Tag Archives: culture

Decline and Fall of Holiday Shopping – from TPC

04 Wednesday Dec 2019

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Your New 86” TeeVee Is Spying On You

Right now, while you’re reading this. Probably putting you on some list or another. I wouldn’t trust that Elf on the Shelf either.

Happy December, Friends of the Georgia Piedmont! Yeah, we have entered the final month of 2019. I hope you’re as thrilled and shocked about it as I am. And, I was just kidding about the TV. Just because it has a camera and a microphone and a transceiver and you can’t turn any of them off and the FBI says it’s spying means nothing. Have another beer, a pill maybe.

The important thing is that you bought it. Isn’t that the true meaning and spirit of this consumerist, er this holiday season? Buying things?

Last week saw another great Black Friday, the day set aside for bloated, semi-conscious Americans to shuffle aimlessly through the malls and discount stores, munching on refried lard and dropping fiat on useless junk that they won’t remember buying just four months later. Well, at least they used to shuffle psychically in order to max out the cards. The Wall Street Journal and other outlets report that this year more and more folks can’t even get up off the couch. Friday set a record $7.something Billion in online “stuff” sales – and, that was ahead of Cyber Monday (color unknown). The brick and mortar traffic was still kicking along, only a little lower and slower than in years gone by. Click on the big site or walk into the big box. Same deal.

Again, the important thing is that money gets spent. That’s what it’s for. The Noo Yaak Fed ain’t flooding $100,000,000,000+ every single day(!) (forever?) into the perfectly healthy economy for nothing.

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READ AT TPC

Congratulations! You’re “Dating” a Nigerian Prince

10 Sunday Nov 2019

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I recently had the high honor of conversing with some teenaged American zombies. One of them boasted to his friends of a “girlfriend” he “met” through an App. He indicated the relationship was getting serious despite the 2,000 miles(!) between the pair. I casually mentioned the three very real girls seated nearby, the presence of which the boys seemed oblivious. Over the pecking of screens, I don’t think they heard me.

The sad news, if this isn’t all sad enough, is that the California dream girl on the App might not even be a real girl. Or even human.

Steve Dean, an online dating consultant, says the person you just matched with on a dating app or site may not actually be a real person. “You go on Tinder, you swipe on someone you thought was cute, and they say, ‘Hey sexy, it’s great to see you.’ You’re like, ‘OK, that’s a little bold, but OK.’ Then they say, ‘Would you like to chat off? Here’s my phone number. You can call me here.’ … Then in a lot of cases those phone numbers that they’ll send could be a link to a scamming site, they could be a link to a live cam site.”

Malicious bots on social media platforms aren’t a new problem. According to the security firm Imperva, in 2016, 28.9% of all web traffic could be attributed to “bad bots” — automated programs with capabilities ranging from spamming to data scraping to cybersecurity attacks.

As dating apps become more popular with humans, bots are homing in on these platforms too. It’s especially insidious given that people join dating apps seeking to make personal, intimate connections.

Please note that these bots are not the kind that looks like Scarlett Johansson. It’s just code in a phone some bum uses to con you out of a dollar. Ignoring real girls + Tinder bots = extinction-level event?

Pop Culture Stuff – from TPC

15 Tuesday Oct 2019

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Perrin Lovett: Five Things UGA Could Do To Ensure Future Football Supremacy – And other entertainment news…

From the Sports and Entertainment Desk:
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Yeah. So, About Saturday…
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Like David Carradine, the Dawgs love a good choke. It just usually comes along a little later and to a better team. Due to certain circumstances, the annual meeting of the Georgia Faithful Next Year Club has been moved up to the Thursday after next – I believe – check on that. Anyway, I have been asked to deliver the keynote speech. Herein, please review my list of talking points – humble suggestions which, if implemented, might actually make one of these years “next year.” To keep this moving along, I only elaborate on number four.
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Note: All five of the following points are related. I list them in order, from “difficult” to “damned-near impossible.” The final two are almost outside the scope of reality. Still, just making two or three easier changes would do wonders. Also, note that these suggestions are aimed at winning – National Championship wins. Due to the nature of the problem addressed in number five, I expect that many of you will have trouble understanding. Listen carefully, without interrupting, to whoever is reading this to you.

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One. IQs Up, Weights Down (Difficult). More Wonderlic, less knee brace. Speed and smarts will help your new,

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Two. Field General QB (slightly more difficult). To complete medium-range shots, while READING THE FIELD, even under pressure. He’s out there. Ask the,

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Three. Win-At-All-Costs Crazy Coach (plain hard). He might be lurking in D1, D2, or the NFL – the contrarian OC who is audible on TV screaming about “going for it, already!” Working with,

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Four. Your own “Ernie Adams” (possibly impossible).

