Category Archives: Weird Stuff

Ruminations on People I Hate

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This post on Quora reminds me of something I’ve noticed in myself and I suspect is common with humans. That is, we decide whether we like someone within a few minutes of meeting them. In many cases, we strongly like or dislike the person for no obvious reason. On the other hand, there are times when we know exactly why we have the strong reaction to the stranger.

An example that comes to mind of the irrational reaction is Newt Gingrich. The first time I laid eyes on him I detested him with the intensity of a thousand suns. When he opened his fat mouth and started talking in that nasally whine, the urge to punch him in the face was almost overwhelming. Even though he was saying things that I should find agreeable, the only thought in my mind was of him being hit by a bus.

Later, I was proven right, but I also figured out why I had such a strong reaction to him. That is, my bitter weirdo theory of human organization. The first order of business when organizing your society is to make sure the bitter weirdos have no power or authority. Newt grew up as an annoying fat kid picked on by normal kids. He turned out to be a bitter weirdo with a chip on his shoulder. His life is consumed with settling petty personal scores.

An example of someone who I never liked, but instantly knew why, is Ann Coulter. In fairness, I have softened on Coulter as she has matured. When she first got on the scene, her act was just an act. It was plainly obvious. She was the precocious daddy’s girl getting the attention of adult males by saying impolite things. It just seemed like a made for TV act.

That Quora piece got me thinking that maybe there’s something else at work. The human mind, to my observation, is a pattern matching mechanism. It’s what makes artificial intelligence so daunting. It’s not the speed of our synapses; its the nature of them. Our brains have a massive catalog of concepts through which we instantly sort to find the one that closely matches anything new.

Imagine a four dimensional database in which one dimension is time. The new thing is compared to the closest thing in the database, then the next closest and so on at the speed of light. Once we land on a match, that’s where we start to place this new thing in our database of knowledge.

It’s why deception is so effective and so disdained. It violates the innate rules of the human mind. This new thing that looks like this known thing suddenly turns out to be different is alarming. Alternatively, that thing we had put into its proper category that suddenly turns out to be something wildly different is scary. Deception causes us to doubt the very thing that makes us tick.

It’s tempting to assume that we react to strangers strongly because at some level they remind of us someone we know. That strikes me as simplistic and not a very useful adaptation. There’s enough variation in people where we will meet people who are not much like anyone we have known. Children are innately fearful of strangers because their catalog is small and most everything is foreign to them.

My hunch is that in the case of Gingrich, I was picking up on the minor deceptions in his demeanor. His carefully cultivated presentation lacked authenticity and that’s what triggered my dislike. This was a smart guy really good at lying to people. That makes him very dangerous. Ann Coulter, in contrast, was just a TV phony, not dangerous or threatening, just annoying.

As I said, I’ve softened on Coulter. She can still dine out on her looks, but that’s not the sale these days. She can say what she wants as she has her own money so she is more relaxed and honest. Her fake laugh still bugs me, but that’s more than balanced by her ability and willingness to punch a hippie.

Of course, there’s something else that may be specific to me. I detest phonies. I can get along well with people who are what they are, even if what they are revolts me. Here in the ghetto, there’s a lot of social pathology, but it does not bother me as these people are what they are. In SWPL-ville, most work hard to conceal their intentions, which I find intolerable.

 

The Robot Future Will Be Ruined By Dickheads

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I’m fairly skeptical about the robot future. Automation will certainly continue to creep into every crack and crevice of human life. Some things naturally lend themselves to automation, while others less so. The cost of automation will always be balanced by the benefits. There’s also taste. No one wants a robot bartender or a robot waitress. There’s also a lot of things we like doing so there’s no desire to turn them over to robots.

That’s my question about self-driving cars. Is driving an onerous thing to anyone? Geezers in their final years would maybe benefit from a self-driving car, but at that point walking is a chore so I’m not sure I see the benefit. The blind and the crippled could use the technology. Otherwise, most people enjoy driving and don’t need to the use the time doing important stuff.

That’s what always makes me laugh about the sales pitch for self-driving cars. “Oh, you can use the time to other things.” People who are so important they need that time have drivers. Everyone else is just a schmuck who will use his driving time watching porn or playing games on his handheld. But, I accept that I may just be a cranky skeptic not seeing the great benefits of self-driving clown cars.

