Adieu

I like some of the posts in this blog, but they are fairly well-hidden by a deluge of not-so-great posts. In the past, I used to curate the blog, deleting posts that I felt did not reflect my higher self, those posts that seem inspired by lower impulses, base fear, greed or anger. Anger seems in plentiful supply now-a-days, served up by the media, and the flames fanned by public figures, who should know better, but they are just there trying to make a living off of the process. It seems to me that communication is a double-edged sword. There is much good that comes, much positive potential, but also there is a negative potential.

At any rate, I am rather bored by this blog and can't imagine anyone really finds anything of merit in it, beyond the occasional google search of a technical conundrum in, perhaps, some old version of Linux, which probably could have been fixed, had they merely upgraded to a newer version or better hardware.

I have ideas for new beginnings and want to leave this one behind, but I will not delete it. Instead, let it remain as a memorial to a period in a life, reflections on various political and social currents of the day.

One thing to bear in mind at all times is Heinlein's law: the two more plentiful substances in the Universe are Hydrogen and Stupidity.

Am I stupid sometimes? Without a doubt. My immune system does not annihilate all microorganisms of Stupidity. I am sure there are colonies thriving within me, and rogue cells, and the like. I regard myself as one example of a large population of an early model, an early breed preceding that which will come after us. Perhaps in the future, if H. Sapiens does not manage to mess everything up, which we do tend to do, perhaps in the future, there will be a better race, but I hope it will also be better from the moral perspective, most of all, and not merely more intelligent, stronger and fitter. The saddest outcome would be a race of supermen that had no scruples, bloodthirsty, cruel geniuses always at each others' throats. It remains to be seen. Hopefully, the process will be taken quite out of the hands of H. Sapiens and guided instead by a higher intelligence of some kind, artificial or else spiritual and natural. That is the prediction I leave with.

Sex

I read today that people are having less sex, at least in the civilized world. I think that sex was overemphasized, beginning in the 1960s or thereabouts, and the Western world, at least, is resuming the historical norm, in which sex was relegated to an occasional necessity for most people, although in truth, there is no necessity, the human population being what it is. Perhaps, in time, reproduction rates will drop off, and a gradual decline take hold, which would be preferable. The human population probably needs to drop about 50% in order to realistically cope with climate change. Governments need do nothing. Nature will take everything for else. Probably double-digit losses in the global population will occur every twenty years or so, brought on by droughts, fires and other natural disasters, but also in the inevitable world wars that will break out, and of which we see glimmerings already.

As to causes for the decline in popularity of sex, one need only consider the many pitfalls and liabilities to sex in today's modern society. There is little to gain, but much to lose, by getting naked with another human being. Disease ranks the highest, but after that pregnancy, then too, financial hardship brought on by blackmail, divorce, or crime. Emotions and drama seem to get involved wherever sex is concerned. Mainly though, today there are simply many more alternatives to sex, other ways to occupy one's time that are safer, cleaner, and arguably more fun. In the end, then, sex is just too much damn trouble for a lot of young people, and who can blame them?

Avoid Local Stores

At this time, quality can be found online. Local stores stock garbage, price it exorbitantly, and hope against hope that clueless know-nothings will buy the garbage. When, on rare occasion, by accident, an item of quality somehow finds it way onto the racks, then the local store charges twice the price of the online venue. That is why all purchasing must be done online by anyone with sense. If you want to stock your life with junk, then sure, buy from one of the retail chains. Watch your money go bye-bye as the cheap trash reveals itself for what it is in time. The retail chains hope to prolong their unnecessary survival by cheating the most vulnerable consumers out of their money. They have no plan at all for long-term survival, and it is only a matter of time before they all suffer the fate of Sears and K-mart.

Election Predictions

In the past, the formula has always held true that if the economy is good, then the ruling party remains in power. If the economy is bad, the ruling party is voted out. The American people are just like any other people in that they want to do well for themselves. If only nations could come together and realize that greater prosperity can be had through cooperation than competition--but leaders like Xi and Putin will never accept that, in a million years, because it is contrary to the place where their souls reside.

