Tag: Protest

Solving the wrong problem

Dude, Are You Even Green?

I woke up this morning to news that another whack job protester had glued his head to a famous painting in the Hague to demonstrate against climate change. Now I don’t generally advocate violence, but in these cases I might make an exception. The next time one of these protesters glues themselves to a wall, it would be lovely if the appropriate authorities would kindly assist them to the ground with some force when arresting them. Wouldn’t it be a shame if some of their newly glued skin remained affixed to the wall?

Ok, sorry. Had to get that out of my system. It baffles me that people can be so blinded by their religion, that they are able to justify anything to themselves as righteous. And yes, global warming is a religion. You cannot question it. You will be branded a heretic if you don’t believe. Never mind that every prediction ever made by the global warming/climate change/extreme weather cult hasn’t materialized… they just keep pushing the date out and hope you don’t notice. Ok, ok, I know we said there was only 10 years left to save the planet, 30 years ago – but this time we’re serious. We have graphs and charts!

The protesters belong to some group called “Just Stop Oil – No New Oil and Gas”. I guess it doesn’t occur to them that the vast majority of every modern product on the planet is some derivative of petroleum – including, ironically, the glue they used to fasten themselves to the wall with. The question the green zealots never seem to answer is, what is the alternative to all this nasty oil?

If pushed, their answer is often the elusive GREEN ENERGY. Wind turbines. Solar panels. Electric vehicles. Clean, renewable, and they don’t spew that nasty carbon dioxide that is literally DESTROYING the planet. Apparently in the green religion, products aren’t manufactured. They just magically appear – poof! Happy workers wearing hemp clothing scamper to the fields to collect the batteries and solar panels placed there by the green energy fairies.

I hate to do this, but I’m going to have to point out an inconvenient truth. Things like batteries are manufactured. In a factory. Factories that use many, many megawatts of energy and machines that run on that horrible oil and nasty diesel. And before that, all those components are made in other factories. And the components come from minerals and ore that must be dug out of the ground by, GASP, huge machines that run on oil and gas and diesel.

The average EV battery requires 250 tons of ore to be mined. Things like copper and lithium. What do you suspect the carbon footprint is of those huge mining dump trucks and ore crushers? If you’re curious, I’d highly recommend you read this thread about what it takes to produce the copper wire for your Tesla battery or giant wind turbine. The energy expenditure and carbon footprint is absolutely staggering.

The real truth is that accounting for manufacturing, the lifetime emission footprint of an electric vehicle is greater than the average gas vehicle. Wait, what? Yes, you read that right. Then there’s the current electric grid which couldn’t support the swapping of all gasoline cars with EV’s. Oh, and the pesky issue of where the electricity is going to come from. It certainly won’t be from wind turbines. And if you’re green, I know you’re not going to support the MASSIVE increase in mining operations that’ll be needed to harvest all the minerals required. We’ll also just ignore the fact that most of those mines are in countries that, shall we say, aren’t inclined to be friendly to the USA.

The hard reality is that wind, solar, and electric vehicles is not the answer – in fact it probably makes the problem worse. If you’re a card-carrying member of the green religion, I’d love to hear the plan to overcome these manufacturing obstacles. Unfortunately, I suspect the vast majority of green folks have never given it a thought. Like slapping an “organic” label on something, they buy their “clean energy” vehicle and feel good about themselves. Almost… righteous. And when you’re righteous, you can condemn and lecture anyone who dares to question the orthodoxy. Facts not required.

I also read today that the US is down to a 25-day supply of diesel fuel. That’s good, right? Let’s stop using that filthy planet destroying petroleum! Some folks may be surprised when they hop in their EV to go down to the local Starbucks for their soy latte, only to discover Starbucks never got their coffee supplies delivered. Something about every product in this country being delivered by diesel trucks and trains.

That’s silly. I’m sure nothing like that could ever happen. Could it?

