This is such an important @nntaleb quote: "If something is nonsense, you say it & say it loud." This is how I try to go through life & why I am probably unemployable. Folks need to stand up & say, "No. You're not right. Your feelings are not facts. This isn't settled science." pic.twitter.com/ekQb6dHjIo
— Rudy Havenstein, a Big 12 Auditor. (@RudyHavenstein) September 21, 2018
We recently penned a piece on a developing nationwide coin shortage sparked by the virus pandemic. As a result of the shortage, at least one major supermarket chain has removed the ability to pay in cash at self-scan checkout machines.
Meijer Inc., a supermarket chain based in the Midwest, with corporate headquarters in Walker, Michigan, announced last Friday, that self-scan checkout machines at 250 supercenters would only accept credit or debit cards, SNAP and EBT cards, and gift cards.
They’re probably all in the fountains. A national coin shortage? @meijer? ????♀️ pic.twitter.com/rzKe68WBqw
— Silvia A. Mansoor (@SilviaMansoor) June 30, 2020
“While we understand this effort may be frustrating to some customers,” spokesman Frank Guglielmi told ABC12 News Team. “It’s necessary to manage the impact of the coin shortage on our stores.”
Fed Chair Powell admitted to lawmakers last week that The Fed has been rationing coins as the circulation of coins across the US economy ground to a halt due to the pandemic.
Continue reading “Meijer Stops Accepting Cash As Nationwide Coin Shortage Erupts”
“When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false.
His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.”
Harry G. Frankfurt, On Bullshit
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Human beings, no matter how much we say we’re dedicated to virtues like reason, logic and above all truth, produce an endless stream of what is academically called “bullshit.” Why is every area of public and private life full of these half-truths, misstatements and outright falsehoods? That’s what a recent experiment aimed to find out, reports Poynter’s Daniel Funke.
According to John V. Petrocelli of Wake Forest University, the author of a new paper in The Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the technical definition of bullshitting is “a pervasive social behavior involving communication with little to no concern for evidence and/or established semantic, logical, systemic, or empirical knowledge.” Bullshitting is not lying per se—Petrocelli says a liar is someone who is actually concerned with the truth and is actively trying to divert their audience from the truth.
Bullshitters, on the other hand, don’t really care if what they are saying is true or not, they’re just putting their opinion out there. As philosopher Harry Frankfurt wrote in his 2005 treatise On Bullshit, “It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction.”
Continue reading “Study Looks at Why We All Spew So Much BS”
Guest Post by Eric Peters
They can’t even get automated traffic lights to work – to sync the green/red cycles in order to smooth the flow of traffic – but we’re supposed to believe that millions of automated cars are going to sync perfectly, whizz along at 100 MPH in tight formation, without a hitch – just like the Blue Angels, the Navy’s precision flying demonstration squadron.
In the rain and snow. The heat of high summer, the bitter cold of January. Dirt, sand, potholes. 24/7, year ’round – for year after year after year, ongoing. Mechanical and electrical components will never wear out – or crap out, unexpectedly. 
Really?
Traffic lights are pretty simple things – even the “smart” ones that have cameras and sensors with which they can “see” traffic (just like automated cars). But coordinating lights to go green at the same time – instead of one going green and then the next one just ahead going red, causing needless stop-and-go traffic congestion – seems to be a bridge too far for the same technocrats who promise a seamless, Blue Angles-like automated car experience.
Continue reading “If They Can’t Get Traffic Lights to Sync…”
Guest Post by The Zman
I was watching the sportsball games over the weekend and this ad for the US Marine Corps kept popping up during the broadcast. I don’t watch a lot of television so I’m late to the party on this. It appears the ad was cut last spring. My first reaction was, “Why would anyone send soccer moms into combat?” That’s what it looks like in the video. The actress looks like she is an office clerk playing paintball at the company retreat. My second thought was, “Who do they think is watching this stuff?”
The answer to the last question is they simply don’t know who is watching this stuff. They just imagine who they hope is watching it. The fact is, the people who rule over us no longer know much about us. The Marines are not as bad as the other branches, but they too are staggering around in the thick fog of the estrogen laced miasma known as multiculturalism. That means they are slowly detaching from reality, confusing the much dreamed for future with present reality. They think G.I. Jane is real.
To equate Trump with one of the greatest figures in history is hubris on steroids. The funny part of it is that these Israelis have been lying for so long, I think they actually believe them.
