"Curated and vetted" news sources

AI generated video content

"We live on the cusp of history" sounds overly dramatic, but I believe it is warranted with regard to the overwhelming amounts of "fabricated" video content polluting streaming platforms.

Who benefits?

Potentially, the legacy media outlets benefit because they can market themselves as only broadcasting "curated, vetted content". The problem with that is that the legacy networks have a history of creating (i.e. "fabricating") stories either for sensationalism or to forward an agenda.

One of the earliest documented cases involved a "hit-piece" on General Motors pickup trucks in 1992. Unlike earlier victims of hit-journalism, GM had the will and the resources to "push back".

The morning after the piece ran to a national audience, GM Legal called NBC and demanded to know where the pickup truck was so they could run their own forensic analysis. NBC told them "It has already been crushed."

That answer seemed too pat and too quick, so GM sent a team of crash investigators to the location where the "test" had been run and started visiting scrap-yards. The found the "crushed" pickup in one of the scrapyards about five miles away. It had not been crushed. They purchased the vehicle, put it on a flat-bed and transported it back to the GM Tech Center in Warren, Michigan.

They found out that the gas cap was not the factory-original cap but was some random, undersized cap that almost fit. It is not know if the producers had replaced the factory cap with one that guaranteed spillage. Regardless, that event is one of the reasons why gas-caps are now tethered to the vehicle. You cannot accidentally drive away from the gas station without it.

The cheap ink used to print information on the outside of the rocket cases had transferred to the modeling clay used to hold them in place. The printing was still legible.

The found evidence that three Estes Rocket Motors had been affixed to the frame of the pickup with modeling clay and duct-tape. The rocket motors had been ignited shortly before the collision to ensure that any gas that spilled was ignited.

The producers of the segment over-filled the gas tank, literally filling it until gas was spilling out of the filler tube. 

Finally, GM obtained video footage from the fire department that had been hired to perform Safety Over-watch during the taping of the event. I assume that the over-watch was required by the film crew's insurance carrier.

The fire department recording, when played at full speed showed that the entire flame-event lasting for five seconds with the big fire-ball lasting about 1.5 seconds. If you watched the NBC footage, you might have noticed that they went to slow-motion to prolong the fireball and then cut the feed as it started to die down. Then they kept replaying the short-lived gout of flame from other angles leading the viewer to believe that the fire lasted much, much longer than it did.

The Mainstream Media coverage of the January 6 demonstration ("insurrection") used the same video techniques to make the entry of the demonstrators into the Capital look like Santa Anna's 6000 Mexican soldiers storming the Alamo. 

Not just NBC

It isn't just second-rate news sources like NBC that have been "nipped".

No less than National Geographic and BBC have been implicated in "pressuring" characters in the reality series "Life Below Zero" to perform dangerous stunts to increase viewership. Sue Aiken has been the most vocal about the pressure but Glen Villeneuve was also goaded into potentially life threatening situations. For example, Villeneuve was "coached" to swim a snow-melt fed river from inside-of-bend to outside-of-bend for drama. He almost didn't make it. 

For those who are not in-the-know, find a wide spot in the river on a straight stretch. Wide means shallow. WADE across the river keeping your core body dry. Outsides of bends are treacherous for three reasons. The current will pull your lower body down due to the fluid dynamics, the bottom and shore are usually very steep AND finally, there are often tree roots and trash sticking out of the bottom that will snag your clothing or legs.

Summary

History suggests that the legacy media will not neutrally "curate and vet" content. They have their own biases and their profit incentives are not transparent.

For those of you in the Northeast who are digging out AGAIN...

 

 

According to some of the people who live in places where "snow machines" are a necessity, they all use "sleds" as multiplier in terms of cargo and they say modern, entry-level machines are "more than plenty". My contacts thought the two-stroke, air-cooled engines with 400cc were the sweet-spot in terms of low-maintenance and plenty of low-end grunt. Of course, they were not trying to go 120mph on their sleds, so there is that.

Sadly, the air-cooled motors seem to be extinct although you can still find machines with two-stroke Rotax engines.

Wood: Cleaning up the mess I made

There is not a lot to report today.

I spent a couple of hours yesterday in the woods. Most of the time was spent cutting "usable" sized chunks of firewood out of the Black Locust I dropped earlier this year. Due to how they leaned, most of the canopies fell into the pasture. Then I carried the chunks and tossed them into pile for later transport.

I will bend over to pick up and carry a stick that weighs 5 pounds. I am reluctant to pick up and carry a log weighing seventy pounds over rough ground. 96" poles between 3" and 5" diameter make good fence posts. Hence the color coding of the table.

Approximate weights of "logs" @ 60lb/cubic-foot.

I want to get the brush dragged back into the "woods" and re-erect the fence. Pastures that are not used revert back to brush.

I also dropped four more Black Locust trees but these were on the back-corner of the property.

Rain is expected all day today and high winds are expected tomorrow so I will not be back out into the woods until Tuesday. 

The load I brought in on Christmas day. The largest chunk is 8" diameter and most are in the 6-1/2" class.

I also brought in four poles that are suitable for fence posts. I did not cut those into 4' long bolts but leaned them up against a tree to dry and to keep them out of the way.

My firearms are LGB, Polyamorous and BIFOC

 

My weapons are breech-loaders that joyfully accept many types of ammunition and have blued-steel.

Geography is destiny

Frequent commenter Michael commented that the supply chain is vulnerable to cities-as-choke-points.

