Category Archives: Rants

Wokeness May Be Destroying the Global Economy, But Economic Hardship May Destroy Wokeness

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The insolvency of Silicon Valley Bank has resulted in a run on the banks, which has resulted in more insolvent banks. The Red Pill community has pointed to SVB’s prioritization of DEI initiatives as being a significant factor in the bank’s collapse, and note with a sense of irony that wokeness may have knocked over the first dominoes that may result in a collapse of the global economy.

Of course, it’s also pointed out that SVB may have been targeted by Uncle Sam for having been friendlier to the crypto market. That sounds kinda conspiracy-theoryish, but if that’s the case, I’d say that that effort backfired, considering that Bitcoin shot way, way up in response to the SVB collapse.

More banks have since collapsed due to bank runs, and I’m seeing the more Red Pill types celebrating the accelerated collapse of the woke movement. While I can get behind that, it’s a little disturbing that there are people who seem to be cheering on the destruction of the global economy. It’s enough for me for the institutions to come to the realization that the woke movement is of no benefit for them to get behind. But considering how much harder it would be for everyone if the global economy were to collapse, I wonder what benefit it would be to anyone if things came to that.

Perhaps there would be some benefit, if only to slap more people awake to the true nature of the woke movement, and if people as a whole were to ditch the crutch of the victim mentality in favor of living on one’s merits. Which they may end up doing out of necessity, if things get difficult.

My foresight is not great. If I had better foresight, I would have understood the true nature of the global economy before majoring in Electronics. Live and learn, and all that.

But still, I can see what would come about if economic difficulty were to necessitate meritocratic living. It would mean that ideas such as wokeness would be viewed in terms of its virtues, which wouldn’t be much outside of its ability to manipulate algorithms. Even now, entertainment companies are slowly coming to the realization that woke messaging negatively impacts the quality of their products, which is part of the reason why viewers are starting to turn against subscription-based streaming services. And now, we’re seeing banks collapse after investing in numerous DEI startups.

While the pendulum is already shifting against wokeness, economic uncertainty would further push the general public into meritocracy as they seek out a way of life that actually, you know, pays the bills. Projecting victimhood seldom does as much, and is becoming increasingly evident as being the sport of the interpersonally manipulative.

When matters are difficult, people turn to merit to get by. It’s when motivated by survival that people look at themselves and other people in terms of what they have to offer. That’s the most practical course in challenging times. Because men tend to have greater upper-body strength than women, and the physiology that lends them more towards physically-involved labor, men tend more towards more dangerous jobs that usually pay better than clerical jobs. This means women would tend towards management of resources and maintaining relationships, in part because their relative lack of physical endurance would mean that this would be the safer option for them, but also because women tend to have minds that are better suited to such things. While feminists wouldn’t like it, more women would return to the trad wife life, even if only out of necessity and in consideration of what they’d have to offer in consideration of their innate attributes.

Considering this, what the woke movement shouldn’t want is challenging times, as woke pet causes tend to thrive more in the prosperous conditions that allow for the luxury of societal experimentation, erroneous philosophies, and the inflexibility of thinking that would result from the rigidness that is characteristic of the woke cult.

Yet, challenging times is just what one can expect, considering that it is the natural consequence of experimenting with ideologies such as wokeness.

An Image To Describe 2022

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Fine then, I’ll do what I’ve been doing, year after year, near the end of the year. I’ll post an image that I feel describes the year pretty well.

Like the last three years, I’m just going to be lazy and share something that I found by using the internet, without bothering to shop it:

A theory that has gained popularity in recent times is the Strauss-Howe generational theory, which suggests that major conflicts occur in cycles of 80 years. When applied to the USA, one can point out that roughly 78 years separates the Revolutionary War from the Civil War, and roughly 76 years separates the Civil War from America’s involvement in World War 2. It’s been roughly 77 years since the conclusion of World War 2, so proponents of the Strauss-Howe generational theory are buzzing with the possibility that we are heading towards another major conflict.

Of course, the idea that major conflicts occur because they abide by a schedule is silly. Therefore, there must be something different to which we can attribute this apparent pattern (of course, the similarity in difference in time between these events could be mere coincidence). One possibility is that the difference in time (about 80 years) is the time it takes for most of the members of a generation old enough to remember a conflict to pass away. And without the benefit of the memory of a major conflict, younger generations won’t appreciate the urgency of preventing a similar conflict from repeating itself.