By the above formula, the Republicans should do well. They are giving themselves credit for the Obama recovery, and perhaps many people do believe that the Republicans, late on the scene, are responsible all of a-sudden for the booming economy. Certainly, tax cuts on business never hurts! Common sense tells as much. The deficit, which the Republicans worried about so much under Clinton and Obama, is abruptly a nonissue now that the Republicans are in power. Look at charts--spending always goes up under Republicans. They have not the discipline to keep their hands out of the cookie jar. One day, the bill will come due, and it may present a huge problem, and retirees are likely to bear the brunt, because in the end, retirees are expendable. The pattern for local governments has always been, screw the retirees out of their pensions.

I predict that the Democrats will do moderately well, making a strong showing, but not a landslide. Certainly, Democrats and independents have been given enough motivation and presented with a stark difference in every kind of policy under the Sun. There is no reason for voter apathy. The irony is, Trump has some good ideas along with the bad, but anytime one unscrews a huge jar of marbles and pours them on the floor, sure, somebody is bound to trip and fall into Truth, and that is what Trump did. A lot of marbles also went and tripped up the poor, the sick, transgendered, and immigrants. Trump to me represents meanness, cruelty. He has resurrected racism and given the demon a powerful new lease on life. He has also resurrected fascism around the world. He is no different than his predecessors in spending entirely too much money on the military, fooling around too much in the Middle East, and not paying enough attention to the threat posed by global warming. It is not popular nowadays to talk about global warming, but it hasn't gone away, and in the end, poses a greater threat to the United States than these sock-puppet regimes in the Middle East. Losing the cities of our coasts may secretly please cynical Republicans, who see them as liberal meccas full of minorities, but it will also waste away the bulk of the nation's wealth, for without the coastal cities, we are Canada. If the U.S. does not lead on global warming, no one will.

I don't really see a monumental regime change underway in the upcoming election, but I could well be wrong. I don't feel inspired. The economy is really the main thing for most people. It is difficult for the average person to grapple with big issues like global warming, foreign policy or even national policy. What people want is a safe job, a way to make a good living. The rest is kind of icing on the cake. Republicans opted to borrow from tomorrow in order to throw themselves a nice big party today. Perhaps that will work out for them in the short-term. Not yet have they told the old people, no Social Security for you.

Stephen Hawking's Predictions

He predicts superhumans will take over. I agree 100% with the gentleman. Tough luck for all those folks fixated on pumping out babies. You will need a genius I.Q. to compete in the future. Otherwise, only occupation? Organ donor.

Climate Change

Doomsy Day, as I call it, has been a popular subject since before our day, going back thousands of years.

The Atom Bomb is the most popular and prevalent catalyst supposed to bring about Doomsy Day. Prior to the advent of the Atom Bomb, people had to deal with diseases such as the Bubonic Plague that threatened to wipe out, if not everybody, a whole lot of people. Then the Christians were always fretting about God's Apocalypse, wherein anyone that wasn't right with Jesus had to pay the price--or be forgiven all their sins, depending on one's spin of religion. Plenty of religions have apocalyptic themes, because our ancestors had a rough life, and wrestled with diseases, warfare (often incessant), starvation and malnutrition, oppression, and even meteor strikes, hurricanes, floods and other calamities.

In my youth, we only really worried about the Atom Bomb, and it's still a worry, and isn't going away but is actually getting worse. The likelihood that some fool or group of fools is going to blast his enemies away with nuclear fission has increased, if anything. At least with the Cold War, you had a restricted number of nations in the "Nuclear Club," and the technology was all so new, that the foolish leaders were quite in awe of the weapons and reluctant to experiment with them. Nowadays every two-bit ignorant-as-hell regime on earth is hell-bent on getting nukes, and that scenario isn't going away anytime soon. Part of the problem is that the U.S. invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, alarming all the other two-bit, ignorant-as-hell regimes, to where they reckon they need nukes to protect against U.S. invasion. But you know, China is no walk in the park either, and may well start invading other countries too, one day soon.

Nowadays, climate change is the big boogie man, and just like nukes, I foresee NO SOLUTION, only pain and suffering for the world's population, not only of humans but all living creatures. Drastic, rapid change is going to result in a whole lot of death and poverty, and the poor people are not going to be taking it sitting down either, they are going to rise up, but they will face armies of drones hired by the rich to protect property. That is my sober (and sad) prediction. When times get tough, instead of pulling together, people often pull apart.

Of course, Republicans are extremely concerned about climate change. Not.