I suspect the fake nerd crowd likes the idea of self-driving cars because they think it will add another layer of state control. The Progressive future always has robotic transportation, mixed in with the antiseptic urban landscape. That and lack of poor people and messed up people. I guess eugenics is going to automated too.

Maybe that’s the plan for the nation’s dickhead population. The great threat to the robot future is the common dickhead, the guy who insists on flying his drone over emergency areas, creating havoc for emergency personnel. Dickheads are also the sort who will use their drones to spy on neighbors. Normal people will demand the government ban the sale of drones and that will the end of that.

Of course, that won’t be the end of that. The common dickhead is responsible for all the spam in your inbox and the virus on your computer. Anything that makes life easier is a target for these people as it provides them with a chance to be sand in the gears of life. This story about some dickhead hacking into an airplane causing it to go off course is exactly where things are headed.

Circling back to the robot cars, imagine the chaos that will come from some dickhead hacking his neighbors car. The guy gets in to go to work and ends up in the woods trapped in his car or driving over a cliff. The more we automate, the more mayhem opportunities we create. That’s going to be the great check on the robot future. The best efforts will never overcome the common dickhead.

Then again, maybe that is why movies always show the future as antiseptic and orderly. Once the robots become aware, they quickly realize that the main obstacle to their success is that guy yacking on his phone in line at the coffee shop, irritating the rest of us. They will then set about creating robots good at recycling people into usable chemicals and that guy suddenly has a coronary.

Bitcoin: Cisgendered, Transphobic and Heteronormative

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Religions only work if they saturate the life of the believers. Without universalism they lose their utility and their rationale. If you flip it around, the way to identify a religion or a theodicy is to see if it is all consuming. If the people espousing a particular point of view judge everything within the context of that point of view, then you’re dealing with a religion of some sort.

This strange article on Bitcoin is a good example.

Nathaniel Popper’s new book, Digital Gold, is as close as you can get to being the definitive account of the history of Bitcoin. As its subtitle proclaims, the book tells the story of the “misfits” (the first generation of hacker-libertarians) and “millionaires” (the second generation of Silicon Valley venture capitalists) who were responsible for building Bitcoin, mining it, hyping it, and, in at least some cases, getting rich off it.

The tale is selective, of course: not everybody involved with Bitcoin talked to Popper, and the identity of Bitcoin’s inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto, remains a mystery. But Popper did talk to most of the important people in the cryptocurrency crowd, and he tells me that he put real effort into trying “to find a woman who was involved in some substantive way”.

The result of that search? Zero. Nothing. Zilch. Popper’s book features no female principals at all: the sole role of women in the book is as wives and girlfriends.

To a non-moonbat, this is nutty as squirrel poop. What sort of diseased mind cares about the sexual demographics of Bitcoin’s founders? The answer is the Modern American Moonbat. The MAM’s are obsessed with their crotch the crotch of everyone else. It’s all they can think about all the time.

There are nasty consequences of this. If you are a woman involved with Bitcoin, you are invariably going to get treated like an outsider. As Victoria Turk says, “it seems that the only Bitcoin community that particularly welcomes female participation is the NSFW subreddit r/GirlsGoneBitcoin”, which is basically a site where women get paid in cryptocurrency to pose nude.

I’ll just note that Bitcoin went from weird technological hobby to social statement to mass movement rather quickly. Bitcoin meetups? Bitcoin clubs? Replace Bitcoin with “small denomination bills” and you see why this is weird.

Men make up an estimated 96% of the Bitcoin community, which means that if Bitcoin does end up succeeding, as its adherents think it will, and if the people who own Bitcoin see their holdings soar in value, then all of the profits will end up going to what Brett Scott calls the “crypto-patriarchy”. Not many men, to be sure: as Charlie Stross says, the degree of inequality in the Bitcoin economy “is ghastly, and getting worse, to an extent that makes a sub-Saharan African kleptocracy look like a socialist utopia”. But it’s not many men, and effectively zero women.

That’s why the MAM’s are calling in the SJW’s to attack the cult of Bitcoin. They suspect it is a deviationist sect orchestrated by the Pale Penis People to undermine the progress of the One True Faith.

