, when we tackled Global Climate Stupidity. We thought we'd done a good job, but it got back up fighting since then and since the conclusion of the Kung Flu PanicFest.
Carbon Dioxide is not a pollutant. I DO understand the theory of Greenhouse Gases, involving radiation heat transfer at different wavelengths. Yes, CO2 is a "Greenhouse Gas". Yes,
The Climate hysterics will tell you that Weather is not Climate. They are right on that. Weather is a chaotic process, explaining why, with the exception of the desert or the North Pole, any forecast claiming to be for a week ahead is bullshit. Climate, based on energy balance calculations is not chaotic like that, but it's still very complicated. CO2 as a Greenhouse Gas is but a small part in a big complicated picture.
Why would this small factor that might just possibly effect the climate in some way that could be overpowered by lots of other factors, with no immediate danger and not even any solid evidence of ANY effect be this BIG news story, going on for decades, 10 or 50 times longer than any of the actual pollution stories? It's not just the Infotainment value, as with the white balloon out of China. No, it's that the Climate Calamity™ has been determined to be very useful to the Globalists and the Communists to ruin yet another country, the grand prize, in fact. You can scare some of the really gullible, cough, Greta, cough, cough, into really believing that Carbon Dioxide is dangerous like a cloud of thick black smoke and Hydrogen Chloride and Phosphene. For the rest, even if they aren't really worried, so long as they go along****** with the scam, this allows for control of the huge energy market, thus control of entire industries and control of occupations, livelihoods, and ways of life.
Granted, it's a long trip on a riverboat down from Pittsburgh, but could little Greta Thunberg give just a little thought to the REAL pollution and the REAL folks down in East Palestine, Ohio instead of some fantasy pollutant? I'd like to hear from her after she protests inside that thick black smoke plume. Hopefully it would shut her up... for a while.
* Haha, more on "emitting" shortly or in the next post.
** Then, a day later, he noted East Palestine Train Debacle Finally Hits the Top News.
*** Some sort of stuck relief valve on one of the burning cars.
**** These 2 are Peak Stupidity coined terms. I like my last one best, due to the nice alliteration.
***** The series of short posts, There is no working mathematical model of the world's climate, dammit! ,are here: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - Part 4 and Part 5
****** Regarding the scientists' and journalists' role in the Global Climate Stupidity, see the old series Global Climate Disruption™ - The Politics: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - Part 4 and Part 5 .
******************************
[UPDATED 02/21:] Added link to previous PS post about Andrew Anglin, which I'd forgotten.
******************************
Comments (9)
Commies gonna Commie - National Rent Control
Posted On: Thursday - February 16th 2023 8:33AM MST
In Topics:   Commies  California  Economics  Zhou Bai Dien

Back in early fall of the 1st year of the Kung Flu PanicFest, Peak Stupidity related some specific Totalitarianism in California. I know, it's California, but I always try to remember that, just like I don't blame myself for some of the stupid political stuff in my State, there is a decent-sized minority of Californians that are not responsible for the stupidity there.
That Oct. '20 post is titled Xia Den Flu De. Firstly, that was another attempt at Pin Yin due to Chinese people being involved in the story, and this time I tried to represent a long German word. (Give it a shot, c'mon!) See, the Chinese people in California, who, as a whole, probably voted right around the State's 3:1 ratio, D to R, were bitching cause, "State control" and "Totalitarianism". Reap what you sow, bitches! (In general, of course!)
The California government was prohibiting evictions of tenants who were paying at least 25% of their rent owed. You know, Covid-19. Can't make money, because the government banned that. Can't pay the rent then. Can't collect rent either. Still gotta pay property tax - luckily Covid-19 didn't affect it. Covid-19 didn't cut off the electricity/gas and water, so you still gotta pay. Tenants still destroy stuff - Covid-19 didn't affect that. Hard to come out anything but behind, but you can't evict people either. What CAN'T Government screw up?!
Rent control is more government intrusion into the market, but it's been around in certain places long, long before the Kung Flu. I won't say where this was, but I experienced the joys of this screwage of the free market. It was very hard to rent a room in this place in which it was hard for a prospective landlord to come out ahead. I would go to check out a place for rent per an ad and see 5 people already on the porch when I got there. They could be picky, so there's that.
"Let me see your references."
"Here ya' go."
"What's your favorite color?"
"Blue."
"Would that be light blue or dark blue?"
"Uhhh, light blue."
"OK, that's it. GTF off the porch."
When I finally did rent a decent place, just out of pure luck - a guy ahead of me bailed out after a week - the landlady begged me when election day came around "please vote these Communists out!"
The town in question did have more than its share of Communists too, especially for many years ago. Well, that story above is just California, so you know ... Now, I read that AOC and company want Zhou Bai Dien to take rent control nationwide. Per Rick Moran of PJ Media, Biden Makes First Move Toward a Radical National Rent Control Law.
Wait, Bai Dien can't make law though. Why don't AOC and Fauxahontas (yeah, she's involved) write up a proposed bill instead. Uhh, well, it's not like that anymore, see...
Under the Biden plan, the president is directing the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to look at limits “for future investments and actions promoting renter protections,” according to a report in Yahoo Finance.They need more control to be able to place those deserving of it into people's rental property. They got just the guy to do it, too:
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) have been enlisted to “root out practices that unfairly prevent applicants and tenants from accessing or staying in housing,” according to the report.
Specifically, lawmakers had called on the president to direct the FTC to issue new regulations defining excessive rent increases and enforce actions against rent gouging*, suggestions that are [morel ] aggressive than what the administration has so far put forth. The letter also asked to have FHFA put in place rent protection for tenants living in properties financed with government-backed mortgage properties, which is more closely aligned with what the president outlined on Wednesday.Note those strings attached for government-backed mortgages, always with the negative strings, Moriarity. It doesn't have to stop there. There is nothing protecting landlords who may fully own their property from being screwed over by government interference. Rick Moran explains the stupidity from a Libertarian, small-government perspective:
Since the beginning of the republic, laws governing rent and leases have been local matters. If a landlord is cheating renters, local and state governments have the authority and the tools to punish the landlord. And being much closer to the problems of renters and landlords than anyone in Washington, local and state governments have a much better handle on the local rental housing situation.Yep. Then, the writer quotes radical Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) in railing against "corporate profiteering" I really surprised it's still not so corporate as Mr. Moran notes:
But now, the federal government doesn’t believe that landlords should be compensated for owning rental property. They’re “gouging” renters. This is after more than two years of preventing landlords from evicting renters for non-payment of rent. And in a period of rapidly rising inflation, landlords are being accused of “profiteering” at the expense of renters.
It’s a ridiculous charge given that 98 percent of all rental property owners, or 80 percent of all rental properties, are owned by small business entrepreneurs who own five units or fewer, according to a study in Business Wire.Yeah, well, they're working on that. I don't know if Rep Bowman is stupid or just the usual lyin' sack of shit, as Big Biz landlords like Black Rock are not going to be adversely affected by your rent control schemes. They help MAKE the laws and influence any move Bai Dien makes. The little guys will get screwed and maybe give up, making it even harder for a decent tenant family to rent a decent place. Big Biz and the deadbeats will be just fine though.
The writer doesn't go far enough in his explanation for what's going on, IMO. Perhaps Rick Moran has not read all that ancient Chinese
That's where we're at now. This may turn into anti-Commie week here at Peak Stupidity, as I sure see the way it's been going.
* Peak Stupidity's take on price gouging. (Spoiler Alert: We're FOR IT!)
Comments (10)
Ctrl-left - Communist Correlation at the University of Wisconsin
Posted On: Tuesday - February 14th 2023 10:33AM MST
In Topics:   Commies  Lefty MegaStupidity  University  Liberty/Libertarianism  ctrl-left  Totalitarianism
Three days back, Steve Sailer had a data-laden post from a poll of over 10,000 students in the University of Wisconsin system. There are 13 campuses, with the well-known Univ. of Wisconsin in Madison being the biggest. polls can be stupid, so I don't trust all this kind of data. If the questions asked there were as written though, the results are downright sickening.
Mr. Sailer's post* is titled Little Sister Is Watching You because he put his focus mostly on the male v female results to the questions.

