Tag: mailvox

Mailvox: the bitter generation

An Xer explains why Generation X is bitter and cynical:

As an X-er, I faithfully followed nearly all the advice given by my boomer parents, and it got me diddly-squat. Gradually I came to understand why: Nearly all the advice they gave me would have been terrific advice for someone with a typical boomer life trajectory, when mistakes could easily be erased and every tree looked like it would grow to the sky. Taking on ruinous debt for a fuzzy degree just so you’d have a diploma with your name on it was probably great advice in the 1960s and 70s. Buying more house than you really needed or could reasonably afford would have been a killer investment strategy in 1982. Everything boomers did was a dumb gamble that improbably succeeded, and they never wondered why; they just accepted it as a convenient law of nature. To this day, I still get these kinds of useless tips from my boomer parents, though by now I’ve learned to ignore them.

This is the great theme of the boomers’ life: They could always take a lot of wild, irresponsible chances on everything, because nearly every bet they made seemed to pay off handsomely, at least within their lifetimes. The completely predictable and obvious long-term costs were always way, way over the horizon — a problem for somebody else. The bill, if it ever came due, would be paid by their posterity, and who cares about those losers? They don’t even like the Beatles, and they’re too whiny and lazy anyway.

Which leads to the root of their endless narcissism. Many boomers believe the incredible advantages they enjoyed were not hard-won gains of previous generations that could easily be squandered, but the inevitable fruits of their own virtuous awesomeness. It never occurred to them that they were both the beneficiaries of and the caretakers for a fragile legacy, and that an economy where anyone with a pulse who was willing to bust their ass could enjoy a solid middle-class life was a historic anomaly that had to be carefully safeguarded. No, it was all just a well-deserved reward for boomers because of their own industriousness and moral goodness. Those whiny kids could have the same thing if they’d just work harder, is how boomers see it.

The cynicism of us X-ers comes from the fact that we grew up really believing this stuff, so finding out it was a lie was kind of a rude awakening. We fully expected that following the rules and ticking the right boxes would automatically give us the exact same life our parents had enjoyed, and we didn’t even have a hint that it might not be true. It also stings because, as another commenter alluded to, X-ers are old enough to have actually seen and gotten a taste of that vanished world; our younger cohorts know it only second-hand. They never lived through it, so the loss doesn’t feel as bitter for them.

I’m not bitter about it, but I, too, was somewhat snake-bit by Boomer cluelessness about the changing world. When I wanted to drop out of college halfway through my sophomore year to sell my 16-bit, 8-channel, stereo 44 KHz sound card that an engineer and I already had working in both hardware and software, my parents aggressively lobbied for me to “stay in school” and “get my degree” because, as every Boomer knew, college degrees are so important. Which, in retrospect, made absolutely no sense in light of how they wanted me to continue working for my father’s company after graduating, which I’d already been doing every summer.

So, instead of selling 200 million dollars worth of sound cards more than two years before Media Vision did with a vastly inferior product, I now have a BS in Economics with a second major in East Asian Studies and a minor in History. None of which has ever profited me so much as a single dime.

The responsibility, of course, is mine. It’s on me, not them. I should have ignored their advice, dropped out, and ploughed ahead to pursue the opportunity while the window was open. But I didn’t, because I trusted what I assumed was their greater experience and wisdom and because it is always easier to take what passes for the normal path in one’s social circle. And that is why Generation X is so little inclined to pay any heed to Boomers now. We listened to them and we took their advice in our youth, and now we see how doing so led us astray.

Mailvox: this church is not dead

A reader emails to confirm that the Southern Baptists are not necessarily impressed by proposed SBC resolutions:

I am member of a Southern Baptist church in Arizona, a small church whose pastor delivers spiritually meaty sermons with isn’t afraid to tell people unpleasant truths.  Your articles on the resolution directed against the Alt-Right and nationalism had me worried, as I have no desire to see my church or those like us converged.  I went to church today praying for the right words to talk to my pastor about this issue.

