Category Archives: Rants

iNap #1: Enough People are Scum

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Intelligible systems are built on a few basic principles.1 While reducing my dour skepticism to the memorable maxims that codify Informed Naked Ape Protocol I repeatedly asked myself what animates unflagging skepticism? What turns naturally cheerful and optimistic people like myself into raging cynics? What motivates noble trolls to put down the pizza and grab the keyboard? Only one answer sprang to mind: other people.

Regardless of your politics, gender, education, race, age, nationality, or ethnicity, you have probably noticed there are a lot of scummy people out there.

Why is this?

The answer derives from our evolution. Evolutionary advantages often accrue to individuals that cheat. Cheating is a fundamental behavioral adaptation that has been observed in many animal, bird and plant species. Cheating is so common that cheating the system is the system! How cheaters might benefit was best illustrated in the hilarious Ricky Gervais movie The Invention of Lying. In Ricky’s world, everybody told the truth until one day he discovered that you could lie. The best scene in the film has Ricky running into a beautiful woman on the street. He tells her that the world is doomed unless she immediately agrees to have sex with him. Given the dire circumstances, she instantly agrees to save the world. Clearly, liars are going to enjoy immense reproductive success in a world of truth tellers. Similarly, scumbags will profit in a world of purely honorable people.

We don’t live in a world of purely honorable people or purely scummy people. Human scum density is complicated; it depends on more variables than the weather. Nevertheless, we can infer that human scum density is seldom zero and is often appreciable.

How big is appreciable?

My bitter sampling of humanity yields an estimate of approximately 0.05 for contemporary American society.2 It’s definitely bad news that 5% of the people around you cannot be trusted or depended on. It’s even worse news that human scum, like pond scum, often floats to the upper echelons of society. This is a nasty reality and I wish it wasn’t so but reality is often unpleasant and leaves few options: either adapt or be crushed.

The first step in adapting to scummy naked apes is acknowledging the most fundamental fact about them — enough people are scum!

  1. The human preference for systems with a few axioms is an artifact of our primitive intellects. There are few if any human beings that would be comfortable with axiomatic theories that depend on trillions of independent axioms yet we know that such systems exist and remain incomplete. Our drive to reduce things to a manageable set of rules, even when we know it is naïve and futile, amounts to little more than thumb-sucking. It makes our baby brains happy even if it will not solve our problems.↩
  2. Yes, human scum density varies with culture. Some societies are briefly more virtuous than others.↩

Informed Naked Ape Protocol

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Many think we are living in a golden age of bullshit. That public discourse has never been gaudier or more demeaning. That respect for truth and decency has reached all-time lows. The mental pygmies that hold these opinions don’t read or think for themselves. Deceiving ourselves and others is the one thing our species excels at. Lies are the bedrock of art, economics, politics, and religion. Only two tiny slivers of human thought have ever breached the bullshit barrier and approached something that might be credibly labeled truth: hard science, and harder mathematics.

If you think I am going to praise brave men, (and bitches), of science for lighting a candle in the perpetual darkness, (Carl Sagan already wrote an entire fawning book on this self-aggrandizing theme), think again. Scientists are just as flawed and full of crap as the rest of us. Science occasionally succeeds because it has evolved protocols that correct for human bullshit. A good protocol protects us against our worst enemy – ourselves.

My Informed Naked Ape Protocol, or iNap for short, consists of eleven1 pithy maxims that force a hard ass skeptical view of things. I will manifest my maxims here and elaborate on each one in following posts.

Informed Naked Ape Protocol

  1. Enough people are scum.
  2. Trust is for imbeciles.
  3. “Belief” is a bullshit word.
  4. Assume corruption.
  5. Analyze the data, not the drivel.
  6. Demand full analytic disclosure.
  7. Practice relentless verification.
  8. Centralized systems are always corrupted.
  9. If you don’t control it you cannot trust it.
  10. Only scientific and mathematical arguments are admissible.
  11. Correct errors.
  1. Why eleven? The last time somebody tried to get the inhabitants of planet moron to follow ten simple rules it didn’t work out.↩

Government Shutdown and Rapture 2018

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It’s 2018. 2018 has prime factors of 2 and 1009, e.g. 2018 = 2 * 1009.