Strikingly, almost 38% of these college women think that offensive language is violence, while "only" 18% of the college men do. The latter number is just as striking too. It'd have been 0 when I went to college, as you couldn't get into college if you were that stupid! Now, apparently, you can. (Or is it only college that can make one this stupid? I think the latter.)
Another question is whether people saying "offensive speech" are "causing harm", which has even higher numbers: 47% of women and 21% of men.
Anyway, I want to concentrate on the right side of the bar graphs, which is this set, from "Very Liberal" (in the modern sense - the ctrl-left) to "Very Conservative". The numbers for agreement with "offensive speech = violence" go like this:

What kind of crazy people would equate free speech that they don't agree with to violence? Wait ... are they crazy, or maybe, is this some kind of purposeful way to enable traditional liberty-loving and even just liberty-understanding people to get in trouble for speaking against the narra.. ...ohhhhhhh. I've read of people like this in, where was it... lemme rattle my brain... China in the 1960s, oh, and Russia like a century ago... hell, over there even when I was alive. I'm blanking out here on the term, though...
To get these violent people, you know, violent due to their speaking against the Establishment, in trouble, you've first got to report them to someone. How do they feel about that?


There you go. Almost three quarters of the hard crtl-left would try to get their Professor in trouble for saying something that they "feel causes harm". Remember hurt feelings are harm now, which is violence, BTW. Gotta report those violent people to the authoritah. That's how they did in in the USSR. That's how they did in under Chairman Mao. That's how they did it under Pol Pot. That's how they did it under Castro.
Ahhaaa, that senior moment I had above is over! These ctrl-left people we have now are Communists. The universities are infested with them, and, in fact, the universities are breeding these people. The universities need to be terminated with extreme prejudice.
* I used to write posts almost directly off of Steve Sailer posts back 5 years ago, as he does all the hard and nasty work of reading the New York Times, Washington Post, Atlantic etc. I'm reverting to sponging off him for this post, as this information is something else!
Comments (7)
Two Stupidity Follow-ups
Posted On: Monday - February 13th 2023 8:18AM MST
In Topics:   Political Correctness  Feminism  Big-Biz Stupidity  Customer Care
Part of our job at Peak Stupidity is to follow up on our older writing to make sure we are correct on the stupidity levels. This 1st point is regarding a small bit of stupidity related to Feminism, this one having been mostly relegated to the back shelf due to being overwhelmed by the newer stuff. The 2nd one is regarding a "Customer Care" experience and simply backs up our one data poing.
1) Over 6 years back, Peak Stupidity came out with our First post on Feminism - starting off at a low stupidity level. That one was about the use of the pronouns "they" "them", and "their" in cases of unknown-sex 3rd person. This goes WAY, WAY back. It's from Feminism, going back to the 1970s, I'm pretty sure. Now it's been superseded by the higher level stupidity of the genderbender nonsense. (Peak Stupidity covered this with a comparison to the Chinese language in Fun with Pronouns.)
I've used this form myself. It's so ingrained in most Americans now. However, I've been making a successful effort, both verbally and in writing, to go back to proper English.
I think that this site has mentioned since that early post that Big Biz promotes this erroneous and confusing English. It's not only that the confusing terminology is in manuals that involve safety, but the introductions themselves even state plainly that this form will be used. The reader is to interpret somehow whether they (the words) are to be taken as singular or plural. Many of the subjects involve more than one employee, and many involve a single employee. What I take from this is that safety is NOT ACTUALLY top priority. I can guess what is.
For this follow-up, I will note that I just read one instruction guide for software, written by either employees or someone from that subcontracted-out software company that has a "his" in there. That was quite refreshing. However, I think it was a mistake, as further down in the document, the usual confusing form was used. I did have a thought in my head that "hey, is someone finally pushing back on this?"
This manual was not written by the company - they are the customer paying for it. Is it possible one could get away with fighting Big Biz on this by telling them: "OK, we will use your style, BUT, we need you to sign these consent forms then. No worries - they are just a small thing our lawyers want. They give us immunity from any physical harm that occurs due to confusion over the language in this document. Yeah, sign, right ... on this line ... here ...hey ... why come you don't wanna sign?...."
2) More recently, last summer, (that long? Seems like yesterday) we noted a most miserable "customer care" experience in the Big Biz world in our post Next: •Indian IT help v Shortwave Radio. If you haven't read that post, you may not get this part so easily.
As I sat working hard on a company computer (reading Unz Review comments), I heard from a few feet away around a corner one side of a phone call by a lady employee. (It was like the old Bob Newhart TV show, but not really so funny, not "haha funny", at least.) "OK, I didn't get that last part." "No, that didn't work." "What?" "I can't understand you. Can you tell me that again, please." "OK." "I'm having a hard time hearing you." "No, it's not working."
This went round and round a few times before I finally was sure: "You're on the phone with an Indian IT lady, right?" I thought she was on hold, but she'd actually hung up, so she told me "yes, that's it." "I've been trying to take care of this for over a week. I bet I've spent 10 hours on the phone!" I told her about my simple password request and my take on the accents, the lack of understanding, and the possible use of an undersea cable that sharks had nibbled on over the years. Her problem was not about a password but that all her apps had wiped themselves off a company piece of iCrap. The company had done its part, but IT was to reset something. A week or so gone down, the iCrap has no apps, and that employee is frustrated and had given up for that day, at least.
Now, some bright Chief Financial Officer may look into the outsourcing of IT to people with heavy accents and a lack of real English understanding, along with the use of really bad voice-over-IP communication. He might want to calculate how much extra IT Customer Care employee time is used per type of request vs the same in an American call center. That's not so hard to calculate, given the call data. He might also want to calculate how much of the company's OWN EMPLOYEE time is being wasted on the calls. Well, they'd be surfing the internet otherwise anyway (on the Peak Stupidity blog probably), so, uhhh, that's a wash, maybe ... How about the frustration and stress level of the employees? "Well, these last things are too difficult to calculate, so we won't." - CFO
Comments (7)
The Carpenters - Close to you
Posted On: Saturday - February 11th 2023 8:48PM MST
In Topics:   Music
Karen Carpenter died 40 years an a week ago today. I missed the even anniversary. I couldn't have told you what year it was, but then I do remember where I was when I heard about her dying. (No, it's not like the flags went to half-mast or anything.) Additionally, the one who told me was the guy who was fired from the campus radio stating for playing The Carpenters, as related in this post. I say apologetically that Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft is the only song by this brother/sister duo (Karen and Richard) Peak Stupidity has posted so far.
Here is a live version of Close to You from over half a century ago. I'm pretty sure it was on that song that I first heard Karen Carpenter's sweet voice.
The week went from Weather --> Weather Balloon --> Balloon week to Inflation and Ron DeSantis week. Let's see... what's next? There'll be more immigration stupidity for sure, a few more "look at THIS crazy shit!" posts from some articles I've read, one taken directly from info in a Steve Sailer post (I don't do so much of that as I did 4-5 years back) and then more than enough stupidity just pops up here and there. Have a restful Sunday, Peakers. Thanks so much for reading and writing in!
Comments (9)
Stupidity attracts stupidity
Posted On: Saturday - February 11th 2023 5:55PM MST
In Topics:   Genderbenders  Lefty MegaStupidity  Educational Stupidity  Female Stupidity
I remember the saying "trash attracts trash" from long ago. That wasn't about people, though I supposed it could apply. It meant that once there was a small pile of trash somewhere, people would not feel any compunction about throwing some more down in the same place.

