Letters From Lock Down

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It used to be that Good Friday was my first non-office day of the year. By that I mean it was the first non-work day of the year. It was the first break since the holidays. I’d rent a skiff and go fishing, waiting for a passing knight to heel me. Some years I’d go to the range or, depending upon the weather, I’d go for a ride. When I still went to mass, I’d go to the evening service, but I have not done that in years.

In the lock down, the normal routine no longer holds. Like everyone else I have been sheltering in place the last several weeks. Fishing is banned here now. The ranges are all closed. I can still go outside for a ride, as they are not arresting people for being outside without a hall pass. They are arresting people for violating social distancing rules, so that means I’ll need to avoid people while out and about today.

For the first couple of weeks of the lock down I tried to maintain my normal schedule, as much as possible, but that did not really work. It was like a vacation in which I was not allowed to have any fun. That and client work started to slow up as they shifted from going into lock down to adjusting for the coming depression. This week my work was probably the slowest in a decade, not counting real vacations.

As a result, I capitulated to reality and decided to use the time to take care of some small projects, like catching up with the correspondence. Like the comment section, the in-box has been hopping during the great panic. It really bugs me when I fall behind in replying to readers and listeners, but there are only so many hours in a day. It is just one of those things I have had to accept as a part of doing this thing.

I also decided to upgrade the computer I use for recording each week. The hard drive was getting full, so that meant installing a new drive and reloading all the program I use for various things. I was still on Windows 8, so it was long overdue for an upgrade, but it is a huge hassle that I really hate. Strangely, the microphone I use is much more sensitive in the new system, so the sound this week may be a little off.

All-in-all, I’m growing weary of the lock down. I’m thinking about breaking contain and going back to the office next week. I have several “letters of transit” now from clients that declare I am an essential person. Even though the building is technically closed, I have keys and the utilities are still on, I think. Perhaps I can be an example to others and this madness will come to an end sooner rather than later.

This week I have the usual variety of items in the now standard format. Spreaker has the full show. I am up on Google Play now, so the Android commies can take me along when out disrespecting the country. I am on iTunes, which means the Apple Nazis can listen to me on their Hitler phones. The anarchists can catch me on iHeart Radio. I am now on Deezer, for our European haters and Stitcher for the weirdos. YouTube also has the full podcast. Of course, there is a download link below.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

  • 00:00 Opening
  • 03:00 Dissident Direction
  • 12:00 Fatherhood & Economics
  • 16:30 China
  • 25:30 Universal Basic Idiocy
  • 35:00 Durham Investigation
  • 42:00 Binary Thinking
  • 47:00 Health Care
  • 50:00 Liberty & Welfare
  • 55:00 Thank You

Direct Download, The iTunes, Google Play, iHeart Radio, RSS Feed, Bitchute

Full Show On Spreaker

Full Show On YouTube

https://youtu.be/EhPkTihSiz0

198 thoughts on “Letters From Lock Down”

  1. The morality – liberty tradeoff is the same nonsense the Libertarians and Socialists have in common. That Man won’t act greedy or tyrannical, or oppressive with power, economic in the former case, coercive state power (violence) in the latter.

    Even your example, well you would not mind being forced to attend an Episcopial service, as long it wasn’t one of those lesbian rainbow ones. And if it turns into one, where do you get your liberty back.

    Or the Liberals who just wanted “common sense gun control” instead of the right to keep and bear arms:
    https://www.redstate.com/kiradavis/2020/04/10/815520/

    It reminds me of the scene in A Man for All Seasons where the traitor is leaving and More’s daughter says “arrest him!” More: “He has broken no law.”. Daughter: “God’s law”. More: “Then God can arrest him!”.

    And what follows – Roper: “I’d cut down every law to get to the devil”… More: “And when the devil turned on you, all the laws being down? I’d give the benefit of law to the devil for my own sake”.

    But a practical example. What if we simply banned anything obscene or offensive, which obviously would include pornography. It would probably include most of your posts here and on social media and replies. Would some Silly Valley Trust and Safety council be the judge and jury?

    Back when things were harder we got the 18th amendment and the Volstead act. More morality – exorcise the demon rum.

    The thing about the virtue of prudence is it can’t be generalized as every circumstance is different. And that is why prudence should be jealous of liberty, even those unused today, and concerned with our own morality and exercising it strongly and robustly in defense of, not in the abridgment of liberty.

    The error is you look at liberties you consider inconsequential or are unused – by you – and cannot conceive of some moral rule that you would break. But the entire SJW “feelz” is moral code. Not anything based on reason or evidence. Morality is easy for rational people to know, but requires rare virtue to exercise. Washington could have become king.

  2. It is ironic that during the lockdown I have had to be out and about more than usual: a combination of our contract workers/day laborers not wanting to show up due to virus fears or easy excuses and us saving a few bucks by doing jobs ourselves that we would have paid someone else to do. I’ve been doing electrical, plumbing, laying tile. Got a small repair job at one of our units tomorrow.

    My life has been remarkably unaffected because our two main business are essential.

    A few couldn’t pay their rent, but only a couple were shitty about it. Meanwhile we had prospects lining up to rent the unit we just turned over. It is interesting to see how different people handle being laid off. Some sit around like helpless children, others get busy finding different ways to make money.

  4. The Insider Threat

    We thought we’d catch up on our many, many, many mandatory online briefings.
    Seeing as how we can’t train.
    Its actually better to be managed by software when it’s degrading and insulting force fed propaganda.

    Let me help you with Insider threats “check on learning.”
    Report the White guy,
    Unless he’s disabled
    Report the Chinese chicks, apparently we’re just drowning in Chinese spies.

    Don’t report the Muslims no matter what they said.

    I’m just glad to be sharing the back of the bus with someone for a change.

    Although I hope the Chinese spy chick doesn’t cough on me

    🤡🤡🤡🤣🤣🤣

  5. It sounds like you have already upgraded to Windows 10, but if you haven’t (or for anyone else who hasn’t) it’s still possible to upgrade for free, despite what Microsoft seems to have to say about it.

    https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-download-windows-10-for-free-now-that-windows-7-is-dead/

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/

    It was never in Microsoft’s interest to end the free upgrade program, it was just pressure from PC vendors who wanted to sell new PCs, so Microsoft announced the end of the program and then didn’t really end it. I used this procedure to upgrade three Win7 PCs prior to the January 14 deadline, and there have been no problems.

  6. Re comments about dirty looks for not wearing masks:

    The gub’ment and Fauci, Birx, Gates, Acosta don’t want the herd to develop immunity. This way they get to run the same play right before the election.

      • I’m not going to listen to a 2 hour YouTube of someone I have never heard of. Seems to launch right into a rather rambling narrative with no attempt to frame. A lot of the commenters Sound like cranks, but not sure that is indicative of anything as the quality of YouTube comments is so low.

        What about this video makes it worth watching or trusting? There are a lot of people out there that can call themselves virologists.

      • Way to go, Frip. What did Z Man say in his podcast about building a community? Guys like you seem to always forget that don’t you?

        To prove my point just go read what Fauci said about Trump acting too slowly on preventing the spread of the virus. Yet it was Fauci who said nobody needed to worry at that same time. I can’t believe you’re that dense. Nice cryptic comments you make. Perfect for ZH.

  7. Brennan is a big fish to be had, but why didn’t you mention 0bama (President Zero)?

    The buck stopped there, and he put the IRS on his enemies too.

    Screw Barr. I’d go after Zero.

