Archive for April 2022
Elon Musk’s Twitter Purchase
In a few words, the whole thing is a whole host of clown-car laughable absurdity.
It's obviously attention grabbing. It's not every day a private individual buys something for 44 Billion Dollars...
...and that's in addition to the 10 Billion stake he'd already invested to stir the shit waters.
The phrase now that's real money has been diluted.
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At 61, I Finally Get Into Razor Shaving Thanks To Thai Ladies
I've had a love-hate with shaving my face since the peach fuzz days of old. All men have had the experience. It's a right of passage, the first shave. For the older amongst us, it was certainly a razor with canned foam, or classic shaving soap lather with a brush. Perhaps the youth are initiated with electric razors now. I always hated them. I've owned a few, but only for lazy expediency.
I loved the shaving-soap method, even collecting various soap products, mugs and wooden receptacles, and brushes.
Many years have passed and over the last 30 or so, I just got away from the habit, so I typically wore all variants of not shaving very often but not going full-on beard with all the trimming and upkeep required.
...Then I moved to Thailand.
In a curious and delightful way, millions of young and even older Thai women have taken a liking to farangs (pronounced 'falang') over the decades. These are western foreigners: white western enlightened men. While there are always the outliers, the vast majority of Thai chicks want you short haired and clean shaven. You see the occasional grizzly bear or hard rocker with a young sweetie, but mostly it's The Formula:
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I Read A Prescient Interview of Hamish McKenzie, Co-Founder of Substack
It was the second piece I'd read this morning from Matt Welch, a sort of hyper-religious guy who often puts me off because of it—the couching in so much personal moralism. On the other hand, he often has great arguments and insights (that do not require his religious beliefs).
The shit Hamish says in response to the questions Matt asked really resonated with me completely. I was a long time debater on the Internets going back to 1992 with Compuserve, Prodigy, and America Online accounts. In about 1994 I graduated to USENET, the real Wild West that will likely never be seen again. Fun fact: USENET was run pretty much entirely on the network of university computer department servers worldwide. Access to archives is spotty, but if you could see them, it would make all the woke universities today go apoplectic.
IT HAD EVERYTHING...including illegal activities and porn. But, it was damn well self-organized, so it was easy to stay on topic. You never had any of that stuff in your face. You had to seek it out.
In about 1998 I dropped most online social-debate activity to focus on business. That would persist for about 5 years until one day in 2003, I got wind of this blogging thing. It appealed to me. Within hours, I had my first blog and first post, November 2, 2003.
Well, It’s a start. For several years I have wanted to create a website to serve as the primary outlet for my ideas and commentary. So this is it, a weblog.
Will anything really become of it? Don’t know.
I’m not setting any goals or making any promises. I’d like to think I will spend some constructive time at this, but I guess we’ll see. I may also archive some of the other stuff I’ve written over the years.
Purpose. Well, it’s my outlet, and as such, I don’t think I’ll be opening up any of my posts to comments. I will be frank, as always. I’ll probably use some “naughty words” here and there, too. Good thing I have no plans on running for political office.
That’s good in another respect too. One of the things this blog will serve is a way to compile and organize my unconventional philosophic, religious, and political ideas.
Now, it’s time to go forth and look around for something to get all worked up about…
I put up 12 posts that month and sitting here today, early 2022, 19 years later, it's about 5,000 posts total. I'm satisfied with that.
In those early days, it was just a move from those other online outlets into reading various bloggers. Their takes. There was no means of really monetizing it for the 99% but it was quite a different thing. Mine got momentum in late December, 2009, when I published this post on foregoing soap and shampoo—water only showers. It got picked up by a couple of buzz sites and took down my ISPs servers on New Year's eve. My normal traffic increased 100s of times-fold in a single day. Some of those readers are still with me today, 12 years later.
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Are We Post-Covid Yet and How Do We Never Return?
Depending where you live, many have been seemingly in post-covid for a while. Some places were virtually never-covid.
But the love-every-minute-of-covid people and places were dealt a resounding blow this last week, right in their stupid, diapered faces.
Fuck you and your masks.
By now, everyone has probably seen many of the videos of folks on airplanes in mid-flight gleefully tossing masks. My favorite:
When I saw it the first time, I thought: had to have grown up in a black baptist church with a choir and great music emphasis (try to name one that doesn't). Anyway, nice little bit of joy for once. To check out the utterly hilarious, check these posts by Michael Senger.
