On oil, the issue had an Autocar Truck advertisement advertising gas and electric trucks. . . the latter being something that locals now insist just can't happen.
Ostensibly exploring the practice of law before the internet. Heck, before good highways for that matter.
Friday, February 23, 2024
Saturday, February 23, 1924. Electric Trucks.
Wednesday, November 23, 2022
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist XL. Panem et circenses.
Yes, the "Big 4-0".
Roman numeral wise, that is.
Because we're not stoned enough already.
Headline from The Denver Post:
Gov. Polis tells Bill Maher he’s
“excited” about medical ‘shrooms after voters pass psilocybin legalization
And also:
Colorado voters decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms
Colorado becomes the second state after Oregon to establish a regulated system for substances like psilocybin and psilocin.
Because Americans aren't stupid enough already, and Denver isn't enough of a giant doped up smelly dump.
Seriously, the march of intoxicants in this society ought to be an alarm bell going off. Something is really screwed up and the only thing a lot of people, and governments, can think to do is to keep people stoned.
A walk thought Denver's capitol city should show anyone, including Governor Polis, how messed up Colorado is as an example of this. Truly, and I'm not a teetotaler, if there's one thing that could have been done to help keep the country from getting where it now is, that we could go back and do, not repealing prohibition would be it.
Panem et circenses?
It seems so.
Bias?
Colorado Springs shooting suspect Anderson Aldrich is a registered member of the Mormon church, spokesman confirms
So what?
I note this as this does seem to be the sort of headline that imports next to no useful information but which reporters, because of a bias, believe it does. It's impossible not to read this and think that the suggestion is that Anderson Aldrich shot up a gay club because he's a Mormon.
I'm rather obviously not a Mormon, but I'm confident that the LDS church does not advocate this sort of thing in any sense.
This is, I'd note, just a stone's throw from suggesting that all members of any conservative religion that generally holds conservative social views is a menace to society, a suggestion I've seen in news articles more than once.
Bias confirmation
Most folks here no doubt don't follow it, but there's a thing called "Catholic Twitter", which is made up of Catholics, on Twitter.
The main thing about Twitter is the gross exaggeration of any one topic until it's at the screaming level. Most of the people on Twitter don't take Twitter all that seriously to start with, and they shouldn't, and any one topic that's on it is not likely to be all that important or reflective of what is going on in the real world.
Anyhow, below is a part of a conservation that got rolling and rapidly morphed into "blind my eyes to the evidence". How it got started I'm not sure, as it involves the now actually relatively old story of Catholic cleric's abusing some sexually.
It's worth noting that this story is horrific in general. But at the same time it was a minority of clerics, and most of this story is now really old. To the extent that it remains a real present story it is is because the Church has a lot of older leaders, much like American society in general, who haven't done a good job of confronting this, in part because they seem to have ignored it and don't quite get the story.
Anyhow, one Priest noted.
Fr. Schneider is correct. Most of the abuse that occurred was male on male, and most of that was on post pubescent males who were legally minors.
Let's take a diversion here for a moment.
Just recently a French Cardinal publically confessed and condemned himself for what was translated as "an affair" with a 14-year-old female back many years ago when he was a priest, not a bishop.
That's horrific.
The headlines, however, rapidly went from "an affair" to "rape", or at least the Twitter ones did.
Here's the thing. Under the applicable French law, she was over the age of consent and could do just that. So the act was icky, gross, immoral, inexcusable, but not illegal. It wasn't rape as the law of that land, at the time, defined it.
FWIW, as that surprised me, I looked it up. The age of consent in France is now 15.
I always think of the age of consent being 18, but by and large in most of Europe, Ireland I think aside, the age of consent is lower than 18, with ages in the mid-teens not uncommon. I'm not going to post them all, but that's interesting in part because Europeans like to criticize the US for having legal pathways to "child marriage" while they have legal pathways to what we'd regard here as rape.
Anyhow, this is an example of following the evidence.
And the evidence generally is that most priest abusers were engaging in homosexual abuse, as legal line or not, "post pubescent" is a legal, not a physical, line.
Occam's Razor holds that the simplest answer is generally the best, because it's generally correct. The simplest explanation here is that most of the abusers were homosexuals.
Indeed, they pretty clearly were.
No, that doesn't make all homosexual men abusers, but if you put anyone in a situation in which they have no legitimate means for an outlet, problems arise. The real question, therefore, is how did enough homosexual men end up in the priesthood (and in Boy Scout leadership positions) for this to be statistically observable.
I've posted on it before, but my view is, on the priesthood, that this occurred as it gave homosexual Catholic men a place to professionally hide. That seems to be where the evidence leads. They weren't there because they were homosexuals per se, but because it gave them a socially acceptable excuse for not being married and, even more than that, not exhibiting any interest in women.
Well, of course, the Twitterverse couldn't accept that. The competing explanation, violating the principal of pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate, was that the abuse was male on male only males were around, and therefore they were the only targets of opportunity.