Peak Stupidity hasn't really covered the Genderbender stupidity very thoroughly. Luckily we haven't been locally exposed to the stuff I see written about in Steve Sailer posts. I still find it hard to believe some of the stuff that is going on. Well, Instapundit linked to a National Review article (yeah, I know*) titled Maine Mom Demands Investigation after School Counselor Secretly Gives Daughter a ‘Chest Binder’. That sounds pretty readable and within Peak Stupidity's wheelhouse as we extoll Libertarianism and Conservatism. It sounds like a rightly upset parent fighting the good fight, more so when you read the beginning. From near the beginning:
Lavigne would later learn that earlier in the year, without her knowledge, her daughter had been reassigned to a new social worker at Great Salt Bay Community School in Maine. This social worker, she learned, had been advising her daughter about gender transitioning. He had provided her daughter with the chest binder, telling the girl that he wouldn’t tell her mother, and she didn’t need to either. She also learned that school personnel had been involved in socially transitioning her daughter, referring to her by a new name and by male pronouns.Yeah, I didn't know about chest binders either. Weight belts, sure... Anyway, good on her. This Maine Mom Amber Lavigne has 3 children, and it's sure tough to keep them from the evil in the Education System during this Cultural Revolution 2.0. She solicited free legal help from the Goldwater Institute (gotta be good people from the name alone!), and much of this long article is about this battle with the Educational Establishment.
No one had bothered to notify Lavigne.
Lavigne demanded answers, but for the most part, she said, school district leaders and school-board members have been defensive and evasive. She is now represented by lawyers from the Arizona-based Goldwater Institute, who argue that the school’s actions are unconstitutional and violate Lavigne’s rights as a parent to direct the education, upbringing, and health care of her child.
That Ed Establishment doesn't feel it has to answer to anyone, and any legal business on their end is covered by the always generous taxpayers. You can read about their full-Commie attitude, their stonewalling with claims of confidentiality, and the usual fighting back with lies (such as that bomb threats to the schools there came from those on the side who don't believe in school counselor-directed genderbending for 13 year-olds.). OK, fine, good on her, and best wishes, I thought ... for a while.
Miss Lavigne feels it very important, though, to make sure we all know she is no right-winger, one of these Liberty nuts or something.
While she has received support from local Republican groups, Lavigne said she is no religious fanatic or right-wing culture warrior. Rather, she’s a Democrat who runs a mental-health-services business in Damariscotta, a small coastal town in Maine best known for its oysters. Her business has worked with transgender clients over the years, she said.Keeping an open mind here myself, I don't want to be too quick to just dismiss her whole story by "what do you expect, lefty? You got what was coming." First, there's the more innocent 13 y/o daughter. Then too, people can learn, even if it has to be the hard way. Amber Lavigne will be on OUR side after this battle, surely. Nope, she ain't learnin' SQUAT, and she will NEVER be on our side. You can read on:
“I’m a pretty open-minded person,” she said, though she said that’s not how she’s been portrayed by school leaders. Lavigne also has two young sons who are four and one.
Last fall, Lavigne’s 13-year-old daughter started eighth grade at Great Salt Bay Community School, which she’s attended since fifth grade. Although she’s struggling with her gender identity now, Lavigne said that when her daughter was young, she was a girly-girl who liked painting her fingernails and putting on makeup.Basketball superstar?! The stupid is attracting more stupid. The Mom wanted her daughter to be like herself, with no thought to traditional Conservative sex roles, and what would make a feminine woman happy. At this point I did a quick ctrl-f "Father" and a ctrl-f "Husband". "No matches." Ahhaa. In the meantime, as of the article date, Miss Lavigne has a 1 y/o son and a 4 y/o son too.
“That’s one of the most bizarre things about this,” she said. “I wanted so badly for my daughter to be an athlete, because I was an athlete; I was a wicked tomboy growing up. I’m like, she’s going to be a basketball superstar. I couldn’t get this kid to pick up a frigging baseball and throw it at me to save her life. She was into tutus and My Little Ponies.”
“I have people in my life who work in other public schools in Maine. This is happening everywhere: One day this girl is declaring she’s a boy, and a week later she’s deciding she’s not,” she said. And as someone who works in the mental-health field, Lavigne said she considered it a “beautiful thing” that the school had social workers for struggling kids.Single Mom Amber Lavigne is an integral part of the Social Worker establishment. Being that, and without a husband to lay down the rules, she didn't have time to do anything but let the Establishment screw with her daughter. She doesn't seem to have a problem with the whole genderbender stupidity in general.
When Lavigne’s daughter started eighth grade, she continued seeing that same social worker. But Lavigne said she has since learned that in October, her daughter was reassigned to another social worker, Samuel Roy, or “Mr. Sam,” as her daughter called him.
Lavigne said that since she’s come forward, she’s been the focus on hateful social-media posts and ugly accusations in the generally left-wing community. There are some stores in town she’s not shopping at anymore because she said she feels unwelcome and judged by staff members.Well, I'm all bent of of shape about Amber Lavigne's shopping experience!
If her daughter gets through her childhood and still feels that she is a boy, Lavigne said she will support her decisions, because “it’s my kid.”There's a lot in the article about this Mom's fight for parental control. That's just for HER daughter though. Being part of the whole lefty Establishment herself, Miss Lavigne is an integral part of that Establishment, which wants control of the children. But, "this is HER baby girl". Well not a baby, and as for girl, that's kind of fluid ...
“If she at 18 starts taking testosterone and decides to mutilate her body, am I going to express to her some concerns? Absolutely,” she said. “Am I going to write my kiddo off? Never in a million years. This is my baby girl. At the end of the day, I’m not going to destroy my relationship with my child to be right.”That would not be some political disagreement or argument about colleges with her daughter. We're talking about the rest of her (former?) daughter's life being ruined, but she's not going to "destroy my relationship". This is not being a good parent. It's hard not to be a dysfunctional Mom when there's no Dad around. I wish the 2 boys all the luck - they're gonna need it.
“At the end of the day, she is who she is,” Lavigne said of her daughter. “If she thinks she’s going to live a more fulfilled life as a male, that’s up for her to decide as an adult. At 13, it’s up to me to safeguard my child against doing things to her body that she can’t reverse.” [My bolding.]
Finally, the NR author Ryan Mills doesn't seem to get that this is not a normal fight-the-crazy-left-Establishment story. There too much stupidity on both sides for that. Stupidity attracts stupidity, I guess.
* Instapundit's more frequent go-to source from the old media world is The New York Post. He links to them about every day. (They host his (weekly) column, so I guess that's part of it.) Peak Stupidity suggested in this post that that publication be the new "Newspaper of Record". Really, I see no reason for any Newspaper of Record. Sounds like Communism.
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Name-calling and Primary Debates
Posted On: Friday - February 10th 2023 9:45AM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '24  Immigration Stupidity  Trump  President DeSantis
Site note first: A new topic key has been added, President DeSantis. What, too soon??* Anyway, this one was easy to back-fill, so that's done already.

