Probabilities Regarding China, Russia, and Trump

 I've had this thought:

The best time for China to take over Taiwan is right after Trump is sworn in.

This assumes they've done a lot of other things, like stock up on supplies in case of sanctions or whatever, but the timing is ideal from the standpoint of what exactly the U.S. government is likely to do.

Even though Trump erroneously employed people like John Bolton, Trump still tended to not do crazy military things that would lead to a great amount of death in other countries.  I remember some issue with some Middle Eastern country (probably Iran) shooting something or other down (probably a drone).  Many officials were quite bellicose about what the U.S. response should be, but Trump decided such a response was not proportional.  

So it is unlikely Trump would try to do something really horrific, like blowing up that huge damn and wiping a bunch of mainland Chinese people who didn't have anything to do with the decision to invade Taiwan.   I suppose there's a really small chance he'd decide this or that general was responsible and try to have him assassinated, but the most likely possibility is that Trump will want to make a deal.  

There's already enough information possessed by the Russians to start a large investigation into all sorts of criminality various members of the deep state have been up to over the years.  Just the bioweapon labs in Ukraine alone ought to be enough.  But obviously there is more than that.  The younger generation of Biden, Pelosi, Romney- were all in Ukraine getting paid for something or other.  

This makes me think back to when Pelosi made that random but highly visible visit to Taiwan.  I would assume that, if they had got up to anything in Taiwan, it would be a kinder, gentler version of the sort of criminality they got up to in Ukraine, but it is quite possible the same sort of crew who got up to no good in the Ukraine also did something in Taiwan.

But all of the nonsense various deep state people got up to means Russia and, possibly, China have a stockpile of information that would make very useful legal ammunition for Trump.  He could have a real chance of draining the swamp with this stuff.  And I suspect that this 'stuff' points directly to things that are illegal to do in the U.S.- not just stuff that Russia and China didn't want them to do.

Zelenskyy is in big trouble and may want to rat out some of these deep state actors in order to secure himself a chance to live out his life somewhere outside of a jail.  This is not going to happen in Ukraine where even a very anti-Russian person would have several reasons to hate him.

A lot of moving parts here, and not really even a good idea about what sort of deal Trump would make, assuming we are talking about China taking Taiwan.  But Trump is smart enough to have actually noticed all of our war gaming research has shown we can't do a damn thing about China taking Taiwan.  China worries about two things- being cut off from trade and the extremely damaging but ultimately pointless carnage a dying empire can inflict on their population.  Trump is the least likely to do the latter.  And in terms of trade, regardless of whatever sanctions he might put on initially, he loves making deals.  So he would also be the fastest to try and get back to some sort of trading agreement.

And if, in the process, a whole bunch of  the swamp gets convicted and shunted out of Trump's way here in the U.S.- well, I suspect Trump would be rather appreciative.

Data Apocalypse

 I've been thinking about data breaches and whatnot.  It seems to me the 'know your customer' laws, healthcare laws, etc...  well, they are all making things worse.   The government has basically forced everyone to build these databases of data, and that means there are more chances for data theft.  There are also more chances for those companies with the data to do naughty things with the data.  

Of course, the government sometimes steps in with some more laws or more exhortations for better security, but I haven't seen this turn out to be all that great.  Usually just more regulations, potentially even more places for the data to get stolen from, and the government track record hasn't been too good either.  They've had plenty of data breaches as well.  Doesn't seem like this is getting any better.

This insistence on the proliferation of the data is the fundamental problem, and it is doubtful your average bureaucrat will come to this understanding, seeing as this is one of the fundamental job descriptions of bureaucrats.  

Even back when these records were on paper, bureaucrats had a bad habit of collecting too much data and not being careful enough about limiting access.  But at least the potential bad actor had to go find the physical paper. 

It seems to me the problem is potentially so large that even bureaucrats should realize the current trajectory isn't a good one.  We have to figure out how to do with less.  We often find out this or that perpetrator was known to the FBI, and yet, it didn't do us any good that he was known to them.  

Maybe if they collected a little less data, they'd have time to go and catch some of these people.

If Goverments Were Products...

