Mexican Telenovellas Reality is Hell


Posted On: Friday - February 24th 2023 2:30PM MST
In Topics: 
  Humor  Female Stupidity

The Peak Stupidity reader should keep in mind that we are not a "current events" (1970's terminology) or news site. I do have lots of posts in mind on the current political stupidity, but other stupidity that is right up our alley garners attention at times. Here's one.



The headline of this Hollywood Unlocked* page starts out:

Wife Stabs Husband After Finding Images Of Him With ‘Another Woman',...


OK, OK, another "Dog Bites Man" story or, in this case, "¡Perro** Muerde Hombre!" as the story happened in Ole Mexico. Yes, those Hispanics can get mighty emotional. It works great in Telenovellas***, but in real life... well, I mean, sure, if I found a video on my wife's phone of her with another woman, well, wait, you know what I'm getting at ...

But, you know, there's metadata. Yes, Metadata, the information that comes along with pictures and video, when they were taken, etc. The headline continues:

... Discovers It Was Actually Her When She Was Younger.


Now, that there's funny no matter who ya' are... other than, of course, that poor guy who got stabbed due to his wife's being an impulsive retard.


* No, not our type of thing, but I got this story off an Unz Review commenter and went to the source.

** Roll your "r"s, bitchez!

*** There's more where that came from. See here. (It's been a while. Time for another one.)


Comments (4)




Irreconcilable Differences as grounds for a National Divorce


Posted On: Thursday - February 23rd 2023 6:16PM MST
In Topics: 
  Americans  US Feral Government  Geography  President DeSantis

Majorie Taylor Greene - yeah, I see why people are going by initials now - MTG, that is, is a US Congresslady representing the 14th District in Georgia, in the northwest corner of the State. She's a "character" as they say, and we could use more of them. It's not that I agree with every one of her "conspiracy" theories, though I think most are conspiracy facts by now. However what people like MTG do is not necessarily shift the Overton Window left or right, but expand the Overton Window, i.e. get a handyman (she's a woman, after all) to knock out the small window and some wall around it and change it to a big bay window. Here's a tweet from her* that expands the realm of public discussion



It's not like there aren't plenty of pundits and commentators that have brought up secession before, I mean since 1865, that is. MTG, though not long in office, is a well-known Congresswoman. Well known people of the Establishment were obligated to get busy and reply. I don't follow these tweet battles, but they'll bring up the not-so-recent-anymore unpleasantness of the secession attempt by 11 States just over 162 years back Instead of a divorce, that trial separation was squashed by President Lincoln's War, which killed more American men and boys than all others since combined.

There had been attempts to reconcile the differences, mostly economic, but with a moral component, between North and Sound well before 1860, such as the Missouri Compromise. (This is not a history post, so I'll stop there.) Let's just say that in 2023 America, the differences that are causing stress to the union are myriad and between vastly different types of people than was the situation in the Union in 1860. They are the difference between Libertarian and Conservative "just leave us alone" types and power-hungry Totalitarians. They are differences basically between the sane and the insane. Worse yet, each side thinks it is the sane one. I'm no know-it-all, but I'm pretty sure I know which is which.

It was possible to at least discuss the squabbles between sides back up through as late as the mid-1990s (by my estimate). Now, one side wants no discussion whatsoever except via their lawyers... on the courts. The "conversation", as they like to call it, goes only one way. At this point, the differences among Americans irreconcilable. I like the way MTG put it. Irreconcilable Differences is grounds for the big D, Divorce, at least in "no-fault" divorce States.

From the Legal Dictionary**
Definition of Irreconcilable Differences - Noun:

1) Differences of opinion or will that cannot be brought into harmony, or cannot be brought into agreement through compromise.
2) A relationship that has become relentlessly hostile.
Yeah, I mean, on (2) alone, the relationship between the left and right falls under this definition nicely.

Is the United State a "no-fault secession nation" though? It's not, per those who prosecuted and wrote most of the history of the War Between the States anyway. Most Americans just assume "ya' can't just do that" for any reason, even infidelity to the Constitution. What would the Supreme Court think of the matter? I think the big fault, pun intended, lies with the Founders for not making it perfectly clear in the US Constitution: Any time you want out, just say the word. (Or in the Moslem version: I secede thee, I secede thee, I secede the.)

I am blessed to have not had any divorces in my immediate or any part of my family. There's a time for divorce, I guess, but when there are kids involved, it's usually a lot more damaging. Custody battles are one thing for 1 or 2 kids, but how about for a nation of 300 million? What States get to keep the Conservatives and what States get stuck with the ctrl-left children? It's a bit more complicated when we are divided like this:



Thank you, commenter Alarmist, for bringing this country-level map to my attention.


