This, ladies and gentlemen, is what commonly known as “having brass balls”. The events of the last a couple of weeks have divided people into very opposing black-and-white camps (oops, I am using non-PC color designations). However, very few of netizens labor themselves with getting familiar with spacious, societal and temporal components of the situations and rather chosen to rely on the official narrative. Which they now are amplifying ad nauseam.
I won’t go into reiterating of the letter published by former apostolic nuncio to the USA Archbishop Viganon regarding the situation in Ukraine. My tell-tailing won’t do any good to his deeply intellectual analysis. But please indulge yourselves!
I am sure you all have heard about crypto-socialists and crypto-communists. The examples are plenty starting with “The squad” and going into an office of pretty much any modern technology company in the US (especially in CA, of course).
But just today I was walking on a beach as I do everyday and noticed how a seagull picked up a potato chip or whatnot handed by a tourist. Immediately, a whole bunch of her comrades gained up to took what was rightfully hers.
And it came to me that seagulls actually are proto-communists with same traits and modes of operations: whatever one makes or produces they take away and split into tiny meaningless pieces no one can enjoy anymore.
While our fellows from the land of the free and the home of the brave (a.k.a “Covid idiots“) follow the orders from “Dr” Fauci and turning away visiting family members unless they have a negative PCR test yet getting sick with new Omicron variance (a.k.a common cold) in droves,
Don’t let your relatives through the door, unless they are vaxxed
the normal ones keep on living their lives as usual…
Looks like they are simply unaware they are all doomed and going to meet their maker very soon because of Fauci’s Christmas wish. Too bad he was on the Santa’s naughty list for the last 40 years.
People have been asking me how I manage to be able to live the life I want and to afford it. Some are even reaching out for a master class on this. Today I have decided to share my secret with all good people, completely free, in the spirit of White Christmas, Happy New Year and all that. Behold..!
The secret of a good and fulfilling life is to figure out what do you want from it and then work hard and smart to achieve exactly that level.
Here, now you know what to do to be happy and walk away completely enlightened!
Today I’d like to discuss a piece of unwanted political activism that my company’s service provider is spreading or spamming. The company name is Expensify and it used to be a decent small’ish shop doing a decent job to simplify the tedious task of expense tracking. No more! It turns out that David uses his company to peddle very disturbing and outright literal lies to their customers. This rises a few questions:
Where in the contract signed between a paying customer and Expensify it is allowed to spread falsehoods illustrated below?
Is Expensify’s board of directors aware about political activism of the CEO?
How ethical it could be to spam your own customers?
What kind of political favors David is expecting to gain in exchange for his intervention into the voting process? And shall this be considered is an indirect contribution to the political campaign and treated as such?
To avoid any misinterpretations, I am quoting the letter of their CEO – David Barret – verbatim (as in screenshots of the email). And I apologize for this revolting piece of propaganda, but here it…
Here, I cut off the middle section where David “offers” some of his – frankly quite illiterate – insights why voting to democrats is “constitutional” and “will promote the democracy”: the two things that are contradictory to each other if you ever did bother to learn anything about US Constitution. And the last part:
Whatever you might think about current political situation in the US and no matter which side of the artificial divide you think you belong to, it is the time to show these sociopaths that their activism isn’t welcome and take your business elsewhere to avoid the patronizing and outrageous propaganda!
And from the very recent Tom Woods podcast with Dominic Frisby I found this magical anthem, I am sure, many liberty minded people would be ready to raise and stand for!
To your attention, a cross between great A. Alexandrov’s music and Dominic’s inspiring lyrics!
You can sing alone, if you like. Or add your voice to the virtual choir, that Dominic is putting together
Taxation is a form of theft. Free markets and free trade are best. Free speech, free movement, free minds & free choice Our actions are all voluntary Not coerced or compulsory.
Here’s an excerpt from today’s Tom Woods daily mailer. I am posting it verbatim (with my emphasis). Here we go:
The government of Oakland is launching an investigation of several ropes found hanging on trees in Lake Merritt. These ropes were “nooses,” they said. Well, no, they aren’t. Victor Sengbe of Oakland came forward and explained that the ropes were for children to swing on, and that of thousands of people who had walked by, nobody had mistaken them for “nooses.” Care to see a photo of Mr. Sengbe? Here he is:
But even though everyone knows these ropes are not “nooses” and that the person who put them there is black and has told everyone that children play on them and that this is their only purpose, the city is still launching a “full investigation.” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said, “These incidents will be investigated as a hate crime. Evidence has been turned over to the FBI. I want to be clear, regardless of the intentions of whoever put those nooses in our public trees, in our sacred public space here in Oakland, intentions don’t matter.”
