What Did We Expect?

Fencing Bear points out that the extreme decline of literacy should have been obvious, less due to the various technological and demographic changes, but because of the way in which the value of reading has been deprecated by the schools and universities:

Why should we expect our students to be able to read for scriptural allusions and figures of speech, images and cross-references and patterns of meaning, for symbolism and beauty and the resonance of phonemes, when everything in their education is telling them that reading is a skill that they need to make money, and making money means filling in the right forms to get shipments from China or contracts from India? Why should we expect our students to enjoy reading when we have reduced their education to a series of bullet points that they might as well get from SparkNotes or chatGPT? Why should they care about reading when their souls have been rendered statistics in the calculation of our national GDP?

It’s true that reading, and the liberal arts in general, have been massively devalued since the early 1980s, as a part of the quantization that has followed the adoption of a purely materialist philosophy by the education system and society at large.

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A Tragic Trust

Smart Boys who love science and trust modern medicine will literally die before they will question their assumptions of who is credible and who is not, as we’re witnessing in real-time with Scott Adams:

Scott’s story is tragic. He has been repeatedly betrayed by Modern Medicine.

Let me explain.

Scott took COVID-19 Vaccines. He trusted his doctors who would have assured him they were “Safe and Effective”. You can count that as a life-changing betrayal.

Since then, Scott has made it very clear that those who didn’t take the COVID-19 Vaccines made the right choice and didn’t have to worry about impacts of the jabs on their health. It is probable that he suffered bodily injury as a result of the jabs.

Scott was then betrayed by his Oncologists. It is clear that his Prostate Cancer was not treated properly. Prostate Cancer patients can live many years, even decades without progression, with the proper Cancer Treatment.

I don’t know what Prostate Cancer treatments Scott took, who his Oncologists were or which Cancer Center he was treated at. But they failed to stop Scott’s cancer from progressing rapidly to a “terminal stage” in a short period of time.

In addition to failing to treat his cancer properly, Scott’s Oncologist lied to him, repeatedly.

First, he told Scott that Ivermectin wouldn’t work, even though he had no way to know whether it would or wouldn’t.

Second, he told Scott that he had 0% chance of survival and would die shortly.

I wish Scott had told us the name of his Oncologist, and the name of the Cancer Center he was treated at, so that other Cancer patients could avoid them and save themselves from harm. Unfortunately, he hasn’t given us these names.

Instead, he has given the world my name, for reasons I don’t understand.

I have never been Scott’s doctor. I was his Health Coach, very briefly. Our Health Coaching relationship lasted 1.5 months, at which point Scott left.

Scott supposedly tried Ivermectin and Fenbendazole, for a total of 1 month.

Scott never completed my Ivermectin Protocol, which is a minimum of 3 months with follow-up blood work and imaging. So we will never know if Ivermectin and Fenbendazole would have worked for him or not. Trying it for one month and then stopping, is not sufficient to make any sort of conclusion.

It is the equivalent of doing one chemo cycle, stopping and declaring chemo doesn’t work.

It takes approximately 3 months to see significant changes on blood cancer markers and imaging. During that time, PSA may go up due to cancer cell killing and release of cancer antigens.

What is both tragic and stupid is the way in which Scott simply refuses to question any step in his headlong, self-imposed failure cascade. But instead of stopping, taking a look around, and assessing exactly how he has put himself in his present position, Scott insists on doubling down, then doubling down again.

It’s neither honest nor rational behavior. If he was honest, Scott would have identified everyone as well as his specific treatment protocols. If he was rational, he would have given the alternative treatment a fair shot; he is literally treating himself with less care than Spacebunny has successfully treated one of our dogs. The fact that he continues to act as a gatekeeper in the medical context despite his condition is sufficient to render his situation entirely unsympathetic.

Their trust is not only tragic, it is woefully misplaced.