China doesn't seem too bothered, either, nor India, nor many other countries outside of Western Europe, and Western Europe has been enjoying a free ride on America's back for the past fifty years. They get to tariff us, and we don't tariff them back, and they get free military defense, while the U.S. taxpayer bears the whole cost. Nice, I'm sure they can fret over global warming under such a great situation.

Anyone living on the coast has to be asleep at the switch at some level. Every year is a roll of the dice. Although, I suppose for people over fifty, the thought may arise, not much time left anyway, and the good years are in the rear-view mirror anyway.

I think that environmentalists are too harsh on their fellow humans about climate change. Really, climate change is not something that H. Sapiens evolved to cope with. We do not have such high capacity. We are indeed fools. "What fools these mortals be!" as Shakespeare put it. Asking people to sacrifice thousands of dollars for a payoff in the distant future, when all these foreigners are not committed to sacrificing anything, is too much. Should Americans pay, yet again, to save the world, when we already saved the world from Nazism and Communism? Christ, we're not Christ. Can't somebody else step up? How about China? Well, China's a greedy, ruthless fascist state that cares nothing for anyone or anything save the enrichment of Communist Party leaders. Russia's a mafia state. What else is there? Europe is a Tower of Babel, too many different languages, cultures and petty little regional governments, they could never come together over the smallest thing, and they make foolish decisions anyway, like letting in the Islamist terrorists and forcing member states to accept knife attacks and bombs blowing up in coffee shops. The general man on the street does not particularly want to watch his body parts blast across the street, just because some politician wants to score points at an international conference.

So, the world can't do anything, because there's no leadership, and the only thing H. Sapiens is interested in is individual wealth and power. The good of all is a foreign concept, kind of a liberal, hippy notion.

At any rate, the world is a-changing, and there's no stopping change. Even the strong and the wise will be impacted. There is a great deal of random on the way. The best one can do is get prepared. Abandon the coast, first of all. That is rather obvious. Other than that, move North, because North is cooler, at least in these United States. Living in a tropical environment has not seemed to be a good thing economically, if we survey the countries of the world.

Platinum Can't Keep Its Trousers Up

As the internal combustion engine gradually gets phased out from worldwide usage in motor vehicles, platinum's trousers keep falling. I anticipate $600/oz., or about where we were in 2000. From there, it could decline further. After all, from an aesthetic point of view, it has nothing over silver.

Times Past

Used to be, the arrogant, stupid leaders of the world could throw a hissy fit, launch a bloody war, off a couple million folks, and call it a day. Now, all of a sudden, a world war results in Nuclear and/or Biological and/or Chemical Apocalypse. Are we to presume, that following the year 1945 and the advent of the Nuclear Age, H. Sapiens has evolved morally and ethically to the point where our leaders will abstain from world war and bloody conquest?

Not at all, not in the slightest; our leaders are just as stupid as before, if not more so, but their weapons are awesome and far beyond anything their predecessors ever dreamed of.

The only possible conclusion is that history will repeat itself, and world war must come again, and in fact, is long overdue. Putin wants war. He thinks he and a small group of cronies can survive the Apocalypse by hiding out somewhere far away from civilization, in the mountains of Siberia, deep underground, with plenty of food and medical supplies stockpiled, and even a generator or nuclear reactor to provide electricity. He figures he can repopulate the world in his own image: ugly, evil, and stupid; something along the lines of what Sauron wanted. Unfortunately for everybody else, his plan is just within the realm of possibility.

Our intelligence apparatus, instead of wasting time on the ragheads of the Middle East, should be focused with laser-like precision upon Russia and China, the real threats, as opposed to the ever-reproducing ragheads, who should be contained, not by American forces, but by other ragheads. Resources spent upon policing ragheads are resources wasted. They will never amount to anything and will always destroy whatever is built in their region of the world, because that is in their nature. It is pointless to expect the raghead to do anything other than have a strong man operating under the cloak of Islamic legitimacy. The past several decades consisted of opportunities and resources wasted by the U.S. foreign policy due to the false expectation that the Middle East would have its share of Thomas Paine, George Washington or Benjamin Franklin. Fat chance of that. All they have is a bunch of lunatics with scimitars, grenade-launchers and automatic assault rifles.

