A hunger for competence

I want to be capable of anything I need to do, and I want to be good at the things I value.

It's hard to admit when I'm not good at something- but if you've been reading this blog for a while, you've seen me admit to many things I'm not good at, or in some cases, apparently incapable of. Just know I hate admitting it.

YouTube- as much as I hate their draconian and hidden policies- has helped me do many things I didn't think I was capable of doing. Saving hundreds of dollars for me and for my parents (I have repaired more things than I can count for them- they just pay for the parts).

I have learned I'm able to do more things than I thought. Often, when I really can't do something, it's a lack of the proper tools or an inability to find the parts. It's not me!

Saturday, while I was grieving a feline friend I wasn't able to fix, my parents' car- which my sister was depending on while she got her car repaired (or not- the dealership service department is famously incompetent and is going to have to try again)-developed a problem that made it unusable.

But, with the help of Grok and YouTube, I was able to diagnose the issue and make a temporary (maybe?) fix that saved the day- or the week. And saved my parents hundreds of dollars, at least for now.

Long ago, I worked with a girl who shocked me one day when she told me she had replaced the fender on her car over the weekend, all by herself. These days, I shock myself by doing things I never imagined I could do.

I would still pay someone else to do most of these things if I had the money, but I'm glad to have options. It's nice to feel a little more competent all the time.

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Prickly statists

Statists don't like being recognized as statists.

They really don't like it when you point out the implication that this means, in this specific area, they are intellectually lacking.

They may be a rocket scientist, but as long as they believe there exists a "right" or "authority" to govern others, they aren't as smart in this specific area as those who realize no such right or authority exists or can exist.

I don't know trigonometry, but I don't get mad if someone points this out. That would be silly. I can't know everything (as much as younger me wanted to). So, when someone who does know trigonometry tells me something related to that specialty, I don't get mad at them or try to mock them for thinking they know more about it than I do. That would be stupid, because they do. Ignorance is guaranteed; stupidity is a choice.

I realize people can't just stop believing what they believe, nor can they just start believing something they don't believe. It's really not an option or how the brain works. Maybe they can eventually learn their way out of it, but statists aren't often motivated to do so. They believe they're right, so they avoid learning anything that might show them otherwise. Whether it's history, economics, or ethics.

We all start out as anarchists, most of us (including me) become statists to some degree as we grow, then some of us manage to learn our way out of it if given the opportunity. Those adults who don't mature out of statism are to be pitied, and only mocked if they strut around being a statist clown who advocates violating others to promote their superstition.

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A govschooling victim

A while back, I saw someone get angry and lecture a person who called this place on the map "America".

He "educated" them that "America is a continent. This country is the United States!".

I guess he's another poor victim of the govschools.

I gently pointed out that the continent is North America, but there's no continent that is simply "America".
I should have gone on to say there's also a South America.
America is this country- the region, the land, resources, people, etc., as set apart according to agreements between political criminals for purposes of plundering without getting in each other's way too much.
The United States [sic] is the government currently ruling over (violating and plundering) the people of America.

No, I never checked back to see how he reacted to this news. Probably exactly as you'd imagine.

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Nothing is truly forgotten

I recently experienced another example of a long-buried memory popping into my brain. Even more buried than the nearly forgotten onions I mentioned a while back.

This time, for no reason I'm aware of, a theme song from a television show that was on the air when I was 3 years old, and that disappeared to never show up in reruns (as far as I know), suddenly started running through my mind. The song brought with it a dim memory of the show.

I hadn't thought of the show since it aired. No one ever mentioned it to me again. But the theme song was in my head and made itself known, and when I looked it up on this electronic wonder, it was just as I remembered. 

Brains are kind of amazing!

Again, this gives me hope that things you and I have said to other people, including to our kids when they were young enough to listen, will stay with them far into the future. Maybe pop back into their minds when they least expect it, but when it's needed. 