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Goodell’s Paradox

The NFL’s pursuit of “fairness” in potentially prioritizing win-loss records over division championships for playoff seeding has exposed how an even greater unfairness will be created if the league’s stupid proposal to devalue the divisions passes at the league owners’ meeting today.

The Commissioner wants the playoff tree to be reconfigured to tie seeding to record, without regard to whether a team won its division. The goal isn’t to promote equity when it comes to who’s at home and who’s on the road in the playoffs; the objective is to make late-season games more compelling by giving teams more to play for.

Whether that happens remains to be seen.

If the Commissioner gets his way on this (yes, the Lions proposed it, but the league office instigated it), it creates a separate issue as it relates to the scheduling formula.

Currently, every team plays: (1) six games against the three other teams in its division; (2) four games against all teams from another division in the conference, which rotates every year; (3) two games against the teams from the remaining divisions in the conference that finished in the same position the year before (first, second, third, fourth); (4) four games against all teams from a division in the other conference, which rotates every year; and (5) one game against a team from a division in the other conference that finished in the same position the year before.

By devaluing a division championship and emphasizing competition within the conference, the eight games every year that arise from an effort to ensure variety in schedule need to be reconsidered. Last year, the teams of the NFC North benefited from playing two of the weak divisions — the AFC South and NFC West. This year, it’ll be a much different story for the Lions, Vikings, Packers, and Bears; they play eight games against the teams of the AFC North and NFC East.

Likewise, the Rams have a very real chance at being in the No. 1 seed in 2025, given that they’ll play eight games against the teams of the AFC South and NFC South.

If a team’s record relative not to its division but to its conference will take on more importance in a playoff tree constructed based on total record, teams need to play more games in their conference. Ideally, every team would play one game against every other team in its conference — like college conferences did before they became too big to allow that.

If there is no value to divisions, or winning a division, then there is no reason to have the playoffs in the first place. Just do it like they do in soccer and award the conference championship to the team with the best record, and play the Super Bowl between the AFC and NFC champions.

But wait, that could be unfair to a team in one conference that had a better record than the best team in the other conference. So really, the playoffs should be eliminated altogether and the Super Bowl should be played between the teams with the two best records, regardless of conference.

Then again, isn’t that unfair to the team that finished with the best record? Why play the Super Bowl at all?

UPDATE: Another excellent suggestion that Roger Goodell should contemplate.

I just think there should be an equitable lottery of who should be the Super Bowl winner based on participation trophies.

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Free Trade is Deader than Dead

Free Trade, and the Comparative Advantage theory that supported it, were always examples of the Ricardian Vice, in which all other relevant variables are stripped away in order to support false conclusion based on a single variable. But among the many fatal flaws of Free Trade, and there are at least nine, is the loss of national security based on outsourcing consumer production to potential enemies.

Engineers have discovered ‘kill switches’ embedded within Chinese-manufactured parts in American solar farms, raising fears that Beijing could manipulate power supplies or even ‘physically destroy’ grids across the US, UK and Europe.

Energy officials are now assessing the risks posed by small communication devices discovered inside power inverters – an integral component of renewable energy systems that connects them to the power grid.

While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.

But rogue communication devices not listed in product documents have been found in some solar power inverters by US experts who strip down equipment hooked up to grids to check for security issues, two sources told Reuters.

Using these devices to skirt firewalls and switch off inverters remotely, or change their settings, could destabilise power grids, damage energy infrastructure and trigger widespread blackouts, experts said.

‘That effectively means there is a built-in way to physically destroy the grid,’ one of the sources declared.

In other words, it appears that China can turn off power to the West any time it chooses, thanks to the economists and politicians who encouraged the outsourcing of solar power manufacturing there.

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Speaking of Zero Empathy

Some bullies just don’t know when to stop relying on bullying others to get what they want:

Blake Lively allegedly threatened to leak embarrassing private texts from bestie Taylor Swift unless the pop star agreed to publicly back the actress in her feud with co-star Justin Baldoni, DailyMail.com can exclusively reveal.