More on the custody of the population later.

As a nation we also have a lot more common property than the average family, more even than the Bezoses. Who gets the nukes? Who gets the 300 million acres of the richest farmland in the fruited plain?

Well, in regular divorces, no matter what the cause, the woman gets the house, especially if she is screwing the divorce lawyer. To extrapolate, I suppose the ctrl-left gets the farmland, but then, as with the woman and the house, they can't take care of it themselves to they require more of our money for that. It sounds very onerous for our side, but then, if we can at least keep our guns, we may not feel obligated to keep handing over money. What about the divorce lawyer in this analogy? Could a separation and permanent divorce between States be done amicably, with no lawyers involved.

From all my observations of divorces of people I know, the lawyer's job becomes increasing the animosity between the sides. There is more money to be made that way. In this analogy, the lawyer would be some foreign power, brokering deals with each side but with its own interests really at heart - yep, like a divorce lawyer. Would it be China, perhaps?

Back to the divide of the American population, being done with this analogy stuff, let me discuss the county-level map above. There may be "blue" and "red" States based on recent voting patterns, but,

1) For many States, it's only a few percentage points of difference, meaning the 2 sides are all mixed together within the States.

2) Though mixed together within States, except for white-lefty New England, the black Mississippi valley, and some big deeply Hispanic areas in the southwest, there is a strong city v suburb/rural pattern that shows a clear divide. You can't even split up territory within the States cleanly.

Even though we see the country is mostly "red", with only the cities standing out in blue, in some of the counties the margin of Right over Left is small. Once has to drill down to voting precincts to find out where the compatible people are. Believe me, I have been doing that for a while. Unfortunately, the NY Times great interactive '00-'10 census demographic page was not repeated for '10-'20 due to wokeness, so I've the been using "Justice Map" site. It's a lot clunkier, one can't look at changes from '10 to '20 directly, but it's helped me figure out who is where, race-wise at least... so I've got to find something like that again, as that Justice Site map just went tits up for me.

How's this divorce going to work, as far as custody goes? Well, we've all heard of over the years, or lived in, sections of States that don't really belong, such as eastern Oregon (east of the Cascades), eastern Washington too for that matter, anything in Illinois outside of Chicago, Florida north of the I-4 being the only Southern part left, and then there's Texas, with a deal they made long ago. These State secessions would not raise the ire of the Potomac Regime as just quitting the Regime would.

In his latest post on VDare, National Divorce—Or State Divorce? Immigration Has Made One Or The Other Inevitable, writer James Fulford discusses these possibilities. That's where I copied the tweet from, but also, it's an interesting article.

This discussion of the carrying out of those dreams of State residents whose territory has the culture of a next-door State brings out 2 big points in my mind:

1) Will people move? Due to the extreme division that's been sown by the hard-core left, I think that's more of a possibility than in the past. Remember that "Free State Project" in which Libertarians were going to flood New Hampshire? Well, it was a nice dream, but I believe it was only 5 thousand or so who moved there for this project, a drop in the bucket even in New Hampshire.

There's a different feeling now after the 2 years of Kung Flu Totalitarianism. The contrasts have been stark - take New York City (please!!!) v Florida. People are moving. California, as nice as the weather and climate is, has become Paradise lost, as business and regulatory "climate", along with not-so-welcoming demographics has caused many people to give up. Exodus II.

There would be a cascading effect. The more of your side known to have moved, the better the new country will look and the worse your old country will be soon enough. Our family would really like to see this divorce, or these divorces, get finalized, so we can pick an appropriate spot.

2) Federalism! Without the kind of Federalist attitude, as in standing up to Feral Gov't pressure and resisting the bribery via their money and programs with strings attached, this won't work. That's why Peak Stupidity is such a fan of future President DeSantis, as he understands this, and he fights, and he wins.

I suppose it'd be OK in future "Blue America", but for those in the potential free zones, nothing changes for the better unless the State government has guts and resists. Otherwise, it's "OK, we have, errr, are allowed, higher speed limits, and you can drink beer and wine at 18 y/o again... blah, blah." Whoop-di-freaking-do!

This is the hard part. The Potomac Regime won't let go easily, and maybe will try a repeat of 1861. Good luck to us all!


* Screenshot, not an actual, physical tweet.

** Disclaimer: Peak Stupidity's legal team cannot verify and guarantee all information therein, as they are too involved at the present time with our class action face Chinese diaper failure litigation.