If you value liberty and have talked about it to anyone, there's a good chance it's still embedded somewhere in their neural network. Maybe long after you and I are gone, words we once spoke will still be doing some work behind the scenes. (That's not counting things we've written down for posterity.) I think liberty gets in your head and makes a home there, waiting to be called up to work. 

Stranger things have happened.

Liberty is a natural human need, even if most people have been brainwashed to think it's not. Keep infecting those around you with the liberty virus. Your great-grandchildren will need it.

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DOGEd suddenly

DOGE may actually be doing what it promised.

It has hit home: a relative's federal government-financed "job" (in govschooling) has been DOGEd.

I would have more sympathy if I hadn't spent a lifetime being scolded for not finding a "good" government "job". Not by this individual, but by others who held this person up as an example I should aspire to.

I mean, I do have some sympathy. But I know this person is a Trump supporter, so I'm not sure how she feels about this. If she's consistent and principled, she'll accept this as necessary. The TDS-sufferers in the family will have a different take on events.

I've warned family members about accepting government "jobs"- but most of them either work in govschool or are retired from govschool. It was pointless and counterproductive to keep hammering the point, but if asked, I didn't hide my opinion. I'm not going to say "I told you so", or really make any comment at all. This is a time to hold my tongue and observe.

UPDATE: DOGE failed.

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Daylight "Saving" Time is a lie

Trump says he wants to abolish Daylight "Saving" Time. Hopefully, he isn't like most people; confused about which is which. Standard Time is the one in effect now; DST is the other setting where everything starts an hour early and pretends it doesn't.

Even a Google search result that relies on AI got it wrong, saying something about "the transition to autumn DST". Yes, it was focusing on "Autumn DST" [sic] to argue there is no increased mortality due to that particular clock change. No, the autumn transition is to Standard Time. That's the one that doesn't have increased mortality. DST is the one that kills people.

Daylight "Saving" Time, and every argument in favor of it, is based on lies.

Supposedly, farmers needed that imaginary "extra hour" of daylight. That was a lie. Farmers never started work by the clock anyway; they go by the sun and weather. Your clock settings are irrelevant to their workday.

People say they want more sunlight after work/school. I suggest they just wake up earlier, and petition their job to open earlier in the summer and they say they can't. But that's EXACTLY what's happening anyway. Businesses are opening and closing earlier, it's just that self-centered people demand everyone mis-set their clocks to hide the fact. That doesn't change it. It's a lie.

Plus, DST is the summer setting, when most govschools are closed anyway. Another lie.

When anyone argues in favor of Daylight "Saving" Time, I'm always reminded of the old joke about the old Native man observing that only the paleface are stupid enough to try to make a blanket longer by cutting a foot off the top and sewing it to the bottom.

It may have been a joke, but it's still true.

It takes me a month or more to adjust to DST (if I ever truly do), but a day or less to adjust to Standard Time. I'm not a morning person, and every person I've ever seen who insists on forcing everyone to pretend businesses aren't just opening and closing an hour early, but that "time changed", is a morning person.

I hate DST. I've always hated it. I hated it when I was a kid in school. I hated it when I had a normal job. If there wasn't much daylight left after I got home, I didn't demand everyone else change their clocks to suit me. I just lived with it. In the summer, there was plenty of daylight left (here, it doesn't get dark in the summer until nearly 10pm during part of Government Wrong Time). In the winter, it's just winter. The sun goes down earlier regardless. Mis-setting your clocks won't fix that.

Set your clocks however you want. Just don't coerce others to adopt your setting. 

DST affects me more than most people because I live on the western edge of the Central Time zone where solar noon is already an hour late most of the time. I can live with that because there's a reasonable argument for time zones. There is no such argument in favor of DST. During DST, my clocks are wrong by up to 2 hours. 

Daylight isn't being "saved" by mis-setting clocks for most of the year. It's all lies.

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"Why do the highly educated lean Left?"

It is commonly observed that highly educated people tend to lean Left. Some people would like to believe this means that’s the smart position.

