Category: Morons & Idiots

Nowhere To Go

Morons & Idiots, Traitors / Fifth Columnists

One has to wonder how this tool thought it might end:

A former CIA officer admitted in a plea deal Tuesday that he disclosed details about a secret U.S. intelligence source to a foreign official and embezzled nearly $200 million from the federal government.

David Rush pleaded guilty in Virginia federal court to one count of wire fraud after an FBI raid on his home in May uncovered 298 gold bars worth $46 million, $2.1 million in cash and dozens of luxury items. 

Justice Department officials said Rush embezzled $194 million from the federal government, using his position at the intelligence agency to create an elaborate scheme designed to facilitate his “maximum self-enrichment at the expense of the United States.”

At some point, you have to wonder how this traitorous asshole thought he was going to spend all that moolah without someone eventually saying, “How did he get to buy all that shit, on a government salary?”

Well, obviously he couldn’t, so all he could do was sit on his pile of gold and look at his Rolex collection or whatever.

Pathetic.

If you’re going to do this embezzlement thing on a large scale, or get paid large sums by a foreign government, the least you could do is insist on being paid with bearer bonds;  because the nice thing about bearer bonds is that they don’t weigh anything (relative to gold, for sure), and you can fold them up, travel to — I don’t know, Liechtenstein or Monaco, for example — and use that money to fund a vacation of your dreams.

Live for today, in other words, because at some point, you are going to be discovered and have the dogs sicc’d onto you, and instead of memories of having hot and cold running women catering to your every perverted need in a 5-star hotel room, all you’ll have left is the memory of a pile of gold ingots.

As you’re walking up the steps to the gallows.

(In any just world, that is.  What’s really going to happen is that he’ll go to jail for a few years, then get an early release — because that’s what happens nowadays — and make a fortune by writing a book and getting a job as a “security consultant” on one of the Commie TV networks.)

Don’t get me started.

Sorry, this post should have appeared earlier, but I messed up the time stamp.

 

This New Thing

Marketing / Advertising, Morons & Idiots

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.

What Price Collecting?

Finance, Morons & Idiots

Lots of educational video to watch today, because… it’s the weekend!

One of the reasons why wealthy people are looking at hypercars as fungible assets and investment vehicles [sic] is because they are wealthy enough to ride the ups and downs of consumer demand — why, for example, a rusted-out 1950s-era Porsche 911 or 1960s E-type Jag can ask for, and get, a premium price for that piece of junk.  Scarcity, of course, helps — which is why a rusted old 1956 Porsche 356 cabriolet will always be worth more than a worn-out 1975 Honda Civic:  the first is worth restoring, the second is only worth recycling.

If you’re interested in learning about this business — even or especially if you can’t afford to play in it — then I would suggest you watch Cars & Money, Rob Moore’s excellent podcast channel with his partner, Carl Hartley of Tom Hartley Motors.  Here’s one example.  (All the podcast episodes are long, about twenty minutes too long in my opinion, but they’re peculiarly fascinating.  This particular episode, you can quit at 1:28.00)

And speaking of watching, there’s the premium watch business, where Teddy Baldassarre, for example, plies his business.  (Here’s one.)

But in this latter category, if you want to see all the costs of creating a watch collection — as an investment strategy — then please take a look at this one, (yeah, it’s A.I., but it’s factually correct) to find out how the big watch brands are bending collectors over the table:


(…and these guys are the worst, which is why I’ll never own a Rolex, because I’m not going to play their stupid game.)

Oh, and by the way:  the actual purchase price of these items is only the first lightning-strike on the wallet.  Then comes the (mandatory) servicing, the parts replacement, etc. etc. etc…. see how the insurance companies play ducks and drakes with your premiums.

Oh, and by the way, car manufacturers like Ferrari are equally guilty of the same kind of practices (which you’ll also learn from Cars & Money;  watch out for the word “allocation”).

 


…and Porsche is just as bad.

If a fool and his money are soon parted, then the duration of “soon” is shrinking faster than a cheap Chinese cotton T-shirt in the clothes dryer.