  8. We’ve had our first bit of fuzzy math in my county. Yesterday allegedly saw the third death in my county from the Wuflu. Here’s how the local fish wrap described it this morning: “County officials Friday announced a man in his 60s, who tested positive for COVID-19, has died following a lengthy illness.” There’s not even an attempt at disguising what happened. “Lengthy illness” has never, to the best of my knowledge, been used to describe a situation where a person died a few days after the onset of symptoms.

  9. I’m just starting to check out BitChute. Who’s good to watch over there? Can someone provide a link (to a list, or whatever) of guys to follow over there from our side? Thanks

  10. Z on continuing exposure of deep state corruption: “You think that finally something will happen. But, nothing keeps happening.” 39:40

  11. Their new rallying cry is “Wait until the economy reopens! Thousands of deaths!” Is there any way we can force these people to shut up? They are seriously retarded. Bunch of goofballs.

    • The takeaway from this hysteria is that the field of “public health” has metastasized and strangled the more sober field of medicine. Medicine is full of doctors, while public health is full of AWFLs, modelers, bureaucrats, hack academics, politicians, and NGO-style social experimenters.

      The two fields have existed side by side for a long time, but it’s only recently that female hysterics in public health have come to dominate and overtake the more sober medicine field.

      “Public health” has been responsible for the reemergence of medieval plagues among the homeless in California, “public health” forces rehab centers into your neighborhood, “public health” encourages drug use among the homeless with free needles, “public health” spreads STDs through anti-scientific propaganda and “destigmatization,” and “public health” now bullies entire countries around with flawed modeling and prognosticating.

      That’s why the hysteria went global: it wasn’t a conspiracy, rather it was giving the fraudulent, politicized, female “public health” sector the authority to make decisions over the more sober, traditional medical profession, which has mostly been silenced and cowed into following along.

      #thefutureisfemale

  12. It does feel like a vacation where you’re not allowed to have any fun 😜

    Or being under house arrest or staying home with the flu but not being sick.

    Oh wait ,we might be sick but have to wait two weeks , comedy !

  13. It seems to me that this is not an assault on Liberty in the way we understand it. That is a second order effect.

    It is a culmination of the assault on consciousness that has been going on for the last 50 years. The Media/Education complex has effectively strangled the development of consciousness and retarded so much of the population back to a bicameral state, that the new bicameral age is upon us.

    Bicameralism is I think the strongest explanation for the commanding authorative voice to be able to overwhelm reality to such a degree that in 3 weeks in a significant portion of the population they have managed to make people reflexively afraid of even the most cursory contact. I see it as I walk around in the countryside, people stop and back away from each other without any thought, as if it has always been this way.

    I think their earlier mapping of the spread and dominance of the tracer experiments they were using like the gender denial of reality and all the other fantasy falsehoods that have poisoned any rational constructs in the brain have shown them that the tipping point had arrived and then they obviously asked themselves why wait?

    Its not a dry run. This is going to be the life now on in the west (which will shortly cease to exist except as a memory for some). Phones and TV act as the commanding voice of statues and hand idols of the ancient world spreading the commands of the scientific priesthood and the ruling class, and as consciousness needs to be learnt by each generation the remainder of introspective thought criminals will be stamped out.

    We will shortly be back to a time when we had conscious rulers and a bicameral population as just before the bronze age collapse. What an eden of free action that will be for some.

    • One caveat: I think the dissenters will have a chance to leave. It’s easier to give the more introspective citizens an “out”; let them congregate on some reservation where they can exist as benighted artifacts for the rest of eternity. It’s easier than stamping us all out.

      • Sounds like what happens to the dissidents in Brave New World.

        “”One would think he was going to have his throat cut,” said the Controller, as the door closed. “Whereas, if he had the smallest sense, he’d understand that his punishment is really a reward. He’s being sent to an island. That’s to say, he’s being sent to a place where he’ll meet the most interesting set of men and women to be found anywhere in the world. All the people who, for one reason or another, have got too self-consciously individual to fit into community-life. All the people who aren’t satisfied with orthodoxy, who’ve got independent ideas of their own. Every one, in a word, who’s any one. I almost envy you, Mr. Watson.”

        • I think it was Shaw who said:
          “The reasonable man adapts himself to his environment, the unreasonable man adapts his environment to himself. Therefore all progress is made by unreasonable men.”

  14. In regards to UBI, I think maybe thinking of it as just another ‘federal tax credit’ helps to show it’s effects.

    Say, $1000/month for everyone. So for a poor ‘working’ family with two kids, their EITC goes from ~$500/month to ~$1500/month. 20% of tax filers claim the EITC (I don’t have numbers on how many get the ‘refundable’ amounts). EITC is sort of a (small) UBI run through tax code (with some qualifications).

    For a net federal taxpayer, they would basically get a $12,000 *credit* on their income tax (each person), which would essentially, with the current tax code, likely make most middle and even upper middle class families owe $0 tax. A two-income family, each earning $60k, not counting deductions and credits, would owe $17980 currently. With a mortgage deduction, child tax credit, etc, they could earn significantly more and still net 0.

    Generally, reducing the tax burden on folks, while a bit of a canard of the GOP, is a good thing. So I would argue that it’s not a complete negative. “More welfare for some, but a tax cut for most?”

    I’d argue that instead of focusing on the effect the money may (or may not) have on prices, the much, much bigger problem is the effect the money has on *work*. In many ways, welfare payments allow companies to pay employees *less* than they can live on, since the employee can get food stamps, etc. The distorting effect of Helicopter Cash (or near-cash, like EBT) based welfare on labor markets is a real problem.

    Oh, and how on earth you pay for it, given that your biggest cash cow (the middle and upper middle class) are now paying $0 taxes.

    • You need to specify who you place into the upper and middle classes—income, wealth and such. Then one might see if they really pay no taxes, or rather if there is any wealth to tax. Basically, my thinking is that there is no way to pay for UBI—not that this minor consideration will stop anybody.

      • I see a two income family earning $120k/yr as at least ‘middle class’, if not the start of ‘upper middle class’. This is much higher than the median household income in the US as a whole (~$60k/yr median HH income). Obviously wealth has a role to play in class (retirees with lots of wealth but no income will skew these numbers).

        ~50% of the income taxes paid in the USA are paid by folks earning between $50k/yr and $500k/yr. This spans working class to ‘upper middle class’. A lot depends on where you live too. Are two doctors ‘upper class’, ‘upper middle’, etc?

        Point being, I agree, there’s simply no way to pay for it, save printing the money.

        • Your median household income excludes so much welfare and subsidies as to be meaningless.

          • So what is meaningful, and what is your point? I started with some numbers to try to determine what net effect something like this would have. Do you have better numbers that can be used to figure out how such a scheme could ever actually work (or not)?

          • The whole point of the mess is that it can be used to support anything, everything and nothing.

            It is not worth serious debate.

            Every man in America should have their face rubbed in Pelosi’s priority of “Women and minorities” all day and every day.

      • My take on UBI is that it could be paid for in theory – if the remaining productive people were left alone and allowed to get their work done. In practice the Left with never allow this. Many on our side like the idea because it seems like it could, for instance, allow white women to stay home and raise kids or work part-time again. The Left is aware of this possibility too and will do anything to prevent it.

        Instead the feminists and other SJWs will demand even more affirmative action including true “gender parity” in such fields as STEM and executive appointments in corporations. The result will be that the remaining productive people absolutely will NOT be left alone. To think of this in Soviet terms, imagine if all the lazy peasants were given a grain allowance but the ambitious Kulaks (who could feed everyone and then some if allowed to do their work) are no longer allowed to use tractors. Now everyone starves together. Equality!

