Joining The Herd Of Lemmings

I’ve had cause to consider a few things. Maybe we’re going about it the wrong way, and we need to ditch Trump

Yeah, NO

Trump all the way! Why? Because being hated by the people who hate him is a sign of impeccable character, that’s why.

The haters can go fuck themselves with rusty twelve gauge bore brushes. I’d prefer ten gauge but that’s kind of scarce, so…I’m willing to compromise.

The RINO’s Dilemma

The RINOs who who have burrowed in and taken over most GOP organizations, from the state down to local organizations, have quite a dilemma on their hands, and most of them have their heads too far up their asses to realize it.

OK, I’m not talking about the liberal in a Republican area, who knows they’re in the wrong party, but is there because it’s the only game in their town; they hope to capture a nomination someday, at which point they’re guaranteed to be elected…otherwise, they never will be. These people are a hazard in any heavily conservative area.

No, I’m talking about the guys who are a little bit conservative and want to do some good by going into politics, and they’re in a closely matched area, closely enough that they can join the party they are most aligned with and still have a chance. They think the Democrats…particularly the ones who end up running for office…are nuts.

They don’t think much better of the Deplorable types, either. A bunch of bumpkins whose hearts are in the right place, mostly…OK a bit extreme. But they think Deplorables can’t understand that first you have to get elected, then work within the system to change things…a slow process. They genuinely want many of the things Deplorables want…just not as much. The government is spending too much. Or they need to spend money on highways instead of welfare for illegal immigrants. But they want to work within the system to get these things done.

Or maybe they think things are pretty close to ideal right now, and they want to nail it in place.

The problem is, that means they don’t stand for anything in particular. And it shows. They’re about as unappetizing to the electorate as a puddle of dog vomit. The folks in the middle, who they think they are appealing to because they themselves are not extreme, would honestly prefer a clear-spoken radical to someone who qualifies everything they say to the point where they sound like they don’t believe anything at all.

The problem these “Mild RINOs” have, is they just can’t see that. And the reason they just can’t see that, is their entire sense of self-worth is tied up in not seeing that. In their minds, they’ve worked tirelessly for their party, to keep those crazy Democrats out…only to have to constantly fight with a small number of crazy Republicans–who are only liabilities if they end up as candidates. They’ve fought the good fight, and if they can just find the right candidate, someone with some charisma, they might stop the crazies…without being too beholden to the OTHER crazies. In the meantime it’s not working. What’s a responsible guy in politics to do?

They simply cannot understand that the Republicans can’t succeed as the party of nothing in particular. Not really in the past, and certainly not today when people are starting to realize that no matter what they do in the voting booth, the country is still about to fly off a precipice. If they did see it, they’d suddenly have two choices: Go away and let the GOP succeed, or stay and fight. But “go away” isn’t really an option, because what’s the point of having a party now owned by the crazies, win?

Well, they have a dilemma…and WE, therefore have a problem. And we would have that problem even IF they realized that they had a problem…that they were the problem.

No one ever thinks they are the bad guy. Even Epstein probably thought he was the good guy. Right up to the moment where he didn’t kill himself.

So if you ever wonder why these unappetizing dufuses cling on even when their fingernails are being left behind…that’s why. They don’t understand no one wants them, and can’t imagine that no one should want them. And oftentimes their greatest pride is in all the hard work they’ve done for the party. They’re not going to give that up; it’d be psychological suicide.

If you’ve worked with these people, there’s a good chance you like them and consider some of them your friends. But even if so…we’re going to have to give them a good, hard shove. Because America is more important than those milquetoasts’ egos.

Justice Must Be Done

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot (i.e., paper) Prices

Last week:

Gold $1,921,60
Silver $24.38
Platinum $1,073.00
Palladium $1,863.00
Rhodium $13,000.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $1,927.30
Silver $24.01
Platinum $1,052.00
Palladium $1,800.00
Rhodium $13,000.00

Mixed movement this week. Gold up a tad, rhodium flat, everything else down. If I were one of those guys paid by the YSM to write the rationale for why the stock market went up or down that day, I’d say something like “Precious metals consolidated their gains this week.” And collect my paycheck. Why do I have to code for a living when that clown never learned to code?

Fuck Joe B*d*n

Due to complaints about foul language, I’ve censored the most objectionable word in the title of this section.