Alexander is laughing at us. "Did you learn nothing from my war against Darius?"

But of course, the Americans do not read history.

Occam's Razor

In the recent Russian nerve agent assassination, Occam's Razor indicates Russia is culpable. The nerve agent was manufactured by Russia and is only known to exist in Russia. Putin is a liar; to lie is nothing to him. Putin controls Russia as a de facto dictator. Putin wanted the ex-spy living in London to die of spectacular and macabre symptoms. Thus, the simplest, and therefore most likely, scenario is Putin ordered the poisoning. Any other theory relies upon further complexity and far-fetched possibilities. All the lies being generated by the Russian state may be ignored without further consideration. Russia can be assumed guilty, under any circumstances, until proven innocent, because Russia under Putin is evil.

Putin is playing with fire, skirting along the edge of war. The fool may miscalculate at some point, to his peril. It is unfortunate that the rest of us have to live on the same planet as Putin. He is in a similar category as Hitler and Stalin, his two heroes. That such a fool is in charge of a nuclear-armed state is a big reason to be pessimistic about the future of H. Sapiens. The odds that H. Sapiens will survive the nuclear age are about one in a million.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke is such a good writer of science fiction. His prose is clean and concise, and he has proven prescient. It is a symptom of cultural decadence that our world leaders do not read from and quote him.

Trump is entirely unacquainted with either science or scientific thought, and to be fair, the same applies to many world leaders, who view science merely as a tool for military weapons or economic gain, if they think of it at all. Elevating the bullies of the world into positions of power has had a deleterious effect upon our future prospects. Putin, Trump, Xi--and then the nitwits of Iran, North Korea, and really most all of Africa. I think there is a great case to be made for pessimism over the future of H. Sapiens, given that many of these leaders have vast arsenals, including biological, chemical and/or nuclear weapons at their disposal. Probability will run its course, and there is a distinct probability one of these nitwits will miscalculate at some point in time and set off a most regrettable chain of events.

Therefore, what is an ethical person with sense to do? Enjoy life, I suppose, and try not to dwell upon the coming end of humanity, and try to secure little pockets of knowledge and culture into safe havens that can endure, perhaps, the coming nuclear/biological/chemical Apocalypse, when vast numbers of the human race will perish in suffering and death, slowly or mercifully quickly. It is well to stockpile cans of pinto beans and dried milk, as I know many folks that do, but also stockpile books and data, because much learning could be lost when the Internet is no more, and libraries have burned to the ground.

Give a care, not just to the immediate needs of current life, the avoidance of hunger and thirst and so forth, but also to the knowledge-base of the human race. Imagine having to discover all of our science and technology all over again. Imagine being without all our fiction and prose. We could well be sent back to the Stone Age, depending on the severity of the Apocalypse. It would be well to have many treasure-chests hidden around in various locations with a wealth of knowledge.

Perhaps if all is lost, and most all our species perish, there is yet hope, if not a hundred years after, then a thousand, or even ten thousand, or a hundred thousand. I imagine a secure and timeless repository like the Pyramids of Egypt, something that can endure, in a desert perhaps, or some remote place far from the beaten path, hidden from thieves and wild animals, safe even from rot and decay, microbes, humidity and solar radiation. It is a technical problem that demands a technical solution. It would be worthwhile to invest a million dollars in securing hidey-holes around the globe for future wanderers to uncover, that our civilization might be reborn in a future age, after the radiation has died down and open spaces are habitable by human beings again.

Guns Vs. Pot

It is amusing to contrast the police response to an active shooter situation at a Florida high school with that of a pot dealer. Tipped off that there's a large stash of pot, eager swarms of police bust in the doors of the pot dealer, looking to score cash, guns, and drugs, some of which can be siphoned off, but at any rate all opportunities for promotion, because the police department gets to keep the cash. Now, active shooter on a school campus? What's the hurry! We could get hurt, yo? No money in that, either.

It is a symptom of the collective schizophrenia in the world today that marijuana is perceived as a crime that must be answered with deadly force. China, Singapore and Malaysia, among other barbaric outposts, are known to execute those that traffic in large quantities of marijuana. For this reason, among others, an alien intelligence evaluating H. Sapiens would be wise to conclude that our species is not worthy of rescue, of enlightenment and education; that we should be left to our own devices, which means, to self-destruct in our own toxins and nuclear weapons. Rather than continue to contact us, they withdraw, leaving no trace.

