Folks, I’m tired. I’m cranky. I’m operating off very little sleep and I’ve overbooked myself on work yet again. You’d think I’d learn. Or take a break. Sigh…
But a thread on Twitter caught my attention yesterday, and I couldn’t let it pass without some commentary. And that, in turn, opened up a whole new level of offensive wrongthink. Underneath it is, in this blogger’s opinion, one of the most important issues of our time.
prog: Elon Musk shouldn’t invest $10,000 starting paypal; he could help 1 person instead
prog: Elon Musk shouldn’t invest $10M from paypal into Tesla; he could help 1,000 people instead
prog: Elon Musk shouldn’t invest $100M from Tesla into SpaceX; he could help 100,000 people pic.twitter.com/eaZzZF3c1g
— Lucifer’s Handplane (@ClarkHat) February 7, 2018
A progressive woman laments how Elon Musk is, in her view, wasting his money launching automobiles into space. Instead, she tells us, he should spend his billions on Flint, a Democrat-run shithole (thanks, Mr. President, I’m using that term a lot more from now on) that can’t even deliver clean water to its residents.
As tired as my newborn has made me in recent days, this is worse. Progressive arguments like this are legion. Instead of using your money for anything else, you should dedicate it all to notions of wealth distribution. Forget your personal desires, your dreams, your aspirations for the very future of mankind itself… instead give everything to politicians.
Dear readers, enough is enough. I’m usually at least somewhat polite on this blog, so take it to heart when I say this. Grasp my full meaning: fuck them all. Toss them out of helicopters, or into woodchippers, or just air drop them into Somalia. I don’t even care anymore. But this is the last straw, folks.
Their short-sighted, Dunning-Kruger infused, elementary school worldview is beyond evil and into a realm of nonsensical mental masturbation. It’s a Lovecraftian horror, except it is inverted. Instead of greater beings beyond our comprehension filling us with horror because of our relative smallness, we have lesser beings whose sheer stupidity and ignorance of all sense is such that to even try to empathize with them causes headaches of massive proportions. To even comprehend such idiocy is horror-inducing.
Not that any of this is new. Back during the days of the Apollo Program, there were plenty of people lamenting that the money that sent a man to the moon would be better spent putting an end to poverty. The more things change, the more they stay the same, I guess.
Another cretinous fool on Twitter explained that Carl Sagan told us not to perform such crazy marketing stunts in space. This esteemed idiot supplied the following quotation:
So, what? Only Communists should go to space? Earth is for everybody, but space is for Communists! No Capitalists allowed. I know a lot of folks revere Carl Sagan, but this certainly ranks high on dumb quotes by this guy.
I started noticing a pattern. Most of the detractors of Elon Musk’s little stunt were women. Most of those singing his praises were men. That reinforces an old, but correct notion that women trend more Progressive than men. Look, I know a lot of smart women (Sarah Hoyt comes to mind right away), but at the same time there is something very, very wrong here.
Why are so many women fixated on first-order problems, without any conception of second-order effects? I mean, imagine if the folks at early Intel who pioneered CPU design, had instead donated all of their money to some politically-correct victim class and bowed out? What would benefit poor people more, a few thousand dollars worth of bread, or technological progress that eventually put the entire sum of human knowledge at their fingertips within seconds?
Our intrepid Progressive women cannot imagine the future benefits to everyone, the poor included, of opening up space to mankind. The entire future of our species, the whole universe there waiting for us, and this chick is fixated on Flint’s water supply? It’s maddening! It gives me a headache. It’s exhausting even trying to understand how a human brain could possibly operate that way.
But I see a lot of modern women who have this kind of thought process. Take a look at this feminist whopper:
Her complete inability to understand anything past her own immediate worldview is simply staggering to contemplate. This is extreme solipsism. Does she not understand what men say to each other on a regular basis? My daily conversations with my male friends would send your average feminist woman into conniption fits. They might give her seizures. She claims to want to be treated just like a man, but no woman actually wants this.
So hey, Thales, how is this related to Elon Musk launching a car into space? I’m getting to that.
I started thinking this morning that perhaps we aren’t dealing with an inability to see beyond first-order effects so much as an inability to virtue-signal them rhetorically. It’s rhetorically easy to point to a crazy publicity stunt and call it stupid. It’s rhetorically difficult to demonstrate the larger utility of the affair, the technological milestones SpaceX achieved in the process. It’s rhetorically easy to give a man a fish and say “look at me, I’m a good person for giving this man a fish!” It’s rhetorically difficult to demonstrate how your long-term plan to teach the man to fish will benefit mankind.
Virtue-signalling is subject to the rule of laziness. If there are two ways you can virtue-signal your moral superiority, Progressives will invariably pick the easiest one. Here’s your fish, come back tomorrow for another. Of what possible use is a microchip to a poor person? No cars in space. And why land a man on the moon? What a waste, am I right?
In other words, it’s easy to drop a first-order effect into a rhetorical conversation and ignore all other effects of that decision, as if everything was in isolation. Nothing in the universe works that way.
And for some reason, women appear more vulnerable to this tactic than men. The irony of the no billboards in space comment? It’s usually women who are more consumerist than men. Marketing? Commercials? All targeted toward women. That’s why almost every man is a dofus in TV commercials, and every woman is a wise, sage-like being of feminine supremacy. Who spends all the money? The answer to that is obvious enough. And yet, women trend anti-Capitalist? It makes no sense, until you start looking at everything from a first-order effect perspective. She wants X, and so she buys X without any thought to the greater ramifications… unless, of course, political correctness rears its ugly head, hijacks her mind, and pushes its claptrap. Then it’s save the whales, don’t buy fur, and no automobiles in space. Those, too, are considered without thought for greater ramifications.
Don’t ask me if this is innate to female biology, or just a product of a century or so of Radical Feminist thinking and conditioning, or some combination thereof. I don’t know, and my headache is too great to speculate at the moment. But whatever the cause, I’m tired of it. When I was a kid, I can remember a little optimism left in the world. Not much, for Progressivism was already on the march even then, and had been for a long time. But still, it was worth looking up and thinking “someday, I’m going to achieve something great.”
Not anymore, I guess. You can launch your car into space, and some idiotic denizen of Twitter will stand up and say “laaaaaame, you should have given your money to some Democrats instead. What are you, some kind of racist?”
Woodchipper them all. I don’t even care anymore.
I’m of the opinion, which is becoming ever firmer by the nanosecond, that female Leftists such as the ones you’ve cited here are incapable of rational thought. Granted, most women have no particular talent for rational thought, but the ones that gravitate toward Leftist activism seem to have had the port lobes of their cerebra surgically removed. All they have is a capacity for emotion. Worse, their emotions are completely unanchored to a coherent conception of anything as a particular thing.
