Tag: You Can’t Cure Stupid

Creating Jobs

If you ask an advocate of tariffs what punishing consumers is supposed to accomplish, amongst other things they will claim that tariffs create domestic jobs. That ignorance is based on the belief that foreign companies don’t employ people domestically but since we live in a global economy, a lot of foreign companies hire domestic employees. So tariffs often destroy jobs rather than create them:

Alibaba’s founder and chairman Jack Ma says the Chinese mega e-commerce company no longer has plans to create 1 million jobs in the US, citing the ongoing trade conflict as the reason Alibaba is retracting its promise to Donald Trump. A new round of tariffs between the US and China will make mutual trade more difficult.

Who would have guessed that alienating one of the largest economies on Earth would have consequences?

Gun Control Support Rating System

Read any article discussing gun ownership privileges (sometimes referred to as rights but rights are something you take and in most cases the discussion of gun ownership revolves around what privileges the government will grant) from the perspective of a gun control supporter and it will inevitably mention the zealous National Rifle Association (NRA) and it’s absolutist position against gun control. Obviously there is some confusion on this matter because the NRA has a long history of supporting gun control. To say that the organization is absolutist is nonsense.

Because I like to be helpful, I’ve decided to put together a quick and dirty three tier rating system for gun control support. I hope that it helps people writing articles in the future (because let’s face it, anybody who claim that the NRA is an absolutist when it comes to opposing gun control is a damn fool). Without further ado, here’s the rating system:

Tier 1: Supports the abolition of private gun ownership. Examples of this tier are Everytown for Gun Safety and the Brady Campaign.

Tier 2: Supports some restrictions to private gun ownership. Examples of this tier are the NRA and Gun Owners of America.

Tier 3: Opposes all forms of restrictions on private gun ownership. The best example of this tier is Cody Wilson and his company Defense Distributed.

Believing in Science

I’ve come across a lot of people who have said that people shouldn’t support politicians who don’t “believe in science.” That phrase always amuses me.

To believe is to accept that something is true. The scientific method is the antithesis of belief. Instead of accepting something as true, the scientific method postulates that all hypotheses be tested through experimentation. If experimentation doesn’t prove a hypothesis false, then there is some evidence to support it. But even then the hypothesis isn’t assumed to be true, it merely hasn’t been proven false. If a hypothesis hasn’t been proven false, the scientific method demands that further experimentation be performed. After rigorous experimentation a hypothesis may graduate to a scientific theory but even then it isn’t assumed to be true. A scientific theory is merely an explanation for observations in the natural world that has been repeatedly tested and verified. At any point in the future an experiment could show that the explanation isn’t correct.

One should not believe in the scientific method. One should treat the scientific method as a scientific theory, a tool that has proven useful through use but not necessarily the only useful tool. One should not believe what scientists have published. One should seek to recreate the results published by scientists. In other words, to truly subscribe to the scientific method one must be skeptical about all things, even the scientific method.

Potentially Most Worthless Form of Protest Ever

When a bunch of triggered snowflake conservatives started burning their Nike products to protest the company’s decision to make Colin Kaepernick its mascot, I foolishly asked if there a more useless way to protest a company than destroying your own property? The question was meant to be rhetorical but a trigger snowflake liberal stepped up to the plate to prove that there are more useless forms of protest through his act of protesting by shooting himself in the arm:

Mark J. Bird, 69, was charged last month with discharging a gun within a prohibited structure, carrying a concealed weapon without a permit and possessing a dangerous weapon on school property, court records show. He was found bleeding from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his arm about 8:15 a.m. on Aug. 28 outside a bathroom in the Charleston campus K building.

[…]

One college employee told police that he held Bird’s hand to calm him down as others tried to stop the bleeding. While waiting for authorities to arrive, Bird said he had shot himself in protest of President Donald Trump, police noted in their report. The report did not elaborate.

I’m sure Trump is all broken up over the fact that some college professor, whom he would probably tear apart on Twitter if he was even vaguely aware of his existence, from Las Vegas decided to shoot himself in the arm with a .22 pistol. I expect Trump to announce his resignation this week due to the power of this professor’s protest.

The real icing on the cake though was this:

Inside the bathroom, campus police found a $100 bill taped to a mirror along with a note that said, “For the janitor,” according to Bird’s arrest report. On the floor of the restroom was a black-and-white, .22-caliber pistol and one spent shell casing.

$100 to clean up blood? Obviously this professor has no idea how expensive it is to cleanup a scene contaminated with blood. You don’t just run a mop across it and call it a day. The scene has to be sterilized because human blood can carry some really nasty shit.

I will probably regret this but I’ll ask anyways, is there a more useless way to protest than shooting one’s self in the arm with a small caliber handgun?

A More Entertaining Show

A bunch of conservatives threw a tantrum because Nike chose an individual who failed to stand during prayers to skycloth as its mascot. While a bunch of triggered snowflakes cutting up their socks and burning their shoes is mildly entertaining, this has the potential to be extremely entertaining:

Ford, (F)a sponsor of the National Football League, has voiced support for NFL players exercising their right to free speech and peaceful protest after President Donald Trump urged fans to consider a boycott.

