Helicopters In the Distance...

 

Background.

Because anything but an outbreak of liberty in Canada is horrendously bad optics; his government will not fall, it will collapse; and if you think the US southern border is too loose, wait until you see the insurgency that will develop in the Great White North through the totally undefended and unsecured northern border.

Crackdowns of any sort are liable to escalate into open conflict in short order, not to mention crippling the Canadian economy for years, if not decades.

Or, Turdoo could stop being an incompetent communist prick, surrender, and just slink away with his skin intact, and his country better off than it is now. The only blood in the water currently is his own.

That doesn't bespeak a lot of palatable options for him, but then he's the one that's been shooting his own toes off until he got to this place, hasn't he?

Bonus Round: And if US authorities decide to go all Waco over here, they could trigger the exact same problem. On steroids and crack.

Hint to the USSS: A rational assessment notes that those concrete WH and Capitol barricades aren't much of a hindrance to the guys who drive the equipment that put them in place. Just saying. Y'all should check your hole cards carefully. Things could go pear-shaped in an awful hurry if the stupidity thus far isn't reined in, like your idiot leash-holders have shown no sign of doing since ever.

And now, an appropriate air:

Vote Early, Vote Often

 h/t HWC

Morbark.

He's tanned, he's fit, he's rested.

Now, more than ever.

In The Dictionary, Under "Beclowned"

 h/t Odd Job

Pussy Communists Projecting Again

h/t Phil 

Pravda

 h/t Vulgar Curmudgeon

Maple Leaf Rag

 

The Canadian truckers are holding a Deadman Switch: "take them out", and you also take out all deliveries to and throughout Canada of anything: fuel, food, Everything.

In chess, when all the opponent has is a king, he cannot attack.

Turdoo is now checkmated, and has nothing left for offense that doesn't cut his own throat, politically and permanently. And it galls both him, and all TPTB, that mere truckers have pointed the knife so accurately.

Now we find out how accurate the "nine meals away" model of societal distress is, don't we?

And Coming Soon: The American version of "Truck Fudeau" is in the offing, with the promise of the exact same scenario.

Squeeze off the ballot box, and the jello will squeeze out between your fingers in new ways.

While the American elites could helicopter out of the District of Criminals under duress, if they do so, the capitol goes up in flames. Which would likely open the ball nationwide, everywhere you have a blue hive idiot in charge.

The peasants are learning how to wage 4G war.

And now, an appropriate air:

[For one small historical reference, AFAIK, there was only one strike by the Teamsters against the motion picture industry anytime since the middle of the 20th century. Hollywood studios held out for about, oh, fifteen minutes, quickly being informed that no food deliveries, trash pickup, or pretty much anyone in the industry would cross the picket lines, before they wisely knuckled under, and quickly called and asked the truckers "What do we need to do to make this problem go away?" Turdoo would be wise to learn that historical lesson. The only question left for him to answer is how humiliating a defeat he wishes to suffer, and for how long, before he reaches a similar conclusion.]

Sheer Coincidence, No Doubt

 

Hey Hey! They're The Monkeys

Tough times for the Johns Hopkins Econ department after their COVID "study" was released...

We could continue to beat this study not only to death, but until all that remained of it were sub-molecular dead-horse particles.

And dollars to donuts, I read 60 more pages of it than 99.99% of those linking to it online in the last couple of weeks.

We would note that with nearly 19,000 studies, them only finding 34 worth the bother points out that 99% of everything in any study is crap.

If we note that they were able to focus on 1,084 before selecting the 34 finalists, the crap ratio drops to only 97%.

It's not impressing us much.

We could observe, as they do themselves on Page 8, that they excluded all studies that relied on artificial models (Globull Warmists and Climate Changeophiles, call your office) as being all hogwash, because "the results from these studies are determined by model assumptions and calibrations".

Proving that the Econ Department at Johns-Hopkins isn't quite as bright as the Art Department, what with sculpture being around for almost 35,000 years, or what any kindergartener knows: when you control the Plah-Doh, you can make it into anything you want.

We could note that this is exactly what they did anyways, by defining "lockdowns" as virtually anything the government does other than vaccines, or propaganda campaigns, thus they have beggared the English language to the point of insensibility. When everything is a lockdown, nothing is.

We could note that government merely instituting a lockdown is no more a measure of anything than laws are a measure of compliance with them. By that recockulous standard - looking at decrees rather than compliance, which is the exact way they look at these "anything-is-a-lockdown" measures - neither the laws against homicide in Chicago, nor speeding laws anywhere, "work". This is utterly asinine.

We could note that the main reason that the 34 studies they selected show no effect was because they selected studies that cancelled each other's results out, thus allowing any "meta"-study's authors the same prerogatives as kids in any arts and crafts class. Creation as an academic endeavor has a place, but not when it's research data and results.

We could even look at just the 34 cherry-picked studies, and note that among them, they rely on non-peer-reviewed working papers for 1/3rd of them, co-mix studies from the US and multiple other countries, early in the pandemic from late in the pandemic, and that their overall methodology between studies isn't just apples-to-oranges fallacious, but literally trying to compare all the pieces of a fruit salad to each other, as if they were all the same thing, when in fact they are anything but that.