We're not voting ourselves out of the whole mess, but that doesn't stop me here... Peak Stupidity had a 4-part series called on Trump v DeSantis in early Fall '22: Round 1: Personalities - - Round 2: Immunity to Kung Flu Panic - - Round 3: Immigration Invasion - - Round 4: Tag Team?, with an Addendum. The personalities come into play in this post, as does the immigration invasion.
Yesterday's post Trump "Distraction Bug" patch a success in DeSantis Beta Testing focused on a video of a Ron DeSantis interview. Though that post was about the words about lawyers and distractions, I think the video was for most people all about Ron DeSantis' reaction to being called a "groomer" by Donald Trump. First of all, I do know how that term originated and enjoy it being used on the right people. I don't know the reason Donald Trump called Ron DeSantis that, and I don't really need to know. Gov. DeSantis' response was nice, though said in the manner of a politician. Fine. It's all pretty silly though, as is following whatever feud Donald Trump has started as if it's a soap opera.
My argument against this silliness is not Ronald Reagan's "11th Commandment" that decreed "Thou shalt not speak ill of another Republican.” It's not that. My argument is, if you're gonna have a public debate for support by the GOP voters, why not debate the real issues?!
I'd love to see tweets flying back and forth and headlines on the internet that kept an argument going between these two on, well, let's see, maybe the most existential problem for this country, the Immigration Invasion. Name calling would just add to the fun AND add to the value.
"Well, DeSanctimonious, you've been letting illegal Cubans use the dry feet policy for years*, you hypocrite!"There are 2 reasons a public debate, as mean-spirited as they wanna' make it, would be highly beneficial:
"Yeah, well, Drumpf, you had 4 years. Where's the freaking wall, you blathering bullshitter? And, you never even talk about illegal immigration, while I am for a moratorium."
"Moratorium, hell, I'll send back anyone whose parents BOTH didn't come here on the Mayflower!" [Grammar and circular speechifying corrected in advance - Ed]
1) Big promises about policy will get made. Some of them (Trump) might never happen and some (DeSantis) would.
2) All the arguments and the terms associated with them would be put out into the public view. Not everyone has read VDare regularly for 2 decades. Get the whole thing out there!
Do the same on US warmongering and the Deep State.
Is this all wishful thinking? Yeah, probably.
* We do have one overly hopeful topic key that was added too soon. That'd be People's Revolt of 22.
** This is just an example here, mind you. I'm not vouching for any facts on this.
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Inflation Note: Motor Oil
Posted On: Friday - February 10th 2023 6:38AM MST
In Topics:   Inflation

In case you're fairly new to the site and wonder what this 2nd inflation post is on about, within 2 days, well, it's kind of a fixation here. We've had posts on more than just examples. Some have been on the intricacies of calculating good representative CPI (Consumer Price Index) values - "Hedonics", "Substitution", and so on, all here with the Inflation topic key.
As for the examples, maybe it's cherry-picking, maybe it's not. What we do is compare prices, some on products and some on services, for which we have a very good memory for the price of many years ago, with a good estimate for that year too. The longer term, the better, as we want a long-term average (with compounding always).
I get this specialty motor oil for one conveyance I've had a long time. (It's not the stuff in the image, BTW.) The thing about motor oil is, it's petroleum, of course, but it doesn't seem as volatile as gasoline. Yes, that WAS a good pun, as I mean pricewise in the context of this post. It goes up slowly when oil goes up, but it sure doesn't seem to come down, ever... I have a good idea on this, as my goal is to stock up when it's down. Yeah, I know, I really screwed up by doing Cloro-prepping*. However, I'm told, as I would have guessed, that motor oil has a shelf-life on the order of the time since the dinosaurs.
I HAD stocked up, for both the cheap stuff for the older vehicles, pricey stuff for a new one, and some of this specialty oil. However, the mechanic told me to change out the type, so it was time to stock up from scratch.** I don't expect it's ever going down, but I also didn't expect the current price, since it's been so long.
I would tell the price for a case, but we've got to be careful on that. The old cases of oil had 12 bottles. New ones have 6. Was that designed to fool people? I don't know what that's about. It was easier to stack and carry the old ones, and the empty boxes were of more use. I'll do it by the bottle.
It's $7.65 a quart for stuff that I recall being under $2 a quart 31 years back! I bought cases (of 12) for right around $20 back then, but I'll go with 2 dollars, as in, $24 per case. From MoneyChimp: That's a 4.5% average yearly inflation rate compounded over 31 years.
No, it doesn't sound terrible. It just doesn't match the CPI tables you'll see for that basket of goods. (Well, see, the baskets are made from petroleum now, so you know ...) A general rate of 4.5%*** also means you lose half of your savings in dollars every 16 years.
* Original post here.
** Sold the other stuff to a friend. He got a hell of a deal.
*** I used 4.47%, as that was the more precise one for my motor oil calculation. (However, I didn't use that precision, as it was probably UNDER $2/qt. back in the day.)
Comments (3)
Trump "Distraction Bug" patch a success in DeSantis Beta Testing
Posted On: Thursday - February 9th 2023 10:27AM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '24  Legal Stupidity  President DeSantis
It pisses me off when some tweet has a video that I can't find on youtube or bitchute.
Thanks for coming through yet again, Adam Smith!
Bear in mind that it's the first portion of the video that I want to discuss (one video on YT looks like the right one, but it cuts off the part I want). The rest is the story for most people, with Donald Trump calling Ron DeSantis a "groomer" now, and the response. That silly stuff is something I'll comment about in another short post, as I was about to fork off onto that. Not agonna do it!
What I get out of this along with all I've seen out of Trump is: DeSantis thinks. Trump emotes. That makes DeSantis more capable, Maybe there was something fundamental too (blackmail, etc.) behind the incapability of President Trump, but to me it was his failure to handle distractions that
I have stated many times before (or at least some prolific Unz Review commenter has) that this crap with the Russia collusion took up half the guy's Presidency. I'm not sure the Lyin' Press had a plan on this, but they hated him, they wanted the infotainment to keep rolling, and intentionally or not, prevent the President from implementing strategy. "Well, what am I supposed to do, the lawyers keep sending more stuff?!" Well, YOU got lawyers too, ya dummy. You can afford them personally, and the White House admin budget has the money. Let them stall, fight, sue back, whatever way they want to handle it.
What Ron DeSantis said here is just what Trump could have said staring in the Spring of '17. I ask you to watch the video, but I'll type it here. This is in answer to something involving legislation about preventing defamation.lawsuits or something.**
"It's just, practically speaking, I would not take time from being Governor to be fighting lawsuits..."
If President DeSantis is a successor to President Trump, at least one big bug has been fixed. (I see other Beta testing in the works too.)
PS: It's not that I think Ron DeSantis necessarily learned from Trump's defects. He just a better executive, period.
PPS: I also like some of the rest of DeSantis' talk, just before that part. Example: "I say defamatory stuff every day I've been Governor." Trump does that too, and it's necessary, but I like how honest Gov. DeSantis is about it. Hey, his grammar is not perfect, but we don't care, and then Trump would have no standing to complain on that score.
* I can't link you to the Instapundit "post" itself either, as this one has no link to its separate self but only to the tweet itself. BTW, he gets tons of comments on about everything.
** I could have used video from 15 - 30 seconds prior.
Comments (10)
Inflation Note: Chicken Soup for the toll
Posted On: Wednesday - February 8th 2023 6:26PM MST
In Topics:   Inflation