Did anything happen in the years 2 and 1009?

  1. In the year 2 Venus and Jupiter were in conjunction. Some speculate this may have been the “Star of Bethlehem.”
  2. In 1009 the Church of Holy Sepulcher was destroyed.

How odd, the prime factors of 2018 yield two Jesus related events, separated by over a thousand years that are mysteriously tied to his birthplace. Evidently, the Star of Bethlehem marked the beginning, 1009 marked the middle, and 2018 is the end! Repent, the rapture is upon us! Better buckle up non-gender specific bovine control officers (cowboys) 2018 is going to be rough.

Just how rough you ask? Imagine hordes of underachieving and mostly useless bureaucrats forced to take an impromptu paid holiday1 because even more useless legislators cannot agree on how to spend other people’s money. Let’s hope the government stays shutdown down until the imminent rapture renders it redundant.

My calculations cannot pinpoint the exact time and date of the rapture. My guess would be the first2 blood moon of the year, January 31, 2018. Get your affairs in order and divest yourself of your worldly bitcoins.3 Use the address encoded in the QR graphic of this blog.

Hey: If you think this micro-epiphany is batshit crazy take a look at this! It’s getting to the point where it’s no longer possible to be satirical because somewhere on the intertubes you’ll find true believers that go way beyond satire.

  1. None of the furiously furloughed will miss a single damn paycheck. Where can I get a job that pays me to sit on my ass and whine about whatever the idiot talking point of the day is?↩
  2. 2018 has two total lunar – blood moon – eclipses. If we’re not raptured on January 31st wait until July 27th↩
  3. Sky Fairy consultants, also known as prophets, have high overhead and need substantial donations to maintain their close connections with the divine.↩

Dear Apple Pay Stop Harassing Me!

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Dear Apple Pay stop harassing me! I will never sign up for you and no amount of iOS app-nagging will change that. You’re pathetic interruptions merely remind me why I “resist” installing every freaking iOS upgrade the Apple mothership foists on its hapless phone users.

I use an iPhone1 but I am not a member of the bleating iSheep. I’ve slowly, one unwanted upgrade after another, developed an intense loathing of Apple’s holier than thou, we know what’s best for the iIdiots, attitude. You’re beginning to remind me of the Hildabeast. Remember that foul creature and her well-deserved fate!

Loathing aside, I have a perfectly logical reason for refusing Apple Pay. Unlike the bleating iSheep, I see what you are trying to do. You want to become a financial “middleman.” You want to skim an ever-increasing percentage of every transaction your well-trained herd of iSheep makes. I admire your larcenous spirit but if you haven’t noticed, we have enough parasitic financial rent-seeking middlemen on this insane planet. Part of the allure and promise of cryptocurrencies is that they show a way to rid the universe of skimming scum like central banks, government fiat, rapacious money transmitters, exchange controls and abominations like Apple Pay.

Don’t ever darken my day with another “activate Apple Pay now” message again. You have been warned!

  1. Unless there are big changes at Apple this is my last iPhone. I want a device that I absolutely control. “If you don’t control it you cannot trust it.” Any phone that I cannot even be sure is off does not qualify. Burners may be my only option.↩

The Mass Kill as Performance Art

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It’s been almost a week since the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay massacre and the idiot media is still looking for “a motive.” They remind me of O.J.’s fruitless search for the “real killer.” I don’t watch the alphabets, except when trapped in airports or, with increasing annoyance, in my employer’s cafeteria so I’ve missed days of mindless speculation but my limited TV sampling confirms what’s easily gleaned from more efficient news sources. The killers “motive” is still unknown and the authorities are still looking.

In all the blather about the mysterious highly organized and thoughtful killer, it’s never occurred to anyone (on TV anyway), that the lack of an apparent motive is exactly what the killer hoped to achieve.

Consider the usual mass media slaughter script. An individual, or group of individuals, attack and murder a sufficiently1 large number of “innocents.”