This is therefore nothing but a Shit Stew, composed by mixing the dung of every animal in not just the barnyard, but in the entire zoo, and then trying to sell it to you as sausage. Bon apetít!

But as we had already warned you of this truth from the outset, we choose not to belabor the point any further.

The great pity is that, just in case these economists had any actual economic expertise on offer, they could have performed something truly useful, but letting us know exactly how much economic damage (something far closer to their bailiwick than medical efficacy, of which they know Jack and Shit), was done by dragging out mostly half-assed lockdowns beyond Memorial Day 2020, when it was clear that the only thing they were doing was crashing - first as collateral damage, and ultimately by express design - the greatest economy in US history, while setting the stage for the eventual bloodless presidential coup, in return for nothing useful to most of America, except Emperor Poopypants and his minions.

No points for guessing why they didn't bother to do that. They'd have been kicked out of academia faster than Drs. Stantz, Venkman, and Spengler, and with none of the comedic aftermath.

The Accidental Utility Of Shovelled Bullsh*t

So other than sprinkling it on the rose bushes, what further use can be made of this study?

Plenty, we assure you.

Soviet and Eastern European ex-pats with long experience frequently relate that even in the cover-to-cover non-stop lies of communist house organs like Pravda and Izvestia, the diligent reader could always infallibly discern multiple truths.

Chiefest among them: Who and/or what are they telling me to hate? 

Why is that useful?

Because one may then know the enemies of The Official Narrative. And exactly as in an old Afghani proverb, "The enemy of my enemy is my ally".

So despite the manifest flaw-holes in this "study" being big enough to drive an entire solar system through, blindfolded, what does it tell us may be true? There are numerous possibilities.

1) The Emperor is butt-ass naked. Most obviously, this may the first of many ham-fisted attempts to walk back a two-year epic policy disasterpiece. Midterm elections are coming on like a freight train, and vote theft which works on a national scale isn't nearly as effective in 468 or so individual elections for Congress and the Senate, never mind a host of state offices. Lincoln's observation on how many people you can fool, and how often, is about to come home to roost at the DNC.

2) Shitstorm Inbound Which tells us: 

a) they're weaker, politically, and in terms of national vote-fraud organization, than the 2020 presidential election fraud portended

b)  they're about to have their political asses handed to them, and be shat on from a great height, and

c) they know it.

Losing the Senate would be bad for them. No SCOTUS picks, no ambassadors, no higher-level bureaucratic flunkies, no bills passed whatsoever, etc. (No new vice presidents confirmed, either, nota bene, which leaves them stuck with Sen. Kneepads indefinitely, and Gropey Dopey's Ultimate Freshness Date expiration is approaching at supersonic speed, because biology.) 

Losing the House as well would be a calamity. Yertle is not likely to return to being the Senate Majority Leader in that eventuality, and Kevin McCarthy, the presumptive new Speaker and long-time pro-Trump ally, is not likely to do anything but send the Left into new fits of apoplexy.

And no, you still aren't voting your way out of this, but if all you're going to do, when thrown to the lions, is to resolve to taste bad, a great help to that strategy is crapping in the lion's mouth on the way down.

3) Get In Zee Boxcars, Jüden! Given the absolutely ass-tastic but purposeful conflation of anything anywhere as a "lockdown", they may be telegraphing the desire to re-institute total lockdowns, Australian-style (which is to say gestapo-style). "True lockdowns have never been tried. This time, it'll be different." Pay attention if totalitarians inadvertently or outright tell you something like this. They usually mean it.

4) Mega Vaxx Attacks The "study" rather pointedly only looked at non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs). So what? That means they could be setting the stage for MORE VAXX! BIGGER! FASTER! HARDER!!! NO EXCEPTIONS EVAR!!!!! And after that? See #3, above.

They could also just be a bunch of pointy-headed academic idiot savants, without the savant component, and simply so full of shit and incompetence, they don't know what they don't know.

Or, anything from 1 to 4, above could be true.

Worst of all, 5) All Of The Above.

Quo Vadis?

What that means for you and me, is that this isn't the beginning of the end, but it's the end of the beginning. There's a long, awful slog still ahead, and we may be nowhere near the bottom, and the long, hard crawl to try and get back to anything anyone living remembers as "normal". But their Plan A has totally gone to shit, as both the Canadian Uprising, and most of Europe shit-canning any COVID-related restrictions, underlines in red Sharpie.

Stay frosty, and double down on BFYTW.

Nothing else will work. And you may be backing it up Rittenhouse-style at any point in the exercise. Which will probably be a feature, not a bug.

Gooooooooooo, Team Fucktard!

In Case You Thought I Was Kidding

 

I wasn't kidding. I'm just getting warmed up. Part One continues...

1) Was This Trip Really Necessary?

We've shown the clowncar of earnest idiots in the economics department at Johns-Hopkins set out on a fool's errand in the first place with this "study". But as they open, they explain why they decided to do it anyways.

"Our early interest in the subject was spurred by two studies. First, Atkeson et al. (2020) showed that “across all countries and U.S. states that we study, the growth rates of daily deaths from COVID-19 fell from a wide range of initially high levels to levels close to zero within 20-30 days after each region experienced 25 cumulative deaths.”

