Hey, John Wilder (and "Unusual Whales", by extension):

(Graph as found. Reality is quite a bit harsher. And Gen Z would
be far better off if they hadn't learned math from 60's hippies.
They're about to learn it from their dead grandparents from 1934.)

(Dear JW:

I'd have posted this as a comment to your previous CW 2.0 post, but it keeps getting cock-blocked there, due to wonkiness. This is one way to drag me back here, kicking and screaming. Well-played.)

FTR, whoever "Unusual Whales" is, the graph line that suggests "Real wages" have increased 30% in the last 40 years is far beyond mentally retarded. And merits them an internet dick punch of Godzilla-ish proportions.

Wages since 1985 have cratered. Case in point, my parents' combined household income in 1985 was at the 50th percentile at the time, i.e the mid-point, nationally. Or notionally. Mine is currently at the 90th percentile nationwide, all by my ownself, IOW, better than 90% of US households. But for me to have the purchasing power they enjoyed near the household median in 1985, my paycheck would need to be larger than it is by seven- to ten-fold. IOW, I make 500% of what mom and pop did, yet the purchasing power of my income is only about 40% of what theirs was then. That's how much nothing my fiatbux "Real wages" command currently, and how badly "Real wages" have dropped.

Gold is gold, which is why the spot price is USD$4500/oz as I write this, compared to +/- USD$300 in 1985. That means a dollar in 2026 is worth less than 7% in real terms what it was 40 years ago. (You could look it up.) Let me turn that up:

A 2026 dollar is worth <7% of what a 1985 dollar was worth.

(And BTW, a dollar in 1985 is worth less than <7% of what a 1932 dollar was worth.)

For Common Core grads, that means your dollar now is worth less than 5/1000ths - 0.005% - of what a dollar was worth in 1932. ($1 x 0.065 x 0.07 = 0.00455. QED) A dollar currently is worth less, in real terms, than the cost for the ink and paper to print it. Maybe write that down on your hand in Sharpie, lest ye forget. We don't need zinc pennies anymore, because $1 bills are the new 1/2¢ coin. And the only people who've figured that out are EVERYONE who's selling you anything, worldwide, and why all your sh*t, from cars to houses to Happy Meals,  has zoomed in price. Gold hasn't zoomed. Your dollars are simply worth Jack, and Shit. That's how inflation works, with the Treasury printing fiatbux three shifts a day, and inflating the unbacked money supply by trillions, year after year. Fun times, dead ahead. 

Oh, and that wasn't Boomers who f**ked you, Boomer-haters. You kneejerk know-nothings know who you are. It was every generation prior to Boomers, those born from 1850-1944 who own that. As anyone with an IQ about room temperature knows, when Nixon was elected in 1968, only the pitifully few Boomers born 1945-1947 - three years out of twenty one for that generational 1945-1965 demographic slice - could even vote for Nixon. But you dipshits "learned" - I use that term loosely - Common Core history from the same aging commie fucktards that taught you economics, which is why reality from both math and history is kicking the shit out of you in both ends at the same time. Stand up, and maybe let a cluebat smack you in the forehead, rather than the foreskin, and you might actually learn something, instead of spending your entire lives getting butt-f**ked by Reality. You public-schooled shithead simpletons. /rant

(This is also why comments from the people who chided me for saying "buy gold as a hedge against inflation, not stocks" from a year or five back haven't aged well. Suck it, chuckleheads.)

This reality is why Fiatbux - dollars, francs, yen, renminbi, whatever - are all finely engraved toilet paper. Don't make  me do a retard crayon talk here. The only things that have cratered harder than "real wages" since 1985 are Russian armored regiment performance, or possibly Minnesota fraud investigations. Even Catholic church child abuse investigations have improved more than real wages since 1985. To suggest otherwise makes CNN economic reporters and hosts on The View sound wise. 

The "Real wages" line on that graph should actually look like Rosie O'Donnell's future media prospects, with the endpoint somewhere below my third paragraph in this response; to suggest otherwise - as that dickheaded graph does - deserves to have the creator of that graph punched in the throat with brass knuckles, then set on fire alive, dropped in a vat of av gas, and have the dwindling pyre shot at by hunters with buckshot. It's so far beyond cretinous, that actual cretins couldn't see the creator from here, even looking from the Webb telescope in space. If somebody can't get something that simple correct, maybe graphing things isn't their game.

Sometime between tomorrow and death, most of the world is going to discover firsthand what the inhabitants of Weimar, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela all learned about financial reality. It isn't going to be pretty. In a Wile E. Coyote running off the cliff kind of way. Mind the drop.

Just saying.

- Aesop

Just Noticing

First, to piss off the haters: No, we are not dead. Second, neither is the blog. It's merely paused. Third, no, we're not back yet either.

Additionally, we've made a lot of progress on alternative arrangements. And some other fronts. Huzzah.

But in flicking by here and doing a quick peruse, the lowest numbers sit around 2K visits/day. The average is several times more than that, most days, equaling what Gulag reported when we were contributing 1-4 posts/day, for a decade-plus. The peak interest was Christmas Week this past year, with multiple days at 50k+ visits/day(!), when a lot of folks were doom-scrolling the net, and the exact kind of daily numbers the Gulag's monkeys NEVER allowed to show up on our view count when we were contributing regularly.