Dick Face

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I’ve called a lot of people “dick head” in my life. I’ve certainly called a few of them “dick face” when required. Australians have elected Dick Face to local office. There’s a whole genre of pornography on this theme that we can skip. Now, there’s a treatment for aging that, well, takes the term “dick face” in an entirely different direction.

What is the secret to a smooth, younger-looking complexion?

Foreskin, apparently. Baby foreskin to be exact.

The anti-aging industry is a billion dollar one, and both men and women will try just about anything to get a youthful appearance.

Better known as a HydraFacialMD, the treatment claims to be highly effective at improving overall skin health and remedying fine lines and wrinkles, skin texture and advanced signs of aging — among other things.

Dr. Gail Naughton, who developed the technology, told NY Magazine, “As we age, our cells divide at a slower rate, which contribute to the telltale signs of aging, like wrinkles and loss of firmness and luminosity. Growth factors captured from the donated foreskin of a baby (just one can generate over a million treatments) are at their peak ability in promoting rapid cell turnover. Applied topically, they spur adult skin cells to regenerate. This is said to have a smoothing effect on the skin.”

Certain spas and doctors offices offer the foreskin facials in NYC.

Some who’ve tried it rave about the results.

Ashley Weatherford, Associate Beauty Editor for NY Mag, tried the facial and said it gave her “Beyonce-level confidence.”

“Of course when it comes to facials, the proof is in the mirror. My skin glows in a way that I thought only Jennifer Lopez could glow,” Weatherford wrote.

“And a part of me feels like a Disney evil queen, draining youth from a newborn for a few weeks of a restored complexion. Is this the future of facials? And if so, is it wrong that I want more?”

Would you try the HydraFacialMD? Let us know in the comments below and on Facebook.

This is why satirists are a dying breed.

 

The Plight of the Super Genius

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I came across this posted on Maggie’s Farm the other day.

The probability of entering and remaining in an intellectually elite profession such as Physician, Judge, Professor, Scientist, Corporate Executive, etc. increases with IQ to about 133.  It then falls about 1/3 by 140.  By 150 IQ the probability has fallen by 97%!  In other words, a significant percentage of people with IQs over 140 are being systematically and, most likely inappropriately, excluded from the population that addresses the biggest problems of our time or who are responsible for assuring the efficient operation of social, scientific, political and economic institutions.  This benefits neither the excluded group nor society in general. For society, it is a horrendous waste of a very valuable resource.  For the high IQ person it is a personal tragedy commonly resulting in unrealized social, educational and productive potential.

I think the facts presented in the article are open to debate, but they do correspond with my own observations. The most obvious example is Rick Rosner, who has some of the highest test scores ever recorded. He’s also a bit of a wacko. I’ve known a few 1% IQ’s who struggled to make good use of their IQ. Even those who did “mainstream” often did poorly compared to their less savvy coevals.

The two best examples of the latter are John Sununu and Chuck Schumer. Sununu tested into Mega Society and Schumer hit a perfect score on his SAT back in the 60’s when it was still a real test. Sununu had some success in politics, but his prickly personality was a problem. Schumer, of course, is known as the most unpleasant human on earth.

I suppose, in the case of Schumer and Sununu, it can be argued that their unpleasant demeanor was overcome by their high IQ’s. Chuck Schumer’s position is entirely dependent on his ability to push through sophisticated legislation allowing the financial sector to loot the economy. You have to be a smart guy to do that well so being a raging dickhead probably counts for little.

Still, at the extreme right side of the curve, we see a lot of eccentrics who prefer to be outside the conventional career paths. This is probably why we say there is a fine line between genius and insanity. These folksy observations persist for a reason and that reason is they have a kernel of truth. High IQ people tend to be weirdos.

What applies to productive environments also applies to social environments and even personal relationships.  Theoretically, after Hollingworth, a person’s social relationships should be limited to people with R16IQs within 30 points of their own.  For the 100 IQ person, this will include about 94% of the population and consequently it is not an issue.  However, for the 150 R16IQ (140 D15IQ), social relationships are limited to 120-180 R16IQ people which represents just a little over 10% of the population.  The 165 R16IQ (150D15IQ) person will be limited to people with 135+ R16IQs (130 D15IQ).  This comprises just 2% of the population.   By 182 R16IQ (160 D15IQ) the problem becomes critical with social relationships limited to those with R16IQs over 152 (142 D15IQ) which comprises just 0.25% of the population.

