Nobody Asked You

It’s amusing that the little sock puppet serving as the figurehead for the Kiev regime actually thinks his opinion matters.

Ukraine must be involved in any negotiations for a peace deal with Russia, President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted on Sunday. The Ukrainian leader says that he won’t accept any deals made between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin if he and his team are not also invited to the table.

‘I will never accept any decisions between the United States and Russia about Ukraine – never,’ Zelesnky told NBC Meet the Press host Kristen Welker. ‘And our people, never. And our adults, and children, and everybody, it can’t be so.’

Nobody asked him and nobody cares. Not only can it be so, it will be so. There are precisely two choices:

  1. The USA negotiates a peace settlement with Russia.
  2. Russia dictates an unconditional surrender.

That’s it. That’s the entire list. And it was obvious from the very start back in February 2022. Notice that nowhere on it appears anything about Zelensky, the Kiev regime, the UN, the Terran Confederation, Starfleet, or the European Union. All of those entities are irrelevant to the outcome.

DISCUSS ON SG

Vaccines are the Cause of Autism

You have to either be prodigiously stupid, willfully blind, totally corrupt, or some combination of the three to still deny that vaccines are the cause of autism, which they quite obviously are.

When Elaine C. was seven years old, her parents became so worried about her speech that they approached a psychiatrist.

The little girl could talk. She just couldn’t say anything meaningful. Instead of asking questions or chattering to her parents, Elaine simply repeated bizarre phrases: ‘Dinosaurs don’t cry… Needle head… Seals and salamanders.’

The psychiatrist who studied Elaine, Dr Leo Kanner, was born in Austria but lived on America’s east coast. After three weeks of observations, he informed her parents that their daughter was suffering from an extremely rare condition – so rare that in five years of intensive research, from New York to Boston, he had been able to discover only ten other cases.

Dr Kanner coined a word for this condition: he called it autism.

That was the mid-1940s. Today, a psychiatrist could go into virtually any school in Britain or the US and find at least ten children with autism. Some would have learning difficulties as profound as Elaine’s or more debilitating. Others could show a variety of less obvious developmental delays…

In the UK, the first cases began to be noticed in the 1950s, when they were classified under ‘childhood schizophrenia’. The first British doctor to use the term ‘autism’ was Mildred Creak, a psychiatrist at Great Ormond Street hospital, in 1963.

In other words, autism was unknown in Britain before the Beatles era.

If you’re still unconvinced that the condition has appeared and become widespread in the space of a human lifetime, think about this: in all of 19th-century literature, not a single child is described with autistic traits.

Charles Dickens had ten children. Leo Tolstoy had 13. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, who wrote dozens of sensation novels, had six of her own and five stepchildren. Those writers, like countless others of the time, were fascinated by psychological strangeness. But none of them depicted autism in their books – which can only mean they never saw it.

So, what has changed since 1940. Obviously, the childhood vaccine program, right? I mean, this is absolutely and entirely obvious, right?

Kennedy is a conspiracy theorist who has linked the epidemic of autism to vaccines. All the science indicates that he’s wrong. So does the timeline: vaccines have been around since the end of the 18th century, 150 years before the first cases of autism were identified. When Kennedy and his ilk make wild claims about what causes the condition, they make life much more difficult for millions of parents who are trying to get the care and education their autistic children need.

The retardery, it burns. Even when the totally fucking obvious is flashing right in front of his face in giant red lights, this moron retreats to the safety of the Narrative. Let’s point out the obvious errors.

  1. Science is less reliable than a coin flip. Its reliability is below fifty percent. Due to the known Reproducibility Crisis and the financial corruption of modern science, anyone who claims “all the science” as a meaningful truth-metric is either ignorant or retarded. Science means absolutely nothing. You might as meaningfully declare that a theory is incorrect because a coin-flip indicates that it is wrong.
  2. The fact that the first vaccines were around 150 years before the first cases of autism is absolutely and totally irrelevant. It’s just not a valid argument. All vaccines are not identical, and children in the UK today are receiving 27 doses in 12 shots before the age of 14 months. 150 years ago, they were receiving zero.
  3. The conspiracy theorists have been proven to be correct far more often than 50 percent of the time.
  4. A conclusion based upon Occam’s Razor is not “a wild claim”.
  5. Regardless of what is believed concerning the causal factor, that belief doesn’t make things any harder for people to get care and treatment for the adverse effects of childhood vaccinations.