The explosive revelation appears in a legal letter filed Wednesday by Baldoni’s lawyers, in response to Lively’s request to quash their subpoena to the singer.

The court filing alleges that the Gossip Girl alum had tried to pressure Swift, 35, to issue a public statement in support of her and urged her to delete text messages between them during her escalating legal battle with Baldoni, 41.

I was pretty sure this wasn’t going to end well for Mr. and Mrs. Reynolds, but I had no idea they were in this far over their heads. Taylor Swift goes out of her way to destroy guys she dated for three weeks, imagine what she’s likely to do when faced with this sort of betrayal from a former friend.

One has to assume Russian scientists are watching the situation closely, since this might be the most devastating non-nuclear weapon to be dropped since the Oreshnik was introduced.

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EU = Elective Unaliving

Hungary rightly reacts with horror to the EU’s plan to bring about an actual Dark Age to Europe:

The European Commission’s plan to completely phase out Russian fuel imports violates the sovereignty of EU member states by depriving them of the right to choose their energy sources, according to Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto.

Brussels has outlined plans to end the bloc’s energy reliance on Moscow by completely eliminating imports of oil, gas, and nuclear fuel in the coming years. Hungary obtains over 80% of its gas from Russia via pipeline, with LNG playing a supplementary role. Budapest has continued to strengthen its energy ties with Moscow despite the sanctions introduced by the EU in the wake of the Ukraine conflict.

“The forced, artificially ideological-based exclusion of natural gas, crude oil, and nuclear fuel originating from Russia will lead to severe price increases in Europe, seriously harming the sovereignty of European countries, and cause major difficulties for European companies,” Szijjarto said in a video he shared on his Facebook page on Tuesday, adding that “what was announced is absolute insanity.”

“Everyone in Brussels has lost their common sense,” the foreign minister exclaimed, emphasizing that Budapest would not allow the European Commission (EC) to violate Hungary’s sovereignty and would “uphold the right to source energy from where it reliably arrives and where it arrives at a low cost.”

If Brussels successfully implements this energy-starvation plan in even part of Europe, the European nations will be begging for Russia to liberate them from the anti-democratic satanic lunatics now ruling over them.

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Green Energy Blackout

Spain, Portugal, and parts of France have been without electricity all day:

Panic buying has swept Spain and Portugal as nationwide blackouts paralysed both countries, shutting down transport networks and prompting people to clear supermarket shelves amid fears the chaos could last for days.

Huge queues formed outside shops and banks as residents and tourists desperately sought to stockpile essentials and take out cash as much cash as they could amid the uncertainty.

Rows of cars were pictured lining up at petrol stations as people hoped to fill up their vehicles and fuel cans, with ex-pats detailing how they have tried to power generators to keep their homes going.

Airports have also been hit by the outages, with flights delayed and cancelled and holidaymakers in Portugal warned by the country’s flagship airline TAP Air not to travel for their flights until further notice.

A British holidaymaker in Madrid described the situation in the city centre as ‘carnage’, telling MailOnline: ‘People are starting to panic. It’s going to get really bad if they don’t restore power quickly.’

Madrid’s Mayor urged people in the city to stay where they were as the disaster unfolded, while the president of the city’s regional government called for Spain’s prime minister to activate an emergency plan to allow for soldiers to be deployed.

Power outages gripped Spain at around 12.30 local time, plunging millions into darkness. Spain’s nuclear power plants automatically stopped, but diesel generators were activated to keep them in ‘safe condition’, officials said.

Trains and metro services were shut down in both countries, with people stuck in tunnels and on railway tracks, forcing evacuations.

Portugal’s electricity grid operator warned that it is ‘impossible’ to say when the power supply would be fully restored, adding that while ‘all resources’ were deployed to resolve the issues, it could take up to a week to fix.

The power cuts come just days after Spain’s power grid ran entirely on renewable energy, including wind, solar and hydro power, for a whole day for the first time on April 16. 