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Now, we get improbable. There may, in all the world, only be the one Ernie Adams. If not, then try to find his doppelganger. (You ain’t getting the original for any money). Ernie spends all his time plotting and plugging statistics into an algebraic formula… Huh? Who is Ernie Adams? Adams is officially the New England Patriots’ Director of Football Research. Yeah… Nobody else has one. But, he’s the behind the scenes logistical and strategic genius responsible for the Pats’ unparalleled two-decade dynasty. He’s the brains of the Kraft-Adams-Belichick-Brady axis. The one-man football Manhattan Project.

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He’s five to ten years ahead of the curve, with the entire sport literally running through his algorithms. He studies all players, games, and stats in the NFL, most colleges, and many high schools (and, many even lower). His is the master plan wherein everything is reduced to mathematical simplicity.

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How do you find one of your own? No idea, really. Do NOT look at other teams. Think about calculus professors, physicists, and /non-special/ financiers of the ELITE Wall Street variety (like Ernie). This one is tough. Almost as tough as…
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READ AT TPC…

Dysgenic Amerika

06 Friday Sep 2019

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Nothing to see here, comrades.

The shrinkage in the marriage market is but a symptom.

“Most American women hope to marry but current shortages of marriageable men–men with a stable job and a good income–make this increasingly difficult, especially in the current gig economy of unstable low-paying service jobs,” explains lead author Dr. Daniel T. Lichter of Cornell University, in a media release. “Marriage is still based on love, but it also is fundamentally an economic transaction. Many young men today have little to bring to the marriage bargain, especially as young women’s educational levels on average now exceed their male suitors.”

It’s like there’s a dire shortage of adults. Oh yeah, there is.

We are losing crucial emotional and mental capacities for self-reflection, for wandering thought, for the ability to tolerate boredom. And that is the very definition of being a child — all id, out of control, demanding and needy and dependent. It’s poisoned our politics and our personhood, the terrible irony is this: Only we can fix it.

Correction: only the long, slow passage of time or war will fix this. Neither of these articles mentioned anything beyond the symptoms of the decline. The authors are likely incapable of understanding the root causes. They will fix nothing. Indeed, the fix is in. Like a plan or something.

Happy Back to School Special

19 Monday Aug 2019

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More (recent) lessons on America’s schools (this example being one of the better ones):

After an interview and teaching a few “test” classes to first- and second-year students, I was hired.  Within a few days, however, it was clear that many students did not understand English grammar, much less Latin fundamentals.  In response, I taught remedial grammar and outlined how students could pass my course with a “C” or “D.”  There were some excellent students, but test scores were not distributed in a bell-shaped curve.  It was an “inverted” bell, or bimodal distribution — with scores clumped at the two extremes.

Poor preparation was only the tip of the iceberg.  Students did not bring books to class, relentlessly complained about homework, and expected high grades regardless of proficiency.  When I asked questions, I uncovered some alarming facts:

  • Latin was a dumping ground for students who already had failed another language; “picking up a few phrases” was the goal.
  • Many teachers expected little but awarded high grades.
  • Students were subjected to parental pressure to obtain good grades regardless of performance.
  • A department head had been demoted for teaching at a pre-college level and refusing to lower his standards.
  • Senior teachers were dropping out in disgust; younger teachers had no choice but to accept the situation.
  • Under parental pressure, the principal was establishing a process to prevent students from having to take more than one test on the same day.  College prep?

Tom Ironsides and I can vouch for this collapse. We will. Soon.

A Tattoo is a…

11 Sunday Aug 2019

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Artistic mental health warning label. Theodore Dalrymple sums up some of my views on the grotesque trend of “inking.”

This, perhaps, explains the outbreak of mass self-mutilation in the form of piercings and tattooing that has overtaken the West. In many countries, the proportion of the tattooed in the population has now risen to about a third. No doubt most of them, if asked, would say that they were expressing themselves, or telling the world who they really are. There could be no better—or in my opinion sadder—testimony to mass inner emptiness than this.

When I first noticed the ascent of tattooing up the social scale about twenty years ago—the type of people who were getting themselves tattooed who would once never have dreamed of doing so—I explained it as the advertisement of a supposedly virtuous political identification with the marginalized in society, to whom tattooing had until then largely been confined, no doubt combined with the eternal desire to shock Mum and Dad. But this theory, if it were ever true, can be true no longer. Self-mutilation is now a fashion, true enough, and perhaps one should not look too deeply for the vagaries of taste; but a fashion that marks you indelibly is more than a fashion for, say, a silly hat or a polo-neck sweater.