- The Mask Cult Melts Down (GOLD Hilarious)
- The Campaign for Permanent Masking (Jesus Wept)
What's so encouraging about it is the unmistakable happiness and relief on display by everyone—not unlike someone being released after a long false and unjust imprisonment while being completely innocent. I dare anyone on the planet to come up with a better analogy than that. It's plain abhorrent that any government or "authority" can force anyone to muzzle up, restrict their natural breathing, and create a substrate for expelled bacteria growth and reinhalation. It's torture, especially when imposed long term; and it has been imposed long term, even to children. It's fucking torture plain and simple and rightly, millions should be in jail for a long time for perpetuating it—especially the enforcers on the ground like police, school teachers...and flight attendants.
It should never be forgotten. For the most part, nearly everyone in all governments around the world are despots. To even presume that level of totalitarian authority is the very definition of despot. That goes for lockdowns and closings too.
...And it certainly goes for that stupid experimental injection so many have been utterly coerced into taking at the risk of losing everything.
It should be very telling what the socio-political tone is, given that:
- Uncharacteristically, the ruling judge did not stay her order vacating the mandate, giving time for an appeal as is common, but made it immediate
- Airlines wasted zero time in foregoing keeping their own mandates in place, getting the word out to thousands of aircraft actually enroute so flight crews could get the word out to their customers
- The TSA quickly signalled that it would not be enforcing it in airports
- The White [clown] House said it would not appeal, then said it might, then suggested it wouldn't, again—or something like that—and now is appealing
- BUT, in doing so, it is not asking for a stay of the ruling judge's order but is appealing in order to affirm the CDC's authority and preserve its right to mandate them in the future
The political climate surrounding this—on display on those in-flight scenes—is like the shot heard 'round the world. It's unmistakable to any political weeny. This is a turd they cannot polish, even to a CNN junkie. What was seen was not only sighs of release and relief. No, those were masking a whole lot of underlying rage at the whole two years of utter global insanity suborning state cruelty and despotism. Tens of millions are still suffering many damages that will take years to recover from if at all. Billions suffering if you include the rest of the world.
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Thailand Mix: Motorcycle Ride, Boat Ride, Young Girls, Bar, Beach, and Young Girls
I'm writing a substantial post about my enormous problem and what steps I took to fix it over the last month or so. I ended up fixing it so damn good that I haven't felt so well in 10 years. Details to follow soon.
After tapping out over 2,000 words yesterday, early afternoon, a bit inebriated, I said 'Richard, get the fuck up off your ass and go do something!'
...So I grabbed the GoPro, sorted the mounting on the motorbike, and headed out. Turned out to be quite a day and evening, but all footage was preserved.
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Easter Holiday Swipes
It's good that in my sphere of detection, lots of people are taking it a bit easy this weekend. I doubt that it's so much jubilation over a resurrection from the dead to save all of humanity 2,022 years ago. ...Seems like a lot of people might be getting weary of narratives designed to influence and control them, not making particular distinctions.
Leave it to the left to push that way too far. The more conservatively inclined have skillfully used fantasy narratives to reign in unbridled proclivities for centuries and it works decently and contributed to quite a building of a rather amazing human civilization out of dirt. That's why I'm not an enemy of religion anymore (a slightly bitter pill, I admit), am often an ally, but I can't fucking stand the left. And I mean: none of it.
So that's my position. Let's swipe through some stuff, for the 1,000 Free Members here. The unwashed can get cleansed and resurrected with a free membership and the already free members are cordially invited purchase the holy sacrament of paid membership. Here's what's in store this time:
- A personal take on Russia vis-a-vis the just-like-Covid narrative that's for everyone
- But the United States can't seem to let it go
- Is there any point in denying effective treatment for Covid, anymore?
- Stop with the good vs. evil crapola; It exposes your deep bias and lazy thinking
- When Walgreens does better data than any government on earth
- What happened to my US Navy?
It's totally unbecoming for an Easter post, but happy [belated] Easter holiday anyway.
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HOW the WHO is Funnier than SNL, when Saturday Night Live was Good: Polishing Turds
Indeed, grasshopper.
Stand by for a bit of history, perspective, integration, and dot-connecting devoid of wingnut conspiracy stuff. Serious and sober; but funny if you catch the drift. Reserved for my besties.
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Sà-wàt-dee bpee mài (Happy Songkran) — Thai New Year 2565
Previous posts:
April 13-15 marks the new year for Thai people. Never having been colonized, they use their own calendar—over 500 years older than our Jesus-based calendar. Theirs is Buddha based. They do, however, conform to Western standards of January 1 as the official start of every new year. It's also observed in Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, parts of northeast India, parts of Vietnam, and Xishuangbanna, China (which borders Laos and Myanmar). Here's a bit of a brief on it.