Spanish officials are urgently investigating the cause of the outages and have said they are looking into the possibility of the blackouts being triggered by a devastating cyber attack. 

Videos online show railway networks in Spanish cities plunged into chaos, with people being evacuated through tunnels as blackouts hit underground stations and halted trains.

The centralized power grid was always a foolish idea, with little redundancy and a natural tendency to get pushed beyond its limits. But attempting to go entirely to so-called “renewable” energy – as if oil isn’t a naturally renewable resource – was always likely to result in something like this.

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This Would Be Why

Women sometimes complain that men don’t take them seriously. And this sort of thing is why:

Katy Perry looked ready for action on Sunday as she posed alongside Lauren Sánchez in bodycon space outfits ahead of their Blue Origin mission on Monday as the singer declared: ‘We’re putting the ‘ass’ in astronaut!’

The star will be part of a history-making 11-minute flight, alongside Jeff Bezos’ fiancée Lauren, journalist Gayle King and three other women, which is set to be the first all-female trip to space since 1963.

The launch is part of Blue Origin’s New Shepherd program – and will take place in west Texas on April 14, with the new space suits designed by Lauren herself.

Katy shared snaps from the launch on Sunday to her Instagram and penned: ‘Happy International Day of Human Space Flight. Forever in awe of the Universe and it’s alignment.’

She looked confident in the blue jumpsuit which was emblazoned with ‘Perry’ and said ‘Blue Origin’ down the arm.

This week Lauren told The New York Times of designing the blue suits: ‘Let’s reimagine the flight suit. Usually, you know, these suits are made for a man. Then they get tailored to fit a woman.’

She added: ‘I think the suits are elegant but they also bring a little spice to space.’ 

Five months ago Lauren got in touch with Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim, the co-founders of the brand Monse, who are also creative directors of Oscar de la Renta and made her 2024 Met Gala outfit.

They agreed to help her with the space suit designs. 

Fernando said during the interview: ‘We even had a meeting on what underwear Lauren is going to wear…’ to which she responded: ‘Skims!’

I’m not saying the suits aren’t attractive. They are. Sanchez, at least, looks good in hers. It’s just that what it says about the priorities of the female astronauts doesn’t tend to lend it to anyone taking them seriously. I mean, if it weren’t for the fact that we know none of them had anything to do with the flight itself, and that they’ll have no more control over the flight controls than the dog the Russians sent up back in the day did, the odds would very heavily favor them crashing.

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Ill-Suited for War

It turns out that the profit motive tends to undermine actual military performance, which is why Clown World has long preferred subversion and color revolution to direct conflict:

Spiegel published a quite eye-opening piece yesterday, which reveals the long-kept truth about the performance of German weapons systems in real wartime conditions:

A German military assessment exposes major issues with NATO weapons in Ukraine.

The PzH 2000 howitzer, while advanced, is so technically fragile that its combat usefulness is in doubt. The Leopard 1A5 tank is used mostly as makeshift artillery due to weak armor. The Leopard 2A6 is too expensive and complex to maintain at the front.

Air defense systems also face problems. The IRIS-T works well, but ammo is too costly and scarce. The Patriot system is called “unsuitable for combat” because its MAN carrier vehicles are outdated and lack spare parts.

This information was revealed in a transcript of a lecture given by the deputy military attaché of the German embassy in Kiev. The summary of the paper is very clear: “Hardly any large German piece of equipment is fully suitable for war.”

The report cites “an internal paper of the Bundeswehr” about the real practicality of Germany’s top weapons. We can assume that the very same results extend to the entire constellation of NATO weaponry in general, since they are virtually all constructed with the same design philosophies, often even with interoperable systems—like the 120mm Rheinmetall tank barrels shared between the Abrams and Leopard series.