Take that first babe, the one that wants Elon Musk to provide clean water to Flint. Ask her to define her terms. What does “Lindsay Beth” mean by “clean water?” How much of this undefined commodity is enough? For how long? How is it to be delivered to “Flint?” Should we assume that by “Flint” she means the residents of Flint, Michigan? How close to them does Elon Musk have to bring the water? Do they have any responsibilities in this undertaking? Wouldn’t it be necessary to purge all the “dirty water” from the system first? Whose job is that? And where is it to go? And what does Elon Musk get out of all this, other than “Lindsay Beth’s” dubious approval…assuming she’s willing to acknowledge a charitable deed by a capitalist?
They don’t think because they can’t think. Anyway, thinking would get in the way of their self-justifying, self-canonizing emotions, and they can’t have that. Woodchip them all? That’s a trifle too kind…wait: how about feet first?
I need more Harvey’s, pronto.
I’m with genius here my fav commercial to laugh at is the buick commercial where the wife says lets have more kids and then shows the man.
Although I can understand your annoyance with people like this lady (I share it too), the American government (and any other nation’s government) can do both things; provide for its people and do technological marvels like put people into space. The problem is, is that the USA wasted and continues to waste money on useless shit like the F-35 that has no peace dividend, and on wars like the Gulf War, the Iraq War, and the Afghanistan War, which haven’t made the USA or the world safe in any way. Fixing what happened in Flint isn’t a hard thing to ask a government to do (and no, this wasn’t Obama’s fault either, it’s the fault of his predecessor for letting things slip so badly, just as it was the same person’s fault for what happened in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina.)
The USA could have put up two space stations as well built as Mir, one moonbase similar to Clavius Moonbase in 2001 or Moonbase Alpha in Space: 1999, and have fleets of ships similar to the Eagles, or just standard spaceplanes to replace the shuttle. Instead, it wasted billions to defeat the already-crumbling Soviet Union and allied nations, has wasted money fighting the above-mentioned wars in the Middle East, and is wasting money on boondoggles like the F-35 that’s been plagued with difficulties and has gone beyond the timeframe for completion and budget, and also may not even work that well.
Should Elton Musk be doing any of what this lady said in her Tweet? No, but the U.S. government-a government that stylizes itself as ‘of the people, by the people, for the people’ should be doing this. And with the exception of the previous occupant of the White House and the successful policies he carried out, it’s failed.
Most people would agree with what was said in this excerpt from the TV series The Newsroom (https://youtu.be/Rpn0vh2Rj0Y) especially considering who got elected POTUS in 2016. But I see that you won’t and continue to be misogynistcally insulting most women just because some of them have a wrongheaded opinion about science and technology that rubbed you the wrong way.
Want to see better (to you) knowledge of science? Pressure your congressperson/Senator to improve public education by funding it fully and improving most schools, and also make sure that said schools have fully-funded science classes (you can also support any initiatives to get more young women into STEM fields.) Plus, you can get your government to spend more money on people and necessary civilian things (like your nation’s crunbling infrasturcture and the improvments of the USA’s passenger rail systems) than on the military and military items like the F-35 by improving the nation generally and making sure that disasters like Katrina and what happened in Flint don’t happen again. If all of this is done, then people won’t be saying things like what this lady said, and instead will like and respect science and technology in the way you and your fellow allied bloggers like.
It begins with you-and ends with you.
“Although I can understand your annoyance with people like this lady (I share it too), the American government (and any other nation’s government) can do both things; provide for its people and do technological marvels like put people into space.”
I doubt you “share” my annoyance. And Elon Musk is doing better than the American government at the moment.
“Fixing what happened in Flint isn’t a hard thing to ask a government to do…”
The woman cited wanted Elon Musk to fix it instead of going into space. As for Flint, well I suppose when you have generations of Leftists running things, this is what you get. Sure, it’s reasonable to ask them to do better, but I don’t seriously expect that they ever will.
“…wasting money on boondoggles like the F-35…”
Preaching to the choir. I agree the F-35 was a waste of money. More F-22s would have been a better idea.
“And with the exception of the previous occupant of the White House and the successful policies he carried out, it’s failed.”
Funny. Flint’s water sucked under Obama too. Don’t conflate local politics with national – that was a mistake the woman I cited made.
“But I see that you won’t and continue to be misogynistcally insulting most women just because some of them have a wrongheaded opinion about science and technology that rubbed you the wrong way.”
I thought you were “annoyed” with this woman, too? Are you a misogynist? Anyway, it’s not an insult to observe the truth that women generally vote more Leftist than men. Don’t like it? Too bad.
“Pressure your congressperson/Senator to improve public education by funding it fully and improving most schools, and also make sure that said schools have fully-funded science classes…”
Yes, because throwing money at the public education system works so well! *sarcasm*. Some of the locales that spend the most per student have the worst results. See: Detroit Public Schools.
“…you can also support any initiatives to get more young women into STEM fields.”
Why only women? You a Misandrist?
“It begins with you-and ends with you.”
It begins with BTFSTTG. Look it up if you dare.
Except that I do share your annoyance, and wish that people like her would get out of their intellectual comfort zone and get truly educated about science and technology, as she’s damaging the progressive causes (and progress) I believe in with her attitude.
The woman’s a fool, as I said, and it was a Republican governor that caused this disaster to happen, not anybody Democrat (or your favorite whipping boy-since you’re most likely a racist that hates black people like myself-Barack Obama.)
At least we agree on that. But the USA spends way, way, way too much money on the military as it is to begin with, and a change in priorities is needed.
Flint’s water was the responsibility of Governor Snyder, not President Obama.
I am annoyed with her, as I just said above, but I’m not being a misogynist about it, or about her.
At the risk of sounding like a skipped record, no.
Strawman bullshit plus True Scotsman fallacy; there are just as many women neocons. And even if they’re all (supposedly) liberal as you claim, so what?
Aren’t you the one angry at the state of science education? Doing this would help get things back on track (unless of course, you believe in Randian bullshit about the market providing everything, in which case, it fits with your worldview.)
It’s in the way that the money’s spent that’s the problem, not in how much is being ‘wasted’ according to you. Spending money on education provides great benefits, as this nation shows. Caring about education in Detroit (as well as caring about the city in general and not letting it fall to pieces) works wonders, too.
See my response above about misogyny, and apply it to this response.
Typical right-wing warmongering neocon chickenhawk Keyboard Kommando response, but what else is new? And you people say that you’re different from the left that you accuse of being violent? Not that much difference between both extremist groups, I’d say.
Nev, dearie,
That woman is NOT damaging progressivism; she is a dyed in the wool progressive and advocates all the ‘correct’ causes. You’re just a misogynist.
Wasn’t a repuke gov that caused the Flint water poisoning; it was the Flint city council, all dhimmicrat. Clearly you enjoy poisoning children.
THe USA spends way too much on social welfare. You clearly hate AMerica.