They'll tell you this all the time. Often with a dash of smugness.

It's not necessarily true.

Since most "educators" lean Left, their students are influenced in that direction. Some of those students end up being "educators" and the cycle not only continues, but accelerates. Partly because they feel Left is the wise position since the "smart people" they know all lean in that direction, so to prove they are also smart, they lean Left. Maybe even a little further Left than those who taught them. Or brainwashed them.

The truly smart people reject archation. They lean neither Right nor Left, but toward respecting the rights and liberty of everyone around them. Politics makes people stupid, especially when they think they are being smart.

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(I’m struggling through a disastrous computer problem, using a combination of someone else’s computer and my phone. This is not sustainable, but I’m still trying to get back into my laptop. Wish me luck!)

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Make Statists irrelevant

It's fun to poke statists, to mock and ridicule their insane ideas, but the best way to make them irrelevant in the long run is through education.

And one of the best sources of the good kind of education is still TOLFA.

It has been a while since I recommended it to you, and I needed to fix that. So here it is: Go to http://tolfa.us/ and learn. It's not hard and it's fun. 

You'll be glad you did, and you'll be making the world a better place.

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Save the future: send kids to the camps

People today aren’t good at thinking. Critical thinking skills seem to be rare-- more rare than is good for the species.

It’s probably too late for most adults. The only hope lies in helping young people develop the ability to think at an early age. 

There should be a summer camp to help kids learn to focus their thoughts; to concentrate. It could be called Concentration Camp.

Wouldn’t you love to send kids there?

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Opinions built on loose sand

Someone expressing a difference of opinion with me doesn't really bother me. What bothers me is a difference of opinion when the opinions are based on objectively incorrect "facts"; hallucinations. Things that can easily be found to be false, if one looks into it.

A personal friend of mine holds many opinions of this type. She's not interested in hearing anything that would challenge her opinions, so I rarely bother, but it is really strange to me. I don't understand this at all. Normally, I just take note of it and move on.

I know she's highly influenced by "public opinion", especially those expressed by the customers and coworkers she's around every day. She doesn't pay attention to "the news", but she still absorbs the narrative. And when their opinions are baseless, hers end up there, too. But, "everyone knows...", so what can you do?

My first observation of this phenomenon was back in 2020 when she was sure Covid was going to kill off all the old and weak, and that the shots were the only thing that might save us all. I nearly broke her brain when I didn't get the shot(s)-- she was sure I was doomed. She wouldn't listen to anything I had to say on the matter. I was foolish and was spreading the plague to the innocent.

In a recent conversation, she expressed a few different opinions of this sort in a short period of time, which is what got me thinking about it. Some of these opinions could actually be dangerous for her to act on, but when I tried to say something about it, she shut me down. She's not interested. Others could save her from a huge amount of future problems, while solving current problems. Nope. Not interested. Others probably won't make a difference in her life, but it's odd to not even be curious enough to want to find out the truth. She's the most incurious person I've ever known.

It seems odd to me. 

That's probably more common in modern humans than I'm comfortable admitting, but if this is a fact, my opinion should change to reflect it.

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Statists don't understand

Statists don't understand economics or inflation.
They don't understand how (and why) cops cause crime.
They don't understand rights.
They don't understand legislation.
They don't understand how foreign meddling creates enemies.
They don't understand anything they want to regulate or ban.|
They don't understand simple language.
They don't understand human nature.
They don't understand history.
They don't understand the difference between the state and society.
They don't understand why free speech matters, or what it is.
They don't understand ethics or morality.
They don't understand physics or science in general, or how science works.
They don't understand democracy.
They don't understand how children learn or what inspires them.
They don't understand liberty.
They don't understand much of anything that matters when people live around other people.
They don't understand why people chafe under their control.
They don't understand government.

This list isn't close to comprehensive. The list of things statists don't understand, but think they should be in charge of anyway, is staggering.