B*d*n, you don’t even get ONE scoop of ice cream today.

(Please post this somewhere permanent, as it will continue to be true; the SOB will never deserve a scoop.)

Orbital Elements (Part I?)

Valerie asked me to explain what I was talking about when I talked about Starlink having to be in an inclined orbit, so here’s my attempt.

It turns out there are six numbers that can, taken together, uniquely and completely describe an orbit. Actually, there are many such sets of numbers, but the most popular ones are symbolized by the letters a, e, i, ω, Ω, and t.

But first we’ve got to make some simplifying assumptions. We are talking about two bodies (primary and satellite), and both can be treated as point masses.

As it turns out Newton showed that a spherical body (or whatever size) could be treated as a point mass, provided you’re outside the sphere and it’s radially symmetric. And what that last bit means is that if you start at the surface and drill down, you see the same things at the same depths, no matter where you start from. Earth turns out to have a solid iron core, surrounded by molten iron, surrounded by mantle rocks, surrounded by the crust; since these layers are pretty much the same thickness everywhere, Earth is spherically symmetric.

Well, almost. It does have an equatorial bulge, and the crust is of slightly varying thickness depending on whether you’re on land or out in the middle of the ocean, and the ocean itself doesn’t cover things completely. But it’s close enough for a first approximation.

You can, from an orbital mechanics standpoint, treat the Earth as if its entire mass were at a point at the center of the Earth.

One more assumption is that there is no atmosphere to cause drag.

Under these circumstances, orbits are governed completely by the force the primary (usually Earth) exerts on the satellite. That force “points” directly towards the primary’s center of mass. And in fact you can simply even further. The force on the satellite is proportional to the satellite’s mass; if you want, you can divide through by the mass, and just talk about the acceleration the satellite will experience as a result of gravity–that will be the same whether we’re talking about a baseball, or the International Space Station…or the Moon.

So we have two objects, pulling on each other, out in space. If they are moving slowly enough with respect to each other, one of them will travel in an ellipse around the other; it’s “in orbit” about the other object. (And technically the other object is also in orbit around the first one at the same time…but if one object is huge, like a planet, and the other is an artificial satellite, it is dang close to being “satellite in orbit around planet and not the other way around.”)

If the satellite is moving fast enough, though, it’s not going to go around and around the big object, though; it will escape, and not come back. This too is technically considered an orbit, but that doesn’t fit people’s mental image of an orbit, so I won’t insist on that here.

So, we have some object “in orbit” around the Earth. But that mere statement doesn’t tell you anything about where it will be, when it will be there, or how fast it will be moving, or in which direction.

That’s what you need those six numbers for. They encapsulate all of those things, and given those six numbers, you can (with a lot of computation), figure out where the satellite is, how fast it’s moving at that time, and in what direction. And you can pick any time, too; the computation is good for a thousand years from now, or last week. (Again, with those simplifying assumptions.)

OK, so what are they? Well depending on how much time I have to write this, I can cover two or three of them.

The first and most important is a. This is the size of the orbit. A non-escape orbit will be an ellipse of some kind (or possibly a perfect circle, but that’s actually just thought of as a special case of an ellipse). a is the semi-major axis of the ellipse…halfway across the ellipse the long way. If the ellipse is actually a circle, there’s no long way, or you can think of it as every diameter being the long way, and the semimajor axis becomes the radius of the circle.

[Johannes Kepler, around 1600, showed that all planets orbited the sun in ellipses (close to being circles). But that was simply showing that they do it. Newton was able to prove that an attractive force that fell off proportionately to the square of the distance would result in elliptical orbits, at least for things not escaping; thus he could describe the cause of all of those elliptical orbits and eventually show it was the same force that makes an apple fall to Earth or which makes the Moon orbit Earth.]

Now here’s the key thing–the amount of time it takes to make one orbit around some planet (called the “period”) depends only on the value of a. If the orbit is a perfect circle, it takes that amount of time. If the orbit is a narrow ellipse with the same semi major axis…it takes that same amount of time.

So, that’s one down: We have the size of the orbit. How about its shape? That is e, the eccentricity. There are multiple different definitions of this number, all with the same result. For our purposes, measure the distance from the center of the ellipse to one focus. Divide that by the semi-major axis. For a circle, the distance to the focus is zero (since both foci are at the center), so your eccentricity will be zero. For a really long, skinny ellipse the focus will be nearly at the end of the ellips and the eccentricity will be almost, but not quite, 1. You can get as close as you like to 1 without actually reaching it; just keep drawing skinnier and skinnier ellipses.