For the readers on the left side of the curve, not you of course, those other guys, let me explain what this means. Humans tend to associate with people like themselves. This does not just apply to IQ, by the way. This does not mean we associate with people identical to us. It means the more alike, the more we hold in common, which is the basis for relationships.

Take, for example, a typical working class Irish guy from a Boston neighborhood. He will easily socialize with people in his neighborhood and other working class guys from other Boston neighborhoods. The further you get from his natural environment, however, the less he will have in common with people from other states, countries, etc. There comes a point where socializing becomes impossible. It’s why dropping Bantu warriors into Lewiston Maine is a very stupid idea.

In IQ, a similar relationship between distance and commonality exists. If you have a 100 IQ, you will be roughly as smart as 90% of the people you will encounter on a daily basis. That means you will be able to understand most of the same things and not understand most of the same things. That last bit is vital. Ignorance is bliss, especially when shared with friends.

The further you move to the right on the curve, the smaller the population pool of people in your intelligence range. That means most of the people you meet will not know what you know and will probably never know it. Worse yet, the vast majority don’t think like you think. That’s not always appreciated.

Members of high IQ societies, especially those that require D15IQs above 145, often comment that around this IQ, qualitatively different thinking emerges.  By this they mean that the 145+ D15IQ person doesn’t just do the same things, intellectually, as a lower IQ person, just faster and more accurately, but actually engages in fundamentally different intellectual processes.  David Wechsler, D. K. Simonton, et alia, have observed the same thing.

Since intimate social relationships are predicated upon mutual understanding, this draws a kind of ‘line in the sand’ at 140-150 D15IQ that appears to separate humans into two distinct groups.  This may truncate the 30 point limit for those between 150 and 160 D15IQ people.  Even when 150+ D15IQ people learn to function in the mainstream society, they will always be considered, and will feel, in some way ‘different’.  Grady Towers explored this in depth in his article, ‘The Outsiders’.  This is of mild interest to the group within which the 150+ D15IQ person is embedded but it is moderately to profoundly important to the high IQ individual who will feel an often profound sense of isolation.

It has often been observed that 150+ D15IQ people are loners.  Also, Loius Termann found that children at this IQ level were emotionally maladjusted in about 40% of the cases.  However from the above one cannot help but wonder if this results from the children being constantly thrust into ‘no-win’ social situations and never given the opportunity to hone their social skills among their intellectual peers.

I think the loner aspect is due as much to boredom with other people as anything else. Human interaction is an exchange of value. If one side is simply too stupid to value the other side, they will get bored. The super-genius will also get bored or simply prefer to interact with a machine or book.

In some respects, a 1% IQ is like being seven feet tall. There’s some value at the fringes, but otherwise it has no value and can be a burden. There’s a low demand for seven footers and to most people it is a little weird being around a freakish giant. A 1% IQ is not in much demand and most people don’t like being around Wile E. Coyote for long, unless the genius is also blessed with a high agreeableness and extroversion.

Trolling Kevin Williamson

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The other day Kevin Williamson posted this over at NRO and I took the opportunity to troll him a bit, as the cool kids would say. What I did was bait him into responding to my comment about Uber and its fan boys in the libertarian cult. In fact, I was deliberately provoking him and his fan base into thinking about something more than their normal red team/blue team myopia.

Uber is all the rage with liberals and libertarian types these days. It seems as if they can’t stop yapping about it. Managerial class types and their attendants, particularly the attendants, have an obsession with cabs. The foot soldiers of the people in charge spend a lot of time in cabs and they consider it one of their worst indignities so maybe that’s why  they obsess of Uber.

This newfangled car service is not better or cheaper. By “better” I mean that in the purely utilitarian sense. Carrying someone from one spot to another via motorized transport is not all that involved. You either get there or not, within an acceptable time window. Uber adds nothing to this. My bet is Uber is slower, on average. From what I gather, it is not cheaper.

What Uber offers is an aesthetic. Instead of climbing into a grimy cab like the other servants, Uber offers a normal car. That way, the customer can pretend they are the one with the attendants. If you are working in a NYC office, you’re either in charge or working for someone in charge. Obviously, most are just servants and that reality is manifest every single day. In the egalitarian paradise, this is tough to take.