While I am not going to dispute that point, I want to demonstrate that the funnel or choke-point effect is highly dependent on geography.

First, some maps

Columbus, Ohio is in the middle of Ohio and the topography is relatively flat. I-70 is a major artery for commerce and it runs pretty much through the center of Columbus from East-to-West.

Later build-out of the Interstate plan has a "ring" around Columbus with a minimum "radius" to downtown of five miles. Then, minor Interstates and state highways act as spokes radiating out from the downtown area.

From a logistical and supply-chain perspective, this looks pretty robust to me.

This is another map of Columbus and it shows the location of all of the Walmarts. Most of them are located close to an intersection of a "spoke" and the ring-Interstate. You can trash-talk Walmart all you want, but they are really sharp when it comes to logistics.

A map of Indianapolis, Indiana. It is not as busy as Columbus but it follows the same general plan. You might notice that the ring is lopsided. If civil disorder snips the ring at the closest point (five miles from downtown) then they would have to project their force almost four times farther to snip it at the northernmost stretch.

St Louis, Missouri is a little more complicated. The Mississippi and Missouri rivers come into play but there is still a generous ring around the core-city.

Even small cities with relatively little strategic importance like Lansing, Michigan have this "ring" structure. Traffic from Chicago-to-Canada bypasses Lansing by taking the west, then northern legs around the city.

One thing that all of these cities share is that they sit on relatively flat land.

Blue line approximates I-70. Green line approximates I-76. Plum-colored lines approximate other Interstates

That all falls apart when you get to hilly terrain. Pittsburgh was built in hilly terrain at a time when water transportation was strategically significant.

While the Pittsburgh area is laced with many roads, the wrinkles and folds of the landscape makes them a nightmare to bypass. That kind of landscape favors the resistance and potentially handicaps the wheels of commerce.

Topography of southern New England and eastern New York

Many of the "classic" cities in New England and New York are compressed in the east-west direction because they are shoe-horned into the Connecticut and Hudson river valleys due to water power and transportation. That makes the lazy-ring + bicycle spoke arrangement uneconomical.

Springfield, Massachusetts. Blue lines approximate interstates. 5-mile measurement bar added for scale.

 

A sobering assessment of land warfare

The rise of long-range strike, drones, and cyber means that the old (safe) rear area is no more. Supply lines are now a front-line fight from start to finish. (Factories) Supply depots, railheads, ports, repair facilities, and fuel infrastructure are all high-priority targets. If an enemy cannot stop forward brigades, it will attempt to starve them. Analyses of modern logistics under fire emphasize that industrial capacity and resilient supply networks—not efficiency—determine strategic endurance.

An army for the future must be able to fight under conditions of intermittent resupply, contested and damaged infrastructure, disrupted and overloaded communications, and near-constant threats to supply lines. Planning and organization must prioritize resilience, redundancy, and regeneration rather than peacetime efficiency and timeliness.

Land warfare (now) favors armies that can fight dispersed but connected, decentralized but coordinated. Small units must be able to operate at will even when isolated or cut off. Junior leaders must be able to act without micromanagement. Commanders must know their communications will be lost and they must be able to exercise control while that loss is happening. Contemporary doctrinal analysis underscores exactly this requirement for decentralized command in contested environments.

This is a question of more than new radios or drones. It is...a cultural issue. The instinct for centralization, risk aversion, and procedural control stems from the experience of peacekeeping and counterinsurgency missions, not from the needs of a high-tech, fully contested battlespace.   -Source 

The way I read this is that when the US goes into its next "hot" war, the battlefield will extend from the front-lines to the transformer sitting on the power-pole outside your house or apartment block.

It will extend to the bridges crossing our rivers and the pipelines and refineries that refine and move oil and natural gas. The cell and fiber-optic networks will come under attack. Our marine ports and air transportation systems will come under attack.

Car-bombs and drive-by shootings will happen on a daily basis as high-value human targets are identified and "taken out". D.C. and Silicon Valley and Houston will become Moscow on steroids.

Today, if you don't know how to turn nutrient-dense ingredients like flour, lard, sugar, dried spaghetti rice and beans into edible food, you still have time to learn. When the supply chain takes a beating, among of the first things to fall off the back of the wagon will be bags-of-air (Doritos, potato chip, popped popcorn, breakfast cereals) and highly processed foods like hot-pockets, frozen pizzas and Jimmy Dean's sausage-egg croissants. I would also plan on bottled water imported from out-of-town soda-pop and iceberg lettuce to become rare/expensive. Plan accordingly.

Christmas: A Season of Bravery

If you are a believer, then you probably believe that Mary and Joseph were devout Jews who practiced their religion with correctness.

I want to look at what they risked by agreeing to be the parents of Jesus.

Mary

Mary risked being rejected by Joseph, the man she was engaged to. Joseph knew that they had not had intercourse so Mary knew that there was a very high probability that Joseph would terminate the engagement and expose her as a fornicator. There was even the potential that Mary could have been stoned for committing the act of adultery.

At another level, Mary's family was very highly regarded. Her brother-in-law was one of the priests allowed into the sanctuary of the temple. Being pregnant before she was supposed to be would bring dishonor upon her whole family. Likely, she would have been disowned. 

Joseph

Joseph was a tradesman. Traditionally, his profession has been translated as "carpenter" but some scholars think it he could have been a brick maker or a potter or some other building trade. Their reasoning is that wood is scarce in the Holy Land and having one person working solely with wood seemed unlikely in a village.

