Trying to Watch the Silo TV Show

I tried to watch an episode of the TV show Silo, but it was unbearable. First, the Apple TV logo is onscreen all the time. Second, it is written for those for those with an interracial porn fetish. A Black man has a lot of sex with a White woman.

People in the future live underground, and are afraid to go outside or learn about their past. Somehow they have food, electricity, and computer technology. It makes little sense.

The storyline is that the silo is one of dozens that were built centuries earlier, and covered with poison so that anyone who leaves will die. If they ever figure it out, they can just put on a protective suit and walk to a paradise on the rest of Earth.

The show gets very good reviews. It is based on books that were very successfully self-published.

I don't know if the author intended the weird racial stuff, but he sure is a religion hater:

If it’s true that violence would erupt if we pushed Christianity to the side, then it means we are living among an ISIS-like group of crazy people who only remain calm because we go along with their fantasies. We are in thrall to this minority of hardcore true believers. We are their intellectual captors.

Yes, violence would erupt if Christianity were outlawed, as that would be an extreme deprivation of civil liberties. No, we are not like ISIS.

Monotheistic religions are necessarily violent. They begin with a claim that there is only one god, which leaves little room for other beliefs. Look at the first four Christian commandments:

You shall have no other gods before Me.
You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything.
You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.

Wow, he is mixed up. Those are the first four Jewish commandments, not Christian. I wonder if his silo is some weirdo religious metaphor.

When you look back at the course of human history, it is one of moral progress. Our spheres of empathy keep expanding, wrapping around larger segments of the population, and more recently to non-human members of the population. Animal rights and environmental protections were fringe concerns in my lifetime; now they are mainstream. Looking back, we can see how many white populations of immigrants were considered terrible minorities to other established whites (the Irish, for instance). Our hate keeps narrowing while our love expands, however haltingly this progress seems.

The same subset of people seem to be on the wrong side of history on many issues, all having to do with an inability to expand spheres of empathy.

He says this while expressing hatred for all the billions of theists in the world. No, that is now moral progress. He was born in 1975, so environmental protection was never a fringe concern in his lifetime. The USA EPA was established in 1970.

Netflix also has a lot of interracial sex fetish programming.

I once thought that Netflix's competitive advantage was that it knows its audience better than anyone, and can make custom recommendations. But that is plainly false. I have watched a lot of shows on Netflix, and it continues to recommend garbage in genres that I dislike and do not watch. It is difficult to find shows that I do like.

The Trouble With Reparations for Redlining

Jason L. Riley writes in the WSJ:

. Research by economists William J. Collins and Robert A. Margo shows that between 1940 and 1980, homeownership rates climbed by 37 percentage points for blacks and by 34 points for whites. If homeownership builds wealth, this was a period of extraordinary gains for blacks.

But there is a more fundamental problem with linking reparations to past redlining policies. While a higher percentage of the black population lived in redlined areas, most residents of neighborhoods where the FHA refused to insure mortgages weren’t black, according to a 2021 National Bureau of Economic Research study by Price V. Fishback, Jessica LaVoice, Allison Shertzer and Randall Walsh. “In our sample, over 95 percent of black homeowners lived in the lowest-rated ‘D’ zones,” they found. “Yet, the vast majority (92 percent) of the total redlined home-owning population was white.” If being a victim of redlining is a qualification for reparations, what is the argument for excluding whites?

Regardless of this, it is pretty crezy to argue that Whites are somehow to blame for Blacks having low real estate values. It is just the opposite. Blacks drive down real estate values.

Redlining has been illegal for decades, but it turns out that using AI race-neutral objective algorithms gives similar results:

In the 1930s, Chicago was known for the discriminatory practice of “redlining,” in which the creditworthiness of properties was heavily determined by the racial demographics of a given neighborhood.

“There would be a giant map on the wall of all the districts in Chicago, and they would draw red lines through all of the districts that were primarily African American, and not give them loans,” she added.

“Fast forward a few decades later, and you are developing algorithms to determine the riskiness of different districts and individuals. And while you may not include the data point of someone’s race, it is implicitly picked up.”

The banks do not care about race. THey just their loans to be repaid.