While the generation that fought in World War 2 is held in high regard, the sad fact is, most of the lessons that the western world learned in its light has been forgotten. It’s generally agreed upon that the Nazi Party was bad, but in a cynically unconstructive manner, many of today’s politically involved try as hard as they can to paint their rivals with Hitler’s virtues. In distorting what the dictator was really about, they play a huge part in unlearning the lessons of the war. There is a certain irony in that, mere decades after the Socialism of Hitler’s National Socialist German Worker’s Party (Nazi Party, for short) was overcome, that countless pseudo-intellectuals tout the benefits of Socialism in coffee shops and college campuses, mainly because they don’t want to work. What’s more, while the same pseudo-intellectuals decry racism, they’re overlooking that Hitler’s racism was the end result of following Darwin’s ideas concerning natural selection to their consequence, an evolutionary theory that the same people accept without question.

One might wonder what would cause a major world conflict, especially in today’s age.

Today’s uninformed like to pretend that most major conflict that has occurred over the course of history has been over ideology, with atheists in particular believing religion to be the prime driver behind conflicts. However, most people who have ever lived that weren’t Muslim wouldn’t care whether someone far off were to bow, kneel, and scrape before some graven image N times a day, so long as they themselves got to live in peace. The fact is, most wars that have ever been fought have been fought over resources.

In light of the ongoing war in Ukraine, this winter could prove to be a tad difficult, particularly for Europe. For one thing, Ukraine and Russia are energy rich (with Ukraine’s energy sector having been of particular interest for the Biden administration). In light of tariffs on Russian oil and disruptions in Ukraine’s energy supply, Europe may find itself on a strict energy allocation for the next few months.

What’s more, Ukraine has been one of the world’s top exporters of wheat, and the top producer of wheat for Europe, aside from France and Russia, the latter being the world’s number 1 wheat exporter.

To illustrate, the following chart from Wikipedia shows countries listed by export of wheat:

Wheat is kind of a big deal, as wheat is used to make foods that are substantial in calories, and calories are one of the major sources of energy that humans use to live. If a substantial source of calories, such as wheat, comes to be in short supply, more people could end up going hungry. And when people go hungry, unrest is an anticipated result.

According to the Strauss-Howe generational theory, when a major conflict does erupt, it usually involves the most powerful weapons that are available at the time. Based on this reasoning, we might think that we might be looking at the prospect of nuclear war. During World War 2, atomic weapons were being developed, and a couple of them were deployed.

But are nuclear weapons really the most powerful weapons available? Or has the communication age changed the nature of warfare, to the point that information has become a more powerful weapon?

In times past, wars could be won by kinetically attacking the civilian population, which would then lose interest in war, and no longer want to support the war effort. Thus, it was of paramount importance that the armed forces defend the civilian population. Today, there’s no need to deploy a nuclear weapon, as to weaken a country is as easy as producing a steady stream of bullshit that is designed to systematically destroy people’s minds.

The fact is, we live in an age of fifth-generation warfare, which revolves around the use of cyberattacks, misinformation, and psyops. While Alex Jones has become the right’s butt-monkey, he did have a point when he pointed out that there is a war for your mind. State actors understand pretty well that a demoralized population is less likely to get behind its government, and would tend more towards subversive movements, which could unsettle standing dominant economic powers.

Considering all this, I think that 2023 might be an interesting year. If you live in a big city, and have the means to get out of it, it might be a good idea to do so.

Bulbagarden Founder Posits Theory That New Gym Leader Is Trans and Non-Binary, Gets Debunked Less Than 24 Hours Later

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It seems like with every new major media release, someone from the questionable sexuality community will come forward with speculation (often stated as fact and foregone conclusion) that a character depicted represents their favorite flavor of sexuality.

As Bounding Into Comics points out, this time around, the speculator is Liam Pomfret, the founder of Bulbagarden, who posits his theory that the newly-revealed gym leader in Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Iono, is non-binary and transgender.

Here is the promo video featuring Iono:

Upon what is Liam basing his theory? The initially ambiguous use of pronouns, and her choice of hair dye:

Image from Bounding Into Comics

One would expect the use of such flimsy inferences from an undiagnosed schizophrenic who believes that their TV is communicating secret messages specifically for them, not a Doctor of Philosophy. Our education system is fucked, isn’t it?