Comments (11)




More info on the J6 Political Prisoners


Posted On: Wednesday - February 22nd 2023 7:03PM MST
In Topics: 
  US Police State  US Feral Government  Anarcho-tyranny



Peak Stupidity has not written nearly enough about the 1,000 or so Political Prisoners that have been held in the Potomac Regime's Federal Shithole, some for 2 years now.. In November of '21, we posted The 1/6 Political Prisoners will NOT be sung of in a U-2 song. Much more recently, on the 2-year anniversary of the protesting, with minor rioting, about the fraudulent '20 Presidential election, we posted Two years later, Political Prisoners still held in Washington, FS.

One must search out this stuff. It's not like any of the mainstream Lyin' Press outlets are keeping anyone informed of this. Were this happening in some Latin American country or Russia (but not the Ukraine), Americans would be reminded daily of how many people were being held in some nasty conditions by near animals as guards and for how long so far. Nope, the protest, riot, and merrymaking in the Capitol was called an "Insurrection!" to both fool the gullible into thinking it was serious business and to teach what happens to "insurrectionists"*, were there any.

I got more information today, an article by one Cat McGuire** (a she) in The Occidental Observer, Report from Washington: DC Gulag Vigil for January 6 Political Prisoners. I am proud of and thankful for political gadfly Ron Unz's having posted the article here on his Unz Review website. There are nearly 100 comments there (The Occidental Observer has only 8 as of now.) At the bottom of the article, Miss McGuire has links to more coverage and groups that actually care about this Anarcho-Tyranny and these Political Prisoners.

There are vigils every night outside the DC Central Detention Facility, which were started by the murdered Ashli Babbitt's Mom back last August. I'm hoping to have a chance to visit with these "Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, and Brothers of the Disappeared" sometime.

I thank Cat McGuire, The Occidental Observer Editor Kevin McDonald, and Ron Unz for shining a little light on the fate of these people subjected to the worst of the Anarcho-Tyranny from the Potomac Regime (so far). I have the usual JFK quote that applies here in the 1st footnote below.


* There is indeed a lesson to be learned. That would be, if you end up part of a REAL insurrection, you may as well go all the way. John F. Kennedy tried to tell them "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable."

** Her bio-blurb makes her my kind of gal (politically): Cat McGuire is a freedom activist in New York City with a focus on opposing vaccine mandates, ID passports, and the New World Order Great Reset. In New York City, no less! That's way behind enemy lines. She was also at the Jan. 6, '21 rally but not inside the Capitol (or she'd have had to be writing this report on toilet paper using blood).


Comments (5)




More on Univ. of Wisconsin polling - to suck up or not to suck up?


Posted On: Tuesday - February 21st 2023 9:50AM MST
In Topics: 
  University  Political Correctness  ctrl-left

... that's the survey question.

A week ago, we showed some polling data from the University of Wisconsin student body that demonstrated how anti-Liberty and downright Communistic these young people are. ("How they are indoctrinated", I could say instead.) The information Peak Stupidity used was taken from this Steve Sailer post: https://www.unz.com/isteve/little-sister-is-watching-you/.*

I want to comment here on one more of the poll questions.



I had to shrink-to-fit, so, I'll repeat the graph title in text here: Percent of students who have not expressed their views because they worried the instructor would give them a lower grade.

The way it's worded means it could have been any Professor of any class in 4 years who had a Totalitarian attitude that discouraged the pollee from speaking up. Here are the answers grouped and averaged by student ideology:



Anyone who's spent time at a university, even going back 40 years, would have seen which particular fields of study ("study" nowadays being defined kind of loosely) have the more ctrl-left Professors The ctrl-left is not tolerant and doesn't even claim to be "liberty loving" these days, and going back to since they got complete control of the Institutions and became The Establishment. OTOH, part of being a Conservative, at least on the old-America-style Libertarian side of it, means one is tolerant of differing opinions.

So those handful of Conservative Professors aren't the ones directly or indirectly threatening the students with lower grades if they speak up in opposition. The ctrl-left ones are. So, there's your graph. It's not that the "Very Lib" contingent are so much more courageous than, or care about grades less than, the "Very Con" contingent. They just have the entire Establishment, including most Professors, on their side.

Going along with the economic factors - the worthlessness of most "Liberal Arts" and "Studies" degrees along with the huge amount of taxpayer money students are borrowing, there's another reason to either major in Science, Engineering, IT, or Math these days or just not attend a university. It's 2 things at once. One will not just stay away from most of the modern Woke stupidity, but one doesn't have to worry about it much if it pops up, and he isn't about to take it bending over.

