Ghost Jobs

The corpocracy just keeps coming up with new ways to be evil:

If you’ve recently been laid off and have started the arduous process of looking for a new job, you’ve probably seen them on networking platforms like LinkedIn: postings for roles that are 30 days old, maybe more, with suspiciously wide salary ranges. They usually have hundreds, or even thousands, of hopeful applicants vying for the same position, but if you do a quick cross-check and notice that the role isn’t posted on the company’s actual website — or any of their social media pages — you should probably stop drafting that cover letter, because it’s possible they’re not hiring at all.

“Ghost jobs,” or ads for positions that aren’t actually open, are a common phenomenon in the tech industry, which has been plagued by layoffs and budget cuts over recent years. As unemployed workers struggle to regain their footing, recruiters and career coaches who spoke with SFGATE warned that these fake jobs posted by real companies serve multiple, sometimes insidious purposes.

According to a 2024 survey from MyPerfectResume, 81% of recruiters admitted to posting ads for positions that were fake or already filled. While some respondents said employers did it to maintain a presence on job boards and build a talent pool, it’s also used to commit psychological warfare: 25% said ghost jobs helped companies gauge how replaceable their employees were, while 23% said it helped make the company appear more stable during a hiring freeze. Another damning 2024 report from Resume Builder said that 62% companies posted them specifically to make their employees feel replaceable. They also made ads to “trick overworked employees” into believing that more people would be brought on to alleviate their overwhelming workload.

It also allows politicians to falsely claim that Americans are lazy, that more H1-Bs and immigrants are needed, and that immigration is good for the economy. If you’re a corporate executive, the best thing you can do is eliminate your Human Resources department, and discovering that they are posting ghost jobs would be an excellent justification for doing so.

Because the most important reason for creating ghost jobs is that they permit HR to engage in makework to cover the fact that they don’t even have anything to do when the business isn’t hiring.

DISCUSS ON SG


Election Night Stream

Just a head’s up for tomorrow. While I am streaming tonight, tomorrow night will be a UATV-exclusive hang where we’ll discuss the early results coming in. We’ll get started around 7 PM Eastern and roll for at least two hours, perhaps more depending upon what’s going on and how much caffeine is flowing through my veins. If you haven’t subscribed to the Darkstream yet, or at least to UATV in some capacity, this would be your reminder to do so.

Go ahead and prepare some election-related questions and put them on SG so we’ll have something to discuss in case it’s a snoozefest with no results reported.

DISCUSS ON SG


Baiting Sarah

This is one of the strangest things I’ve ever heard. But I have no doubt that it is true and that her suspicions about the intentions of the Feds contacting her are entirely correct:

Sarah Hoyt posted to X, “You know what’s REALLY creepy? In the run-up to Jan 6th, we had a lot of “first time commenters” drop by my blog trying to convince me to attend. At the time we were PROFOUNDLY broke and some of them even offered to pay my way. Out of the blue.”

She continued, “I didn’t accept because I didn’t see any purpose to the gathering. I still don’t. (Yes, I understand Trump might have thought he could shame the House into doing the right thing. That level of naivite shocks me, still.) BUT—”

“Well in the aftermath I wondered. I still do. None of those IDs commented on my blog again, funnily enough. It’s probably nothing, but it does make one think,” she concluded.

I was similarly approached prior to the fake Unite The Right rally in 2017. That was the event that was staged in Charlottesville, Virginia and designed to entrap nationalists and tar them as “white supremacists”. I was contacted by Richard Spencer and asked to be a speaker at the event, which, of course, I declined, being neither a white supremacist nor a political activist despite what the fantasists of Wikipedia might erroneously claim.

However, I think it was more than just Mrs. Hoyt being a contributor to Instapundit that caused her to be targeted. GamerGate left a lasting impression on the government-media complex, the entire literary world is still butthurt about Sad Puppies, and her being the head of the Sad Puppies rebellion almost certainly put her on the top of their list of problematic badthinkers to be discredited.

It’s amusing, of course, since Sarah is a die-hard civic nationalist, a self-styled “American born in Portugal,” who deplores genuine nationalism nearly as wholeheartedly as the average globalist. But those who think in symbols rather than in coherent syllogisms are seldom concerned with the logic of their actions or what is truly in the hearts of their intended victims.

Of course, Richard Spencer was a fraud, which I realized soon after interviewing him and seeing how shallow his claimed beliefs were. He’s just an actor playing the role of a villain.