So, some idiot suggested COVID deaths would level off after 25 deaths. (SRSLY??) And two years and millions of dead people later, this gang of idiots thought they needed to see if this was, in fact, the case. 

To be fair, this is actual scientific inquiry (hypothesis + experimentation = conclusion), but it's actual science from, like, retarded fetal alcohol syndrome kids fed lead paint chips and drinking out of lead mugs. It's on the same level as Dr. Robert Ballard writing a grant proposal to study whether the RMS Titanic was actually unsinkable. After he discovered the wrecked pieces of it on the ocean floor 73 years later. "Chief, I'm thinking your study is a bit late on locking the barn door after the horse already got out there."

We'll get to some actual numbers in a minute, but they really open the ball with the following sentence:

"Today, it remains an open question as to whether lockdowns have had a large, significant effect on COVID-19 mortality."

SRSLY?!? In what psych ward???

 Walk with me for thirty seconds. If you had looked at nearly three dozen studies of different people lowering the temperature of water until it froze, and controlling for the other variables (atmospheric pressure, salinity, etc.) Who The Actual Fuck would open their "study" by saying

"Today, it remains an open question whether water freezes at 32° Farenheit."???

If you had that many relevant, properly designed studies, the answer is "No one with an IQ above fungus would ask that question." In fact, to even ask the question, let alone declare it "open", you'd have to be a functional retard. Or, a Johns-Hopkins economics researcher. But I repeat myself.

The question being "open" implies that either the studies point in all directions, that they must not be repeatable, accurate, nor well-constructed or valid, or that the people looking at them cannot comprehend what they're reading.

Let's drill a little deeper on how they worked this out.

2) Meta-What?

This "study" in question is no such thing. No actual research was done. Because it's a meta-survey. Think of it as the Cliff notes to multiple other studies, purporting to have any internal errors in any one study cancel each other out, to better reveal the truth.

It's also the lazy man's way to sound smart without doing any actual, y'know, science.

 

"A meta-analysis is a statistical analysis that combines the results of multiple scientific studies. Meta-analyses can be performed when there are multiple scientific studies addressing the same question, with each individual study reporting measurements that are expected to have some degree of error. The aim then is to use approaches from statistics to derive a pooled estimate closest to the unknown common truth based on how this error is perceived. Meta-analytic results are considered the most trustworthy source of evidence by the evidence-based medicine literature." - Wikipedia: meta-analysis

Sounds positively spiffy, and it can be, with a few caveats.

The surveys or studies considered have to be looking at the same question, the same way, and controlling out all the same variables. Otherwise you're just playing Splattergories.

They should all be properly constructed, with valid methodology.

The results for each should be quantifiable, not subjective, and in a common frame of reference, not apples-to-oranges, let alone houseflies-to-houses.

Good ones are always this, which is what makes them useful in the medical community. Bad ones are none of this, which makes them towering piles of bullshit masquerading as science. 

For example:

Suppose you have in your employ one Faston Flock, the great grand-nephew of Himself, John Moses Browning, and he has invented, designed, and built a truly splendiferous and earth-shattering method of making accurate rifles, and you want to see how accurate they really can be.

So you assign ten product reps, one at a time, to take three rifles, and 39 rounds of ammunition, to each of the top ten rifle shooters your research department can find. They're all top marksmanship competitors, based on points in international matches, Olympic events, pre-qualifying matches, etc. They're all right-handed and right-eye dominant (to eliminate another pair of variables). They each get 13 rounds of ammunition in three lots named Red, Blue, and Green. They get three spotters for each lot, and after sighting in, they fire ten rounds for grouping, from three rifles, #1, #2, and #3. Rifle #1 is fired with Red, #2 is fired with Blue, and #3 is fired with Green. No time limit is allotted. The reps each record the time of day, the weather (temp., humidity, barometric pressure), the wind, the site elevation, any slope to the target to the 100th of a degree, and the time between shots. And any other 27 variables you'd care to name. Each rep takes the rifles to a different marksman, and only conducts the test once. What neither any of them or any of the marksman, knows, is that Rifle #1 is an average rifle with factory standard ammo, the second is an accurized rifle with standard ammunition, and the third is an accurized rifle with match-grade ammunition. Group size for each string is recorded, and after all the tests are performed with all the rifles and all the marksmen, the data from each shoot is compiled into a meta-study to see the final results.

That's the kind of meta-analysis you're hoping to perform and analyze.

But if, instead, you hand out 100 rounds to the ten reps, and tell them to go to ten shooting ranges, and record no data other than group size, and just have the first ten people they meet try a 10-round string, and record those results, it's a wee bit different. Because alongside a couple of legitimate riflemen, some of the shooters have never fired any rifle before, some are nearly legally blind, some are likely drunk, and you suspect at least one of the reps threw the ammo into his own garage, and just pencil-whipped phony "data", and turned it in to HQ. The results of those 100 strings are likely not going to be representative of anything useful whatsoever.

Let's see what we have here.

3) Let's Meet the Contestants

The Assclowns In Question (hereinafter AIQ) started with 18,950 COVID studies. They ended up only looking at 34.