Blessings of Liberty for Our Posterity

The US Constitution begins:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Who is the Posterity? Does it include immigrants? Vox Day says no.

The question is this: how do we determine which of the three definitions of posterity should correctly apply to the term “posterity” as it is used in “ourselves and our posterity”? The answer, as I previously suggested, is straightforward. To understand how the term was meant to be understood in the Preamble, we must look at how the same people using it were using it in their other writings. Fortunately, there are more than a few mentions of “posterity” in both the Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers which are discussing the very constitution in question. There are seven instances in the Federalist Papers.

Here is Webster's 1828 definition:

1. Descendants; children, children's children, etc. indefinitely; the race that proceeds from a progenitor. The whole human race are the posterity of Adam.

2. In a general sense, succeeding generations; opposed to ancestors.

Immigrants might qualify under definition 2, but not 1. Vox Day makes a good argument that definition 1 is correct.

You might think that only White supremacists would argue that America was founded to benefit Whites. Actually a lot of others argue it also, such as the NY Times in The 1619 Project.

They are Coming for your Children

The NY Post reports:

At New York’s annual Drag March on Friday, activists chanted “we’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”

It’s shocking. But not new. In recent years, such blunt, outrageous rhetoric from the gay left has become pretty familiar.

Two years ago, the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus released a YouTube video in which 81 of its members sang a song with the refrain: “We’ll convert your children / Happens bit by bit. / Quietly and subtly. / You will barely notice it.”

CBS News reports:

The community came out in numbers Tuesday night with signs and flags to support trans youth and speak out against against a proposal in the Marlboro School District.

The policy in question would make it a requirement for teachers to notify parents if their K-8 students identify as transgender.

"A lot of kids are scared they're not in a safe environment to come out," resident Cali Trainor said.

The school board is calling it a "family-centered approach," saying parental involvement is needed because of the age of the students involved. Parents in support of the proposal say they deserve to know what is going on with their children.

"People here tonight spoke of increasing suicide rates and all the emotions, social, and mental distress that comes along with gender dysphoria and something like that should never be kept from a parent," one parent said.

Under the policy, a parent that disagrees with their child wanting to change pronouns would meet with the student and a school administrator to determine next steps.

The New Jersey governor is firmly against informing parents:

Some say this idea will not only rob trans individuals of their right to privacy, but also shatter the trust between teachers and students. Gov. Phil Murphy addressed the topic Tuesday night.

"We will be vigilant to the max in fighting back," Murphy said.

Trans allies say this proposal is solely focused on exposing trans children, and no one else that identifies as gay, bisexual, or otherwise.

Teachers betray our trust if they keep any secrets from parents, or encourage any behavior to the disapproval of the parents. Schools should not be endorsing behavior that is "gay, bisexual, or otherwise." I would also object if the schools were covering up heterosexual activities. The kids are not even old enough to legally do any of those things.

Boy is Criminally Charged for Drawing Hitler

The NY Post reports:

A Jewish middle school teacher in Massachusetts has resigned after facing antisemitic harassment by a 12-year-old student – who allegedly made Nazi jokes and sent him a drawing of Adolf Hitler. ...

The child is now facing a misdemeanor charge of criminal harassment.

When Robblee tried to quiet his students one day, the boy began spewing homophobic slurs, so the teacher removed him from class, Insider reported. ...

The Berkshire District Attorney’s Office said in a statement to The Eagle that it was working with the Anti-Defamation League and Jewish Federation of the Berkshires to determine how to prevent similar incidents in the future.

This story is strange. How did it get to a teacher getting a 12yo boy criminally charged with a misdemeanor?

Was this teacher spreading gay Jewish propaganda to his students?

Why is the DA consulting Jewish political group on what to do with a 12yo non-Jew?

It sounds like this story:

A 16-year-old boy from Mersina in southern Turkey was arrested and taken to prison on Wednesday for drawing a "Hitler" moustache on a campaign poster of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, some media close to the opposition are reporting.

Erdogan is an authoritarian ruler who does not like kids making fun of him. Jews don't like it either, but how did they get Erdogan's power to arrest enemies?

Gender identity is not real

To be fully tolerant and inclusives, there are an increasing number of eccentricities to accept.