But everything I’ve shown you is two dimensional. What about three dimensions? Couldn’t an orbit be perpendicular to the ones in the last figure I showed, into and out of your computer screen?

Absolutely!!! And the next three numbers will describe the orientation of the orbit, in 3D.

But to describe the orientation with numbers, you must have a coordinate system and then you’ll want to do math. I can relieve you of the math (since I just want you to have a picture of what’s going on) but we’re going to need that coordinate system.

The first thing about that system is that it’s much, much more convenient if it’s inertial…in other words the coordinate system can’t move. That seems kind of trivial and something you shouldn’t have to mention, but that’s not true: we use a coordinate system every day that does move, and that’s latitude and longitude. Sure, 105 West longitude runs through Colorado, and will continue to do so–so it’s stationary, right? No. Colorado moves…because the Earth rotates.

So to best do orbital mechanics, you need a three-D coordinate system, that does not rotate with the Earth. You’d also find it easier if the system were a square grid, which latitude and longitude aren’t (even with altitude thrown in for a third dimension). The most commonly used such system is one called “Earth Centered Inertial (ECI).” In Earth Centered Inertial, every location in space is described by three numbers, x, y, and z. I won’t go too much into x and y (yet), but the Z axis, along which z is measured, is Earth’s axis of rotation. It goes through the north and south poles, and the center of the earth. If some object is on Earth’s axis, it will have a z value, but x and y will both be zero.

But that also means Earth’s equator has a z value of zero, just like Earth’s center does. So the xy plane represents the plane of Earth’s equator.

So what’s the first thing you can do with an orbit, now that we’re thinking in 3D? Up to now you’ve probably been imagining these orbits as being in the earth’s equatorial plane (if you’ve thought about it at all).

The first thing we can do is tilt the thing so it is no longer in the earth’s equatorial plane. So you can imagine measuring the angle between the plane of the orbit and the plane of the earth’s equator. But that’s not what we do, actually; it’s mathematically simpler to draw a line perpendicular to the plane of the orbit, and measure the angle it makes with the earth’s axis, i.e. the z axis. In the diagram below, h with the hat on it is perpendicular to the orbital plane (green disc) and forms an 11 degree angle with the north pole (k).

[Math note: Take the velocity vector for the satellite. Normalize it, so its length is 1. Take the cross product of it and the z axis unit vector. Take the magnitude of that product. You now have the sine of the inclination angle. For those of you who didn’t understand that, be assured that it’s dead damn easy and you don’t have to watch the satellite in orbit to figure out its inclination, so long as your velocity measurement is accurate.]

Or here’s another one, though it’s showing the angle between two planes definition:

Note that you can go all the way up to a 180 degree inclination, in which case you’ve flipped the orbit over as if it were a flapjack. The difference is, if the satellite were going counterclockwise around the planet before you flipped it, it’s now going clockwise. (Counterclockwise, as seen from over the north pole, is the “normal” direction, the one the moon and planets follow, and is also called prograde. Clockwise is retrograde.)

Note that a satellite will go over the north and south poles only if the inclination is 90 degrees. It will go over every possible latitude. This is called a “polar orbit” and it is the only orbit that can go over every spot on earth. (The orbit has to be of such a period that it doesn’t just hit the same spot at the same time every day, or you’ll repeat the same thing over and over again.)

If it’s only at a 60 degree inclination, it will only go as high (or low) as 60 degrees north (or south) latitude. But you can also get this with a 120 degree inclination! Because the plane of the orbit will at that point be at a 60 degree “slant” just like a 60 degree inclined orbit, but the satellite will be going “backwards” in its orbit.

For a satellite at over a 90 degree inclination, you can figure out the maximum latitude it will go over by subtracting its inclination from 180 degrees, so working that example, (180-120) = 60 degrees.