After the sermon, my fears have been quelled, as shades of the Alt-Right were present throughout it.  Our pastor talked about nations, not about some vague global community.  He spoke in favor of using mockery against the enemies of God and the modern false prophets.  He warned against letting political correctness stop us from defending the Gospel.  He even used the words “I don’t care” in regards to those who disagree with him on national-spiritual matters, which brought a smile to my face.

I don’t know how this resolution will play out and what it means for Southern Baptists as a whole, but I do know now that we aren’t all lost. Thank you for the community you provide at your blog.

Remember, no matter how bad things get, the battle isn’t over and there is no reason to accept defeat. Only two numbers matter, 2 and 12. Because one plus one is three and all we need are twelve.

Mailvox: disproof vs positive claim

RS asked about tariffs and wages:

In your second presentation on Free Trade you said that Hazlitt was erroneous in claiming that tariffs would reduce wages in America and you pointed to the fact that wages have reduced since 1973 event though tariffs have largely been eliminated. In any event, I think that the reduction in wages for American workers since that time is due to the large scale importation of foreign workers which seems orthogonal to tariffs.

It is false to claim that tariffs reduce wages. While it is true that the two primary reasons for reduced American wages are a) twice as many women working than before and b) the importation of foreign workers, the fact is that reduction of tariffs has not increased wages. Perhaps more to the point, wages in China have risen from 445 CNY to 67569, most of this prior to the relaxation of tariff rates in 2010.

It is difficult to separate the various effects, but the point is that we do not see the inverse tariff/wage relationship upon which Hazlitt in part bases his case.

Meanwhile, DH found himself troubled by the thoughts my previous Darkstream raised:

Your recent dark-stream is quite thought provoking. I had difficulty putting my mind at rest enough to fall asleep until way past my usual bedtime. The points you made resonate with me as true, however the argument is left begging for more.

Your reaction to comments stood out as thought provoking as well. While I do not consider myself to be particularly bright on an absolute scale, I have no idea what my I.Q. is. I find it does not require a great deal of intelligence to be frustrated with and isolated from most of those around me.  I relate to your frustration, though I wish it didn’t keep you from completing your thoughts.

Even if we could distill all the best aspects of every “ism” into one best of all “isms”, it would not be accepted upon pain of death either by the elites or their devoted subjects.

The point that I am making is not that communism is good or desirable. It is merely that global free markets and individual sovereignty is incompatible with the survival of both nation and family. It is not an accident that so many globalists are childless individuals with unusual family situations; even the modestly successful expat communities tend to be mostly populated by rootless transients upon whom one can hardly expect to successfully build a society, let alone a civilization.

What passes for global society is intrinsically parasitical, if not downright predatory, and therefore cannot possibly serve as a sound foundation in itself. Globalism requires that cows first transform themselves into wolves, and then, after that impossibility is successfully accomplished, learn to eat grass.

Mailvox: the next Literally Hitler

Is apparently not from the Middle East at all. The news from Austria is encouraging, and not entirely unexpected.

In Austria the coalition of the center-left and center-right party broke up and there will be a new election in October 2017. Currently, the center-right and right-wing party have nearly half the seats in the parliament already. The green party is expected to loose voters, while the left-liberal and right-liberal partie (Neos and Team Stronach) will maybe and surely drop out of the parliament, respectively. The center-left party is not expected to make gains. The big winners will be, and must be, the right leaning parties.

Usually I would not put much faith into the conservative cucks, but now Sebastian Kurz has taken over leadership. Despite being 30 years old, he has already done a much greater service to Europe and Austria than most conservatives do in their whole life. Being Austria’s foreign minister since age 27, he was the single most important political figure responsible for closing the Balkan route, thus keeping hundreds of thousands if not millions of invaders out. He is in the process of closing the Italian route and already has publicly called out NGOs for cooperating and actively assisting the human traffickers bringing the Africans over. From an Austrian point of view his most bally move was to politically break with the Germans, thereby doing what no other Austrian politician dared to do in many many decades. His recent immigration laws aim towards removing islam from public life.