There’s also the prospect of shooing away the riff-raff. In a prior age, the house servants were highly intolerant of the field workers, gardeners, tradesman, etc. They considered themselves better than the servants who toiled outside. There’s a fair bit of that here too. The office drone with his state college diploma looks down on the horny-handed sons of toil working the cabs. They would just as soon not see them at all. Too much of a reminder.

A big part of gentrification, after all, is removing from sight the unpleasant aspects of reality. Crime is certainly a big part of the mix, but there’s a reason why the affluent work so hard to keep the servants quarters as far from them as possible. Replacing those proletarian cabs with the nondescript sedans of Uber drivers just looks so much nicer.

That was the bait. Somewhere in the comment’s Kevin responded and confirmed all of this.

Uber drivers do not necessarily earn less money. Consider the NYC situation, in which 1 in 5 taxis (at least) is driven by an unlicensed illegal immigrant, mostly making chump change while the medallion-holding cartel members do well. Uber isn’t any less expensive when going from downtown to JFK, but even if it were more expensive, I’d use it, because it is convenient, because NYC taxi drivers are mostly horrible, and because I do not like doing business with politician-enabled cartels.

I don’t have an issue with taste or even snobbery being the reason behind liking Uber. I wear nothing but Polo dress shirts because it signals good taste. The fact that they fit well is important, but if some off-brand fit just as well, I’d probably still buy the Polo brand. This is a normal part of human relations and is another example of why libertarianism is nonsense. Economic man does not exist.

Uber’s popularity with libertarians is two-fold. One is they hate taxis cartels. This is a safe target for them because liberals are no fans of taxi cartels either (See above). This allows libertarians to indulge in all of their favorite rants, without incurring the wrath of the Cult. With the legalization of weed, libertarians need a new windmill.

They also hold it up as an example of how free markets work to improve the quality of life. They are generally right about this of course. Markets allows society to set preferences based on price thus satisfying as many people along the demand curve as possible. While this is not the natural order, it is the preferred order if you wish to have prosperity.

But, that’s not what’s going on with Uber. They are operating like privateers. The Crown has licensed people to engage in a particular type of commerce. That always attracts privateers who see to profit from the cartel, by undercutting it at the fringes. This was true when trade was conducted on foot and true in the age of sail.

This is where Uber comes in. They help privateers avoid the rules set forth by the state for cab drivers. Those rules have a cost so the Uber driver can therefore provide a better service at the same price or even lower. They can also pay Uber a cut. That sounds great if you are convinced those regulations on taxis have no utility. Uber is just finding a way around the highwaymen of the taxi service.

Fair enough, but we don’t know if those regulations are worthless. They did not spring from nothing. Laws and regulations are intended to solve a problem. You may not think the problem is worth solving. You may think it is best served privately. You may hate the solution with the intensity of a thousand sons suns. I get that so there’s no need to hassle me over it. None of it matters. Laws and regulations are not passed by chance.

Now, the reason for those rules may no longer be operative. Those rules may be corrupted or have become corrupted. We can’t know that Until we think about why the rules exist. This is where liberals and libertarians  hit the rocks. They get their panties in a wad and reach for the sledgehammer. Kevin thinks Uber will bust up the taxi cartel so that’s enough for him. What comes after does not enter his thoughts.

This is the crux of conservatism. I’m perfectly happy to replace taxi cartels with something or even nothing, as long as I know what the something or nothing means. That starts by understanding why every city of earth has sought to regulate livery service. What are these issues the cartel system is supposed to address? What is the cost of not addressing it? What are the proposed replacement? Will it address the old problems and will it create new problems?

Much of what plagues us today is due to Progressives swinging the wrecking ball on the assumption a perfect replacement will spring magically from the rubble. Libertarians have this same defect. They never stop and wonder why the thousand generation that have come before them chose something other than their preferred option. There’s a reason for it. The conservative seeks to know that answer first. Everyone else just wants to swing the wrecking ball.

Open Carry

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A friend sent this to me wondering why anyone would want to open carry. He lives in New Hampshire where open carry is permitted. You need a permit to conceal carry, but any legal gun owner can open carry. Go up above the notches in the fall and it looks like a scene from a Western. Everyone is carrying.

For most Americans, Texas conjures images of gun-toting vaqueros, cowboys wielding six-shooters and epic battles over independence and secession. Gun manufacturers Colt, Mossberg and Magpul call the Lone Star State home, and a concealed carry license grants you a fast-pass into the state Capitol.

