We are ruled by sociopaths

Oh, capitalism! You are the best of all possible systems!

Companies May Limit Life-saving Climate Data to Clients that Can Pay

Multi-billion dollar “climate services” firms are trying to cash in on the financial fear and insecurity prompted by changing weather

Yes, there's a new industry that has apparently sprung up recently. "Climate Services."
First, big business destroys the climate, poisoning the air we breathe and the water we drink for profit. Then, when the result of their "dark, Satanic mills" becomes impossible to ignore or pooh-pooh, more big businesses rush in to profit off of the misery the first group of businesses have caused.

Oh, and I suppose this little wrinkle should come as no surprise:

One of the industry’s leaders, a Silicon Valley executive named Rich Sorkin, made the case for climate services in May to the U.S. House Subcommittee on Environment. He argued that taking the big-picture climate science produced by federal agencies and turning it into hyperlocal threat assessments is a crucial and effective way for cities, states, companies and investors to better prepare for the climate emergency. 

Yes, the data which these leaches intend to sell to whomever can afford it in order to accumulate more and more wealth? It's production is paid for by us, the American taxpayers.

So we have to pay to produce this data because of the malfeasance of corporate America, and now corporate America is going to use this data to feather their own nests. And what do you, Joe taxpayer, get out of the deal?

Nothing, unless you are one of the super-wealthy who can afford to have this customized data delivered to you so that you know when to leave your Malibu beach house and head for your Aspen ski villa.

Sorkin suggested that his risk-focused climate company Jupiter is uniquely suited to take on this job. “We believe the federal government should defer to the private sector in this area,” he said in a statement. 

Oh, really? What a fucking shock. You think the government should just stay out of the whole climate data business except for, you know, doing all the actual work of collecting all the data? That's what you think? Quelle surprise! Well, we believe that you, Rich Sorkin, should go fuck yourself!

Sorkin argues that companies like his—which is part of an industry that in 2015 was valued globally at US$2.6 billion with 6% to 10% growth per year—are nimble and innovative where government can be slow and cautious. “We’re years ahead of what the public sector is doing,” he says. 

In his statement, he likened Jupiter’s impact on climate science to the disruptive influence of Amazon, Microsoft and Google on supercomputing: “In nearly every case, the private sector is leading the adoption of these new technologies, driven by brutal competition for profits.”

Yeah, does anyone NOT hate Amazon? And Microsoft?
Fuck, any time one of these little startup assholes uses any form of the word "disrupt," they're talking about fucking things up, putting existing companies out of business, throwing people out of work to stuff the bank accounts of a few greedy sociopaths.
Saying "we're going to do for this sector what Amazon, Microsoft and Google have done for theirs" is like saying "i'm going to do for your church group what Jim Jones and David Koresh did for theirs!"

And for companies like his, those profits can be lucrative. Jupiter’s clients include players in oil and gas, insurance and defense. 

Even industry leaders acknowledge the risk of a not-so-distant future where the wealthy and powerful have better information and tools for protecting themselves from the devastation of climate change than the poor and vulnerable.

“That’s a huge concern, and I’m certainly not going to pretend that we have the solution,” says Emilie Mazzacurati, the founder and CEO of Four Twenty Seven

"That is a huge concern, and I'm certainly not going to pretend we have any interest in addressing it," said the comic book supervillain.

“Scientists were saying, ‘We knew this could happen,’” Mazzacurati says. “[There was] a disconnect between the available data and projections around risks from climate change and the fact that those were not systematically integrated for most organizations.”

Okay so let me see if I git this straight. Scientists have been sounding a warning on climate change for years. Corporate America made a point of ignoring those warnings for fear it might cut into their short-term profits.  -- I'm sorry, I mean they "failed to systematically integrate those projections." --
Now that Corporate America has done irreparable damage to the planet, they are not being punished, they are being given a chance to access inside information, for which we all paid, to be able to mitigate the damage their greed and callousness have caused. Oh, but only to mitigate the damage done specifically to them and their bottom lines. And there is now an entire industry dedicated to ensuring that they will be able to minimize the risks to themselves while still contributing to the incipient catastrophe. Have I got that right?

Mazzacurati founded Four Twenty Seven after Hurricane Sandy devastated New York City in 2012. “What struck me most was the chaos that [an] extreme weather event could bring to one of the wealthiest, most organized, most resourceful cities in the world—and some of its most powerful businesses,” she later recalled. 

Won't somebody think of the powerful businesses?