Our conclusion is that, surprising us not a whit, Gulag continues to fornicate our daily view/visit count, only letting their efforts lapse when we're not showing up on some shit-minion's daily Black-Pilled Blogs To Fuck With List.

Which means we can probably take their reported views, and at minimum, assume that post-Trump, there should be a zero behind them, if the actual views were removed from the official Gulag Fuck With This Guy's Blog list. We're sure any number of folks, especially those on our right column Blog List, fall under a similar situation. IOW, we see you're still f**king with things, Gulag, but you're not fooling anyone. (We have literally been online and watched the count cycle backwards, in real time, like on Election Night 2024. They're that ham-fisted. For another touch point, the view count of this post shows 6 views in the seven minutes since it dropped. The blog's view count shows 2400 additional visits in the same time frame. IOW, people are visiting the blog, but not, y'know, reading the posts. Kind of like getting Playboy, but not opening it, like people did. Riiiiight. Said No One Ever. How To Tell Me Gulag Is F**king With Your Blog, Without Telling Me Gulag Is F**king With Your Blog.)

Which means we're winning, and it's still giving them a huge dose of redass, even when we're too busy to add anything.

This warms the cockles of our cold, green amphibious heart no end. Keep sticking it to the bastards. We shall return to the fray anon. And we humbly thank what is obviously an interested reader base in our current prolonged absence. You're not alone out there, people, even on shitty days in challenging times. 

It's just that certain of TPTB want you to think you're alone. Take heart. You are not any such thing.

See you soon, we hope.

Best Wishes,

-A.

Bigger Fish To Fry

We've been far less concerned with the internetz the last couple of months, because we've been working on Castle Anthrax. IOW, our personal arrangements for when the threat of spicy times becomes an actuality, as well as being our retirement fortress of MYOB when we've had enough of indentured servitude for our final employer.

Where is it, you may ask?

NDBBM.

It is far from our front porch, well away from the 10% of America that lives in the surrounding area, and conveniently far from the beaten path to make us happy with the arrangement.

The last few weeks have been spent securing things to a reasonable degree, and working on plumbing and other infrastructure.

So as much fun as we have here, it doesn't hold a candle to weightier things at the moment. We do not expect a horrific turn of events tomorrow, or this year, but want to be in a better position for whatever comes, whenever it happens, with a view towards when we wish to put out the following unwelcome mats, bolted to the step,

then chain-locking the front gate, and set about minding our own business to a far greater degree.

Posting will continue to be therefore rather light. We have frequently advised people to make the most of the good times to prepare for bad times. That's exactly what we're doing the most of at the moment. We hope you are too, or have already done so. Anyone who doesn't realize Trump and Vance are a seredipitous but temporary respite hasn't been paying close attention.

And FTR, this is probably just about all we're going to specify on this particular activity until a friend or relative comes on here, and tells you we won't be posting anything at all, since there's no internet in the afterlife. We earnestly hope that day is looong in the future, but for the time being, we quite literally have much better things to do than deal with the minutiae in the wider world. We expect to still log on and visit our own favorite stops and drop comments, but overall, this place has been moved temporarily to about twenty-seventh on our list of daily Top Ten Things To Get Done.

While we're otherwise occupied, feel free to frequent the other bloggers on the Blog List, or cruise through our greatest hits from the last seventeen years we've been at this. When Castle Anthrax provides some object lessons, we shall be only too happy to share those, consistent with our personal privacy. When things are a lot farther along than now, we expect to return to more regular posting.

In our absence, you have our sincere best wishes for your efforts to make similar arrangements.

Sunday Music: Too Late For Goodbyes

 

1984 saw this cut from Julian Lennon's debut album reach #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, teasing hopes of a belated Beatles' reformation, with son Julian sitting in for his recently assassinated father John. But it was all tease, and nothing ever materialized, except this track showing everyone what might have been.

Sunday Music: Just My Imagination

Classic Motown soft soul, this platinum single was the third time the Temptations hit #1, this time in 1971, recalling their signature 1960s glory.

No, By All Means, Move

h/t WRSA

Suck It, Bitchez

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I've never said Ukraine could win. I have said Russia, Ukraine, or even both could lose.

But DJT? What does he think, 1309 days into Putin's idiotic and blood-soaked quest to reassemble the former Soviet Union?

I'ma just leave this right here.

There was a mix of astonishment and reservation in Kyiv on Wednesday — contrasted with bitter dismissal and some mocking defiance in Moscow — after President Donald Trump said Ukraine could reclaim all of its territory, a dramatic change in rhetoric on the war. 

Trump had long maintained that an end to the war would require Ukraine ceding territory, but months of failed diplomacy have seemingly fueled frustrations with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

We earnestly commend the Rootin' For Putin crowd still waving their "Any Day Now™" banners to flood the White House website, and explain to 47 how he's got it all wrong now that he's finally grown tired of the taste of Putin's ass. Let the UDS flow through you.

Can Ukraine "win"? Define winning.

Can either side, or both sides, lose? Absolutely.

But at least Trump's stopped trying to outdo Dementia Joe in throwing a country whom we promised to support under the bus for naked political expediency, thereby imperiling every treaty and alliance we've signed since 1787.

Personally, we only have one thing to say to DJT, finally pulling up in his Secret Service limo:

Cue a caravan of poo-flinging monkeys and ass-slapping baboons in 3, 2, ...