These days, Mum and Dad have probably beat the kids to the needle – Granny too. In a way I like it. A visible tattoo lets one know who and what one is dealing with. But, the sheer number says something about the decline of the people. A 2018 University of Miami study verified the obvious: tattoos are highly indicative of mental illness.

But, not yours… I’m sure yours is so very special. Go talk to yourself about that.

Dysgenic Slide Continues

25 Thursday Jul 2019

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Fertility rates decline in America. Fewer pregnancies go full-term. And, women keep postponing children (cause gurl can have it all!).

The general fertility rate in the United States continued to decline last year, according to a new report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

“The 2018 general fertility rate fell to another all-time low for the United States,” the researchers wrote in the report, published Wednesday.

The report found that the general fertility rate dropped 2% between 2017 and 2018 among girls and women age 15 to 44 nationwide.

They left out the incredible drop in sperm counts and testosterone. Let these trends continue another decade and cucks will be trying to marry their daughters to robots. Oh, wait.

It’s even possible that by not encouraging my daughter to be open to love AIs in the future, I might be shortchanging her, which is the last thing a parent would ever want to do.

Ultimately, I believe in loving my daughter, regardless how sophisticated technology becomes.

If she chooses as an adult to marry anyone or anything — so long as she has rationally and deeply thought all of it through — then I want to support her choices.

Even if in the future her spouse is not of human form.

Strange, but I get the idea that the poor girl might find a robot that’s a little manlier than the one who penned that insane drivel. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to run over an ATM or digital parking meter.

Greek to Taki

20 Saturday Jul 2019

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Good old Taki compares his Athens, the then to the now.

ATHENS—Standing right below the Acropolis, where pure democracy began because public officials were elected by lot, I try to imagine if random political selection today would be a good thing. The answer is a resounding yes. Both Socrates and Aristotle questioned fundamental norms and values, and if they lived today they would certainly question the acceptance by us of career politicians who have never had any other profession. (Corbyn, Biden, I could go on.) Socrates was skeptical about many things, especially the arts, because he believed they led us away from the truth. Yet so-called “artists” today influence public opinion as never before. Even numbskull rappers have a say and can alter public opinion, hence election by lot should be a must.

Old Socrates was obsessed with the truth, and politics is all about the propagation of falsehoods. Aristotle believed that many people are slaves by nature, and the proof lies in the blind obedience of those hatchet-faced people who scream abuse on TV to leftist dogma. (Aristotle would not get invited to chic parties were he around today; he opposed homosexuality, believed women to be biologically inferior, and despised rule by the many.) The ancient Greeks may have invented everything useful, but they did not invent socialism, the system that makes theft legal. They were too smart to fall for its Siren-like attraction because they knew it would eventually kill all initiative. Yet politicians nowadays demand more socialism, even after the examples of the Soviet Union, Cuba, and Venezuela. Go figure, as they never said in old Athens.

Who, really, knows better than a frightened and angry mob of illiterates? Damned near anyone, just ask the guys at the bowling league (if you can find them).

Whither Voltaire?

18 Thursday Jul 2019

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Certainly not the modern Post-American university. PCR explains:

When I was a student liberal professors found Voltaire to be an exemplar of the correct attitude toward free speech. Voltaire quotes were used everywhere in the halls of learning:

“Think for yourself and let others enjoy the privilege of doing so too.”

“I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to say it.”

“Cherish those who seek the truth but beware of those who find it.”

“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”

“It is clear that the individual who persecutes a man, his brother, because he is not of the same opinion, is a monster.”

Today Voltaire is never heard from. Dogma has shoved aside tolerance and taken control of American universities in which Political Correctness, an ideology or religion in which emotional-based beliefs of certain “preferred” groups with aristocratic or Vatican privileges, such as black activists, abortionists, and sexual deviants, cannot be “offended” by facts or by someone’s contrary opinion.

For any SJWs unfortunate enough to have found this page, Voltaire was America’s fourth president, a racist and slave owner. You know what to do.

Folktale Fiction for the Fallen Nation

06 Thursday Jun 2019

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Ann Coulter writes about the rejection of truth in the burning remains of the West.

New York City public school teachers recently revealed that they have been instructed to reject “objectivity,” “written documentation” and “perfectionism” by Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza, as part of his effort to “dismantle racism.” Carranza identified these values as tools of the “white-supremacy culture.”

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In our new country, nonsense like “objectivity” and “written documentation” are mere tricks, chicanery, hocus-pocus, used against “communities of color” — as Schools Chancellor Carranza explained — in order “to win victories for white people.”

And, here, the schools are behind the curve, as Coulter observes. But, we do need some new victories. Each Coulter column counts as one.