Because he was tripping over himself to find trans representation in a Japanese game marketed towards anyone in the family, he looked at the soft blue and pink hair (kinda looks lavender to me) and immediately thought of the trans kid flag, rather than the recurring red/blue coloration of Pokémon’s flagship games, Scarlet and Violet included.

Less than 24 hours later, Nintendo dropped supplemental promotional material concerning Iono. It’s the kind of thing that looks like it would have been released simultaneously with the promotional video that originally featured Iono, so maybe it was hastily thrown together after the fact.

The promo specifies Iono as having the feminine pronoun of “her”. Iono is female. Because we’ve already established that speculation is fun, maybe Nintendo threw this out there because they knew what Liam Pomfret was saying, and were all like “Nope. We’re not having that.”

If “Bulbagarden” sounds familiar, then you’ve been following along back when I pointed out how inappropriate it was that they used their Pokémon fan platform to soapbox about an immigration policy that they blamed on Trump (the problem was actually Obama’s fault, and Trump resolved the matter through an executive order).

This was Bulbagarden’s forum header at the time:

Fucking creepy.

And a fantastic opportunity to warn parents out there that there are some predatory actors in fan communities who use their positions in their respective communities to pressure younger members. Oftentimes, their activities involve performing “favors” over video chat. Of course, there are many ways that bad people can take advantage of children online.

That PSA aside, it can also be pointed out that there is a certain obsession with pointing to Japan’s status as a relatively advanced, orderly, and peaceful society. Oftentimes, someone on the radical left will attempt to glom onto a form of Japanese media, in a sad attempt to make the case that the Japanese are actually just like them.

What these attempts overlook is how Japan as a society got to be as advanced as it is. Japan is a heavily structured and stratified society that favors family, career, merit, and respect. To further reduce that, Japan is conservative. In fact, it’s one of the most conservative societies in the world.

Sometimes, a weeaboo pops up who thinks of Japan as being their kind of society, probably because they got ideas as to what it’s like from anime and manga. The fact is, Japan is a society of norms. If you move to Japan, you’re expected to conform to the norms. If you don’t want to, then you don’t belong in Japan. It’s as simple as that.

Red light districts aside, Japan is an advanced, peaceful, and orderly society. If your thinking is different from theirs, that might have a lot to do with it.

Iono is pretty far from the first character from Japanese media to have gotten this kind of attention. It wasn’t long ago that Shiver from Splatoon 3 came under scrutiny as possibly non-binary, but it turned out she was female. Nanachi from Made In Abyss is a frequent target of this, because author Akihito Tsukushi prefers to leave Nanachi’s sex as unknown. Or, more famously, there’s Bridget from Guilty Gear, who is male.

That’s not to say that there are no “non-binary” characters in Japanese media. However, such characters are seldom portrayed as sympathetic. But why would they, when there is something obviously wrong with their thinking?

Iono is merely a character in a work of fiction. She’s just made up, therefore nothing about her has any bearing on the reality of any matter. It doesn’t matter whether she represents anything, except maybe in the deluded thinking of those who lack the ability to parse reality without the assistance of a fictional construct. If this describes you, then you need to seek help. And get over yourself, while you’re at it.

Diversity Works Better Without Top-Down Control

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One of the talking-points that comes up in politics is diversity. Particularly, racial diversity (though, as my smarter readers are aware of, there is more to diversity than looking different). In this area, the left (particularly Democrats) love to boast that they’re the pro-diversity party, even going as far as to pretend that their rivals are opposed to diversity, as though they themselves were always diverse, all along.

However, that’s a misconception. But it’s a misconception that they’ll feed into, knowing that it benefits them.

The fact is, both sides of the American political climate are for diversity. The difference between them is in how diversity is achieved.

First, the right (usually represented by the likes of Republicans and Libertarians). The American political right believes that diversity should come about naturally, and to this end, a person’s race should not be considered in their endeavors.

Ideally, an employer should consider a candidate based on their merits. If this were the case, people of different races will be present in a large enough business by virtue of the fact that no race is being purposely excluded. Likewise, a college considering an applicant should consider the potential student based on the likelihood that they’d succeed in the environment, without regard to the applicant’s race. Under these conditions, diversity on campuses wouldn’t just be likely, they’d be expected.