And, despite this monumental lack of understanding they've built their entire government-supremacist edifice upon, I'm expected to let them run my life?
I don't think so.

I'm better off taking care of myself. And so are you.
I understand that you're better off making your own mistakes.

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Once you see it…

…You see it everywhere.

I’m talking about all the problems people obsess over that have one core cause: government.

I’ve written about it many times, so no need to rehash it here.

I see it everywhere, from just about everyone. They see some of the problems (the ones that bother them), and they are resigned to the problems being unsolvable. Or they suggest approaches that will make it worse. All because they can't let go of the cause.

I suppose you could point out that the root cause is actually archation, but then I'd point out that archation has a known solution: defense. And I'd also point out that government is institutionalized and "acceptable" archation, which is said to be above any "violent" solution. Defending yourself from government is said to be wrong. (It isn't, but it may sometimes be unwise.)

So, the solution to all the problems they dwell on is off the table.

They'd much rather thrash at the branches (or the shadows of the leaves) than dig out the diseased root. That's how captured their brains are. They can't even see how silly they look.

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Here are some of the best ways to help me

Breaking News! Freedom pamphlet sweeps the world!

Well, maybe not yet. But you can help make my headline true.

There's a new booklet you need to download. Freedom and How To Find It. It was written by frequent commenter to this blog, and all-around good liberty-loving guy, Jim Davies. 

And when you do download a copy, please send a dollar to Jim, and then send copies to people you know might be receptive to the message.

I've been sending out copies myself.

The more liberty there is, the better off all of us will be. Only the bad guys will be hurt by it, and I can't bring myself to care much about their plight. 

I know what liberty looks and feels like, and I want it all. Not bits and pieces-- ALL of it. Maybe this could help reach the goal.

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Here are some of the best ways to help me

Special kind of stupid, or clever troll?

What?

I keep saying that anti-gun bigots are stupid, but according to this meme I found on X, they apparently keep trying to show that they are even more stupid than I had believed possible.

The premise is a lie- there's no such thing as "gun violence".
The grammar is pitiful and nearly incomprehensible.
Their math/physics is impossibly ignorant.
The "solution" they seem to be promoting would make things worse by empowering people who already don't mind murdering innocent people.

If that's their "voice" they should be humiliated that it was made public!

Unless this is a trick by trolls to make anti-gun bigots look even more stupid than they are. If so, Bravo! (And I can't help suspecting this is the case, because I have a hard time comprehending that this level of stupidity isn't immediately fatal.)

If this is "for real", this is pathetic. They are simply too stupid to be listened to by anyone with an IQ above that of a politician.

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Show me you don't understand what a "right" is...

This is why we have trouble with authoritarian control freaks trying to violate natural human rights.

This was a YouTube channel's poll that popped up on my phone. 

At first, I was bothered by the way the question was worded, then I started reading the comments. It got much worse. 

These are screenshots of the top of the comment thread-- nothing got skipped. And it went on and on like this. I probably won't bother reading the replies to my comment, just to avoid thinking the worst of "conservatives" who only want to conserve government supremacy. 

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best ways to help me feel useful

Government's "job" is to...

Government’s "job" is to put up roadblocks to stifle the economy and innovation. 

Government’s "job" is to "get in a man's way".

Government's "job" is to throw its military around to make you less safe.

Government's "job" is to whittle away at your standard of living.

Government's "job" is to counterfeit money.

Government's "job" is to muddle language so you are unable to think clearly or identify reality.

Government's "job" is to make sure you don't have options to escape its reach.

Government's "job" is to make up and enforce legislation that violates your natural human rights and destroys liberty.

Government's "job" is to indoctrinate children and make sure they aren't too educated for its purposes.

Government's "job" is to make you as dependent and helpless as it can get away with.

Government's "job" is to steal from you to make sure you aren't self-sufficient.

Anything else you've been told is "government's job" is a lie. The lies you've been told about the purpose of government should be obvious to you. If not, you'll keep making excuses.