You just have to contend with the 543-year difference because every document, including bills, uses that calendar.
Songkran is a water festival. There are the formal ways of doing that (see the video down below from our own homegrown ceremony last year) and then the informal ways...where like yesterday evening when I headed out to do the rounds, I was sprayed and doused with water all along the 5 kilometers.
Short intro this time, but the rest is free, you just have to grab the free level of membership.
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2,400 Employees Is A Lot When There’s Nothing To Worry About
There's a true story out there, likely never reported on even Fox—just as bad—News, that certain entities had sought to obtain all the documents from Pfizer for their SAFE AND EFFECTIVE!!! mRNA jab that got authorized for "emergency use" way back in December of 2020. We're nearly a year and a half into that "emergency."
It's a fuck-ton of pages, like 400,000. In opposing the request for the documents, FDA wanted to distribute them in batches of 500 pages per month, a schedule that would take decades. I can't recall. It was like 50-70 YEARS!!! before the documents attesting to an ongoing EMERGENCY use would be made available. The FDA took 108 days to thoroughly review every single page of the 400,000 to ensure they're TOTALLY SAFE AND EFFECTIVE!!! I'm absolutely sure.
(Yes, this is your world, now, voters.)
The judge called fucking bullshit. Duh.
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The Best Way To Look On The Bright Side For Prosperity and Happiness
- The introduction
- Printing presses, mimeographs, and owners
- People who DRS — who Don't Read Shit
- The annual flu shot LOL fraud decades in the running
- ...So nothing is new
- My point about the bright side
- Cake icing conclusion
There's no serious dispute that global life in general has been a disappointment for over a couple of years. Liars abound who assert it hasn't affected them, or they did even better...as though the only time they're really well off is when everyone else is shackled. Good for them, right?
And what's the message, there? Your life was totally wrecked while, 'I got better and prospered, what's wrong with you?'
'Uh, lost my job, wife did too but flipped burgers for takeout while I watched the two babies and tried to find something on the internet. Then we defaulted on the mortgage and one of our cars got repossessed. But props, man...'
Even though the last two years have cost me over $200,000 so far, the far deeper cost has been to my general psychology. No, I'm not really talking about the fact that for 20 years I did the Go-USA domestic thing and settled down; then in late age-50s, got out of that gig, set off in early 2020 to nomad the world, and then Covid—totally dashing every aspiration down to electron microscope levels.
Crazy strike of bad luck for me but as we say here in Rawai, "We live in Rawai!" Thailand may not be the best place in the world to endure, but all in all, it was tolerable and generally, I could still get anything I wanted 24/7—just with a bit more effort and enginuity, at times. And even though most cuties are masked, most aren't fat, either...
I managed to make the best of that and still am. ...Just had a 20-minute fun and funny vid-chat with my girl. Her and her sister (double and triple jabbed) are holed up in a room in Surin, about 5th day of Covid. Bad cold symptoms, so far as I've seen. Can't get a cold anymore. National and international news, now. It's recorded in a data center. Very bad. Just so.
But what of everything else?
I recall as though it was yesterday, 1989. I was a 28-year old Navy officer who'd just returned from living in Japan for five years where during that time, I rented beach houses and travelled all over Asia. Korea, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, et al. As a young man, my chief pursuit when off the job was Asian women.
Hundreds.
So it's no surprise that when I returned to Thailand as a single man once again at the age of 59, Asian women were a substantial part of that calculation. It's the one large area of the world where women see men far differently than most anywhere else I can think of. It's just so, and we like it.
A 20-year old girl in this culture thinks nothing of bedding down with a 60-year old, if he can manage to make her a bit curious or horny.
To know how to do that is easy. You simply have to understand that they have zero Jesus baggage and act accordingly. They have deep cultural and familial norms and traditions. Just, zero Jesus—don't know him from Adam. Makes a profound difference.
...OK, at 555 words, that's it for the intro. The numbers are 8,000 newsletter subscribers, 1,000 free members, and 200 paid members.
The remainder of the post is for the 200. It's the next in the Prosper Anyway series.
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Ukraine’s Zelenskyy TL;DR: We Surrender
As cable-news Generals endlessly pontificate about how fucked Russia COULD BE!!! they get undercut by a horse's mouth because they're stupid, have zero integrity, are in the pay, and are politically oriented first and foremost.
Laughably, the "commander-in-chief" (see short vid at the end) is gonna roll out TOUGH NEW SANCTIONS!!! that are GONNA HIT REALLY HARD!!! He's probably about three nap-and-sleep cycles behind.