See, this is the difference between us normal people and the sociopaths that run everything. Most of us saw the devastation of Sandy and thought "oh, shit! There are people suffering. People losing their homes. This is horrible." Someone like Emilie Mazzacurati sees the same footage we all saw and thinks "Damn, I'll bet those powerful companies would pay big bucks for some sort of protection from the next storm!"

The longer I live, the more I realize that the rich and powerful have a strong tendency towards sociopathy. And it makes sense. If you want to succeed in business, if you want to make it to the top, it helps to have no compunctions about who you have to stab in the back to get there. So it's easy for executives to lay off workers. It's easy for politicians to cut people's healthcare or food stamps. It's easy for Presidents and Secretaries of State to order bombings and invasions. Because they don't care. They have no empathy. Or not enough to stop them from doing whatever they think will benefit themselves and further their career goals.

Look how many rich and famous names are popping up in the Jeffery Epstein case. Why, if you are a wealthy powerful man, would you need to have Epstein secure underage girls for sex? You can probably have sex with tons of consenting adult women. Pretty ones, even. I think that a lot of the rich and powerful are seriously damaged, disturbed people. Especially if they were brought up by wealthy, sociopathic parents.

Exhibit A.

Why would someone like, say Bill Clinton, commit rape?
At the time, I was naive enough to think that he wouldn't because plenty of women wanted to have sex with him so why would he have to force himself on anyone? Now, I get it. That someone like Bill Clinton, someone who can get lots of women into bed, is exactly the kind of person who would do this. Because when a Paula Jones or a Juanita Broderick says "no, thanks. Not interested," the reaction isn't "oh, well, there's a million women who will!" The reaction is "who do you think you are to say no to me?"

Honestly, the whole world makes a lot more sense once you realize that we are ruled by sociopaths.

What are you complaining about, ya crybabies?

It used to be that when a young person complained about something, an old person would tell them all about how "you kids today have it easy. When I was your age, we had to walk ten miles to school. In the snow. It snowed every day back then, and if there wasn't enough snow, the city council would bring in snow machines from the local ski resort to make sure we had snow to trudge through. And shoes hadn't been invented yet! And after school, we would walk home through the snow, sip dome gruel, then go off to our jobs as coal miners. And we didn't have these fancy picks and shovels, we dug coal out of the mountain with our bare hands, and the foreman would stomp on our frostbitten toes if we didn't dig fast enough. And the TV only had three channels!"

But now, Marc Thiessen is taking it up a notch!

American millennials have a lot of complaints about their lot in life. So here’s a question for them: When is the last time you had to walk through a sewer waist-high in human filth, choking on the toxic ammonia, yet unable to cough for fear of alerting the Nazi SS soldiers on the street above — knowing that if you did, they would open a manhole cover and toss in grenades or poison gas to kill you?

The fuck?

How is that your baseline?

Oh, you've got some complaints, have you? Well, just consider yourselves lucky that you aren't in literally the most dire circumstances humanly possible!

You have to worry that white supremacists might shoot up your school, your mall, your nightclub? Psshh! Are you wading through sewage while you worry about being shot by Nazis? No? Then quit your whining! You don't know how lucky you are!

You see a future in which our coastal cities are all under water? Well, they're not under sewage, are they? Then what is your fucking problem, you crybabies?


This is one of the weird  themes that conservatives return to again and again. The "at least you're not in this place that's worse" shibboleth. You object to the fact that there are a lot of states where a person can be fired for being gay? Well, you know, in Iran, they put gay people to death! You think it's wrong that women still don't have full equality in America? Hey, in Saudi Arabia, women aren't even allowed to drive! As long as some other place is worse, we need never address any societal problems here in the US of A. Well, except for football players kneeling during the National Anthem. Or television shows being disrespectful to Christianity. Or department store cashiers saying "happy holidays."

Here in Warsaw 75 years ago, teenagers did exactly that. Last week, surviving members of the resistance gathered in the Polish capital to mark the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, when the underground Home Army rose up, freed the city from Nazi occupation and held it for 63 days.

In our colleges and universities, first millennials and now their Generation Z successors have demanded “emotional safety,” insisting on “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” to protect them from ideas they don’t like

Oh my God. here we go with the "safe spaces" crap again!
Why are the righties so obsessed with the idea of "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings?" As if they didn't create an entire news network to protect them from ideas they don't like!



As if they didn't create an alternative to Wikipedia to protect them from facts they find troublesome.

As if they hadn't re-translated the Bible to protect themselves from inconvenient theological teachings.