I've been under the weather for a couple of days. My forced partaking of high doses of one my wife's concoctions for the Kung Flu PanicFest probably helped, but it definitely had a side effect too... that is TMI...
At the same time, the usual Chicken Soup can't hurt, and I like the stuff. I wonder if it's nothing but the salt that helps. I know the readers will tell us to make our own, but my wife didn't have the time just now. This canned stuff is full of salt! I remember figuring each can has about 3 or 4 days worth of the sodium you need.
My wife kindly went out and bought 4 cans. I was of the understanding that she was getting cans of the classic Campbell Soup. It's her reporting to me of 3 dollars a can (not on sale) that had me flabbergasted. By the time I found out it was not Campbell's, but 13 oz cans of Progresso, well, this inflation note post was already in progress in my head. I had to go to the store and check out the Campbell's Chicken Noodle, because I have a price data point on it from 43 years ago, and I want to compare
It's $1.99 per 10.75 oz can at the normal price. Now, I've seen it for closer to $1.75 or so, but not much less, even before the Biden* inflation surge. Don't ask me how I remember this, but in 1980, this stuff was (normal price) 35¢ to 40¢ per can (of what size, though?) I input 38¢ to $1.99 over 43 years into the MoneyChimp calculator: Average 3.9% inflation counting compounding. Well, 1980 was still within the large inflation years before the effect of Paul Volcker's putting the lid on took effect. That's only 1 or 2 years though, and then the Biden surge of late may have brought it up that 25¢ in 2 years. OK, even taking 45¢ to $1.75 over 40 years gives us $3.5% average.
What about that shrinking size deal that Peak Stupidity dubs Inflation by Deflation? I just wouldn't think a non-round number like 10.75 oz was the original size. Wouldn't it have started at 12 oz? I just spent 10 minutes, but I've spent half an hour before on the search engines to no avail on this question.
I'm not a connoisseur of Pop Art to begin with, but at least Andy Warhol could have put some detail in those soup can paintings. We could have gotten the size circa 1962, 60 years back. He didn't even paint the label showing the huge amount of Sodium! Painting the full label for nutrition information should be required by law in Pop Art.
I wonder how much inflation there has been in Andy Warhol paintings?
PS:I'd written about Campbell's soup before, Real life inflation anecdotal-data(?):
I'd bought canned Campbell's soup back 30 years ago to eat as supper for $0.45 to $0.55 per can. They are now in the range of $1.00 to $1.55 for a smaller can, and yeah, you have to have a good memory to catch these things (the shrinkage especially - 12 oz down to 10.75 oz.) On a per-mass basis, at the price mid-range, that soup's gone up in at an 3.5% annual rate.Note that I assumed the size change from 12 oz to 10.75 oz, but I haven't been able to verify that. Note that with a smaller time range and different starting and ending pricing, I got about the same value, a 3.5% annual inflation rate.
* Yeah, I know the President doesn't spend the money, but it's not like you'd ever hear "tighten our belts" or "put a lid on spending" out of that guy's mouth (or any other President in a couple of decades).
**************************
[UPDATED: 02/21:] When I wrote this post, I did a quick search to find anything I'd written about soup. (Yeah, good luck with the lack of any search features. Sorry for that, readers.) Anyway, I did find a paragraph in post from 4 1/2 years back later on, so I inserted an update here.
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Ein groß weißer Luftballon - The Chinese
Posted On: Wednesday - February 8th 2023 9:54AM MST
In Topics:   Music  Humor  China  Zhou Bai Dien

Honestly, I don't know. It's funny anyway.
Peak Stupidity is yet AGAIN repeating music. Hey, we didn't know what was gonna happen and that the blog wouldn't have already been destroyed by now. (No, not by the Chinese, more likely by Merrick Garland.) The German band, not its leader singer, was named Nena, and their Ninety-nine Red Balloons, translated based on meter* from the German Neun und neunzig Luftballons, was a hit song 40 years ago. Our original post with the song was just about the music.
The theme of Ninety-nine Red Balloons is a peaceful incident - the balloons in the sky - triggering military escalation and the start of a nuclear war. I was going by memory, but wiki supported me on it, that the band Rush's Distant Early Warning (also on this site, here) was from around the same time. It was from 1984, as opposed to Nena's hit in 1983.
This was still the Cold War era, and all the possibilities for large-scale nuclear war were on people's minds. They had been since the 1950s. This showed up in rock music into the '80s. I do wonder how much of this was anti-Reagan propaganda, against, you know, the guy who ENDED the Cold War. Also, the early and mid 1980s was also a time of great music videos. I can remember the video for Distant Early Warning, and 99 Red Balloons too, though, IMO, Nena didn't put as much effort into theirs.
Back at the swamp, bugs in the software
flash the message, "Something's out there",
Floating in the winter sky,
one big-ass white balloon goes by.
Ninety-nine politicians tweet
on smartphones from their toilet seat.
No worry, worry, don't you scurry.
Chairman Xi says "don't you hurry."
The President is on the line
begging "CCP, don't drop a dime."
"Let our balloon fly over slow,
or it's Hunter, Hunter, on video."
A thousand spies are there in place.
We just do this so you lose face.
Both Bai Dein and Xi can rot in place,
let's take this war to cyberspace.
None of you clowns could be my hero.
What was that crap about Covid~Zero?
Don't want to live under some 'tarded freak,
as stupidity comes to a peak.
Wait, where do balloons come back in again?
OK, this is not a time for levity. Do you understand what happened to Lawn Chair Larry Walters? (Pun and James Taylor reference** very much intended.) OK, I sucked myself into this:
Drei und vierzig white balloons,
sailing right through Class B airspace.
Lawn Chair Larry had no fear,
six pack and baloney sandwich near ...
This is the last verse of the actual lyrics of the American version:
Ninety-nine dreams I have had,
in every one a red balloon.
It's all over, and I'm standing pretty
in the dust that was a city.
If I could find a souvenir
just to prove the world was here.
Here it is, a red balloon.
I think of you and let it go,
as ninety-nine red balloons go by...
That was pretty poignant. I don't remember caring about that in 1983. I just cared that it was a good melody with decent sound (for the '80s) and that the girl I though was named Nena was standing pretty in the video.
* That's got to be tricky. The title was not hard, with "red" inserted for one more syllable, though it's still shy by one from the German. However, translating a whole song without butchering the meaning, while keeping the meter straight, and making it rhyme? I respect those who figure these puzzles out.
** We've got that too! Machine Gun Kelly was from JT's great album Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon. My wording is from the intro to the song.
Comments (12)
Zwei und neunzig Luft Balloons - the NOAA
Posted On: Tuesday - February 7th 2023 3:49PM MST
In Topics:   Music  China  Geography  Zhou Bai Dien
That's "92 Balloons", in English. ("Luft" is "air".) We'll get to that number shortly.