There are same-sex orientations, and opposite sex gender identities. And many more you might not have heard of.

There are otherkin, who identify as non-human. Not to be confused with furries, who have a fursona. There are unusual religions. There are people who claim to have been abducted by space aliens. There are unusual gender identities, such as xenogender.

There is no proof that any of this is real. They are just delusions, or fantasies, or role-playing games. It is hard to tell which.

This nonsense is leaking into the federal courts, and a judge just ruled:

The elephant in the room should be noted at the outset. Gender identity is real. The record makes this clear. The defendants, speaking through their attorney, have admitted it. At least one defense expert also has admitted it. ...

Despite the defense admissions, there are those who believe that cisgender individuals properly adhere to their natal sex and that transgender individuals have inappropriately chosen a contrary gender identity, male or female, just as one might choose whether to read Shakespeare or Grisham. ...

Still, an unspoken suggestion running just below the surface in some of the proceedings that led to adoption of the rule and statute at issue — and just below the surface in the testimony of some of the defense experts and AHCA consultants — is that transgender identity is not real, that it is made up.7 And so, for example, one of the defendants’ experts, Dr. Paul Hruz, joined an amicus brief in another proceeding asserting transgender individuals have only a “false belief” in their gender identity — that they are maintaining a “charade” or “delusion.”8

An AHCA consultant, Dr. Patrick Lappert — a surgeon who has never performed genderaffirming surgery — said in a radio interview that gender-affirming care is a “lie,” a “moral violation,” a “huge evil,” and “diabolical.”9 State employees or consultants suggested treatment of transgender individuals is either a “woke idea” or profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry or doctors.10

Any proponent of the challenged rule and statute should put up or shut up: do you acknowledge that there are individuals with actual gender identities opposite their natal sex, or do you not? Dog whistles ought not be tolerated.

That is his whole argument that gender identity is real. An admission by an expert witness, and mocking a surgeon who has never performed gender-affirming surgery.

Both sides of this lawsuit agree that gender dysphoria is a mental illness. The question is whether the state is obligated by the constitution to pay for bizarre and controversial treatments.

I do not even understand what this judge means by saying that gender dysphoria is real. Is it like saying that schizophrenia is real? If it is real, what is it? Is it any more real than furry personas?

If somebody could really be a woman trapped in a man's body, maybe it would show up on brain scans or psychological tests. Nothing like that has been found.

Gender identity is not real.

Few dare say that, because transgender creeps will try to cancel anyone who does. If it were real, there would be some way to measure it, other than some silly judge bragging about a court witness making an admission against his client's interests.

AI Will Save The World

Marc Andreessen rejects the AI scare stories, and writes:

The most validated core conclusion of social science across many decades and thousands of studies is that human intelligence makes a very broad range of life outcomes better. Smarter people have better outcomes in almost every domain of activity: academic achievement, job performance, occupational status, income, creativity, physical health, longevity, learning new skills, managing complex tasks, leadership, entrepreneurial success, conflict resolution, reading comprehension, financial decision making, understanding others’ perspectives, creative arts, parenting outcomes, and life satisfaction.

Further, human intelligence is the lever that we have used for millennia to create the world we live in today: science, technology, math, physics, chemistry, medicine, energy, construction, transportation, communication, art, music, culture, philosophy, ethics, morality. Without the application of intelligence on all these domains, we would all still be living in mud huts, scratching out a meager existence of subsistence farming. Instead we have used our intelligence to raise our standard of living on the order of 10,000X over the last 4,000 years.

What AI offers us is the opportunity to profoundly augment human intelligence to make all of these outcomes of intelligence – and many others, from the creation of new medicines to ways to solve climate change to technologies to reach the stars – much, much better from here.

He is correct that intelligence is beneficial on many levels. This fact is not appreciated by low IQ folks. They do not comprehend high IQ.

If AI becomes like IQ 200 or 300, I don't think anyone understand what to expect. We will not even realize we are being outsmarted.

In the mean time, AI like GPT-4 will be a huge boon to mankind. There are many good and useful things it can do.

People with higher IQ do have measurably better life outcomes, but only up to an IQ of 130 or so. Beyond that, smart people have trouble making friends, tolerating fools, and conforming to social expectations. Maybe a super-smart AI will not be so powerful either.