Practices that discriminate based on race, such as racial steering and block-busting would be illegal, as they would exclude qualified candidates and applicants based on race.

The left, as exemplified largely by Democrats, has a different approach when it comes to diversity. Their difference in approach provides an excellent illustration in how their political philosophy as a whole differs from their opponents.

The left’s approach when it comes to diversity involves achieving diversity through top-down intervention.

Rather than allowing diversity to occur naturally, the left prefers to pressure employers and institutions to achieve diversity with quotas. As the left would have it, the representation of each individual race in each setting must be consistent with their own ideal of how each race should be represented. Whether this is through equal representation of each race, or consistent with each race’s representation in the general population, the left isn’t always clear.

When you understand the left’s tendency towards top-down controls, even on the societal level, you’ll have an easier time understanding why social engineers tend towards the left.

When you consider the left’s tendencies towards top-down societal controls, the implications should give you the chills, especially if you’re of the opinion that each individual should have the freedom and autonomy to determine for themselves how they live their lives.

And I would think that most people would prefer to make choices for themselves, such as which car to buy, without having the selection limited by a governing body they does not understand the nuances of an individual’s decisions. And, for that matter, an individual should have freedom of choice as to who their spouse would be, without having their selection limited based on race, provided their selection consents. And the couple should be free to produce the number of offspring that they choose, without external manipulation or intervention.

In fact, any form of external manipulation or intervention in any of these choices should absolutely not be tolerated.

However, the left is of a different mind. They are generally more favorable of the idea of top-down control on the part of the government, even as far as engineering society into the shape of their preference. This is in stark contrast with the right, which favors limited government, by principle.

The right tends more towards libertarianism, while the left tends more towards authoritarianism. As one examines their respective policy positions, this becomes evident. The moniker of liberal really doesn’t fit the left very well.

If we were to examine the American political right in good faith, it would be apparent that they desire diversity. Not only that, they have a far superior way of achieving it, which involves a stronger society, by reason of important roles going to the best qualified, rather than to diversity hires.

The left might try to paint this as a pretext for racial discrimination, but there wasn’t much expectation of an argument in good faith from those lacking moral absolutes. While that may sound like a cheap shot, it holds up with the observation that a larger representation of leftists are of the idea that human government is the highest level of authority, and that there’s no truth but power. But that’s an issue for another essay.

Warning: Producers Are Workplace Prey

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There’s something that’s been on my mind for a while, and I think this can serve as a warning to those in their twenties who have the idea of spending the next 40 years of their life working for some other man.

A long while ago, I started working a new job. It seemed like typical work, but before too long into it, my supervisor started suggesting certain procedures. You probably already know that a “suggestion” from a supervisor usually comes down to “do as you’re told, or there’s gonna be trouble”, but there’s something more to that particular instance: the procedures that he was suggesting did nothing to make my job more productive, they actually did just the opposite.

It didn’t take long to figure out that for the supervisor it was a matter of pride, or that the person I was replacing didn’t put up with the guy’s shenanigans (my co-workers told me as much).

Because we’ve grown up watching a lot of television, we’ve had it drilled into our impressionable little heads that it’s the hard workers who are the winners, and that if we keep at it, management will eventually take notice, and we’ll achieve that sweet payoff. Of course, as we grow more cynical over the course of our exposure to the real world, we eventually realize that our collective work ethics are being harvested to make other people rich.

In the workplace wilderness, those who actually produce value are prey animals. Their natural predators are those who produce bloat.

Bloat predators usually don’t do much of anything. But when they smell blood, then they’re off to get a piece of the action. This happens when there’s a problem somewhere.

Those who produce value can usually get by without the help of a bloat predator. Often, solving a problem is as simple as making an adjustment to a value or two in a process. However, the bloat predator is out to justify his existence, so he’ll continue to hack away at the issue long after the matter has been solved to the satisfaction of the rest of production. A problem solved by simple adjustments can be expanded into extensive record-keeping, periodic procedures, purchases of new gadgets (that aren’t guaranteed to work), redundant measurements, and on and on.

While the productive prey can attempt to confront a bloat predator, the matter usually won’t go well for the productive, as the typical bloat predator would just label them as problematic, and end up having their way because they tend to be more connected (they know which nuggets to blow).

