Pictured above is the gameplan for a left-wing one-day boycott of major businesses and services, in the hopes of sending a message. That message being, “we show them who really holds the power”.
The boycott is being pitched as non-partisan, but considering it’s traction among the left, it’s plainly a reaction on their part because they’re upset that they’re losing their grip on culture. The claim of being non-partisan is clearly intended as an attempt to expand leftists’ influence when they know that they are not culturally dominant.
They are not the “silent majority”, and the 2024 Presidential election provided the numbers to prove it.
Here’s a list of their extended gameplan, which makes mention of companies that have ditched DEI, such as Wal-Mart and Amazon:
You might be wondering, “Raizen, what are you doing sharing their gameplan? Doesn’t that help them?” I’ll explain why passing this info along doesn’t help them in the following list of reasons the boycott is almost certain to fail:
Boycotters prep for one-day boycotts by making their purchases in advance, or making up for them in the days after, so the companys’ bottom lines are often unaffected. This is especially the case with products such as gasoline.
Investors who learn of the boycott in advance can reallocate their investments, and thus profit off the boycott.
Imagine consoomers not consooming for a day.
Some people may decide to spend an inordinate amount on the day of the boycott, out of spite.
People tend to have less money when they don’t understand how the world works. For that reason, if leftist foot soldiers decide not to spend for a day, it’s probably not going to be very impactful.
And a bunch of leftists presume to tell the rest of us about economics.
So no, it’s not necessary for you to make a big ol’ shopping list and go wild on Friday. The left-wing one-day boycott is largely self-defeating.
And with how much better off companies that ditch DEI are likely to be in the long-term, they probably won’t much care.
While much of the corporate world is starting to get the idea that DEI in its various appellations is not a great idea, Apple is pushing back. They’ve encouraged investors to vote against a measure that would pressure Apple to join the movement where other companies, like Meta and Target, are ditching DEI.
As I’ve pointed out before, to survive in this world, it’s expedient to have a flexibility of mind to adapt to changes. And within the last couple years, one of the changes that has occurred is that companies are dropping DEI and other variants of it, which are not great for companies that adopt it.
In light of this, it’s really disappointing that Apple is among the few companies that are resisting this change. But it’s not altogether surprising.
It seems as though Apple favors virtue signaling over innovation. As expensive as Apple products are, they’re not terribly innovative. Their main selling point is their stability, which one might expect considering that the hardware and the OS are both developed in-house.
So, what’s the signal that Apple is boosting? Did you know that Tim Cook is gay?
No kidding? Was the rainbow that is shown off with product reveals not sufficient to give it away?
Image credit: cultofmac.com
Normally, that wouldn’t be known. But for some reason, that information is widely publicated. Ideally, this would have no bearing on the quality of a product being engineered and manufactured. But when a company is putting a visibly high amount of effort in communicating how dedicated they are to signaling, consumers start to get suspicious.
While Tim Cook might not identify with what it’s like to be straight, most people are, and they know what their tendencies are.
It might not be politically correct to say, but let’s acknowledge the reality of the matter: Most straight people would not want to be mistakenly seen as a homosexual.
It’s like a form of self-preservation. And five years of social engineering aren’t going to make a dent in a trait that’s been conductive to humanity’s continuity for as long as humans have existed.
Considering this tendency, it’s understandable that most people might be hesitant to adopt a brand where there’s higher potential to be mistaken for being a homosexual.
They might instead consider a phone from Samsung, which is headquartered in Korea, where the western world’s cultural problems are distant.
It might even be a significant factor in Android having roughly three times the share of the mobile OS market compared to iOS.
Other businesses are on the pivot to profit, whether Apple is enthusiastic about it or not. People speak of dying on their chosen hill, but it’s important to know that not every hill is worth dying on.
It seems the house of mouse is among the growing list of companies that are rolling back DEI initiatives. According to a note sent to employees and obtained by Axios, Disney is going to be focusing more on “business outcomes”.
