Saturday, February 17, 2018
American Steel
Friday, February 16, 2018
The Mental Illness Defense
If there are some who want to pay to keep a murderer alive, then they should donate the cash, after compensating the victims' families a million dollars per life, and compensating the state for all legal costs, police overtime, etc. Perhaps some of these people that want to keep the insane murderers alive can sell their homes, cars, clothes, kidneys, fingers, eye-balls etc. to raise money. It is not the responsibility of the taxpayer to keep an insane murderer alive for the next hundred years. It is a violation of my rights as a human being to compel me to finance a murderer's food, shelter, and so on. The amount I am willing to pay for that sort of thing is zero.
Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Lenovo
And, word to the wise: the defect rate of Lenovo products is high, while their technical support is extremely poor. Their tech support staff speak poor English, the kind of English that a third-grader in China learning English as a second language might use, and frequently Lenovo staff will return a product without performing any repairs at all. The amount of time Lenovo requires to perform a simple repair is 2-3 months; a complex repair is completely impossible. Those who invest in Lenovo as a company or as a customer have a desire to lose money and lose time. They would be better off playing video games, because at least they would have fun that way.
Saturday, January 27, 2018
The Opioid Epidemic
We should legalize marijuana from coast to coast and let that be our people's drug, because it has little harm, even next to alcohol. The resources devoted to locking up pot users are resources wasted. Pot is tea. No big deal. The biggest downside is potheads get thick-headed and lazy, but they aren't addicts and can quit tomorrow, with a bit o' willpower.
The other drugs, should they be legalized too? Yes and no. I would support legalizing methadone and other mild things to help addicts wean themselves off the hard stuff. I would not support the legalization and availability of meth, heroin or crack, because people are stupid, and they will take poisons until they die, and unfortunately, addicts have a nasty tendency to wreak ruin on those around them.
The Stock Market
The question is when, not if.
I'm quite satisfied with my gains thus far. Thanks, Obama. Oh, and a tip of the hat to Trump for not following Republican tradition in launching a new war. Yet.
True, bond interest rates are abysmal, insufficient to keep up with any rational projection of future inflation.
But, so what? Interest rates should catch up in time. Nice to have a hefty chunk of change in the bond market, dry powder for future use in the event of a stock market meltdown.
Right now, foreign stocks look interesting to me. I like the look of Asia. A war with North Korea just isn't something the U.S. really wants to do at this time, because our trade with Asia is such a huge part of the U.S. economy. Also, North Korea is nothing but a hundred-pound baby, with needs, not anything useful to offer the world. Bombing them just sort of reinforces their already existing bunker mentality, and they don't have anything worth bombing. If peace prevails, then Asia stands to gain, because China is highly rational when it comes to economic and trade policy.
Thursday, January 25, 2018
Intel Slipped on its own Banana Peel
Saturday, January 20, 2018
How to Handle Afghanistan
A bonus to dumping waste in Afghanistan is that the opium crop would have a built-in deterrent for all the drug users. They could get a hefty dose of radiation with every injection. That would cut down on the drug epidemic.
I don't understand why the U.S. has not recovered reparations from all the mines in Afghanistan. We should be rolling in gems and rare and precious metals now. Every taxpayer should receive a box filled with treasure captured from Afghanistan. Instead, all we receive is a big tax bill, and the tax money has gone over to help the ragheads, who hate us anyway. Worthless waste of money, getting involved in raghead nonsense. All they live for is martyrdom, they have no life and no culture.
Monday, January 15, 2018
500% Tax on Turkish Imports
Sunday, January 7, 2018
Fever
Religion in Iran
Saturday, January 6, 2018
Trump Administration Drama
Trump is a natural extrovert and basks in any kind of attention, negative or positive, and he has an impressive, thick skin. I don't imagine he is really upset over the whole Bannon deal or over much of anything else. Instead, he keeps his eye on the game at all times, always looking at how to win. That, I think, is his secret. He comes across as emotional and passionate, and to an extent, he is genuine, but in reality, at his core, he is calculating all the time. It is probably true that he pays little attention to details, has little knowledge of world affairs, lies frequently to make himself look better, traffics in deceit and corruption, harbors numerous personal vendettas (he's a game-player), and is suffering from early stage Alzheimer's, but he may get through his term, nonetheless. Key is whether Ivanka can exert a moderating influence and remain as a close advisor. After four years, he's done. No way people will sign up for another four years with Drama Queen, I think.
I just hope Trump doesn't get us into yet another war. It seems to me, the U.S. has borne the heavy weight of the Cross for far too long. Time for other countries to shoulder the burden of World Policeman. We are twenty trillion in debt. This is no time to take on new commitments. I am for investing, not in war, but in infrastructure, here in the U.S. I place the need for better infrastructure even above health care, because better infrastructure would result in better health care. I am talking about better, safer, faster trains, better roads and bridges, Universal, Cheap High-Speed Internet in every mile of this country, whether rural or not, and better services from the government. It is rather shameful, some of the things I see and hear about regarding government services. For instance, some government offices still run on Windows XP. There is nowhere in the world that Windows XP should still be in use. I don't care how much money it costs, people need to upgrade, or else go Linux.
Wednesday, January 3, 2018
Alas, Iran!