Is the U.S. Doomed?

The United States will one day be one great big desert, with slave camps for all its people, who will be used as body bags by foreign conquerors--fresh organs, blood, tissue. One reason is other countries take science seriously, like Japan with its new cure for flu. How come the U.S. did not come up with that miracle drug? What's the reason?

All that Trump wants to do is buy bullets and bombs to blast the ragheads in the Middle East from afar, just like every Republican since 1988. Other than that, no medical care for the poor, no science, no space exploration, no infrastructure. The U.S. decays from within, while the Republicans have a jolly good time running up the deficit in a race to see how fast they can bankrupt Treasury and deplete our Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

The number of young people interested in pursuing a career in actual hard science (not just computers and nursing) is abysmal and paints a picture of the slave camps that will stretch from California to Florida. Sex slaves and organ bags are what our defeated people will become, to whichever nation or group of nations takes science seriously enough to gather up the secrets to future tech. China has already stolen a great portion of our technology, due to our leaders being asleep at the switch. No one in Washington, D.C. cares about or even really understands cybersecurity or science. All they care about is bombing ragheads, looking tough, standing tall, and partying all night in their drunken reveries of arrogance over their temporary power in this world. They will be forgotten, just like the old Weimar politicians.

Time is not on our side. I wish the Republicans would think for one second how many Ph.D.'s are graduating in China as opposed to the U.S., and how many new discoveries are being made, not in the U.S., but in competitor nations. It is not just because of resolve or toughness that the U.S. won WW2. It is because of what? Because of science. Without science, there would have been no radar, no breaking Enigma, no advanced bombers, no nukes.

Instead of a stupid border wall, which is a great big admission of defeat in the failed war on drugs, the Chinese are building dams, internet, highways, universities. Instead of invading worthless cesspool countries, the Chinese are investing in factories.

Who is going to rule the world in the future? It won't be the U.S., twenty trillion in debt. Our economy collapses the moment investors wake up and realize the debt is never going to be repaid. Inflation will turn into hyperinflation, and no one will have any retirement savings.

Swatting Gnats

The U.S. could yet emerge victorious in the current world scenario, if our people proved worthy, which remains to be seen. The odds are in our favor. The U.S. is fantastically powerful in every way. North Korea barks about its nukes, but through science, we could neutralize nukes, even ICBMs, from North Korea, Russia, China, Iran and all comers.

I doubt, however, whether our people are ready to devote resources to complicated, hard to understand science and scientific research, instead of the usual, par for the course: bombing ragheads in the Middle East.

The problem with bombing ragheads is they just reproduce like rabbits and make more ragheads. What's the point? The fanatic, despotic Muslims never were a realistic threat to the U.S., just a distraction and an annoyance. They are miserable savages, yes. They should be sealed off from North and South America, Europe and Australia and contained in the miserable Third World region with the other savages. Instead, our myopic leaders squandered the nation's treasure bombing places that were probably improved by the bombing and never were anything special to begin with. Meanwhile, Asia and the real threat, China, crept around and surprised us with a nuclear-armed NK.

North Korea is just a sock-puppet for China, yet another distraction while China wages economic warfare, seizing all manufacturing, and the U.S. transforms into a service economy unfit and unprepared for any serious endeavor, useless and dependent.

The United States, twenty trillion in debt and lagging in scientific research and development, with Trump wanting to spend money, not on science--goodness no!--but on military hardware, bullets and bombs and gadgets, in order to enrich his crony friends, and possibly wage war against the next annoyance, the outlook for the U.S. does not appear all that great. China's long-term strategy, meanwhile, is apparent to those who watch and listen. China's strategy must succeed, if the U.S. does not change course and focus on what is real, rather than swatting gnats.

The proud old lion gasps in the jungle as the bold hyena comes to claim dinner.

Cold

To be a good operator in this world requires replacing stock H. Sapiens blood with ice water. Sang froid, I believe it is called. For we have many opinions, don't we, about the way things are, but opinions do get in the way, and after all, aren't we wrong some of the time? The superb operator listens to realpolitik, to the sense, not the appearance, of reality. Because reality is not as our opinions seek to make it, but rather is independent of us and our beliefs and preferences. The Universe is greater than any--or all--of us. These things I accept.

