177 Comments

  1. I was at the check out at a grocery store in Ottawa, Canada yesterday and when I gave the young female cashier (who was masked, of course) the exact amount due in cash and coins, she looked at what I gave her for several seconds in stunned confusion. I thought I may have given her the wrong amount. Nope. She then asked me what I had given her in coins. I was confused by her question at first and then I realized that she didn’t understand what amount the different coins represented (the amounts are labelled on the coins). I’m not making this up. I think I want to take the vaccine now.

      1. Actually, my experience with lower IQ people with a good heart who have had to function in a market economy is that they are far preferable company and fellow citizens to higher IQ people with an evil heart who are subsidized by lots of government subsidy aka corporate welfare. So I would be careful about denigrating “the stupid.”

        Christian cleaning ladies at Super 8 Motels build a human civilization. Harvard grads in Silicon Valley build a surveillance state that parasites and genocides you.

        So who is stupid?

        1. The cashier didn’t signal any outright indications of having a low IQ although I barely interacted with her. I assumed the issue was that no one, including her, her school, her parents or her employer, thought it was important enough to explain currency to her. I will start surveying cashiers about how many customers typically pay in cash because I’m concerned that I’m now in a very small minority.

          1. By the way, some of the dumbest idiots I’ve encountered, especially over the past two years, have been highly credentialed university graduates who take everything the government and media says at face value. When the trucker convoy rolled into town I made it a point to ask each trucker I interacted with what they thought was driving the COVID shenanigans and ALL of them knew it was the implementation of the control grid. I’m not claiming the truckers to be low IQ – just that a good majority of the ‘highly educated’ should be looked at with disdain at this point. Orwell saw straight through these frauds 80 years ago.

          3. In my very small town rural U.S. Post Office, a sign was posted as of this week,
            Checks, Credit Cards, or Exact Change ONLY. I interact with the clerks fairly often and they have been “asking” for exact change pretty much all summer. The “inch worm”!

        2. Indeed. Having worked as an administrator for a University, I can say that IQs or PhD degrees are not correlated to humanity or kindness or true intelligence.

        3. My mom was one of those “Super 8” ladies when she came to Canada with a Grade VIII education in 1967. Couldn’t speak a word of English. Her mental math still (!) puts everyone else’s to shame.
          My daughter (who is 14) has a job at the Farmers’ Market. She got a raise to adult minimum wage shortly after starting because she never made an error giving change.
          Another reason to homeschool, I suppose.

        5. Precisely. Lots of highly intelligent people are narcissistic and highly destructive. It takes a reasonable amount of intelligence to be evil and not a lot to be kind hearted.

        6. Thank you for saying that Catherine. I can confirm that experience regarding Christian cleaning ladies. my mother was one for 25 years across the bridge at Cooper Hospital. I know you know where that is.

          1. Also not convinced IQ is a great parameter. One needs focus and coherence to function and that is thwarted in every conceivable way on purpose today. I believe that is why so many people like “protocols” regardles of IQ.

  4. Catherine

    I enjoy your discussions with Joseph Farrell about the intentional degradation of culture & how important that fact is. And music is a good example of that. There is an extraordinary amount of poor quality music being produced & presented to the public.

    A point always pops up in my head though when I listen to your conversations with him. Though I take Mr. Farrell’s point, he ought not use Arnold Schoenberg as an example of the degradation of music. Schoenberg was recognized as a musical genius by his peers. He could and did write excellent tonal music & he composed a piece, Pierrot Lunaire, that is often listed with the most important music of the 20th century. I saw 2 performances of it at the opera house in Leipzig & was overwhelmed by its creativity, raw emotional power & uniqueness.

    There was a belief in the early 20th c., that after Mahler, all possibilities for writing fresh & creative tonal music had been exhausted. Schoenberg, along with others, attempted an exploration of music beyond tonality. In tonal music each of the 7 notes of a scale in a particular key are given hierarchical importances. The listener is teased & pleasurably tortured by the contrast between notes & they tell an emotional story.

    Schoenberg destroyed the sense of tonality by giving each of the 12 tones equal importance by playing each tone the same number of times & by not playing any particular note again until the other 11 were first played. It is called 12 tone music or serial music and sounds awful. By giving all the notes equal importance contrast is destroyed & makes it difficult to “say” anything. Schoenberg went down a musical dead end, but he was an exceptional music talent & it was an honest effort.

