Category: History

Unprecedented Times: Don’t Underestimate the Impact of the Pandemic

UPDATE 12/22/2021: Unbeknownst to me at the time I first wrote this,
Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, stated that the impact of COVID-19 would be so great that the world requires “a Great Reset.” He makes many arguments similar to mine here. I didn’t know this existed when I wrote this post in July 2021.

In my freelance blogging business, I deal with mostly online entrepreneurs who have a website-driven business model. Ever since the pandemic hit, all my clients have been taken off-guard by the fallout. It’s not just that all the numbers in online business go down; some numbers go up too. The one consistent pattern is that nobody can predict what’s going on, and everybody wants answers.

For those of you in eCommerce who are also wondering what’s going on, I can provide some clues. I can’t provide definitive answers, and part of the clues will point out why. My purpose here is to lay out the mind-boggling scope of the pandemic’s impact on business.

The bottom line is that the economy is largely a chaos system. Chaos systems are huge, complex systems where small changes can cause huge ripple effects. The mark of chaos systems is that it is very difficult to predict what effect a given stimulus would have. Meanwhile, a global pandemic is also a chaos system, as natural phenomena with worldwide reach are wont to be. The result: The economy interacting with the pandemic is the front between two chaos systems, not just one!

But in the first place, there are not only people missing from the work force, but people missing from the mall. They are not shopping, or what shopping they are doing is bare necessities, not discretionary spending. They are not traveling, they are not buying tickets to anything, they are not being busy. So they are not stimulating business.

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Attention Internet Court : Guilt Requires Intent

If you’re reading Harry Potter because you like J.K. Rowling’s alleged transphobia, you’re doing so with intent and are a bigot.

If you’re reading or watching Harry Potter because you like fantasy stories about wizards and magic, you’re not a bigot. Indeed, even if you’re reading just to see what all the fuss is about, you’re not a bigot.

If you don’t even think Rowling is seriously transphobic because she seems more to be just plain naive about society and culture, congratulations! As God is my witness, before the Rowling row I personally did not know that trans-folk menstruated at all, I thought they just got a Depo-Provera shot or something to have done with it. Nevertheless, Rowling doesn’t realize that Twitter isn’t the place to have this kind of in-depth debate and stupidly digs her way in deeper every time she opens her yawp. I’m still not convinced she’s intentionally bigoted.

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If you bought Load O’ Lakes butter because you like having submissive female native Americans kneeling at your breakfast table to feed your imperialist fantasy, you’re a bigot. And weird.

If you bought Load O’ Lakes butter because it’s just damn butter and never gave a thought to the packaging, you’re not a bigot.

Wanna see more? Right this way!

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Crazy Times Don’t Last, But Crazy People Do

Greetings and the usual introduction about how the current news cycle is as nutty as squirrel poop. However, there is light at the end of this tunnel. I see signs of meager improvement. The year 2021 is so far being nicer to us than 2020. Let’s get to brass tacks and bras tax:

If you follow my Twitter feed, I also broadcast my latest work there occasionally. Lately at the geeky fandom beat, I got sick and tired of The Matrix getting a free pass with all the crazy conspiracy theories it’s spawned. If we’re going after the toxic media that poisons our minds, let us include the popular ones. We openly laugh at the spastic static of Marjorie Taylor Greene, but wrap the same bullshit in a leather trenchcoat with cool guns and we literally make a religion out of it.

And nothing appears to be as popular as The Matrix. Between Red Piller Incels and people murdering their parents because they thought they were living in a computer simulation, The Matrix is responsible for indoctrinating people to a level similar to The Turner Diaries. Yet social media does not allow you to criticize The Matrix! The Wachowski siblings are sacred, untouchable cows. You get stoned to death by angry mobs for daring to suggest that they don’t walk on water.

UPDATE: As usual, after I finish my thesis, I find a video with a reasoned scientific argument agreeing with me!

Using the same logic, we could say “there are more ants than people on Earth, therefore the odds are better that we are ants.”