But you can actually work that backwards. If you’re launching from Cape Canaveral into orbit, what orbits can you get to, directly, without having to maneuver “up there”? (Such a maneuver is a “plane change” and is very expensive in fuel.) Well, ones that pass over Cape Canaveral of course. Cape Canaveral is at 28.5 degrees north latitude, so Cape Canaveral can only launch directly into orbits inclined at least that much. An orbit with a 20 degree tilt, for example, simply will never pass over Cape Canaveral. Cape Canaveral can launch into a polar orbit by aiming the rocket to the north or south, or into a 60 degree orbit by aiming northeast, a 28.5 degree orbit by launching straight east, but it can’t go less than that, because no 20 degree orbit can ever have Cape Canaveral in its orbital plane.

At least some of Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites have to be launched into a very highly inclined orbit, or they will never pass over the Arctic. Since Musk wants his starlink to be useful anywhere on earth, he has to have at least some of his satellites be in polar (or very nearly polar) orbits.

Well, with any luck I’ve achieved my goal of confusing Valerie quite thoroughly. And I haven’t even gotten to the other three numbers yet. Maybe some other time.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

EDIT: 22:54 MT. Well let’s just say the top item didn’t age well…except perhaps for the deserved insults to Speaker Dungsmear.

I can only hope McCarthy keeps his promises.

Giving Our “Love” To A Certain RINO POS

Sundance of Banhammer Central, addressing Kevin “Dungsmear” McCarthy:

(See, this is how you do it, Sundance. Don’t drone on for ten thousand words, half of which are selected [and many of those misused] solely for their two-dollar value.)

More seriously, have you ever seen a more blatant example of how the Republican Party simply does not care about what its voters want? (Except of course to figure out what positions they need to mindlessly parrot when doing town halls and campaigning.)

Most of the base loathes McCarthy, and all but twenty of the Republicans in the House of Representatives insist on voting for him for Speaker of the House, again and again, exemplifying the definition of insanity.

For those twenty standing their ground, you are heroes. For the rest…you’re RINO scum (or you’re acting like it so if, deep down, you aren’t I can’t tell and neither can any other actual American, so quit acting before we decide to terminate your careers). Lauren Boebert is not my representative…on paper. That honor is dishonorably discharged by Ken Buck. In spirit, however, Lauren IS my representative.

[Note: Now there are six holdouts. Five of whom say NO WAY to McCarthy. The others, I hope, got some very good concessions that will neuter the RINO to some extent. And of course two hours before this posts, they will try again, so (other than my note to Sundance) this may all be moot by the time it posts.]

[11:45 PM ET: Dungsmear lost again, but the House remains in session. Apparently Gaetz is being pressured to switch from “present” to “Dungsmear.” Ongoing…]

Now the most likely outcome is that McCarthy does indeed pick up that gavel, after having made a deal. Hopefully one that renders him powerless to interfere with a MAGA agenda.

RINOs an Endangered Species?
If Only!

(Well this is the perfect time for this to come up in the rotation!)

According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.

Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.

I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.

But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.

The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.

Given the results of our most recent elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.

I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.

This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?

In Defense of Ranked Choice Voting

One of the biggest obstacles to direly-needed change is RINOs, and one of the weapons in their arsenal is the “Wasted Vote” argument.

Periodically a third party has arisen, trying to hold RINOs to account by putting pressure on them from outside of the party, since doing so from the inside has historically done very little good. But, even if you find a third party candidate who perfectly reflects your views, you’re likely to vote for the RINO anyway. Why? Because if you don’t, the Democrat might win, and that would be even worse. So if you vote for that third party (that few will vote for), you’re throwing your vote away and increasing the likelihood of the Democrat winning. (It’s half as much a gain for the Democrat, as actually voting for the Democrat would be. Not as much, but half as much. Because although you denied the R your vote, you did not flip your vote to the Democrat.)

The Republican Party Establishment knows you don’t love them. But they know you hate the Democrats worse, and they use that to continue to herd you into supporting them. With gritted teeth but your vote counts the same whether you cast it enthusiastically, or only because it’s probably a felony to piss on the voting apparatus.

But what if you could vote for that third party without increasing the changes of the Dem walking away with the prize?

This is what ranked choice voting, or instant runoff voting, can do provided it is properly implemented. (And this includes the votes, and only genuine votes, being counted honestly, of course. However, I’m going to compare it to what we have today, and pretend that is honestly done too. RCV can’t work if it’s not honestly administered, just like our current system isn’t working because it isn’t honestly administered.)