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Don't trust government with what matters

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for October 29, 2023)

I could never be talked into sending my daughter on a cross-country trip with a stranger. Or worse, with an acquaintance I couldn't trust because of a history of dangerous or unethical behavior. If I did, and something tragic happened, how could I live with the guilt? I know better.

For this same reason, I would never entrust anything I value to government's control. Government has a history, stretching back thousands of years, of dangerous and unethical behavior. I can't trust it and am shocked at anyone who seems to. You may as well hand your child off to a junkie driving a stolen car.

Being under the influence of political authority-- government-- is worse than being under the influence of any chemical intoxicant such as drugs or alcohol.

Anything that matters-- science, the economy, security, safety, health, education, food supplies, and more-- is something I can't trust government to have control or influence over.

I want everything I love kept beyond the reach of government, but this doesn't mean I want government to meddle in things I'm opposed to or not interested in. Someone values those things and I'm not petty.

Space exploration thrills me. The worst situation possible for this essential endeavor is to allow government to license and regulate it.

Wildlife and wilderness; pets; firearms and self-defense-- they'd all be better off separated from government's "help".

Justice is nearly impossible with government courts. They dole out a weak substitute-- punishment-- without distinguishing between mala in se (actual crimes with individual victims) and mala prohibitum ("illegal" because government says so, although there is no individual victim).

I can't think of a single thing I value which needs government involvement; anything I would entrust to government. This goes triple for liberty.

Governments have proven over and over again that they can't be trusted to protect the rights or the liberty of those they rule. They invariably become the worst threat to the liberty of those they are tasked with protecting.

Constitutions haven't worked; even when explicitly listing rights government is not allowed to touch. Politicians find excuses, and the people have no real power to do anything substantive about it. So they vote, instead. Some even side with government, begging it to violate natural human rights they don't like. It's a failed system.

Why would I ever trust government, something I know to be completely untrustworthy, with anyone or anything I love?

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Garbage in, garbage out

When I was a kid, the most common excuse to explain why so many computer answers were useless was "Garbage in, garbage out". This referred to informational garbage (bad data) not useful organic garbage that can be used for good.

That doesn't only apply to old computers.

It's why AI may never be as useful as it could have been. Biased humans will train it with their political garbage (flawed date), so what do you expect to come out of it?

But the same is true of students who've gone through gov-schooling (including statist universities). Garbage is put into their heads, so garbage is what their words and actions are once they are out in the real world.

Then too many of these garbage-filled drones go into that other dispenser of garbage: government. 

Political government has nothing but garbage going in-- beginning with the flawed ideas that create and justify it-- so garbage is the natural output. Garbage in, garbage out.

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Intelligence vs trainability

Intelligence is not the same thing as trainability. Trainability masquerades as intelligence, or is mistaken for intelligence. 

Both have their place.

"Getting good grades" is a sign of trainability.
Doing tricks to amaze or amuse the humans is trainability.

A minimal amount of intelligence is necessary to be trainable-- you can't train a sponge-- but people seem to be more impressed, in general, by trainability than by actual intelligence.

Those who submit to training are rewarded and praised. Those who outsmart the ones who want to train them are often not appreciated. Or even punished.

I'm usually much more impressed by intelligence than by trainability. Even though I'd appreciate it if I were able to train my cats a little more.

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Education matters

Here's an education question for all my readers. 

First, a little context. I think one good quality I possess is the ability to adapt. When I think "there's got to be a better way" I don't mind changing things around to try to find that better way. I see it as a survival skill, and it has served me well many times.

Well, I'm shifting gears on how I'm educating my daughter and I'd love some input. I'm hoping for good, well-thought-out answers.

What knowledge do you believe a young person should know when they leave high school and/or start living independently? What knowledge is essential in order to be prepared for life? Beyond the obvious.

I have my own thoughts on the matter, but I want to hear yours. I really want to hear yours, so don't hold back, even if you've never posted a comment before. Please, and thank you!

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