And we know what that means. It means that Disney is joining the pivot to profit.
The note states that performance factors will focus on “Talent Strategy” rather than “Diversity & Inclusion”, and they’re dropping their “Reimagine Tomorrow” initiative, and have already replaced its website with an updated corporate hub.
Additionally, Disney has removed an auto-playing content advisory for certain programs on Disney Plus, and replaced it with a brief disclaimer in the details section of these programs. Which, as I see it, does suffice.
This development is yet another in a culture which is shifting back towards normalcy. While this may have been attributed to Trump’s resounding victory back in November, the pushback against the likes of DEI has been well underway at that point, with Trump’s victory being yet another indicator of where the US’s culture has been trending towards.
The fact is, DEI and similar notions have been huge liabilities, and it didn’t help the activists’ cause that the venture capital has been drying up.
Now that Disney is coming back around, I suspect that conservatives and those with families will be warming up to them, again. This is great, because this would amount to positive feedback for making better decisions. As I’ve pointed out about Mark Zuckerberg’s redemption arc, forgiveness can be strategically valuable. After all, if a person were presented with no avenue for redemption, they would have no reason to seek it. It’s better to have a Disney that aligns with our values than a Disney that opposes us, and it’s not bad for them to have an avenue to come back around.
And an incentive can help motivate them. The pivot to profit.
Of course, it’s also possible that we might get to watch Star Wars again, without worrying whether it would be undermined by some activist message.
Sometimes, when a guy goes through enough slop, he’ll just stop being nice. Such is the case with the CEO of the struggling company GameStop, who dragged DEI on X.
To him I say, welcome to the club of those who are sick of it.
A CEO’s job is basically to keep investors happy. Naturally, this would involve avoiding saying things that carry the risk of devaluing the company, even as the company goes on sale. I bring this up to help make the point that Ryan has evidently run out of cares to give.
The point he’s making is obvious: GameStop is not in great shape, and poor decisions such as allowing DEI to permeate its corporate culture has played a significant role in that.
I’m not pretending to know how to run a company. But I do know that consultants who push DEI can do some real damage. They know just enough about corporate structure to effect some change, but lack the wisdom to understand the second order consequences of their pet policies.
And when it comes down to it, the DEI pushers are like a cult. In a cult, when there’s failure, the ideology not blamed. When a cult encounters failure, the usual solution is to try the ideology even harder. You’ll see this not just in religious cults, but also in the likes of Marxism and corporate cults such as call centers.
What Ryan Cohen has indicated is that GameStop is so heavily compromised by DEI that there’s little chance of getting rid of it without the corporate equivalent of an exterminator.
When a company adopts DEI, it starts spiraling the drain, usually right away. As it’s corrupting influence becomes more apparent, you’ll see more sound-minded people starting to nope out, while a few who stick around who know what’s going on largely just try to extract as much value as they can, often through the DEI grift, itself.
And then you see people like Ryan Cohen, who throw their hands up and show just how they feel about it.
As more companies dump DEI, we’re probably going to be seeing more of this.
Lately, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta and Facebook fame has expressed a desire to change course. He says that he’s sorry about all the censorship, and he’s dropping things like DEI from Facebook, and has even expressed more masculine interests, such as in combat sports, and has even been on the Joe Rogan podcast to explain his perspective.
As you might expect, some people were skeptical of the change. It’s the internet, and there are people on it who are running the race to be as vindictive as possible, for whatever e-clout that there is to extract from so doing. Thus, Mark is being accused of just going where the trends are going, just because Donald Trump has won, and not because he’s expressing a sincere change of heart.
In the current zeitgeist of frumpy bitterness, I have a take that could be controversial. I think that Mark Zuckerberg might be being sincere.
Yeah, I get it, it’s trendy and cool to assume the worst if someone’s position can be interpreted in a manner that favors indignation, even on someone else’s behalf. So, my take probably won’t be algorithmically-boosted in the same way as some rage-inducing video. But I think that Mark might actually mean it.