President Obama shares responsibility thru his EPA with the dhimmicrat Flint city council in poisoning the water supply. Why do you hate children?
On wasteful and ineffective public school spending: your response is “It’s not wasteful, it’s WASTEFUL!” Wow, quite an insightful thinker, aren’t ya, son! ROFL!
You’re easy to ridicule, son. LOL!
A government is not supposed to ‘provide’ for its people. People provide for themselves. You need to get out of your mom’s basement and become an independent adult, son. Dependency is for non-adults.
Governments do not produce technological marvels – only private individuals and organizations do. Governments cannot create; they can only consume. The Soviet Union proved this – 70% of its technology was directly stolen from the West. That which they developed at home was thru government ministries that had to be set up by necessity as pseudo-private enterprises with incentivization systems and rewards for talent and achievement.
I am also a doubter on the F-35. Why didn’t Obama cancel it? The program was mostly done on his watch. Hence most of the blame is on him, and progressives by association.
Flint is also Obama’s fault to a great deal. Flint’s progressive administrations over the years created the problem, in collusion with the EPA under Obama. This is thoroughly documented and factual. Again, progressives like you are guilty thru association. Which begs the question – are you ashamed of what you did to Flint’s kids thru poisoning their water supply, or secretly happy? Considering how long you let this go on and the awful effects lead poisoning has on children, it makes the question a legitimate one.
Throwing more money at public education doesn’t work – hence the tremendous rise of private and home schooling. This raises another question: why did progressives intentionally destroy the public education system? Public education is not supposed to be your tool for indoctrinating kids into social marxism, but for making kids smart, capable, effective, productive adults. And again it makes people legitimately wonder why you seem to hate kids so.
So the only thing that should be provided for is just corporations? Shows how much of a caring human being you are.
And no, I live in an apartment, sir; I haven’t lived with my parents for two decades.
Something else to share with you:
That also applies to social programs as well.
See my response above. Also, government facilitates, industry usually carries it out, even in a society like this.
As for the Soviet Union, it was a state capitalist system, not a socialist one. Turn off Faux Noise and reich-wing radio and you might just get somewhere.
Obama was most likely blocked on that by the GOP like he was blocked on a few other things. What you said proves nothing.
Also, something else about Obama you need to learn about that ‘trumps’ his predecessor and his successor:
Previous Democratic administrations didn’t do jack shit to the water; it was a directive from Governor Snyder that caused this disaster. Your whataboutism isn’t working, and is just more Faux Noise/reich-wing radio-directed nonsense.
How so? It was a neocon that did this, not anybody liberal. Read this before you put finger to keyboard again.
See above response. Also, I’m a Canadian, and before you object to my commenting here, a reminder.
One more time….
Is your brain functioning, and did your IQ drop suddenly?
Nev, honey,
“Providing” for corporations is a Progressive/leftist thing, as evidenced by your love of George Soros, Warren Buffett, Jeff Immelt, Wall Street and the TBTF banks. Chrony capitalism, long a hallmark of violent socialist movements such as fascism and naziism, is something progressives have passionately embraced.
Son: your mom’s basement is not an ‘apartment.’ Now wipe the yellow cheeto stains off your fingers.
Your quote of Liz Warren’s ridiculous collectivist screed is rife with logical fallacies. We ALL pay for the roads, schools, firemen and cops. We agree to share the expense. What we DO with all that, though, is up to us as INDIVIDUALS. That’s the underlying basis of private property, a mainstay of civilization. I work for a living. Beyond my agreement to conform to civil society to pay my taxes, you have ZERO claim on my earnings. You have NO RIGHT to ANY of it. To say that you do is simple thievery and is an excuse to steal and destroy used by all dictators and tyrants throughout history. You keep truly awful intellectual company, son.
Government does not facilitate. Government gets in the way. Only someone with an infantile mind thinks bureaucrats who know nothing on a particular subject or industry segment can do anything but cause problems for it. You have to be a 5 year old to actually give credence to the phrase “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
The soviet union was a state capitalist system? Son, you must be the stupidest human being alive. There are ROCKS that know better.
Obama had a congressional supermajority for two years and controlled at least half of congress for six years. The F-35 is on him and you.
No, it was an EPA directive that reinforced Flint’s dhimmicrat city council decisions. OBAMA’S EPA. Obama killed and poisoned children.
Neocons are democrats with interventionist foreign policy ideas. You are again to blame.
Thank you for telling us you’re canadian. Based on your current prime minister and your country’s current obsession with gender pronouns, we now understand why you seem irrational and retarded.
What you don’t know about water treatment in Michigan is Michigan has stricter water quality regulations than the feds. What that mean is the feds give precedence to the state. Water in this stae must be tested and reported daily. Michigan DEQ and the EPA knew about the lead almost a year before it became public. For a more thorough discusion see my comment below dated Feb 13 and the reply by Johann Metesky. I’ve been a licensed water treatment operator for 25 yrs in Michigan so don’t bother with your usual smoke and mirrors talking points.
To Thales: My friend, please forgive me for what I’m about to do. I’ve had it with the sneers, pretensions, and superciliousness of leftists. So I’m about to cut loose.
To Neville: You, my dear, are a perfect exemplar of the contemptible subgroup to which I referred. You don’t think. I suspect that you can’t. You’ve provided a perfect demonstration: “Military bad, public schools good” is about as thoughtless — nay, as evil — an assessment of federal activity as is possible by someone with the ability to get onto the Web.
Were you aware that the Constitution of the United States does not give the federal government any role in education? If you were, why offer such a ridiculous proposition as to trade the F-35 — for which I hold no brief, by the way; it’s a lousy plane — for “fully funded” (a meaningless phrase) government-run schools? The maintenance of the armed forces of the United States, in contrast, is a federal responsibility. Indeed, it’s the most important of them. But hey, left-loonies can’t be bothered with such trifles as Constitutional responsibilities. Sell all the bombs and planes! Put daisies in the tanks’ cannon barrels! Beat the M-4s into plowshares! When the next military emergency arises, we’ll all just hold hands and sing Kumbaya!
But the fun is just starting. Study after study has refuted the notion that educational quality correlates positively with spending levels. It simply isn’t so. Indeed, at this point the only things that correlate with educational attainment are race, parental involvement, and what language is spoken in the home. But hey, left-loonies can’t be bothered by mere facts, especially when facts contradict one of their sacred mysteries. Spend more money! Give the underperforming teachers raises! Hire more administrators to monitor the restrooms! Lower the passing grade! Put bigger telescreens in the classrooms! Get faggots to teach sodomy techniques and bull dykes to demonstrate strap-ons in Sex Ed! That will hold the kids’ attention. Besides, there’s no amount of money you and your ilk would ever say is enough. Double the funding and the performance remains the same? Spend more! Triple it without result? Spend more! Leftists love to throw money at lost causes…at least if it’s someone else’s money.