    I heard a tape of Leonard Bernstein discussing this subject mid-century in a lecture. He opined that tonal music was not dead. He and I are in agreement on this. Check out my Dream Waltz (the 3 part one) on Paulevy.com. I think it is a delightful piece & is tonal. Serial music still exists & is still taught in university. In fairness, there are sincere, capable composers continuing that tradition. And I wouldn’t lump that group in with just plain bad music.

    1. I have had the opportunity to listen to Farrell engage verbally with a subscriber on just this topic – a very interesting heated 30 minutes. He is confident in using Schoenberg. I understand none of the details and could not hold my own on the discussion, but I am with him on this one. I would never willingly listen to Schoenberg.

      1. I’m a former professional musician. Nobody likes Schoenberg. The only thing good that came from Schoenberg was Alban Berg. Wozzeck is a stunning work.
        He was later murdered by an American soldier for smoking a cigar a few minutes after curfew. Go figure.

        1. I’m a current professional musician. I would never willingly listen to Schoenberg or any others of that 20th century atonal music. The most beautiful and complex music was created in the baroque and recreated over and over since. Schoenberg and others were a reaction to that, much like all those artists of the same period who created demented, shocking works, or stripped back to just a stripe on the canvas or whatever. They took out the beauty and meaning intentionally, as a kind of misguided rebellion (in my opinion).

          1. I agree. I am a degrees musician, too. I like much tonal 20th century music (Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Americans such as Copland and more). I had to listen to atonal in college but never wilingly since then!

  7. A. G., another gem from CO.

    Every item shipped to you in CO. will cost $0.27 delivery fee.

    Colorado’s Retail Delivery Fee

    Monday, August 8, 2022
    Recently, Colorado’s new $0.27 retail delivery fee went into effect. The fee targets all deliveries by a motor vehicle that have at least one item of taxable and tangible personal property. This new levy impacts both in-state and out-of-state retailers, requiring those entities to register with the Colorado Dept. of Revenue and remit funds to the State.
    A delivery occurs when any of these items are mailed, shipped, or otherwise transported by a motor vehicle. The preamble of the bill specifically targets the rising consumer delivery culture and large corporations. But the bill itself does not discriminate—it affects anybody and everybody selling items that are to be delivered in the state of Colorado.
    While the fee targets retailers who use delivery, the costs are charged to consumers and collected by Retailers. The retail delivery fee applies statewide and is calculated per sale. Invoices and receipts presented to customers must contain a separate line item called “retail delivery fees.” The fee contains certain exemptions such as qualifying wholesalers who currently fall under sales tax exemptions. The fees automatically adjust proportional to inflation.

    The purpose of the bill is to sustain Colorado’s transportation system and create more funding for infrastructure development while protecting the environment. Sponsors of the bill also hope to encourage the purchase and use of electric vehicles and the slow phasing out of gas vehicles through the financial costs implemented by the bill in the pursuit of a greener Colorado. The retail delivery fee is one part of at least five other fees implemented by that state under the guise of environmental and infrastructure funding. The legislature anticipates the bill will raise $5.4 billion dollars by 2032 for infrastructure, mass transit, and green energy.
    Business groups and a State Senator have filed a lawsuit alleging that SB 21-260 violated ballot initiative Prop 117, which won over 53% of voters in the election. Prop 117 was a ballot initiative in 2020 which required voters statewide approve new state enterprises when the enterprise’s projected or actual revenue from fees and surcharges is greater than $100 million within its first five years. They allege these new fees are just taxes in disguise and are a way for the state government to get around the tax accountability goals of Prop 117.
    The fee is codified at Colo. Rev. Stat. § 43-4-218 and enacted through State Senate Bill 21-260, effective July 1, 2022.
    Putting It Into Practice: The new fee came into effect July 1, 2022. Retailers who do business in Colorado should ensure they are registered with the Department of Revenue or update registrations as needed. Retailers—including those using third party delivery services—should talk to their tax professionals and ecommerce leads about implementing a process to comply with the new fee.
    Copyright © 2022, Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP.

      1. Thank goodness there is an easy work around for this in a dry climate. Not so much in a humid climate.

        A swamp cooler or evaporative cooler. They are great in dry climates because they not only cool the air but humidify it a bit.

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