Please be aware that good mayor of Oakland is in this position since 2014 and as a former resident of California who lived not even 10 minutes away from that city I can attest that last 6 years were daring for that community. It isn’t leveled up with Baltimore or Chicago yet, but give it another a couple of years – and it will be there, no doubts.
Some one might say “Hey, she probably has good heart and her intentions are good!”. And I reject this argument as a complete bullocks, of course! Because, hey – Intentions don’t matter! anymore.
While I don’t care how money stolen – nay, voluntarily contributed through taxes by CA taxpayers – are getting wasted, I have a question I think many in the country would ask: why the hell our federal taxes are being thrown into rabid boondoggles of outright crazy people occupying Oakland city hall?
By today, perhaps, everyone but this guy sailing solo round-the-world for 9 months have heard about Imperial College of London it its infamous pants-down ex-professor Ferguson who made yet another disastrous prediction that millions will die, unless we all got locked in. And we know it turned out to be an utter bullshit. Yes, you’ve heard me right: he’s doing this predictions like a clock since early 2000’s. However, unlike even a broken clock that shows correct time every now and then, he has never (fortunately!) been correct in any of his.
Well, on top, it turned that one of the reasons for his less than stellar track record, was a computer code these academics were writing for last 15 years or so. After the code has been given to a team from Microsoft and they were fixing it for about a month, a bunch of people found that it is … .well, full of crap. It is hard to say for sure if the original code is significantly worst (you know, it is really hard to make accurate predictions 😉 because ICL doesn’t answer calls to release the original code. Which has been paid for by UK tax payers. Not that I care how they spend their money.
Anyway, I’d like to talk about this interesting phenomena called Festinger effect (you can read more in this article by a physiologist Dr. Hugh Willbourn). His point is quite simple, in fact: people who are so eager to get us and keep us in this lock-down manifest all the properties of a typical cult (yes, like Jehovah’s witnesses, Global Warmers, Scientology, Climate Changers, Hasidic groups, or largest ever – Christian Church soon to be overtaken by another – Islamic – cult). Anyway…
Cult members (or believers) should present the following five conditions in order to avoid cognitive dissonance between their own lives and a system of believes they have in their heads:
There must be conviction
There must be commitment to this conviction
The conviction must be amenable to unequivocal dis-confirmation
Such unequivocal dis-confirmation must occur
Social support must be available subsequent to the dis-confirmation.
…and boom: you look at all these who are almost coming just from a thought that global economy should be totally shut because of a slightly worst-than average flu-like illness (which perhaps Chinese leaked by total negligence or someone else was trying to perform morally questionable gain-function experiments) – and you see a cult. Enjoy the read!
Generally, I prefer not to write nor discuss this particular subject, because it is obvious and dull for anyone with at least half-functional brain. But this story got to me for good. I spilled my morning coffee all over the kitchen table once I just saw the headline. But it got real funny when I dug into it. I’ll let you judge for yourself in a second. But first a short preamble.
Military all across the world are known to attract the dumbest of the dumb. It is a universal law (well, more like a principle, I’d say), like a gravity pull or reactive action, or laws of thermodynamics. Oftentimes, it is called “selection bias”. However, US military is in its own category even among its peers.
Thank you for you service, boys and girls of USNavy and so on: you made my morning, Quite a disappointment though, that Uncle Sam just took another proverbial pound of my flesh to feed them knuckleheads ;( And don’t worry: taxmen are coming for your flesh very soon too!
Note: these saviors of the country manage to contaminate the hospital ship without on-boarding a single patient.
And as planned earlier, I am in Southern Thailand for a while now. Things were pleasantly uneventful for a few weeks: swimming in the morning, doing some work midday, then go back and surf or paddle-board a little before the sunset. Water is 29.0 to 30.1 C all the time. Super nice and definitively better than Caribbean in this aspect… I never had such a nice tan and I never were able to tan without sun burns. It musta be a special kind of sun here, at 7″ north of the equator.