Confirmation bias

Scammed By A Headline
  • Brace yourselves – I’ve discovered some shocking information… the news is dishonest. I know, hard to believe right? While I’m certainly not the sharpest crayon in the box, I feel like I have a pretty good sense of what’s garbage and what’s not when it comes to the news. Unless it’s something you’re predisposed to believe is true because you’ve seen it day in and out. Confirmation bias. If it’s what you expect to hear, then it’s easy to blindly believe the words in front of you.
  • Here’s the backstory. I have been a longtime cycling fan. Starting in high school I dabbled in a few races and briefly thought I was a “real” cyclist. Reality set in pretty quickly and I evolved to a weekend rider and TV race fan. I watched the grand tours religiously year after year. There were days I’d be late to work because I got up early to watch the Tour de France in real time. I was, and continued to be, a big fan of Lance Armstrong through every tour and even after his fall from grace. A few years ago he started a podcast on YouTube with George Hincapie that gave the best race analysis you could find. Lots of “inside the tour” details and great tactical discussions. Every day of the tour I’d watch the recorded replay of the stage and then Lance’s podcast. As the big names all started retiring, I began slowing down on following cycling. Lance’s podcast revived my interest again. And then last year we had all the BLM protests. Sure enough, what pops up in the news headlines?
    • “Disgraced cyclist Lance Armstrong goes “woke,” cancels bike shop’s contract with Austin police”.
    • “Lance Armstrong’s Bike Shop Cancels Police Contract – Still Wants Cops To Protect Them From Threats”.
    • “Lance Armstrong’s Texas bike shop cuts ties with Austin police”.
  • God Damnit! Why can’t these celebrities just stay in their lane? I watch/follow them for their athletic ability or acting, not their politics. Why do they have to ruin things with their woke opinions? That was it, I was done with watching the tour and Lance’s podcast. I did not follow a minute of cycling last year or this year. I didn’t even realize the Tour de France had started this year until I saw the headline about the idiot spectator that caused that huge crash.
  • I was telling someone why I no longer followed the tour and was looking for one of the articles about Lance. Suddenly an article I hadn’t seen before appeared. Turns out Lance found out about the bike shops decision while he was on vacation and didn’t agree with it. He contacted the Austin police chief and brokered a thirty minute meeting with the chief and the bike shop to try and work something out.
    • Armstrong said ” the shop’s decision to cancel the contract is “not a situation that I support.” He also said he was “sick and tired of everybody screaming” at each other over the issue, which pitted the business against the police and some members of the public in a war of words”
  • Turns out Armstrong is a sworn sheriff’s deputy in Colorado. So… I got suckered into some sensationalist news headlines and made a snap judgement about something without making much of an effort to research further. What’s that old saying about assuming something? I lost a few Contrarian street cred points over this one. So what’s the lesson learned? The news lies. Media will always go for the sensationalist headline without bothering to do much, you know, actual journalism. Don’t let yourself be so easily swayed by “popular” opinion. Oh, and this year’s Tour de France is shaping up to be a really good one!