Proud Persians are tortured, imprisoned, psychologically crippled, sexually maimed, and sometimes murdered, for no good reasons at all, but just due to the whims of the ignorant mullahs, who think they have a direct line to the Omnipotent. They do not. The gods hate them, without exception. They are hated and reviled universally. They must continue to imprison, to murder, and to torture their own people, for that is the only way they can cling to power, and that is their curse and their damnation, to be compelled to such acts. Both the tortured and the torturer suffers and both become bankrupt in spirit.
I am glad I don't live in Iran, among the savages. If I did, then I'd probably be investigating all of the ins and outs of cyanide, strychnine and like substances for ending my life, but only after, don't you know, only after taking some of the oppressors with me into the grave. I believe it is a duty to resist such tyranny as is exhibited in Iran. It is a solemn, spiritual duty, and to die without taking the life of an oppressor is a grave Sin in Iran. I would seek at all costs to maximize the loss of life and the suffering among the oppressors, which is to say the mullahs, and take every precaution to ensure that my goals were obtained, prior to my own destruction.
Sunday, December 31, 2017
Swatting Gnats
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.
Friday, December 29, 2017
Trump's Right about USPS. USPS Sucks.
The USPS is managed by morons, who should be placed in a facility. It operates at a loss, because the management does not know what to do, other than play with their thumbs. Management wants the USPS to be privatized, so they are doing everything in their power to destroy the USPS.
The USPS gives money to Amazon for no apparent reason, charging half what UPS and FedEx charge to deliver packages. Meanwhile, they pay the drivers $15 an hour, with no benefits at all, and no full-time hours. They use part-time, disposable temp workers. Very few drivers are full-time, with benefits. The USPS does not provide good jobs to most of its employees. Instead, it is far worse than Wal-Mart. The driver jobs are noisy, dusty, long hours for little pay, and the vehicles are unheated, uncooled, violent, and liable to cause severe, permanent hearing loss in drivers. For $15 an hour, a driver can expect to lose 25% of his hearing for life, suffer injury to joints, bones and tissue, and possibly lose a limb, because the little jalopies the drivers run around in on dirt roads for twelve hours at a time are unsafe, antiquated WW2-style jeeps.
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Lawsuits are Good for Apple
Apple is a tax dodger anyway for hiding all their profits overseas and refusing to pay much of anything in taxes to anybody, even poor old Ireland. They have no goodwill as far as I am concerned. Microsoft is a better corporate citizen than Apple, any day of the week, and that's saying something.
While I'm on Crapple's case, why did they move all the jobs to China? They should stop calling themselves American. List Apple in the Chinese stock exchange and just call themselves a Chinese company. They don't need U.S. protection. Their executive types need to move over to Beijing and learn all about the tender mercies of Chinese law and attend all those Communist Party meetings.
I don't give a hoot about new Iphone models, because they have zero features that interest me. There is one feature that would interest me: a replaceable battery. Will Apple ever design such a phone? No, because they're greedy, irresponsible idiots.
Sunday, December 24, 2017
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
Because Guns are Everywhere
Guns are about as good as we've got at this stage, but they are brutal, klunky weapons, and we have to be willing to accept that accidents will happen--often. Police require the ability to exercise deadly force simply because deadly force is widely distributed amongst our criminal class. If our criminals were not armed with deadly weapons, then yes, the police could be kinder, gentler, and have fewer accidents. But that's not the case. We have to get used to reality. The reality is that yes, the police will off innocent folk by mistake from time to time, because it comes with the job, and there is always going to be a certain percentage of accidents and misjudgements, both due to the human factor and due to the fog of war. People casting blame blindly upon police do not grasp the challenges that the police are up against in today's heavily armed society.
Relocate Israel
There are very few people in Australia, with the consequence that much of Australia goes unused, being desert and scrub, and the Israelis have the knack of knowing what to do with that sort of land. Australia would benefit not only from the money down on the purchase, but by having an industrious, well-educated neighbor (possibly a quasi-independent state) which could join the Commonwealth. The smart Israelis would set a good example for the Australians and teach them a thing or two about military endeavors, as well. I bet a lot of Australians would eventually want to go live and work in their new neighbor. Israel can then focus on what it is good at, science and technology, without the distraction of fanatical, stupid, know-nothing Muslims blowing things up and killing people.
Meanwhile, all materiel currently in Israel must be dismantled and shipped to the new homeland or destroyed, leaving nothing behind but a wasteland, where the U.S. can dump nuclear waste and other highly hazardous materials, to deliver the Muslims a Pyrhhic Victory, a victory they won't want and won't be able to exploit for a thousand years. Any buildings, farms or equipment left behind should be destroyed by fire or bomb. The Muslim fanatics now spending billions of dollars on terrorism can learn about the virtue of work, and spend billions to rebuild roads, shacks and sewage systems. Nothing should be left behind for them, and they can spend the next couple centuries cleaning up nuclear and biological waste. They don't deserve to profit from the unhappy situation they created, and it will be a good lesson for them to farm on radioactive soil filled with viruses, bacteria and heavy metals.
Friday, December 22, 2017
Arguing the Case for Hanging
Cold
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.
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techlorebyigor is my personal journal for ideas & opinions