Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[Higgenbotham]

Regarding the graphs showing the rising incidence of chronic health conditions among young people, on the one hand, it can be argued that a large component of rising incidence is just more comprehensive diagnosis and maybe even expanding definitions. On the other hand, it can be argued that the severity of conditions, autism for example, is increasing. It's hard to know exactly how all of this factors in. There is such a thing as an illness profit system where how much profit can be made from a given condition and its projected future "incidence" is of more concern to the health care industry than trying to characterize the illness itself. For example, when searching for information about the incidence of endometriosis there was more information about rising revenues from treating the disease than there was about historic incidence trends of the disease itself.

[Higgenbotham]

As has been documented here by other posters, Kamala has proposed price controls.

Several months ago, aeden linked to an article about toxins in children's breakfast cereal. The levels looked pretty outrageous. It seems to be mostly mothers of young children who voice their concerns about such things and their response is generally that these corporations need to clean up their act and provide healthful food to the public.

The price of Lucky Charms, Trix, and other breakfast foods like that, last I checked, was also pretty outrageous; they seemed to be around $4 for a one pound box several years ago. Also, even the alternative grocery chains have mostly stopped carrying whole grains - hard red wheat berries, for example, and they are even hard to come by online.

There is a company called Azure Standard that carries such things. It is not real convenient, but if you're near a drop off point you can pick up a 50 pound bag of organic hard red wheat, oat groats, or rye for around a dollar per pound, plus or minus. One of the last things I do every night is soak the morning's batch of whatever whole grains we will be eating for breakfast. My kid has never eaten any commercial cereal. That's one of our methods of price control, for now. If a loaf of sprouted grain bread, goes over $8, I will probably start making it myself.

[aeden]

Data fragility as we noted very early.
Feature or Fiction depends on conditioning in the feature of the fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJWYfPSsuX0

This is a Cluster B Personality Disorder they pursue.
They left a compromised effect to leverage the plausible denial model, but we fathom monopoly of violence.
Casey was right in that segment everything they know will be complete.
But we have 51 laptop experts as they serve only what they extract from the productive.

The coup is just not finished. They have to fully disgrace themselves. <---- another optimist...
https://x.com/starside8/status/18249291 ... t-election

As for the 404 cult reading way back will not be on list to what they seek.

[Higgenbotham]

So I've reduced my short position from the high when I had my whole account in the SDS double inverse fund, but only by about 8 percent.

Went back to having my whole account in the SDS double inverse fund late last week. Still not thinking about it too much.

[aedens]

Buybacks end first week sept we expect ramp up into sept6 then drain some for some days.
They will stay evil much longer than solvent top down.

As He said the argument right now.
https://basedunderground.com/2024/08/18 ... bo-cancer/

[aeden]

Empire of Dust.
Now they will get free shots again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOkrYW3vF0o

[Higgenbotham]

Yah, there are experts, and there are experts. Some say a high will come four score and seven years after the last. Other say we must have had a collapse somewhen, so we must be going to have another. Some say cut taxes to the rich and deficit spend. Others work to curtail corporate profits, pay down the debt and build the middle class. Some start a war for oil. Others work for strong alliances to deter expansionist conflict. Some work to conserve energy as we are approaching the limits to growth, and to curtail carbon release to fight global warming. Others want to profit now. In short, if you have an opinion, you can find an 'expert' to agree. even if a blindfold is required. It is a question as to which expert you buy into. Generally, it is those you agree with. If you are profiting of the status quo and buying politicians to set policy, you can get a mess.

I happen to agree with those who see problems approaching and are trying do do something about it. To date, Malthus has been proven 'wrong'. He foresaw problems early which haven't developed yet. Partial solutions haven't prevented the problems from continuing to develop, and for his heirs to cry for better solutions. It is progressives that see the new problems and work for solutions. It is conservatives who want to stay the same and continue short term profit.

See the problem, exaggerate it, cry, whine, panic and give up? No thank you. As I said, there are advantages to overblown opinions to cause those not aware to wake up. Absurdly obviously exaggerated opinions result in rejection and are not helpful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Robert_Malthus

This probably doesn't deserve a response because the context of my post that prompted this response is so obvious.

Here was my initial statement about subject matter experts:

Subject matter experts, while not infallible, are useful. They are more useful for evaluating certain of what I call the dark age outputs than others.

Let's say the dark age output in question is the decline in sperm counts. The dark age output measured is that the average sperm count in the West is 49 million and it's declining 2.6% per year in linear fashion.