It is almost a certainty that the crones would count the months from when Joseph took Mary into his house and when Jesus was born. They would look at his size when he was born and they would quickly figure out that Mary had conceived before they were married.

This will seem like a very, very small thing to many modern people...but it was a very big deal not so long ago.

The people in the village (many of them family members) would conclude that Joseph did not follow the rules, that he cut corners and "cheated". Not a very good look for a tradesman whose reputation pays his wages.

That would have been a cruel, hard blow to an upright man who took pride in his strict compliance to Mosaic Law. 

Flight to Egypt

Shortly after Jesus was born in Bethlehem, Joseph, Mary and Jesus fled to Egypt to evade King Herrod's massacre of the infants. In some ways this is a repeat of the Jews fleeing to Egypt to evade the famine during the time of Joseph, son of Jacob.

In this case, Mary's time with Elizabeth, Jesus's birth in Bethlehem (not Nazareth) and the subsequent flight to Egypt stymied the old hags who would have counted the months and then wagged their tongues.

The message for us in 2025/26

Mary and Joseph followed the mission that God gave them. They knew the risks and did the right thing anyway. They had no way of knowing that other things would happen that would short-circuit the likely outcomes.

To me it is a message of "Do the right thing. Be merciful. Pray. Let the chips fall where they may." Don't be enslaved by the bad decisions we may have made in the past. This is what we signed-on for.

"The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother in law against her daughter in law, and the daughter in law against her mother in law."  Luke 12:53 KJV

Another Christmas Party After-Action-Report

The immediate ERJ Family Christmas celebration is in-the-bag for 2025.

Mrs ERJ and I will attend Mass tomorrow morning, but all of the heavy-lifting (socially) is done. 

Highlights

We have been enjoying beautiful sunrises.

Most of the high-calorie treats were sent home with the kids (Yeah!!!)

Our new son-in-law made the salad and we kept that here (Double Yeah!!!)

The presents were modest and everybody seemed grateful. Even the gag-gifts were well received.

I learned that my regular attire is now considered fashionable. The family fashionista informed me that New Balance shoes are retro-cool. And in the summer, so is wearing calf-height crew socks AND sandals. Ironically, the last combination was once known as "Senior Citizen birth-control" since it would NOT get you any dates. 

Nobody unearthed sensitive, unpleasant events from the past. We did talk about some times that were unpleasant but those were times when the family pulled-together and got through it; no victims but plenty of heroes.

Belladonna was dragged out to the swing set by Quicksilver. I learned that they both share a dislike of snakes.

This guy was pretty lively for an air temperature of 40F.  He keyed out as Heterodon platirhinos 

White Oak leaf included in the frame to provide a size reference.

"No fangs, none for me today" You can kind-of see the "hog-nose" that gives this snake its common name "Hognose Snake". One of his defenses is to spoof being a venomous snake.

I was assigned the job of relocating Heterodon.

Posted for future reference

 

A Youtube short of about a minute.

The speaker says his piece and gets booed.

Paraphrasing (because I know some people dislike Youtube) 

Men: Do you live a life that demonstrates enough virtue that a rational woman will be comfortable submitting to your authority?

When you are probing unknown territory, do you squash down your ego and ask for guidance? Do you ask HER? That is what mature authority looks like; using the best information to make the best decisions.

Women: Do you demonstrate enough virtue that a rational man will be willing to risk dying to protect you? 

This is what "Women, submit to your husbands and men, love your wife the way Christ loved his church"means. 

What we call "Mental Illness" can be a positive adapation for certain environmental stresses

Is it possible that there are situations where "symptoms of mental illness" are positive adaptations?

Anxiety and Depression 

The two largest categories of mental illness in terms of number of diagnoses are Anxiety and Depression.

Anxiety: May I suggest that the ant in the story "The Ant and the Grasshopper" was driven by anxiety to store provisions for the winter?

Mass grave of Medieval famine victims

Getting ready for winter was not a trivial task in medieval Europe. The days of summer were long in terms of number of sunlight hours due to the high latitude. Peasants had to work as if the hounds-of-hell were chasing them every daylight hour. The name of that hound? "Anxiety".

Peasants who were not anxious starved to death before the next harvest.

Incidentally, people who are anxious tend to be great planners. They constantly play "What if..." in their minds and make plans to remediate those issues. Modern society sits on a foundation of What-if plans. 

Depression: Conversely, being able to sleep for 20 hours a day during the winter was an energy conservation strategy. Put the entire family into bed and throw all of the clothing and blankets over them and let the cooking fire drop to a slow-smolder. Relatively little energy was expended. 

If you charted the energy expenditures it would look like the flight of a woodpecker. A burst of beating wings and then a ballistic free-flight that was as long or longer than the burst of wings beating.

Not wanting to socialize was also a benefit. Lice spread typhus and those beds got lousy because boiling all of the bedding and then drying it all-in-one-go was beyond the means of most families. Socializing meant sharing lice with other families...lice which might bring typhus into your family. 

ADHD

It is notable that the surge in diagnosed cases of Attention Deficit, Hyperactive Disorder(ADHD) in boys approximately aligns with the removal of gym classes and recess from elementary schools? It also coincides with the time when kids transitioned from walking to-and-from school with busing being the predominant mode of getting to-and-from school.

A "good student" is one who sits passively and "doesn't make trouble".

There was a time when every person in the family had to contribute to the household economy. Those little boys would scour the area for twigs and sticks to cook the daily porridge. They would trap sparrows and catch minnows for the stew-pot. The child who sat passively and "didn't make trouble" was an economic dead-weight in terms of the family economy in a subsistence environment.