Over the course of my work life, I’ve encountered bloat. There’s not much that one can do about it. When it gets excessive, it might be time to start looking around, as the company you’re working for might soon be going nipples-up. If you’ve got a side-hustle, it might not be a bad idea to put more energy into that, even if just for mental health. But if you can somehow manage to become self-employed, that might be ideal. In that case, you can decide for yourself how much bloat would interfere with productivity (ideally, it wouldn’t).

But in most workplaces, unproductive people who produce bloat are a fact of life. And for those who produce value, they are a vexation.

Malthusians: Destroying Humanity For Profit

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Original image source: wallup.net (edited by me)

A common position of the Malthusian is that overpopulation is resulting in an overconsumption of resources, which may result in humanity endangering itself. Professing this motivation, the Malthusian feels justified in making actions that prohibit procreation among human beings, in an effort to keep human numbers in check. To this end, they encourage people to live single.

However, it’s easy to see that people living single actually consume more resources than if a male-female couple were to share the same dwelling space.

This should be simple to comprehend when you look at the resources consumed by couples, as opposed to what they’d consume if they were to live independently.

In terms of dwelling space, two people living single would require more space overall, as they would live in different homes, each with different sinks, refrigerators, air conditioners, and bathroom facilities. On the other hand, a couple would share all these facilities. Couples would easily use up half as much living space.

Next, let’s consider utilities. In the summer time, when people are uncomfortably hot, two people living single would air condition two different living spaces, whereas a cohabiting man and woman would only need to air condition one living space. Thus, the consumption of electricity would easily be halved when couples live together, and the electrical grid would be far less stressed.

Then, there’s winter time, when people get uncomfortably cold. A person with a one-bedroom flat in the northeast United States can easily spend as much as $200 a month keeping their place warm in the winter. However, a couple wouldn’t face the same hardship, as they’d share the utility expense, and their situation would be better still for the warmth the couple would provide one another.

When it comes to transportation, matters are less clear. I’ve seen couples that manage by sharing one automobile, but this isn’t always desirable for every situation. However, when people live by themselves, they each require their own transportation, which in many cases means many single people needing their own cars. This gets more significant as the result is the consumption of more fossil fuels, as well as ethanol, which is largely derived from corn. This is more significant as concerns agriculture and landmass when you consider that most corn grown in the United States is not for consumption as food, but for conversion to fuel.

As one considers all this, it’s plain to see who makes a killing off of Malthusianism: Real estate interests, utility companies, and oil barons.

If more people are living independently of other human beings, that means more people spending more on products and services than if they were to share these things with other human beings. Real estate companies profit when more people are buying homes and apartments for themselves than if they were to cohabit. Utility companies maximize the number of spending customers when each potential customer is spending for themselves, rather than sharing the benefit with another person. Oil barons profit huge when demand is increased, and this happens when more people are fueling more cars, rather than sharing cars with partners.

From this, we see that the product of Malthusianism is reduced living space, resources being depleted, and the environment being destroyed. Which is, of course, the exact opposite of what many of their own sincere believers may have wanted. But for the ones that really benefit from the ideology, it means dying rich while fucking over the entire world for successive generations.

All while pretending that the opposite is happening.

Don’t Like a Piece of Art? Here’s a Flow Chart to Assist You.

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Waterhouse_Hylas_and_the_Nymphs_Manchester_Art_Gallery_1896.15

Back in 2018, a #MeToo campaigner complained to an art exhibit to have a work removed because the person was triggered by it. Shortly afterwards, the work was reinstated after public outcry. The work in question was the one pictured above, a Victorian era painting titled Hylas and the Nymphs.

Great work guys, you censored a work of art from over a century ago that took inspiration from a fable thousands of years old just to satisfy a blowhard belonging to a fad movement.

It’s because of things like this that people don’t take feminism seriously. And it backfires when people become ashamed to identify as feminists,  as indicated by this note left for the curator:

feminist note to curator

If you spend time looking at art, you’re bound to find something that’s objectionable to you. If you dislike a work of art, your solution is simple: If you don’t like it, don’t look at it.

If this process comes off as novel and confusing, I’ve provided a simple flow chart to assist you:

art flow chart

That pretty much lays it out. If you’re still unable to follow, then you shouldn’t have been able to operate an automobile all the way to an art exhibit without causing an accident. Learn to drive.