OK, first of all, they've got to be just fucking with us, right? I mean spy satellites are pretty damned good now, and they will be where they are supposed to be based on orbital mechanics.
At the same time, there are over 100,000 Chinese engineering students in the US, with 10's of thousands more Post-Docs, Chinese Nationals with Green Cards, and then those working long-term in National Labs and such. Even one in a hundred of them working for the CCP makes a thousand or two spies. (Peak Stupidity one case here, but VDare, where we got that post from, has plenty of other stories.**) I'm pretty sure these "students" and "researchers" can get a lot more important information for the CCP than a big white balloon sailing across freaking Montana.
Still, the idea is to protect one's territory from invasion, something hard to do in space, but not so hard with this not-so-maneuverable contraption. (People have noted the solar panels and talked about motors, but drag goes up with speed squared, so it'd take a lot of power to overcome any decent upper-level winds trying to steer that huge sphere around!)
Maybe it did get here by error. So what? It's humiliating to see that foreign object floating above, just as with a neighbors drone over one's yard. This thing was well out of shotgun range though, so you get the Air Force to easily take it out. We know Chinese would do the same in similar circumstances, laughable NY Post article quote - China accuses US of indiscriminate use of force over balloon, aside.
Why did Commander-in-Chief Bai Dien wait so long? My point today, which got greatly sidetracked from already, is one simple one. That excuse of not wanting to hurt people or property on the ground is bullshit. There's a lot of land out there, most especially in the West.
Stuff comes down from space, and we don't always know where on the ground or in the ocean it's going to end up. Airplanes drop off parts occasionally, on which some mechanic forgot to take care of few fasteners. Nobody besides a wishful-thinking purchasing department cares where they end up. (Got some funny stories from the airborne freight world, but I'll hold off.) Skydivers drop all kinds of stuff they are playing with (a hula hoop is the one I remember), and they are very lucky if anyone ever finds any of it.
Let's just talk balloon payloads, since the news is all "balloons, balloons" these days. For about 90(!) years, NOAA***/Nat'l Weather Service has been releasing 2 weather balloons daily in 92 locations, spread out around the US. I do mean spread out, as the only launch I've seen was in Western Washington State, in Quillayute to the west of the Olympic Mountains. That is truly nowwheresville. (Because Washington, FS runs the show, the balloons are launched everywhere right near 7A and 7P EDT (6/6 EST), so that dude had to launch his next one at 4 in the morning. It's part time, but not bad work, compared to say, fast food...
As per this NOAA/NWS quick, nicely-written page, the radiosonde payloads get Temperature, Dew Point, Pressure readings, along with wind velocity (velocity means direction AND speed)**** as they rise from the surface to 100,000 ft and stay aloft for a couple of hours.
Now, the gentleman in Quillayute told me these payloads (with return info on them) were rarely ever sent back in. The page above says 20%, though. (Perhaps they have locator beacons now.) Granted some hikers or ranchers may want nice souvenirs, but most of them have probably never been seen. That's most of 92 of them daily, dropped onto the continental US.
These are small items now - due to improving electronics, the payloads have gone from 2 lb. to 4 oz since the 1990s - but the point is, there's lots of room (if we would KEEP it that way), and this was not a real worry regarding the wait of days to shoot the Chinese balloon (one of them, so far) over the ocean off of the Carolina coast. Did they want to make it easier to retrieve the payload? That's a legitimate concern. Another legitimate concern that the Chief Executive/Commander-in-Chief may have is that videos of his son with coke and underage girls in China don't suddenly go viral. Xi says "Jiamp!" and Bai Dien asks "Hao hai, Xir?!"
As usual, the post got longer than I'd expected. I'll put up the song with lyrics in the next post.
PS: I just learned that 25% of the weather balloons are now autolaunched. With the filling of the balloons and all, that'd have been a cool engineering project. What happened, they could find Guatemalans to do the job?
* Work on it a bit first, before asking in the comments. OK, hint, it is under the ocean - only 40-something feet though, with the continental shelf and all. Hint 2, the guy sang for The Monkees.
** There's also the much more commonplace industrial espionage. Peak Stupidity has an example from personal knowledge in Chinese grad students and airbag espionage.
*** That's one of the very few US Feral Gov't agencies Peak Stupidity looks with favor on.
**** Here's where I wonder what they did for P and Winds aloft before GPS. Without GPS, with its pretty accurate altitude determination (nowadays), altitude is obtained FROM pressure, so how does one get P v Altitude? For the winds, were these tracked with triangulation for a while? Now, on-board GPS position can be sent. I wish I could remember all thatthe guy in Quillayute said.
Comments (10)
Hysterical Weather Girls
Posted On: Monday - February 6th 2023 8:43PM MST
In Topics:   TV, aka Gov't Media  Humor  Female Stupidity
Peak Stupidity's post Battle of the International Weather Girls from last summer showed our favorite bikini-clad weather girl down there in Chile. We enjoy watching, even though the high temperature in Conception on some random day in the year 2013 is not of great interest. Wait, are you back, or not? OK, I'll wait.
Steve Sailer has a post up, as taken from this comment* by regular commenter "Twinkie" on a previous thread, titled The Latest Crisis: Not Enough Black Women Meteorologists. It's the usual thing, pointing out the stupidity of it all, but it was again about why Affirmative Action can't fix everything, as if it were just OK for governments to discriminate against White Men to begin with.
Anyway, the discussion on TV "meteorologists" - some are, and some aren't - was good timing for me, as I'd gotten to the video here on youtube earlier.
If you're gonna watch the weather on TV, sure it's great to have the pretty girls doing this portion of the broadcast, from the studio. However, when it's in the middle of a hurricane, in this case (Galway, Ireland) just a bad storm, I think it's man's work. Hysteria is not a good look. We've put up with a couple of years of it recently, but I'd be hard-pressed to ever purposely watch it on the TV ...
If it makes you feel better, but possibly also a little let down, youtube commenters wrote that this was edited and the stop sign didn't actually hit this hysterical weather girl.
PS: I was going to post about the Chinese balloon(s) today, but I ended up spending too much time ... you know where. That'll have to come tomorrow.
* Usually he gives attribution, but he didn't. I believe the idea was, since Twinkie's comment derailed a significant portion of the thread, it would make for a good post.
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What if you reached the Age of Treason...
Posted On: Saturday - February 4th 2023 8:54PM MST
In Topics:   Immigration Stupidity  Music  Websites  Media Stupidity  Liberty/Libertarianism
... only to find there was no reprieve?
Would you still be a man for all seasons,
or would you just have to leave?
- Al Stewart, with more lyrics below.

That's not the exact lyric though. I changed the one word from "reason" to "treason", as stolen from unz.com commenter GeoKat62 here. The Age of Treason fits the current era quite well, though. That's especially as applied to the existential issue of the immigration invasion and the Zhou Bai Dien/Mayorkas Surge.
These things aren't planned in Peak Stupidity staff meetings (because we don't have enough staff to HAVE meetings), but this week has turned into Immigration Invasion week here. I promised to continue on just a bit to discuss Reason magazine, with a shout-out by VDare's Federale on behalf of the Libertarian magazine/website. ("Shout-outs" can go two ways, you understand ...)
Federale said Governor Ron DeSantis Strikes At The Slave Power With Mandatory E-Verify—REASON Magazine Is NOT Happy! We already discussed the first part yesterday. Federale says:
Reason claims that E-Verify is both error-ridden and ineffectual, therefore hobbling Americans and legally authorized aliens from obtaining a position with employers who use it. Of course, that makes no sense. No employer would use E-Verify if that were true. In any event, it is not true. E-Verify is fast and effective in authorizing employment. What Reason objects to is the fact that E-Verify interferes with the employment of illegal aliens. Because they support mass unlimited immigration, Reason just plain lies about E-Verify. [My bolding]Right. Reason magazine writers believe in open borders. Full disclosure here [as prompted by the PS Legal Department). As a solid Libertarian, I subscribed to Reason magazine for a few years in the '00s. It was my growing understanding of the immigration problem (thanks, Dad) and that publication's ridiculous stance, that had me writing a letter telling them to keep the rest of my subscription's issues and use the money to "buy a clue". I otherwise agreed and still do with most of the ideas I've read from the Reason people*.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again (slightly differently):
Hey, Reason writers: Look, I agree with the ideas of Liberty that you Libertarians discuss. We need more people like us. It's enough that Barry Goldwater lost by a landslide, and the L candidates never get more than 3% of the vote. Now, you want to keep importing millions of people who come from places with no history and ideas of liberty and freedom and who don't even know what Libertarianism means?! I doubt you'll get 10 new subscribers out of the 1/4 million! who crossed the border in a month. I'm sorry, but that's just not a good business model...Federale continues:
Reason does bring up one valid criticism of E-Verify, that it verifies documents, not people.His point follows, and that criticism prompts Federale's solution, the last part (I didn't want to excerpt the whole thing) of which I DON'T agree with**, and mine is surely a valid criticism. That would be the anti-privacy and Totalitarian aspects of it.
What is our opinion on the question of E-Verify? We're for it. Uber-Libertarian and hero of Congress Ron Paul is against it due to the unConstitional search/privacy aspects. It's one of the very few issues I don't agree with him on, for 2 reasons:
1) It's water under the bridge. If there had been no Volstead Act and no Amendment XVI***, so it was still not the Feral Gov't's business where we all work, than that'd be different. I don't like it, but it's been a century already. E-Verify doesn't make the problem any worse.
2) We have an existential problem here. First, we try to stop the invasion. Then, if this land magically reverts to a Constitutional Republic somehow with border control like a serious country has, E-Verify can be terminated.
With its open-borders stupidity, Reason magazine is aiding and abetting the Treason being done against America by the Bai Dien Administration, led by ex-Cuban Motherland Security head-traitor Alexander Mayorkas.