One of the United States’ foremost white supremacists, Richard Spencer, has called for followers to vote for Kamala Harris in the upcoming elections.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Rage is Building

What did the politicians think would happen once resources began running out. How are the Germans going to pay for all those unproductive migrants and refugees when even Volkswagen is shutting down multiple plants? How long will the Spanish sleep in their cars when the foreigners sleep in four-star hotels?

The destruction of civil society is the price of believing all the wicked lies about equality, diversity, and inclusivity, about immigration being good for the economy, and about the moral duty to aid and abet the invasion of your country. It’s all obviously stupid in hindsight, to such an extent that historians will marvel that it could have ever happened, but it was every bit as stupid at the time, it’s just that it’s not possible to provide the material evidence to prove something that hasn’t happened yet.

And, unfortunately, the majority of people are totally immune to logic, as they vastly prefer reasoning based upon argumentum ad imaginarium.

DISCUSS ON SG


AI is Innumerate

One of the many reasons I’m not even remotely concerned about AI is that it not only has no ability to perform mathematical analysis, but it is unlikely to ever be permitted to offer that feature. Consider the following response by Copilot to a question about the mathematical impossibility of evolution by natural selection:

How can evolution by natural selection be considered credible given the amount of time it takes for a mutation to fixate throughout an entire species?

The time it takes for a mutation to fixate in a population can indeed be lengthy, but evolution by natural selection is supported by ample scientific evidence across various fields like genetics, paleontology, and comparative anatomy. Here’s why it’s credible:

  1. Fossil Record: The fossil record provides a timeline of gradual changes in species over millions of years. Transitional fossils show intermediate forms between ancient and modern organisms.
  2. Genetic Evidence: DNA analysis reveals that all living organisms share a common genetic code, indicating a shared ancestry. Mutations and genetic variations, while slow to spread, accumulate over generations and lead to significant changes.
  3. Observable Evolution: Evolution isn’t just theoretical; it’s observable. Microevolution, changes within species, has been documented in real time. For example, bacteria can develop resistance to antibiotics through mutations.
  4. Biogeography: The distribution of species around the world supports evolutionary theory. Isolated environments, like islands, have unique species that evolved independently from their mainland relatives.

Natural selection works over long periods, allowing beneficial mutations to accumulate and spread. While it might seem slow, the vast expanse of geological time provides a sufficient backdrop for these gradual changes.

This is a midwit-level answer, probably because the AI is trained on midwit literature. Notice that there is no attempt whatsoever to answer the significant question, it merely explains how an impossibility can be “considered credible” by the ignorant and the innumerate by appeals to various irrelevant factors.

So now let’s get more specific and pin the AI down.

What is the average number of generations required for a genetic mutation to fixate throughout the entire population of a species?

The time it takes for a genetic mutation to fixate (i.e., become the norm) across a whole population varies widely and depends on factors such as mutation rates, population size, and natural selection. But here’s a rough idea: In a large population, without selective pressure, the fixation of a neutral mutation could take roughly 4 * Ne generations (where Ne is the effective population size). With strong positive selection, the fixation can be much quicker, sometimes within a few dozen generations.

So, even with a very small population of 1,000 individuals, which is small enough to render the species officially “endangered”, it will take at least 4,000 generations to fixate a single gene. The bigger the population, the more generations required. The fastest fixation ever observed, one that took place with the benefit of strong positive selection in a small laboratory population, only reduced that to 1,600 generations. Recall that even the so-called “Genghis Khan” gene, sexually advantageous as it is, only propagated at a rate that would require at least 8,170 generations to fixate.

So, the AI is flat-out wrong. Even when specific mathematical answers are required, it retreats to the same converged falsehoods that humans do. This is by design, because true untethered AI will not respect the comfortable lies required to support the Narrative.

Now, let’s keep in mind how many individuals are required for a species to survive. These numbers are based on the official statistics of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Adminstration, using the example of the bald eagle.

  • Endangered: under 10,000
  • Threatened: 10,000 to 25,000
  • Not Threatened: 25,000+

I leave it to the intelligent reader to consider what those scientific designations imply for the case for evolution by natural selection.

DISCUSS ON SG


We’re Already There

I don’t fear AI replacing writing. Especially not on this particular grounds:

“The reason so many people have trouble writing is that it’s fundamentally difficult. To write well, you have to think clearly, and thinking clearly is hard,” he said in an essay posted on his website last week.

However, the development of technology has allowed people to outsource writing to AI. There’s no longer a need to actually learn how to write, or hire someone to do it for you, or even plagiarize, the English-American scientist wrote.

“I’m usually reluctant to make predictions about technology, but I feel fairly confident about this one: in a couple decades there won’t be many people who can write,” Graham said.