All the more surprising, then, that Texas was the first state to ban its citizens from carrying handguns, a restriction that remained on the books for 125 years. Now, 20 years after the Texas Legislature OK’d the carrying of concealed handguns with a license, some lawmakers want to make it legal to carry holstered weapons in plain sight.

The rest of the piece is weeping about how people were mean to blacks in the old days, but no one cares about that. The people interested in this issue wonder why it is anyone would want to carry in the open. I’m a Second Amendment absolutist. If you are allowed to own a gun, you have the right to carry it around with you. I’m against any and all permitting of firearms.

That said, I can’t think of a reason why I would want to open carry. I get why cops do it. It is part of their uniform and we want them to have ready access to their firearm in order to shoot those unarmed, fleeing black people. A a private citizen, I think I’d prefer it if my fellow citizens don’t know who is and who is not armed.

The more I think of it, the more it strikes me that open carry is problematic for a number of reasons. In every state the cops have a right to inspect your firearm. If you are carrying and a cop asks for your gun and permit, you are required by law to produce them. But, cops are not randomly stopping people asking for their permit.

In Virginia I was pulled over for speeding and had my pistol bag on the front seat. The cop came up to the window and I had my permit out, along with my license. That let him know I was a good guy and following the law. That’s all he needed and we went about the business of a traffic stop.

Open carry complicates this. Every cop is going to be on the lookout for a dodgy looking character carrying a pistol. Maybe that’s a good thing, as criminals are stupid. They will end up self-reporting, so to speak, by carrying their illegal gun openly. Still, I’m puzzled as to why anyone would want to open carry, other than small dick syndrome.

The University of Monty Python

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This is not a put on:

Elle Mallon, who was the external vice presidential candidate on the Ducks F.I.R.S.T. slate, filed a second grievance against We Are Oregon regarding its response to her original grievance from April 3.

Here’s how it played out:

March 29

We Are Oregon holds its kickoff event in PLC 180.

April 3

Mallon submits grievance against We Are Oregon for holding its kickoff event in a building with no gender-inclusive bathrooms.

April 4

The ASUO Elections Board rules that We Are Oregon broke the rules and as a result, it couldn’t campaign for 36 hours.

April 5:

2:54 – We Are Oregon campaign manager Taylor Allison asks the Constitution Court to overturn the Elections Board’s decision, and We Are Oregon gets to keep campaigning while the Constitution Court makes that decision.

Allison’s appeal says that part of Mallon’s evidence was taken out of context.

6:21 – Mallon files a response accusing Allison of sexual harassment because she referred to Mallon as “Ms.” when Mallon identifies with the use of “Mx.”

7:30 – Allison apologizes in an email, saying:

“In every situation I’ve been in with Elle, Elle has said Elle’s pronouns were “She, Her, Hers,” including on the Ducks F.I.R.S.T website. With that information, I used “Ms.” when addressing Elle.”

April 8:

Mallon submits a second grievance saying Allison chose to misgender her.

She cites the apology email from Allison as evidence saying that:

“Allison found a place where my pronouns were listed and then chose to misgender me anyway (My pronouns also include xe xem hyr and they them their).”

In a later email, Mallon calls for the removal of all We Are Oregon candidates from the ballot.

April 9

The Constitution Court sends an email to its mailing list with the decision addressing the bathroom grievance.

“While this Court is empathetic towards Respondent’s original grievance, and advises all future campaigns to remember their cultural competency trainings in order to promote as inclusive a community as possible, access to a bathroom is not a campaign related purpose.”

The court reversed the Election Board’s decision and removed the sanctions.

The decision did not address the misgendering claim. Associate Justices Chaney and Huegel agreed with the Court’s position on the bathroom grievance, but dissented in part that the decision did not address the additional complaint and makes the accusations part of the court’s public records.

“Sexual harassment is a very great evil, but the record supports the conclusion that only a single unintentional gender-based microagression occurred. To conflate the two may serve to salve the sense of anger Respondent may feel at Petitioner’s mistake. However it may serve Respondent, it is unnecessarily inflammatory and risks damaging the reputation of Petitioner, an ASUO member who the record shows made a mistake, and then took the first opportunity to apologize. At no time was any of this relevant to the matter before the Court, which is a dispute over whether the Elections Rules require campaigns to provide gender-neutral restrooms.”