The idea behind RCV is to vote by expressing your order of preference. You could vote for the Patriot Party, then for the Rino Party as your second choice (and ignore the Democrat, the Green, the Overt Socialist Party, etc.)

What does this do? It nullifies the wasted vote argument. Your vote will be counted for the Patriot party, first, then instead of it being “wasted” when the Patriot Party loses, it ends up going to the RINO. Actually, it’s just barely possible that the Patriot Party would actually beat the RINO, if people weren’t all individually afraid to vote for it. (It’s just like the famous “Prisoner’s Dilemma” where your fear of other peoples’ actions prevents you from doing the optimal thing. As long as Job Lowe is afraid to vote Patriot because he’s afraid you’ll vote RINO, you’ll have to vote RINO because Job Lowe will.)

So on the whole I like RCV. It gives you a no-risk way to vote against the RINO scum, and in favor of someone who deserves your vote.

The problem is, as done here in the US, it comes packaged with a “jungle primary.” A bunch of candidates get to put their name out there, and the top four (or so) candidates get onto the “main” ballot. This gives party establishments their way around the threat of a good third party bumping them off. Because they know that few people bother with primaries, and third parties don’t have the resources to run in a primary…so they throw two or three establishment hacks into the primary and they will probably beat the third party. The result is the RINOs end up with two of the four slots in the general election, and the Dems get the other two. Now there’s suddenly no third party candidate on the ballot at all.

If we were to combine RCV with the present system where each party could nominate exactly one candidate to appear on the November ballot, or at the very least, ensure minor parties could get onto the ballot with at least one candidate regardless of the primary, we would be getting somewhere, but the establishment is smarter than we like to give them credit for. They will support the jungle primary + RCV “solution” rather than the more appropriate one-candidate-per-party + RCV solution.

It’s not RCV, it’s the primary structure grafted onto it.

Justice

It says “Justice” on the picture.

And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.

But what is it?

Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.

Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):

Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.

Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.

—Ayn Rand Lexicon (aynrandlexicon.com)

Justice Must Be Done.

Trump, it is supposed, had some documents.

Biden and company stole the country.

I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices

Last week:

Gold $1,825.50
Silver $24.08
Platinum $1,079.00
Palladium $1,869.00
Rhodium $12,900.00

This week, 3 PM MT on Friday, markets closed for the weekend

Gold $1,866.70
Silver $23.92
Platinum $1,100.00
Palladium $1,889.00
Rhodium $13,250.00

Everything other than silver is UP. Gold might actually exceed palladium soon at this rate. (I still remember when gold was $300-400 and palladium was $80 or so. Then palladium spiked overnight to $120 when cold fusion was announced by Pons and Fleischman.)

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

Some Cause for Celebration

Sunday is the New Year.

The new congress starts on January 3.

Lynn Cheney, that rhinoceros cunt, will be out of office on that day.

So there’s that at least.

News Flash

Today, it is still the case that Joe Biden didn’t Win.

I realize that to some readers, this might be a shock; surely at some point things must change and Biden will have actually won.

But the past cannot actually be changed.

It will always and forever be the case that Joe Biden didn’t win.

And if you, Leftist Lurker, want to dismiss it as dead white cis-male logic…well, you can call it what you want, but then please just go fuck off. No one here buys that bullshit–logic is logic and facts are facts regardless of skin color–and if you gave it a moment’s rational thought, you wouldn’t either. Of course your worthless education never included being able to actually reason–or detect problems with false reasoning–so I don’t imagine you’ll actually wake up as opposed to being woke.

As Ayn Rand would sometimes point out: Yes, you are free to evade reality. What you cannot do is evade the consequences of evading reality. Or to put it concretely: You can ignore the Mack truck bearing down on you as you play in the middle of the street, you won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring the Mack truck.

And Ayn Rand also pointed out that existence (i.e., the sum total of everything that exists) precedes consciousness–our consciousnesses are a part of existence, not outside of it–therefore reality cannot be a “social construct” as so many of you fucked-up-in-the-head people seem to think.

So much for Leftist douchebag lurkers. For the rest of you, the regular readers and those lurkers who understand such things: I continue to carry the banner once also carried by Wheatie. His Fraudulency didn’t win.

Let’s Go, Brandon!!

Hey China!

Or rather, “Hey Chinese Communist Party and your entire array of servitors, ass-wipers, and fellators!”