Does that mean that he was principled enough to stand up to the government that was pressuring him to censor certain viewpoints? Apparently not. But it would seem like he was principled enough to consider something wrong, even if he hesitated to act or speak against it for years.
I could point out that Mark didn’t become right-wing during the first Trump presidency, but I know that it’s easy to make the point that the initial Trump administration wasn’t strongly establishment, as the establishment largely resisted or even undermined Trump. I think that the safer position to take is that the mandate implied by Trump’s overwhelming recent victory made it far easier for Zuckerberg, and many others, to finally take a stand.
If you’ve ever been threatened in any way over what’s right, like if your employment was threatened, and you refused to back down, you’re probably more principled than Mark Zuckerberg. But he does seem sincere in the position he is now expressing, so I don’t see any reason to doubt that his redemption is valid.
People tend to overlook just how valuable redemption is, even if from a strategic point of view. If the continuum between right and wrong were to only allow traffic in one direction, towards wrong, then anyone who ever goes in that direction would only be lost. If no path towards reconciliation is allowed, then there’s no reason for anyone who becomes an enemy to pursue it. If a religion were to tell a person that they couldn’t be redeemed, they’d have no reason to join. Political ideologies are similar when it comes to those who may change sides.
As I see it, there isn’t much reason to doubt someone’s redemption if they’re determined to be an asset. What would be the alternative? To insist that such a person must continue to resist them?
When Abraham Lincoln was asked what he’d do with the southern states after the Civil War was over, he answered that he’d treat them as though they never left. His answer was excellent, and his attitude characterizes the relationship between the states today pretty well. Consider the value of having this attitude towards those who wish to join, and you didn’t have to fight a war against them beforehand.
The race is over. We have a loser. She wasn’t the last one to reach the finish line, no. Before the starting gun even sounded, she was going full sprint in the opposite direction. Her desiccated corpse has been found, and it’s been drained of all fluid by reason of the many nicks and scratches she accumulated in her determined push through the dense bramble of abject failure.
I’m talking about Sammy Sludge, the dirtbag who went on a killing spree in a Christian school before personally ending any possibility for any redemption arc for herself.
And no, Sammy Sludge wasn’t her real name. As I see it, if anyone commits her category of crime, they should lose their real name, and instead be remembered by a demeaning monicker that they’d have been certain to have hated. Sure, she called herself “Sam”, but she also called the people she hated “sludge” in her manifesto (if her writing could be called that), so she’d probably hate to be remembered as “Sammy Sludge”.
So, Sammy Sludge, it is.
So, what did she do? She turned a gun on a few children in a Christian school, before turning it on herself. Why did she do it? Because she hated men. You know, half of all people who exist. A biological sex that is necessary for the continuity of humanity.
I’m not accusing her of thinking this through.
Her “manifesto” indicated that she was a TERF, a form of feminist which rejects even trans women. And her social media footprint indicates that she was interested in mass killings, particularly the Columbine shooting.
She was a TERF-orrist.
So, can we as a society address the brain-rot that drives people like Sammy Sludge to commit the kind of crime that she did, at just 15 years old? Maybe it’s about time that we admit that certain ideologies, when believed in with sincerity, turns people into bad people. Do we need more evidence?
Sammy Sludge, with her final act, undermined her own cause. Is there anything else a person could do to make it look worse?
Obviously, she doesn’t represent everyone from her own cause. I get that. But that doesn’t mean that she can’t undermine it. And that’s just what happened.
If Sammy Sludge was a victim in any sense, it’s that she was fed a completely one-sided argument in favor of a pile of bullshit, which she then believed in with sincerely. Her mind, as defective as it evidently was, was unable to mount a sufficient defense against the assault against her intelligence that turned her into a foot soldier for a debased cause.
What Sammy Sludge left behind was a world in which men continue to live, nearly all of whom are more virtuous than herself.
We’ve all heard the classic example of the loaded question, “Did you stop beating your wife?” While most would recognize the ruse for what it is, it still succeeds in tripping people up.