If you ever watched a single "news" source that's not mainstream, then you likely have never heard of the Minsk I and II accords, how Russia fully complied and Ukraine ignored, refused, and continued to devastate the Donbass, etc. You wouldn't know that because of those Ukraine actions that Russia recognized the independence of two regions and signed a defense accord (treaty) and fulfilled that bargain under continued Ukrainian assault days before Russia's operations began.
Nor would you have heard anything about what Putin's and Russia's goals were in order to get out of this.
Nope, an ignorant-of-everything narrative was created and just like Covid, was disseminated and taken up worldwide, detractors are Nazis (while Ukraine's biggest-in-the-world Nazi problem was part of the problem...but crickets...), and all of Russia's tactical and strategic diversions (like taking Kyiv with a 40KM truck convoy and 40K troops, LOL...even fucking cable-news Generals fell for that) were square-pegged into the prevailing narrative as TROUBLE FOR RUSSIA!!!
Fucking fools everywhere. Nobody thinks for themselves, anymore. Not even cable-news Generals.
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The Story Of My Financial Collapse
That's an email I received early morning my time today, from Mark.
Self explanatory.
It was in reply to the final thing. This is where I have completed all arrangements on my end and forward the necessary documents. He asked if that was it, I replied.
Grand Solmar Land's End Resort & Spa is a very special place. Go ahead. Click the link and be fucking amazed. I own a piece of that. I have a modest page here on the blog specific to my listings.
...Beatrice, my wife in 2012, thought we ought to go to Baja for a week on New Years, 2013. She arranged a 2-night stay in another timeshare we owned, Worldmark, Cabo San Lucas, and then a stay in La Paz in a private villa thing her sister had been to, and recommended.
The serendipitous thing is that the flight from Tijuana to Cabo (yea, we walked across the border and flew domestic), was a late-night arrival and we got suckered into a free ride, so long as we would attend a presentation the next morning—but along with the promise of an excellent, sea-front buffet breakfast. We were tired and I was in a whatever mode.
I always do what I say I'll do—the most essential man-standard there is and the biggest difference in genders—so was out there at 7am and the transportation was on time. The setting for the breakfast was fucking impressively unbelievable. I've done this sort of thing before. This was the difference between staying in a Motel 6 and The Four Seasons (did that latter once too, Las Vegas, met George Foreman, and yes, his intoxicating smile is genuine).
Scott was there to greet and welcome us and this guy is a fucking great salesman. A friend to this day. He led us, but let the greatness of the property speak for itself. So.
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Can’t Believe How Much I Love This. People In Shanghai Literally Starving
You can click to read the whole thread.
Ha, you're New World Order is beginning to look like really old-world orders we've all seen in movies.
Perhaps a good question to ask is how much you want your non-Chinese governments and companies to hob-nob or worse, support the ants, bees, and borg of China and its culture or any fucking thing about it beyond their tasty Westernized food.
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The Comprehensive And Real Story You’ve Never Heard About Russia and Ukraine
In my last post about our dismal state of affairs, I got a comment shooting out a link, and I read it this morning. Here's a money quote.
As a former head of the Warsaw Pact forces in the Swiss strategic intelligence service, I observe with sadness—but not astonishment—that our services are no longer able to understand the military situation in Ukraine. The self-proclaimed “experts” who parade on our screens tirelessly relay the same information modulated by the claim that Russia—and Vladimir Putin—is irrational. Let’s take a step back.
OK, but who the fuck is he and who should care? Easy.
Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist on Eastern countries. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in the Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight, at NATO, against the proliferation of small arms. He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist the Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les fake news, L’affaire Navalny. His latest book is Poutine, maître du jeu?
Oh, my. Almost sounds a little more expert than the retired colonels and generals supplementing their retirement pay through "expert" bla bla and yak yak appearances on Fox, CNN, and MSNBC. Incidentally, as a former US Navy officer I can't get through a single guest appearance by any of them ever. I know high-ranking military officer bullshit-speak when I hear it. I only ever knew one single flag-officer in 8 years I didn't think was mostly a liar and mostly full of bullshit most of the time. They're politicians. That's how they get there when it's not no-shit war.
Well, might as well mention the one dude who was straight-up mensch. Henry H. Mauz.
Henry Herrward Mauz Jr. (born May 4, 1936) is a retired United States Navy admiral and the former Commander in Chief, United States Atlantic Fleet from 1992 to 1994.