. . . they tell us that “words are violence.” No, they are not. Violence is SS officers using flamethrowers to clear buildings. Violence is defenseless civilians being put in front of Nazi Panzers as human shields. During the Warsaw Uprising there were no “safe spaces” — battles were literally fought house to house, room to room. There were no “trigger warnings” — only Germans pulling their triggers as they executed civilians and prisoners of war lined up on street corners.

Okay. Yeah. And that Warsaw situation was objectively worse. Why does it sound like you prefer a scenario in which young people are being roasted by flamethrowers and crushed by tanks to one in which college professors give "trigger warnings" before discussing potentially troublesome topics?
Somehow, if a college literature professor says "this semester we'll be discussing Huck Fin and - trigger warning -  Huck uses the N-word a lot." this is more problematic to you than innocent people being slaughtered by Nazis?

I brought my kids — ages 17, 16 and 13-year-old twins — here to witness this. I wanted them to see with their own eyes what real adversity, sacrifice and heroism look like. I wanted them to put their fingers in the bullet holes that still mark the walls where the Nazis executed children their age. I wanted them to understand that these horrific events happened within the lifetimes of their immediate family, and that they must never take for granted the freedom, peace and security they enjoy.

Okay. That seems like a good idea. But I'm going to go ahead and assume that you gave them a warning first. A "trigger warning," as it were. You probably told them before you got to Poland that they were going to see some things that they would find disturbing. You didn't just say "hey, let's take a fun family vacation to Warsaw," and then when you got there go "hey kids. See those holes in the wall? Those are bullet holes from when the Nazis murdered children your age right here in this very place. Go ahead, stick your fingers in the holes the bullets made after passing through the bodies of terrified children!" Because if you didn't warn them beforehand, you're a fucking monster.

Not Helping

No, Atlanta Journal Constitution, "Tragedy" did not strike El Paso Walmart. Tragedy striking Walmart is Walmart being hit by a tornado. Or Walmart's roof caving in and crushing a bunch of people. Something for which no one is to blame. Tragedy did not strike the El Paso Walmart, a homicidal racist asshole struck the El Paso Walmart.

This kind of framing is not helpful. Treating gun massacres like natural disasters, as just one of the hazards of life like earthquakes in California or hurricanes in Florida is not helpful. It's whatever the opposite of helpful is.

This is what the NRA ghouls want. They want everyone to accept that mass slaughters are inescapable, that nothing can be done to prevent them, and that  your best bet is to arm yourself to the teeth so that you'll be ready to defend yourself when the unavoidable massacre inevitably comes to your mall or school or church.

So stop referring to these massacres as "tragedies." They are murders. Mass murders. And we absolutely CAN take steps to minimize them. If we have the collective will. And framing them as unfortunate catastrophes is not helping.

At least it's not just America.

I don't know if this is a new thing, but I only just heard of it a couple days ago on some podcast or other. There is a website called "Quillette." And holy shit, it is freakin nuts!
It seems to be based in Australia or maybe the UK,  but it does employ internet gadfly Andy Ngo as a "sub-editor." Anyway, this is the article that I heard about on the pod.

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man: A Profile of Boris Johnson

written by Toby Young

"Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Man" is an awfully dramatic way of referring to a clod like Boris Johnson.



Christ, just add an eyepatch and subtract 50 pounds and he's this guy:

You know, I thought it was only American conservatives who could look at a shambling, disheveled, bloated buffoon and see a superhero,

but whatever it is, it seems to infect the British right as well.

I first set eyes on Boris Johnson in the autumn of 1983 when we went up to Oxford at the same time. . . With his huge mop of blond hair, his tie askew and his shirt escaping from his trousers, he looked like an overgrown schoolboy. 

Yeah. "looked like."

Yet with his imposing physical build, his thick neck and his broad, Germanic forehead, there was also something of Nietzsche’s Übermensch about him.

 

Oh my God! "Übermensch!"

If by "imposing physical build" you mean "layered in middle-aged baby fat," and by "broad Germanic forehead," you mean "heavy cro-magnon brow," then sure. That's the ubermensch all over!

You could imagine him in lederhosen, wandering through the Black Forest

Okay, first of all, fuck you for making me picture Boris Johnson in lederhosen. 

Second, yeah - I could imagine him in lederhosen. Stuffing bratwurst into his buttery face in a biergarten somewhere, but wandering the Black Forest? 