Leftists sling insults and impute evil motives to conservatives and conservative positions because they can’t argue cogently for their case. The facts are against them, and so is all logic. I’m done with treating them as if their aims were good but their methods unsound. You, Neville, aren’t merely stupid; you’re an enemy to all that is right and good. Any decent society would cast you out and bar its doors. Take your opinions and shove them where the moon never shines.
To Thales: I feel better now. Mea maxima culpa.
Dear Francis,
Excellent comments, as always.
But I hardly need remind you that it falls on deaf ears when addressed to the likes of Neville/Padraig.
Progressive opinions are not based on facts or logic. They are deliberately intended to arouse FEELINGS of comparatively greater worthiness and moral & intellectual superiority. Progressives cannot generate these feelings thru their own efforts & achievements, and are mostly afraid to try for fear that they would prove inadequate to the task. They must generate these feelings thru words and postures that belittle, demean and smear those who HAVE achieved and who have earned their virtue. Yes, it’s spiteful and malicious of them to do so, but that is their nature. Their light is dim; in order for it to shine more brightly, other brighter lights must be extinguished.
This is why your (or my, or anyone’s) factual, reason-based arguments will always be rejected by progressives. To consider the arguments even in part would destroy them, as they would fatally erode the flimsy architectures of their personas.
Today, consideration of this has finally led me to an epiphany of sorts.
The Left will continue on this path more stridently and energetically no matter what. We on the right object because we are concerned that this will lead to a complete dissolution of civil society and result in civil war. We love our civilization and the benefits of freedom its social, political, economic and legal institutions & frameworks provide to everyone within it, regardless of race, creed, color, group, race, sex or tribe. The idea of damaging any part of it in a war is repellent to us, and the idea of harming or killing any of our fellow citizens – even those with whom we disagree – is just as repulsive. After all, judeo-christian ethos are the foundation of our society, our ‘house’ if you will.
But the goal of progressives is, in fact, the DESTRUCTION of our society. They will FEEL absolutely superior to it when they have shattered it to dust and burned it to ashes. In other words: it has become obvious to me now that Civil War is the GOAL of progressives. They will pursue this goal ever more energetically until they reach it. If they have a successful midterm election, they will feel energized by their triumph and pursue our destruction more vigorously. If they fail in the midterms, their outrage will grow and it will fuel the pursuit of our destruction more vigorously.
It is unavoidable and inevitable. There’s going to be a fight. And they WANT to kill us, either passively if it looks dangerous to try or actively if they feel they can get away with it. Their ability to live with themselves depends on our deaths and/or utter, slavish submission (at least for a few they think might be useful.)
The Slayer of Chaldeans will be cross with me for this, but I now see civil strife of a level not seen for a solid 150 years as inescapable. For those of you who live in a blue state or city, get out – especially if it’s california.
Addendum:
I forgot to add – when that civil strife does erupt, the progressives/social marxists/maoists will say it’s OUR FAULT. Wait and see.
I’m sorry you’re much to cheerful. Think Beirut or Bosnia.
Men and women need each other for reproduction, period. Other than that, men are better off flying solo. We have the tool boxes and the knowledge, the strength, the clearness of mind and the boldness to survive perfectly well on our own. Women only blur a man’s focus. Nietzsche once said, “Wives and children have destroyed more artists than the cholera.” Not just artists – men in general. Men don’t thrive in an atmosphere of hysteria; women create it. I’m not advocating for homosexuality, I’m saying let women have their little crazy, logic-proof, man-hating world and good luck to them.
How the frak would women and men being separated be a good thing just because this lady said what she said in her Tweet?
Well, you’re a progressive, so you should be able to explain why that woman – a fellow traveler of yours – tweeted such a sentiment. Or are you discounting what she said because she’s a woman? Begs the question: are you a misogynist? THe evidence suggests Yes.
I am me, and she is her; I’m a progressive (well, a pragmatic one), and I would never say anything like that-I believe in space programs generally, as well as science and technology. And, I’m not a misogynist as it’s defined these days
Since you’re admitting that you are a progressive, you prove your innate misogyny.
How much is enough? Ain’t never gonna get there, Francis.
Focusing on Mizz Beth for a moment:
There is no point in getting frustrated, upset or perturbed in anyway by the irrational ranting of such a creature. The most appropriate response from Elon Musk to her screed would be one of the following:
1. “Whadda I care, honey? Take care of it yourself, I’m busy.”
2. “You sound Fat.”
3. “If I were to do that, what would you do for me first, babe? Hint Hint, Nudge Nudge…”
In other words: reasoning with the likes of Mizz Beth is pointless. Such people cannot understand cause & effect, cost vs benefit, logic, strategic thinking or data-based rationality and don’t want to any. It’s better to simply address them in an offensively dismissive, condescending and mocking manner. And it’s tons of fun, as well. 😉
If all that’s the case, then why did the person running this blog write a whole blogpost about her Tweet? Looks like they and you are the triggered snowflakes, and not her. Next time, you should just let proxmirisms like that slide, and not let them get to you enough to be reading or indulging in screeds like these; it just makes you a lot like the people you’re opposed to.
“Proxmirisms.”
Hi, Padraig.
LOLROFLMAO!
He couldn’t resist coming back, could he? Just like a 5 year old brat! HAHAHAAAA!
Bingo!
If the original blog post wasn’t worth writing, why are you objecting to it so much? Do you really hate the 1st amendment THAT much?
Or maybe it’s just because 5 year old spoiled brats are very easily….TRIGGERED. PWNAGE!
It all went wrong after women were allowed to vote.
Touche, my friend. I was going to make the same point until I saw that you had already made it. I often use this to anger particularly dogmatic feminazis. My niece brought her “girlfriend” to my house during the last election cycle. She ate my food, drank my booze, and imposed on my hospitality before denigrating me and my wife for our obvious political ignorance. By the time I finished proposing and defending this jewel as an explanation, she was nearly apoplectic in her spitting-mad frenzy. I love exercising power over these mindless idiots when they are rude. I am not normally so impolite to visitors, but there is a line you cannot cross if you come to my home.
It went wrong when Western men decided it was not acceptable to beat misbehaving women anymore. Every suffragette should have been whipped soundly and given more chores to do.
That’s bullshit and you know it.
nothing but nothing can break your heart like a daughter. from one who knows, 1) never let her near a public school, and 2) take all the time you for doing thing together before she enters the teenager tunnel. the stress of trying to have a family of character battling this culture is a real uphill.
if you succeed, she’ll never be one of *those* women
“She claims to want to be treated just like a man, but no woman actually wants this.”
You’ve clearly never worked in the aviation sector.
And you’re either a) a woman or b) a man playing “white knight” in hopes of getting one, because having worked in and around STEM all my life, that’s EXACTLY true about 90% plus.
