Category: Scarred Brain murmurings

I haven’t written since my last summer binge.

Lots and lots going on. None of it is really worth writing about publicly.

I wish I’d saved the article I saw about the economic state happening right now. Essentially, the author admitted something that it seems to be tough for many to admit. I Don’t Know.

This started with the debate over whether that US economy is in a recession after the frequently-cited two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.

Change the definitions, and hope that people don’t hold it against you that you don’t know.

I don’t know.

Neither do the armchair Austrian economists.

Why are asset prices not following inflation?

I don’t know.

Oil is still very high. Why is the same not true of precious metals? For the crypto-doesn’t-have-any-use-other-than-gambling crowd, looks like Real Estate is about to crash.

Nobody fucking knows.

Even the people who proclaim themselves to be right on just about everything, and that messaging is the most important thing ever. They knew that this would totally get people on their side.

What’s tougher — admitting you don’t know, or that you were wrong?

Good question.

The site for the Notes of a Goon podcast. Back At Again – Notes Of A Goon

But after issues with the domain registrar who shall remain nameless, I’m back on the Intertubes.

But it’s another Saturday to write.

Speaking of writing, I think I’m going to do my summer sprint again this year. Why the hell not?

So I need to dig through my outstanding prompts, and more things to add to the Summer Writing category.

But things are progressing.

Looking forward to my travels at the end of the week/next weekend.

Next Saturday’s writing may be from the train. We’ll see.

Yeah, it’s a reference to an odd U2 song. I dunno.

This is where the NeoHippies are, and always will be. (I understand that it doesn’t really fit perfectly, but I’m so finished with the antiwar.com-types. Again. And more.)

That really is a callback to my days in radio, where I’d rip probably three faxes per day peddling various apologetics.

I felt much the same way about the obsessive Chomsky quoters on Orkut.

But the latest part is the “takeover.” Instead of creaking fax machines, the new delivery source is Twitter.

While I gave them some credence as I’ve been bumping through various Libertarian podcasts, and seeing them treated favorably on Kennedy, the miss on the Russian invasion of Ukraine really soured me.

Now what they’re worried about, first and foremost, is keeping the US out of a nuclear war. See the clip in the first line. Things that have happened really are irrelevant. Pay attention to this one article Harry Browne wrote in 2001. Pay attention to some of the icky things the US was involved with in South America in the 1970s and 1980s. Pay attention to the Iranian coup in 1953. (Which, yes, the early CIA helped with, but was primarily a British operation….Hitchens wrote about this after the Michael Moore trope was released in 2004.)

Hear what you want to hear, and disregard the rest…..

See? I did have Boomer professors….

(And that particular Boomer professor had actually been a counterpart of my dad’s in the Army…I’ve wondered what happened to him, but my web search skills fail….he’s got a very common first name, and a surname that’s shared with another university nearby….)

The similar thoughts that came into my head watching the debate in NYC, that the clapping section, who now define what Libertarianism is, thought one person won. See here.

What do I do if they succeed? Well, I take my own advice.

Speaking of podcasts, the most notable one I heard this week was this.

I miss the Free Beacon podcast. It was one of the things that seemed to die with the COVID lockdowns.

I could probably plunk away for hours, but I understand that basically nobody will read this. Whatever.

I love how modern browser thingie complains that I repeat words.

Maybe I typed it on purpose, okay?

I worked some yesterday. It’s kind of make-up for basically not working Friday. I almost got distracted, there, too, but I resisted. One of the things I’m a bit concerned about crossed my mind.

Things are changing whether or not people push back on that change.

I’m not particularly wedded to any way of working. No, this doesn’t make me a bad employee, person, whatever.

I understand, of course, the push towards longevity, naturally. The place where this is hosted I’m working on a replacement for.

The blog, and its associated artifacts are pretty straightforward. But I’m thinking that the method of storing email in individual mailstores is probably not terribly efficient these days.

So continue along the path of figuring things out. Maybe it wouldn’t have made sense in 2005; it’s not 2005 anymore.

Looking at things that way really aren’t looked upon kindly, professionally. See: Boomer President IV on aircraft carrier equipment. (The current guy thinks it should be a return to seaplanes….)

But I try to stay up on things as best I can.

I’ve also really learned to accept that I don’t have all the answers to everything. I don’t have any delusion that my work is perfect, either.

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.

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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.