I like that! Let’s insert a jump here before my front page gets overloaded.

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Now My Other Gigs Are Infected With Occult Influence

You could say the same for every day of the cursed year of 2020, but my timeline seems to have been particularly dark since reviewing – and being bit by – Cultist Simulator. It was indeed a fit spooky choice for October, which dragged me through the month as I’ve tried to keep up my horror viewing in the middle of everything else.

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Is Ignite Cannabis Co. trying to tell us something?

At my stoner DabConnection gig, we’ve become the freelance police of the cannabis industry busting fake brands of THC vape cartridges left and right. But this time I got interested in a real brand managed by an Instagram influencer Dan Bilzerian, though “real” and “managed” are both up for debate. The brand has raised millions in investor funding and squandered millions more with Bilzerian apparently going through the most hysterical public midlife-crisis ever. We’re talking $50 million in 2019 alone!

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In Which I Explore More Hidden Worlds

As a freelance blogger, what I really do for a living is just explore. That’s it; I visit some exotic far-off realm of the anthropocene noosphere, and I report back on what I found. I always find something weird and squirmy, without even digging much.

My favorite thing to do in the world is to open the door on closet cultures most of you never knew existed, and drag them out in the daylight. Even though I snark a lot, I love these pocket societies because they present an alternative view of the world. We all have our own perspective on “where it’s at.” Where is it at? That depends on whom you ask. Maybe the lost tribes are right. Maybe the underground subcultures are right. Maybe we should all ditch everything and go find enlightenment in some hidden digital playground because that’s all the meaning we have left to get out of life. Maybe we’re all deluding ourselves. Maybe we have no choice, and our only relevant decision is to pick the delusion that allows the most comfort.

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In Which I Escape the Kratom Booby Trap

Greetings, energy beings of planet Gaia! I have ingested large quantities of an exotic plant from the Far East which gave me new, mutant powers of bullshit detection and a renewed faith in our one true god Zardoz. It doesn’t matter how interesting your week has been, mine has been more interesting.

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Discovery #1: Kratom is Bullshit!

At the behest of my client at DabConnection.com, I experimented with this Thai herbal drug making the rounds at convenience store kiosks. Read my bummer trip report on kratom here, where I risk bodily soundness and my sanity in trying to get any reaction out of this rip-off product, including gulping down mugs of kratom tea on an empty stomach at 5AM because that’s the thing you do on an average weekend morning! Alas, I got nothing but dead air for the trouble, which included gulping down so many of the half-gram pills that I rattle when I jump up and down.

I love my career.

I found out confirmed proof that alleged “kratom strains” all come from the same plant, too. My suspicion that the alleged “kratom plant” is actually catnip can neither be confirmed nor denied by my cat, who recognizes catnip but will not touch the stuff.

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If I offer him catnip, he’ll sniff it once and give me a dirty eye, insulted that I would disrespect him with this offering, before pointedly batting it away. I have a Mormon cat.

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I Investigate Some Anti-Pot Propaganda Billboards

In this Monday’s edition of my weekly exploration log, I got curious about marijuana propaganda and decided to dig into who is behind all the billboards popping up in weed-legal states. The answers, as you might expect, range from complete mysteries to right-wing muscle groups to hair-raising teen-torture scared-straight camps. JWZ, world’s biggest fan of They Live(1988), would have been proud of me. I felt just like this:

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Anti-Drug billboards sponsored by Straight Incorporated founders

And seriously, I’m not kidding about teen-torture camps. Some of them are sponsored by “Drug Free America Foundation,” no surprise, but that foundation was founded by the same husband and wife team behind Straight Incorporated. Sample review:

“Straight, Incorporated was a very destructive, highly controversial and extremely abusive cult that shamelessly and dishonestly, masqueraded as a drug rehab for teenagers in several parts of the United States from 1976 to 1993.”