“We respect individuals’ rights to express their views, even if they are not ones we share,” the company said on Monday. “That’s part of what makes America great.”

Queue a bunch of triggered conservatives burning their Ford F-150s.

Yeah, I know it won’t happen. Virtue signalling only goes so far. Some people may be willing to cut up a $10 pair of socks or even burn an old pair of shoes to demonstrate their virtuousness, but few are willing to destroy a vehicle worth tens of thousands of dollars to show the world how much they love the skycloth.

A Modest Proposal

It appears as though the confirmation hearing for the new Supreme Court justice went well:

The confirmation hearing for US President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee has descended into “mob rule”, a Republican senator said.

John Cornyn of Texas spoke out as Democrats demanded an adjournment. Seventy people were arrested as protesters interrupted the proceedings.

Brett Kavanaugh faces four days before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

If approved, the conservative appeals court judge would be expected to tilt the court’s balance to the right.

Minutes after Mr Kavanaugh, 53, entered the committee rooms on Tuesday, the hearing was disrupted by angry shouts from members of the public and lawmakers alike.

Shenanigans like this, where groups of people attempt to shutdown proceedings by screaming, seem to be becoming more common in this country. I can’t help but think that this is due to the fact that no mechanism exists today for resolving major political disagreements. This wasn’t always the case.

Long ago in this nation’s history there was a contentious president named Alexander Hamilton. He had a major disagreement with another politician named Aaron Burr.

That disagreement never devolved into public display of stupidity like that witnessed at this confirmation hearing though. Do you know why? Because there was a mechanism in place that allowed people like Hamilton and Burr to resolve their disagreements with each other in an unambiguously way.

What I’m saying is, there is an obvious solution to this country’s political disagreements.

Bring back dueling.

Impotent Rage

Nike announced its new mascot, Colin Kaepernick. Since Kaepernick made a name for himself by failing to stand during prayers to skycloth, a lot of conservatives are upset with Nike and have chosen to make Nike feel their impotent rage:

Following the announcement, the hashtags #BoycottNike and #JustBurnIt started trending on Twitter and shares started falling. Some angry consumers even posted photos and videos of themselves burning their Nike shoes and other gear to protest the company using the divisive figure in its 30th anniversary ad campaign.

I ask you this, is there a more useless way to protest a company than destroying your own property? I can’t think of one. If you purchase a pair of Nike shoes and later burned them, it doesn’t hurt Nike one bit, the company already has your money.

With that said, I am glad that Nike chose Kaepernick as its mascot, not because I feel that a backup quarterback best represents the company but because the memes that have sprung forth have been solid gold! This one is my favorite so far:

The People Who Decide Legality

Anybody who has looked into the history of the politics and legalities of firearms knows that the people who write and interpret laws regarding firearms are generally clueless about the subject matter. The same is true for technology (and possibly more so). The people who write and interpret laws regarding technology are almost always completely clueless about the subject matter. But what happens when you combine firearms and technology? An entirely new level of ignorance is unlocked:

On Monday, a federal court in Washington state blocked Cody Wilson and his company Defense Distributed from putting his 3D-printed gun schematic online. The court’s order—the latest in a years-long legal tussle that has picked up this summer—largely focuses on government rulemaking procedures, but a number of times it has to consider how technology works. When it does, it manages to get the technology remarkably wrong.

Perhaps the most comical of these is when the decision considers whether letting the schematic go online will cause “irreparable harm.” Most of the files are already online, Wilson’s attorneys argued, so what’s the harm in putting them up yet again? Yet the court disagreed, saying those online copies might be hard to find—only “a cybernaut with a BitTorrent protocol” could locate them “in the dark or remote recesses of the internet.”

If you think downloading a schematic for a firearm is insane, just want until you see what else I can do with a BitTorrent protocol! You’ll have to wait though since I’m short on BitTorrent protocols at the moment (please donate).

In addition to the use of the word cybernaut, I find it comical that the Internet Archive is considered a dark and remote recess of the Internet by this judge.

What should really stand out about this story though is that court officials who are entirely ignorant about the subject matter that they’re ruling on are allowed to make official rulings. When this judge issued their spiel about cybernauts using BitTorrent protocols to obtain schematics from the dark and remote recesses of the Internet, it had the force of law. If Defense Distributed violated this ruling, armed thugs with badges could be sent out to kidnap Cody Wilson or even kill him if he resisted their kidnapping attempt because an idiot in a magic muumuu has the power to make whatever they say an enforceable law. If that isn’t a great case against statism, I don’t know what is.

The Best Memory

The powers of the current United States president never cease to amaze me. For example, he apparently remembers the bombing of Pearl Harbor:

“I remember Pearl Harbor,” Trump reportedly told Abe as part of a tirade against the U.S. trade deficit with Japan. The president reportedly wanted better deals to help U.S. car and beef producers.

Considering Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941 and Trump was born in 1946, he apparently has a really good memory, just the best.