  15. Yup a month later and we’re still all paying the price of that Trump CDC speech which sett the ball of this global shutdown in motion . That was our 911, Colon Powell UN WMD speech, and Lehman Brothers moment wrapped up in one hour that will go down in infamy, and set a precedent that we and future generations will pay for, as such shutdowns and quarantines become increasingly commonplace and supplement the Patriot Act and other post-911 legislation. . After doing the travel ban ,all these foreign countries retaliated with shutdowns and bans of their own.

  16. You mentioned a “coming depression” at Counter Currents. Not gonna happen, bro! V-shaped recovery! Buy the dip! I’m up 50% on stocks! Throw in my Trump bucks, and it’s a windfall! Money money money! Explanation points for everyone! ALL CAPS BABY!

    Trump will get us back to WINNING!

  17. Z, good explanation of the UBI issue, or more specifically the problem of prices adjusting upward to new money. If there is any critique of your logic, it is the $2500 for community college example. This example is valid (grant only spendable on one service). However for money spendable on anything, it is not as clear. Yes, basic economics of more goods chasing money tends to higher prices. However, giving me $1000 to spend on anything gives the buyer a temporary advantage, at least in the sense that he has a far greater array of goods and services to bid upon, and most likely a lot fewer competing bidders on any one item. The current orgy for the rescue money is just the latest spasm of our ever-socializing FED. Someone once defined the dollar as an “I owe you nothing”; at the logical extreme, the FED has bought all the debts and counts them as “assets.” Will they buy stocks? Private property? Where will this end?

    • See my discussion below on thinking of it as a tax credit in a way (and welfare for the non-taxpayer). The inflationary effects are considerable if the money is *printed* for the welfare portion, and simply handed out. Part of the problem is the massive amount of credit drives price inflation too, but all the economists are *still* worried about deflation due to the possibility of asset values crashing down and the resulting credit defaults. The bigger problem to me is the danger to the labor markets of more free money for not working.

  18. For you folk in the USA, UKColumn have been doing some excellent, non-hysterical reporting on our ‘current crisis situation’.

    This chart they have presented is very interesting – detailing the difference between the countries which are in lockdown (house arrest) – against those which are not: https://youtu.be/rNPSG3mHGkE?t=372

  21. Concerning the Durham investigation, I never thought it would go anywhere due to the probability that the gay mulatto Obama was at least aware of, if not involved with, the whole mess.

    There is no way anyone in Washington DC wants to be part of an investigation that implicates the “first African-American” President. He is practically God to the DC establishment. No Republican (especially an insider like Barr) who wants to remain in good standing with that crowd is going to step into that pile of crap.

  22. I wonder if they are still Trump worshipers over at that site where everyone is “high IQ” and only a “gamma” would argue with the host.

    Trump has let Dr. Death (Fauci) dismantle the US economy and put perhaps 50 million people out of work. I don’t think that makes Trump “on our side”.

    And what about those guys in the tree house. I have not read a post over there in 3 years, but they used to worship every word Trump uttered.

    And what about the Q people. Was destroying the economy “believing in the plan”??

    • You mean the “Tri-racial” guy? Haven’t thought about him and his gooble-gobble cult in a while.

      But I’ve said too much; don’t want to get accused of infighting again…

      • I have given up on him ever learning from his costly mistakes in that area.

      • The simpler explanation is that he was in on it all time. I often wondered why he did not seem in the least bit worries about impeachment and the other stuff, yet shows no interest in dealing with it. Trust the plan indeed. Its just not the one you thought it was.

    • The tree house is still at it. Even while trump is instrumental in holding them down and strapping on the face mask full of rats in Room 101 the cult of the leader morons are expecting him to suddenly save them from the terrible DS officials he keeps somehow appointing and deferring to.

      Even locked in their house, fired and denied even basic freedoms one can find outside a slave colony it still continues.

      Its a giant case study in ignoring any actions for the last 3 years and listening to the Media cult of the leader that has been created for them.

  24. I am sitting here listening to Trump’s press conference, hearing him say that it was the government’s “aggressive measures” that saved the day. He just gave a green light to every would-be dictator in this country that it is open season on small business and its employees as well as on civil liberties. I can’t believe what I am hearing. Instead, he should be announcing that heads are rolling today over Fauci’s and Birx’s hysterics that led to this debacle.

    • What did you expect, that the orange clown will take the responsibility for having created/participated in the greatest lunacy since 1914?
      You realize that every single politician and doomsday asshole will claim to be world savior among the ruins they had created in the first place
      It is one thing to struggle it is entirely different one to struggle and see assholes who made you suffer elevating themselves to world saviors
      But there will not be the days of rage, it has been banished along with hate from dictionaries by the very same people

  25. Of course I only follow the ROE.
    I only think Goodthink.

    But if I were thinking Badthink;

    * Let the Left rise and raise their arms first. They already are beginning to howl for it. Let them.

    *As the Jacobins took the Giorodnists as the Bolshies came behind the Cadets so ride behind whoever breaches the gates, or even makes the attempt.

    *Avoid as the worst of all, the pariahs among Lepers the Pilgrimage of Grace Types, you will know them by their talk of the Constitution, of not wanting this or that, avoid the Dietrich Bonhoeffers.
    You will die screaming, accomplishing nothing.

  26. On the issue of UBI I think looking at it as an additional grand (to use your example) is the wrong way to look at it. In the medium to long term with automation and various other labor saving techniques UBI will become many, if not most, people’s sole source of income and therefore putting up the price of the BMW will out it out of the UBI recipients reach.

  27. On the issue of UBI I think looking at it as an additional grand (to use your example) is the wrong way to look at it. In the medium to long term with automation and various other labor saving techniques UBI will become many, if not most, people’s sole source of income and therefore putting up the price of the BMW will put it out of the UBI recipients reach.

    • Also, it’s not like ubi is spent on a single good, such as BMWs, or that all stores will coordinate raise prices at once. Do you really think the 7-11 or Wawa keeps tabs on the cpi? doubt it. Stores may choose not to raise prices if a UBI means more sales,which is the more likely outcome. Inflation will go up, but probably not nearly as much as feared.

  28. Notice how so many of your PO box letters come from the big multi-kulti cities. Nothing builds contempt like familiarity. The more exposure to diversity, the more realistic you have to be about equality and HBD. People in college towns can afford to be married to the concept of equality and rejection of HBD, but people who have daily interactions and have share the streets with diversity know all too well what that means.

    Great show.

    • Liberals have been saying for I don’t know how long that prejudice is ignorance. Sometimes that’s true, but it’s equally true IMO that familiarity breeds contempt. Brings to mind an African joke: what’s the difference between a tourist and a racist – two weeks.

      Holding a low opinion of a particular group doesn’t necessarily translate to wishing them harm or hating them, but sometimes means that don’t want them around.

      • The terms prejudice and discrimination were honorable and necessary concepts in the 18th century. Then Leon Trotsky began the task of twisting and inverting definitions and at the same time inventing new ones. Even as people were using the same words they had taken on a different meaning. That is how the left lives rent free in our heads.

    • This is unfortunately where WhereAreTheViking’s libertarianism (see comments above) crashes against the POC reality. Constitutional rights aren’t really compatible with POC and POC cities.

      • That’s interesting, FBC. I have never been one to equate the Bill of Rights with libertarianism. I have always considered them an enshrinement of natural rights for the little platoons – in other words, the sweet spot between Burke and Voltaire.

        • Vikings, check out Z’s old pods (particularly the Social Contract) for the general line of thought behind Constitutional skepticism here.

          A lot of us, me included, are ex-Tea Party types and we’re still chapped from the failure of Constitutional civic nationalism.

          As you mentioned up-thread “Perhaps we are no longer a one size Bill of Rights fits all country.”