This was the reason I stayed fully invested in the United States stock market after Donald Trump became President. I sensed inflation would rise, but so would the stock market. Donald is simple, and it is not difficult to walk though his mind and lounge about on his mental furniture while deploring his atrocious taste in decor. He telegraphs everything he thinks the moment he thinks it, all the time, and is remarkably consistent, and even his many lies are transparent, for he is rather a buffoon. This makes investing easy, even with little knowledge of the market.

Just because I am making money does not mean I support Trump or the Republicans. Money is not everything to me, and I don't think it should be. Money does not equate to morality, as those right-wing Christians that adhere to the Prosperity Gospel seem to think. I know that, a hundred years ago, John D. Rockefeller helped finance the whole theology that linked Christ to the Almighty Dollar. But this idolizing of the rich has a whiff of sulfur about it.

I don't think that removing all of the safety nets from the poor and the ignorant and the stupid is a very nice thing to do. I think that there is a danger that those millions may turn extreme, rather than passing into that good Night gently and quietly. The Opiod crisis, the meth epidemic and the alt-right are warning signals from the poor. There are many guns among the people, more than in the militaries of many nations, and the right to own them is enshrined in our Bill of Rights.

The simple, ultimate and universal answer to the problems of today are both philosophical and technological. We must control the production of our new humans and optimize this production to create the very best from birth. No more defects, no more sub-par, only the very best and the very brightest. This is a very radical concept, unpalatable to many, but will be adopted by other nations such as China even if we do not. This question will decide whether democracy survives, or whether totalitarian dictatorship is the only rational and effective system of government. The United States and its people will be overtaken and enslaved in brutal servitude if we do not adopt a system of Eugenics. This is not to say that the system cannot be humane, gentle and yet effective. There is no need for human suffering or for callous or insensitive treatment of existing humans. There is only a need, and an urgent one, to improve future generations, to be better than me, than you, and better than anyone we know. The brave new world is now, and let's not let China steal it away from us.

Suffer & Die

After reading about the fraud and corruption in the new Republican tax bill, I'm persuaded the ultimate objective of the Republicans is to gut Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, and basically every other government program out there. It's a rifle-butt to the teeth of the lower and middle classes, a removal of the social safety net, and a return to the way things were in the 1880's, but the change is set in slow motion, not taking effect immediately. In other words, the government is being set up for inevitable bankruptcy and failure to meet all its obligations, because not enough tax will be collected to finance everything. The giveaways to big business will just result in CEO's and investors pocketing the difference and taking it home.

All of this must delight Trump supporters, who want Evolution to take its course and weed out the weak, even if that means grandpa, aunt Suzy or their best friend, Annabelle down the street. Either they love Evolution and the bones that produces, or they don't understand the simple math, in which case, Evolution again, upon the thinker that failed to think. I asked a poor Republican once why he supported the Republicans, and he said it was because of the Abortion issue, and that that was the main, possibly the only, issue for him. Well, abortion in this case is abortion of the sick, elderly, and the marginal types. Basically, society will have a harder edge, with suffering and death being more likely outcomes, without Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid around. When folks get too old or sick to work, and don't have enough money, they will just buy a gun at the corner store, and blow out their brains. Republican Heaven!

Trump the Grump

Trump called a grieving war widow to tell her that hubby knew what he signed up for. That may be the single stupidest thing he has ever said, although there is tough competition from among the many stupid things he has said. One day a book will be published, just a list of all the stupid comments Trump made over the years. If he's the best this nation can put forward, we are in big trouble ahead. Young people look at him and think what's the bother, don't work too hard, don't study, don't care, just lie, cheat and steal, and as long as you don't get caught, you're fine, you can be President.

Harmed

I do feel let down by the system, because so much of our peoples treasure was squandered on meaningless, pointless gonad-waving exercises overseas, from Viet Nam in the 1960s and 1970s all the way to Syria, resulting in our national debt, some twenty trillion last I heard, which will crimp U.S. prosperity in the future.

All that dough could have found a cure for Alzheimer's by now, along with cancer and other things, and maybe folks wouldn't be suffering so from horrible diseases. If only our leaders spent one minute of their time thinking about what could be truly awesome and wonderful and inspiring, instead of listening to their generals and the arrogant millionaires, who want to control everything, everywhere, even though they can't, and even though, deep down, they know they can't, and yet they still try, because they're morons with no philosophy in their vapid souls.

