December 14, 2022

January will be exceptionally bumpy

* There could be orange indictments. I'd rate likelihood as on up side of moderate, but not by much. If not January then each successive month becomes more likely. Could be Georgia or Special Counsel or both. But not December because, unlike Mollusk, even SCs are aware of sensitivity about firing or otherwise disturbing the Holiday season. Indict before Christmas? No, it goes "Twas the night before Christmas".

* December test runs at electric infrastructure may presage January waves.

* Could be big J6 cracks or breaks or bus accidents. RepubliQon members of the House could be indicted or subpoenaed. This months Meadows comms release signals big trouble has arrived at Donald's office doorstep and his domestic hearth doorstep (Meadows and Junior).

* Ukraine winter offensive will start or already be underway. It's been comparatively stable for a few weeks now. Russia may surprise with a re-offensive first, but I doubt it.

* Winter European energy crunch will be biting and there will be lots of unhappy people there.

* New Congress with New Ingredient: energized gungho nutzoid RepubliQonners who think they have the wind in their sails and the voice of the people behind them. They will overplay their hand more than once.

* January often sets the tone in the stock markets for the year.

* China will be immersed in a full bore pandemic because a) it is ramping up already, b) little natural immunity due to zero-Covid, c) Chinese vaccines are lousy until you have 3 shots and then they compare, d) little uptake of vaccination so far, e) just starting a big push to vaccinate the elderly. Plus protests have shown they can have effects. But also the Chinese Security Apparatus has begun a clampdown on people involved in the covid protests. That will have ripple effects too.

There is peril in every item listed, but I am not particularly alarmed overall. But it will be bumpy.

On the other hand ... stabilizing factors include:

* calming inflation, soft landing avoiding rough recession looking more likely.

* gas prices down.

* Democratic Senate, by a hair thin margin. Steady Democratic hands in the White House.

That's all I can think of at the moment.

December 7, 2022

Implicit Russia propaganda inside headline: Only Russia can attack across border

Ukraine can only defend inside its borders, is the implicit line.

In reality, Ukraine has been extraordinarily disciplined in mounting only a few pinpoint attacks over the border.

In my view, that has the purpose of weakening Putin's support in Russia by taking away from him the internal propaganda weapon of "The Motherland is being attacked! Sacrifices will be made!".

I think the restraint has been effective by limiting his hand, for example, not calling for a full mobilization. Meantime, Ukraine, as the defender, has a full mobilization.

December 7, 2022

The flip is that the war will exacerbate domestic problems and be identified as the cause

Russians know it is more than just a "special operation".
They know it is Putin's war.
Putin owns the last 22 years.

Potemkin regimes last only as long as the frontages stay up and only as long as nobody goes behind them to look. The exact path whereby one of many cracks is exploited and the regime tumbles is unknowable and problematic. But Putin's regime will fall before long. He can't win his war. He is like a tank in mud, digging in deeper spinning its treads, but still firing its gun here and there.

The frontages are crumbling because Russians are noticing losses of rights, diminished incomes, lack of Western products, and a military that has been revealed to be weak and uncaring for conscripts.

Granted, they have a very restricted main stream media giving them a very narrow propaganda view, but they also have smart phones.

As in all authoritarian countries, there is a social contract. The people say "Let me get on with living and making a living and I'll not bother myself about whatever crackdowns you feel you need to do." But Putin has broken it, and Russians know who broke it.

December 5, 2022

Not quite. Musk is a mid-info guy. Fiona Hill is right about Musk being manipulable

And at the heart of her interview article, she has very good geopolitical analysis.

I think Putin web brigades put out lots of hooks to hang hats on. Musk saw that one. And it surely was "bruited about" in his circles (she mentions some conference).

The brigades plant lots of memes and brief posts about this and that, a hundred different propaganda points. Like "Russia has had Ukraine for a thousand years", which is provably false. Moscow was a village at most, a thousand years ago, while Ukraine was building magnificent gilded monasteries. But it doesn't matter. It's a hook.

We all hear about low info types (or voters) as a trope of easily swayed people. Presumably (but not completely true) DU posters are high info types.