The question is designed so that its underlying presumption goes unchallenged, if the person being asked is predisposed to giving a “yes” or “no” answer.
In Japanese, there is a third one-word answer that a person could give, where “hai” means “yes”, and “iee” means “no”, the third option would be “mu”, which means “impossible”. It’s a one-word way to say that the question doesn’t apply. The English equivalent could be “wrong”, which could be considered a shorthand way to say that “The question is wrong.”
This is not the only way that dichotomous thinking can influence people. Another would be to split the world in two, as many cults often do.
For example, you might be asked what your market philosophy is, “Marxism or capitalism?” In most cases, you’d probably say “capitalism”, whereas where your life depends on the answer, you’d probably say “Marxism”.
Turns out, the term “capitalism” doesn’t much narrow it down, because it’s a broad term that encompasses many economic schools of thought. The term “capitalism” is as popular as it is because Marxism has succeeded in dividing the world into two, and since then, they’ve succeeded in getting the rest of us to use their language.
Upon learning of this, I had a bit of an economic identity crisis, as I’ve suddenly found myself learning about a handful of economic schools of thought, which would have fallen into the “capitalist” compartment in the thinking of those influenced by Marxism’s memetic legacy.
For those curious, I’m not strongly committed to any economic philosophy, but I do recognize that the Austrian school has some interesting ideas. The Keynesian system embraced by much of the world is problematic, but I’m willing to live non-belligerently where it’s the order of the day, even if I were to point out its problems.
But back to the topic at hand, the dichotomy of Marxism vs Capitalism is one of many ways that the world is oversimplified, and can obscure some of the nuanced ideas that may be worth considering.
Another example that I could think of off the top of my head is the idea of the political right versus the political left. It’s a trick that Liberalism has used to make “the right” appear to be monolithic, when in reality, “conservatism” is most ideas outside of liberalism.
When you understand this, it becomes much easier to comprehend why the right has often struggled to develop a coherent message, while the left has done so much better at organizing. And you’ll recognize their carefully-manufactured image of being a bunch of underdogs for the ruse that it is.
So, what’s the point of this thought exercise? Odds are, you can think of another false dichotomy that’s relevant to you that may have been carefully-designed to limit your choices or perspective. Or it might be that there’s one that you might not have thought of, yet.
I suspect that there’s a great many people whose minds are shackled, though they’ve been led to believe that they have been freed.
When I heard that the CEO of United Healthcare was assassinated, it was easy to guess what motivated the killer.
Because I, like many others, have endured the hell of having the same claim repeatedly denied which was explicitly covered under a health insurance company’s policy, it was easy to imagine that something like this would happen. And it did.
My opinion is going to be a safe one. While it’s tragic that a life was lost, I don’t feel strong pity for the victim. Also, Luigi Mangione is a fulminating fuck belch.
Basic observations aside, I want to point out the amusing effect that Luigi’s “manifesto” has had on political commentators: they’re playing hot potato with him. The right is focusing down on his leftist-sounding language to try to make him out to be a disgruntled left-winger, while those who look at the long lines of Canadian clinics with throbbing chubbies are trying to make him out to be a right-winger.
Both sides are playing directly into his hands. It’s obvious that Mangione’s missive was carefully crafted to keep him and his cause in the conversation. It’s infuriating to contemplate, but this demonstrates just how intelligent the guy really was.
Just not intelligent enough to avoid what’s awaiting him. Prison is a terrible place to be famous. If Luigi thinks his back hurts now, he’s really going to be in for it when he gets punched right in the back by the other prisoners.
A person’s actions play a significant role in determining their outcome.
I’ve read Mangione’s so-called manifesto, which reads as a justification for his actions. While his thinking may be flawed, I can point out that, if he’s forthcoming about the experiences he expressed, it’s little wonder he went insane. Those kinds of experiences could drive even a stoic mind to madness.