To explain better, firstly, the Professors in STEM** are still generally more Conservative. The people that end up teaching Engineering or Math simply cannot be as dumb as most of those teaching Womyn's Studies or Psychology. Therefore, they don't fall for the Woke stupidity (though they may still be cowardly about it). Just as importantly, the STEM classes have objective rather than subjective subject matter. Yeah, this one Math Prof may be a left-wing kook and gets pissed off when you disabuse him of his political stupidity. However, if you solve the Differential Equation correctly, well, it's right. PERIOD. What can the guy do?

How to get those easy A's in those 10 electives you also took to meet girls in as lectured to by the Woke ctrl-left types, now that's another story. Do you suck it up or raise hell? Depends on your GPA, I guess.

PS: We briefly mentioned 3 weeks back in Chinese v American U-Students - Round 2: Current Campus, one fun activity for a grad student who is allowed to "audit" other classes - meaning no extra tuition and no grade - just for learning and .. heh, yeah, that's the ticket. This activity would be your auditing of the sickest, wokest class of the sickest, Wokest Professor at the whole school. You raise your hand a lot to argue anything you don't damn well agree with. Fun would be had by all! ... errr, you and your friend and hopefully a handful of regular student sympathizers! What would happen next? PS Legal says we shouldn't have even mentioned this to begin with.


* BTW, pro-White activist Jared Taylor posted Women Are the New Thought Police a day later, based on the same poll and also on The Unz Review. Mr. Taylor's style is different from iSteve's, but I like it, and there are 290 comments there (I haven't read) vs. iSteve's ~190. (Ron Unz put Jared Taylor's post up top for a day or two.)

** I really don't like the term much.


Comments (11)




Rage Against the War Machine Rally


Posted On: Saturday - February 18th 2023 3:52PM MST
In Topics: 
  Liberty/Libertarianism  US Feral Government

This is tommorrow.




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.

Terrain in north-central Ohio - this is about 50 miles SW of Cleveland:



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).

Terrain near E. Palestine, OH. It's mostly woods to the south and east, toward the river. There's more farmland in proportion to the north and west.



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, so is H2O, the other product of clean combustion [YOU! DO! NOT! TALK! ABOUT! FIGHT CLUB! THE! WATER! - Ed.] Yes, increasing CO2 levels have an effect of increased temperatures ... BUT, from that ONE EFFECT! There are lots of processes going on in with the climate of the Earth. You've got ocean currents, cloud cover, land cover, winds aloft, solar radiation fluctuations, heat transfer from one atmospheric component to the other, to the ground, from the ground, out to space, convection heat transfer, with every process depending on the rest of them (except for solar radiation not depending on the rest). It's complicated, and there's no working mathematical model***** of the whole thing, and I wouldn't expect there to be, for a long time.

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.

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.
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:
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.

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.
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:
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 secrets history, say on their Cultural Revolution. The big cry for justice and retribution during that mess was against the landlords. The landlords, by definition, OWNED something. That's not the deal in Communism - you don't just up and OWN stuff! Not if you're just some peon in the 99.4% you don't.

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.

I was pissed enough reading this article that I don't hesitate to put her image from the article here.



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.

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.
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.

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.

“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.
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:
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.

“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.”
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.
“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.

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.
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.
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.

“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.]
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.

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.


Comments (11)




Name-calling and Primary Debates


Posted On: Friday - February 10th 2023 9:45AM MST
In Topics: 
  Elections '16 - '26  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!"

"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]
There are 2 reasons a public debate, as mean-spirited as they wanna' make it, would be highly beneficial:

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

6 is the new 12.



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.)


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Trump "Distraction Bug" patch a success in DeSantis Beta Testing


Posted On: Thursday - February 9th 2023 10:27AM MST
In Topics: 
  Elections '16 - '26  Legal Stupidity  President DeSantis

It pisses me off when some tweet has a video that I can't find on youtube or bitchute. This is after 15 minutes searching this time. The video is in the last item (10:28P) from yesterday (02/08) on Instapundit. You may find it easily today, but those Instapundits post prolifically, so it'll be hard to find soon.* Therefore, for the 1st time, Peak Stupidity will link to a tweet. Mea MEGA culpas! If any of you bright readers can find the video, please paste a link in the comments.

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 was still IS his biggest bug.

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..."
EXACTLY!

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.


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Inflation Note: Chicken Soup for the toll


Posted On: Wednesday - February 8th 2023 6:26PM MST
In Topics: 
  Inflation

Top row, 2nd from the left.



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 apples to apples the cheap stuff to the cheap stuff.

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

Who are these two?



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.

The Big White Chinese Balloon, being sent to Dai Fie Zhou ne dzis loe kei.*



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.


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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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