The left leaning Austrian media and all of Germany’s media are already writing their hit pieces on him. Apparently, he is the first Austrian politician since Haider deserving the title literally Hitler, which these days appears to be a compliment.

Our next government will likely be strongly right leaning. It seems as if you were right, and the times are really changing. Note also that according to polls, if there was a vote right now in Vienna, around 40% would vote for the right wing party, giving them a vast edge over the social democrats coming second at around 25%. The same social democrats that have won every single Viennese election since 1919.

The tide has turned. The EU is dying. The forces that will propel Reconquista 2.0 onward and restore a revived Christendom are beginning to grow and gather.

This is the time for courage and confidence, not cowardice and cuckery. Within eight years, we will see NGOs being banned and the surviving architects of the invasion being put on trial for treason in multiple countries.

As the young Sweden Democrats say, Europe belongs to us.

Mailvox: a call to edit

HJ explains why he has begun to get active as an Infogalactic editor:

The other day I was interested for no particular reason in the founding of Oxford University, and looked it up on IG.  The content was the original material pulled from Wikipedia.  To my astonishment, or maybe I was naive, there was no mention of the crucial role of the Church in laying the foundations of the university system.  Here’s what it said:

“Teaching at Oxford existed in some form as early as 1096, but it is unclear when a university came into being.  It grew quickly in 1167 when English students returned from the University of Paris.  The historian Gerald of Wales lectured to such scholars in 1188 and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland, arrived in 1190.”

So apparently those were the highlights of the one-hundred-year period that began with a handful of monks and ended up setting the world standard for institutions of higher learning.  Fortunately, there was an entire section on the history of women’s blahblah, in which I was informed that “Oxford and Cambridge were widely perceived to be bastions of male privilege.”  Until they were converged, of course.

Needless to say, this cannot stand, so I jumped in and made some edits.  Much more can and will be done.  If anyone out there is wondering what the point of Infogalactic is and why it’s important to get involved, hopefully this example will demonstrate why Wikipedia needs to be disrupted.  It’s biased, and SJWs have smeared their feces all over the place as a form of territorial display.  And yet to many people Wikipedia is an impressive and reliable source.  We will do better.

Someday it may be possible to view IG content from the perspective of a Christ-hating SJW sperg.  When that day comes, I suggest we call that perspective “Wikipedia.”

People often ask me why this Infogalactic page doesn’t have X or why that Infogalactic page has Y. To everyone, my answer is the same: because you haven’t fixed it.

I am not the reality police. The Techstars are not occupying themselves with trying to fix all of the egregious errors and propaganda that litters Wikipedia, and which Infogalactic has inherited by virtue of its nature as a dynamic fork. What we’re doing, rather, is giving the truth-oriented community the ability to fix these things themselves, for their own benefit, on their own time. With 7 million pages to date, that’s all the dev team can reasonably expect to do.

So get involved. Do one edit per day. Join the Burn Unit. Start using IG News and IG Tech for your headlines. Get a group of five editors together and launch your own IG Francais or IG Finance or IG FPS. All of these things are possible, but all of them require action, not mere intentions. And, in doing so, help Infogalactic continue to grow into the replacement for Wikipedia that it is designed to be.

Global Rank: 55,991
US Rank: 15,340 

We have a long, long way to go, obviously, seeing as Wikipedia is currently 5 and 6. But we are considerably closer than we were six months ago.

Mailvox: A church, converged

This is what it looks like. Step by step, the world reels in one congregation after another, simply because the members would not abide by the Scripture.

The church that I grew up in was a place that I loved. My family spent a lot of time volunteering at various functions to help the place run right: setting up for lunch after the service, helping pass out food at funeral services, spending time getting it set up for vacation bible school, etc. A lot of good memories were made in that place that are still cherished to this day. Then came time to go away to college and I spent less time at that church, simply stopping in when I came home.