You’re not even worth my time this week. When you decide to act like civilized people, maybe I’ll give you a lesson or two in how non-barbarians behave.

Hey BiteMe!
(Or, Whoever Has Their Hand Rammed Up That Putrefying Meat Puppet’s Ass)

[Language warning]

You and yours have caused a lot of injury. Literal injury with your war on people who don’t want to take an untested vaccine. When people die in an emergency room because a hospital won’t admit them because they haven’t had their clot shot, that’s a crime.

I’m going to address here the insult on top of the injury, because I am among the insulted. I still have my health but apparently you want me to live under the 8th Street Bridge (which actually isn’t on 8th Street, but whatever, that’s what the I-25 overpass over Cimarron is called), so maybe if you have your way that won’t be true for long. Dreadful time of year to become homeless.

No, you’re just trying to make me unemployed, because I won’t take your fucking shots.

Well, that threat is NOT going to work. I. Won’t. Take. Your. Fucking. Shots.

And it looks like enough people agree, that you’re having to back down, you worthless asswipe.

You’re LOSING.

You LOSER.

You Chinese-bought ratfucking traitor.

I would love to see you die an agonizing, humiliating death. (This isn’t a threat, because I am not threatening to cause that death. I am just announcing my intention to party if it happens.) It would be just recompense for the way you’re killing America…and millions of Americans.

His Fraudulency

Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.

One can hope that all is not as it seems.

I’d love to feast on that crow.

(I’d like to add, I find it entirely plausible, even likely, that His Fraudulency is also His Figureheadedness. (Apparently that wasn’t a word; it got a red underline. Well it is now.) Where I differ with the hopium addicts is on the subject of who is really in charge. It ain’t anyone we like.)

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices.

Kitco Ask. Last week:

Gold $1,799.50
Silver $23.82
Platinum $1,033.00
Palladium $1,832.00
Rhodium $12,750.00

This week, markets closed as of 3PM MT.

Gold $1,825.50
Silver $24.08
Platinum $1,079.00
Palladium $1,869.00
Rhodium $12,900.00

The classic precious metals (gold and silver) moving up as one would expect in inflationary times. It looks like gold is forcing its way upward now though beware of “pump and dump.”

PGMs are showing upward movement too, enough that palladium’s lead over gold has actually grown (from $32.50 to $47 per troy ounce).

The New Year

It’s actually surprising that through the last couple of thousand years of the Julian, and then the Gregorian calendars, one key factor has changed a lot, while others haven’t changed much or at all.

Our calendar goes back to the Romans, and was a hot mess until Julius Caesar reformed it in 45 BCE. Years were only vaguely aligned with the seasons, and priests would occasionally insert extra months as a sort of “leap month” measure. However that was very politicized. If they liked someone who was in office, they were liable to insert a month even when it wasn’t called for.

[And let’s not go into how the days were counted within a month, which makes me wonder how Romans could both keep track of it and remember to breathe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_calendar if you really want to know.]

46 BCE was the “Year of Confusion” as Julius Caesar decreed three extra months (!) to bring things back in synchrony; but 45 BCE, the first year of the actual reform, is recognizably our calendar.

Going back a bit, well before Caesar’s day, the year had ten months and then some indefinite time for winter, two months (January and February) were eventually added to cover winter. (This is why Quintilis, Sextilis, September, October, November and December all had “number” names that are now two off from where we think they ought to be. And oh, yeah, Quintilis was renamed July and Sextilis August, after Julius and Augustus Caesar. Later emperors attempted to rename the other months, but in all cases their successors eventually undid the change.)

[What about March, April, May and June? Their names derive from Mars, Aphrodite (Apru), Maia (one of the Pleiades and the mother of Hermes), and Juno.]

What hasn’t changed at all? The week. We haven’t ever, once, broken that seven day pattern; it’s actually the one major feature we didn’t get from the Romans, but rather from Judea. (The Romans had a nine-day cycle, an eight day week followed by a day of religious festivals and markets. This of course is long gone.) Constantine brought the week into the Roman calendar by making Sunday (any Sunday) a holiday.

The months haven’t changed since Augustus Caesar. Julius, after fixing the lengths of the months, had decreed a leap year every four years; this was misunderstood and applied every three years. Augustus corrected that mistake by skipping a few leap years and clarifying, “every four years,” and fixed the lengths of the months in their current form.