And when baubles like watches and performance sports cars start becoming investment assets, the Finance Fucks in companies like Rolex are going to start making marketing decisions (pro tip:  they already are).

It’s the utter cynicism of the whole business which gets up my nose.  My only consolation is that the fools who’re being thus led around by the nose are the super-wealthy who can afford to pay those bullshit prices.  And I have absolutely no sympathy for them.

Strategy Change

Morons & Idiots

Well, why not?

A majority of idiots in Gen Z have moved money out of investments and into a sports betting account. Twenty-six percent of Gen Z say “they treat sports betting as a deliberate, ongoing component of their financial plans,” according to a Bloomberg report.

Nothing like “fair and balanced reporting”, is there?  (I know, it’s Breitbart and not Fox News, but you get my drift.)

That 26 percent compares to 14 percent of Millennials, just six percent of Generation X, and one percent of Boomers.

“Sports betting is increasingly competing with traditional investing for younger Americans’ attention,” adds Bloomberg, “with more than a quarter of Gen Z investors saying they see gambling on sports as part of their long-term financial strategy.”

Gambling as a “long-term strategy.” The stupid; it hurts.

But let’s look at this whole thing from another angle.

The thing about sports betting is that if you take it seriously and look at the stats (as opposed to picking a horse because its name reminds you of yer Mum), there’s little difference between that and, say, playing the stock market.  Oh wait, those are serious investment vehicles. [eyecross]

And let’s be honest:  how many times have you seen one of those silly games where darts thrown into a random chart of stocks have yielded better results than those picked by analysts?  (I would love to see some kind of comparison of long-term results from the darts vs. the analysts, played each day, week or month over a twenty-five year period.)

Pro tip:  it’s all gambling.  Whether it’s a horse crossing the line first (at 27-1 odds) or GlobalMegaCorp Inc.’s share price doubling over the next six months, who can say?  Even better:  who’s not going to make money over the result of the next Dallas Cowboys game by picking the other team?

The only way people are going to consistently lose money on sports betting is when they start playing the minutiae:  points spreads, yardages, number of times Caitlin Clark is going to draw a flagrant foul for the rest of the WNBA season, etc.  (In the stock market, those kinds of  bets  I mean investments are called “puts”, and while the rewards can be astonishing, mostly it’s just the old “dropping dollars down a drain” situation.)

Rule of thumb:  the more complex the bet, the more likely you’re going to lose.

But I digress.  I have no problem with a small segment of Da Yoot trying a different way to increase their moolah.  I’m more interested in why they’re doing it, but not that interested, any more than I’m interested in why people still go to casinos, or why they bet on which raindrop reaches the bottom of the windowpane first.

Or whether Whizzbang Technologies’ IPO will yield 45% growth of stock value on the first day’s call.

I should point out that in my own yoot, I once got suckered into a golf game called “Yardbucks”, in which each yard of the golf course was worth a yard:  lose a 375-yard hole, and you’re down $375.  (There are typically more than 6,000 yards in an average golf course.)

I ended up losing only $15, and I only managed to lose that little because I won the last hole, a par-five 568-yard monster by fluking a 15-yard putt.

More to the point, I think I sweated out well over a gallon in those four hours,  and I’m pretty sure I did lasting damage to my heart.  I’ve never gambled on golf, or any other sport since.

Not News

Morons & Idiots, Taxes and Theft, Wealth Envy

Apparently, champagne socialist & CalGov Newsom wants to tax billionaires, to the general amusement of those of us waiting to see just how these shitforbrains Californians can find still more creative ways to cut their own economic throats (when they’re not defrauding the FedGov, that is).

Am I the only one who doesn’t give a rat’s ass what Newsom thinks, says or does?

I know, I know:  “O but Kim, he might one day become President!” goes the lament.

Yeah, and I’ll start supporting gun control.

He’s only powerful in his own mind, and in what passes for the minds of his deluded supporters.  And (you heard it here first), Hair Gel Boy isn’t radical enough for the AOC/Mamdani Wing of the Socialist Party, so his higher political aspirations are going to be fucked from two directions.

Irrelevancy, thy name is Gavin.