Looking back and thinking about the things that Vox has brought up, I realize all the signs of a growing convergence were there that we didn’t see. It started with the little things that we went along with because, how much could it hurt right? We no longer sang just the old hymns, and moved onto a mix of contemporary worship songs. Then there were no more hymns. Heaven forbid if the sound system crashed as the congregation would just have to stand there in shock and silence now. Then came the eradication of the clauses in the Bylaws about prohibiting members of the Masons to be elders, because that was simply “an old, archaic thing that didn’t matter anymore”. Then came the church vote on installing women deacons and elders, as both of them had “just done so much for the church”. Then came the hiring of a “new, dynamic pastor” who was certainly going to revitalize the numbers of people that were for some odd reason starting to drift to other churches. He certainly wasn’t Reformed, but that really didn’t matter did it? During the meeting with him before the vote, he was amazed that there was this document called the Heidelberg Catechism and had never heard of it, but promised to go read it when he was able. And finally there came the raiding of the saving account that the giving of the faithful had stored up over a hundred and twenty five years. Now it was all needed to build a “community outreach center” for the “vibrant growth of the unchurched” that would be our new church building and revitalize the area to new heights for God.

Now, I drive through the streets of my hometown out towards the crossroads of the highway to look at that God-forsaken temple to man’s arrogance. It is a grand, new building designed by some snooty architectural firm that is pretty much a mirror image of a movie theater the next town over. No real identifying marks on it, unless you drive around back and stumble upon where there is a cross. Or I guess if you can decode the “Faith Center” or whatever it is called now, and recognize it as a church. I have snuck in once or twice to see the new reality, just to sate my curiosity. After the light show and the semi-professional band is done playing, there is a fifteen minute self-help service that tells us how good we are and cherished we are. People are encouraged to bring their own Bibles, though I can’t see why, as there is no mention of God’s Holy Writ during the service. Must be for show. Or maybe something to rest your gourmet coffee on so as not to stain the new carpet.

Mailvox: it’s an ECHO CHAMBER

Phat Rephat, whoever that is, complains that excessive moderation is turning VP into “an echo chamber”:

VD, I’ve been following you for quite a while and appreciate your viewpoint and the information shared. Of late, however, it seems you’re shifting to the echo chamber model. I agree with your desire to keeping on-topic and without profanity. But not allowing contradicting views or the calling out of the GE when he appears to be losing focus, is not of value to any of us; concern trolls aside.

Well, obviously I am terrified of VP being called an echo chamber. I mean, what could be worse than an Alt-Right echo chamber? Where else will people be able to find conservative, or liberal, or mainstream media views being expressed?

Clearly we must act! I will take his well-considered advice.

Trolls, defeatists, anklebiters, have at it. Comment as you see fit. Be defeatist. Be despondent. Share your contradicting views. Call out the God-Emperor. Insult your fellow commenters. I’m not going to moderate anything at all. Moderators, stand down and let the commenters comment freely, as they obviously desire.

I will also unspam every spam comment that catches previous trolls.

It’s certainly less work and time-investment on my part. I look forward to seeing precisely how much the comments are going to improve and how much value is going to be added to everyone.

UPDATE: Four hours and 47 minutes later:

Hello VD:

It’s Phat Repat; I get your point.

PS This is a Mea Culpa. 😉

Point? What point could that possibly be? I’m just astounded by all the added value!

Mailvox: moderates never learn

You don’t win by running from your extremists and stabbing them in the back in order to try to win the approval of the center. See: Sinn Fein. And yet, it appears elements of the Alt-Lite intend to make exactly the same mistake that Bill Buckley and his followers did when they banished dissidents from the conservative movement and created the Alt-Right in the first place. A report from Berkeley from someone who has been active there since the start:

Antifa’s tactics rely heavily on police non-involvement. In this case, police arrested Antifa wearing masks and also patrolled the nearest parking garage, allegedly catching a truck of Antifa with explosives as a result. They also did NOT disarm our side nearly as much and allowed us to wear masks since they weren’t for identity concealment.

While Antifa’s tactics are somewhat sophisticated, they don’t appear to be flexible or adaptive. 2/1, 3/4, 4/15, and 4/27 were all the same. There were more Antifa present than a first glance suggests, as many of them came in quietly to check out our supplies and our numbers. They must have decided we were too well prepared to attack, at least without their explosives.