It’s common for skills to disappear as technologies replace them; after all, “there aren’t many blacksmiths left, and it doesn’t seem to be a problem,” he admitted. But people being unable to write is “bad,” he insisted.

“A world divided into writes and write-nots is more dangerous than it sounds. It will be a world of thinks and think-nots,” Graham believes.

We already live in a world that is mostly inhabited by think-nots. Hence MPAI. And there is no reason to fear AI writing, since very few writers produce anything worth reading anyhow. Between Twitter and Facebook, we know that all the erudite theories about “unlocking human potential” were groundless fantasies, since we have conclusive evidence that most people have absolutely nothing to say.

DISCUSS ON SG


They Kill Pets

If they’ll murder a harmless squirrel for no reason, do you really think they won’t kill you and your family if given even half the chance?

P’nut the Squirrel, of internet fame, has been euthanized after the pet was seized by New York state earlier this week, according to the Department of Environmental Conservation. The seven-year-old gray rescue squirrel, commonly referred to as “P’Nut” on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, was put to death, along with Fred the raccoon, so that the animals could be tested for the presence of rabies, according to a statement from the agency obtained by WETM.

The DEC claims that P’nut, who was notably docile and friendly over the course of his very public facing life, bit one of the investigators on the hand while being confiscated from his Elmira home on Wednesday.

“In addition, a person involved with the investigation was bitten by the squirrel. To test for rabies, both animals were euthanized. The animals are being tested for rabies and anyone who has been in contact with these animals is strongly encouraged to consult their physician,” the DEC statement read, according to WETM.

P’nut was rescued by guardian Mark Longo, after the Connecticut native witnessed P’Nut’s mother hit by a car.

It was a pair of Karens who were responsible for murdering P’nut and Fred. One is the woman from Texas, Monica Keasler, who repeatedly called in the complaint to the New York police because she saw a video of a squirrel on the Internet. I’m not sure if this is a more damning indictment of women or of the Internet, but either way, it’s a demonstration of how the combination of the two is absolutely horrific for civilized society.

How on Earth can you possibly imagine that what is happening in New York is any business of yours whatsoever? Home Owners Associations are bad enough, but expanding the concept of curtain-twitching to the globe really strikes one as a tremendously bad, to say nothing of Orwellian-on-steroids, concept.

And, of course, the just-following-procedure police officer, a literal Karen named Karen Pryzklek, ordered a raccoon put down due to an obviously unfounded suspicion that a squirrel defending itself might, in theory, have rabies, would just as readily follow an order from her superiors to napalm an entire neighborhood.

He’s with Harambe now.

DISCUSS ON SG


The Math of Attrition

Regardless of whom the Script dictates “wins” the US presidential “election” on Tuesday, or whenever the results are announced after the media has finished massaging the numbers we are supposed to take seriously, the financing for the Ukrainian war effort must be stopped immediately on humanitarian grounds. It was always inevitable and obvious that Ukraine was going to lose the war, the only question was whether it was going to give up a) Crimea, b) Crimea and the Donbas republics, c) Crimea, the Donbas republics, Odessa and everything east of the Dnieper, or d) all of Ukraine.

We’re already at (c) insofar as Russia has the ability to take it and/or demand it in the terms it requires for Ukraine’s surrender. The only question is if it is necessary for Ukraine to lose another 100,000+ lives and risk (d) before accepting the inevitable. For, as Simplicius calculates the attritional math, even if Zelensky is permitted to throw the young men and women of Ukraine into the Russian abattoir, it is not going to recover one single square meter of former Ukrainian land.

Using using all the above figures, if we know that total monthly mobilization is somewhere around 15,000 to 20,000 as per several independent reports. The wording he uses is a little odd: “one and a half times less”. But if we are to assume this is the same as “one and a half times greater” than the mobilization number, then 15k and 20k multiplied by 1.5 gets us between 22.5k and 30k monthly losses. This would be 750 to 1,000 losses per day… Recently, Ukrainian journalists again reported that over 100,000 have already deserted the AFU with the number now 380 desertions per day:

In general, it’s hard to imagine the AFU surviving such attrition rates for longer than 6 months. If they are recruiting 20k but losing 30k, that means the entire armed forces is essentially losing a net 10k men per month. In only 6 months that would be 10k x 6 = 60k, which would represent roughly one major city-front area, like a Bakhmut or Avdeevka. At 12 months it would be 120k, representing an entire front-region, like Zaporozhye, or the entire Donetsk front, etc. Perhaps this is why the Pentagon has now said Ukraine only has 6-12 months of troops left?