I have no idea whether that's a problem or not. Experienced fertility doctors do. They are our subject matter experts. The experienced fertility doctors can tell us the sperm count at which conception becomes difficult. Typically that's a consensus number agreed upon by these experts based on what they've seen in practice. That number is 40 million.

In trying to evaluate how dire these particular numbers are, it is useful to get an opinion from these subject matter experts. While not infallible, it is useful. What is not useful is to get an opinion on the current decline in sperm counts from Higgenbotham or Bob Butler. I haven't given my opinion or, if I have, I probably shouldn't have. Or at least there should have been some qualifiers on that opinion.

But our proverbial Uncle Bob has given his opinion:

A lot there, most of which I don’t see as overly relevant.

Uncle Bob knows. There are subject matter experts and then there are experts like Uncle Bob. You know, the same Uncle Bob who says "follow the science" on covid vaccines and global warming, but don't follow it on other "inconvenient truths" unless defined as such by fellow cult members.

[Higgenbotham]

About 25 years ago, I wrote the following to a director in my workplace who was hiding information: "When open communication is not the norm, it is only human nature that rumor and speculation will emanate to fill the vacuum." She really hated me for that. This is an excerpt which includes that:

A friend recently texted me with the news that his wife received a PIP (Performance Improvement Plan) at work. She had probably been forewarned that one was coming. I noticed he immediately went on the defensive.

When an employee is threatened with a PIP, my offhand thought would be to fire an email back to the supervisor who threatened it, that person's boss, and HR, saying something to the effect that, "I'll schedule a meeting with our legal team to make a determination as to whether a PIP is warranted in this case. You will receive our response within 21 days." I would say 8 out of 10, the PIP threat will disappear into the ether. What I told him was that I was threatened with a PIP once by the same outfit referred to above and my response was, "Great, bring it on!" That was the last I heard about it.

The reason I bring all this up is the pervasive response from the citizenry to government threats seems to be to go on the defensive. To that end, I'm going to copy a few more excerpts out of the above memo and discuss how I responded to her other threats.

OK, so I went through a couple old memos and the same outfit who threatened the PIP verbally also threatened disciplinary action in writing. My response was essentially the same (throughout the memo, her threats were underlined with my response in blue underneath each threat):



Since the quoted post was written on August 15, we have Kamala threatening price controls and many people seem to be going on the defensive. I would say, "Great Kamala, you go girl, bring it on!"

The other old girl never did take any disciplinary action. I worked there another 2.5 years before resigning.

[Higgenbotham]

The above reminds me of a high school physics teacher who asked my father to come in and talk to him. My father asked me what the teacher wanted and I said that he wants me to work harder. We lived in New York State, which had or maybe still has New York State Regents Exams. It wasn't required for the class. I told my father that I would take the Regents exam in Physics anyway and he could tell the teacher that.

So my father left work to talk to the teacher and during the conversation the teacher told him that I was an F student. My father told him to give me an F but that I would be taking the New York State Regents Exam and when we got the score back he could explain to the school board why I got an F vis-a-vis my Regents Exam score. That was pretty much the end of the teacher's rants, which had been ongoing, about like the old girl mentioned above. I got a 96 on the Regents Exam.

[Higgenbotham]

Data fragility as we noted very early.
Feature or Fiction depends on conditioning in the feature of the fact.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJWYfPSsuX0

This is a Cluster B Personality Disorder they pursue.

This isn’t like Covid, murderous cops, race riots and the insurrection in having massive disturbances associated, but in theory in the Information Age issues can be decided by votes instead of wars or dark ages. We shall see.

A good deal of this crisis can be summed up with “Mind your own damn business.” Republicans should not try to impose their traditional culture on an increasingly diverse population.

See the problem, exaggerate it, cry, whine, panic and give up? No thank you. As I said, there are advantages to overblown opinions to cause those not aware to wake up. Absurdly obviously exaggerated opinions result in rejection and are not helpful.

Looking at the issues that have been manufactured by the media and parroted by the Uncle Bobs, you would think that 6 million blacks have been killed by police in America. What is the actual number? About 233 per year.

Parroting authority figures who are really Boomer snake oil salesmen is a huge problem in this brainwashed society. The people I was talking about in the posts immediately preceding were Boomers. My son is an F student? Oh my Gosh, what shall I do to appease you, sir? Shall I start working on nuclear fusion immediately? I had a confrontational attitude and disciplinary action will be taken? Yes, maam, I am now so contrite and will do 6 times the work load of your incompetent minority recruits just like you ordered me to do.