Home » Open thread 6/16/21

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Open thread 6/16/21 — 27 Comments

  1. Here’s an online dating experience I just had this week. Woman says she’s moving to Omaha and I think that is true. After a few conversations, I ask her for her last name. I then ask if that is her maidan name and she says yes. I look her up on Linkedin. There she is along with the name of her business.

    I Google her last name and town. Nothing. Then I add in the name of her business. She was indicted in federal court for embezzling nearly a million dollars over five years.

    I then get into PACER and look up her criminal case. I printout the sentencing memo. She had previously served time in state prison and had been arrested nine times for fraud. The federal judge sentenced her to four years.

    Yesterday I tell her what I found, but actually in a nice way. (Not typical for me!) She initially denied it! I then started reading from the press release of the US Attorney. She then goes off on a tangent about how she got “compassionate release” and would show me the Order that had been filed under seal. She also went on to claim that she had repaid all the money that she had stolen. Ha! She also said she was going to tell me about her criminal past when we finally met. (We were going to meet Monday night.)

    Sometimes it helps to be a lawyer. Looking back on our few conversations, it is clear to me that she had lied to me about a number of things. And she was probably unrepentant about her crimes and four years in the Big House. She was just released in May.

    The laugher here is that I referred her to a book about the Jesuits and decision making. It is Fr. James Martin’s “The Jesuit Guide to Nearly Everything.” I looked at it again last night and it helped me.

    Ignatius was a strong believer in evil and how to deal with it. I think I’ve learned that from him over the decades.

    If she thought I was a rich mark, she was way wrong there!

  2. Wow, looks like you dodged a real bullet here.

    (OTOH, it’s quite possible that you impressed her mightily—with all the background research, checking and vetting—to the point where she’s whispering to herself, dreamily of course: “I’ve finally, FINALLY! met a man who really cares about me…course I haven’t met him yet…but…still…sigh…deeply cared…damn! I shoulda used another name… Well, next time….”)

    In any event, there’s a whole lot of flashing red and blue lights shouting “Keep Yer Distance!!”

    As far as books are concerned, you can tell her that you’re willing to share experiences with her and co-write something like “How Not to Fall for the Wrong Person For Dummies”, and then split the proceeds. Fair’s fair. (But do it on Zoom.)

  3. @Cornhead:

    Well done, Sir!

    Now I’m sure you know the wealth-preserving adage involving Yachts, Private Jets, and…

  4. Charles Murray’s new book is out.

    https://vdare.com/articles/charles-murray-s-facing-reality-ruling-class-must-accept-race-differences-or-provoke-the-disaster-of-white-identity-politics

    From review seems that he’s done his standard gentlemanly (He certainly is one and not any kind of Berserker) thing and laid out the facts very convincingly but has not really dared to delve too deeply into implications and What Needs to be Done.

    URL summarises Murray’s thesis. Sane Whites who would like their grandchildren to have grandchildren ask “Now just *why* would White Identity Politics be such a disaster when apparently it is great for every other group to have *their* identity politics?”

  5. OK Zaphod. I want to hear the wealth-preserving adage involving yachts and private jets.

    I do recall hearing about Fred Schwed’s book “Where are the Customers’ Yachts?” (Apparently the marina was full of the investment manager’s yachts.) But I think that is a different story.

  6. @TommyJay:

    Be it duly noted that I did not wish to lower the tone of This Here Fine Blog, but you asked me and I therefore hereby Cry Out in Pain as I reluctantly type:

    If it Floats, Flies, or @#$&s, Lease It!

    You’re welcome.

    Some years back had occasion to spend a week visiting an office on a converted shipping wharf in Sydney. Massively gentrified with restaurants, software companies, and boutique fund management companies. One of the selling points was they could moor their yachts along three sides of the thing. And the multi-level converted warehouse running the length of it had ample parking for their Maseratis. Epiphany. Realised I’d picked the wrong career.

  7. Here is a new show: Breaking Points

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAPsHAz1O6I

    Krystal and Saagar are two young journalists that have left The Hill and formed their own podcast. It’s getting a really big volume of followers (much more than CNN / MSNBC, etc) because they are picking apart the issues that are left under the bed by legacy media on all sides.

    They each have their differing views but are (gasp) able to carry on a conversational debate on the differing perspectives in a congenial and informative fashion. Here is a short ~10 minute episode on the recent Facebook decision to extend Donald Trump’s ban on the platform. I predict this is going to be very successful.

  8. Ha! I must be slow, Zaphod. I thought I got it on the first read, but it only sunk in a minute later. Alliteration.

  9. @Aggie,

    Looks like Controlled Oppo to me.

    If it was actual Oppo Oppo wouldn’t have 319K Subscribers, would be shadow-banned or banned outright.

    Now I wonder did they do a piece on Marjorie Taylor Greene being forced to go grovel and beg for forgiveness at the Holocaust Museum because she dared to make the wrong comparison when complaining about mask wearing?

    https://edition.cnn.com/2021/06/14/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-holocaust-museum-apology/index.html

    Nope. Crickets. Wow… Edgy, Man.