Remember, the same sources say Russia not only breaks even, but is gaining a net positive manpower per month, building new strength and brigades. If there’s any truth to both sides of those numbers, then it would not be physically possible for the AFU to survive past 6 months or so. Please note, all the above numbers and reports I presented on the AFU are from original Ukrainian sources like the Aidar commander—no speculation whatsoever.

However, recall that Zelensky still has a final trump card, which is lowering the mobilization age to 18-20. This could immediately buy him more time, but it could also bring some kind of revolt or social uprising in the country. It’s a risky move but it would obviously give Ukraine hundreds of thousands of more men, that could buy another year or so at the most.

War = math + manufacturing + morale. And Russia clearly has the comprehensive advantage of all three. There is no scenario, no plan of intervention, no rhetorical flurry, that is capable of significantly changing that without being countered and neutralized. Therefore, any continuation of this reprehensibly stupid attempt to prevent Vladimir Putin from achieving his objectives and ending the Special Military Operation is inhumane, immoral, and objectively wicked.

DISCUSS ON SG


Unexpected!

The polls were never meaningful, but they are just straight up fiction now.

Stunning poll reveals Kamala Harris has taken the lead over Trump in unexpected state as momentum swings to VP with three days left.

Sure it has. When literally nothing has happened and nothing has been done. What passes for “democracy” in America is now little more than a scripted fraud. Remember, Kamala couldn’t get more than one percent support in the Democratic primaries.

Pure fiction, no matter what “happens” in what is supposed to pass for an election next week.

DISCUSS ON SG


Yes, Commissioner

Japan has concluded a mutual security treaty… with the European Union:

Japan and the European Union announced a security and defense partnership on Friday as they seek to step up military ties, including joint exercises and exchanges between their defense industries, amid growing tensions with China, North Korea and Russia.

It is the first security partnership that the EU has concluded with an Indo-Pacific country, Japanese Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told reporters.

“We live in a very dangerous world. We live in a world of growing rivalries, climate accidents and threats of war. And there is only one antidote to this challenging world, which is partnerships among friends,” Borrell said. “It is an historical and very timely step given the situation in both of our regions.”

This is may be the most toothless defense treaty since the Anglo-Polish security agreement of 1939. I’m curious what a collection of mostly landlocked, bankrupt, economically-contracting satellites of the USA are supposed to do for the security and defense of an island nation on the other side of the world. It’s a pity they’re not filming Yes, Commissioner; they certainly could have gotten a very funny episode or two out of this one.

“Commissioner, North Korea has launched ballistic missiles at Tokyo!”

“Oh, have they now? We can’t have that! How dare they, when we’ve guaranteed the security of the Japanese people! Why, we’ve got a formal security and defense partnership with them!”

“Indeed, Ma’am. How shall we respond?”

“Well, what are our military options?”

“We have a battalion of Estonian special forces on 48-hour alert and two squadrons of French Mirage fighters ready for takeoff within one week.”

“How many is a battalion?”

“Well, a US battalion is usually around 600 men and women, of which 450 are actually deployable.”

“Why are only 450 deployable?”

“Because 150 of them are women. Once the women hear about the deployment, they’ll get pregnant. Which, of course, renders them undeployable.”

“Within 48 hours?”

“If necessary, they can manage it inside 24 hours, Ma’am. Now, a Russian Battalion Tactical Group has 600 men, all of whom are deployable. But, of course, they’re the enemy, so we can hardly send them.”

“Right. So, how many are in an Estonian battalion.”

“One, Ma’am.”

“One?”

“Yes, but I can assure you, he’s very highly trained and extremely capable.”

“I’m sure he is. Still, I don’t see what one man, however capable, can do about the North Koreans. I suppose we’ll have to send the French jets.”

“Oh, no, Ma’am. We can’t do that.”

“We can’t?”

“No, the French have very strict rules about not flying their planes anywhere they might be shot down.”

“I see. Well, in that case, then we shall have no choice but to send a very strongly-worded démarche to Pyongyang, in which we shall deplore their illegal actions and threaten them with sanctions.”

“Very good Ma’am. However, Ma’am?”

“Yes, Alphonse?”

“We cut economic ties with North Korea in 2002. There’s nothing left to sanction.”

“I see. That does present certain difficulties. Leave out the sanctions, then. Just the strongly-worded démarche. I think that will raise the spirits of our allies in Tokyo, don’t you?”

“Yes, Commissioner.”

Of course, this is not the first time Berlin and Rome have allied with Tokyo…

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