— Anything, not everything, but lots in-between | Pratamnak Hill, Jomtien-Pattaya, Thailand | March 26, 2023

Banking meltdowns; How Trump got pawned on the Covid response; For the love of Thai pork; Kitchen tip for leftovers storage; Member section (AI stuff)

Banking meltdowns

Are we at the stage where everything is half false, or is everything only half true?

"This is as good as it gets, folks," (said the pessimist).

So which are you? Probably, you're optimistic about some things, pessimistic about others. Same me.

Where hard cash is involved—and not just the ability to spout a line of absolute bullshit at no conceivable cost—I'm optimistic. For the latter, I'm pessimistic, but it doesn't really matter. The path through history is littered with the corpses of the smart and stupid alike, but the stupid lived in Pollyanna bliss (until they didn't). Largely, most of what people like to "think," is utter bullshit and most of the time, mere regurgitation, calculated to get head-nods—because everyone else is just as fucktarded, so someone blathering on with the same old slogans and bromides counts as confirmation. It's OK to be wrong, so long as everyone else is, too.

Misery. Plenty of company.

Modern discourse and critical thinking is that pathetic and banal. It's not a new phenomenon and no, it's not TV and the Internet "dumbing down" society. It was always dumb. There are simply increasing means and opportunities for self-exposure...and for the conscientious and smart and curious and inquisitive to expose it all, especially in iconoclastic fashion, for the pure pleasure of all the laughs to be had.

Mel Brooks spoke the oft-quoted line in a film way back, "it's good to be King," but that only applies...to Kings, and as despotic as they may be, there are but few of them. Society is a modern equivalent, where, regurgitating football-bat goofy shit gets a room full of glancing-around, head-nodding, and uh-huhs. ... One imagines someone bellowing out, "It's good to be Stupid!" getting the same response and reaction from the agreeable crowd.

It's all in the delivery.

It's an awful trait in humans...the tendency to put more weigh on the validity of something owing to the number or percentage of others who believe it, rather than the plain plausibility of it, in itself.

And it goes way back. How far? Well, at least this far...