          That’s an important milestone.

          Keep thinking and don’t get too upset at the verbal rough-housing.

      • Certainly the founders and most leaders all the way up to the civil war, including Lincoln, had no intention of extending Constitutional rights to Blacks or “Red Savages.”

  29. “Medicare for all” is just a desire to put aliens and certain other people on the dole. People who have full time jobs get insurance through their employer and people already on the dole get Medicaid and, of course, seniors get Medicare. Further, they don’t want to give Medicare to the aliens and others, they want to give Medicaid to them. Medicare has a lot of co-pays and costs money (monthly premium). The premiums come out of their checks and the co-pays can be pretty high. Medicaid is totally free and has almost no co-pays. Medicaid also comes with free transportation to and from the doctors as well. What few co-pays there are, are only like a dollar or 2. It covers everything. I don’t know for sure, but I am pretty sure it will even pay for cosmetic surgery under the right circumstances. It can be deemed “medically necessary” under mental health.

  30. The consolidation of the banking system, the offshoring of manufacturing, etc., may have all “just happened.” On that question I demur, but I will set that issue aside, for now. That said, The biggest disaster of the post WWII era, the Immigration and Nationality Act (i.e., Hart-Celler) of 1965, definitely did NOT “just happen.” Emanuel Celler was a member of Congress in 1924 when the previous immigration law (Johnson-Reed) was passed, and he argued strenuously against it. Celler remained in Congress over the next several decades, and he was instrumental in the creation of President Truman’s commission that produced report called “Whom We Shall Welcome” that set the groundwork for the Hart-Celler Act a decade later. And yes, Celler wore those curious little hats you mentioned in the podcast…

  31. The FBI will not allow anyone to record them. It is illegal to record them. Their written record is THE record. The agents can write down anything and there is nothing to contradict what they say. Even entering a room with an FBI agent puts you in a bad place. They can say you said anything and there is no way to prove they are lying! Like all cops, they can lie to you perfectly legally, but it is a felony to lie to them.
    Just last week some weasel FBI agent called a cop on his phone, set up a meeting in a parking lot and then ordered him to turn off his body-cam. This blew up into a shit show where he gave the cop his phoney ID and this ended with 3 local cops putting him in the back of their cop car and his pretending to have a heat stroke.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujp1Ol9yChE

    There’s all the entrapment they do where they brow-beat dissidents to agree to harebrained schemes to blow up a bridge or something. It was created corrupt and has been corrupt ever since.

    • As long as you’re in public, you keep filming them. They’ll try their best to brow beat you into making your contact off the record, but they can’t “make” you stop recording them. It’s not illegal. Watch the below video to see how it’s done.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxqC3Ep9Oxc

      • Great video. Scumbags (and at least one (((scumbag))) ).

        Notice how they immediately started talking to the high trust Boomer father. Who almost certainly would have complied if he had been alone.

        • They’ll be back. Gotta watch how you talk to these guys; they only follow the rules in the beginning.

      • It’s not so much “off the record” as it is “only OUR record of what was said”
        I agree about recording them in public, but only to a degree. Never, ever talk to the cops, especially not the FBI, EVER. Nothing good can come of it. You will never talk them out of arresting you and nothing you say, even if you have a perfect record of it, can be used to help you and anything you say can be used to hurt you. Your good statements are hearsay and your bad statements are evidence against you.

  34. My opinion on RamZPaul is that bringing on Styx is a good move. For the American audience anyway. Tina seems like a nice lady and very wise and on our side but her accent is sometimes hard to understand and the flow of the show slows down.
    I think with Styx, although some of his ideas I don’t agree with, the overall flow of the Happy Homelands show will speed up and the give and take will be more interesting for listeners and viewers.
    You gotta understand questions and answers clearly to enjoy a podcast and the flow of the show has to be steady.
    I had the problem recently following a Paul Gottfried show, not due to language difficulties but just due to technical issues making understanding questions difficult.
    Clear questions and answers along with a well timed and interesting show is the key.
    Rush Limbaugh does this well
    As does the guy here, the Z Man
    I think RamZPaul will succeed with Styx and I look forward to it.

    • I caught the last couple of minutes of Ramz’s first stream with Styx; the later was insisting that Mexicans are going to start voting Republican soon…

      So he’s basically a Satanist Erick Erickson?

      • I’m amazed that someone could believe that, unless the GOP becomes W’s party of treason.

  35. As a person who has not reached certainty regarding the severity of the virus, due to untrustworthy data, I am concerned by the intensity of our in-group infighting. Ramzpaul parted ways with the Swan of Tuonela, the sweet and intelligent Tiina, over their disagreements over the virus.

    We don’t have to shred ourselves over this. People of good faith can disagree.

    We have to act now and that entails making decisions, but even if you disagree with a comrade’s prescription, we can acknowledge the uncertainty. We don’t have to insult and hate each other over this.

    • 2 million Americans to 1 million to half a million to 260,000 to 80,00 to 60,000. Our reaction to this virus was nothing short of retarded. And the media will go on thinking they’re sanctified geniuses.

      If only there were a way we could broadcast their retardation to normies.

      • The bleating normies, in all their mask-wearing, virtue-signaling glory, are every bit as retarded as the media.

        • I got a bunch of dirty looks at the grocery store from a bunch of AWFLs and suburban bugmen for daring to walk around with my face uncovered.

          • Went to Walmart this morning and stopped at the door and ordered to put a mask on. I wear a fancy scarf as a mask that has a habit of slipping off of my face, but it got me through the door. Mandatory in NJ.

          • Pretty soon, they’ll be dragging you by your collar down the bread aisle.

            I’m just so, so tired. Aren’t you? It is exhausting to be hectored by panicked, innumerate strangers; to suffer under the heel of a public crisis that, as I have said before, is staggeringly retarded. It’s like all the gayness and all of the retardation of our culture has galvanized into a quivering mass of butt-ugly, cancerous duncery.

        • This is very unfortunately true. It is also true that the revised estimates have not put a dent in normie behavior.
          They are a herd, and they have not been given the signal to change direction yet, so onward they walk, in unison, towards the cliff.
          This crisis has proven not only the cynicism and incompetence of our rulers, but the craven submissiveness of the general population.
          The majority just rolled over and exposed their collective bellies without even a growl.
          Pathetic.

      • I was expecting worse (in fact my old “model” expected peak either late this month or mid-June) not that my doubling some figures on a calculator constitute a good model. But do give the epidemic its due. Let us hope the casualties will be relatively few, but it’s still got to run the current wave and we are promised possible future waves. “You never know who’s going to win til the race is run.” (widsom from AC-DC’s misogynistic “Kicked in the Teeth”)

    • On the plus side, we see how people have reacted under fire – particularly who’s been more interested in sectarian sh*t-stirring than leveraging the situation for White advantage on the whole.

      Nothing at issue in the last 3 months is worth wrecking a long-term collaboration like RamZ and Tiina had – that’s a shame.

    • Ramzpaul parted ways with the Swan of Tuonela, the sweet and intelligent Tiina, over their disagreements over the virus.

      I doubt it was about the virus: he has signed on Styx, who’s totally on the Armageddon bandwagon.

      And good for Ramz; nothing more annoying than when a talented host needs an echo girl to laugh at his jokes and repeat his points.

      Steven Crowder + idiot chorus line
      Jared Taylor + obsequious wossisname
      Henrik Palmgren + ditzy soccer mom Lana Lokteff

      All shows I can’t bear listening to because of the goofy sidekicks.

      I might start listening to Happy Homes now. I’d have preferred he did it solo, but Styx probably doesn’t plan on being an echo girl.