In older people, having a certain percentage of the population with ADHD meant that nearby tribes could not sneak up on your tribe. Nor were flash-floods and sudden wildfires likely to catch the tribe unaware if Billy was relentlessly scanning 360 degrees of the compass.

Finally, I had a conversation with a doctor who claimed to have ADHD.  His intellect was impressive as he quickly leapt from topic-to-topic. It is my impression that he was probably very good at diagnosing issues because he didn't get trapped or "overly-invested" in any one possibility. 

I have seen trouble-shooters in the factory get bogged down when they are "absolutely sure" they know the cause of a problem and then they try to bend the symptoms to match the illness. They would have been far more effective if they considered the four most likely diagnosis consistent with the main complaint and then looked for the best fit. 

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

PTSD comes in a lot of flavors, but in some cases it keeps people alive on the battlefield. There are situations where actions must happen faster than conscious thought. Obviously, I am not talking about the PTSD where the person goes catatonic. I mean the PTSD where the patient explodes out of bed 210% awake and sprinting at the sound of whistling or a "pop". Maybe they smash the face of the person who is too close to them.

Summary 

Are these behaviors anomalies or is our current environment a transient anomaly? The subsistence agriculture in Europe lasted for roughly 3000 years. Warfare has been around longer than that. Industrialized education, depending on how you want to define it, has been around for fifty-to-one-hundred years.

Genetic Drift

An earlier post asked "Are there more crazy people now?" and the body of the text focused on how the pressures of environmental "triggers" have increased for most causes.

The genetic portion which is responsible for 60%-to-85% of the cases was not discussed in that post.

Are more people carrying "crazy-genes" then they did in the past?

The short answer is "yes".

Life was a constant struggle for sane, well adjusted people in the slums of Limerick, Liverpool and Hamburg. It was fatal for crazy-people.

As recently as 1900 in developed countries like Ireland, England and Germany, if your mother was crazy you were probably not going to live to see your first birthday.

Infant mortality in Ireland starting in 1930 at 85/1000 live births in urban areas.

 

Infant mortality in Ireland 1960-2020 ending up at about 3/1000 live births.

If you were a crazy-woman, your best chance of getting married was to get pregnant and "trap" an impulsive man. There was  a pretty good chance he was also crazy or was an alcoholic.

As her child, your best hope for survival was to be placed in an orphanage, which in turn greatly reduced your chances of marrying and producing children.

In total, crazy-genes had a high probability of "dead-ending". In those days the pool of crazy people resulted from random meetings of recessive genes or in new mutations.

Flash-forward to the permissive, Welfare-State

Anecdotally, one of our local characters who was called "Homeless Girl" had five children before age 25 and they were all removed by Child Protective Services because: 

• She was homeless
• She was addicted to drugs and could not care for them

Eventually, she O.D.ed in the bathroom of a fast-food restaurant.

The average woman in the United States has her first child at age 27-1/2 years.

That means that this crazy-woman had FIVE children before the average, not-crazy woman had her first. And all of the crazy-woman's children survived.

This is happening (with minor variations in the details) all over the United States and Europe. 

Numerically, that means that back when "crazy-genes" self-extinguished we experienced a rate of approximately 5% seriously crazy people. Now the crazy-people genes are subsidized rather than exposed to Darwinian selection and the numbers are growing much faster (due to high risk behaviors) than the numbers of not-crazy people. 

Fine Art Tuesday

 

 "The Ramp Grove is a secluded old growth forest remnant along the Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River in Washington State. We identified it on satellite images. We named it the Ramp Grove because it is an unusual ramp-like geologic formation with cliffs above and below. It starts at 1500 feet and tops out at 2000 feet."
Too isolated to log economically.

Hat-tip to Lucas Machias

Lessons from Jake Paul

 

A Social Media personality decided it would be a lark to go into the boxing ring with a top-tier, professional boxer.

The personality had a few photo-op bouts with ancient Mike Tyson and assorted wannabes and he didn't totally embarrass himself, so he decided that he was ready for prime-time.

I think it was Joe Rogan who called it. "Anthony Joshua is going to f___ing kill him." 

And Anthony Joshua did. It was like watching a hungry wolf execute a Golden Retriever. The wolf is a pro. His life depends on efficiently killing the prey. The Golden Retriever is play-acting. Jake Paul was not capable of defending himself. He was always a half-step behind and Anthony Joshua was reading him like a book.

Death of "...the narrative"

One of my kids asked me "Why are you so negative about Meghan Markle?"

If I am honest, it is because I resent her certainty that top-dollar script-writers and video camera-men are more important than decades of experience. 

I have a nephew who is a cook in Napa, California. He has been busting his ass for twenty years and has satisfying some of the most affluent and critical clientele in the world. And he will never get one-tenth of 1% of the accolades that Markle demands as her marriage dowry.

"The Rev" (my nephew) works 18 hour days and, with support, bangs-out  flawless 7 course meal for a wedding reception for 200 guests. From scratch. And he can do it four days in a row. Week-after-week-after-week.

He is not unique. There are legions of people like him in every city in the US. 

Markle does not even know how to hold a pastry bag. 

And the "...strong, independent woman..." insists on using her maiden name, except when she thinks using the surname "Windsor" is more to her benefit. Even though the only reason people pay any attention to her is because some dude named Andrew married her.

My super-powers

My super-power is that Mrs ERJ seems happier when I am around.

My dog likes me. 