 This post was made possible by people lying again about what Trump said.  What did he say? I don't know, because by this time I know I could go find out whatever he said and it would obviously not be what they said he said.  It doesn't really matter what he said. What matters is a fundamental error in thinking about government.

So, let's just say someone tells you- hey, just vote for me this one time and you'll never have to vote again. 

If this were a product, that someone would be selling you something- like maybe a washing machine or something- and he'd say, just buy this once.  It will just work and you won't have to meddle with this thing ever again.

But those who constantly talk about 'our Democracy' - if they were selling us a washing machine, wouldn't we be getting these mixed messages:

1: Bureaucrats/experts who will tell us how to do our laundry.

2: Constantly having to fix/meddle with the machine and/or just having to hand-wash because the machine isn't working again (and this will allegedly be a good thing because participation in this task that you just want done well with a minimum of attention or input on your part is somehow a wonderful thing).

3: Additionally, we must hear other people's voices about how to do the laundry and/or run the machine (which usually doesn't work- at least it doesn't work for our purposes).  The sort of people who absolutely fail at laundry nevertheless must be heard because everyone must have a voice- and it is very unkind to notice that they've turned all their white t-shirts pink.

Regardless of whether this analogy is functional or not, there's a key issue here- people don't like politics and most people have absolutely no skill whatsoever with that esoteric art of creating policy.  We are currently in an era of being jerked around by people skilled in emotional manipulation, and the resulting policy prescriptions tend to land in the arena of doing twice as much as whatever it was that was done before.  

This is probably because the current lunacy is still providing benefit to a few powerful people who find the situation lucrative.  

But in terms of real people, the idea of being able to stop paying attention to this governance thing sounds pretty awesome- much like if you have a good spouse competent at housework.  You are then able to go do whatever it is you are good at and not worry about the laundry.  

We would be thankful for a government we could ignore.  That would mean it was quietly doing good work and we could get on about our own work.  

 I've been thinking about how the Constitution has just not worked very well, and I think one of the easy things to look at is the bill of rights- specifically 'free speech'.

Some folks will happily tell you the founding fathers were deists, or the more conspiratorial will suggest freemasonry.  This should not bother us too much, because, if all else fails, we could just look at the Constitution as a sort of illegal subversion.  I know many of us still kind of like it because nostalgia- i.e. the non-ideology of conservatism in which we just want to keep the stuff around that we grew up with, despite how often the things we grew up with were already tainted with leftism and/or fiddled with to not work as we expect traditional things to do.

But, whatever- America was a Christian nation and, at one point, the Supreme court generally left the states alone and focused on keeping the federal government true to the Constitution rather than hack the will of the people as expressed via state law.

Additionally, voters were property owners.  Sure, other rules applied, but for bill of rights type purposes- well, the only rational way to handle any kind of 'right' is via property right.

How did this play out for 'free speech'?  

The overwhelmingly Christian population- via state and local legislatures- put anti-blasphemy and anti-obscenity laws on the books.  These were not terrible restrictions on an unalloyed right.  No, they were the rather obvious flip side to freedom of speech.  We have the freedom of speech, but everyone else has the freedom not to hear- especially if they actually take the time to listen, figure out the speaker is a jerk, and head for the door.  In a state where only property owners vote, the laws restricting speech simply remove the nonsense that the property owners don't want to hear from being shouted out around their property.  

In other words, in this formerly Christian nation, Christian property owners voted- and, by and large- modulated free speech into what could probably be called productive speech.  I'm sure much nonsense was still spoken, but in terms of the gestalt of what was spoken it was likely much better than what I'll describe below.

We have had the 'free speech' thing reinterpreted to be anyone can say anything anywhere- obviously violating property rights and making the creation of true communities more and more difficult.  Of course, the destruction of the community involves many more things- in older days you'd have the neighborhoods where people were trying to behave themselves, and then you'd have red light districts or whatever- this led to people noticing that they didn't want the bad ideas in their neighborhoods.  Perhaps especially if they were tempted enough to actually visit these districts- the obviously poor outcomes were blatant- not hidden two doors down in so many neighborhoods now.

But then we went into 'free speech' for people who were advocating for silencing other people. And, even at this late date of empire, we should have been smart enough to shut this down.  Using free speech to say this other person shouldn't have free speech?  Seems like they violate their argument by arguing it.  But these people are not afraid of hypocrisy.