      • YMMV, Felix. I’ve never found either Lana or Tiina “ornamental” and Styx strikes me as Moly with a dirtbag aesthetic.

        • Lana deserves credit for putting her money where her mouth it and actually birthing white children

          • Big deal. If she really were to walk the talk, she should be at home, minding the sprogs, making lacto-acid preserves from her garden harvest, instead of interfering in daddy’s work.

        • I’ve never found either Lana or Tiina “ornamental”

          Neither have I, I find them “detrimental”.

          Tiina isn’t as bad as Lana, at least she’s got some Finland-stories – in fact, she was better when she ran a Finnocentric solo show.

          Styx strikes me as Moly with a dirtbag aesthetic.

          He’s from one of the whitest states in the Union, what did you expect? I have hopes that we might turn him to the dark side yet: at the moment, he’s bunkered up in some white suburb of Rotterdam but they’ve started shifting diversity into Vermont, so maybe he has a life lesson waiting for him when he gets home?

          Also, he nailed the God Emperor from the outset. Not only did he call all states (except one) during the election, but he told us that Trump would be a “mild reformer”, that he was a NY liberal at heart.

          • We’re reaching deep levels of irony when we’re talking about converting a lolbert Satanist to our “Dark Side.” What a great time to be alive.

          • What a great time to be alive.

            Amen to that.

            He says he’s not a Satanist, rather than something-something magical, but I can understand why people get confused.

            I peg him, most of all, as a sperg. He needs his bubble pierced from the outside.

          • Given the persona, Felix, I was kinda hoping for Tool or at least Iron Maiden’s “Number of the Beast.”

            Now I’m picturing him singing “Horse with No Name” for the Sunday Night Thelema Society Sacrifice… Strange days.

          • I’m not sure Tiina and Paul split just because of this virus stuff. Maybe it was the final push, but Tiina has a lot of other irons in the fire in terms of European activism. I suspect Paul and Tiina just went as far as they could go with their show and it was time for a change. I’ve seen Tiina mad, so I think I’d know if she was mad at Paul.

          • Reading the comments on Ramz’s YT announcements about the staffing changes, the most disappointing thing was the observation that few if any comments were made without reference to the pleasant appearance of the outgoing co-host.
            On the other hand, those having a temper tantrum swearing to unsubsribe… That there is the state of our depth of thought.
            It’s too early to start drinking.

      • Totally mercenary move for more subs and super chats.
        As for Styxx, no thanks. His 666 handle, shirtless libertarian and now some kind of expat stance is just foolish cosplay to me. No matter what right wing takes he has.

        Ramz should do consulting work if he needs more dough.

        • The reason it should be interesting, is exactly that he’s a libertarian, that he’s not on our team.

          I look forward to seeing them lock horns over the China Plague and, of course, ethno-nationalism. Should put a dent in our popcorn hoards.

        • Yep. The greasy hippie vibe, the satanism – he’s just another cretin trying to sell an empty brand. He’s not a serious person that you’d want speaking for your movement.

    • “Nailed them, with their own words.

      In this article, I’ll present quotes from official sources about their own diagnostic test for the coronavirus. I’m talking about fatal flaws in the test.

      Because case numbers are based on those tests (or no tests at all), the whole “pandemic effect” has been created out of fake science.”

      https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/04/08/corona-creating-illusion-of-pandemic-through-diagnostic-test/

      The one he wrote today is even more powerful. We have been lied to, and we have been screwed. I think it is far to lake to recover from this. Maybe 50 million unemployed say some economists. 50 million???? Damn.

  36. Latest #s from my hospital. No positive tests for over a week.

    • Veteran Testing:
    o We received 2 COVID-19 test results today; 2 negative and 0 positive.
    Total tests sent: 184
    Positive: 6
    Negative: 171
    Pending: 7

    • 6 COVID-19 cases to date; 2 in inpatient/ED, 2 recovering at home, 2 deceased

    • Employee Testing:
    o We received 1 COVID-19 test results today; 1 negative and 0 positive.
    Total tests sent: 15*
    Positive: 0
    Negative: 15
    Pending: 0

    • Thank you for continuing to post these numbers.

      The number of expected deaths in my former home state of Colorado had been revised downward from 33,200 to 254. No joke. In the original model Colorado was supposed to be experiencing hundreds of deaths per day by now. Under the new model it was supposed to be experiencing 30-40 deaths per day now. The actual numbers were more like 5-15 per day.

      Apparently these numbers weren’t scaring the masses sufficiently so yesterday the Health Department reviewed their case files and “discovered” a bunch of unreported Covid deaths that they had failed to report, so they added them all to the death count yesterday. That was sufficient to bump the expected deaths number up to 457.

      What a farce.

      • Anyone one who tested “positive” for Chinese Virus and then dies will be listed as a Chinese Virus death, even if the individual actually died as a result of being run over by a Chevy Suburban while crossing a highway. I read elsewhere that death will automatically be attributed to Chinese Virus, even of someone who was never tested.

        • At this point I believe NYC is counting nearly every death as Corona to keep feeding the media hysteria and to make Cuomo look good for locking down the entire state.

          • Yes. I have personal knowledge of someone who was diagnosed with bone cancer about 3 months ago, died yesterday in a hospice. He also had corona virus that he picked up in the hospital, treatment center, or hospice; his death is listed as corona-related, although that was hardly a contributing cause.

      • Portland (Oregon) VA medical center. Largest VA hospital between Seattle and San Francisco. Going east, Denver probably the next big one. Pretty big area.

  37. The “vision thing” is binocular – what we can do short-mid-term on the one side and what’s ideal on the other. Like the ability to hold two seemingly contradictory thoughts in your head at once, a lot of people have trouble coherently merging those world-views.

    Those of us who believe in building communities from the ground up rather than seizing Washington ala 2016’s higher hopes are more than willing to share the road with fellow travelers who stay in their lane. When you reach your desired exit, depart the caravan peacefully and fare thee well.

    The try-hard efforts at discrediting other groups, seizing “leadership” of “the Movement” and attention-whoring in general are what cause dissension among dissidents. It will play itself out, as it always does.

    Check out the Counter-Currents multi-part-piece on French far-Rightist Dominique Venner* for an example of how the French far-Right was riven by the same factionalism (indeed largely the same factions) decades ago.

    Samples:

    Conformism

    All the “nationals” have their good Gaullist, their good technocrat, their good minister. Yielding to an old bourgeois reflex, they dread “the adventure” and “chaos.” As soon as a man of the régime waves the flag, they give him their confidence… They prefer the comfort of blindness to lucidity. Sentimentalism and parochialism always prevail over political reasoning. In the vain hope of satisfying everybody, they refuse to take a side and satisfy nobody.

    Mythomania

    The reading of espionage novels, the memories of the Resistance and other special services, the stories of plotters, Gaullists and others, plunge the “nationals” into an atmosphere of permanent dreams. A game of bridge with a retired general, a member of parliament, or a sergeant from the army reserve becomes a dark and powerful conspiracy. If they recruit as few as ten high school students, they think themselves Mussolini… They are partisans for unity and have only bitter reproaches against the sectarianism of militants who refuse to take them seriously. The same “nationals,” in a period of genuine clandestineness, are arrested with lists of addresses and documents, and begin to talk as soon as the police raise their voice.

    ***

    Plus ca change…

    * https://www.counter-currents.com/2010/09/for-a-positive-critique-part-1/

    • Those of us who believe in building communities from the ground up rather than seizing Washington ala 2016’s higher hopes are more than willing to share the road with fellow travelers who stay in their lane. When you reach your desired exit, depart the caravan peacefully and fare thee well.