The real reason parents are in such denial about vaccines causing autism is that they don’t want to believe it was their fault. That’s understandable; it’s no different than the people who want to believe they were “forced” to get the Covid-19 vaccination. But if you’re dumb enough to believe anything that the medical authorities tell you, you simply have to own that. Because while not doing so isn’t going to mitigate any of the consequences you’re going to face, at least you might be able to avoid making the same stupid mistake next time.

And there will be a next time.

DISCUSS ON SG

Kiev Doesn’t Count Either

There isn’t any point in including the Kiev regime in the upcoming talks between the USA and Russia concerning how NATO will surrender to Russia, so it’s good to see that representatives of the unelected regime are not invited.

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has confirmed that Kiev was not invited to the discussions between delegations from Washington and Moscow which are expected to take place in Saudi Arabia in the coming days.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump spoke by phone on Wednesday, marking their first known direct conversation since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. On Saturday, the countries’ top diplomats followed up with a call to discuss “preparations for a potential high-level Russian-American summit.”

Moscow has yet to confirm any details, but according to multiple media reports, a US delegation – likely composed of national security advisers – will travel to Saudi Arabia in the coming days for talks with their Russian counterparts.

These are surrender talks, not “peace negotiations”. So, it’s important to exclude both a) the yapping dogs who still don’t think they have any skin in the game and b) the sacrificial lambs, since neither of them can bring anything rational or meaningful to the table.

The only way a substantive and potentially lasting agreement can be made is if the two relevant powers can reach an accommodation that they will mutually impose on all of the other parties involved. So, the fact that all of those other parties have been excluded from the talks is a positive sign that a resolution may be possible.

Of course the Europeans and the war-criminals in Kiev will be kicking and screaming about their exclusion and the eventual settlement. That’s precisely why they can’t be involved in the first place. If the matter was left up to the clueless, short-sighted retarderati that presently speak for the European Union, the Russian army would end up having go all the way to Lisbon and Barcelona, and no one wants that less than Vladimir Putin.

By the way, I expect Trump’s demand for Ukrainian natural resources is actually aimed at Putin, because Russia controls the region that contains most of them. That’s what he really wants out of the settlement, an agreement to sell them to the USA at a reasonable price, which Putin will likely grant if he’s provided what Russia needs with regards to a) territory it hasn’t taken yet and b) the retreat of NATO from Russia’s borders.

DISCUSS ON SG

He Doesn’t Care, Margaret

The corrupt kleptocrats of the EU are very, very worried that they will be left out of the peace negotiations between the USA and Russia. Which, of course, they will be, because they are a) irrelevant and b) worse than useless. The whole war could have been avoided and over one million lives saved if Boris Johnson hadn’t convinced the deranged Kiev regime that NATO could defend them from Russia.

President Donald Trump’s envoy has sparked fury among European leaders after being told they would be excluded from the Ukraine-Russia peace talks, causing Emmanuel Macron to call for an emergency summit.

US Special Presidential Envoy for Ukraine and Russia, Keith Kellogg, 80, has encouraged Europe to join the conversation about the Ukraine-Russia conflict, but ultimately said they won’t have a final say in the resolution.

‘That is not going to happen,’ he said at the Munich Security Conference on Saturday.

‘And to my European friends, I would say: get into the debate, not by complaining that you might, yes or no, be at the table, but by coming up with concrete proposals, ideas, ramp up [defense] spending.’

Kellogg defended America’s desire to keep the meeting small, stating that last time the meeting included too many countries and no agreement was made.

However, many European leaders are worried about being excluded from the conversation over fears the decision will directly – and negatively – affect their countries.