Most of the time, my kids will respond to my texts if I ask a direct question.

I am pretty good at keeping gas in the tanks of our vehicles.

Beyond that, I am pretty humble. I have no desire to make a spectacle of myself by claiming to be more than I am. The higher the monkey climbs, the clearer the view everybody else has of his backside. 

Asymmetric Information

 

"Just Divorced" stick family

 

This is a follow-up on the previous post "Human Trafficking".

From the comments 

Milton, one of my regular readers commented about mothers needing to rethink the threat situation and then he added 

"...With a Mama Bear mentality and defensive handgun training (***last minute gift idea fellas***), let the gift purchasing be left to Dad."

Let me point out that he did not write "Purchase the mother of your children a firearm" because that would be a violation of the Federal Firearm code sometimes called "a straw purchase".

He suggested finding a certified trainer who is experienced in training WOMEN.

Women are not men. On average, women have smaller hands than men. From a physical standpoint they can have difficulty racking the slide due to hand-strength and upper-body strength issues. 

My sister had a boyfriend who bought her a Derringer in .45 Colt. Maybe not the best choice. Not my sister's hands.

Some women are extremely petite and will have a hard time "hiding" a concealed carry. Most women's clothing, especially for younger women, is form-fitting. Perversely, the firearms most suitable for deep-carry (like Derringers) have brutal recoil and limited-to-very limited ammo capacity. 

Women are more likely to be "talked down-to" when purchasing a firearm and end up with a firearm that they are not comfortable with. They are less likely to ask questions especially when men are around. 

Maybe the hardest thing for a woman to wrap their mind around is that they have to know when they pick up a weapon that the MUST be willing to pull the trigger without hesitation when the need arises. At some point there is no more time to "talk about it" or "call a friend" or "exercise conflict de-escalation techniques". If you wait for +100% certainty* then you (and your kids) will be the victims.

Asymmetric information

Going back to the scout cruising the parking lot looking for kids to nab at the local big-box grocery store. Most parents are going to think "My kids are responsible and would never open the door for a stranger." right?

Visualize kid(s) playing on their phones in a Honda Odyssey or Ford Bronco with the "cute" stick-figure family shown at the top on its back window.

Now visualize an older person in a Walmart vest banging on the window and yelling "Oh my God! Oh my God! Your mom fell and hit her head. She needs you right now!!!" What "responsible kid" will fail to rush to his/her mom's aid?

If the kid hesitates, the faux employee can add "She needs you to unlock her phone so she can call for help."

That stick-figure family that "mom" modified to stick her thumb in the eye of her "ex" just made her family a prime target because it gives potential abductors a credible back-story. They KNOW that the shopper is not "dad". They know that the kids will be hyper-protective of "mom".

We live in an era of Too Much Information. Most people share personal information as if they were writing in their best girl-friend's high school year book. Facebook is probably the worst offender but even a bumper sticker can share too much information. That information can be used against you. 

Incidentally, I applaud all of my commentors. You are very discrete in what information you share. Keep up the good work. 

Regarding the issue of "sensationalism"

There were 254 "Human Trafficking" cases (some involving multiple people) identified in Michigan in 2023. Is that a lot for in a state with 10 million people? Link

I sent an email to the person who shared the information with me. I asked for permission to attribute the quotes to her and/or for "original sources" to quote. I sent it at 5:38 p.m. on Saturday but she hasn't gotten back to me. 

I decided to exercise executive privilege and run the post anyway due to time urgency. I trust that my readers are mature and can decide if any "entertainment" I post on this blog applies to your situation or not. 

*99.1% certainty + redundant confirmation 

Human trafficking

 

A person who follows these issues closely recently informed me that we are at "annual peak human trafficking".

She said that the Super Bowl represents the largest "event" for the human trafficking industry. And industry it is. Orders are made. Delivery time-tables are specified. "Products" are delivered. 

For a kidnapped child to show up in Southern California (where the 2026 Super Bowl will be held), they must be scooped up this week. Fortunately for the kidnappers, the frenzy of Christmas shopping makes it easy to have a scout cruise parking lots and calling in "teams" to nab kids left in cars to play with their "device" while mom or dad is making last-minute purchases.

One reason this isn't covered in the news outlets and captured in the FBI UCR system is that there is a break-down in reporting as files-are-cleared at the end of the year. Law enforcement agencies have a limited number of days to report-out end-of-year data before the results are compiled... Overburdened agencies face a lot of "moral hazard" to disappear reporting incidents that happen in the last half of December.

Another factor at play is many "missing children" are assumed to be muddled custody issues as they are passed back-and-forth between separated parents. The Christmas-New Years period is probably peak-chaos for custody conflicts and it is easy to assume that "Brad" is being an asshole. Little does the custodial parent know that their child is in a basement in Detroit getting addicted to drugs to make them compliant in time for The Big Party in Southern California.

My source informed me that the largest demographic for "orders" are for children between the ages of 5-and-11 (gender not specified!). Then next biggest demographic this time of year is for white women between the ages of 35-and-70 for the purpose of "Harem Masters". And yes, they are also addicted to drugs.

The third biggest demographic is for minority men between the ages of 20-and-30 as "Pimps" to keep the "Harem Masters" in line. 

These people are all expendable. In fact, they become a liability as the party "fizzles out" and they become potential witnesses/evidence. All of those little kiddies seen in the Epstein photos? Yeah, they are dead.

I know it sounds like a horrible Liam Neeson movie but as I get older it becomes harder and harder to find any act that is so depraved that there are not people actively engaged in and profiting from it. 