      Well put.

    • The striking thing about Venner was that he was from his youth both a man of letters and a man of action unlike most of his contemporaries. He volunteered for the Algerian War and afterwards had always felt the need to inject himself into some public action even if he felt it was futile. Winning required losing a lot, but the injection of energy into the public sphere would in time pay off. He would rail against the intellectually cloistered believing ideas and strategies always needed to be tested IRL outside of the chambers they were formed in. When he eventually cloistered himself his worst instinct metastasized in isolation and he turned a lifetime of good work and action into a ruinous deadend.

      Cloistered movements are footnotes and never part of the historical narrative.

      • The circumstances French far-Rightists faced in his waning years were black-pilling. He’s been (unfairly) labeled the “French Mishima” for obvious reasons but there is no fair comparison between the lives of the admirable Venner and the degenerate Mishima rather than their deaths.

        Despair is our greatest enemy, even more than dissension. It’s existentially important for guys to find normal life outlets and simple pleasures to feed their souls when the meta-politics grind you down.

        I’ll cite Steyn again, from After America – don’t just live in words and ideas. Have a hobby. Make things. Learn to cook.

        Staring into the Clown World abyss is a psychic “Dirty Job.” You have to hose off the crud and get comfy when the workday’s done.

  38. Nothing is as normal.

    My 85 year old mother had a massive stroke as this all started. After we got her in a nursing home we could no longer visit due to the lock-down. Then a swallowing incident lead to CPR and the ICU at the hospital. Could not see her as the hospital was locked down. She was put on a breathing machine and got pneumonia and about a week goes by and they transfer her to hospice. We get to see her in hospice but she only lasts 5 days there. They say she died of coronavirus and not pneumonia.

    Now we can only have 10 people at the graveside service tomorrow; nine family and one preacher. The preacher man said that he can’t visit anyone in the hospital. He said that they are not putting out chairs for the grave side services right now.

    Just stupidity.

    I understand the some are predicting 50 million unemployed people. For what? To save a few thousand Boomers? They were going to die anyway. (I am high risk myself)

    • > I understand the some are predicting 50 million unemployed people. For what? To save a few thousand Boomers? They were going to die anyway. (I am high risk myself)

      I’m sure the tens of millions of unemployed 20-30 year olds are more than happy to lose their jobs if just one 80 year old diabetic can live a couple of years longer. If they don’t, well that’s just selfish.

      MY condolences, BTW.

      • The oldest Boomer is 74 this year. The ones who really need to worry are older – upper 70s and beyond.

        • The remaining members of the Silent Generation (ie the only group really at risk) are the only ones who have handled themselves with any dignity through this ordeal.

        • That the Xers and less are thick as pigshit doesn’t stop them sharing their ignorance,

    • It’s a good thing your mother is protected from all of her loved ones.
      I get to see my grandma through her balcony on the second floor! The experts know best, though.

      I’m getting pretty sick of this crap. I wish we could do something.

    • The idea of not sitting out more than 10 chairs at a funeral for this is pure loonacy nut job. And old people need our loved ones near us when we die.
      These jack offs are making Stalin look good.
      Sorry for your loss.

    • The cowardice of our Christian leaders has been something to behold, at least for myself.

      Christ tells us we don’t live by bread alone, yet I look around and see Christian’s of all stripes demanding everything except the grocery store be closed down.

      Sorry for your loss, and I’m sorry it had to occur in a shroud of lunacy.

  39. I don’t think I can fault the libertarians or other “perfectionist” cults for striving toward an ideal society, as long as they understand the striving will probably fall short of perfect, and in those instances we shouldn’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Example: Yes, the Constitution gives the right to bear arms and the policy of a Bloomberg to stop and frisk minorities is the kind of “infringement” that would get certain libertarians (and ACLU types) in a lather, but not getting shot or stabbed in a subway (and, incidentally, keeping blacks and Latinos from getting shot or stabbed as often) takes precedent in this case. I also disagree with Z (at least in part) when he says we should not have a system that is at war with human nature, if in human nature we include impulses and instincts. Trying to be a better person and failing is better than celebrating some nonstop bacchanalian riot (whether it’s people treating their bodies more like playgrounds than temples, or Wall Street turning every surface in sight into a money changing table). Yes, I’ve started reading the Bible, really reading it (not under duress or for school). Hypocrisy would actually be an improvement in our elite at this point, since the hypocrite at least has the sense to hide his sins and uphold public morality.

    • Joey, I know what you’re saying. But “not getting shot or stabbed” is also a justification for taking our guns and/or knives. As a defense attorney, I asked juries if they could find a man who committed the crime not guilty in order to honor the Constitution’s protections for all of us. That is, if the prosecutor could not prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt, as required by due process, could they find my client not guilty, even if they had lingering suspicions he did what he was accused of doing. Another way to look at it . . . which is worse, to imprison 100 innocent people because there are no Constitutional protections, or let 1 guilty person go because there are Constitutional protections. That Bill of Rights is precious. We slice away at it at our peril.

      • Well, if you don’t want to make certain exceptions for certain people (minorities) in certain times (now) in certain places (New York or any other large metropolis), then understand your chances of getting your face sliced on the train is higher.

        • Liberty is more important to me than physical safety. Having said that, I will tell you that I live in Oklahoma, a constitutional carry state, and I have absolutely no fear of being harmed. Perhaps we are no longer a one size Bill of Rights fits all country.

          Making exceptions swings both ways. It all depends on who is in power. It will be your civil liberties and my civil liberties being tossed out when the Democrats get in power. They have already, with the acquiescence of Republicans, criminalized our thoughts and now we can be charged with a crime for what we may have been thinking. The sky’s the limit once they are back in power.

          • One black (gray?) bill the Zman has fed me is this: What does he call it? Like when you are de-platformed or banned from “private” but near-monopoly services (Google, Twitter, PayPal, etc.) Indeed, a day may come when you have lost much access to communcation, commerce and even financial services, yet no one has violated your legal rights! Is this the first time in history when private corporations were among the biggest powers?

      • The powers that be just wish the citizen cherished his rights, but not necessarily use them. Sure, we like our rights to speech, assembly and so on, but you must admit the Tyrant has a point: I value my right to a jury trial, but I will be even more grateful if I can live without needing that right 🙂

  40. This is America’s DeBaathification.

    De-Baathification was absolutely the proximate cause of the Iraqi insurgency; because it forced out of work the competent part of the country, which had access to vast munitions stores and organization, intelligence files and the like.

    Now the same results aren’t happening here because above all there’s no organization, no way to organize under these conditions, no money, no networks, no leadership. No will either as of yet.

    So Operation Time Out is working (its brilliant really, we should have thought of this) but how long can Operation Time Out last?

  41. Meanwhile out in rural Indiana, life is pretty much going on with no difference from day to day. It is a hassle that I can’t get toilet paper from Sam’s Club delivered but otherwise this apocalypse has been pretty disappointing.

    • No draconian prison-style lockdowns from your state or local government? And no one with an “I don’t believe the liberal media” bumper sticker cheering for it?

    • Same in Copenhagen, really. I’ve seen one or two people masks in the last couple of weeks, and the shelves are stocked as usual, people are playing ball in the parks.