Third, you're kinda tipping your hand with all the German stuff. Why not compare Johnson to some formidable British hero? I mean, you must have one, right? Some medieval king or something? When you start off by referring to Hitler's favorite philosopher, drop in the term for Hitler's super race of ideal pure Aryans and the only metaphors you have for power, strength, and toughness are all German, you're kinda giving the game away.

You could imagine him in lederhosen, wandering through the Black Forest with an axe over his shoulder, looking for ogres to kill.

Okay, yeah. I could imagine him wandering lost in a forest, looking for imaginary made-up creatures to battle. I could see him as a LARPer.

Basically, this guy with worse hair.

 This same combination—a state of advanced dishevelment and a sense of coiled strength, of an almost tangible will to power—was even more pronounced in his way of speaking.

Okay, we get it. You reads the Cliff's notes of Also Sprach Zarathustra. Geez!

Also, where are you seeing "coiled strength?"

He began to advance an argument in what sounded like a parody of the high style in British politics—theatrical, dramatic, self-serious—when—a few seconds in—he appeared to completely forget what he was about to say. He looked up, startled—Where am I?—and asked the packed chamber which side he was supposed to be on. “What’s the motion, anyway?” Before anyone could answer, a light bulb appeared above his head and he was off, this time in an even more orotund, florid manner. Yet within a few seconds he’d wrong-footed himself again, this time because it had suddenly occurred to him that there was an equally compelling argument for the opposite point of view. This endless flipping and flopping, in which he seemed to constantly surprise himself, went on for the next 15 minutes. The impression he gave was of someone who’d been plucked from his bed in the middle of the night and then plonked down at the dispatch box of the Oxford Union without the faintest idea of what he was supposed to be talking about.

Yeah, now THAT sounds like Boris Johnson. And now, I assume you're going to explain how this buffoonery was actually evidence of his genetic superiority or some other such quasi-Nazi shit?

 The motion was deadly serious—“This House Would Reintroduce Capital Punishment”—yet almost everything that came out of his mouth provoked gales of laughter. This was no ordinary undergraduate proposing a motion, but a Music Hall veteran performing a well-rehearsed comic routine. His lack of preparedness seemed less like evidence of his own shortcomings as a debater and more a way of sending up all the other speakers, as well as the pomposity of the proceedings. You got the sense that he could easily have delivered a highly effective speech if he’d wanted to, but was too clever and sophisticated—and honest—to enter into such a silly charade. 

 

Of course! He meant to do that! Jesus Christ!

He couldn't possibly have just been in over his head and getting rightly mocked and ridiculed by his fellow students. No, it must be that he was screwing up intentionally. To, um. . . make some kind of a statement. About Oxford. And how they take things too seriously. That is totally the sort of thing that a freshman could get away with doing at Oxford! If there's one institution in Britain than knows how to laugh at itself, it's Oxford!

In Boris, though, it was as if I’d finally encountered the ‘real’ Oxford, the Platonic ideal. 

Jeez, get a room!

Also, that rumbling you feel is Plato turning over and over in his grave.

 While the rest of us were works-in-progress, vainly trying on different personae, Boris was the finished article. He was an instantly recognizable character from the comic tradition in English letters: a pantomime toff. He was Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night demanding more cakes and ale, Bertie Wooster trying to pass himself off as Eustace H. Plimsoll when appearing in court after overdoing it on Boat Race night. Yet at the same time fizzing with vim and vinegar—“bursting with spunk,” as he once put it, explaining why he needs so many different female partners. 

Oh my God.

Oh my GOD!

So many female partners?

That's a long, convoluted way of making excuses for him being a pig.

He was a cross between Hugh Grant and a silverback gorilla.

Well, you're half right!

My uncle had described him as a “genius” and as a boy he’d been regarded as something of a wunderkind.

And there you go with the German again. You just can't help yourself, can you?

There was the occasion when he was holidaying with his family in Greece, aged 10, and asked a group of Classics professors if he could join their game of Scrabble. They indulged the precocious, blond-haired moppet, only to be beaten by him. Thinking it was a one-off, they asked him to play another round and, again, he won. On and on it went, game after game. 

Oh, bullshit. That never happened. You expect us to believe that this guy

a ten-year-old version of this guy, had a stronger vocabulary than a group of classics professors? It doesn't pass the laugh test!

At the prep school he attended before going to Eton, Britain’s grandest private school, he was seen as a prodigy. A schoolmaster who taught him back then told his biographer, Andrew Gimson, that he was the quickest-learner he’d ever encountered. In the staff room, the teachers would compare notes about the “fantastically able boy.”

Oh God.

Oh, no. 

No no no no no no no..