“Thus said Hashem to Cyrus, His anointed one— Whose right hand He has grasped, treading down nations before him, ungirding the loins of kings, opening doors before him and letting no gate stay shut.” Isaiah 45:1 (The Israel Bible™)
Many have seen similarities between the Biblical King Cyrus and President Donald Trump. (Breaking Israel News)
The BLS produced their monthly propaganda regarding our AWESOME jobs market. Trump will tout it as the GREATEST in history. The MSM will mouth the platitudes from their scripts. But, it only takes a few minutes of scanning the data to see through the bullshit. Here are a few observations:
Guest Post by L. Todd Wood
I know of no white person alive today in the United States who has ever legally owned a black slave, or any slave for that matter. Almost 700,000 mostly white men died 160 years ago to end slavery. Jim Crow ended generations ago. Yet black America, for the most part, is still locked in inner-city gang violence and economic hardship. Why?
Is it because America is racist? Is it because of some overhanging white supremacy? Is it because of the Illuminati?
No, unfortunately, it is because of black culture and the adoption of Democratic Party government dependency.
Continue reading “I’m mad as hell and I’m not taking it anymore”
Guest Post by The Zman
A couple of months ago this post generated a ton of traffic and ton of suggestions for entries. It seems like a worthy project, as our Prog rulers keep coming up with new words and phrases to fool us and themselves. In the fullness of time, someone is going to write a book on how marketing techniques infiltrated the minds of our rulers, like a virus, causing them to increasingly rely on cheap marketing gags to communicate to themselves and the rest of us. The result being a ruling elite that sounds like commercials for laundry soap.
With that in mind, here are some new additions to the list.
Show your support: This is always a demand from a company or organization for you to buy their stuff so they can spend the proceeds on themselves, while taking credit for some good deed. Currently, retail chains are having their cashiers harass customers into giving money to the Red Cross for hurricane relief in Houston. The end result will be a photo-op of the executives posing with the Red Cross, handing them a big check, so they can claim to be supporting the community.
There’s no proof that Russia hacked the US elections.
There’s no proof that Russian officials or Russian agents colluded with members of the Trump campaign.
There’s no proof that Russia provided material support of any kind for the Trump campaign or that Russian agents hacked Hillary Clinton’s emails or that Russian officials provided Wikileaks with emails that were intended to sabotage Hillary’s chances to win the election.
So far, no one in any of the 17 US intelligence agencies has stepped forward and verified the claims of Russian meddling or produced a scintilla of hard evidence that Russia was in anyway involved in the 2016 elections.
No proof means no proof. It means that the people and organizations that are making these uncorroborated claims have no basis for legal action, no presumption of wrongdoing, and no grounds for prosecution. They have nothing. Zilch. Their claims, charges and accusations are like the soap bubbles we give to our children and grandchildren. The brightly-colored bubbles wobble across the sky for a minute or two and then, Poof, they vanish into the ether. The claims of Russia hacking are like these bubbles. They are empty, unsubstantiated rumors completely devoid of substance. Poof.
As reported moments ago, CNN is leading with a story about a 35-page dossier compiled by a former member of British intelligence, which had been distilled into a 2-page appendix presented to Trump last Friday by the US intel community, and which contains “explosive, but unverified, allegations” that the Russian government has been “cultivating, supporting and assisting” President-elect Donald Trump for at least 5 years and “endorsed by Putin” gained compromising information about him, with the aim of “encouraging splits and divisions in the western alliance.”
The memo has allegedly been circulating among elected officials, intelligence agents, and journalists for weeks.
The dossier, which is a collection of memos written over a period of months, “includes specific, unverified and potentially unverifiable allegations of contact between Trump aides and Russian operatives, and graphic claims of sexual acts documented by the Russians” according to Buzzfeed.
Of course, the question on everyone’s lips is what are these “unverified and potentially unverifiable allegations” contained in the memo. We now know the answer, courtesy of Buzzfeed which fill published the full document “so that Americans can make up their own minds about allegations about the president-elect that have circulated at the highest levels of the US government.”
Guest Post by The Zman
I don’t remember when it was, but I have a recollection of John Derbyshire wondering when racism would become fashionable for young people. It may have been a podcast or a column, but it was long enough ago that I don’t recall much about it, other than the question itself. Everyone is required to think of racism in the same way that people used to think of devil worship or communism. It is, and always will be, the worst form of evil so it can never be normalized. Even thinking about it could be enough to get you in trouble.
I’m not much of a racist myself, but I don’t think about it very much either. Still, I remember Deb’s query because it was so provocative. We live in an age where nothing is sacred, so we are told. Being subversive and outrageous is the highest virtue. Our celebrities exist almost exclusively on their ability to outrage. Logically, if racism is the great taboo, someone will try to make bank on being racist. Young people with their desire to reject their parent’s morals, would be prime candidates for this sort of thing.