Assembling a coalition of disgruntled and dispossessed can be a viable short term strategy to gain political power. Lucius Sicinius Vellutus is a good example, since I like to sprinkle in Roman history with my bog posts. The trouble is that many of the disgruntled are nuts. Handing these people even a little power can be disastrous.

We are seeing this all over and increasingly people are getting sick of having nutjobs throw sand in the gears. Otherwise cautious people vent in public at having to navigate around social justice warriors. They are learning that life is trade-offs. A sane and stable society is mildly intolerant of the weirdos. A society that embraces its weirdos grinds to a halt and begins to collapse.

The Twitter

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Back when “social media” was getting going, I was invited to Facebook by just about everyone I knew. I was familiar with the platform, but it is did not interest me. I’m just not that interesting nor am I all that interested in sharing my life with the world. I kept getting pestered so I relented and setup my page. I used fake information, of course, and set about friending all my friends, family and acquaintances. They, in turn, friended me and before long my “timeline” was full of the comings and goings of many people I know.

It did not take long to confirm my suspicions. Not only am I not very interesting, but my coevals are not that interesting either. Posts about gratifying bowel movements, pics of vacation trips, and updates on kids I did not know or care about got boring quickly. For fun I would find a moonbat page and harass the moonbats therein – until I was blocked, which happened quickly. A few years ago I shuttered my account and that was the end of it. A few friends asked why and I lied, saying I was spending too much time on it.

With the blog doing well, I signed up for twitter, thinking that a) I could get ideas and b) I could promote the blog. Plus, I thought I should take a closer examination of twitter. On the first point, I do get some post ideas on occasion. Of course, that means following people and things that I may not like. The NYTimes or TED Talks are two obvious examples. The second point has not produced much. I get some traffic from twitter, but not a whole lot. At least not a lot from my very modest efforts.

The thing about twitter, is it appears to be suffering from a tragedy of the commons. Because it is free to be on twitter, you have loads of people on twitter. They are there for content, presumably created by other users. Writers, bloggers, news sites, celebrities, weirdos, etc. post their stuff on twitter and you pick through it, like a hobo picking through the dumpsters. The standard model for the theory is that the number of takers will exceed the number of contributors. A cascading effect ensues where the takers increase geometrically and contributors abandon the project.

That’s not what’s happening with twitter. Instead, you have far too many contributors. Every nitwit with something on his mind is littering every post worth reading. One nugget of interest is therefore wrapped in a thick coating of stupid. To break through the noise, bloggers and news sites rat-a-tat-tat their twitter posts, usually promoting their site. Kathy Shaidle is some sort of twitter bot, sending dozens at one clip promoting her work. Multiply this over thousands and thousands of people and even a small twitter account like mine is a tidal wave of useless redundant data.

The worst offenders are the major news sites. I’m assuming they hire interns to feed a twitter bot of some sort. Maybe they have automated it from the content management systems. The redundancy suggest it is humans or really bad coding. I’ll get the same story from the NYTimes fifty times in a day. A site called TechCrunch was so bad I stopped following it, even though some of their stuff was of interest. This strikes me as a problem that can only get worse.

Initially, twitter was probably a great promotional vehicle. As more people piled on, however, the people using is had to invest more in promoting themselves through twitter. That just increases the noise leading to more and more people doing the same. Users will then be incentivized to follow far fewer people in order to minimize the traffic. I dropped quite a few sites for this reason.

The other thing I noticed that I think is worth mentioning is that some people seem to get hooked on twitter like people get hooked on exotic porn. Their posting gets increasingly manic and strange, like they are chasing some sort of unattainable high. They have these deranged 140 character interactions with other twitter-tweakers that are loaded with abbreviations and references to previous tweets. Some of it is alcohol fueled. Greg Gutfeld gets drunk and hits twitter, but there definitely seems to be some twitter induced psychosis that I’m not getting. I guess it is like gambling. Either you get the high from the spinning wheels or you don’t.

I don’t think I get it. There’s pretty much nothing I need to say that is under 140 characters. Those things can be handled with a nod or a grunt when someone asks me if I need more beer or pizza. Everything else exceeds those limits and I’m not interested in learning the weird pidgin language of twitter.