We'll get to the details in a moment, but for openers: they threw out 18,916 studies, IOW 99.82058047493404% of them, and based their entire survey conclusions on the results of the remaining 0.17941952506596% they actually looked at.

To put this in perspective, that would be like deciding the 2020 presidential elections on the votes of a population the size of Wyoming, amidst 158M voters. It would be basing the winner of the World Series based on 10 randomly-selected at-bats per team in any season.

Which begs a couple of questions:

If there were 18,950 assorted COVID studies to look at, why did only 34 actually evaluate lockdown effectiveness in curbing mortality?

If any one of those studies were pure poorly-designed and invalid crapola, it would represent only 0.0052770448548812% of all COVID surveys.

But if the same were true for one of the 34, it would be weighted 584 times more heavily.

So how did they chuck all those other studies? They threw out 17,542 based solely on looking at the title, which is generally about ten words or less. So if the title didn't sound applicable, without any further checking, they chucked it. Quelle scientifique!

They threw out another 934 because they didn't measure the effect of lockdowns on mortality, ignoring, yet again, the possibility that they did so because one has no effect on the other, the entire point at issue. Pure scientific genius in action, right here.

That left them 117 studies that they actually, y'know, read. And promptly dumped 83 of them, i.e. all but 34 studies. Because reading more than that would be...work?

4) So, about those "lockdowns" they looked at... 

"Compulsory non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), commonly known as “lockdowns” – policies that restrict internal movement, close schools and businesses, and ban international travel – have been mandated in one form or another in almost every country. We use “NPI” to describe any government mandate which directly restrict people's possibilities. Our definition...include[s] mandated interventions such as closing schools or businesses, mandated face masks etc. We define lockdown as any policy consisting of at least one NPI as described above."

 SRSLY???

Allow me to illustrate:

Sorry for all the short bus kids who could tell us what the windows taste like, but every one of those examples are what the authors of this "study" consider lockdowns.

So, for the Common Core glass-tasters in the crowd:

Who would like to hazard a guess why this sort of "lockdown" might not accomplish...anything?

This is just the level of total horseshit found in the first seven pages, and only 53 more to go.

So keep those "Yeahbuts" coming in the Scratching Post, er, Comments.

A Giant Wet Plopping Sound

 

Sunday Music: Roam

 

Much as I love their signature "Love Shack" track from the same album, I like this cut better:

because it was another Top Ten hit, taking them out of the one-hit wonder category forever, and it proved conclusively that "Love Shack" wasn't just a fluke.

And for a delightful and unique new wave band, it also passed the Dick Clark acid test: it had a beat, and you could dance to it.

MOAR BHM: Okay, Karen

 

Might want to change from Whoopi to Whoopsie. Just saying.

The Plural Of Bullsh*t Is Not "Research Study"

 

When Wassamatta U. beats John-Hopkins at anything,
it's a measure of how far the mighty have fallen.

By now, somewhere on the 'net, you've probably seen someone, somewhere (perhaps here), make reference to the Johns-Hopkins economic study that purports to show that "COVID lockdowns had no impact on COVID mortality". And in 99.9999% of all instances, whoever was blogging or reporting on it did so in the vein of "Aha! J'accuse! I told you it was all a bunch of horseshit!"

If you saw/heard/read anything to the contrary in regard to the study, raise your hand.

Everybody with me so far? Good.

Now, for the benefit of the TL;DR crowd, and Common Core grads in the audience, we will provide a summary of what I'm about to tell you about this "study", just like they do in the extract:

Still with me? Great. Now, to the fisking, wherein we illuminate why we just said that, and why it is so.

1) The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect

This phenomenon was coined into the lexicon in a well-known lecture by the late Michael Crichton. The guy who graduated Harvard Medical School, went to Hollywood instead, and went on to become an author, screenwriter, director, and science lecturer, who gave you everything from Westworld to Jurassic Park, and at one point simultaneously had the number one best-selling book, number one TV show, and number one movie in the world, all at the same time. He was a true renaissance man, gifted in a host of fields of endeavor, not least of which, the ability to make science understandable and relevant to all, simultaneously educating you while holding your interest and entertaining. That's some world-class multi-tasking. But I digress.

 "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray [Gell-Mann]'s case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward -- reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.

In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.  

That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means "untruthful in one part, untruthful in all". But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia."

Why does this apply here?

Because this is the same Johns-Hopkins many of you, and likely 100% of the people pointing to this craptastic survey with sh*t-eating grins, have railed your asses off against, with levels of bitching, whining, and moaning that dogs could hear in space, for their  dashboard of COVID cases and casualties, a tally which no small number of you (I've seen you say it) think must actually be somewhere between 1 and 0, worldwide, from 2019-five minutes ago, worldwide, inclusive.

So which is it, kids? Are they all a bunch of world-class frauds and liars, all in on the conspiracy? Or earnest researchers speaking truth to power? You can't have it both ways here, and many of you are world-class cynics about pointy-headed academia, but when it tickles your confirmation bias, you become a busload of whores dogpiling a $20 bill blowing by on the day your supplier has a fresh batch of crack on offer.