Musk is a mid-info guy. (New concept, hunh?)

He's mid-info because he is quite smart, has some world experience, and is very busy. He's smart, so he absorbs a lot of info quickly. He gets tweeted and retweeted all kinds of political stuff (definitely, or why buy Twitter?) but he is so busy that he only has a limited amount of time for it. So if his own Twitter feed and other sources he follows are feeding him stuff of various kinds, they will adapt and feed him what he spends time on. So that narrows his own focus. Not as broad as high-info types, not as well-considered.

He's a victim of his own device, like too many of us.

He's got just enough hubris to over-believe in his abilities to sort through information and get to the kernel. And he has various kinds of real world experience before erecting his hecta-giga-naire bubble. Enough so that he thinks he knows which end is up, always. But not the kinds or enough for true wisdom, in my opinion. He's always been well-to-do, never wondered where rent was going to come from.

So his feed gives him the "Crimean Water Supply" meme, in the long-standing sense of a small or tiny bundle of concepts and factoids represented by a tag.

So he retweets or regurgitates it, to buttress his self-image as a collosus astride the globe, making peace. But it could have been any of a hundred bundles he might have picked up. It was one he picked up.

I thing the Egoloon has secretly sincere plans for a minor amount of world domination, sincere because he thinks "I alone can fix this" (seems like orange words). Saviour complex.

All of the above means that Musk is much more manipulable than he realizes. Fiona Hill is right about that.

November 30, 2022

Focus on your health, integrity, kindness, and engagement with society. Be a good friend to yourself

I too was a "late bloomer". Be your own best friend.

Sounds like you should make moving to a more comfortable part of the country a priority goal. It might be the best life change you could make to move to your ultimate goal. Alternatively, if you find a woman who wants to escape, you could escape together!

If you focus on those four things in this title, you will attract people and women for partners. In general, women (being people) like kindness and care. If you are kind and care for all people and animals, you'll be attractive from the inside out, and that is how a good long term relationship is founded.

Maintain a lightly upbeat persona with people, and yourself. It is good for one's own health, but also very attractive. Smooth, but not glib. Deep but not an abyss. More likely to chuckle at one's own flubs than curse.

Don't push or "convey" marriage goals onto a date. Enjoy the person and the event without setting goals. But certainly be frank and open about your goal if the topic comes up, or if writing bios on dating sites. Don't hide your goal, especially the more you like the person after a date or two, but "conveying" it too upfront will make you look a little desperate.

Be confident by telling yourself 1) you will find someone, 2) if you don't that is okay too, 3) by being easy and confident with being single you will be attractive. #2 is key to confidence. Glide through life projecting ease and confidence and you will become easier and more confident. I know people who got hitched at age 50 and live in bliss. It doesn't matter when or if. What matters is you need to accept whatever happens and be pleased with it. If you can have a relaxed zen attitude about setbacks and blockages, you'll be attractive.

Engagement with society is important. Get on out there, doing social activities that are meaningful to you, be it volunteering or helping, sports, culture, politics, whatever. Get into social situations, but don't be a hunter, be the healthy, integral, kind, engaged person you are. Most importantly, don't waste time with people you don't like or don't like their politics or don't like their behaviour. Move on to something else.

An intelligent friend who had "good luck" with women told me two ideas. He remarked that the actor Laurence Olivier held popular parties and somebody was at one for a while and realized that every joke Olivier told had himself as the butt, but not a gloomy gus kind, of course, upbeat. Second, he said that when he went to gatherings himself where he knew few if any people, he didn't make himself the center of attention nor did he become a wallflower. He parked himself somewhat centrally and comfortably and smiled at anyone who looked at him. Eventually somebody will get curious and come over and engage in chat.


A partner for life is a good person to be around and with on a date. Start with being that good person (you are already a long way there, not much more needed, just polish).

November 27, 2022

In 60s they went to New Math. Later they went back, then in 2000s, new new math. Now backlash again

The backlash is the same old nonsense.

You can't create the STEM students of universities with all the modern viewpoint on mathematics that they need to make their way in the world of reality, without a solid BROAD foundation of mathematics from Grade 1.