If, as is often the case, the attackers are well-known terrorists they will typically gloat and issue more threats. Public threats trigger the idiot media’s “analysis.”

If the terrorists are Jihadis the idiot media will downplay the attack while issuing stern warnings about not jumping to racist conclusions about an “entire religion.” Then, when forced by competing news organizations like Fox or right-leaning bloggers, they will join the fray and condemn the killers while searching for a way to blame Trump.

If the killer is black and the victims are black — well this isn’t news! Press the ignore button and complain about anything that can be plausibly blamed on Trump. And, fortunately for the idiot media, that well will never run dry.

If the killer is white and the victims are mostly white (bingo for Las Vegas), spend a day or two glorifying the murderer. Review his2 typically pathetic and meaningless life while running candlelight vigils, peace garden plantings, and out-of-tune Kumbaya-a-thons in the background. In more sober moments touch on the “known motive” for the mayhem. Tut-tut the violence, reassure moronic viewers that violence is never the answer. Play a few bars of Imagine then, when appropriate mourning turns to anger, use the “known motive” to pivot to what the idiot media wanted to talk about from the beginning: gun confiscation.3

The sooner the idiot media can get “the motive” out of the way the sooner they can get down to one of their favorite topics. Sadly, the Vegas killer, being an intelligent and detail oriented psychopath, anticipated this and left no clear motive forcing the idiot media to fixate, like a dog licking its ass, on “the motive” for day, after day, after day. Every day spent discussing “the motive” inflates the killer’s infamy. He’s already the most famous mass killer in recent history.

Real villainy requires incomprehensible dread and clear motives eliminate dread. When Jihadis kill it’s no big deal. Their sky fairy manual exhorts true believers to behead, enslave and tax infidels. It’s hard to imagine a violence-free way to realize such goals. When black hating psychopaths open fire in churches the idiot media have ready-made dread dispelling explanations. If you can quickly explain an atrocity it almost ceases being atrocious. But, if the horror can never be explained, if it sticks in your existential craw, it remains a source of terror forever. This is what the killer was really aiming for.

I view the Las Vegas massacre as deadly performance art. The killer has more in common with “artists” that drop their pants in public and pee on crucifixes than cause-driven revolutionaries or garden variety psychopaths. What exactly motivates public “performance” crucifix urination? To even ask the question is to mock it. For one deadly night the Vegas killer staged a performance that upstaged all the other Vegas shows and unlike another showing of Cirque du Soleil or Menopause the Musical his performance will be remembered forever. The mass kill is a new art form and the idiot media is its biggest patron.

  1. Sufficiently large is an ever-increasing natural number that is now greater than ten.↩
  2. The overwhelming majority of mass killers are male.↩
  3. It’s impossible to have an intelligent debate about guns in the US is because neither side is willing to discuss their ultimate goals or take responsibility for their positions. Gun controllers secretly want the second amendment appealed and all existing guns confiscated. Nothing else will satisfy them. They naively think an unarmed society will never be abused by the state. Gun holders often point out that the second amendment was never about creating a safe and secure society but about erecting deadly barriers to government tyranny. Unfortunately, they’re unwilling to admit that a heavily armed populace will result in large numbers of firearm deaths. US gun deaths are an order of magnitude greater than comparable western societies: that tree of liberty is more bloodthirsty than expected.↩

EquiFucked

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If you have the misfortune of dealing with US Fuckancial orifice Insertions (Financial Institutions) you’ve probably heard of the Equifax hack. Equifax is one of three large companies in the US that collect, without your explicit approval, personal credit information to compute credit scores. Your credit score is a single number that allegedly measures how likely you are to pay back loans. Credit scores are no longer used just for assessing creditworthiness. They’ve slowly become proxies for literacy, intelligence, and honesty.  In today’s USA, it is illegal in many states to test a job applicant’s literacy or IQ.  In others, you cannot ask if they have a criminal record. Fortunately, for HR drones everywhere, there are no laws barring credit score enquiries. Oh sure, you can refuse to allow a potential employer to look up your score but if you want the damn job you’re more or less forced to bend over and enjoy a scoring.