Bottom Line

Take your children with you into the store when you shop or leave them at home with a responsible adult. Don't leave them in the vehicle. Don't let them bring their "device".

Keep track of them while you are in the store. Pro-tip, buy them helium balloons and tie them to your child's wrist. Leave the ribbon long enough that the balloon can be seen above the racks.

Order stuff on-line and have it delivered. It probably won't arrive in time for Christmas Day but you can point out that there are 12 DAYS of Christmas. Jesus himself didn't get his Christmas gifts until the Magi arrived and that was NOT on the day of his birth. 

Stay away from crowds! 

Frequency of DIAGNOSED Mental Illnesses in the US

Jonathan commented on the previous post:

"...in some circles it (a mental illness diagnosis) is celebrated so people look for and encourage diagnoses that may not be medically accurate."

My perception is that many "sophisticated" players are gaming the system to take advantage of the "...reasonable accommodations..." for people with "disabilities" in the Americans with Disabilities Act.

If a sophomore in high school can get a "label", then those accommodations often include extra time to complete tests. That includes the SAT and ACT which are college entrance exams. Sometimes those accommodations are so burdensome to the faculty that they allow the student to take the test home to complete.

Those labels follow the student to college where they offer the same advantages. Some "disabilities" impact the ability to read and so the "reasonable accommodation" involves supplying a person to read the questions out-loud. Some "disabilities" involve attention deficits and so the university is legally required to offer the student a private room (perhaps without a proctor to watch for cheating) to take the test.

By the numbers:

Recent annual rates of various mental/emotional health disorders in the United States (Link):

• Schizophrenia Spectrum Disorders: 1.2%
• Borderline Personality, Cluster B Disorder:  1.5%
• Bipolar Disorders: 2.8%
• Post Traumatic Stress Disorders: 4.1%
• Substance Abuse + Mental Health Diagnosis: 8.1%
• Major Depressive Disorder: 15.5%
• Anxiety Disorder: 19.1% 

(Anxiety and Depression are two sides of the same coin. Anxiety happens when a young person struggles to keep up with his herd/tribe. Depression happens when the young adult realizes that he will NEVER be able to keep up with his tribe) 

Diagnosed mental/emotional health disorder rates by selected demographic silos (Link):

• Male: 20%
• Female: 26.7%
• LGB: 53:2%

Stats from another website (Link):

 

Serious mental illness (SMI) is defined as a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder resulting in serious functional impairment, which substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities. 

Bottom line

1 in every 9 Gen Z in the work-force has been diagnosed with "Serious Mental Illness. 

1 in every 13 Millennial has been diagnosed with "Serious Mental Illness". 

If you are in a group of 20 random people, there is a good chance that there is at least one person in that group who is unhinged.

Plan accordingly. 

 

Are there more crazy people now?

 

Let's look specifically at Schizophrenia because it is among the most studied mental health disorders and many mental health issues share comorbidities. That is, if you are diagnosed with one "disorder" then there is a pretty good chance that at some point you will also be diagnosed with another disorder as symptoms evolve and manifest. So it is reasonable to assume that the "triggers" or environmental risk factors for Schizophrenia are likely to be risk factors for other mental illnesses.

Schizophrenia is also of interest because Nick Reiner was (reportedly) diagnosed with it. Schizophrenia is one of the "lifetime" diagnosis unlike Anxiety Disorder or Depression which can come-and-go.

It is currently believed that Schizophrenia is highly heritable and that the external "risk factors" that trigger it represent between 15%-and-40% of the aggregate risk. Some of those external risk factors* include (Link):

• In-Utero Trauma (bleeding, diabetes, rhesus incompatibility, preeclampsia, low birth-weight, oxygen deprivation, malnutrition, drug-use, other) Link
• Infections 
• Migration 
• Urban environments
• Childhood Trauma
• Cannabis use 

Let's look at them one-at-a-time

In-Utero Trauma: I would rate this as slightly elevated compared to 20 and 40 years ago. From anecdotal evidence, recent immigrants are less likely to seek prenatal care and might not even be paying attention to their pg/non-pg status...risk factor slightly increased.

Infections: Specifically Toxoplasma gondii and Chlamydia. T. gondii is spread via untreated fecal material, primarily from cats. Chlamydia rates increased by 50% between 2000 and 2015...so this risk-factor increased.

Migration: Migration to the United States showed a very large increase in the 2021-to-2024 (inclusive) time-frame. Literature specifies 1st and 2nd generations being at increased risk....so this risk-factor increased.

Urban environments: My perceptions is that there is a small, net outward migration from highly urban environments. I will call this....risk factor slightly decreased.

Childhood Trauma: It has been observed that the most dangerous person in a young child's life is his mother's new boyfriend. Traditional families continue to shred....risk factor increased. 

Cannabis Use: It has been decriminalized at the state level and legalized in many "Blue" states. Furthermore the level of THC in samples obtained "on the street" have increased by a factor of three between 2000 and 2019....risk factor increased. 

Tallying up the count, five of the six environmental risk factors increased with three of them increasing substantially. One of the six risk factors shows a weak improvement.

Conclusion: Perceived increases in rates of severe mental illness is factual and not a figment of reporting or in increasingly aggressive diagnosis or more expansive definition of diagnostic criteria.

 

Note to readers: I will be busy today and expect to be back-in-the-saddle tomorrow. Responses to comments will be slow. 

Bonus video

 Hat-tip to Lucas Machias.