One big question of the day was who would the 2 PM start time hurt more: us or them? There are various factors, so can’t say for sure, but it would appear to have hurt them more. The numbers we got were key, but that may not be repeatable as the urgency will fade the longer we go without violent confrontation.

I see a disconnect between the rank and file and the leadership, particularly the Oath Keepers and Kyle Chapman. The rally attendees are mostly there to push back and to support free speech. They either don’t mind or LOVE Nathan Damigo and the TRS/IE/TDS guys, who literally saved lives on 4/15. Kyle and the OK, on the other hand, actively conspire to prevent any white nationalists from speaking on the open mic and don’t want them at the events.

For now, no question, everyone is following Kyle, which makes perfect sense. So far we have the fighters, the medics, and the lawyers working under Kyle’s banner.

There’s a delegation issue on our side, likely the result of not yet knowing who can be trusted to get things done. I do my own thing with my own group but found it was very difficult to make use of volunteers who didn’t have an extraordinary amount of personal initiative bc every decision had to be run by Kyle and Kyle never had time to respond.

The Oath Keepers are a pain in the ass to work with. There was some confusion in the morning bc they were telling people that “the neo-nazis” had been arrested, giving the impression it was Nathan’s group. Turns out they use neo-nazi as an all-purpose slur and it was actually Antifa who were arrested. In general the OK have survived by being extremely decorous when it comes to the law, so they are basically the nagging mom on the scene, “I don’t like this group, I don’t like that group. You can’t do X, can’t do Y [when actually X and Y are perfectly legal].” Understandable but annoying.

I didn’t see this “Millennials vs Boomers” thing at all at this event. The Boomers who showed up are much further right than the youngins. I’m curious to see what comes out of the ghetto going forward. After both events, I ended up talking with young black men from Oakland who consume a ton of YouTube and were hella woke, perfectly happy to embrace TDS guys bc they said people in the hood are sick of the discivic antics of Antifa and BLM.

They aren’t the only Alt-Lite group about which I’ve heard the same failed strategy of running to the center being embraced. The thing that is so stupid about the strategy is that it is bound to fail because it is based on a false assumption that people want to be chased rather than led. The moderate conceptual model can’t explain why Ronald Reagan got more votes, and was more popular, than the more moderate George Bush. They can’t understand why people will respond so much more positively to those whose nationalism is outside the framework that the mainstream media deems to be reasonable. They can’t understand what Osama bin Laden meant by “the strong horse”.

And they’ll never see it coming when, like the Tea Party, they suddenly find that the parade they think they are leading has abruptly gone in another direction. If it didn’t work for the mainstream media, if it didn’t work for the American political establishment, if it didn’t work for the British political establishment, or for the European political establishments, it certainly isn’t going to work for them. These massive waves of social mood cannot be managed, muzzled, or controlled.

I appreciate what the moderates of the Alt-Lite are trying to accomplish, but the current trend is very clear. Nationalism is rising. Not civic nationalism, not paperwork nationalism, not state patriotism, not any other facsimile, but real, genuine, linguistic-religious-genetic nationalism. And the post-It’s a Small World Happy Time Credit Boom pendulum has barely even begun swinging back. Anyone and anything that stands in the way of that is going to find itself going by the wayside sooner or later.

Omni-nationalism, not civic nationalism or imperialism, much less multiculturalism or globalism, is the future. The world will be a confederation of nations, not a global federation of denationalized, deracinated, demoralized states. Which, of course, is why the Alt-Right is going to subsume the Alt-Lite, at least, those elements which don’t wind up drifting to the Left like the Never Trumpers did.

It is, of course, more than a bit ironic that self-appointed “free speech advocates” are themselves attempting to prevent others from speaking. You’d think people so obsessed with optics would be capable of grasping that they are creating a serious credibility problem for themselves.