Seriously, even Ghana and Niger don’t care what France thinks, much less Sweden. Why would Russia or the USA? The age of pretending everyone is equal and everyone matters equally is over.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Importance of Knowledge

I’ve occasionally made reference to intellectual accomplishment as being the combination of three factors, and equated it to the effective use of artillery. The metaphor is as follows:

  • Gun Caliber: Intelligence, as best approximated by IQ
  • Gun Laying: Wisdom, which allows one to effectively aim and focus one’s intelligence on a meaningful target with precision.
  • Ammunition: Knowledge and experience. It doesn’t matter how smart you are if you are operating on the basis of false, incomplete, or outdated information.

Now, NN Taleb is a very smart guy. But like all very smart men, he is subject to the temptation to substitute his ability to think quickly on his feet and utilize logic to fill in the blanks of his actual knowledge. I used to be as prone as anyone else to occasionally bluff my way past my own ignorance, until one night in college, after one of my very smart friends was so inadvertently blown out of the water this way in public, that I vowed to never, ever do it again.

In fact, regular readers here will probably have noticed that I do the opposite; while I don’t play dumb, I quite often know a bit more about the topic being discussed than I usually advertise. Back when the evolutionists weren’t terrified of engaging with me, they used to warn each other that I was better read in the basics than they tended to assume.

Unfortunately, Taleb apparently never learned that lesson, which has thereby led to the comprehensive demolition of his hapless argument against IQ. Although I was asked numerous times to address that argument in detail, out of respect for an author that I admire as well as the obvious nature of its flaws, I contented myself with simply pointing out that his argument was false on its face, on the basis of its core assumptions. However, Heretical Insights showed no similar restraint in his point-by-point rebuttal.

Taleb starts off his attack on IQ on the grounds that it supposedly has a ‘low variance explained’ with various performances (which ones specifically he’s referring to, he doesn’t specify):

Psychometrics peddlers looking for suckers (military, large corporations) buying the “this is the best measure in psychology” argument when it is not even technically a measure — it explains at best between 2 and 13% of the performance in some tasks (those tasks that are similar to the test itself)

Taleb doesn’t provide any sources for where the 2-13% claim comes from, which is odd for someone who is so seemingly confident about his stance on IQ. Besides that, he makes a very basic mistake of misinterpreting anything that has a ‘low variance explained’ as being meaningless. The problem is that r2 is a flawed interpretation of effect size because it doesn’t tell us anything about the real world effect that one variable is expected to have on another variable. As an example, let’s assume that IQ explains ‘only’ 9% of the variance in income, so does it matter whether or not a one-point increase in IQ predicts a $10 increase in income or a $10,000 increase in income? Of course it does, and this is obvious to anyone who’s honest, but here lies the problem: r2 does not tell us how large the real-world effect is, because it expresses the effect size in a statistical sense, which is neat and all, but not in a real-world sense, so it’s not very meaningful. An r2 of 0.09 for IQ and income in the real-world means an r of 0.3, or that a 1 SD shift in IQ predicts a 0.3 SD shift in income, which is certainly not trivial.

So, in the real world, even things that only explain a small percentage of the variance can have large effects. Thus, a low variance explained is not valid grounds for dismissing the utility of IQ. But the truth is, we don’t even need to think that hard to find instances where a small variance explained has a large effect. Ryan Faulk gave more intuitive examples in one of his response videos which I will list here:

  • Mayonnaise only explains 5% of the variation in the tastiness of sandwiches. Therefore, hugely increasing mayonnaise levels will have no effect.
  • Salt explains little variation in steak tastes. Therefore, triple the salt!
  • In America, the proportion of people starving to death doesn’t explain much variation in health. Therefore, people don’t have to eat!
  • Stabbings explain little variation in physical health. Therefore, increased stabbings will be fine.
  • Oil production only explains around 5% of the variance in GDP per capita. Therefore, having 100 times more oil per capita won’t matter.
  • Ethnic diversity only explains 5% of the variance in GDP. Therefore, replacing Norwegians with Ethiopians won’t have any effect!