Virtue Signalling – “I gave a man a fish!”
Compassionate Leftism – “I taught a man to fish!”
Capitalism – “I love fishing. I worked out how to catch loads of fish really cheaply. People can buy fish instead and devote their time and energy into the things they love too, and I make a nice profit. PS – I need some more fishermen!”
Communism – “We caught all the fish and shared them equally. Everyone gets a 1/4 fish. There no fish left, so youre still hungry today, and will be hungrier tomorrow. WTF went wrong? Are there any fish in that lake over there? What do you mean no, we used that to store industrial waste?”
Maimonides, the rabbinical scholar who lived about 900 years ago, said that the greatest level of charity was to loan someone money to start a business, enter into a partnership with them, or find them a job, all in order that they will not need to be dependent upon others.
@Kryters, teaching a person to fish is not wrong-that aphorism’s a good one, and is used by a lot of people because it makes good and common sense. I know that people like this lady are foolish, but why waste time indulging in misogyny when you can help to improve what women think of science and technology, instead?
If teaching people how to fish is bad, why did progressives deliberately destroy public education? You seem to take pleasure in making kids ineffective, uncultured and uneducated, as if their weakness made you feel stronger and able to dominate.
Regarding women and STEM – progressivism has strongly encouraged – nay, SHAMED – women into rejecting STEM as a patriarchal tool of oppression and has deliberately attempted to sabotage the utility of STEM thru weakening standards and practices allegedly to ‘favor’ women and their ‘sensibilities.’ This is tantamount to proclaiming that women are less able than men to engage in STEM studies and professional practice because they are somehow inferior.
Which begs the question: why are you and other progressives so misogynist?
Doesn’t that harpy realize how many millions of dollars were spent (wasted) by her Democrat “leaders” to deliver crappy water to Flint, MI?
@Mark, IIRC said disaster was actually caused by Republican neglect in the first place.
Nev, honey: you spelled ‘democrat’ wrong.
Here in America water treatment is run by the local government not the state. I think if you check it’s the same way.
In the workplace, when I treat women like men they end up crying in the rest room.
Is this really what they want?
There’s a deeper disconnect in the mind of “Lindsay Beth” – what Musk is attempting is to solve a new problem. Delivering clean water? SOLVED. (And the solution involves not voting for Democrats all the time as a first step.) Cheap ground-to-orbit? UNSOLVED.
She wants someone working on an unsolved problem to fix “her” inept implementation of a solution that’s already available. Unless … unless she’s thinking that the problem is to make Democrat leadership accountable, effective, and worthwhile? That would be a massive unsolved problem to tackle… but I suppose that casting the problem in this light would also involve sputtering denunciations.
@Mike, the Democrats (I assume that you mean President Obama like you people usually do) didn’t cause this problem, the Republican governor (and administration) of Michigan did. Obama had nothing to do with this.
No, Nev. The culpability of dhimmicrats and the Obama administration are both well documented in the Flint disaster. The only question is why you did it. Lead poisoning has HORRIBLE effects on children. How do you propose to pay for your crimes?
Stop with the Obama worship. Burris never mentioned your great messiah. Why are you worrying about American problems anyway? One would think with that buffoon Trudeau running Canada you would have enough to worry about.
I have a few of those as friends. Telling one of this cool stunt while doing important experimenting with a new type of rocket. Her: “That was stupid.”
??? “The rocket?”
“Sending a car was a waste of resources. If they needed payload they should have send something like rocks.”
AAARGH!!!
She can be nice enough company sometimes, but good heavens there are times when I feel like slapping her silly. Because I doubt I could slap her into something resembling lucid. I don’t think she has the ability to go there. Don’t know if it is something she was born with or just rot induced by our schooling system and relying on news from our MSM, which is probably even worse than yours from what I have been able to compare the two.
But I do think part of it is probably cultural. Women in all western countries have been taught the idea that girls are nice, or should be nice, from childhood. That girls, and then women, are the caretakers, the ones who look after others, the ones who care. No, not really, we can be pretty damn vicious and don’t necessarily have any more of an instinct to look after the whole world than men do, at best we care about our families, and especially about our kids but beyond that…, but that idea is there, and most of us get this urge to at least pretend. And what is the easiest way to do that? Virtue signalling. Going out and trying to interact with some smelly hobo or whatever is not easy, saying how somebody else should do it – that rich guy there for example, he’d have the money to hire somebody to do it so he wouldn’t even have to do it in person – that is easy.
Talk is cheap. And then you can feel all good. Because you have demonstrated that you care. Like a proper woman should. :/
Tell your BFF “They sent up something less useless than rocks – they sent up a Tesla.” See if she gets it. If she doesn’t, you’ll know she’s actually retarded and needs to be kept away from furniture with sharp corners, sharp objects and electric sockets.
😀
I don’t think I want to know. Best probably to stick to subjects like cooking from now on.
@pohjalainen, did you or any other neocon like you do anything to alleviate the poverty of said homeless person by voting for, say a progressive person who had a good plan to fix said homelessness? If all you did was vote for neocon politicians that let things go on as they usually do, then you don’t have any more of a leg to stand on than said hypothetical woman does. In fact, you’re probably proving her point for her.
Nev, progressives created the homeless problem. YOu didn’t fix anything; as usual, you made things worse. Poverty is created by marxism. Look at how people live in NK and Venezuela. You have much to account for, son. Your sins are many and grevious.
P.S. – neocons are 99% long time dhimmicrats who eventually adopted a policy of aggressive international interventionism. You progressives/social marxists have a real love for exporting war, misery and suffering to other people.
Heh. I’m a Finn. You can’t vote “neocon” in this country. Considering the alternatives in Finland it doesn’t really matter who you vote for when it comes to that issue, there is only one or two alternatives which have slightly, and I mean SLIGHTLY, different ideas as to how to fix that problem. And they have never gotten so many votes so far that they could implement anything. It’s a leftist system. Doesn’t seem to work all that well. Well, nobody usually dies, apart from some of those too stubborn to go to a shelter during the colder winters, and nobody starves, but neither can that many of those who fall to the bottom get out of there even when they give their all to try. It’s called the welfare trap, dear, and it gets lots of attention here, but it just seems to get worse. And I’ve got reasonably good personal experiences of the system too. Sure I’m rich compared to anybody living in the medieval times, but I have spend half of my life living just at the poverty line by current standards in this country.
And btw, while the Nordic welfare states here have managed to work pretty well for nearly a century now and are only now starting to falter may have had something to do with religion. Which was a big part of most people’s lives up to the mid-20th century but did start to lose its grip after that time. My country and the Scandinavian ones are all, or have been until the last decades, pretty universally Lutheran countries. And that is one of those branches of Protestantism which puts high value on hard work, modesty, frugality and discipline, as well as obedience, both to church and to your country’s government.