And while you’re at it, stop assuming that every artistic expression of nudity and sexuality somehow demeans women. Nudity is the natural state of the human body, and is not inherently evil. Sexuality is one of the most human traits, and is a universal part of the human experience. An expression of either one doesn’t devalue women. Or anyone, for that matter.

And if, after considering all this, you still don’t like a work of art, just don’t look at it. I doubt that you fill the Pictures directory of your computer with images you don’t like, so why go out of your way to personally view a piece that only makes you upset? Just move on. Calling yourself a feminist doesn’t give you permission to decide for everyone else what art they have access to. Stop assuming that the rest of us can’t handle what we see.

Feminists have a very negative view of the general population, and this is what guides their attempts to decide for us what media that we have access to. Museum goers did a good job of not letting them. Very well done, keep it up.

Anthony Fauci is an Inferior Man.

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Anthony Fauci literally just said that “There comes a time when you have to give up what you consider your individual right of making your own decision”.

I can guess what you’re thinking: “There’s no way. How can anyone be so out of touch with reality as to say something so devastatingly wrong?”

I don’t expect you to take my word for it, so I’m sharing video evidence. In it, Fauci tells us plebs that because we’ve been benefiting so well from society, we should give back by giving up our right to make choices for ourselves. Putting aside, of course, that society under Fauci and his other leftist corporate interests have attempted to shut us in our homes and are now pulling out the stops to threaten us into taking a vaccine that we don’t trust.

Here’s what stupid sounds like:

One of the many things that Fauci is ignorant of is the fact that the American republic was founded by better men than Anthony Fauci. What these men understood was that human rights were axiomatic tenets of reality that every human being has, as they penned in the following blurb from some old document that they might still teach about in schools:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The United States Declaration of Independence

Even if you don’t believe in a Creator, you should still understand individual rights to be a matter of superordinate principle, in a manner similar to natural law. Every human being has a right to security in their property, without it being stolen from them. Every human being has a right to their own sincerely-held religious beliefs, or any conviction they may have. They have a right to express their opinions, even if there are consequences for doing so. A person has a right to defend themselves. A person has a right to their silence, without it being taken as self-incrimination. Every person has a right to their own means of production.

In that these rights are unalienable, means that they exist by default, it is impossible for a person to voluntarily give them up, are not granted by human government, and if any government doesn’t recognize the existence of these rights, that government is wrong.

Continuing on, the Declaration of Independence has this to say:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”

No one can be governed unless they allow it. It doesn’t require a lengthy explanation, because it’s entirely self-explanatory. Anthony Fauci doesn’t govern me, because I refuse to be governed by inferior men.

The republic’s founders continue with language that puts those who would follow Fauci’s example on notice:

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

I know that some limp-wristed incel might latch onto the use of the word “Safety”, and twist it to mean something that it doesn’t. The fact is, safety implies bodily autonomy, including the freedom to turn down a vaccine that one does not trust.

When a government twists the concept of safety into a pretext to challenge the axiomatic freedoms, that government should be altered or removed. That’s some food for thought for the Democrat establishment, if they are at all interested in retaining their place in American government.

After all, in nature, as is the case in human society, and has been demonstrated throughout history, the followers don’t endure being abused by their leaders for very long.

There is an old proverb, and because it originated in China, I suspect that Fauci has heard of it. It goes like this:

“The emperor that burned all the books was overthrown by illiterate men.”

Howard Stern, Get Over Yourself.

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Howard Stern’s remaining audience largely consists of boomers who mistakenly remember a time in which Howard Stern was cool, and Gen Xers who started listening because the boomers did.

While it’s obvious that Stern’s best days are behind him, he’ll sometimes fire off his mouth in an attempt to stay relevant. I’d have no idea what he had to say if it weren’t passed along by new media, which is pretty sad considering his history of proclaiming himself as “King of All Media”. That’s a ballsy thing to proclaim one’s self, but he didn’t use any of that to make the following statement about those who refused the COVID vaccine by reason of their personal freedom:

“Fuck them. Fuck their freedom. I want my freedom to live. I want to get out of the house. I want to go next door and play chess. I want to go take some pictures.”