It's indeed the Age of Treason.
Peak Stupidity has featured this Al Stewart song at least twice already. We try not to do repeats, but this one, from the album Time Passages, is such a great one. Every time the phrase "Age of Reason" (I think something to do with the Georgia Guidestones book), I think of this song, though the title is A Man for all Seasons.
What if you reached the age of reason, only to find there was no reprieve?
Would you still be a man for all seasons, or would you just have to leave?
We measure our days out in steps of uncertainty, not turning to see how we've come,
and peer down the highway from here to eternity and reach out for love on the run,
while the man for all seasons is lost beneath the sun...
Here was this musical artist almost a half century ago writing melodic and thoughtful rock and pop songs about history. Now we have Wet Ass Pussy. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the former is higher culture than the latter. Nah, I'm just a curmudgeon, right?
* I'd occasionally end up on their website's Hit & Run blog/forum from Instapundit (maybe). The SOS regarding immigration stupidity appeared there too.
** The last paragraph in there.
*** Read all about it! Part 1 - - Part 2 and Part 3
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Trump v DeSantis / Legal v Illegal Immigration
Posted On: Friday - February 3rd 2023 9:22AM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '24  Immigration Stupidity  Trump  President DeSantis

Round 3 on the Peak Stupidity battle between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis last Fall consisted of comparison of the two politicians regarding the MOST IMPORTANT problem in America (30 years running), the immigration invasion. This is a follow up, 4 months later, using VDare as our source. There is no better source of information on this issue.
VDare writer Federale just wrote Governor Ron DeSantis Strikes At The Slave Power With Mandatory E-Verify—REASON Magazine Is NOT Happy!
. Due to worries about Peak Stupidity's chronic biting-off-more-than-I-can-chew syndrome, we will address the latter point in another post. This is the beginning of the article:
America’s Viktor Orban, Governor Ron DeSantis, is moving from victory to victory on social and cultural issues, besides having a 2.5% unemployment rate. After beating the tranny lobby and Disney, Governor DeSantis has moved against illegal aliens, doing his best to end the job magnet and participating in the legal actions against various Biden Regime Administrative Amnesties.(As is the usual case with VDare articles, there are LOADS of links. I didn't transfer them.)
The Scourge Of Illegal Aliens
This time Governor DeSantis has backed up his threats against the Slave Power to enforce the use of E-Verify by employers in Florida. Some claim DeSantis is just talk, but the truth is he acts and the Slave Power is being hurt. Many of the Slave Power thought they were above the law and ignored legal processes demanding compliance with the law. The Slave Power thought they could outwait Governor DeSantis, but that was not happening.The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity said that Prestige Cruise Services, LLC, was the only of six organizations that received a notice in December of their requirement to prove compliance with E-Verify.Some got religion and complied, others thought they could intimidate Governor DeSantis. But that was the wrong move.
Dec. 16, a letter requiring proof of compliance was sent to six organizations: M.D.L. property Maintenance, American National Red Cross, Intelycare, Inc., Prestige Cruise Services, LLC., Upperline Health, Inc., ScribeAmerica, LLC., and Prestige Cruise Services, LLC.
The Department said Prestige Cruises is now “fully in compliance with Florida law,” but sternly warned the other five.
“For any organization that does not respond by its deadline, the next step is for DEO to notify the agencies that hold their licenses of their noncompliance. Per the law, agencies would then suspend all applicable licenses held by the employer until the private employer provides the department with the required affidavit,” they continued.
[Florida Warns Companies Who Disobey E-Verify of License Suspension, by Eric Daugherty, Florida’s Voice News, January 13, 2023]
Now, as for Donald Trump as of late, James Fulford just wrote In New Hampshire Speech, Trump Talked Border Crisis, But Made NO Mention Of Legal Immigration. Mr. Trump spoke in New Hampshire and South Carolina recently, and Mr. Fulford went through the New Hampshire video (and maybe a transcript*) He doesn't mention the S. Carolina speech here.
I applied the CTRL-F "Immigra" technique to the YouTube to find out if Trump talked about legal immigration, and while he mentions the Border several times, the only mention of immigration is when a New Hampshire GOP operative comes on after Trump, at 3:18:58, and mentions, along with NRA and pro-life outreach, ”immigrant outreach.”This seems to put Trump and DeSantis even-Steven in this comparison... so far. However, Mr. Fulford adds (from a VDare tweet in the article):
The problem is that if Trump isn’t saying anything about legal immigration, he’s not projecting the level of immigration patriotism he did in 2015, when he definitely won. See my 2015 post Trump Posts Immigration Plan, Neocons Go A Little Crazy.
DeSantis's speech criticized LEGAL mass immigration: "Mass immigration through the legal process, like the Diversity Lottery or chain migration, that is not conducive to assimilating people into American society".Donald Trump used to understand this and maybe still does. However, to the point here of this comparison, it's not just what these 2 politicians say. It's what they DO.
Trump had 4 years, and he spent more time bullshitting and tweeting than he did DOING THINGS. The things he did do mostly showed his incompetence, vindictiveness, and poor judgement. Down there in Florida Ron DeSantis IS getting things DONE, as we write here. This post is about the invasion, but as I read more on the ACTIONS Governor DeSantis is taking on other issues, I see that he is EFFECTIVE. Donald Trump is effective in mostly one area - getting people to care. Yes, we did care, but he didn't make use of all of us, and not much got done.
Like most of the VDare writers, I stay hopeful, maybe too hopeful. DeSantis could turn out to be incapable (probably not), neo-conned into worthlessness (maybe) or just another example of our Cocktail Party Theory of Political Stupidity once he goes from State to Feral. Until I know this, I like this guy! He fights, and he wins!
BTW, VDare is not always hopeful, as things are getting overwhelming. That's what the feeling I get from reading James Kirkpatrick's article on the site today, Why Now? All The West’s Ruling Classes Are Suddenly Enabling Invasion.
PS: Spellcheck still hasn't learned the word "DeSantis". It's underlined in red right there, as I write. I guess, generously, it's because I don't do updates, EVAH! Or, is this some petty way of lashing out by BIG "TECH" wokesters?
* Possible a big mistake. Transcripts of Donald Trump speeches are not just a little bit tedious! He goes round and round, but it at least comes out better from him aurally in person. I pity the fool who transcribes Donald Trump speeches!
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Ron DeSantis on the Warpath!
Posted On: Thursday - February 2nd 2023 12:45PM MST
In Topics:   Elections '16 - '24  Immigration Stupidity  Political Correctness  President DeSantis