But all that has been eroding for decades now.
Yes Progressives have a great plan for the homeless. That’s why a quarter of all homeless in America live in California.
I am proud that Elon put a car in space so that under the rules of salvage I can repurpose it to use on Mars. I just hope he left the batteries charged, so I don’t have to charge them before I use it.
By the way you misspelled Chicago as sh!thole. We all heard him say Chicago, I don’t understand why the Democrats heard Sh!thole.
[Comment resubmitted by me due to technical error that resulted in accidental deletion – Thales]
His car, his dummy, his spacesuit, his rocket. Who is this woman to tell a guy how he can play with his toys? She’s not his mom, wife or girlfriend. If she really wants to be treated like a man then tell her to bugger off.
Flint is a political disaster. They had good water from the Great Lakes Regional Water authority. In order to “create local jobs” the city decided to reopen the local water plant.
The Flint river is apparently slightly acidic. Standard practice is to add a little lime to neutralize the acid and provide a scale coating so the metals in the pipes don’t get into the water.
Michigan and I assume Federal law requires daily testing and reporting. So if the plant operators (Who are required to be licensed by the state) did their job. Then both Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and the EPA knew there was a problem from the beginning.
The city of Detroit (run by Democrats since the late 1950s) makes a lot of money charging other municpalities for water. Flint (also run by Democrats) was buying water from Detroit but they wanted to save money by joining a regional consortium, Karegnondi Water Authority, that was building their own water supply. That decision was made in 2013, by the city council with the concurrance of the then Emergency Manager appointed by the state governor because Flint was insolvent. Flint joining the KWA was partly seen as a jobs program. A day later, the city of Detroit notified Flint that they’d be turning off the spigots a year later. The regional water system wasn’t ready so in April 2014 Flint city management and a second emergency manager decided to start using the mothballed Flint city water system and draw water from the Flint River. Then the folks running Flint’s water system decided to save money by not putting in the anti-corrosive and anti-bacterial additives because the state Dept of Environmental Quality apparently told them they didn’t have to. The local Flint folks could have done so if they wanted. The EPA was also involved in that clusterfark.
When Gov. Snyder was on Capital Hill testifying before a House committee on the Flint water crisis, he was sitting next to the EPA administrator. When asked if the state screwed up, the governor said yes and that it was a failure of government at all levels. When asked if the EPA screwed up, the EPA director spent five minutes avoiding saying yes.
Heads of state agencies and at least one of the emergency managers have been charged, by a Republican attorney general,with felonies.
The people who love government want to focus on the Republican governor and not the fact that it was government in general that failed the people of Flint.
Gentle reminder to everyone:
It’s not just SJWs and 3rd wave feminists who are past the stage of straightjacket + rubber room + intense medication. It’s also Hollyweird and the MSM.
Example:
https://twitter.com/johncusack/status/965466229434667008
As best as I can tell, the entire Left suffers from this Mystical Psychosis. Perhaps not everyone to the same degree, but it is without question endemic amongst those who consider themselves ‘progressive.’
My conclusions:
1. This is a monumental mental health crisis.
2. There’s no going back from this. There are people on the left, probably numbering in the 10’s of millions, who will not stand for any further obstruction of their agenda.
We still haven’t seen the worst yet. This won’t end without major civil disturbances, and I’m sure we will see a red state-blue state rupture that at the very least will bring us right up to the brink of all out civil war.
I’m not HOPING for it. I just see it as an inevitability.
If said civil war happens, it’ll be because of neocons like you and the orange-colored moron you elected that considers himself a financial genius/wizard, not because of John Cusack or other actors. Stop diverting the failures of neocons onto actors who happen to have a different view of life different from yours.
Busy little bee today, eh? How many replies is that in one hour?
Have we triggered you?
The triggering’s all on you, sir, not I-somebody responding to you is not being ‘triggered’ as you neocons love to say.
You sound triggered, Nev.
In fact, you sound about as clear-headed and rational as this:
Congrats you’ve learned a new word.
HEY look everybody! Neville learned the word neocon today.
Thank you for proving my point, Nev.
Personally I would have used video of the twiggly puff
How can I be a neocon? One has to be a leftist or ‘ex-leftist’ to be one.
THe fact is that it is the Left which not only frantically advocates political violence, but is the SOURCE of all political violence, ever since the development of socialist and marxist political theory in the 19th century. You and your ilk swim in oceans of blood.
You need to stop calling for the overthrow of an elected government just because you don’t like it. Either you win thru elections or you separate yourselves from the nation thru secession. Both are legitimate exercises in political freedom.
But if you and your comrades continue trying to foment civil war, you’ll get it. And you should be mighty careful what you wish for. I’d quote you Sun Tzu but you wouldn’t know who he is or what the meaning of the quote was.
TSW,
“I just see it as an inevitability.” I don’t agree. First never think that way (the Left loves that type of thought process), nothing is inevitable. If you believe that you deny that you yourself can change things, not true. Hillary and her people thought that way about the election and…….. I agree with most every thing else you say. The Left (this left) lives and fights in the universe of words and feelings, when they have resorted to physical violence or intimidation (Antifa and BLM) they werem’t very good at it and it hurt them. Trump himself has proved, so far anyway, that all you need to do is say no and ignore them, which I’ll admit isn’t easy, but works. They are not the Bolsheviks of 1916, they are losing, press them.
Well, I’m actually hoping to be wrong. 🙂
Notice, though, how the Left is digging in its heels. There is no interest in moderation or reconciliation. Instead, they are becoming ever more radicalized and shrill.
Some examples:
1. NBC’s winter olympics coverage. It’s a giant exercise in SJW ideological conformity. There are parts of the coverage that are actually disgusting.
2. The thematic direction of the latest two ‘Star Wars’ installments. Disney bought the franchise expecting big things from it, but the last two films saw a substantial reduction in receipts. Nonetheless, the director for the next film has already publicly responded to criticisms of the obvious ‘progressive’ slant of the last two films by accusing critics of racism and misogyny and proclaiming the next chapter would go even farther down the ‘social justice’ road.
To some extent, it comes across (at least to me) like a spoiled child having a tantrum – if the brat doesn’t get what they want, they yell and stomp; if they still don’t get what they want, they bray and stomp louder. The difference, however, between the Progressive Left and a spoiled brat is that the progressive left seems more and more inclined with every passing day to settle its differences in opinion with violence.
I say again, with certainty: we haven’t seen the worst of it yet.
TSW,
Always be cheerful, always.
Normally I’m like this:
Oh geez, the Star Wars franchise having people of color and a women be up-front in the two recent movies (both of which have generated record breaking grosses) is now a crime? The NBC coverage of the Winter Olympics showing athletes of color being involved in winter sports beyond and besides figure skating (and the network’s focus on them), plus any focus on women athletes is just ‘SJW ideological conformity’ I think I hear my tricorder beeping, and it’s showing that your penis is shrinking because of all of this social change that you can’t deal with.