    Give the Peons a bit of Red Meat, but not too much.

    Also, if there is a White Woman and POC Mystery Male heading it up that’s part of the Message, too.

  10. @TommyJay:

    Still, you can be sure that this very day, somewhere, an optimistic Fund Manager is getting married for the third or fourth time.

  11. Some years back had occasion to spend a week visiting an office on a converted shipping wharf in Sydney. Massively gentrified with restaurants, software companies, and boutique fund management companies. One of the selling points was they could moor their yachts along three sides of the thing.

    Zaphod:

    I imagine you’ve heard of this evergreen classic:
    _______________________________________________

    Six decades ago, Fred Schwed wrote a book called “Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?” The title came from a story about a visitor in New York more than a century ago. After admiring yachts Wall Street bought with money earned giving financial advice to customers, he wondered where the customers’ yachts were. Of course, there were none. There is far more money in providing financial advice than there is in receiving financial advice.

    –“Where Are the Customers’ Yachts?: or A Good Hard Look at Wall Street”
    https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/21/where-are-the-customers-yachts.aspx

  12. TommyJay:

    A month ago I discovered a new friend is a convicted murderer, only a year out of prison. I googled him to find if he worked with some celebrities I knew of. Big surprise.

    I like him. He’s smart, artistic, kind, going to church, and living a constructive life. I won’t tell anyone. But geez…

    Of course, I’m not considering him as a romantic companion.

  13. @Huxley:

    A classic book and doubtless there will be a need for its message until heat death of the Universe rolls around.

    ‘OPM’ (Other People’s Money) used to be a popular term. Haven’t heard it so much these days because brutal cynical honesty has become less safe in the age of iDevices and Permanent Social Media Records. Rapacious Scumbags today are very sincere and other-directed in the manner in which they go about their rapacity.

  14. TommyJay:

    Missed your ref to “Yachts” … Sometimes happens when I dart to the bottom of a topic and back up.

  15. Re: Charles Murray…

    Zaphod:

    I looked up the review in the “Harvard Crimson” which was, needless to say, negative with the usual broad smears.

    https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/10/19/charles-murray-speaks-gov-50/

    The comments were much more to the point and took the Harvard faculty to task. As with so many other woke pontifications about anti-racism, 1619, Wuhan flu, transgender, 2020 election, 1/6 insurrection, I think the citizenry are still keeping their heads down, but not buying the elite wisdom.

  16. @Zaphod “Looks like Controlled Oppo to me.

    If it was actual Oppo Oppo wouldn’t have 319K Subscribers, would be shadow-banned or banned outright.

    Hmm…..OK then, pure fakery, because you say so. They spent 3 hours discussing their phenomenon with Joe Rogan today, but you follow your excellent instincts. I’ll think I’ll at least watch a few more segments, and hopefully catch the Rogan show.

  17. This is very interesting. As soon as I mention a particular over-prescribed drug starting with O, I can’t comment.

    @Neo Don’t you find that interesting?

  18. Test. Let’s see if I can type Fentanyl here?

    Well that’s very interesting indeed. I can type this word… but if I type the O..n word my post doesn’t happen.

    Curious.

  19. I was suggesting to Aggie that he write off and ask his brave new Rogan Stars (How do you get on Rogan if you’re a Real Dissident? I don’t think Spotify would be having any of that.) to do a feature on the O..n Scourge in Rust Belt American.

    As soon as typed that offending O-word, my post was censored and gone.

    Just fascinating that a pharmaceutical brand name would do this.

  20. I reckon if I typed out the S..r family name word of O..n Infamy, my post would get zapped too. Don’t want risk getting auto-blocked from posting here, so won’t do it. But if anyone else wants to give it a try, please go ahead and let know.

    Obviously Fentanyl is OK because Fentanyl is Chinese.

    Anyway… I just want to say that The Democrats are the Real Racists and Make America Great Again and Dinesh is a Mensch. There is no Glitch in the Matrix. Look! Ponies! On Rogan!

    (small voice) Am I OK now?

  21. @geoffb:

    It’s as if a Speeding Dos Passos crashed into the back of a busload of creative writing students headed home from a trip to the 1964 World’s Fair.

  22. Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch:

    https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law-and-crime/article/3137588/hong-kong-national-security-law-apple-daily-chief

    Comments are worth reading to see what a curated comments feed looks like 😛

    There’s a lesson here:

    1) First they gradually make you very angry through making your vote not count and feeding you Shit Sandwiches and solemnly informing you that you’re getting Caviar and should be Grateful.

    2) When you finally lose it (e.g. Jan 6) because there is nothing else left to do, the full Moralizing (note I did not say Moral) Power of the State and its organs comes down on you like a ton of bricks.

    3) Then an impression is created of everybody else piling on in righteous anger and outrage.

    Jan 6 was just a small taste of this.

    FWIW, Apple Daily is a raucous scandal sheet, but it’s all the Man in the Street has had speaking for him for many years now. Doubt it will see out the year.

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