Category: Scarred Brain murmurings

S.H.I.Thursdays, everybuddy. *quack*quack*

I’m really happy I didn’t end up a zookeeper.

Especially, now, where instead of going to a crappy little station somewhere to be a minor local celeb, but I really prefer where I am.

Obviously I don’t like having MS. It was more than a little dismaying learning that an old journaling friend was diagnosed the past fall.

Things change, but you can always leave.

I unsubscribed from a few podcasts after what happened with Russia and Ukraine. I emailed Kennedy to tell her I wouldn’t be watching episodes where she’s got those people as guests.

One of them lost the debate I went to see in NYC, and I’ve written about here before.

But you also can sorta go back again. So I’ll go to the TWUUG meeting tonight before I do extra work. Party.

I really didn’t feel like working yesterday, but I did. I also ended up working last night to address an operational issue that arose over the work day.

Since then, minus about four hours of sleep, I’ve been watching what’s going on in Ukraine.

Many of the information sources I’ve been consuming the past couple of years were completely wrong.

There’s just no other way to put it. I was convinced that the Russians would try to invade.

And they did.

And there’s been near silence about it.

Checking his Twitter feed, pretty much nothing over the past two days, save a link to fucking Antiwar.com.

Calling back to the late, great P.J. O’Rourke, Give War A Chance.

I’m too frazzled to write terribly coherently right now.

But there’s lots of things where I’d signed-up for something that’s proving to be untrue.

There’s a Sportsball game or something today. Hat-tip to Bald Bryan.

I guess what annoys me is the admonition that goes along with it. So you don’t care about Football. Great. Many people do. If you don’t want to participate in the hoopla surrounding, go do what you’d like to do. Or make some money serving the people who do care.

I admit I’ve mocked people in the past for engaging in activities I don’t understand. I know I said a few things about the people camped out outside of the theaters when Star Wars came out in 1999

I had a job back then. If I didn’t, I could have done something.t

At the same time, I was still such a stickler for following THE RULES back then, I probably would have never even considered doing anything ummm, outside them. There’s a “No soliciting” sign in the theatre parking lot. Okay, and? Who would I have been hurting, really, by providing for those people with interests that differ from my own?

Kind of feeds in to what’s going on with the truckers blocking all sorts of shit right now. They don’t like THE RULES, and, by just doing what they can, they’re really fucking things up for the PM up there.

Yah, sorry. We’re not leavin’.

The autocorrect in Safari is kind of annoying.

But, being such a stickler for following rules, no matter how stupid they are, worked for me well for a long time. Following them feeds into my obsessive side.

The compulsive side, on the other hand, is writing. Obviously, I’ve managed to stay pretty sparse over here since I finished NoJoMo. I am writing episode recaps over at Back At Again, but that’s about it.

I hope this week is rather low-stress, as opposed to last week.

I watched the debate between Spike Cohen and Dave Smith on Locals last night.

The title is a reference to this.

After thinking more about it, the less intrigued I am about either of the potential candidates.

Much like the Krystol-Horton “debate” at the Soho Forum, the more I heard, the less impressed I was.

To the participants — Spike, don’t wish for an Anachro-Capitalist society. I understand that, likely, there’s a lot less of my life ahead of me. (I worked through Y2K; I’m wondering if I’ll be around to see Y2K38) I think you could articulate a way to minimize the weight of the state on most people’s lives.

Dave, please find a book by someone with whom you disagree, read it, and write a brief summary of the arguments the author presented. Yes, there’s bad things the US did in South and Central America places in the past. Noted. It’s not why there’s tens of thousands of Haitians trying to cross into Texas. But that you floated out something from a very-biased take on history doesn’t add anything to your argument.

I find myself unimpressed with the options presented. None of the above.

---

Both of these guys are frequent guests on Kennedy, something which I often view.

Part of what one of the things that’s argued about the LP Mieses Caucus is an attempt to push ideas at lower levels to get libertarians to take advantage of the things that are coming up in the “alternative” media outlets.

I understand and enjoy the format. I really don’t think it lends itself to presentation of any coherent idea about policy.

Landing that fifteen-second clip that gets repeatedly shared on Twitter/Facebook/whatever, doesn’t explain what changes you would make to the existing morass that is the modern state. What will you do to move people from under the boot of the state? Next year. Not thirty years down the road. What are you going to do to bring people towards a system based on freedom?

I am this morning, having woken up, then shutting my alarm off. Considering how much work I owe for this pay period, I’m in no particular hurry to get going; I’m tired.

Not sure who I’d like to see win the football game tonight. One of the podcasts I listen to has a Cardinals’ fan, which was an oddity to me for a long time. When I thought about them in about 2016, I realized that I’d actually never met a Cards’ fan. Not once. But then there was a woman I worked with who actually was; she’d grown up in the “Valley of the Sun,” and they’d been out there most of her life, so it fit.

Enough of that. I wanted to show something that came across on Twitter the past couple of days.

This is a perfect example of what the LPMC folks don’t understand.

If you don’t like a private company[s policies, deny them your business. You can leave. Subtle nudging, as I think I did, goes a long way toward making people think about what they’re doing. It doesn’t require any sort of loud pronouncement.

LPMC campaign strategy is similar to the underpants gnomes.