Howard Stern

If Howard wants so badly to do those things, he can just do them. That’s what those who appreciate their freedoms have been doing with those very freedoms. If Howard himself has been vaccinated, he’d face no risk of getting COVID, if the vaccine were as effective as other vaccines. And if he weren’t (by reason of medical exemption), he’d be taking a risk intrinsic to living life, comparable to catching the flu.

That’s how it goes, sometimes, you don’t have the same kind of health that someone else has, and that makes your choice of activities more narrow than theirs. Fact of life.

Howard, who once upon a time was marketed under the pretense of being shocking and anti-establishment, is now taking a pro-establishment position with no risk of retaliation on the part of advertisers. And over what? He wants everyone else in the world around him to get a vaccine they might not even want, just so he’ll feel safer going outside and doing stuff.

And we’re supposed for feel bad for him after he spent the better part of his life as a multi-millionaire who made bank by contributing nothing to society except firing off his mouth on the radio, and making a movie that no one cares about.

Not everyone can understand why anyone would watch videos on YouTube about people playing video games or eating food, when people can just do these things themselves. I wonder how many of these same people listen to a radio show about a rich man who goes to night clubs and talks about seeing anatomical features that half of all people have?

Another point one can make about Stern is that he talks as though he thinks we’re still consuming the same old news stories that were going around at the early part of the pandemic:

“The other thing I hate is that all these people with COVID who won’t get vaccinated are in the hospitals clogging it up.”

Howard Stern

Remember back when they opened stadiums up with hospital beds, to prepare to treat an expected influx of patients? Remember when they closed those makeshift treatment centers down because, as it turns out, they didn’t need them? What hospitals is he going to that he couldn’t get in because of all the COVID patients?

What’s more, Howard is blowing his stack, saying that people who refused the vaccine should be denied medical care, overlooking the fact that people can refuse the vaccine for some compelling reasons, such as the suspicion that it hasn’t been sufficiently tested before being released to market, or due to concerns over spike proteins.

It’s easy to see past all the bluster and realize that the real reason why Howard is so salty is because we’re going to be the ones writing the history books, by reason of the fact that we’re the ones going out and living life and procreating.

What’s really sad about this is that we lived to see the day that Howard used his platform to proclaim the following:

“Fuck their freedom.”

Howard Stern, whose entire career is owed to free expression and the private ownership of the means of production, is apparently selective when it comes to what freedoms are applied, and how.

Because Howard Stern (and leftism in general) is out of touch with reality, they lack the cognition that freedom is not granted by human government, it’s axiomatic in a similar sense to natural law. Everyone has a right to their own sincere convictions. Everyone, when attacked, has a right to defend themselves. Everyone has a right to their own property, without it being unjustly or unfairly extracted. If any humanly devised system ignores these axiomatic fundamental rights, they still exist, and the system itself is in the wrong. Whether you’re a celebrity, radio personality, or king, if you ignore or act contrary to these rights, you are wrong.

But no one has a right to a life that’s free from risk. Risk, including the risk of getting sick, or getting attacked by an animal, or ending up impaled on something, is an intrinsic element of the reality that we live in. Attempts to alleviate those risks are usually reasonable, but sometimes not. Attempts to eliminate those risks are often wrongheaded.

If COVID is something you’re concerned about, you can plan accordingly for yourself. What you can’t do is limit another person’s freedom of movement or bodily autonomy. Whatever choices you make for yourself, you do with the possibility of whatever consequences that follow as a result.

While Howard Stern is free to have his own opinion, that includes his right to a misinformed or misguided opinion, a right he’s done nothing to waive. While Harlan Ellison may not like it, people do have a right to be ignorant.

But if you’re one of the few people left who still listen to Howard Stern, you should ask yourself what you’re listening to. When you listen to a rich man with a radio show hobnob with strippers and ruthlessly lampoon members of his own cast, is it really because there’s nothing else to listen to? As a person who gets up early in the morning, goes to work, comes home to eat poor people food, and usually barely pays the bills, it’s easy for me to say that Howard Stern doesn’t speak for me.

An Anti-Censorship “Freedom Phone” Was Just Revealed. Here Are My Thoughts.

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I think my typical audience can appreciate that the sad state of social media and the tech industry is such that there is a strong unfulfilled demand for a device whose seller markets it as respecting a basic fundamental human right.

But that’s not as far as it goes when it comes to what’s sad about the Freedom Phone, which is being offered by a man who got rich by buying Bitcoin when it was cheap. As for me, I majored in Electronics Technology outside of mainland China.