And it’s quite evident that he is insane. People mistakenly believe that an intelligent person cannot be insane. But they can be. Another example is Ted Kaczynski, whom Mangione looked up to. When an intelligent person goes insane, their own substantial intelligence becomes weaponized against their own mind.
I held off on writing about Mangione after seeing his auto-post on YouTube, which posted after he was arrested. YouTube has the option to schedule a video post, which was how Mangione’s YouTube channel posted an update after his arrest. It was like a kind of “dead-man’s hand”, with Luigi likely having the plan of pushing the date for his post back until he could no longer access his account.
His video hinted that something would be revealed on Wednesday, but that day came and went with no apparent reveal, perhaps because his channel was taken down.
As for what will happen to Mangione in the future, I don’t know. Putting aside other prisoners punching him in the back, he’s probably going to have a voyeur at all times.
As for the health insurance industry, I can suggest this to improve the situation: that a health insurance company gets a fine each time they deny a claim that is covered by their policy, with the fine proportional to the claim’s monetary value, with repeated denials of the same claim resulting in cumulative fines.
It’s a start, right? But any such bill would probably be lobbied out of existence by the healthcare industry. So, I don’t have much expectation that health insurance will change for the better anytime soon.
But Mangione’s trial is probably going to be entertaining.
It’s finally over. The 2024 election has drawn to a close. There is a winner, and it was the most predictable outcome that there was in decades. Donald Trump has won the 2024 presidential election, and it was an undeniable blowout victory.
In the months to come, I expect the dead-enders, however few they may be, to convince us that the votes were tallied wrong, that Trump’s popular vote victory didn’t actually happen, and I expect leftists to pretend that they themselves are actually more in touch with the wishes of the typical American. This would all be cope, and a refusal to accept what is now an undeniable reality.
But for most of us, now that we got the outcome that we sought, it’s time for healing, it’s time to put the bookend on what was one of America’s darkest chapters, and it’s time to move on.
Now that we’ve won the victory, it’s time for us to make it count, which each of us can do in different ways. Many of us still have work to do, and many of us have goals that we’ve wished to accomplish in our lives. And we may now do so knowing that we can do these things in a land that is healing.
We know that the left had other plans, because we have seen them in action. Americans have seen tokenism. We have seen divisiveness. We have seen our heritage as it was being given to those who do not belong here. We have seen a bloated, bureaucratic state steal more and more of our prosperity. We have seen cities fall into disrepair. We have seen sexual deviants strut in the open without any shame. We have seen our children being indoctrinated. We have been called names. We have seen our national character being ruthlessly mocked. We’ve seen institutions weaponized against us. And seeing all this, we answered, “no”.
The halcyon days of the American republic are not behind us, they are ahead. And, at this point, what I’d like to see is for the American people to reconcile with each other, as we have largely begun to do as we came together to decide a clear winner just last night.
It’s time for the American people to celebrate. Well done.
Rich from ReviewTechUSA, as seen on his now-defunct YouTube channel.
Consider what it takes to be a dad. You might have thought of virtues such as strength, attractiveness, thriftiness, skill, discipline, conviction, and the intelligence to make a plan and see it through to fruition.
But what it really takes is finding a woman who will let you blow your load inside of her.
This becomes easy to see as one ponders the falling-off of Rich, also known as ReviewTechUSA, who has proceeded to throw his toys on the floor and stomp out of the room because he was designated a “lolcow”.
You can try searching for his YouTube channel, but you won’t find it, because he deleted it as part of his temper tantrum. Instead, if you were to look for ReviewTechUSA on YouTube, all that would be left would be videos from creators who criticized him, in many cases rightly so.
His image took a tumble, so rather than just shut up and course-correct, Rich instead ceded ground to all his critics, destroying a money-making channel with a following that took years to build.
What’s especially disappointing about Rich’s recent behavior for me is that he was one of my favorite gaming and tech world commentators when I was in college, back when he would rant about this, that, and the third as gameplay video of GTA would play. I didn’t always agree with him, but I did appreciate his viewpoints.