Song of the day: The Clash-Police And Thieves 1977

Confirmation bias, Daily Life, Government, Politics, Solving the wrong problem

I Don’t Know, But I’ve Been Told
  • GIGO. Garbage In, Garbage Out. If you haven’t heard that expression before, it’s an old-school programing adage. Your belief systems are a product of the inputs you consume. Consistently consume information from just one source and that’s what you’ll believe. A recent, annual, survey that focuses on false beliefs broken down by political ideology, gender, etc… illustrates this. The questions ranged from Covid, race, gender, and the climate. Biden voters had false beliefs 61% of the time, while Trump voters were wrong 42% of the time. If you consume your information solely from CNN, MSNBC, Facebook, and like minded Twitter follows, then of course you’ll have a skewed vision of the world. The same is true of Fox, but per the survey to a lesser degree. Take for example the recent expose of CNN by Project Veritas. Oh, you didn’t hear about it? That’s because there’s zero coverage of it on CNN, MSNBC, Politico, and Twitter permanently banned Veritas’ account. Veritas published video footage of a CNN technical director saying the networks focus was to get Trump out of office. “Look what we did, we got Trump out. I am 100 percent going to say it, and I 100 percent believe that if it wasn’t for CNN, I don’t know that Trump would have got voted out. … I came to CNN because I wanted to be a part of that,” Chester stated. He then said, “[COVID] will taper off to a point that it’s not a problem, anymore. Climate change can take years, so [CNN will] probably be able to milk that quite a bit. … Climate change is going to be the next COVID thing for CNN. … Fear sells.” You would think “The most trusted name in news” getting caught talking about pushing a specific social/political agenda might be a story. The fact that it’s not even mentioned by the major outlets speaks volumes. This really shouldn’t be a surprise, but clearly a large percentage of people take whatever the news media says as gospel. Hear it often enough and it starts to become a core part of your beliefs. The goal of the School Of Contrarianism is not to claim what I say is correct. I’m probably full of shit 38.4% of the time according to the latest surveys. The goal is to get you to question. Question everything. Just because some 23 year old “journalist” did a copy/paste of an AP story and then added their own opinions to give the story some “depth” doesn’t make it correct. We’ve gone from the 1960’s Timothy Leary/counterculture slogan “Question Authority” to becoming mindless lemmings of corporate wokeness. Ever see the movie The Truman Show? That’s us today. We’re all stars of the show, only we don’t know it. (P.S, lemmings don’t really jump off cliffs and commit mass suicide. Boom, mind blown.)
  • Speaking of blindly following a narrative, the Biden administration continues to give focus to the cult of global warming. Here’s a good place to start practicing your path down Contrarianism (TM). In the U.S. Energy Information Administration’s (EIA) the Monthly Energy Review, they report that energy-related CO2 emissions decreased by 11% in the United States in 2020 primarily because of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions. Furthermore, U.S. energy-related CO2 emissions fell in every end-use (consumer) sector for the first time since 2012. We had a record reduction in CO2 emissions, so we have the first actual laboratory experiment to see what happens with CO2 in the atmosphere. Remember, reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere is the entire goal of the green new deal that’s supposed to save us from this existential threat. So what happened? Nothing. Zero change in atmospheric CO2. Not even a blip. Meanwhile, China’s Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Yucheng on Friday said, “Some countries are asking China to do more on climate change. I am afraid this is not very realistic”. On Wednesday President Biden’s climate czar, John Kerry, admitted Wednesday that the US reducing its emissions to zero wouldn’t make much of a difference in the global climate change fight. Yet we’re moving forward on a $2 trillion climate agenda. How does this even make sense? As a junior Contrarian, start questioning this sort of crap.
  • The Minneapolis City Council has voted 11-1 to oppose the use of tear gas and other munitions as part of Minnesota’s response to civil disorder. Closing arguments in the Chauvin trial start Monday. I’ma gonna grab my popcorn for this one. I’m sure Minneapolis will come out just fine from all this. A few mostly peaceful protesters and some bad words shouted. It’ll all be good.
  • You should read this letter from a parent who’s pulling his kid out of an expensive private school. We’re creating an entire generation of mindless lemmings (I can’t help but perpetuate this lemming myth). I’m reminded of a meme I saw the other day that speaks truth. “Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. Weak men create hard times”. Sorry for the blatant cisgendering stereotyping. If I’ve insulted your personhood and cosmic aura, I apologize.
  • I decided to install a part on the ginormous motorcycle yesterday. I was going to have the dealership do it, but it kills me to pay someone to do what I’m (mostly) capable of. It took half a day, one trip to the auto parts store for a specialized tool, several skinned knuckles, many four letter words, and watching a how-to video approximately thirty times before I realized there was a specific orientation to get the parts to fit. I should have just gone to the dealership. Do you think I’ve learned my lesson? Probably not. As Forest Gump says, “I’m not a smart man”.