As you know, things around the world were heating up with #ChinaFlu (or quite commonly referred to as #CPPFlu or #ChicomFlu). You might have heard it is called COVID-19 (what a ugly name, by the way).
And Thailand isn’t much different, although it has been really blessed with a slow uptick in cases (or a lack of testing, perhaps): flights cancellations and border closings, banning of Chinese nationals from entering the country – that one clearly has happened too late to have any real effect. Then the banning of other foreigners from entering started unless they have some sort of health certificate. And now the country went to a more strict, but not strict enough, lock down.
But evidently, if you are from #China, you can get yourself a fake health certificate and keep traveling spreading the disease freely. Here’s a screenshot of the above link for your convenience, as #Twitter is infamous in accidentally losing things they disagree with.
Now the country-wide state of emergency has been declared until April 30th. This should help with closing some notorious illness-spreaders like boxing matches, night clubs, massage parlors and spas, bars – basically places of massive public gatherings. I am not saying all of them are dirty holes (in fact, I haven’t been to any of those except like a month ago I checked a couple of local neat bars to grab a beer). Today things turned more sour, with an attempt of local authorities to close public beaches. During the daytime. When UV levels are super high under the tropical sun. I let it sink for a minute…
And yet, Thai immigration isn’t even trying to make things easier for those who decided to stay in the country and avoid unnecessary travel. All knucklehead rules for regular renewals and 90-days checks enforced on legal non-residents and residents alike are still in place. People need to go to the tiny offices of tourist police and spend a few hours in the crowds, being potentially exposed to asymptomatic or sometimes asymptomatic spreaders of the latest #ChinaFlu. The very logic of very controversial moves by different part of government escapes me. But after all, what is the point to keep searching for your car keys under a street light, if you lost them two blocks away three days ago? BTW, these immigration checks cost B1,900 a pop (about US $60). I guess I found the traces of logic after all.
With lots of tourists leaving the country and many airlines cancelling their international flights, things slow down real fast. Businesses are hurting: the rental prices for cars, houses and villas are dropping significantly. You can get a rental car with 30% discount compared to just a week ago. I am sure it will be 75% off in 2-3 weeks when I need to renew mine 😉
I expect this is going to be a quiet few weeks here. Hopefully, it will blow over soon, and in the meanwhile local bureaucrats will avoid doing something counterproductive and outright senseless. I will keep this post going, so come back soon for the updates…
UPDATED: Apr, 10 2020
The island goes on lock down: starting Monday, April 13th all non-essential traffic between the sub districts will cease for two weeks. It isn’t shelter-in-place like in California, however everything but groceries and pharmacies being already closed (including beaches, most unfortunate), and the curfew is established from 2000 until 0300. One can take walks (mornings and late afternoon as midday is very hot with over 34C). Or to drive around (be careful, as local dogs love to in a middle of a road) whatever sub-district you’re stuck in. And that’s about it. Except for yesterdays’ -4cm low tide, where about 200m of the shore were exposed making this black dog quite happy 😉
UPDATED: June, 20 2020
Lock-down is lifted, the beaches are open as of last week, even the airport is open for domestic flights. Restaurants are open as well as most other places like shopping malls (I am not sure why the hell anyone needs to go into a shopping mall?). It is of little help as the island has been abandoned by Caucasian tourists (called farangs in local dialect) and Chinese are shitting bricks as they are facing the consequences of their initial cowardliness or stupidity or compliance with Communist Party guidelines, which is all the same in terms of consequences – over 8 million people are sick worldwide, economies are shuttered, people can’t get to their families. But CCP is trying to play like they are on a high horse. Well, full me once… At any rate, most of the town used to be crawling with tourist are empty and look like a post-apocalypse setting…
All in all, I should say that Thailand (and Vietnam as I’ve heard) fared real well in terms of getting through the epidemic – kudos to early terminations of the international flights and sunny climate. I am not sure what was the real effect of alcohol bans, districts lock-downs and beaches closure… Most likely, just a safety theater. But I am glad I stayed here and not in New York, Milan or Moscow.
And by the way, locals are truly amazing when it gets to their pets or just stray cats and dogs living around… I will be missing these sights when finally I board a plane back home!
On Economy-n-Stuff 