 

* Poor sleep-hygiene was mentioned as a risk-factor for Bipolar Disorder (aka, Manic-Depressive or Jekkyl-and-Hyde Disorder) but not in the paper referenced. Forty years ago broadcast TV shut-down after midnight and people didn't stay awake round-the-clock "gaming". Except for some convenience stores, nearly all businesses shut-down for maintenance or cleaning every night. That has been a major change during my lifetime.

Well, this is a fine kettle of fish!

What kinds of work can old people do?

Pension funds, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid going broke is a foregone conclusion. So is inflation withering of purchasing power of the assets you might have saved. Furthermore, taxes will rise as governments become desperate to feed the ravening beast.

It seems inevitable that I will have to work to put bread on the table at some point in the next 15 years. In 15 years I will be 81 years-old. 

What kinds of work can a 65 year-old do? What about 70 year-olds? 80 year-olds?

Work vs Job

Notice I used the word "Work".

"Job" implies some degree of permanence. It is an artifact of the Industrial Revolution and the transition of the economy to consumer debt. Nobody was going to loan you enough money to buy a car if you didn't have a "job", that is, a guarantee of future income.

In the United States, the majority of the economy transitioned from "work based" to "job based" sometime in the 1920s and 1930s. Before that, the only people with "jobs" worked for the railroad or in steel mills or the new automobile plants.

Limitations of being older

• Vision is often an issue.
• Reaction times get slower
• Physical strength and stamina are limited
• Hearing is often less acute

Most of us will not be capable of doing 40-hours-a-week of concrete work in our seventies. Long-haul, OTR, transcontinental trucking is also not in the cards nor is delivering 50 pound bags of dog-food to apartment blocks.

Going door-to-door selling garden produce is a possibility. Mrs ERJ does that now when she gives away her surplus of cherry tomatoes and sweet peppers.

My dad was canning tomatoes into his mid-80s and mowing grass with a garden tractor until he was 90.

Watching young kids...say up to 5th grade, is an option.

Repairing clothing is an option if you have bright light, magnifying glasses and (perhaps) easy to thread needles.

Being a waiter, bus-boy or bartender for a few hours (lunch rush) is a possibility although wet floors are not our friend. 

If you had to go back to work as a 75, 80 or 85 year-old, what would you do? 

Hand Grenades, Canaries and Christmas Carols

Today I introduced Quicksilver to the joys of The Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote cartoons.

Growing up and watching these cartoons, I somehow came to the conclusion that hand-grenades were a regular item of commerce and were a commodity that would be easy to obtain as an adult. Alas, if only it were so.

Most of the segments we watched were from the 1960-to-1964 time-frame.

In 1960 there were still cats and dogs alive that had been born while WWII was raging. Everybody who was over the age of six and not in a coma knew what a "Stuka" was, for instance.

1960 was seven years after the Korean Conflict went from HOT to SIMMER.

In retrospect, there were probably a lot of "off-books" devices floating around in 1960. If you were a trustworthy sort of fellow and were known to be able to keep your mouth shut, you could probably shoot grease-guns and toss pineapples and potato-mashers and play with det-cord, perf-caps and Serious Putty.

Canaries in Coal Mines

I know that I have at least one reader who is a young lad of less then fifty so please humor me if I tell you things that you already know.

Coal miners were known to take canaries into coal mines because the small birds were exquisitely sensitive to toxic and explosive gasses. A miner might attribute a headache to the home-brew he drank the night before, but if the canary went Tango-Uniform, they all hauled anatomy out of the mine and did not go back into it until after it was thoroughly ventilated.

In real-life (whatever that is) there is a dramatic tension between wanting systems that perform without providing irritating or distracting feedback .AND. the need to know when a system approaching massive failure.

Idiot lights are one solution to the problem. In biological systems like streams, orchards and fields we use indicator species.

In a stream there is a hierarchy of species that will tell you much about water quality. Grayling are the most demanding of oxygen and water quality. When they die off you know that the system is slipping.

In an approximate and descending order you might have Brook Trout, Rainbow Trout, Brown Trout, Walleye, Smallmouth Bass, Northern Pike, Channel Catfish, Suckers, Common Carp, Gar, Bowfin, African Walking Catfish.

In the orchard, apple trees are very sensitive to the toxins produced by Black Walnuts. Apple trees are expensive at $20-to-$60 a tree. A rational person would find a less expensive, highly-sensitive plant (i.e. Canary in the Coal Mine) if he were to trench around the orchard and wanted some assurance that all of the roots had been cut or if he wanted to visualize the leaching and decay of the toxic compounds.

Stated another way, why would I risk killing a $20 tree when I can test the soil with a tomato or marigold plant that cost me a nickel and a delay of a year?

Christmas Carols

 I am 60% certain this is in Spanish

Handsome Hombre picked up Quicksilver this afternoon.

Quicksilver is of an age where language is absorbed with lightning speed. It does not seem like that because she hasn't figured out how to make all of the consonant sounds. You need a keen ear to decode when she asks "Please close the door" for instance. But all of the signs are there that it is all going into memory.

I asked HH what some of his favorite Christmas Carols are. HH grew up in a very religious family in a country where everybody speaks Spanish. Of COURSE they sang Christmas Carols.

I shared that this is an outstanding time to teach those songs to his daughter. Looking at his face, it was clear that the idea had never crossed his mind.