Black Lives Matter Killed Blacks

Steve Sailer gave a speech, largely on racial racial and other awkward facts that we are not supposed to notice. Black deaths went way up in 2020, but it was not from covid. He uses charts like the above to show that George Floyd and BLM, more than anything else.

How the Titanic Sub was Lost

The submersible looking for the Titanic appears to be lost. Here is some info on the company:

OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who went missing aboard his Titan submersible vessel along with four other passengers on Sunday, told an interviewer he didn't want to hire a bunch of "50-year-old white guys" like other submarine companies because he wanted his team to be "inspirational." ...

Former OceanGate director of marine operations David Lochridge -- one of those "50-year-old white guys" Rush wanted to avoid hiring for not being "inspirational" enough -- was fired by Rush in 2018 after he reportedly blew the whistle on OceanGate by raising safety concerns over their first-of-a-kind carbon fiber hull and other systems. ...

TechCrunch reported "the lawsuit was settled in November 2018" and "neither OceanGate nor Lochridge responded to requests for comment."

Not Good. We will still learn more. Testing appears to have been inadequate.

Your Politics, written in your Face

PsyPost reports:

A new study in Denmark used machine learning techniques on photographs of faces of Danish politicians to predict whether their political ideology is left- or right-wing. The accuracy of predictions was 61%. Faces of right-wing politicians were more likely to have happy and less likely to have neutral facial expressions. Women with attractive faces were more likely to be right-wing, while women whose faces showed contempt were more likely to be left-wing. The study was published in Scientific Reports.

Wikipedia explains:

Physiognomy (from the Greek φύσις, 'physis', meaning "nature", and 'gnomon', meaning "judge" or "interpreter") is the practice of assessing a person's character or personality from their outer appearance—especially the face. ...

Physiognomy as a practice meets the contemporary definition of pseudoscience[1][2][3] and it is so regarded among academic circles because of its unsupported claims; popular belief in the practice of physiognomy is nonetheless still widespread and modern advances in artificial intelligence have sparked renewed interest in the field of study. The practice was well-accepted by ancient Greek philosophers, but fell into disrepute in the Middle Ages while practised by vagabonds and mountebanks. ...

Due to its legacy of racism and junk science masquerading as criminology, the scientific study or even discussing the relationship between facial features and character have become taboo. However, science has uncovered many links between character and facial appearance.

One of the reasons AI is considered dangerous is face recognition. It does not just figure out your name and address. AI estimates your moral worth as a human being.

For a century, mainstream scientists have been able to tell everyone that physiogonomy is bogus. Now they will have to suppress AI.

Update: Yuval Noah Harari, the weirdo Israeli Sapiens author, says that AI could have identified him as gay before he knew himself.

Your Ethnic History is being Erased

The London Telegraph reports:

Cambridge is teaching students that Anglo-Saxons did not exist as a distinct ethnic group as part of efforts to undermine “myths of nationalism”.

Britain’s early medieval history is taught by the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, but the terms within its own title are being addressed as part of efforts to make teaching more “anti-racist”.

Its teaching aims to “dismantle the basis of myths of nationalism” by explaining that the Anglo-Saxons were not a distinct ethnic group, according to information from the department.

The department’s approach also aims to show that there were never “coherent” Scottish, Irish and Welsh ethnic identities with ancient roots.

The increased focus on anti-racism comes amid a broader debate over the continued use of terms like “Anglo-Saxon”, with some in academia alleging that the ethnonym is used to support “racist” ideas of a native English identity.

The West’s proxy war with Russia

Nearly all the Western news about the Ukraine War is anti-Russia, so it is useful to hear the Russian view.

RT reports:

By the time the conflict in Ukraine is resolved, Kiev will have accepted the loss of its former territories, and Western-led globalization will be dead, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told RT Arabic on Friday.

Speaking on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, Lavrov described the West’s proxy war with Russia as “a geopolitical conflict,” in which the US was attempting to eliminate a powerful competitor and “preserve its hegemonic position by all means.”

“The attempt is futile, and we all know this,” Lavrov stated, adding that Ukraine and its backers will be forced to accept new “concrete realities” before a ceasefire is reached.