Sounds stupid, right? That’s because it is…

Overall, Taleb’s article was bad, really bad. For a guy who is so confident about his stance on IQ, it’s truly incredible that he made all the mistakes that he did. Taleb seems completely ideologically driven when it comes to the topic of IQ and is completely unwilling to even acknowledge all the compelling evidence in its favor. One of the things Taleb does is constantly insult advocates of IQ or call them names, quite childish for a man who’s supposed to be regarded highly and also quite telling of his attitude towards people who disagree with him. When all is said and done, it’s pretty clear that Taleb’s personal biases against IQ prevents him from seeing the overwhelming evidence that IQ is valid and useful. He thinks that the people who promote IQ are either racists/eugenicists or psychometric peddlers looking to get rich, it never even crosses his mind once that maybe the reason why people promote it is because it’s a good tool for making sense of the world around us. The words ‘racist’ and ‘eugenicist’ are nothing more than empty moral pejoratives used to instill fear against those who are able to think independently enough to not blindly obey our current institutional authorities or our modern sensibilities. Lots of things are eugenic Taleb, and if you’re so committed to fighting it, then the only thing that awaits Western civilization is ruin. It’s time to put this delusion to rest and acknowledge reality for what it is.

I don’t know what Taleb’s motivations might be for metaphorically sticking his hand into such an obvious woodchipper, nor am inclined to guess what they might be. But the important thing to remember is that no matter how smart you are, no matter how successful you might be, and no matter how astonishing your intellectual accomplishments, achievements, and original insights might be, nothing that you did in the past means that you are going to be right in the future.

Every appeal to human authority eventually fails in the face of objective reality, because reality is the ultimate authority short of the Creator God. And the more intelligent one is, the more intellectually accomplished one is, the more important it is to never lose sight of that.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Sheep Bare Their Cud-Chewers

The European ex-powers try to intimidate Russia with their feeble and largely nonexistent “unity”:

Statement issued by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, France, Germany, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom.

We are ready to enhance our support for Ukraine. We commit to its independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russia’s war of aggression.

We share the goal to keep supporting Ukraine until a just, comprehensive and lasting peace is reached. A peace that guarantees the interest of Ukraine and our own. We are looking forward to discussing the way ahead together with our American allies.

Our shared objectives should be to put Ukraine in a position of strength. Ukraine and Europe must be part of any negotiations. Ukraine should be provided with strong security guarantees. A just and lasting peace in Ukraine is a necessary condition for a strong transatlantic security.

We recall that the security of the European continent is our common responsibility. We are therefore working together to strengthen our collective defence capabilities.

This is one of the most retarded statements ever issued by a supposedly representative body, which, of course, the so-called “High Representative” isn’t. The only thing the “High Representative” represents is the subset of Clown World that runs its EU puppet leaders.

Everything about it is a lie. Russia is clearly, and as per usual in its history, fighting a defensive war. The fake borders notwithstanding, the Clown World-installed Kiev regime attacked the Russian people of the Donbass, refused to allow them self-representation, and did all of this AFTER the post-1991 expansion of NATO to which the USA had promised would not happen.

“Not one inch eastward” was the promise. The war is the obvious and inevitable result of Clown World’s attempt to expand its fake and gay rule through NATO, not “Russian aggression”.

The God-Emperor 2.0 has made it clear that the USA is not going to be Clown World’s enforcement arm any longer, and the collective forces of Europe would be hard pressed to fight Switzerland, let alone what is now a battle-hardened Russian army that has already defeated two NATO armies in addition to the Ukrainian army, as German military officers clearly know.

Military circles cite “around 120,000 soldiers as the lower limit” for the planned deployment. As the troops have to rotate, around 40,000 men and women would be deployed at any one time. EU military officials expect that the Europeans would be able to provide “up to 25,000 soldiers at most”.

The only move that will permit an immediate peace is if NATO withdraws to its 1991 borders, Russia is allowed to annex Odessa and all of the territory up to the Dnieper, Ukraine agrees to permanent neutrality, demilitarization, and the Kiev regime officials are surrendered to the Hague to face a war crimes tribunal made up of genuinely neutral parties led by China and India. Because if the unelected European “high representatives” don’t agree to this voluntarily, Russia is going to impose this and more unilaterally.

DISCUSS ON SG

Lonely Liberal Women

I wonder if they’ve ever considered how not behaving like horrifically unpleasant control freaks ready to take offense or administer a retarded lecture at the drop of a hat might make people more willing to spend time with them? Almost certainly not. They probably haven’t considered how actively uglifying themselves with ridiculous haircuts, piercings, and venomous hair colors makes them unattractive to others either.