Now we have forced speech.  It's Pride month.  If you are not happy with Pride and you are lucky, then maybe no one will notice.  Maybe you can just be silent.  But if you have any level of renown, chances are high your refusal to talk or participate in some way will be noticed, and they will come out to punish you.

If 'speech' is any indicator, LGBT etc... will soon become only T.  I've already seen the suggestion that gay and lesbian are outre and now we should call them same gender loving- or SGL.  Meanwhile the medical industrial complex can look forward to approximately seven million dollars- possibly more since devious minds come up with ever more procedures.  I can't call them treatments, since the suicide rates (not to mention the effects of these procedures) clearly cast them out of any notion that rises to the surface when hearing the word 'health' or 'care'.

Without the framework the Christian property owners provided, 'free speech' is incoherent.  Speech likely should be as free as possible for purposes of iteration- same with most 'freedoms'.  Within certain parameters, freedom translates in to the chance to try again, to iterate until we solve whatever problem we have.  

But after watching these things play out, and seeing how 'free speech' has been used to prop up demagogues in other countries, I can see why the Russians, Chinese, and many other nations just look at us like we are stupid when we talk about it.  

Are They Trying to Lose?

 The recent confirmation of American troops in Taiwan has me thinking USG is trying to lose.  Our government has not done the things that one would have presumably needed to do in order to protect Taiwan- it would have taken multiple decades and one look at the map would tell you it may have still not worked.  If we weren't the empire that wants to pretend it isn't an empire, we would have just used Taiwan as a staging ground for invading the mainland, possibly the only real way to keep whatever promises we threw out there. 

But that was decades ago.  Now we already have plenty of  military simulations on how we would fail miserably if we tried to protect Taiwan.  It's been known to the military strategist types for years.

China has maintained it wanted to reunite with Taiwan peacefully, and has- so far- not done anything to make me question that statement- within the context, of course, that I fully expect them to invade should they feel all peaceful means are exhausted.  

So the decision to put U.S. military there is highly questionable. The constant mention of China in the media was questionable too, although less so now since it now seems plausible that the USG is actively attempting to create this conflict.

The delusion bubble in D.C. may just be that strong, but to those of outside, this just looks like somebody is fond of losing, and is drunkenly spending all our assets to add another loss to their collection.

Having a Blog is No Assurance of Quality

Grey Enlightenment making stupid statements about something I know about in his post:Having academic credentials is no assurance of quality

The headline is, of course, absolutely true.  So obviously true in this age of dumb ass idiots with various degrees - but who does he decide to pick on? Seth Roberts.  Without bothering to do a lick of research either.

From 2009, Eliezer Yudkowsky discusses the Shangri-La Diet, a type of diet that involves the added consumption of oil:

Any serious look into the Shangri-La diet would mean you wouldn't make this statement.  Yes, oil was often used.  I used walnut oil for the longest time, but I know what it is really about.  What is important is that you have some sort of calories introduced into your body without flavor.  So it is easy to fill a shot glass with oil, hold your nose and achieve this.

When I first tried this, Seth was on flax seed oil- but flax seed oil did not work well with my body at the time.  Since I actually read what Seth wrote, I knew it wasn't the oil per se- but some calories with no flavor.  

You can think of it as signal versus payload.  Calories are the payload.  If they get into the body with no signal, perhaps even just an unreliable signal, appetite gets regulated down.  Think about processed food- you eat the thing- you taste the thing, and the body receives the calories.  In a processed food environment, the signal (the flavor) is an extremely accurate predictor to the body as to how many calories are going to be there.  This leads to appetite increasing and more weight gain.

So, before I found I could tolerate walnut oil, I tried various things.  One of the most effective, in my opinion, was to roast chicken breast in the oven, put a nose clip on, eat it, and then rinse my mouth out with water before taking the nose clip off.  It was immediately effective, as it was difficult to finish a 4oz portion.  But it was also effective over the course of the day.  I'd feel full much faster when eating tasty meals that I wanted to eat, and I'd have to stop.