UPDATE: To quote Cernovich, few understand this. Almost all the rank and file and 100% of those vying for leadership positions believe appealing to the center is the key. Long run, it won’t matter.

Ye cats. To think some still can’t understand why I have zero interest in leading anyone anywhere. MPAI. If you learn nothing else here, remember that.

WWII production trivia

MR sent this fascinating explanation of one reason the Allied bombing campaign was a bust with regards to inhibiting German aircraft manufacturing:

When I was in grad school I heard of the origins of CO2/Sodium Silicate core making in Germany during WWII. The fellow said we were bombing factories and foundries.  My dad and later myself were metallurgists, both doing time in the foundry industry before branching out.

Coremaking….. cores make the hollow spaces inside castings, is heat intensive as it was done with oil bonded sands that had to be baked like cookies.  Gas, coal, coke…..and big core ovens. A cupola to melt iron can be made from oil drums and bricks and the molding sands can be mixed with a shovel and rake, but you need ovens for cores.  We couldn’t figure out how the Germans were making castings so soon after we bombed their foundries into the stone age.

After the war we found out that they had invented a core making process that did not need ovens or oil.  Simple sodium silicate and clean sand.  What the foundry men would do was take the coreboxes, the molds for the core..out in the cities and countryside.  They taught the people to mix the silicate and sand and ram up the cores, then set them out in the air.  In a few hours to a day the core would be hard as a rock…literally.  The two halves, or more pieces, would be glued together and be ready to go. They had regular drop off and pick up routes and kept the German foundry industry humming.

Necessity, as is so often the case, proved the mother of invention. Given the dearth of invention in Silicon Valley of late, perhaps we should encourage the North Koreans to bomb the Bay Area.

Mailvox: fighting antifa

A firsthand report from the Second Battle of Berkeley from a reader:

Those Nike batting helmets are light, but they work! I took a rock to the top of my head yesterday that probably would have had me out.We also tested it before the saturday with a could of good smacks to the sides and back with both dowels and 1x3s. The impact jerked your head, but it protected against the pain and did a reasonable job of getting the blow to skate along the curves of the helmet.

One of the folks there next to me wasn’t wearing a helmet, and took a nasty smack in the head with a thrown full mini-can of soda. He recovered OK, but there was a LOT of blood. They have video of him getting treated.

Wear a helmet…even if you are fit and young. I armored up because I am slow, but even those fit madmen dodging rocks on the front line could use it.

…and VD, They did a fantastic job of keeping the lines together yesterday. They had folks watching for flanking and the berserkers (that’s what those based millennials were fighting like…absolutely breathtaking) at the front were keeping an ear out for the yell to pull back when they smashed into the front lines of the very skinny antifa janissaries. There were only a few incidents of folks pushing too far and getting enveloped.

Gloves are necessary as well. I started out with my motorcycle gloves, but lost them when I took them off to put some gauze on the fellow how to smack with the soda. Even though I didn’t take a hit in the hands, I still learned why I needed them after the rally when I was heading back home. I didn’t get pepper sprayed directly, but I did go through the clouds a couple of times and helped a few guys holding their head back when they were getting their eyes washed out. Pepper spray residue was all over my hands and when I took off my mask, helmet and goggles, I instinctively wiped my lips. Noob mistake that would have been mitigated if I was wearing gloves. I’m glad there were no cameras to capture my “it’s too spicy” dance.

Good to know that there are some tactically-aware leaders taking charge, and that people are following their directions. Discipline plus preparation plus leadership usually equals victory. I noticed the discipline right away in the first videos I’d seen; it’s far more important that everyone is on the same page than for anyone to engage in individual heroics or pursue optimal tactical objectives.

It was also significant to see that the tanks were going after the antifa leaders. Remember, antifa is all offense, so the leaders are not expecting to engage in any direct conflict themselves. The wedgies were a nice touch; another effective humiliation is to tie their shoelaces together or to remove their belts and bind their ankles with them.

It seems to me there ought to be a bounty placed on antifa flags and masks. I certainly wouldn’t mind having a flag or two to hang in my office as a trophy.