Song of the day: Fatboy Slim – The Rockafeller Skank

Daily Life, Health, Politics

Let’s Go To The Timeline
  • I’ve seen episodes of NCIS and Perry Mason, so I know the importance of a timeline. But first a quick step back in history. The year was 1846 and President Polk wanted war with Mexico. Well, not necessarily war but he wanted the shipping ports of California. War was just a means to an end. The border between Texas and Mexico was highly disputed and Mexico had troops stationed in an area they believed was their territory. Polk ordered General Taylor to take his 4,000 troops and advance to the Rio Grande river. Mexico didn’t take kindly to what they saw was an invasion of their country and the inevitable conflict happened. US troops died. Polk went to congress and declared that Mexico had shed American blood on American soil. Congress and America got appropriately fired up and declared war (interestingly a young representative named Lincoln was one of the few to object. It cost him his seat in congress). My point is that what you see and your impression is very much shaped by how it’s reported. Back to the timeline. On Jan 6th I was at work all day, so my view of what happened was what I saw on the “news” shows when I got home. President Trump apparently called for his angry mob of protesters to march on the capital, resulting in the violence we saw. Trump is an evil maniac and we must impeach, invoke the 25th amendment, make sure he doesn’t have the nuclear codes, and erase all evidence he was ever in office. Maybe history will just show an asterisk like Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France wins? Is that really what happened though? That pesky timeline shows that idiots began breaching the Capital’s security 20 minutes before the end of the President’s speech. Seeing as it’s a 45 minute to hour walk from the speech location to the Capital (the area was shut down to cars), there’s no way these folks could have been inflamed by Trumps rhetoric and rushed to breach the doors. Reporters on the ground said that cell signal was non-existent, so they couldn’t have been listening either. The text of Trumps speech shows that he specifically said let’s “peaceably march” to the capital. Obviously these folks were planning to do this well before Trump said anything. You can argue that he should have known what was going to happen if he held that rally. That’s fair. The rally and speech was a dumb move on many levels. But to declare the President incited violence, is a danger, and needs to be immediately removed from office and erased from social media is beyond stupid. It’s simply the media, democrats and never-Trumpers exacting their final revenge. We certainly didn’t hold any of these officeholders and media to account when they were encouraging and celebrating protest in the street during the mostly peaceful BLM riots. Or when the Hart Senate building was occupied by Kavanagh protesters. Or when there were marches, protests, and rallies at Trump’s inauguration. The notable orator Madonna said that day that she dreamed about blowing up the White House. #notmypresident Ah, but those are woke causes. It’s different. Biden’s ironic inauguration theme is “America United”. Apparently a bunch of people on both sides didn’t get the memo. You have 75 million pissed off, angry voters. Yes, Trump should have kept his narcissistic ego in check and quietly conceded. And the left, media, and big tech should stop poking the bear. Eventually something (more) bad will happen if they don’t. And it will be everyone’s fault.
  • I got my second vaccine on Monday for the virus that must not be named. I had no issues with the first one. I had no issues on Monday with this one. Felt fine on Tuesday when I woke up. By noon, I felt like I got hit by a truck. Headache, body ache, and a serious brain fog. I still don’t feel a hundred percent this morning. Interesting the second shot invokes such a strong reaction. Worth it though. I can now run naked through the Covid ward without fear.
  • To use the irony word twice in one day… Twitter apparently has zero self awareness. Twitter’s Public Policy group posted the following: “Ahead of the Ugandan election, we’re hearing reports that Internet service providers are being ordered to block social media and messaging apps. We strongly condemn internet shutdowns – they are hugely harmful, violate basic human rights and the principles of the #OpenInternet.” Apparently deciding what speech is allowed is only moral if you’re the one doing it.
  • And speaking of the continued purge, Facebook has declared the phrase “stop the steal” as scary, banned words. They stated: “We are now removing content containing the phrase ‘stop the steal’ under our Coordinating Harm policy from Facebook and Instagram.” Well, if you don’t like it go create your own social media app. Just as long as you don’t utilize Google, Apple, or Amazon services.
  • We’ve begun the process of what Mrs Troutdog calls ‘divesting from work’. I changed my hours to part-time. I don’t know what that means yet. Honestly, I’m freaking out a little bit about this. There’s an element of guilt not working full time. The point is to start figuring out what full retirement will eventually look like for us. It’s a very strange feeling. Stay tuned.
  • If you’ve been following along at home, you’ll remember we had a sewer backup that filled our bathtub with some objectionable material. We thought it was fixed, until it wasn’t. Turns out there must be a tree root through the line somewhere catching “stuff” as it flows down. Unfortunately we can’t really do anything about it until spring as everything is covered in feet of snow. Sigh.

Song of the day: Big Audio Dynamite – E=MC2

Uncategorized

Crack Some Heads And Lock Them Up
  • During the never ending BLM and Antifa riots this year I said on multiple occasions it was time for the police to take action. Billions of dollars lost in damages, buildings burned, business lost. 30 people killed. It’s time to start cracking some heads and locking up these assholes. And then the brief occupation of the Federal capital building happened yesterday. Do I still feel the same way? Yep. Protest is one thing. Rioting is something else. But in my inside voice I also had a different feeling about these rioters. I understand the frustration. I understand the anger. I don’t agree with what they did, but I get why they’re doing it. And then it clicked. The supporters of BLM and Antifa feel the same thing. They’re angry and feel hopeless. They feel marginalized by the system. That utter frustration makes people want to speak out, to be heard. Unfortunately with any protest, that emotion can start spilling over into riots. In every crowd there’s always a bunch of knuckleheads who are simply opportunists, ready to take advantage. Those are the folks who make the news. I agree with almost nothing BLM or Antifa stand for, but I do get the feeling of being left behind by the system. The irony (there’s that word again) is that BLM, Antifa, and the MAGA crowd are all actually fighting the same thing. An oppressive ruling class of elites who’s only goal is to enrich themselves and their donors. Regardless if you’re a minority in a poor neighborhood plagued by crime, failing schools, and zero job prospects, or a middle class blue collar worker struggling to make ends meet, it’s very hard to watch politicians pander and fawn over their political base with words and then go spend a trillion dollars on foreign aid and millions in handouts to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. But wait, you get $600! Don’t spend it all at once. While the anger from the left and right manifests itself differently, it’s fundamentally about the same thing. The system is rigged against me. The system is unfair. People don’t like when things don’t seem fair. Tucker Carlson said it best in his commentary on what happened yesterday. And this applies to this years BLM and Antifa riots as well as yesterdays ridiculousness. You can quell the riots. You can speak soft, soothing words about restoring the integrity of our democracy, bla, bla, bla. But if the ruling elites don’t start to address the underlying issues, this is going to happen again. And again. And at some point we’re not going to like the outcome. I think the ruling class underestimates the level of anger from both the left and right in this country right now.
  • I cannot emphasis strongly enough how dangerous this is – what you are allowed to think and say right now is controlled by three companies. Twitter, Google, and Facebook. Twitter shut down the Presidents account last night. Facebook announced today they are shutting the Presidents account for the next thirteen days. YouTube removes or demonetizes any video that has content that doesn’t echo the left’s talking points. I don’t care if you don’t like what the President says. Millions upon millions of people do. And a few corporations are deciding what the President of the United States can and can not say. If you agree with what these companies did simply because you don’t like the President, you’re a naïve fool. Toe the company line or you’re out. Censoring speech and ideas because you don’t like them leads us down a dark path. The antidote to what’s happening in this country is the exact opposite – we need to shine the light on everything. If you don’t first pull the curtains back and expose the roaches, you’ll never get rid of them.
  • The faux outrage and gnashing of teeth over yesterday’s events makes me want to vomit. Protests are cool as long you’re on the right side.