50-yard penalty, and loss of possession.

2) The Economics Department? Why Not The Volleyball Coaches?

This is a study purporting to examine the medical effectiveness of lockdowns. By economists. Do you also consult your bank tellers for medical advice? Get your stock tips from your barber? That's a Gropy Dopey Biden level of dumbassery, right there.

If we wanted to know the economic effects of the lockdowns (like hundreds of businesses that went out of business didn't make that trip a total waste of time), these would be the guys to call. For medical efficacy, not so much. But if it's all just numbers, why not Bill James and the stat crunchers from ESPN? Hell, it's Black History Month: Why not get those black cleaning ladies from Hidden Figures? Or call math whiz Evita Guevara-Castro? Or Heidi Fleiss and the Mayflower Madam? Anybody that can run hookers in Manhattan and L.A. must have a head for numbers, right? (Or was it numbers for head? Sorry, I couldn't help myself there.)

While you're up, you may as well tune in to The View and ABCNNBCBS for news of the world and how things really are. Get ChuckU Schumer on the line and ask him for advice about the Second Amendment. Call Whoopi Goldberg to explain the Holocaust to you. Consult Marie Antoinette about bread distribution to the peasantry. Consult the German safety analysis on hydrogen-lifted airships. Ask Biden and the Pentagon whiz kids about the best way to evacuate and abandon a country. That's stupider than all the anchors at all the networks, plus the NYTimes, combined.

That obvious lack of any expertise or credibility alone should be enough torpedoes beneath the water line to sink the Yamato, let alone this silly-assed report. But wait! There's MOAR!

3) Wet Streets Cause Rain.

Funny Crichton should mention that. They were studying how lockdowns affect COVID mortality.

For those with memories shorter than your wedding tackle, here's a funny thing: the lockdowns weren't instituted to "decrease COVID mortality". You could look it up.

Here, let me jog your flagging memories. Fill in the blank:

"Two weeks to make less people die from COVID.."

BZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzztttt! WRONG! Hey, thanks for playing, but wait right there, and we'll have a lifetime supply of COVID vaxx, and a scorching case of herpes for you.

Try "Two weeks to SLOW. THE. SPREAD."

It doesn't matter that it did no such thing, and worked about as well as a screen door on a submarine, the point remains that lockdowns weren't instituted to keep people from dying from COVID AT ALL. They were instituted to keep people from dying from COVID ALL AT THE SAME TIME. By spreading the outbreak over weeks, rather than days, and delaying its spread from ports of entry to the hinterlands. 

(Nota bene that any city with a large Chinese expat (Chinatown) population did notably worse, initially. All those people crowing about how well FL, or Iowa, or Montana did: got a big Chinatown in Miami, do ya? Or Des Moines? Or Missoula? Or BFE? No?!? Color me shocked. Boston, NYFC, Frisco, Seattle, L.A.: all screwed, from the get-go. This virus came from where, again?)

File this under: Duh! Spreading is how a viral outbreaks become pandemics. And with the original strain of COVID, the death rate was always going to be what it was going to be: 1-5% historically, with 3% as the no-shit dead-on balls average, since ever. Ten to fifty times worse than common flu, but two to ninety times better than Ebola, for reference. (And I'm telling you experientially and anecdotally, subsequent strains of Kung Flu aren't even in the same ballpark as the initial one. Which probably has more to do with milder infections than the not-a-vaxxes ever did, just like with every other virus in history, AFAIK.)

If 10,000 people got the initial strain of Kung Flu, no matter when they got it, 100-500 of them were going to die. A minimum of 9,500 of them, and a maximum of 9900 of them would live. Staying at home wouldn't make them healthier, FFS. The very concept that one thing could affect the other is idiotic.

The whole point of the exercise was to make sure that Friendly Acres Mega Hospital didn't get all 500 of the sickest of the sick all in the same week.

Trying to flip the study around to see whether or not lockdowns did something they were never intended nor instituted to do is asinine, recockulous, and fucktarded. And I'm soft-soaping how jackassically moronic the very idea is, by orders of magnitude. It's like studying whether parachutes prevent plane crashes. It's asking how fast the brakes make your car go. It's looking at whether trains go faster if the conductor is right-handed or left-handed. If Gilligan, Goober, Larry, his brother Daryl, and his other brother Daryl all came up with this study, it still wouldn't be as fucking retarded as this.

(The fact that the lockdowns were extended and expanded wholly as an excuse and a means to steal an election in plain sight, and institute a bloodless coup, bears no small amount of the rationale for their continuance, either, but is beyond the scope of the moment.)

And yet, this jackassical farce of a topic is EXACTLY what they set out to study, on purpose, and we're only up to the opening introduction.

Only 60 more pages of this abominable bullshit to go. We've tortured you (and ourselves) enough for one day. You'd already be demonstrably dumber just reading the introduction to the paper in question, and doubtless can hardly wait to dig into the meat and bones of the rest of this enormous offal souffle. 

And we will continue. Just not today.

Part Two

MOAR BHM - Let's Remember Trayvon:

 

It must sadden his family, and the BLM community, to know that if only he were alive today, he could already be two years into his third strike life sentence in the state pen.