What did those degenerates do to poor little Boris? 

There is no way that having English private school teachers comparing notes on you in the staff room can possibly lead to anything good.

That's something out of a Morrisey lyric.

Belligerent ghouls

Run Manchester schools

He grabs and devours

He kicks me in the showers

Kicks me in the showers

And he grabs and devours

Okay, this isn't funny anymore. I'm sorry. If Boris needs a sycophantic glowing hagiography to feel okay about himself after what he went through, then by all means, go right ahead. Just maybe lay off the German stuff, huh?

The stupidest six words of all time

So today I saw on my Twitter an article from Wonkette about Jordan Peterson

And it contained probably THE stupidest six words ever spoken, written, thought, or conceived of.

First, some context. Peterson, who for some inexplicable reason is someone that a ceertain segment of the population thinks is a serious public intellectual, was opining on why women should all be running around plopping out babies all the time.

He said:

There's a serious conversation to be had with young women. A woman asked me a question on my Q&A this month. She said that her friends are really down on her, because she claims to not be a feminist, but even more importantly, because she wants to have children. And they're telling her that only an evil and cruel person would bring a child into a world this terrible, and worse, to do the damage to the planet that that child will inevitably do. And people are very serious about this. And they are very hard on young women.

Okay, that never happened.
I'm guessing that this woman doesn't exist, that no such question was asked. Especially seeing as how what Peterson claims the woman "asked" was not a question, but a statement.
The only other possibility is that Peterson did actually get this "question" on his website or whatever and was too thick to realize that the person "asking" the "question" was bullshitting him. Because no one is responding to their friend's stated desire for a cute cuddly baby by telling her that she is "evil and cruel." This is an obvious lie,. But it's not even the stupid part yet. Well, it's A stupid part, but it's not THE stupid part.



Her is THE stupid part. The stupidest part. The sentence containing the stupidest six words ever assembled into a single phrase:

I always think of the Pieta because I kind of think of it as the Christian equivalent of the crucifix, 

Yes, there it is. Did you catch that? "the Christian equivalent of the crucifix." The CHRISTIAN equivalent of the CRUCIFIX!

Peterson is saying that there is a thing that exists which is a version of a statue of Jesus Christ on the cross, but is a CHRISTIAN version of that.  How do you respond to that? I have no words.
A Christian equivalent of this:

Like there's a non-Christian version of a crucifix.

I mean, you could certainly have a Buddhist equivalent of a crucifix. Or a Muslim equivalent. Or a Hindu equivalent. But a Christian version of the crucifix is like an athletic version of the Olympics. It boggles the mind that this is a person who is taken seriously by anyone.

Here's the whole quote:

I always think of the Pieta because I kind of think of it as the Christian equivalent of the crucifix, you know, you have Mary there with her broken son in her arms. And I think that the great adventure for women, at least in part, this is the maternal adventure, is to bring a child into the world, knowing full well the consequence is a crucifixion-like brokenness. And that it's still a mark of faith in the possibilities of being, to participate in that and not to hide from it and to say: 'Well, despite everything, I'm going to act out my faith in life and in the possibilities of being and I'm going to bring someone into the world who will be a net force for good rather than evil. And that's my moral obligation.'

Holy Saint Stupid on an idiot stick!

Where to begin?

Pewrhaps by boasting that I have seen the Pieta in person?



No, that would be rude. But true!

Anyway, this dolt thinks that even though a woman would know full well that the end result of bringing a child into the world is going to be " a crucifixion-like brokenness," She should somehow wish to do that anyway? Like if you told some woman that she has a rare genetic condition that will cause any sons or daughters she has to die a slow painful death while they are still young, you're supposed to find it admirable for her to say "well, that's okay. I really feel like I oughta have some kids anyway?"
Or the fact that he thinks that having babies is a "moral obligation," no matter how much pain and suffering and "crucifixion-like brokenness" those children would be fated to endure?
Or that he thinks that having a child whose fate it is to endure a "crucifixion-like brokenness" is not only a moral obligation, but also an "adventure?"
Maybe the worst part is that he thinks he has the right to tell women what they are "morally obligated" to do with their baby-making parts.
.
It's hard to fathom how much stupidity, arrogance, and just general shittiness Peterson can pack into one brief paragraph. I've read that bit over and over and each time I notice something new, some new nugget of idiocy or hubris or general dickishness to marvel over. A better writer than I could probably write a book about just that one paragraph.
You could probably get at least a magazine article out of the stupidest six words in the history of the English language.