      Should be interesting how Sweden fares. They’re pretty much running business as usual, except they’ve locked up their geezers – the Stockholmers are out and about, reveling in the spring weather.

      https://3speak.online/watch?v=rairfoundation/wiutwmyy&jwsource=cl

  42. You use the expression “waiting for a passing knight to heel me.”
    Could you tell me the meaning and origin of this phrase.
    I have looked elsewhere with no success because I am reluctant to lazily use other people’s time.
    I am a long time reader of your words. Listening, not so much because of hearing. Since coming across your words a few years ago I have always enjoyed them – thought provoking, humorous, and fascinating – fascinating that people so far apart geographically could be so akin in attitude.
    But then, my work (engineer) took me all over the world to work alone with small teams, and I found that people were the same everywhere. Good men and women that you could have a laugh and beer or few with, and the very few others with whom you could work with but avoid later.
    Thank you for your issue.

    • Universal means everyone gets it. I agree that it seems unlikely that everyone would get it but in that case they’re gonna have to call it something else.

      • Everyone??
        do you think they’ll be able to find all the homeless people, force them to open direct-deposit bank accounts?
        What about the off-grid people, the hippies in the hills, the gypsies?
        Are they going to go looking for them?

      • The people on our side who think UBI will be truly universal are completely delusional. The powers that be will start giving increased benefits to single mothers and other favored groups as soon as it is passed. The “universal” bit will be part of the lie they use to get the thing enacted into law. From there it will be much easier to monkey around with who gets what using regular congressional budgeting.

    • I thought the virus must be hitting harder than expected when I saw my schedule this morning. It has appointments listed every 20 minutes and then, at the bottom:
      2:00p CLOSED FOR GOOD
      FRIDAY 2PM

        • It’s more like: I gave up drinking for a month. Change the punctuation and change the meaning: I gave up. Drinking for a month.

  46. ZMan, can you recommend a good microphone for a beginner looking to start their own podcast?

      • Z-

        I thought your audio was quite good this week.

        I thought you sounded clearer on the podcast than you did in previous weeks.

    • Get yourself a used Sennheiser shotgun mic. They can be pricey. Just look around on eBay. If you’re in a big city, call around to various recording studios and see if they have one they want to get rid of.

  47. Although I’m happy either way, I’ve got my fingers crossed chanting “son, son, son, son!”

    • I think its development shouldn’t have moved past 8. It’s the perfect number for Windows: two gaping holes through which spyware can flow in and your personal data can flow out.

    • I was an early adopter of W8. I never had any problems with it, but I’m more technically proficient than most people. I really only use my desktop for recording, surfing and as a storage device, so the OS is not all that important to me.

    • Windows 8 is okay, but far too tilted towards touch-centric operation in its default state. You can turn a lot of that off if you dig into the settings.

      Win10 is far better because it ditches most of the touch-centric defaults. I also like it’s simpler windowing graphics, which seem to reduce the hardware load.

      • Yeah I remember when Windows got into the tablet game, they all had Windows 8 or 8.1. That’s the only experience I ever had with it. Until today I didn’t even know there was a desktop version. Was 8 before or after Vista?

        • Some idiot at Microsoft got it into his head that people were going to want to pay 50% more for their screen so that they could smudge it up touching it and Win 8 was born. Completely puzzling was that Microsoft ported the same interface to the server OS which rarely ever has a screen, let alone “touch”. Microsoft back-peddled a bit and put out 8.1/2012r2 and the little changes made an intolerable OS pretty good. And then they ditched all of that progress for 10. Now that we’re on 10.9 or whatever, it too is finally fairly decent, though laden with M$ spyware.

          • You’ve really nailed the main issue with Win8 in your comment.

            Heck, I absolutely *love* the detachable form factor (MS Surface Pro, Acer Switch) and I barely use them as touch tablets.

            I highly recommend them as lighter laptop alternatives for frequent travelers, unless you are doing the kind of work (3-D rendering, image processing, etc) that requires more juice from the CPU and GPU in your device.

          • 8’s basic problem was that it was trying to look like a phone OS.
            It was a software transvestite.

      • If it still has the capability, use the Windows 2000 interface. I use it on my Windows 7 machine.
        Windows 2k was the best version of Windows. It was a well worthwhile upgrade no matter what version you were using before.
        Windows 8 was terrible.

        • Son, I like you.

          Because you realize how good Win 2k was.

          Most people out there give far too much credit to Win98, which did not solve all the stability issues of Win95, and WinXP, which really didn’t do much except graft a crappy set of windowing graphics onto Win2k.

    • Windows 8 was fairly popular for a few years but nowhere near so as Windows 7. The ‘unicorn’ you are referring to is actually Windows 9. They skipped 9 for various reasons including too much similarity to 95/98 and 10 is ‘suppose’ to be the last version of Windows. M$ will be rolling out something entirely new.

      Given that the company is now wall to wall Pajeets who slowly infiltrated because of the H1B scam and Gates wanting cheap slave labor for 2 decades, I wouldn’t hold your breath on that ‘new platform’. Microsoft wasn’t innovative even when it -was- innovative if you catch my drift.

      • Sill on Windows 7 at home – its annoyance factor has fallen markedly since they stopped with Update Tuesdays, and I utterly hate Win 10.

      • Anything Microsoft sucks now. Try using Internet Explorer, don’t even know where tf half the stuff I need is. There’s a very real correlation between cheap import labour and quality.

        • Is that true? Seriously, I’d like to know. Plenty of times I’d prefer just having the command line back.

          My impression is they always found themselves stuck patching spaghetti code while trying to morph along, initially aping Apple since those critical days of 82-84 or so. Hard to believe in retrospect, but there was a brief window of time where it wasn’t crystal clear who might come to dominate the desktop market.

          Although MS had the corporate edge with IBM and Apple dominated creative sorts, Apple made some impressive front ends for “midrange” systems (VAX, DEC, etc) that often occupied dedicated rooms. Plus some narrow research/defense applications like object oriented programming systems, etc. Apple was nimble and always seemed to nip at MS management in odd ways – even at the executive level, which was fodder for amusing industry rumors.

          My impression was that Apple did a better job of retaining American engineers on the front ends (consciously or not) while MS relied on foreign recruits (software as well as hardware) from the get go.

          I’ll say this for MS – every new release supported an entire cottage industry of corporate hand holders and data staff smelling salt dispensers to cope with ”user hostile” error messages and upgrade/migration days or even weeks. Many a lucrative consulting career resulted.

          • I prefer the command line, though long file names made it a real pain in the butt. Yes, there’s the Tilda, but it’s too cumbersome.
            Earlier versions of Windows and DOS were written for speed. But all of that started changing around the turn of the century.
            I don’t think there was ever a time where MS’s dominance was not obvious. MS knew NT was not ready and kept the 16bit (and quasi 32bit) version of Windows alive long enough to where they could migrate everyone to NT. MS jumped ship on OS/2 in the very beginning when it was obvious OS/2 was going nowhere. Apple was never going anywhere and that was obvious then, IMHO.

      • Apex, I’m already resolved to switch to Linux for personal/non-work stuff within the next couple of years. I’ll always have to use Windows for a lot of client stuff but I like to have one machine in each “camp” and I’ve heard Bad Things Are Coming for MS quality-control etc…

        YouTube had vidya from an ex-quality-control guy from MS who was still frenemies with his old staff there, put out some good critique of their recent changes, but you could tell he was pulling a lot of punches to avoid burning that bridge.

    • I recently moved from Win 7 to Linux Mint, and I only wish I had done it sooner. There is a learning curve, but if you’re at all familiar with the Control Panel (or even better, the command line), it’s not all that different from Windows. Their user forums are very accommodating to newbies, too. WIn10 is spyware and they will probably be moving to a subscription model soon anyway. Time to say goodbye.

      • I feel you. I don’t want Windows 10 enforced cloud. I’ve been hanging on to Windows 7 but I have lots of Linux experience. Are there any programs, Zoom, Microsoft Teams, that you can’t run? Give me the worst of it.