Also, for the sake of thoroughness and to establish context, Spiegel explains that the ‘report’ was taken from a lecture given to junior officers of the Bundeswehr by a ‘deputy military attaché of the German embassy in Kiev.

None of this should come as a surprise. The so-called “military-industrial complex” is neither military nor industrial; it’s really just another way of feeding off federal funds through government grants, no different than Politico making a living by selling massively overpriced subscriptions to USAID.

And the more things change… overengineered, expensive, hard-to-maintain weapons systems have been a German tradition since at least WWII, one that the USA inherited when it imported all the German scientists in the post-WWII migration that launched the US space program.

Which, of course, is also a fraud. No wonder the Russians are entirely confident of victory even if they have to face the entire continent of Europe alone. Simply living in objective reality instead of a hazy fog of financialization and rhetorical fever dreams is a material advantage that cannot be overcome, no matter how many delusional sales pitches are pronounced by unelected politicians.

Here is a useful metric: if a leader has no genuine followers, he’s a puppet and everything he says will be intrinsically false and is intended to be misleading.

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Shall We Step Into the Narrative?

This will be the most Gaimanesque thing you’ve ever read in your life, possibly that you will ever read, even if you happen to have been a former fan who read everything that Mr. Tubcuddle has ever written. Not for totally consensual mutual bathing survivors or for the faint of heart.

The Cauldron of Possibilities

Come, let me tell you a secret. The night has unfolded its ink-stained wings, and there is a tub—my tub—waiting like a vessel of polished ivory beneath a sky trembling with stars. It is no ordinary tub, you understand. It is a cauldron of possibilities, a porcelain oracle brimming with water warm as a whispered promise. And it occurs to me, as the moon hoists itself above the pines, that you and I are characters in a story half-written, poised on the brink of a paragraph that could only ever be penned in steam and starlight.

Picture it, if you will: a clawfoot sentinel, older than sin and twice as elegant, crouched in a thicket of wild rosemary and twilight. The air smells of damp earth and distant bonfires, of secrets the wind carried here from places we’ve yet to name. Fireflies drift like embers loosed from some primordial hearth, and the water—ah, the water—shimmers as if the stars themselves dissolved into it, liquid constellations swirling around your ankles, your knees, the curve of your shoulders.

You might protest, of course. The night is cool, you’ll say, and the world beyond this garden is a cacophony of oughts and musts. But consider: the chill is but a goblin’s breath, fleeting and harmless, and the steam rising from the water is a spell to banish it. As for the world? Let it spin on without us awhile. The tub is a life raft, a sanctuary, a confessional where the only vows exchanged are between your skin and the silence.

I cannot promise you safety, mind. There are risks in such an undertaking. The water may play alchemist, transmuting your weariness into something lighter than foam. Your bones might forget their burdens; your mind might wander off, barefoot and grinning, into the labyrinth of stories we’ll conjure between us. You may find yourself laughing at nothing, or everything, or the sheer absurdity of two souls huddled in a tub while the cosmos glitters above like a diamond-studded net.

And yes, there is vulnerability here. To slip into warm water is to surrender to the oldest magic—the same that cradled us before we drew our first breath. But I will be your witness, and you mine. We’ll speak in half-sentences, in glances, in the language of ripples. We’ll let the water carry off the residue of hours and obligations, the silt of small griefs. We’ll be rinsed clean of all our many sins, if only for tonight.

Stay. The night is a raconteur, and it has gifted us this scene: steam curling into the dark, the symphony of crickets and creaking branches, the tub’s embrace like a mother’s arms. There are stories that can only be told submerged. There are truths that dissolve unless spoken into hot, wet air.

Come. The water is growing restless. The stars are leaning closer, eager to eavesdrop. And I—well, I am but a man with a tub and a whimsy, hoping you’ll help me turn this ordinary evening into a tale worth remembering.

What do you say, my dear? Shall we step into the narrative together?

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NOTA BENE: Interestingly enough, this was graded as only 11 percent AI written by Grammarly