ABC Explains How They Celebrate It

When they realize you only need three witches to form a coven,
Joy Behar's days are numbered too.

 

Inflation, Redux

Poor Peter, over at Bayou Renaissance Man, had the temerity and unmitigated gall to point to last week's post here on Inflation, because he thought foolishly that I had explained things pretty clearly. Silly me, so too did I.

What we failed to account for was the irritated asses (I mean that in every possible sense of those words) of the Butthurt Platoon.

The ones for whom it's not wrong because it's wrong, it's wrong because *I* said it.*

Which is good, because Peter and I are not the only ones saying this.

Divemedic is apparently still butthurt because Alec Baldwin is still free, because he's legally and morally blameless, exactly as I noted, however much it pains him and sets his teeth on edge. Sorry, man. It's not what I'd wish for either, but I call it like I see it. Better luck next time.

But to his credit, he at least engaged the argument on the merits, and made a valiant effort.

Right up until he admitted that, no he wasn't in stocks and such anymore, and had converted all his investments out of the exact stock investment he was touting like a mofo for three posts, and had moved everything into real property, including *gasp*...PMs like gold. Because of looming INFLATION.

Geez, if only someone had suggested doing that, somewhere, where other people could see it, like, I dunno...maybe on a blog page??

And then, caught hand-in-the-cookie-jar, his brilliant retort was

"You are a fucking idiot."

 QED.

Game. Set. Match.

Clearly, me pointing out the obvious truth: that dollars, or stocks valued in them, were not a wise future repository of value, exactly as he had concluded on his own, some months back, was the last straw.

Mad props, man. Well-played.

Because the guy who gets check-mated and flips the board over in disgust always wins, right?

I'm a fucking idiot for stating the obvious truth that inflation has been the driving force for most, if not all, of the recockulous growth in stocks since 1932 others keep wanting to pretend is both normal, and perpetual.

Because back when money was stable and solid, 1% was seen as a good annual rate of return, for, oh, about a hundred and fifty years, back to the founding of the Republic.

For anyone who came here on the short bus, yet again, YOU COULD LOOK IT UP.

I even took the time to explain this, laboriously, in multiple comments at Peter's blog.

For the TL;DR crowd, here's the DK picture dictionary version:

IOW, to be a millionaire in terms understood in as recently as 1932, you'd need to have $89M now. ($89,501,150, to be precise.) But if you'd had as little as $11,000 dollars then, and simply converted it to gold, and buried it in your back yard, you'd be worth $1M now. But if you'd kept the cash in your pocket, and never spent a penny, that same $11,000 would be worth $122.90 right this minute. Next year, it might be worth $92.18. (Maybe even less than that.) 

That's INFLATION. 8950%, and counting, since 1932, in the U.S.

It also illustrates rather vividly the difference between what you have when you hold money, versus when you hold fiatbux, or anything valued in them.

That's why a $2000 car back when my old man made $10K/yr now costs twice as much, in real terms, at $40K when I make $100K/yr., ten times what dad pulled down. I'd need to be making $200K, just for parity with a guy in the 1960s with a high school diploma working a low-level purchasing job. BTW, the same job he had now? $77K/yr, top tier. The new car he could have paid for with 3 months' salary would currently take his modern counterpart six months' salary.

Inflation makes everyone a serf, working more and harder for less and less, every single year. As it's designed to do.

Let's be fair: People, like Divemedic, and most of the stock-enamored whiners commenting at BRM or anywhere else, are absolutely right in one respect:

Stocks can compound growth.

They are a great investment idea.

In 1940. Or 1970. Or even in 2001.

If, IF, IF you pick the right ones. And/or you die, or bail out of the market, before the bottom drops out.

If you acquired Ford, or Coca-Cola in 1920, you would have done okay.

If you'd picked RC Cola and Studebaker, not so much.

Index funds?

Suuuuuuuuure.

If we assume a stable sensible economy, with sound money (neither of which we've had since 1928), that will never, ever go tits up. Like it never did in Weimar. Zimbabwe. Venezuela.

Show of hands: How many people think the next 40, 30, 20, or even 10 years, financially and economically, are going to be anything like as stable, with the same sort of stock growth, as anytime in the last 80 years have been??

Beuller? Beuller...? Ferris Beuller?? Anyone???

What's the FIRST RULE OF INVESTING?

Don't believe me. Look at the people who bought shares of Sears, Pan Am, US Steel, RC Cola, for just a few examples. Or who invested with Lehman Bros., or in ENRON.

Literally anybody can pick stock winners in hindsight. Going forward, not so much.

You've seen this con before. It's called past posting.

You can read about it, or just watch The Sting.

Spoiler Alert: It pays off great for Henry Gondorf and Johnny Hooker.

Not so much for Doyle Lonnegan.

That's why he's called "the mark".

All I've suggested is that you don't be the mark. And that you check your calendar before putting your money down, and decide whether you're betting on the past, or the future.

The future for both fiatbux and stocks doesn't look so good.

But then again, no one's ever invented $15,000,000,000,000.00 in just a couple of years by pulling it out of their own ass before. Well, almost no one.

So, how did that work out?