Firstly, Kiev must accept that any potential peace agreement will need to take into account the loss of the Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye Regions, which voted to join the Russian Federation last year. Before sending its military into Ukraine, Moscow offered more generous terms, and Lavrov warned on Friday that “the longer they put off talks, the more difficult it will be for them to reach an agreement with us.”

I think it is correct to say that the West is waging a proxy war against Russia, and that it is a geopolitical conflict. The West has decided to destroy Ukraine for the sake of weakening Russia. I do not think it is going to work.

The NY Times reports:

A dam in Ukraine was designed to withstand almost any attack imaginable — from the outside. The evidence suggests Russia blew it up from within. ...

Deep inside the dam was an Achilles’ heel. And because the dam was built during Soviet times, Moscow had every page of the engineering drawings and knew where it was. ...

This has led to suggestions that the dam may have merely fallen victim to the accumulated damage, which Russia has seized on to deny responsibility.

But multiple lines of evidence reviewed by The New York Times, from original engineering plans to interviews with engineers who study dam failures, support a different explanation: that the collapse of the dam was no accident. The catastrophic failure of its underlying concrete foundation was very unlikely to occur on its own.

I find this unconvincing. Okay, Russia had the engineering drawings. But apparently the NY Times does also, so I suspect that Ukraine did also. Both Russia and Ukraine knew how to destroy the dam.

I do not know why Russia would destroy it, and it seemed more likely to me that Ukraine did. I cannot trust either side to tell the truth. And I cannot trust the American govt or the NY Times.

The NY Times tried to convince us that the Russians blew up the Nord Stream pipelines. Now it says Ukrainians did it. The USA govt surely knows, but refuses to tell us.

Jewish Rabbi finds Gender Fluidity Everywhere

Slate, a typical leftist site, reports:

Rabbi Daniel Bogard cuts a distinctive figure when he walks into the Missouri state Legislature. He’s usually wearing a yarmulke. And he’s always got something to say. He’s testified in favor of gun control and abortion rights, but over the past couple of years, his primary focus has been trying to block legislation targeting trans kids. This is important to the rabbi because one of his three kids is trans. ...

“There’s been a real change over the years,” he said. “Early on, the legislators would sit up when I would start talking. And over these three, four, or five years, it’s been wild watching them become antisemitic before our eyes as they’ve realized just how progressive the Jewish community is, particularly when it comes to issues like trans kids and abortion.”

When Rabbi Daniel mentions antisemitism here, one of the things he’s talking about is the assumption many Missouri legislators seem to be making that there is an underlying religious case against trans people. As the leader of a Jewish congregation, Rabbi Daniel looks at the Bible and sees evidence of gender fluidity everywhere. To him, implying otherwise amounts to a rejection not just of his trans kid, but his belief system.

There are a lot of Orthodox Jews who are firmly against transgenderism and abortion. But among the politically active Jews, he is right that they are extreme Leftists. They will sell out their own kids if it helps undermine Christianity. He is raising his 9-year-old girl as a boy.

Yes, there is a religious case against transgenderism. This Rabbi is not even religious, as Christians understand the term. Here he argues based on what ancient rabbis taught:

There have always been trans people. There will always be trans people. It’s just another way of being human. And so when you look closely at Jewish history and Jewish texts, there have always been trans Jews, and there have always been texts about trans Jews. The early rabbis living 2,000 years ago or so look around, and it’s just self-evident to them that there are more than two biological genders. They describe six, seven, eight in the Mishnah — again, this is an 1,800-year-old text we’re talking about. The normative Jewish understanding of the Adam and Eve story is not that Eve was a rib, but that the first human being, Adam (“earth being”) — the word kind of means “mud being” — was created back-to-back with male and female characteristics, which is to say that Jewish mythology says that the first human being was a nonbinary intersex person and that this Adam was only split in half later and turned into Adam and Eve as gendered beings.

Christians would say that if God created two sexes out of a mud being, then we should accept that, and not try to change back to what ancient rabbis thought was self-evident.

So what were you hearing people say that got you so riled up?

They bring in fake doctors who say terrible things about how being trans is a mental illness. ... My kid isn’t mentally ill. My kid is a really well-adjusted child. And he always has been.