I suppose that according to ‘people’ like you, the civil rights movement would’ve been like this, too?
Oh, for the love of……
The only ones that are doing violence are the extreme right, you silly moron, as evidenced by this incident, this incident, and this
incident, as well as most of the shootings. When the frak has the American left done any violence to anybody?
As for the Olympic coverage, the real crime done by NBC is how badly executed it is every four years in contrast to the CBC’s (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) coverage; focusing on women and minorities competing in winter sports isn’t one. But I guess that people like you can’t deal with that, or any change beyond technical ones.
Bringing women, minorities and gays to the forefront were FORCED on audiences, not reflective of conformance to existing social trends. Proof:
1. The NBC olympic coverage ratings were the worst in US TV history.
2. The last two Star Wars films had strong opening weekends, followed by collapses in ticket sales. They have been the two worst performing films of the franchise.
You progressives award yourselves merit by pushing your ‘social justice’ agendas, yet you only prove you are innately hostile and prejudiced against gays, women and minorities. People of the Right staunchly believe that individuals are not to be judged by class, group, race, creed, color, sex or tribe, but by individual ability and merit. Progressives, on the other hand, believe that individuals do not exist outside the context of a group and that certain groups NEED help to compete and achieve. It’s “The White Man’s Burden” in different clothing.
Whoa – you’re saying my penis is shrinking? Son, your mother and sister wouldn’t agree with you! LOL!
You use quotes around ‘people’ when referring to me? So you’re saying people of Italian heritage don’t merit consideration as equals under the law. Wow, what a bigot!
Don’t give yourself a merit badge over ‘civil rights’, son. Abe Lincoln was a republican. Democrats opposed emancipation and advocated race-based slavery to the point of civil war. Democrats imposed the Jim Crow laws. Republicans developed the 1964 Civil Rights act and voted overwhelmingly to support it, while Democrats almost unanimously voted against it.
Your links prove again that I am right and you are wrong. ALL political violence is a Leftist phenomenon and has been for over 150 years. Antifa and BLM are on the verge of becoming full blown terrorist groups. It’s all on you, son.
Your evil is profound, and a direct consequence of your lack of adult maturity. You are indeed a shallow, vapid thing – a 5 year old brat.
You have much to atone for, son.
When you drank the leftist Kool_Aid didn’t the tell you not to eat the pitcher when you were finished?
“A progressive woman laments how Elon Musk is, in her view, wasting his money launching automobiles into space. Instead, she tells us, he should spend his billions on Flint.”
The human female egg is a massive death-star structure requiring millions of male sperm for the problematic possibility that just one will successfully interface with it.
What men do with their $s is not a decision she gets to make.
Get you own $s, girl.
Day twenty since Thales last posted anew column. New babies and being a driven workaholic sure do cramp his blogging.
Let’s have our own discussion then! 🙂
Something on my mind: this broward county school shooting thing.
I’ve noticed the progressives are out in force, and the younger they are, the stupider they are. The levels of virtue signalling and stupidity are galactic in scale at this point.
My take:
1. As best as I can tell, the gun mass murder maniacs of the last 20 years have all been long term anti-depressant users. There is quite a bit of evidence that long term use of antidepressants in severely depressed people often leads to sudden outbursts or violent rage. Hence, it should become ILLEGAL for doctors to prescribe antidepressants to treat such patients over the long term outside of confinement to a mental hospital.
2. Banning the AR-15 for sale will not prevent the next murderous attack. Crazies will switch to other semiauto rifles (M-14, mini-14, AK’s and so forth), or to 9mm pistols with 14-16 round magazines, 12 gauge autoloader shotguns with banana or drum clips, etc…Limiting magazine sizes won’t help – loading fresh 10 round magazines in a 9mm is a very swift and easy operation.
3. I hope the next progressive who screeches about their hatred of ‘automatic assault weaponz’ gets hit by a meteor. Stupidity is a dangerous thing and is actually communicable. Such retards should be treated like lepers.
4. I strongly suspect Trump’s call for some level of gun control is actually a trap for the democrats. The democrats will either ‘underreach’ on legislative efforts and drive their base into a fresh round of lunacy, or overreach and further alienate various demographic groups upon which they depend (african americans/black americans for one, who are strong believers in the 2nd amendment.) Either way, it will make for hilarious political theater.
Thoughts? Comments? 🙂
While not a conspiracy the Progs are all involved. The majority are useful idiots. But then there are those who want the power to control in spite of your wishes. These are the ones that are the most hidden. They almost won when the great gun salesman was President.
When I was in the service I could change a magazine on an M16 in about three seconds. I’m pretty sure with practice you can reload an M1 Garand just about as fast. British troops could load and fire their bolt action 303 Enfields fast enough so the Germans thought they were facing semi-autos.
France has very strict gun control yet Select fire AK’s and RPG’s are used by terrorists. Gun control obviously doesn’t work.
Every terror attack this century was preventable. There was plenty of warning but Progressive PC policy prevented action. The Parkland shooting appears to deliberately have been allowed to happen. I’m not saying it was but the shear volume of warnings makes one wonder.
Chemical anti-depressants do seem to cause some problems with long term use. But since the all natural organic anti-depressant is illegal and Big Pharma is one of the protected businesses you will keep getting people going nuts.
Are you still talking nonsense? A ban on all semi-(and fully) automatic guns (plus mandatory registration and checks for mental illness for anybody wanting to have a hangun or sport rifle) would stop all of these massacres, just like it’s now doing in Australia. But I guess common sense escapes people like you.
You speak untruth, Nev.
Private gun ownership in Australia dropped from 1 in 13 to 1 in 17 after the ban. IOW, private citizens still own some guns. Yet after a brief hiatus, gun deaths actually ROSE. Why? Criminals can always get guns and felt ’empowered.’ Furthermore, the total murder rate grew. Your progressive anti-gun policy did what all progressive policies do – hurt the public and made their lives worse while transferring power which by right belongs to the people over to government bureaucrats.
The tide has turned on you, son. Americans and, more slowly, europeans, are waking up to the evils of progressivism/marxism. Your miseries, stemming from your insecurities, sloth, projection and narcissism, can no longer be freely transferred to society. We are resisting, and the resistance grows.
Believe me when I say I enjoy the pain it causes you.
Don’t you mean like France which has much stricter gun laws than the Aussies?
There are 350 million Americans. There are north of 360 million legally owned private firearms. The Second Amendment along with the First were meant as blocks to tyranny. The process to get rid of the Second Amendment is spelled out in the Constitution and it is intentionally difficult. After you get rid of The Second Amendment you still have to Go and get the guns. There are not enough cops or military personnel to collect just the legal guns even assuming all cops and military would cooperate. So tell me how you going to pull this off?