"Gimme a list. We can listen to Christmas Carols sung in Spanish just as easily as we can watch Roadrunner cartoons." Melody, meter and rhyme are all mechanisms that help our brains retain information. Song and verse are how information was passed down before the written word. It is hardwired into our brains. Not exploiting what God put there is to be a wastrel of the basest sort.

Resilience vs. Efficiency: Grains

 

 20 minute run-time

This video is interesting because it explores the tension between "Resilience" and "Efficiency".

Before you get super-excited...the narration (perhaps AI generated) takes liberties with technical concepts like "hybrids" and "clones". So take everything else in this video with a grain of salt.

Humans are in a race with fungi, bacteria, virus and chaos. For a while the winds and tides were with us and we have thrived. Pendulums swing. Things change. Even if the earth was filled with oil there is a finite amount of oxygen in the atmosphere. At some point we will have spent our way back into a pay-as-we-go thermodynamic relationship.

Life is "interesting" in the corners

One "hack" in optimization software is to examine the values in the vertices (corners) of the allowable universe. Interesting genes are found on sky-islands in Arizona, cracks in sidewalks, Peru, Spitzbergen Island, Mount Tahat, Orkney Islands, Hillsdale College and Fort Dapp. 

Genetic trajectories are not anchored by regression-to-the-mean when they evolve in isolation.

While novel and useful genetic packages can be found in random individuals in the great, thundering herds of conformity, it is not economical to search for them in such places. It seems unlikely that one would find a land-race that can deal with toxic soils in the fertile fields of Indiana where it is not an issue.

Let's raise a toast to those of us who refuse to bow to the cast-pewter gods of conformity! 

Source of heirloom grain seeds 

Random thought

I look at all of the water-containment run-off swales that the EPA requires of newly paved areas. I understand the concept. Unbuffered rain run-off and snow-melt can be "acid" or thermally hot. Channeling the runoff into a containment area and then having it percolate through the ground buffers the pH and stabilizes the temperature.

A random set of containment ponds in an un-named suburb in a midwestern state.

How hard would it be to toss a couple of handfuls of viable Wild-Rice seeds into every detention pond in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, and North and South Dakota during the month of October?

Native range of the genus Zizania at the granularity of "county". Source

If the Wild Rice is happy it will establish and become repatriated and ducks (and humans) will rejoice. If not, nothing ventured-nothing gained.

Hat-tip to the tireless Lucas Machias

 

Planning notes for fertilizing the orchard(s)

Pruning trees is a good time to look them over and think through management plans for the coming growing season.

I did not fertilize most of the trees that I pruned last winter. Removing 1/2-to-2/3 of their canopies nearly always causes rampant new growth the following year. Adding fertilizer exacerbates the problem. Lush, rampant growth makes the trees susceptible to fire blight and makes the next year's pruning (which is this year's) more work.

Commercial orchards send leaf-stems (petioles in botany-speak) to laboratories for chemical analysis. They use the results to fine-tune their fertilizer applications, sometimes on a month-by-month basis.

I use more primitive methods because those lab tests are not cheap and I don't need to squeeze out every last 40 pound box of apples to make payroll.

I tweak my fertilizer plan to produce a target amount of shoot growth each growing season. I aim for a minimum of 24" of growth on dominant side-shoots while I am growing the tree to fill its allotted space and 12" of growth after they have fill their "place".

Most of the heavily pruned trees gave me 18" or so of shoot growth and will produce substantially less next year unless I add fertilizer. Those trees are now carrying a lot more vegetative and fruiting buds. More shoots means fewer nutrients per shoot. More fruit means more carbs being pumped into the fruit.

Always be suspicious of round-numbers

One rule-of-thumb for fertilizing apple orchards is to broadcast 100 pounds of Nitrogen-per-acre at the beginning of the growing season. It is hard to think of a number that is "rounder" than 100lb/acre.

One detail that gets glossed over is "Do you also fertilize the grassy aisle-ways?" 

My inclination is to NOT fertilize them. More aggressive grass growth means more competition for moisture and if you cannot irrigate it means fewer pounds of apples. 

The trees in the Upper Orchard are planted 15' between trees in the row and 25' between rows. That is low-density by modern standards but I am not running a modern orchard.

Beneath the trees, the area sprayed with herbicide varies between 6' and 10' in width. If I split the difference (i.e. 8' wide by 15' per tree) and go with the 100lb/acre that means I need to apply about 0.6 pounds of urea per tree. Key point, the fertilizer must be scattered evenly over the 120 square-feet per tree.

The more vigorous trees like the Empire on MM-106 I might use a bit less than a half-pound. 

The less vigorous trees like GoldRush will get the full 0.6 pounds because they are struggling to fill their allotted space. 

Trees that were planted last year will get a half-pound of urea over the a circle with a 10' diameter centered around them and will get extra weed control.

Newly planted trees will get hand-watered with 300PPM Nitrogen water.

Very early May is a good time to broadcast fertilizer in Michigan. In many years we go into a period of low rainfall starting in late-May through most of  June and I want the fertilizer dissolved and carried down to where the roots are BEFORE that happens. 

Weed control

Weeds compete with your trees for nutrients and moisture.

A fertilizer-plan is only half of the game just like the offensive game is only half of the football game. Weed control will be a composite of herbicides (primarily glyphosate but it may include a pre-emergent like Simizine) and mowing. Most grass that is mowed short has much shorter roots than grass that is not mowed. That is why a lawn that is "scalped" is the first lawn on the block to brown-out in the summer.

Orchard floors do not need to be groomed to city-park standards but I do have to stay on top of mowing if I intend to reap the benefits of the fertilizer I apply.