The minor change since then has been the matter of leap years. As stated the Julian rule was that every fourth year be a leap year; over the centuries, however, the calendar date accumulated “extra” days such that the 21st of March started falling later and later in the year, relative to the spring equinox, and so the new rule instituted by Pope Gregory in 1582 was that three of those dates in every 400 years would be dropped. This resulted in an average 97 leap years every four hundred years. The Reformation had already happened, so large parts of Northern Europe didn’t adopt this change until the 1700s (England, and hence the future United States, in particular waited until 1752); and of course the Eastern Orthodox countries waited even longer than that. Russia, for instance, did not switch until 1918. Even today many Orthodox congregations continue to use the Julian calendar. (By the rules of that church, they can stay as they are, but once they decide to change, they must stick with it.)

This change has almost no impact on our daily lives. We today here at QTree can simply pretend the Julian rule is in place, because the last “skipped” leap year was 1900 and the next one won’t be until 2100. None of us were alive back then, few reading this will be alive in 2100. [Now watch this article get resurrected and be read by billions sometime around 2096, just so they can laugh at that previous sentence. “Gee, that SteveInCO was such a short-sighted dingbat…” Honestly, guys, I’ve written better, go dredge some of those up instead.]

That’s the minor change I alluded to. (And yes, technically it affects the length of some months.)

The major thing that has changed, often and quirkily, in the last two thousand years, is the day the year starts. Yes, without changing the names of the dates, New Years day gets shifted around the year, falling on different dates.

You saw a hint of this already. The Roman calendar started with March and ended with what would eventually become February…at least for some period of time. Once January was instituted, it started then…Janus was the god of beginnings.

At various times, and in various places since the Romans, people have celebrated the new year on March 1, March 25, September 1st, and December 25th…and some started on Easter, which could literally be any date from late March to late April. England, in fact, used March 25 until 1752, when they switched to the Gregorian calendar.

This is hard to imagine today. But imagine that the day after March 24, 2022 was March 25, 2023. (What a pain in the butt for software! And imagine what full-year wall calendars would look like.)

George Washington, born in February, would, if birth certificates had been a thing, have had his marked February 11, 1731. Thanks to these two changes that happened in 1752, that same day would be denoted February 22, 1732.

Well, technically we’re not supposed to retroactively renumber dates just because we adjusted the calendar. And we’re also not supposed to go back to before a calendar was instituted and give dates in the “proleptic” calendar either, but we do it often. (Washington himself celebrated his birthday on February 22 after the change.) In England and the United States, sometimes a date will be labeled “O.S.” (“Old Style”) to indicate it’s the Julian calendar (and March 25 year start) in use; and (less commonly) N.S. for the Gregorian Calendar; this is done in the Wikipedia article on George Washington. And we certainly regard his birth year as having been 1732, even though on the date of his birth everyone was writing 1731 on their checks. (The Washington Quarter, for instance, originally commemorated his 200th birthday…in 1932.)

Many Eastern Orthodox countries used 1 September as the start of the year–and of course that would have been by the Julian calendar. Russia switched their New Year’s date in 1700 (but they retained the Julian calendar). September 1 would actually make a very limited amount of sense. I remember as a kid watching some commentary on the news suggesting we move New Year’s day to September 1, since a lot of things we do on an annual basis (school years, the NFL season, etc) start then. However, even if this were still true (school, at least where I live, and the NFL start earlier now), it wouldn’t be worth the bother, honestly. Imagine how it would bork up our statistics having one eight month year in there in that sequence of 12 month years. (The US government fiscal year used to start in July…then we had one 15 month fiscal year as we transitioned to having it start in October, and people complaining about federal spending have been having to explain that one ever since. And even with that change those jackasses couldn’t get a budget passed in time, and have now given up on even that.)

If we were starting from scratch, I’d personally push for either the winter solstice or the spring equinox to start the year…and the appropriate month would start on that same date as well. (No split months, thank you!) The 25th of December or March are close to these times but not right on, and I’ve never figured out for sure why there’s a four or five day difference between those historical New Year’s Days and the astronomical events. But we’re not starting from scratch; we have the calendar we have and January 1 works as well as any day.

Besides, the New Year hangovers subside just in time to celebrate Lynn Cheney’s celluloid-covered ass getting booted out of Congress. Buh-bye…Bitch.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!