Further, business people and psychologists and early childhood educators all benefit from the CONCEPTS that come from a broad introduction to math from early grades. Mathematics is not as much about calculation as the masses think. Math is about processes and descriptions and reasoning and extrapolation and planning.

All toddlers are scientists exploring the world until they get the shit beaten out of them by the math-o-phobes who can't stand the competition.

November 27, 2022

The number of dyslectic people is much smaller than the socially-supported mathophobes

Children are taught from a young age by parents and friends that math-illiteracy is okay. "Oh, that's okay dear. I never was good at math either". But they don't say, "Oh, that's okay dear. I never was good at reading either."

Kids pick up on this. They know what they can get away with. Social acceptance of math-illiteracy needs to change to be the same low as social acceptance of reading and writing illiteracy.

There needs to be sympathy and support for those truly having difficulties akin to or caused by dyslexia. But there equally needs to be social disapproval for those shunning math for no good reason.

Note on terminology: it's not "innumeracy" because numbers are a small part of mathematics.

November 24, 2022

Exactly. He's been hurt for a long time; meth & religion is latest phase (years long phase)

But I don't really know, do I? Especially at this point. And I'm unlikely to have much further interest in the manly man.

I don't know how he was hurt, perhaps by his parents, the point being that it is passed down through generations. He passed it on down to his son, who last year terrorized his mother. So I suspect he was hurt before his son was born.

The meth is deeply symptomatic of self-medication and impulse joy-seeking (unable to postpone gratification). Hence him saying "I said to him 'Violence works. It gets immediate results'". People with injuries more or less along the psychopathic or narcissistic (unempathic) spectrum/axis are like that.

When violence is passed down psychologically to children it is a form of injury. As if a parent broke a kid's ankle and forced them to walk on it until it healed mangled and pointing to the side.

Whether it is an injury inflicted on a person, or congenital (in the brain), the person needs help coping, at least, and maybe remissive treatment if applicable. Whoever they are. So that these psychological injuries are not passed on down to progeny.

But Republicans, and the meth-addled dad is proudly claiming place in the Republiconned, the Republiconners are 100% opposed to taxpaid healing.

IANAP. I am not a psychologist. But I think the perspective is consistent.

November 19, 2022

Means to me DoJ is protecting ONGOING investigation of tRump

If there are sources and evidence of crimes by tRump or tRumpkissers, it will NOT be released while there is an ongoing investigation.

We know that there is an ongoing investigation of tRump for several reasons, not the least of which is the appointment of the Special Counsel and Garland actively suing in court to lift restriction on his ongoing investigation of the tRump document crimes.



If there are not sources and evidence in the redacted portions, then releasing/unredacting would greatly benefit Garland, the Department of Justice, and Mueller.

In that situation, it would enhance the Department of Justice's reputation for being fair and honest and clean because it would make Barr look either stupid or malevolent. Barr is tRump's appointment. It's on tRump, not on the Department that they had Barr catapulted in to flatten the whole thing. Garland has no motive to protect Barr. Protecting Barr sullies the Department because, as a thinking man with experience, Garland knows that truth comes out.

If they were going to release/unredact, they would have done much more much earlier in Garland's tenure. They would have simply said, "the former AG made a determination about the legality of indictment of a sitting president. Regardless, Mr. Trump is no longer president and that determination is no longer applicable. Thus we are releasing today ...." whatever it is.

But they haven't.

November 19, 2022

Garland undoubtedly has determined, but would not say if he has. He has not said tRump is cleared

Garland has not said that tRump is not being investigated any more. That is very significant.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence with regard to the link you request. Absence of link does not make its existence impossible. Garland's DoJ is one of the most tight-lipped DoJs ever.

Especially when Mueller's report remains redacted (mostly likely due to ongoing investigation).

Especially when Garland has actually appointed a Special Counsel.

Especially when the statements clearly alluded to the fake elector scheme tRump is entangled in.

Especially when Garland is currently actively suing in court to lift the restrictions on investigation of the tRump document crimes.

Especially when Garland explicitly refused to rule out tRump:



All of this points to intent to indict, one way or another.

I am confident Jack Smith will indict tRump for more than one crime.