That explanation leaves a lot lacking. For one thing, males aren't the only humans around. The French example, which has become two examples, demonstrates that, and an example in our own diocese of many years ago demonstrates that as well.
And while all male environments do give rise to this, it's not quite in the same fashion. Those examples tend to be instances in which not only are only males around, but their virtually cloistered for long periods of time. Groups of straight conscripts, for example, don't start engaging in male on male sexual contact as there aren't women around. Indeed, studies have shown that in areas where there are only males for long periods of time, what tends to happen is that their testosterone levels plummet on their own, and they're simply less interested.
But because we must maintain this fiction socially now, we can't entertain the possibility that the abusers were homosexuals. We can't even really engage in the possibility that a small number of homosexuals are abusers.
The Zeitgeist.
What about the Boy Scouts?
I haven't researched it, but I'd guess that those abusers were attracted to those leadership roles specifically for the target of opportunity situation. So that situation was different yet. The difference, therefore, is that in the priest example I suspect homosexual men put themselves into that situation to avoid suspicion as to their inclinations, and then yielded in crossing a line which they should not have, and which in the US is illegal, but in the same country, at a time when pornification of child models was common, isn't surprising. In the Boy Scout example, that was probably a group of men who were abusers in the first instance, but with homosexual inclinations.
And no, that doesn't mean all homosexuals are abusers.
Less government?
The State gave out $6,600,000 in rent relief, funded by the Federal Government, last month.
This program has stopped now, but its interesting in that there's been so much howling in the state about Federal money. As other examples have shown, people can howl about the dangers of Federal money and take it at the same time.
Credit Cart Sales and Firearms
A recent headline read:
Guns bought through credit cards in the US will now be trackable
So what?
In the United States, you have a right to keep and bear arms. We all know this. But that really doesn't mean that private companies can't track it.
They're already tracking everything else.
If we really don't like this, what we ought to do is simply ban credit cars, which are inherently inflationary to start with.
Misplaced Complaints
A lot of people are complaining about Elon Musk buying Twitter and treating it like a toy.
Well, he's super rich and for him, it probably is a toy. He's probably loving seeing people complain as they dance to his tune. And that probably explains why he let Donald Trump and Marjorie Taylor Greene back on Twitters.
Just ignore it.
Twitter really doesn't matter. I noted this all the other day here:
Much ado about Twitter.
Elon Musk has bought Twitter and is busy making changes to it internally. This, in turn, has resulted in a lots of righteous anger about his behavior.
Here's the real question.
Who cares?
We have a Twitter Feed. You can see it on the bottom right-hand corner of this page. That doesn't stop the fact that Twitter is basically stupid.
A person can't say anything worth saying in as few of words as Twitter restricts you to. All Twitter really is for us is redirection to this blog. Does it work? Who knows. But as far as weighty conversation, not happening.
Indeed, the fact that people seem to think its weighty shows how dim the American intellect has become, as if there wasn't plenty of proof for that otherwise.
Now, I have some feeds that I follow I really like. Some do nothing other than what this one does, direct you to other things Some are basically photo feeds, much like Instagram.
But as far as news or anything worth reading, not going to happen.
Some people seem to think that Musk shouldn't be allowed to own Twitter or, if he does, he shouldn't be allowed to wreck it. Well, why not? He owns it. If you are uncomfortable with that, as many are, the real argument is that a person shouldn't be allowed to amass the size of fortune that Musk has. Musk was born into a wealthy South African family, and he's made more money, showing I suppose that being born to a wealthy family is a good way to get richer.
It also shows how screwed up American immigration laws are, as Musk apparently lives in Texas. Why was he allowed to immigrate here? No good reason at all, and in a society whose immigration laws made sense he'd be back in South Africa, or perhaps someplace in what's left of the British Commonwealth.
His personal life also shows how Western morality has declined. Musk has ten children by three women, the first six by his former wife Justine Musk, then two by Claire Elise Boucher, the Canadian singer who goes by the absurd stage name Grimes, and finally twins via Shivon Zilis. If nothing else, this proves that vast amounts of money will get the male holder of the same money and sex, but it's not admirable and that this sort of conduct is no longer the type that is regarded as scandalous, although it should be.
None of which is a reason to get all in a twitter about Twitter. If he wrecks it, well, he bought it.
Who cares?
A bigger topic regarding Must, really, is should a just society allow one person to have so much of the planet's resources.
Scary
Last Prior Edition:
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist XXXIX. Pretending
Thursday, July 7, 2022
Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist Part XXXV. Griner and Russian Law, Senseless Destruction, No. 10 Cat to get new Roommate, Russia threats on Alaska, Where's the followup?
Don't be stupid out there
Senseless Destruction.
Somebody blew up the Georgia Guidestones.