It’s interesting to see how the conservative women are not only more soundly based, but more socially successful.

DISCUSS ON SG

Exceeding Expectations

I’m not going to lie, I’m starting to like the cut of this vice-president’s jib. He’s been much better than I expected, or even imagined he would be.

In an address at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Mr Vance warned Europe’s greatest threat came not from China or Russia but from within.

He said free speech and democratic institutions were being eroded and accused European politicians of forcing people to shut down social media accounts.

The Vice-President also urged the continent’s leaders to do more to stem illegal immigration.

In a specific attack on the UK, he raised the case of an ex-serviceman who prayed outside an abortion clinic and was convicted of breaching a safe zone around the centre.

‘Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making,’ Mr Vance told the conference. ‘If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.’

He accused EU officials of cancelling elections and asked whether ‘we’re holding ourselves to an appropriately higher standard’.

I like how he’s walking right into the serpents’ lair and calling them out for being liars and cowards right to their faces. As corrupt and retarded as US politicians have been for the last 50 years, it would be hard to find politicians anywhere in the world who have been as totally abysmal as the fake democrats of the European Union.

DISCUSS ON SG

Definitely Not Shipping from Britain

A 21 percent tariff makes it an easy decision to ship from Switzerland instead of the UK.

Britain is at risk of a £24billion hit to the economy after Donald Trump vowed to impose tariffs on countries that charge VAT.

The US President said he would charge reciprocal tariffs ‘for purposes of fairness’, which could result in a 21pc levy on goods exported to America.

He vowed to address ‘each country one by one’ – meaning it is not yet clear what the impact on Britain will be.

The UK currently charges a 20% standard VAT for most goods and services. Trump told reporters that he views VAT as a tariff.

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) previously estimated that tariffs of that scale could knock 0.4 percentage points off UK economic growth for the next two years – equivalent to around £24billion.

‘I’ve decided for purposes of fairness that I will charge a reciprocal tariff. It’s fair to all. No other country can complain,’ Trump told reporters as he signed the new order putting them in place.

It is a bit rich for the countries charging exorbitant VAT to complain about tariffs. VAT is a tax on imports, and the little redefinition game isn’t a justification for complaining about the USA doing the same.

DISCUSS ON SG

Based Books Sale: Spring Edition

Tired of mainstream traditionally published books with their diversity checklist characters and tired social justice themes? Then check out the Spring 2025 Based Book Sale running through the end of the day, Tuesday February 18, where you’ll find nearly 300 books that defy the politically correct gatekeeping and deliver traditional storytelling that upholds the good, the beautiful, and the true. All for $0.99 or free!

Here are some of the early Based Book Sale leaders, and we have a host of new faces among the most popular authors. Top sellers in the first day of the sale included John C. Wright’s One Bright Star to Guide Them, Robert Kroese’s Starship Grifters, Steven G. Johnson’s Operation Vampire (Murphy’s War Book 1), EJ Fisch’s three-book Ziva Payvan trilogy, Kevin Bates’, Quarantine and Even if by Fire, Michael F. Kane’s After Moses, Ryan M. Patrick’s The Martian Incident and Lag Delay: A Technothriller (Grace Parkowski Thrillers), Zakalog the Great’s The Mayor of Christ Mountain, Gregory Michael’s Chloe’s Kingdom, Russell May’s long awaited Solarvoid, sequel to Eta Cancri, Richard Paolinelli’s Sea Dragon, Brian Heming’s Murder on the Stellar Schooner: Illustrated Detective Scifi, the five-volume Exile War boxed set by Bowen Greenwood, J.Z. Pitts Virtual Rebel: A Sci-Fi Action Adventure (The Haven Trilogy Book 1), Terra Nullius (Slipspace Book 1) by Zachary Forbes, Asterius (Timelessness) by Susana Imaginário, the Shoot the Devil 3: Militia of Martyrs anthology, by a host of talented authors, Christopher G. Nutall’s Ark Royal, Michael Dibaggio’s House of Refuge, and classic works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E. Howard, G.K. Chesterton.