Now, when this appetite suppression kicked in, paleo was also becoming popular, and here I was suddenly capable of thinking about what I should eat, rather than getting the hungries and cramming whatever down my pie hole.  So I added a low carb, paleo approach along with SLD.

I lost over a hundred pounds and I've mostly kept it off.  I say mostly, because after all of this I decided to go into the gym and try to gain muscle.  I dieted down below my ideal weight- at least what I think my ideal weight is after some research.  

I also stopped SLD.  At the time, walnut oil seemed like a pretty healthy thing, but I'm now a little leery of it.  I could try the chicken again, but I'm not a fan of eating cardboard, and although I'm a few pounds heavier than my ideal weight- I am within striking distance.  Probably shouldn't have listened to those 'bulking' arguments.  

So, why does it not work for Eliezer Yudkowsky?  Well, there is this small possibility it doesn't work for some people.  But I've watched people who, after hearing my story, tried it. 

The first potential snag is, do you get it?  Are you actively trying to get calories in without tasting anything?  If I remember correctly, I was getting 240 calories from walnut oil in the morning, and that was enough for strong appetite suppression throughout the day.  But if you are just chugging oil normally, and tasting it, it's not going to work.

The second snag comes after getting appetite suppression.  What are you eating the rest of the day?  This also happens with low carb- you can beat these protocols that help you lose weight by poor food choices.  And some of these choices are allegedly 'healthy'.  Nuts are supposed to be healthy, but since they are mostly fat, you can put many calories down your gullet.

This is reminding me there's another thing I did- I used Wolfram Alpha make an educated guess about my muscle mass and ate 1g of protein per pound of lean muscle mass.  And I was using mostly meat.  This may have an appetite suppressing quality all to itself, because if you prioritize eating enough meat to reach that goal- well, you don't feel very hungry. 

So, I can say the Shangri-la Diet created strong appetite suppression in me.  I can also say it is the height of superficiality to call it an 'oil diet.'  Some people would just put a nose-clip on and eat a normal meal, and I certainly found it to work very well with chicken.  And I can say there are probably thousands if not millions of academics who deserve a nasty blog post being done about them.  Seth Roberts is not one of those academics.  Frankly, even if SLD doesn't work for you, his story is still worth looking into.  He lost his appetite in Paris, not due to oil, but because he drank some sodas- flavors he was not familiar with.  It stood out to him because he was intent on eating a lot of stuff in Paris, and found he couldn't.  But he also had the intellect to correlate what he was experiencing with some of the research he had read.

So, he came up with a hypothesis and it worked for a lot of us.  He actually came up with many hypotheses- SLD was just the one most popularized.  He was one of the few good academics.  

The False Goddess of Rebellion

 Today I saw a book for little girls- something like Bedtime Stories for Rebellious Girls.  It occurred to me this is a subplot- or sub-identity (as in identity politics) meant to attenuate or destroy a woman's capacity to operate in a generative fashion.

Briefly, the entire point of these 'identities' that they try to brainwash people with is to keep the current cancerous bureaucracy on top.  They pretend there's some other 'oppressor' - i.e. not the blindingly obvious incompetent/evil bureaucrats who are currently in charge and driving Western civilization into the ground.  They are extra happy when low IQ people fall for their crap, because we have yet another fight between groups of people not in power, while those in power pretend to be 'professionals' and go around assigning blame, or privilege, and redistribute a huge chunk of resources to themselves while claiming to help whoever is perceived as the biggest victim in the current year.

But the rebel is inevitably defined by who she rebels against.  If there is nothing to rebel against, well, you might have to stop thinking about rebellion and start- I don't know, growing food or something.  I mean, we need food, so somebody has to grow the stuff or everybody is going to get really hungry.

By the same token, there's family, society, ecosystem etc...  A lot of important stuff to maintain and grow, especially if you get wind of the fact that the bureaucracy has been reflexively damaging this stuff since the late 1800s.  

What does rebellion get you in a situation where you desperately need to be responsible for and either build or help build real systems that will keep you and your progeny alive?  They never seem to rebel against the bureaucratic state, but instead a revisionist version of what came before. A boogeyman that doesn't even exist.  The entire project is meant to keep you helping your exploiters alive, well, and in position to keep exploiting you.