Having never lived in the State of Florida, though not having any problem with the idea, especially today, I'd never heard of the Governor there, Ron DeSantis, until well into the Kung Flu PanicFest. He was one of the first big American political figures to push back against the PanicFest Totalitarianism. I never have gotten it straight whether the story of Gov. DeSantis' telling Zhou Bai Dien "Go fuck yourself" was true or not - the story is here on Peak Stupidity (but, of course) in the post Federalism Rumble of Feb 22nd '21.
Whether voting matters or not, we are all aware that Ron DeSantis capabilities and principles have made him a contender for the GOP Presidential nomination for '24. Peak Stupidity posted a 5-part series with a comparison of Ron DeSantis to Donald Trump last Fall - Round 1 - Personalities - - Immunity to Kung Flu Panic - - Round 3 - Immigration Invasion - - Round 4 - Tag Team? and Addendum - David Cole article.
Who knows? I may get fooled again, as I recall how encouraged about things I was this time of year 7 years back - beginning of '16 - with a long way to go for Donald Trump. (It's not that I think Donald purposely fooled us, but I was fooled into believing he knew WTF he was doing.) Ron DeSantis had Neocon tendencies, no doubt. The warmongering has got to stop.
However, it's the full-out immigration invasion that is THE existential threat, and DeSantis would have to be a hell of a conman to be fooling all of us on that score. He has done things, such as the Martha's Vineyard Trafficking scheme, that I just can't see any go-along-to-get-along politician doing. DeSantis compares favorably to Donald Trump on this issue. See the 3rd of the links above, and that was from months back. He's only gotten better.
Additionally, Governor DeSantis has been fighting hard against the PC/woke stupidity of Big Biz (aka "The Mouse") and education in his State. In his Kruiser Morning Briefing today, PJ Media's (part of Instapundit's group) Steven Kruiser posted DeSantis Keeps Staring Down His Haters and Winning. He quoted fellow PJ Media writer Rick Moran:
After scathing criticism of the Advanced Placement curricula for African American Studies by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the College Board has significantly altered the curriculum by stripping many of the issues to which DeSantis objected.DeSantis has got some guts for even bringing this up. No, this is not the pressing immigration issue, but this win shows that Ron DeSantis fights... and not just with his mouth. Kruiser writes:
It’s a big win for DeSantis and Florida students, who now have a less ideological black studies program to study — if they so choose.
Gone will be most references to black authors and writers associated with critical race theory (CRT). Also gone are many writers and scholars associated with the queer experience and black feminism. Also not a part of the formal curriculum anymore is Black Lives Matter.
Added to research topics: black conservatism.
We are coming up on the third anniversary of all hell breaking loose thanks to the coronavirus, which means we will also soon be coming up on the third anniversary of the beginning of everyone trying to cancel Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.The writer mentions that DeSantis is making all the right people angry. Yes, that is a good sign, though one must be careful about that Overton Briar Patch too. Mr. Kruiser links us to one piece of work named Joy Reid, but I came upon the same anger from yahoo.com. Whether it's after logging out from email or using the search engine to "find" this site to keep it on top, I sometimes spend as much as 5 seconds per day on yahoo.
Spoiler alert: none of them have been successful.

Right on top of the main page (formerly "home page"), yahoo asked the burning question "What in the hell is wrong with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis?"
Florida’s governor, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, has been on a proverbial warpath against everything—from banning mask and vaccine mandates and the teaching of critical race theory to suppressing voting rights."Banning mandates", he did. Now, that's kind of an odd way to put the first part. I would write that the Governor protected the freedom of Floridians to neither be forced to wear appendages that cause breathing problems nor take experimental gene therapy. But see, that's why I'm not a journalist, like Sophia Nelson is. And hell yeah, on the voting rights. It WAS up to the various States, when things still worked right in this land.
I know I am asking a rather loaded question. But it is one for which I have been desperately searching for answers. Florida is off the chain: neo-Nazi rallies, anti-CRT sentiments, debates on banning books, bans on vaccines and mask mandates and attacks on voting rights and fair elections. But worse than the state itself is its young Yale and Harvard Law-educated governor, Ron DeSantis.I'm not so sure that the writer hasn't made up the neo-Nazi rally thing out of whole cloth, and this accusation of the banning of books reminds me that there is nothing new under the sun - even 70 years later, after this. As Senator Joe McCarthy simply wanted to get the pro-Communist books taken out of the single-purpose foreign anti-Communist libraries, Governor DeSantis simply wanted to take out the sick BLT-G tranny books out of the grade school libraries. Unless you are a 4th grader away from the guidance of your parents, if you like your books, you can keep your books.
Florida’s governor has been on the proverbial warpath against, well, everything. Yet, this man is the most likely 2024 Republican nominee, in my opinion. He is the new darling of the conservative right. Bold. Brash. A braggart. He’s has called teaching about the impact of race in American history “crap.” And he carps on and on about protecting freedoms and rights by attacking science, mask-wearing and vaccines as Florida has surged with COVID cases, hospitalizations and tragically, deaths.On the warpath. YES! That's the guy I want - a guy on the warpath. Thank you so much for the encouragement, yahoo and Sophia Nelson!
PS: VDare's Federale has another post, up yesterday, about the Governor he calls America's Victor Orban, but we'll discuss this in a subsequent post with another comparison to Donald Trump on immigration, along with an evisceration of the folks at Reason magazine.
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Salad Bar Days
Posted On: Thursday - February 2nd 2023 9:19AM MST
In Topics:   Peak Stupidity Roadshow  Kung Flu Stupidity

Do any Peak Stupidity readers remember the days of the ubiquitous steak house restaurants? Western Sizzler, Western Steer, Ponderosa, and Ryan's are those I recall. ("The West is the best", "they"* say.) Only the latter is still in business, having re-invented itself as a buffet restaurant. Back in the day, you'd get that 1/2" thick piece of solid Sirloin - billed as that, anyway - with a baked potato, drink, and access to the salad bar for $4.75 or so. This was just after the decade in which jogging became popular.
Though you came for the shoe-leather steak, you all thought you were being so healthful, partaking of the salad bar, with 20 kinds of dressings and, YEAH, bacon bits!
On a road trip recently, the chain restaurant we stopped by had the old-fashioned salad bar. You've got your Romaine lettuce, your Iceberg lettuce, your variegated purple/green lettuce, your spinach... I was grabbing some of that rabbit food with the plastic tongs when a woman fell behind me in line. She had on plastic gloves up to her elbows. These were made of clear plastic, not the blue neoprene. Whatever, it was not my business, and not my day to calm down hysterics.
I didn't start it. "We're supposed to still wear gloves at the salad bar," she informed me. "First I've heard about it," I informed her back. "I thought the PanicFest was completely over." Well, SHE started it. "No, they want you to wear gloves." "That's not gonna happen."
Well, I got my salad, and she got her salad, so I assume this customer was not too bent out of shape by my lack of "Protective Equipment". I mean, they still have the sneeze guard, so there's that ...
This Kung Flu stupidity, the bread and butter of Peak Stupidity during our Salad (Bar) Days, lingers on, like a 3-day old booger on the sneeze guard.
* "They" being crazy Jim Morrison of The Doors of Perception.
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