A recent article by Peter Turchin, The Ginkgo Model of Societal Crisis, went viral and was shared on Vox Day and elsewhere, so I figured it merited a response. It will soon be two years since the US presidential elections of 2016, which should have made it clear to everybody that our society is in… Continue reading Peter Turchin is wrong about Crisis

All over Twitter, Reddit, and YouTube I’m still seeing anger over Alex Jones’ unexpected termination of his YouTube, Apple, and Facebook accounts. Even people and YouTube channels that have nothing to do with conspiracy theories or politics have chimed in. It’s evident Alex Jones’ de-platforming has a great cultural significance, or is evidence of Alex… Continue reading Alex Jones de-platforming, part 1

It seems Ann Coulter in the past few months has stopped ankle-biting Trump. She no longer does the daily border wall updates and has stopped criticizing Trump, in general. Mostly she just re-tweets links, with some commentary of her own, but is not critical of Trump anymore. My guess is, either she got tired of… Continue reading Ann Coulter lays off Trump

The cyclical curse On the one hand, this will present opportunities for the cognitive elite. On the other, the downward trajectory of society and civilization is almost certainly going to increase as time goes on, IQ continues to decline, and the r/selected increasingly outnumber the K/selected. The welfare system was bad enough, but combining it… Continue reading No dysgenic collapse

Occasionally, I still grapple with where this website falls on the left-right spectrum or the authoritarian-freedom axis. There are two intellectual/ideological pillars of conservatism/right-wing thought: There is mainstream conservatism. Examples include National Review, Town Hall, Fox News, and The Hill. This is pretty much your basic check-the-boxes brand of conservationism. It’s positions are predictable, and… Continue reading The Third Position

People who are smart, skeptic-minded, and knowledgeable about science at times believe in unfounded, unscientifically-tested things. One such example is brain training, specifically, memory training. Memory training was popularized by the 2011 best-seller Moonwalking with Einstein, by journalist and ‘memory champion’ Joshua Foer. The idea is, by using certain techniques and tricks, such as mnemonics… Continue reading Bullshitting with Einstein

Anyone who frequents 4chan, 8chan, or the outskirts of Reddit has probably encountered the word ‘bugman’ or someone being called a bugman. Etymologically, it has nothing to do with entomology or humanoid-bug mutants, but in the context of online discussion seems to be interchangeable with a much more common and well-known word, ‘normie’. Normie, bugman,… Continue reading Normies and Bugmen

On March 1st. Trump announced tariffs, from Wiki: On March 1, 2018 Trump announced his intention to impose a 25% tariff on steel and a 10% tariff on aluminum imports.[32] In a tweet the next day, Trump asserted, “Trade wars are good, and easy to win.”[33] On March 8, he signed an order to impose… Continue reading Trump tariffs: experts wrong again

Derek Sivers is famous for founding a long-forgotten and insipidly-named website ‘CD Baby’ (yeah that is what it is called, and typing it once makes me mad), which he sold in 2008 for $22 million, so now he’s an expert on everything. This is similar to Nassim Taleb, who is held up as some sort… Continue reading Derek Sivers

Bitcoin resumes its plunge, falling from as high as $8,400 just two weeks ago to $6,300 now. Half a year ago ago when Bitcoin was in the $17k-14k range, I predicted it would go a lot lower, and it has. The most optimistic scenario is Bitcoin hovers around $3,000-$6,000 for awhile, but a retest of… Continue reading Bitcoin crashes …again