“These teenagers who were incarcerated in all of these savage Straight locations usually ranged in age from 13 to 20 years of age. The Straight cult had these Warehouse type facilities which operated in states such as California, Virginia, Texas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Georgia, Maryland, Ohio and Florida. Contrary to the mythology and propaganda endlessly perpetuated by Straight, these kids were not clients! These teenagers were hostages. While on First Phase they were imprisoned and held against their will physically,emotionally and psychologically (and sadly in so many cases, all three,) at the Straight Facility during the day and at night they were shuttled and transported (against their will) to various foster homes where they were held against their will there as well.”

The hair-raising tales of torture, rape, brainwashing, and even deaths in these American teen-torture camps rival many a horror story from the Holocaust, and it’s going on right under our noses right now, nobody knows. Start digging here, and here, and here. Bring your barf bag. This industry has gone on with no oversight, no regulation, for decades now, without once breaking the news. Remember when Mitt Romney was running against Obama? He was financed by WWASP. The teen torture industry has some deep ties to US religions that have an unusual interest in UFOs, which might explain why the closer to Utah you go, the creepier the anti-marijuana billboards get.

And speaking of UFOs (he said provocatively)…

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Gen Z Parents : Help Us, You’re Our Only Hope!

The editorial powers that be asked me to throw together a resource for parents facing “back to school” in the post-COVID-19 world. This is a post on home-schooling and remote education resources for parents raising mostly K-12 kids. It’s not much, but it’s what little I can do.

Parents should take education into their own hands, even before COVID-19

Even though we sent our kids through public school, we homeschooled them as if they weren’t attending. That’s because the public school system in the US is so gutted, so hostile to intelligence, such a Babylon of pseudo-learning idolatry, that I have to wonder if it does more harm than good.

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I dunno, it’s like US schools had some other focus besides learning. I can’t quite put my finger on it though. It’s on the tip of my tongue.

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Maybe I’ll recall what it is…

In case you missed it (because who even checks by this dead blog to begin with?), I also covered freelance writing in a post-COVID-19 world. So there, you have your school covered and your work covered, all off-grid. Call us when we get a government that’s interested in doing anything for people again.

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Surviving the Iowa Derecho 2020

The good news is that your humble freelance hack blogger has the household power and Internet restored. That was nuts! The derecho storm marched right through the middle of Iowa, and I have to say in retrospect I’d rather have ten tornadoes than another derecho.

So I’m obligated to blog the experience both for a first-person historical account and to explain to my freelance clients why I vanished for two days. Pictures here are from the news, not mine.

What it’s like after a derecho and city-wide blackout

In the first place, most of the destruction occurred in the late morning hours of Monday, August 10th 2020. It just hit with a force like a shock wave. Trees flying immediately.

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The power blinked off within minutes, and we could guess why. What we didn’t know is that this time, the storm’s effects were widespread. Our Internet router was of course knocked out too, but our land line phone remained functional. We hopped onto mobile, but discovered that our local mobile coverage was also spotty.

Meanwhile, the entire city was in chaos!

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Nice Demon Fetish You Have There

I may get around to talking about the rest of gaming news, but it’s going to be hard to get past this first. In my GeekyDomain gig I’m obligated to talk about game trends. Recently when I browse Steam, one game kept shoving itself into my face over and over. Judging from its top-rated position, it seems to be the hottest (oh God stop the puns already!) free casual game lately.

I’ve been tricked into playing a game about seducing demons

So I tried it, beat it even (it takes minutes), and found out what the big deal was. Helltaker is an indie dating sim about assembling a harem of demon girls, after some obligatory puzzle and bullet hell elements. And you, all you depraved people, you wretched goblins made me play that just to see what all the fuss was about.

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So now we know why half the fanart base has been taken over by devil girls eating pancakes lately. And honestly, even if I’m not down with this particular scene, I get it, I really do. I even analyze why in that post.

But that doesn’t mean that I quit finding all things concerned with Satanism and Hell to be side-splittingly hilarious. I love how Zdrada has a cross necklace. It’s amazing how well one indie Polish developer managed to capture Western humor so adeptly. That’s vanripper if you want to follow him to see what devilment he gets up to next.

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