After graduating from the United States Naval Academy in 1959, Mauz went on to serve in Vietnam, operating river patrol boats along the Mekong Delta. He went on to command a minesweeper, USS Prime (MSO-466), the guided missile destroyer USS Semmes (DDG-18), and the guided missile cruiser USS England (CG-22) (1980–1982).
Mauz served as commander of the United States Seventh Fleet from 1988 to 1990, and in August 1990 assumed command of all United States Naval forces in the Persian Gulf.
Mauz retired from active duty in 1994 as Commander-in-Chief, United States Atlantic Fleet. A 1965 graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School, he was President of the Naval Postgraduate School Foundation, and currently serves on its board. Mauz's education includes the Naval Academy, Naval War College, a graduate degree in electrical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a Master of Business Administration from Auburn University.
Well, I know a lot of flag-officer resumes read similarly but personally, Mauz was different. Perhaps it was because he maybe could have been a pro golfer instead. He had a 3 handicap, and this is when I knew him in his 50s (US Seventh Fleet Staff).
People are so prone to authority figures. And it's pathetic and fucking stupid. Here's the real hierarchy:
- Solid record of being right and producing important results that are obvious and can be accounted for with math
- Job titles held
- Degrees held
And 3 and 4 are entirely superfluous because only #1 matters, and 2 and 3 are not prerequisites. Fuck off already about this. It's really fucking sad that we live in a world were #1 real results are only taken seriously if 2 and 3 are prominent. I know we all fall prey to its seduction.
...For another quick diversion before I get to the meat course, fucking Alex Berenson. A lefty, former NYT reporter, author of some books, etc. He's one of the few lefties with credentials that went after the Covid scam. He wrote a book, Pandemia: How Coronavirus Hysteria Took Over Our Government, Rights, and Lives, published last November and has been a top seller in spite of zero media attention or marketing from his publisher. I haven't read it, but I know a couple who have and who give it high marks. Here's a review by a German academic. In short, Berenson's stuff on Covid has been narrative smashing and that's what's important.
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Our Dismal State of Affairs
Woke up this morning feeling the best I have in three weeks. This appears to be finally over completely. A follow-up post on that in a few days...to explain how I finally figured out an ending to it on my own, with help from a friend.
I sensed the end was coming when after three weeks of flogging myself just to write a blog post—or do much of anything—I wrote yesterday's NFTs Are Dumb post with gusto, enthusiasm, and energy for three straight hours. I published it, scheduled the email to 8,000 for 7pm my time, 6am east coast. Then I hit the beach, did my rounds of chatting with expats and 20-something Thai chicks, got home 6 hours later at midnight, then had a decent sleep.
I'm back.
I'm making my digital rounds this morning and I have to tell you that Jeff Childers' Coffee & Covid has become my top read. Not only does he have good filters of what to write about and not write about, he does so in a style I like...love, actually. I do similarly from time to time and in fact, his style has inspired me a bit, at times, to be less confrontational and more ironic. Or whatever. I guess. So.
His Saturday issue (Sunday morning my time) was a kick for me, especially in my re-found zest for life. This was one of the sections.
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NFTs Are Dumb: Here’s Why
As many readers know, I did a deep dive into cryptocurrency a few years back and in fact, had purchased an initial Bitcoin long before that, in 2011, so 11 years now. And I'm still as confident in at least Bitcoin and Etherium as ever and hold some of each.
I think there's good reasons for doing so and I treat it the same as I would holding gold in a vault.
When I first heard about NFTs (non fungible tokens) perhaps about a year ago, I began a dive into them. I was seeing some smart people go all in on promoting them. More on why I think that is, later.
So let's get meaning in place. First, what is fungibility?
Fungibility is the ability of a good or asset to be interchanged with other individual goods or assets of the same type. Fungible assets simplify the exchange and trade processes, as fungibility implies equal value between the assets.
So, fungible: money per denomination, gold by weight, bitcoin by ledger entry. Each denomination of those is equally interchangeable. A dollar is a dollar, whether hot off the presses, or old and wrinkled.
Non fungible: houses, cars, boats, airplanes, tulip bulbs. None of those are equally interchangeable, because they are not identical. Even the same make and model of car, same year, is different and each minute of use makes their similarity diverge.
And so now you see the reason for the header image. NFT should really denote Non-Fungible Tulip, not Token.
"Token" is merely a slight of hand whereby a unique cryptographic unit (token) tied to some digital creation is written onto a blockchain, making it permanent. Unlike a ledger entry, like bitcoin—fungible—the typical reason for a token is to have something unique—like a tulip bulb or a snowflake.
That's where things end and NFTs become even more ridiculous than Tulip Mania. So let's move on...
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