        • Zoom works fine for me on Ubuntu, though it always seems to switch from the app to the browser version in meetings. Probably anything with the word “Microsoft” in it won’t work except under Wine (the Windows emulator). There are exceptions even there. I use Visual Studio Code on Linux and that’s from MS.

          I strongly recommend anyone in the DR learn to use Linux for as much as possible and keep Windows machines when absolutely necessary (it seldom is) and keep them walled off in their own little network ghetto away from the machines you use for anything important. Apple is NOT an alternative and is even more pozzed as a company than MS. Eventually spy- and nanny- ware will be built into both platforms at too low a level to turn off. The closed-source nature of those platforms means that you cannot disable that stuff and rebuild the system as well.

          There are other reasons as well. Lots of stuff you pay for in the MS world is available as open source in the Linux world. This means more money for building that bunker and stocking it with weapons. Linux can be (slightly) harder to set up but once installed requires far less maintenance. Upgrades are less disruptive as well. Linux distros also don’t come with any adware/upgrademe-ware so you don’t have to kill pop-ups asking you to register things every 5 minutes. All of this means more time to spend stocking the bunker as well.

        • 64k? Come on man, get with the times!
          Get an REU! You can get them with a MB or more! Throw that 1541 in the trash and get a 1581. 800k. Who is ever going to need 800k?!

      • I used Mint for a few years and found it baffling, at least under the hood, and I’m not exactly a tech boomer. God help me if I had to download a program and the only way I could do it was via the Terminal, and then I’d get repository issues and broken files and I’m getting PTSD just thinking about it. I had to return to Windows.

        • I tried Ubuntu a few years back; same experience, albeit the install went without a hitch. Too many baffling little things that take too long to fix.

          Cool rotating-cube multi-desktop, though.

        • Mint may be worth another try.

          It has a Gui-based package manager that is pretty easy to understand and use.

      • The whole industry wants to do that. It is a GIANT step backwards. I absolutely cringe when I hear someone talking up “cloud” computing and storage or renting software. It is a return to the glory days of terminals. Anyone who trusts their data on a cloud platform is a fool. I wouldn’t put a to-do list on someone else’ computer. Everything I do is backed up to multiple places locally. Storage is so cheap there is no reason you can’t keep multiple full backups of your data. Most people don’t even have that much data.
        It’s funny that software costs are going up while quality is going down. Nothing works properly anymore. Even Google is not 1/2 as useful as it used to be. It’s not just them playing games by hiding stuff.
        There has been a massive slowdown in the expansion of computing power. Just the clock speed alone went up 250 times between 1982 and 2000, from 4.77mhz to a gigahertz, not to mention the power per cycle increases that were made in that time. The next 18 years saw less than a 5x clock speed improvement.
        Extra cores reach diminishing returns fairly quickly. Unless you are dealing with a server, you are more or less hitting that with 4 cores. Even so, all other things equal, 1 faster core is better than 4 slower cores that equal the fast core. Yes, we are still getting faster processors, but they aren’t that much faster. My 12yo processor isn’t anywhere near as out of date as a 386 25mhz (1988 release) was in the year 2000.

        • Low Hanging Fruit. If you notice, Cars are pretty much the same as before, just a bit more reliable (as are PCs, if you don’t remember the days of IRQ errors). Houses, buildings, etc. Engineering has solved the ‘easy’ problems. The Hard ones, are well, much harder. And quality actually is better, crazy as it sounds. The problem is the demand for more magic from the box than ever before.

          • The quality of PCs has plummeted precipitously. The quality of the boards, power supply, hard disk, keyboards, mice, the case everything. 1/2 of the PCs built in the late 90s early 2000s died of premature capacitor failure.
            I recall in the late 90s, PCs were becoming so cheap, that the motherboard would flex from the pressure of pushing in a card. Dip switches started being replaced with jumpers. Parts started becoming hard to find because they weren’t keeping inventory of spare parts.
            The computers shipping today and the components in them are just cheap junk. It is a total crap shoot of Chinese logistics and the phony parts that make it into the production lines.
            The ease of use issues have nothing really to do with quality.

          • You’re saying as software quality goes up, hardware quality goes down?

            Here’s an example where it’s harder to tell:
            Backblaze has thousands of drives for their online backup product, and they make stats available:

            https://www.backblaze.com/blog/hard-drive-stats-for-2019/

            Generally, it’s hard to tease out general trends from one metric. Seems to be manufacturer dependent as well (Seagate 12TB drives were failing far more than any other).

            I will say that the more miniaturization takes place, the harder and harder is its to make modular, replaceable parts that can be repaired by hand. And the cost of labor to do this far outstrips the cost of simply replacing the whole module.

            There’s something to be said for commodity. Yes, it’s ‘cheaper’ and less well made, but as a commodity, it’s a lot easier to get your necessary failure rate down through redundancy.

          • I am assuming they are not using consumer grade drives.
            Take pretty much any keyboard made before 1995 and compare it to a modern KB. Same with mice. These examples really show the deterioration of quality. Even the cheaper KBs or the era were better built than most, even name brand quality, KBs made today.
            The next biggest cost cutting has come in the cases. The actual physical box the components go into. Paper thin metal if you are lucky, otherwise plastic. They are so cheap, the slot covers are usually perferated in place and not screwed in from the factory. Just weigh the average pre 1995 PC and then a PC made after 2k. Obviously weight is not everything, it’s just a good indication of the drop in quality. Weight isn’t a consideration for a desktop PC. They are not deliberately trying to shave the pounds (other than shipping cost).
            The next biggest cost cutting leading to poor quality is the power supply. PS very rarely went bad back then. They certainly were not over-rating them. If it were a 500 watt power supply, it was rated 500 watts with a duty cycle of 100%. Duty cycle is how crap quality gets in.
            Once electronics started getting outsourced to Asia, the dishonest labeling REALLY got started. The words “up to” started getting added to everything and, of course, in small print. Like how a printer might print 3 pages per minute, but in draft quality, while giant bold letters proclaim letter quality. Or 14.4 modems start getting advertised as 115k, the max speed of the UART chip.
            Hard disks have really gotten bad. The physical build quality of even thumb drives have gotten way worse and they are much younger.
            Also, I would be a bit weary of data-center data. In addition to using better quality drives, they are rarely power cycled. I am generally talking about what a consumer would purchase either in a store or an online retailer and mostly, that are included in the computer to begin with.
            The physical quality of monitors has dropped, but it’s kind of an apples to oranges comparison.

            The one upside is that all of this poor quality has allowed the costs to plummet. You might have gotten a MUCH higher quality PC in 1990, but you were paying for it. They generally ran between 2500 and 5 grand for a complete name brand desktop PC sans monitor. Today, you can buy a PC on the low end for $400. There IS something to be said about that. If you want a good quality KB (for example), you can pay $150 and get a good KB or even just buy a used Model M (which is what I use). But you should be absolutely diligent about backing up your data, because for so many people, your PC could fail at any time.

          • And lolbertarians have been pushing the free-market BS with computers the hardest. They completely ignore the fact that all of this stuff is being made much more lower quality and where labor costs are much lower (outsourced) and where there are no laws protecting the environment. Some of the lower costs is scale, but the bulk is from a combination of outsourcing and lower quality.

          • IBM Model F mechanical keyboards…dude, you ever used one? They were god-tier equipment. Each keystroke sounded like a gunshot, like each finger press was a mini-hammer strike writ large. I loved those keyboards.

        • As has been said many times: There is no such thing as the cloud, only other people’s computers;

          • Ouch! You’re party poopering on the “safe spaces” conception of data security. Reality Hurts.

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