Make that, "No one in the U.S." Or... hey waitaminute!

So consider your options, and then decide what to do, based on your own analysis.

After that, YOYO.

You're On You're Own.

This man is not your friend, (rarely ever has been)
but he does have a bridge for sale. Cheap.

If anyone has a quibble with any of that on the merits, have at it. Bring your calculator, and your history book. I put up the original post to make a point, not to make enemies. I've never been shy about good give and take, and as I've stuck to unassailable historical facts in this, I like my odds. But if you're just looking to display your amazing total inability to marshal facts and logic on your side of an argument, showcase your shocking lack of manners and abysmal upbringing, and flaunt your rhetorical shortcomings:

Who'da thunk common sense and stating the obvious would be such a hard sell, right?

*[Shout out to B:

Dude, you argue like a jealous little bitch. And I mean that clinically: bringing up imaginary past sh*t, and a continued inability to come up with any reason for your current hissy fit in the moment. We're not dating, we aren't related, and this is the only time I've mentioned you spontaneously in recorded history, because like Herr Steiner, my instincts about certain things are similarly infallible. My comments are unwelcome on your blog, which is entirely your prerogative, and you're utterly incapable of admitting when anyone points out where you've made an error (hey, I feel your pain), but much as it stings, you're not logical enough to examine the error without taking the correction as a personal slight. I hope that's not how you navigate and aviate, or you're going to have a shorter career at it than you'd have hoped, and end up landing into a mountain somewhere. And despite your shock, even I don't want that.

So please, get over the fact that your little blog isn't much of a draw, and either up your wordsmithing game, or just hold your peace. I'm living in your head rent-free, and that's all your problem and your choice, not mine. You're smart enough to fly planes, and wealthy enough to pay for them. Good for you. Sincerely. But that's not the global rarity you think it is, so either up your game, get used to a life of constant disappointment, or go out in that big wide internet, and just mind your own business in your little corner, without flinging sh*t you can't back up on other people's blogs because you can't control your impulses. It just looks catty and juvenile. Unless that look is what you were going for from the outset. If that's the case, You go, girl! But I'm still not interested in you, and my utter unconcern for your personal opinions of me cannot be measured with existing instrumentation. Scuttle back off to whatever it is you do, and we can both happily ignore each other endlessly, m'kay?]

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

h/t WRSA 

A couple of notes for those who thought this was a good idea:

1) When your big slogan is "Remember How Well We Did With COVID?", you probably want to stay the hell away from anything medical or healthcare related for about 100 years.

2) I don't think I'd want to use the word "shot" anytime the rest of this century either, in connection with any idea coming out of the White House.

Just saying.

Don't be Bitchy, Be Cheerful

 Always look for silver linings.

MOAR, please.

College ≠ Education

 

Doctor of Thinkology

John Wilder has some thoughts on choosing a path in life. RTWT.

We've broached this subject ourself, a time or two.

College is potentially a fabulous opportunity, but mostly intrinsically worthless.

There are only three things you need to know in life, none of which are taught in college:

1) What do I really like doing?

2) What am I really good at doing?

3) What can I make decent money doing?

When those three legs of that stool come together, you've found where you're supposed to be, and what you ought to be, in life. Period. (For porn stars, thieves, liars, prostitutes, journalists, politicians - but I repeat myself - and such, your morality, or lack of it, determines whether that is something you ought to be doing.)

But those legs need a seat to plug into, and those three questions must connect to one other thing, to be truly worthwhile:

Is this something that cannot be shipped to Shi*tholia or Trashcanistan and done for 5¢ on the dollar to wages here?

Why? Because if it can, it will be.

Loyalty is deader than canned tuna.

The days of 40 years, a gold watch, and a pension until you die left the building 40 years ago.

Employers (stupidly) expect, or even foolishly demand, loyalty to their interests, but never send any loyalty the other way.

They are as loyal to their employees as they are to used toilet paper, and always will be, for every position from janitor to CEO.

So answer those three questions, and then the fourth one, and ROWYBS.

If (as in about 5% of cases) that indicates a specific college course of study, go for it.

As to specifics:

Being a lawyer requires law school, not college. College is just to weed out the lazy and the really stupid f**ktards. (Looking at judges shows you how poorly it does at the latter.) Major in any damn thing you want to. Whatever it is, it will help you as a lawyer.

Including the anthropology of French basket-weaving poets. All that matters is an LSAT score to get in, and studying your ass off to get out. But only those who graduate from top-tier law schools will get top-tier salaries. The rest can make a living. Some can't even manage that. (Getting to SCOTUS from night law school is a very narrow and unlikely road.) Things are tough all over.

Medicine requires college, especially physics, chemistry, biology, and mathematics. (See if you can guess what subjects the MCAT focuses on.) But once again, that's just to weed out those with no aptitude for finishing medical school, because letting somebody in means telling 100 other bright young wannabees to eff off, so if they let you in, they have a not-so-vested interest in making sure you won't screw the pooch and flunk out, thus wasting a chair that could have gone to any of 99 equally qualified candidates.

Engineering is all about college. To get you in the door with an engineering company.