    AOC – “The thing that critics of activists don’t get is that they tried playing the “polite language” policy game and all it did was make them easier to ignore”. Kamala – “Protesters should not let up”. Pelosi – “I just don’t know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country. Maybe there will be”. Maxine Waters – “… you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere”. Ayanne Pressley – “there needs to be unrest in the streets”.

    I don’t condone it on any side, but one thing is universally true. You squeeze people hard enough for long enough… and shit’s going to happen.
  • As I sit here writing this, I’m angry. I’m frustrated. I’m saddened. I’m fed up with the outrage. Part of me just wants everything to go back to the status quo so my biggest worry is should I go downhill or cross-country skiing. I don’t know if I’m going to stop blogging, write less often, or simply focus on brilliant commentary about puppy dogs and rainbows. But the overwhelming negativity on social media is getting to me and I don’t see it getting better any time soon. We’ll see.

Song of the day (repeat): Rage Against The Machine – Killing In the Name (Official Music Video)

Confirmation bias

It Must Be True

Confirmation Bias – also called confirmatory bias or myside bias, is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s beliefs or hypotheses, while giving disproportionately less consideration to alternative possibilities.

If you haven’t been following the Nathan Phillips/Covington High School controversy the last few days… you’ve probably been living under a rock, and may be better off for it. If you have seen it, what was your first reaction when the story initially came out? Be honest.

The media showed a video clip of a high school student wearing a MAGA hat, with what looks like a an odd smirk, standing all up in the face of a native American banging on a drum. News reports said the high school students were shouting racial epitaphs and “build the wall”, and generally disrupting a peaceful indigenous people’s march.

Within nanoseconds the social media warriors had fired up the meme machines. White privilege, this is what a Trump supporter looks like, this is what white supremacy looks like, this is not my America, bla, bla, bla.

As Paul Harvey said, “and now the rest of the story”. It now looks like that’s not at all what happened. A group called the “Black Hebrew Israelites” seem to be the ones responsible for most of the racial epitaphs thrown at the native Americans. The high school kids were just waiting for their bus and began singing their school spirit song to drown out the inflammatory chanting. Statements by most of the kids seem to indicate they were all pretty confused as to what was happening.

And best of all… new video shows that it was Nathan Phillips, the native American drummer, who walked into the group of kids, got all up close and personal and began drumming right in one kids face. The kid just stood there respectfully and smiled.

Back to my question. How badly did you want the original story to be true? How certain were you that, of course a bunch of Trump supporting, MAGA hat wearing, kids exuding white privilege would do this? Because all Trump supporters are one step away from the Klan, right? There’s now several hours of video of the events and people are examining it second by second looking for evidence to support whatever side you’re on. I don’t really care about that outcome. The bigger point is that so many people rushed to pre-judge something that didn’t exactly happen the way it was portrayed.

Confirmation bias has become so rampant and damaging to society today. Unfortunately the news is helping to perpetuate it. Don’t be a part of it. There’s a difference between not agreeing with a policy or statement, and being so blinded by bias you read evil into everything. Wait to judge, take what you see in the news with a grain of salt, and stop being a part of the problem.

“We all see only that which we are trained to see.”

Robert Anton Wilson