Here ya go: a series of earworms, courtesy of Reader Sean F.
Except for 8 Miles High. Didn’t like that stoned hippie shit back then, still think it sucks.
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A Second Industrial Revolution?
Perhaps, just possibly, we may be starting to turn a corner. From this:
Where did all that creativity come from? Largely from physical suburbs, neighborhoods of the middle and working classes, and nuclear families – all seen as contemptible by globalist/Marxists – where the father had a good job. Who have almost all been reduced to desperation. Why? Because globalism effectively shipped tens of millions of jobs overseas, and the environmental movement, backed by globalists, cleared tens of millions rural dwellers into the mega-cities, where they languish in matchbox apartments beside super highways. A manufacturing job has a multiplier of five and a resource job a multiplier of 7. Where, I ask you, do people think money comes from? Production? The Fed? To globalists the Central Banks print money to pay their mounting liabilities, thank you very much.
To this:
Now both Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal, who put all their eggs into globalism, are sneering, but this is what is happening in the real world, the physical world, where actual people make actual things.
And what follows is a long list of developments that should make one feel a little more hopeful, in that they are reversing the effects of “off-shoring” our manufacturing capacity and the shuttering of energy development. Then:
None of these depend on green energy. Why? Because green energy is a boutique operation for rich globalist virtue signalers meant to steal subsidy from the taxpayer.
The investments from the private sector into the physical economy are equally huge, as the big houses diversify away from globalism and carbon capture and alternative energy as profit. Trillions are moving into the marketplace.
Oh, and Trump just CRUSHED the trade deficit, slashing it from $136B to $29.4B, the lowest in 20 years. America has been subsidizing the rest of the world long enough. Time all those broken countries stood on their own two feet.
Time to grow.
I think we can do it. The rest of the world? I’m not so sure.
The Doomed Five To Make You Think Again
What do you do when society — and specifically, a society’s infrastructure — either fails because of a Random Bad Event or else because of a series of cascading calamities brought on by years of neglect.
Here’s a piece which highlights the five places in the U.S. that you absolutely don’t want to be living in when the above S hits the F.
As much as I sometimes complain about living in north Texas, we seem to be in slightly better shape than any of the above areas, although the prospect of a catastrophic power grid failure in June with no hope of repair for months does certainly give one pause. (We’re little different from Phoenix in that regard; we have little access to water and life without air conditioning doesn’t seem survivable.)
At least we Texans have one thing going for us: the chance of becoming prey to people who would take what little we have from us during calamitous times is somewhat reduced by the fact that we are not a disarmed populace — unlike, say, the Atlantic Northeast and Chicago, which are.
I know that we laugh at Europeans when they suffer from a major heat event like this previous summer; but their summers are really, really short compared to our Western states, so at least they may be able to survive a couple of months, more or less, always with the chance of seasonal rain to help. A typical eight-month-long dry Texas- or Arizona summer? Not so much.
Sobering stuff, indeed.
Caption Competition #460
Your suggestions in Comments.
Quote Of The Day
From Reader Mike S., about Granny Salma Hayek:
“I wouldn’t sell my soul for her, but I’d arrange for a long-term lease.”
Considering my advanced age, I’d settle for a lifetime one. Just a quick reminder of the topic under discussion:
This New Thing
Probably the modern word I hate the most is this “influencer” tag. Fuck me, every totty with some kind of EeewwwChoob / TikTwat channel is now suddenly an “influencer” because her views of makeup / clothing / (whatever fad the younger audience of today are obsessed with) seem to cause advertisers to swoon with delight, according to the number of “followers” they are supposed to have according to some impenetrable measurement method.
There’s nothing wrong with the latter, of course: the Nielsen ratings were once the yardstick whereby advertisers could approportion their spending among the various TV stations and shows according to the shows’ audience size.
Or maybe it’s just sour grapes on my part, because these (mostly-brainless) girls are raking in the cash with their “content” — the latter being nothing but opinion (largely shaped, I assume, by the brands’ sponsorship of such). And apparently, being beautiful with large breasts increases their allure (no idea why).
I find it interesting that male “influencers” tend to have more actual content on their shows; the wonderfully-low-class Mat Armstrong, for example, has made hundreds of thousands of dollars (okay, pounds sterling) out of repairing crashed supercars — he’s just bought a house in England and another in Miami, so we can safely assume that his business is profitable — while stalwarts like Garand Thumb (two guys with actual expertise, being former SpecFor and Ranger operators) skimp along, apparently, with sponsorships from various gunny-type companies (but have a lot of fun along the way).
I suppose that even I could call myself an influencer, judging by the number of (tongue-in-cheek) complaints from people over the years, wailing about how they were perfectly happy with their firearms until they came to this website and were compelled — forced, even — to buy yet another gun they didn’t know they needed until I spoke glowingly about its allure and excellent qualities.
Did I get any kind of remuneration from this “influencing”? Don’t be ridiculous.
So yes, maybe I am jealous that today’s influencers make money hand over fist each week while I have made, at a rough guess, a few thousand dollars — over twenty years — from my type of influencing.
Of course, my own cussedness hasn’t helped, in that I refuse to take on advertising (I did, once, very briefly for a few months during the NoR days, until an advertiser complained that I’d said Bad Things about his industry and I told him to fuck off and pulled the plug on the whole thing). Ditto sponsorships, mostly because gun companies don’t need me when they have “gun writers” to pimp their products via the various gun magazines, but also because I absolutely refuse to be tied to any kind of influence over my opinions on, well, anything.
It also doesn’t help that my “likes” are confined to a really small list of products and such, either.
So I guess I am and have been my own worst enemy in this regard.
Oh well.
Here’s an unsolicited (and unpaid-for) recommendation (link in pic):
It’s a pre-WWII Sempert & Krieghoff tube-fed semi-auto chambered in 8x60mm, and it’s so beautiful it makes me swoon like a schoolgirl groupie. Okay, at $17,500 it’s not the cheapest gun you could buy, and good luck finding the obscure 8x60mm S ammo anywhere, which means it’s strictly for reloaders.
And its performance is pretty much on a par with its smaller 8x57mm Mauser cousin, which is plentiful and can be fired far more cheaply from rifles like this mil-surp K98k:
…which are sold everywhere and can be had for under $1,000.
But you have to admit, that one-of-a-kind Sempert sure is pretty. If you do decide to buy it, mention my name to the folks at Collectors, which will result in nothing more than a “who?” from them and not a single penny of kickback to me.
Par for the course, really.