But not all science degrees are equal. In the six months before I bailed out of computer science, I correctly recognized the scam. Computers were the hot thing, promising scads of jobs. But the course load was so bloatedly over-packed with prereqs and mandatory classes (in programming languages that are about as useful now as Aztec and Sanskrit), and impacted by too damned many applicants, that it took an extra year - maybe even two years extra - to get a basic four-year degree. At the same starting salary coming out as the guys in business and engineering. Dumb idea, and I ditched it ASAP. Bonus: All the guys I started with made good money - for about a decade. Then they spent another ten years as waiters and barristas when all their jobs were shipped to India, Singapore, Pakistan, etc. The guys ahead of them pulled up the ladder, and sold them out in a heartbeat.

The architects, civil engineers, and electrical engineers made a good living. The aerospace engineers spent more time on unemployment than actors, with the booms and busts and constant consolidation of a once diverse employment industry.

Nursing? Hard to get in. But after losing out on a NROTC scholarship that would have sent me to Stanford or MIT for free, if only I hadn't been white (they told me this to my face), then saw me unemployable in the fire and police departments for the same reasons, walking into the nursing department as a guy made me the same kind of diversity hire as if I was a handicapped gay black female: 2% of the field. Dean's list grades, and top 1/2% SATs meant they knew I wasn't going to flunk out, unlike 90% of their actual diversity selectees. Bonus: Can't ship the job anywhere. Ever. Permanent shortage of them from now until Forever. What does college - even my nursing classes - have to do with my job? Damned little. It only guarantees that on Day One, there's an 80% chance I won't kill my patient out of outright stupidity. Nothing more is certain. The real education started after I had the license, and hit the floor. Sucked to be told that after I graduated. Really pissed me off. Sucked even harder to find out it was true.

College for anything else? 

Okay, if they require it.

Major in whatever-the-hell you want, because it literally doesn't matter.

The utility isn't what you learn in college (which is always damned little, trust me.)

The value is in learning how to think, how to learn, and most important of all, how to teach yourself anything and everything, and how to teach it to others.

Someone that can learn, think, and teach others can (and will) excel in any business on the planet. That's what businesses are hoping they get when they hire college graduates. What they mostly get instead is over-educated children who can't tie their shoes, dress themselves appropriately, answer the phone without a 6-month training class, can't show up on time, nor work long and hard without a boot in the ass from a boss with a high school diploma, and a Ph.D. from the School Of Hard Knocks, subbing in for idiot parents and rent-seeking public school teachers.

A horrible instructor teaches you what to think. (This describes 90% of all colleges, everywhere, at all times, BTW.)

A mediocre instructor teaches you what you should know. (This is maybe another 8%.)

A good one teaches you how to think, not what to think. (This is Top 2% stuff, and can be gotten anywhere, at any school.)

A great one teaches you how to integrate and synthesize that learning and integrate knowledge from diverse subject areas, and convey it to others. (In most cases, this is supposed to be what Master's programs are all about, but seldom are).

Doctorates are supposed to be for those actually expanding the edge of knowledge beyond what is already known, plugging it into what's already known, and presenting it to everyone else.

College that fulfills that mission is worth the investment, if you need it, or want it for its own sake.

College just to get a job may as well be accomplished online or at the JC, for pennies on the dollar to Harvard or Stanford. (And both schools know that too.)

And you can make more money than college grads if you have aptitude for the trades.

A high school classmate, solid C student, nice guy, was a total gearhead. Not college material in any way, shape, or form, and he knew it. But a good guy, and good with transmissions and engines. Three years out of high school, he bought his boss's shop. Ten years out, he owned ten auto shops. Was married, paid-off house, and worth $1M. Before age 30. Never even bothered with the SAT. Knew what he liked, did what he wanted. None of the college grads (which was 95% of my class) could touch that at the 10-year reunion.

A guy fixing air conditioners, transmissions, or furnaces and water heaters is going to make a good living anywhere but Trashcanistan, and the entry requirement is a GED, aptitude, and a work ethic.

Mike Rowe annually pounds the drum that Caterpillar every year has unfilled openings for people willing to learn how to repair bulldozers, cranes, and graders, has a full apprenticeship program, and that in 2 years, you'll graduate with zero debt, and skill that can take you worldwide, and pay $100K a year within a couple of years after graduating, and can't be shipped overseas, unless that's where the broken bulldozer is. And they go begging for applicants, because people would rather mortgage their entire future and not get their fingernails dirty.

College is not for everybody, probably not even for most people, and totally unrelated to one's education, or one's career, in most cases. It's the biggest scam and unexploded bubble market in the world at the moment, and it's going to pop sooner or later.

What never goes out of fashion is being able to learn, and knowing how to think. With or without a sheepskin. Brighter folks figured that out by the end of The Wizard Of Oz.

"It's Always February 2nd. And There's Nothing I Can Do About It..."

 

At some point today, Watch The Movie.

Even if you've seen it a hundred times, it never gets old.

And it's probably as good as almost anything else you could do.

People Are Different

(Also still available in original tall strip version.)

Lifetime Solutions

 

Hopefully, the penny drops. Before you do.

Never Advertise Your Senility

 h/t CW @ Daily Timewaster