I first met credit scores in the 1990s. After two decades of living in Canada, I returned to the US for a job. In the early 1990s few companies requested credit scores on job applications but if you tried to rent an apartment the first thing they asked for was a credit score. I didn’t have one at the time and this turned out to be a major problem. I calmly explained that I had lived outside the US for my entire working life and had never taken out a US loan, used a US credit card, or secured US credit of any form. I was an alien freak, possibly dangerous, and certainly, someone to be wary of.

My situation wasn’t unique. In the 1990s large numbers of American immigrants, both legal and illegal didn’t have credit scores but, how can I delicately phrase this, their predominantly dusky hues forestalled aggressive credit score seeking by lawsuit averse bottom feeders. My hue didn’t help. My status as an educated, articulate, white guy without a credit score was an unfathomable anomaly to the simpletons that process apartment applications. I eventually straightened this out but I had to get a letter from my employer that disclosed my salary and, even then, the simpletons had to phone my employer’s HR department to make sure I wasn’t trying to soil a sacred one bedroom dump with my unscored person. The entire episode pissed me off.

Who allowed large, clearly inept, credit agencies to collect detailed personal information on pretty much every person in the US? Even worse, what bit of arcane intellectual property law, gives credit agencies the right to apply, “proprietary” – meaning opaque undisclosed bullshit – algorithms to their pilfered information to compute an index that nobody outside the agencies can vet for accuracy or relevance?  Finally, who continues to tolerate their criminally negligent handling of sensitive data? I would be willing to bet big bucks that the EquiFucks didn’t even encrypt the data that was hacked.  I work with corporate databases and you would be surprised at how often things like Social Security Numbers are stored in plaintext. Meaning any disgruntled ITer, and there are a lot of bitter disgruntled ITers, could easily replicate the Equifax hack.

The EquiFucks know they are in deep dodo. Three company executives conveniently unloaded company stock after discovering, but before disclosing the hack, and today the CEO “voluntarily retired.” I know it looks like they’re pulling the ripcords on their golden parachutes but I’m sure it’s all as innocent and kosher as unleavened bread. The EquiFuck is so bad that the traditional stern admonishment to never do it again followed by sizeable donations to political accomplices probably won’t cut it this time. I better see some perps in prison.

Sending EquiFucks to prison, while gratifying – their agony will be delicious – won’t fix the real problem which is the collection of immutable identifiers like Social Security Numbers. I’ve raged about the idiocy of Social Security Numbers before and until we move to a proper private and public key based identification system EquiFucks will just keep happening.  I could care less if the EquiFucks of the world store my public key. Without my private key, which I, and only I know,  it cannot be used to find shit. Of course, this will destroy the business model of financial predators like credit score companies but, paraphrasing Mao, you’ve got a break a few eggs now and then.

Stop Writing Dead Tree Letters to the Editor

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I don’t pay for newspapers anymore and neither should you. The dead tree media is truly and absolutely dead. It serves no function in the modern world and like the What Happened Hildabeast, it needs to FOAD. The collapse of print media and the incontinent wailing of unemployed political operatives with bylines has been duly noted by many and, as much as I love flogging dead horses, that is not why I blogforth today. There is one anachronistic section of dead tree newspapers that still amuses me: letters to the editor.

Who the hell writes letters to the editor these days?

Did these letter writers just wake from a long Rip Van Winkle nap and take up where they left off in the 1960s? Oh, and it definitely is the 1960s. The overwhelming majority of dead tree letters clearly come from the fat furrowed brows of retired old boomer farts that mistake constipation for thought.

As I have said before, even though I am a boomer, nobody hates them more than me.

There’s no point in rehashing the infinitely rehashed. Modern letters to the editor lack the intelligence of blog posts, the pithiness of tweets, the sublimity of poetry or the seriousness of books. They’re vain displays. Look at me; I’ve bamboozled an idiot newspaper editor. Congratulations, you’ve surmounted a bar low enough for Conga champions.

I think I speak for all of us when I say that we’ve had enough of your letter antics. Please find your way to the nearest online comments section and unleash your inner troll. And, if you must debase yourself to a larger audience start a blog!