The LPMC strategy is:

Phase 1: RON PAUL

Phase 2: ???

Phase 3: Profit!

But the bigger thing that I think they’re missing is that you deprive private organizations that don’t align with your values your money.

I don’t care if you think you think you’ve got the most important, compelling message in the universe, if you don’t like how an outfit operates, deny them your content. You can leave.

If your message is worthwhile, a worthwhile audience will find it, regardless of where it is.

If you think your audience isn’t discerning enough to follow you to a place that adheres to the values you claim to admire, your message speaks for itself.

I relistened to the debate I mentioned here. If you’d like to watch the debate, it’s here.

Again, the resolution was this:

A willingness to intervene, and to seek regime change, is key to an American foreign policy that benefits America.

This was an Oxford-style debate. The “winner” is the one who changes the audience’s opinion the most.

Before the debate, I cast my vote as undecided. Following the debate, I gave my vote, much to my dismay, to Krystol.

After listening again, despite Horton’s seemingly-irrelevant interjections, I reluctantly opposed the resolution.

But, on further consideration, there’s not two, but four separate options.

Do you have a willingness to intervene? Yes or no.

Do you have a willingness to seek regime change? Yes or no.

So, the First Gulf War would have been: Intervene, yes. Seek Regime change, no.

Afghanistan in 2001, or Somalia in 1992? Intervene, yes. Seek regime change, not particularly at first.

Panama 1989? Intervene, yes. Seek regime change, yes.

Libya in 2013? Intervene, for the most part, no. Seek regime change? Absolutely.

Egypt in 2013? Intervene, no. Seek regime change? Not particularly, but it happened, and we were okay with it, even though it meant the Muslim Brotherhood.

Iraq 1991 – 2003: Intervene, yes. Seek regime change? No

Rwanda 1994: Intervene, no. Seek regime change? No, just stop the massacre.

Libya 2003ish-2013: Intervene, no, seek regime change? No.

	RC	NRC
Intervene	YY	YN
NI	NY	NN

By and large, however, I’m opposed to intervention. I didn’t support the Second Iraq War until I heard Tony Blair argue for it in front of Parliament.

But breaking it down into the separate combinations….

Are there times when America should intervene, and not seek regime change? Sometime, absolutely.

Are there times when America should intervene, and seek regime change? Yes.

Are there times when Americas should seek regime change without intervention? I would say that that’s pretty rare.

Are there times when America should stay as far away as possible? Yes.

That neither of the debaters noticed the problem with this resolution is actually pretty incredible, now, in retrospec.

Long, only partially-successful week.

Sunday I finally got my work laptop mostly working well enough to work Monday. Long day of work Monday, but I got through it.

Tuesday, I tried to go to Robbie Soave‘s book signing at the Reason office in DC. I did really want to meet the staff, deliver some gifts stored since before the pandemic, but I got the address wrong, and the state’s blind guy bus dropped me exactly where I’d requested…..a few blocks south of where I was supposed to be.

I used to say that I was good for about a block on foot. I think, now, that’s probably a bit too, ummm, optimistic.

If I know where I’m going, don’t have to read addresses, and have to backtrack, maybe that’s where I am.

I finally gave up, and ended up finding a Lyft driver who took me where I was supposed to go long enough to drop off my gifts, and drive me home.

I am still sore on Saturday.

I spent quite a bit of time Thursday and Friday preparing for my oldest friend and my trip to NYC for the debate.

A willingness to intervene, and to seek regime change, is key to an American foreign policy that benefits America.

I guess I’m generally against that idea. Trying to not let my general disdain for both of the debaters sway my opinion before i listen.

The album artwork for the album that came to mind reminds me of the NPC T-shirt I bought this week.

But I’m almost out of coffee, and a bit jealous of the folks going to Buck Johnson’s event in Texas week after next, or the Saluyta(sp?) Super-spreader event in Mexico in December put on by Johnny, and PFP.

But I can go to NYC on the train which makes things a bit easier. Get to ride Acela for the first time coming home.

I’ve been spending a lot of time the past few days thinking about two things, and they’re related.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the young folks who are embracing Austrian economics really don’t like doing math.

That might represent why there’s the attraction to Bitcoin. There’s a maximum number. There will only ever be 22 million. The number in circulation continues to increase, though the rate of that increase continues to decline, and will almost endlessly. Nobody knows when the last coin will be mined.

While the number of new coins is decreasing as time progresses, there’s actually a decline in the supply due to lost bitcoins.

What does the total availability graph look like when you take into account the rate at which coins are being lost? Right now, the rate of new coin creation probably exceeds the rate of loss, but they will eventually intersect. At some point, there’ll be more inaccessible coins

Both the Chicago and Austrian schools of economics assume a money pool that’s predictably-growing, and not shrinking.

If your currency is based on something like precious metals, “production” might decrease, but it doesn’t just vanish. It can be reclaimed. Do you remember your unemployed Realtor^TM who was scrounging around for gold? Or the person who stole the copper gutters off the tall apartment building where I was living?

It’s probably impossible to scrounge for those “lost” bitcoins. Maybe there’ll be some advance in computing that makes it possible, quantum, perhaps, that’ll make it possible, but I’m not going to hold my breath on that.

It’s a bit like the idea of what would happen if an asteroid full of gold gets tapped.