We could bring up the irony of the fact that his channel was called “ReviewTechUSA”, even though he hasn’t really reviewed tech as a focus since the early days of his channel. I suspect that this has a lot to do with the fact that he turned heavily tribalistic when it came to brands. He was a heavy critic of Apple, and if your tech review channel is just going to dump on Apple, don’t count on Apple to send you new iterations of their products for review.
It seemed that his early videos were enthusiastic about PC parts, which makes me suspicious that ReviewTechUSA was a means to write off a man’s PC gaming money trap, while raking in that sweet, sweet e-clout.
It didn’t help that he would sometimes spout off about some controversial takes. If what you have to say is controversial enough, tech brands might not want their products associated with you.
From what I’ve heard, Rich also went TDS. To risk alienating as much as half of your audience is highly inadvisable. That’s the risk that comes with approaching political content. It might be tempting to go TDS, considering that Trump supporters are more likely to be able to take a joke, but it’s a black hole. When your audience is composed of leftists, they’re likely to be hyper-sensitive, and willing to cancel you for saying the wrong thing at any given moment, and they’re not known for their forgiveness, even with profuse groveling.
With that framing, you might be wondering how Rich fucked up. Did he point out that men and women are different? Or did he go full Hitler and point out that different people from different parts of the world have different cultures?
Nope. He was a shitty dad. His little girl wanted him to put her to bed, but he declined so that he could continue his stream. Which, considering his typical routine, probably consisted of taking off his shirt and playing with a rubber chicken, while self-deprecating by calling himself a fat fuck (his words, not mine).
Naturally, this pissed people the hell off, because when you’re a dad, your first duty is to your family, and a shitty ass livestream doesn’t even come close to it. And because the current system is fucking over young men who have been trying way harder than their fathers and grandfathers before them to accomplish the same thing in a financially responsible manner, this is only upsetting young men all the more that Rich is not properly appreciating the family that he has, and which is his responsibility.
So, latest development, Rich has been branded a lolcow. But, as the tendency of lolcows is, he takes himself way too seriously, so he’s not leaning into it. Just the reverse, he was willing to torch his own paycheck to avoid confronting his critics, destroying a YouTube channel that could have continued to generate passive income for him if he were to just let it sit, doing nothing else with it.
But Rich took a blow to his pride, and he’s not handling it well.
Where he goes from here, I don’t know. Where exactly does someone go if they were once e-famous, but then deleted their own channel? Does he have a backup plan? Can his lengthy experience playing with his nipples in front of a camera somehow transfer to another career choice?
Considering that Rich has a little person who is counting on him, he needs to figure things out pretty quick. Unlike most young single men, he can’t just fall back on sleeping in a car when times are rough.
But we’ll see whether Trump working as a fry cook would discourage him at all from doing the same thing.
EDIT: Okay, so he has a plan. Rich says that instead of gaming commentary, he’s going to do “grown-up” things like comment on the news and politics.
First, it can be pointed out how this new direction would be catastrophic for a man in his mental state. Few people could get into that kind of content without it frying their brains. People who get into politics tend to become tribalistic, which tends towards people becoming so closed-minded that they refuse to see any virtue in a person in the rival tribe. What’s more, news commentary requires a person to have their finger on the pulse of current events on a near constant basis.
Then there’s his implication that games commentary is beneath his level of maturity. Rich was once one of the guys who argued that it shouldn’t be seen as unusual for a middle-aged man to play video games. And now that video games are no longer stigmatized, he goes and acts like playing them is for less mature people.
But if news and politics are how Rich is deciding to rebrand himself, let’s see how seriously anyone will take a man who played with his man-boobs on livestream when he fires off his mouth about current events, or what can be brought into the conversation about politics by a man who engaged in sensuous play with a cucumber, also on livestream (you could probably guess that there was a point when I lost interest in his channel).
But, if he insists, then he’s free to fire off about how he believes the rest of us should live, and the narratives that we should view the world through, in consideration of the exemplar of virtue that he obviously is.
Magnetricity 