Scientific education, research and development is not prioritized in the United States, which is why our people will become organ bags for the Chinese, and nothing else. There won't be jobs, work, or good living going on over here, just prison-farms where people live their whole lives until their organs are needed for harvesting for a rich foreigner. That is my prediction for the U.S. and other declining countries.

I think the Mr. Robot television series is quite prophetic, and that the entire political class should be watching it on a nightly basis, before they go to bed. Indeed, China. So, tell me, how many trillions of dollars has China wasted on invading other countries? How many dams, roads, factories, and universities have they built instead?

I Wonder

I had a millenial friend that didn't bother to vote, though he supported Bernie Sanders, because he feels the system is rigged, and there's no point in participating. I wonder how he feels now, with Trump in power, and Republicans doing just whatever they please, as though they had a mandate, which they do not, but they don't care. I expect he feels raped; welcome to the world of realpolitik, wherein one either uses the system or is used by it. The system is all-powerful, greater than any of us, and can reduce us. I pitied him then, for there was much he did not yet know, but I also perceived, I was once like him, just as unaware of the light, gray and dark forces in the world, just as self-assured, just as deluded. It is truly not necessary, I concede, but it is convenient, to observe the solemn formalities, accept the petty indignities, and display the expected piety in this world. He chose not to do so, and so chose the hard road. I say that, by all the gods, our ancestors died for the privilege, and it is better to vote. Rigged or not, fair weather or not, destined for loss or not, I will vote.

In 2020, we will see, won't we? We will see whether White Nationalism is where the nation wishes to go. I only hope that the Democrats can retire the old dead wood and bring in fresh new blood. Out with Pelosi, out with Franken, out with Schumer, in with young Turks that understand the age in which we live and feel comfortable with a computer in their hands. I am sorry to disparage gray heads, but they are fossils in a rapidly changing age, and we need people that are all over data, computers, and artificial intelligence. What we need are people that read science fiction for pleasure. We have always needed that, in truth.

Precious Metals are Preposterous

The prices of precious metals are preposterous and fueled by irrational chimerae. The popularity of role-playing and video games drives demand for gold, as millions have been trained to think of gold as highly desirable, and the only possible currency, within the gaming system. In reality, in jewelry, gold has been supplanted already by other shiny metals that can mimic its properties or indeed surpass them. Gold is not what anyone will want in an apocalypse; food and guns are what people will want. It is not at all likely that precious metals will ever again occupy the position of currency within any future civilization.

As for precious metals other than gold, similar logic applies. For what reason should a man pay $1000 an ounce for platinum and $16 an ounce for silver? Silver is destined for long-term decline, because it is no longer needed in film. Platinum is destined for $500/oz., because it will soon be no longer needed in catalytic converters. The temporary aberration that saw a spike in precious metal prices is destined to peter out as the oldsters that clung to the shiny metals die off, and their descendants take the metal and sell off.

Men & Women

What men don't get is that women don't have the same sex drive, about ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Women don't want it. Men acting as though they do (or should) is the cause of much scandal and now, the ending of careers of the offending men. I feel sad for the men getting scourged in the media without much chance to defend themselves before a disbelieving public. In a way, it seems unfair to be called to the carpet for something that happened ten or thirty years ago. In the first place, the offense is a distant memory, if remembered at all, and the person is a much different person, having aged and grown.

Probably the optimal adaptation, for an average man of modest income and average mental and physical endowments, is the obvious and simple expedient of self-pleasure. Complete reliance upon others for fulfillment of basic needs has pitfalls in today's society, where lawsuits can be filed, charges brought, careers ended overnight.

Technology in the form of Artificial Intelligence will come to the rescue of the many lonely, homely, uncouth men--and women--who seem incapable of finding fulfillment with eager, compliant sexual partners. Robot prostitutes will sell to a vast market, and the value of said market will easily exceed that of motor vehicles. This will arise faster than anyone thinks, because there is bound to be a bright fellow somewhere among the rich who will perceive the same things and pour the necessary investment into crafting an adequate robot-whore that can be sold, rented or borrowed by techno-pimps. Anticipate the next Microsoft.