For those who are not familiar with them, there's a really good episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World about them, identifying the builder and why he did it. For a really brief synopsis, based on memory, a physician who lived in another state built them out of concern that things were going down the tubes and giving his own personal guidance and thoughts on how to avoid going down the tubes in the future.
Frankly, they were very 1970ish.
Why would somebody blow them up?
Apparently, some people believed they were evil, which is silly.
Regarding guidestones, with all the crap going on in the US right now, the builders thoughts probably wouldn't be altered if he were around right now.
Boris Johnson falls.
Americans tend to be so self focused on their own politics, which are distressingly weird right now, that they miss the politics of other nations. On top of it, the American press is phenomenally bad on reporting political events in other nations. Added to that, the press of the subject nations tends to be no better, so you are only left with the suggestion that he did something horrible, with nobody ever telling you what it was. An article in the Guardian, for example, calls him the worst leader the Tories every had, but won't say why.
Canadian changes of power, by the way, are completely that way. It's like the entire topic of the election is a big secret.
Anyhow, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resigned. He will briefly remain Prime Minister until his replacement is chosen.
Usually this happens following an election with the party in control loses. This, however, was due to an internal revolt in the Conservative Party.
Apparently a lot of this has to do with "Partygate", a scandal in which parties were held at No. 10 Downing Street (as if they were going to be able to keep that secret) which violated COVID restrictions in the UK.
I guess it says something in favor of the British that this would bring a Prime Minister down, whereas in the United States a sitting President would attempt to illegally retain power and nothing happen to him.
Russia threatens Alaska.
One of the Russian strategies to deal with its pathetic performance in Ukraine is to threaten everyone else. Now it is threatening the United States, stating it might fight us to take Alaska back.
Seriously?
Usually, bullies have to win to be credible.
And now. . . ?
I'm not going to bother to name names, but there is a politician in Congress who came on Twitter nearly daily to blame Biden for rising gasoline prices.
Now gas prices have fallen for eight days straight. So is he going on and giving credit?
Yeah. . . right.
Friday, June 3, 2022
The Mental Health Crisis. Okay. . . but why?
In the current debate, discussion, etc., or whatever it is on violence in the United States, we continually hear that the country has a "mental health crisis".
Nobody seems to doubt this, and indeed it seems true.
We hear a lot of other common things stated by Americans about the United States, including that it's the "greatest nation on Earth". But does a great nation have a massive mental health crisis.
What's going on?
Well, it should be apparent that the crisis is an existential one. If we have a massive crisis, it's because there's something massively wrong in the culture itself. Other nations have lots of firearms in circulation without having what we're experiencing, and that alone tells us something.
And we also know that, contrary to what we often hear, our society is getting less and less violent, but at the same time our mental health is getting worse. But mental health getting worse isn't a good thing by any measure.
And here's another fact of this crisis. From at least an external view, nobody whatsoever is going to do anything about this, really.
And here's why.
What is going on is that we've erased a set of standards that governed our society that were nearly wholly based on a Christian world view, on everything. In their place we've erected nothing at all, other than a concept that whatever pleases you, you should do, even though every indicator is that this in fact doesn't make for a happy society at all. Most recently we've even tried to erase biological lines written into our DNA, and simultaneously flooded our society with new intoxicants of all types, as the old ones apparently were sufficient. Lines that at one time, if they were crossed, resulted in some sort of institutional intervention, no longer do. Those in society crying for help aren't going to get it, as our new libertine society simply holds that their crying is simply an expression of their soul, rather than a desperate cry for help.
To add to it, we've wiped out meaningful and productive labor for an entire class of individual, which was often all that kept them tethered to something. For many more, we've erased the change that tehir employment and daily endeavors are their own, rather than some board of directors living far away who care little about them. And the dream of working on the land, the most elemental dream of all, is just about dead in the United States.
And, added to that, the erasing of the natural bonds of family in an aggressive way means that entire generations of children are essentially raised in conditions that no human being has been since some prior variant of our genus started to become really intelligent.
Mental health crisis?
Yes, indeed.
Are we going to do something about it?
Probably not more than doping up as many people as we can and sending many more to bogus therapy.
Monday, March 25, 2019
The inevitable cycle of substance
It can't be harmful. .. . I'm using it (even if a confirmation of that type means nothing).
It won't hurt me.
Science demonstrates it has risks.
Science demonstrates its really risky.
Society does nothing.
The lawsuits begin. . . .
Friday, March 22, 2019
Friday Farming. Wherein the New York Times shows itself to be economically thick.
Nor, realistically, can we expect aid to produce a political turnaround. Despite all that aid, in 2017 more than a quarter of East German men cast their ballots for the extreme-right, white nationalist Alternative for Germany.
I’m sure that some rural readers will be angered by everything I’ve just said, seeing it as typical big-city condescension. But that’s neither my intention nor the point. I’m simply trying to get real. We can’t help rural America without understanding that the role it used to play in our nation is being undermined by powerful economic forces that nobody knows how to stop.