Dear Fellow ‘Declinators’,
As a follow-up to Neville Ross’s/Padraig’s infantile platitudes and posturing, I present you all with an opinion piece by WaPo entitled “It’s time to give Socialism A Try.”
WARNING: the opinion piece is absolutely saturated with elitist, ivory tower academic snobbery, echo chamber induced intellectual blindness, leftist canards, virtue signalling and rejection of reality & facts to the point that you will likely become quite nauseous upon reading it.
Prepare yourselves.
https://www.f169bbs.com/bbs/discussion/556886-washington-post-its-time-to-give-socialism-a-try
THere can be no ‘middle ground’ with such blinkered, dogmatic, delusional people. We live on a different planet and speak a completely different language. The divide between us and those who somehow conclude that the writer of the opinion is correct is so vast as to be unbridgeable.
Day thirty in the hunt for our intrepid blog master. Has he been kidnapped by aliens? Perhaps Neville has him tied up in his basement tormenting him with Nancy Pelosi and Twiggly Puff videos. Will he escape his terrifying imprisonment and will he be the same when he does?
Some music to pass the time whilst we wait:
I prefer Ramble On myself. Or in keeping with my previous post Hendrix All Along the Watchtower.
Hard to argue with either choice.
I wonder what other folks here have by way of musical taste?
I would bet Neville/Padraig listens to Milli Vanilli…;-)
Since we are on the subject of music. The other day I was driving and listening to some oldies on the radio.
The Pointer Sisters, Fire came on and I realized at least three femmanazis had just had heart attacks because the song promotes “rape culture”. Damn I miss the old days before the PC police.
Many, if not most women are silly – and I say that as a woman. (I don’t say that it’s not repairable). From puberty onward, girls are brainwashed via the natural instinct to find a mate into a Gestalt-imperative of cosmetics, clothes, shoes, hairstyles and giggling gossip. (I know – I was fifteen once, too.) Changing this doesn’t require forcing them to play with trucks, so to speak; rather using these interests to learn a wider view of the world. For instance, the very involved and interesting history of cosmetics: properly explored, this could pull in differing cultures, political/social fashions and forces, chemistry new and ancient, religion over the ages, archaeology, philosophers, and more. A different sort of ‘intersectionality,’ if you will.
Women’s magazines, asinine talk shows, advertising – all seemed designed to latch on to the female urge for empathetic community, to twist that urge into feelings above all, shallow and illogical thinking, and an activist herd mentality. This can be changed, but it requires mothers to actually raise their daughters, not leaving their minds to be steered by day care centers, after-school programs and the public schools themselves. And needless to say, girls and women need to learn logic, and should read, read, read books, both fiction and non-fiction, that train thinking and build sturdy and substantial common-sense mental wiring.
Men can help the project by means of emotional support and actually doing some of the teaching themselves (read to your children regularly). That takes focusing on their families as at least as important as their careers. Society in general could help by developing creative job opportunities:for instance, my daughter homeschools, but one day each week she goes to work and her husband stays home – because their employer lets them job-share. This allows her to keep up to date skill-wise, build a resume in view of future employment, and escape unbounded domesticity for a few hours. A new emphasis on hiring opportunities for middle-aged women would be greatly beneficial, also.
In short, women do not have to be silly.
Thank you, LA, that was quite interesting as well as a refreshing perspective.
I would like to follow it up by saying something that some might find controversial.
I have a long professional history in high technology – not the current ‘tech’ drivel where social media scam outfits pirate user data and many of their ‘tech’ employees can’t actually do any real coding beyond the most basic level, but real high technology involving microchips with billions of transistors, high performance computing systems, and genuinely useful & complex software that taxes those systems to their limits.
There’s been a lot of idiotic chatter about ‘bro culture’ in ‘tech’ and the lack of women in the workforce in Silicon Valley. What I can authoritatively tell you is this:
There is indeed a paucity of women. Silicon Valley (the geographical region in the Bay Area from Palo Alto down into San Jose) has a worse ratio of females to males than Alaska. However: you can certainly find women working in Silicon Valley companies. Many are in finance & accounting. A decent number are in sales. You can find a surprising number doing actual engineering work – design, product & test and applications for both hardware and software. However, what is quite noticeable is an almost complete absence of AMERICAN women in those engineering jobs. They are almost always from Asia – China and India in particular.
Asian countries are not exactly leaders in women’s rights, to put it mildly. So how is it that female technology workers are almost exclusively from the greater Asia-Pacific region?
To be brutally candid about it, I think it boils down to a matter of backbone. Whether you’re a guy or girl, pursuing STEM as a career is generally a grueling endeavor, even for the most gifted. All the advanced level math and hard science courses do not lend themselves to a college experience filled with wild parties (though you can squeeze a few in.) And the professional career experiences are even more taxing. You have to be the kind of person who deals with repeated and extended bouts of frustration, uncertainty, disruptive change, challenge and failure with resiliency, creativity and energy. In other words, you have to have a certain amount of fortitude, of spine, of raw guts to pursue such endeavors. There is clearly something within Asian cultures which produce a far greater abundance of women with such qualities than western culture in general and American culture in particular.
Thoughts? Comments?
Addendum to my comment on 3/10/18 at 2:32PM:
See video below.
The people who teach this kind of stuff (women’s studies, trans studies, lgbtq studies, race studies, gender studies, ethnic studies, whateverstupidsjwcategory studies) are essentially criminals, as far as I’m concerned.
The kids who take these courses and subscribe & adhere to what they are indoctrinated with are unforgivably stupid – it’s practically a crime committed against oneself.
The parents who let their kids study this crap are criminally negligent.
The administrators at universities and colleges (and, now, even high schools, middle schools, grade schools and kindergartens) who permit this kind of sadistically damaging and evilly subversive indoctrination are criminally negligent.
There needs to be a comeuppance – a backlash. This is just pure evil. Satan himself would be appalled at the vileness of it.
OMG – sorry. Video included.
Are you kidding Satan himself is laughing his ass of at how well his plan is working.
The space program has done vastly more good than the millions invested could have done in any other field. From Medicine to the transistor the world would be much worse off today. As an example the Psuedo-Prog in Popehat’s little tweet that 100 million helping 100000 people is dwarfed the number of people helped by medical discoveries as a result of the space program. So yes if Elon’s 100 million changes the world as much as 100 million spent on the government space program. All I can say is do it.
Enough is enough:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/us/politics/trump-organization-subpoena-mueller-russia.html
The left simply will not stop until they get their way.
They want to overthrow the government.
I stand by my earlier statements: the left is driving towards civil war. They WANT to settle our differences once and for all, and with violence.
My message to leftists is the same as the one I have for anyone who threatens me and mine.
Don’t just sing it , bring it. Bring your violence and civil war I tired of listening to your crap,
I deplore violence. But you wake that monster if you dare.