But I learned a few things, and started storing value in crypto. Let’s see what Mr. Rich-Boy who already did so has to offer the pro-freedom world.

As it turns out, it’s not a whole lot. He’s taking some relatively-cheap Pixel phones, installed with GrapheneOS, and preloaded them with a few select apps, sans the typical Google stuff. One of the offerings is a Pixel 4 XL 64GB, starting at $489.

You can verify by looking it up, but it’s a snap to find the same phone for under $200. But hey, if you’re looking to justify the markup, you can look at the pre-installed OS and apps as a service for if you don’t want to do it yourself, and learn to do so, if need be. If you’re really being threatened with censorship by big tech, would it really hurt to learn?

Noteworthy is that the Freedom Phone offers an “uncensored app store”. If the app store were to be completely uncensored, what’s to stop a developer from offering an app with malware? And if the app were removed, the developer could call the Freedom Phone out for not being “uncensored”. Then there’s the question of whether “uncensored” means that the store will remove illegal content.

If you’re already paranoid, then you’ll likely already understand the concept of a “honeypot”, which is what you have when certain software is marketed towards a target group because that software has a hidden capacity for monitoring the people who use it. It’s an app such as this which was behind a massive sting operation which saw the arrest of over 800 people. Considering this, it’s understandable that even a free-speech advocate might consider the Freedom Phone to be kinda sus.

Hold on a sec, check out that logo:

It looks like it says, “Reedom Phones”. If you’re going to “ree” over the software on your cheap phone, perhaps it’s appropriate. Otherwise, Freedom Phones might want to change up their logo.

When one goes overboard with the privacy protection stuff, that in itself can put a person on the map. After all, most people wouldn’t run an obscure computer with an unusual OS, running Tor and encrypting all their files unless they had something to hide. If what you’re doing requires a huge pile of over-the-top privacy measures, what you’re doing might be so illegal that it may be a solid strategic move to do it from another continent.

By the looks of it, Freedom Phones isn’t offering it’s own carrier service or running its own cell towers. Because of this, your phone can still be denied service by your carrier, whose SIM card you install into it. What’s more, because your carrier can determine your location by triangulating your position using cell towers (yet another thing that Edward Snowden was right about), your phone can still be used to determine your general location. And speaking of your cellular provider, you probably provided them with oodles of personally-identifiable information for the purposes of identity verification when setting up your account.

Having expressed due skepticism, one thing I can appreciate about the Freedom Phone’s reveal is just how hard it has legacy media tripping over itself to write up whatever hit pieces they can about it. It seems they can agree on one point concerning it:

The Daily Beast, for example, is among those pointing out that the phone was made in China, as though that’s an argument against the phone. Let’s be honest here, just how many American tech companies make their own tech? The world would have surprisingly little without the roughly 1 billion slaves laboring under the Chinese Communist Party. Not that The Daily Beast is being racist against the Chinese, by the way.

PC Magazine is on the bandwagon with the stock response that it was made in China, as though they themselves see a problem with Chinese manufacturing. Do you see a problem with Chinese manufacturing, PC Magazine? Say it.

Even Business Insider is parroting the “but it’s made in China” spin, as though that’s an answer to any question anyone is asking about the Freedom Phone. If you have a problem with a tech device just because it has components that were manufactured in China, I welcome you to research the tech products you already have to see how far a boycott would last you.

This again.

Check out how hip and anti-establishment HotHardware is being by saying the exact same thing the corporate mainstream information media is saying, days after they say the same thing. There’s no way to stick it to the man quite like dissing a platform poised to give ordinary people a voice that cannot be censored by the establishment. Don’t you feel so hip!

While some of the concerns are valid, the left is being sudden with their disdain of Chinese manufacturing. I don’t expect them to go as far as boycotting Chinese devices. After all, they’d have a much harder time masturbating without a glowing display screen to show them pictures of cartoon ponies.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, I don’t recommend Freedom Phone. If free speech online is a big enough concern for you, I’d instead recommend getting a reasonably-priced phone you can install GrapheneOS onto, then attempt it yourself once you know what you’re doing.

If you’re still on the fence, it might be a good idea to hold off until you see some reviews from those who’ve actually used the product. The reviews themselves might be entertaining.