His daughter suffers gender dysphoria. Probably caused by mentally ill parents. It is the transgender community that very much wants it to be labeled a mental illness, because they want medical insurance to pay for surgeries, drugs, and psychotherapies. Jews are big believers in such nonsense. She will be in therapy the rest of her life.

Jews seek ethnic cohesion by telling Holocaust scare stories. Sure enough, he compare laws on two biological sexes to the Jewish Holocaust:

Yeah, this is not the Holocaust, what is happening. Very clearly, thank God. And I hope we don’t get anywhere like that. But I certainly understand the Holocaust. And I understand Germany in the late ’20s, early ’30s in a way that I never thought I would, because I see it. I see the way that fear and disgust and misinformation about a tiny, vulnerable minority can be weaponized by a political minority to hold on to power.

He goes on to explain that he started a camp for trans kids, so that they could swim with other trans kids without being embarrassed about wearing a wrong-sex swim suit.

This is really sick. I post this to point out the Jewish thinking behind a lot of transgenderism.

What does the Progressive Pride Flag Mean?

There are a lot of Pride flags in use. The most common I see used to be the rainbow flag, but now I see more of the Progressive Pride flag, shown above. What does it mean?

The people promoting it obviously believe that they are sending a very important message, but what is it?

The UK BBC explains:

Over the years the original rainbow flag has been redesigned, with some within LGBTQ+ movements arguing it needed to better represent and reflect more communities.

In 2017, Philadelphia's Office of LGBT Affairs added black and brown stripes to the Pride flag to recognise people of colour.

One year later, an artist called Daniel Quasar released a redesign of the Pride flag, called the Progress Pride flag, which was widely shared on social media.

It included black, brown, pink, pale blue and white stripes, to represent marginalised people of colour in the LGBTQ+ community, as well as the trans community, and those living with HIV/AIDS.

"The arrow points to the right to show forward movement, while being along the left edge shows that progress still needs to be made." explained Daniel Quasar.

There are a couple of important points here. First, the rainbow flag must not have represented everyone. I thought that is was supposed to be all colors for everyone, but obviously not.

Second, the white is not for White people. Black and brown colors are for Black and brown people, but Whites are pointedly omitted, Normal folks with cis-gender preferences are also omitted.

Third, the whole idea is LGBTQ+ forcing their progressive ideas and beliefs on everyone else.

When and empire conquers new territory, the first thing they do is to plant their flag to show everyone that they have been subjugated.

That is why we have Progressive Pride flags all over the place. It is to demonstrate to White heterosexaual cis-gender Christians that they are being subjugated. It looks like an arrow from the left because leftist queers are taking over.

If you don't believe it, just read what they say. What else would it be? The flag does not stand for inclusiveness, as normal Whites were deliberately excluded from it. It does not stand for tolerance or acceptance, as it symbolizes progressive change. It is about an ideology being forced on you.

People can display whatever they want in areas where they have free speech, but why is this flag now in public schools, libraries, and government buildings? It would be better to have MAGA Trump flags.

And no, most people do not support this nonsense. The trend is against transgenderism:

A new Gallup poll out Monday reveals an overwhelming majority of Americans believe biological sex should define participation in athletic competition. Sixty-nine percent of the 1,011 adults surveyed between May 1-24 said athletes should only be allowed to compete on teams that match their birth gender, up from 62 percent just two years ago. Even 64 percent of participants who reported knowing a transgender person said sports leagues should be segregated based on sex.

Another 55 percent of Americans told Gallup that it is “morally wrong” for individuals to attempt a gender transition, up from 51 percent in 2021.

One city is standing up to the flag:

On Tuesday, Hamtramck, Michigan's city council, unanimously voted to ban Pride flags from being displayed on public property. Located just outside Detroit, Hamtramck is the only Muslim-majority town in the United States. ...

Hassan argued that allowing Pride flags to be flown on public property could lead down a slippery slope that ends with white supremacist and neo-Naxi groups asking for the same opportunity.

I agree with that. If anti-white Pride flags are shown on public property, then White supremacist flags should also be allowed. It is embarrassing that we have to depend on Moslems to defend traditional morals.

The trans activists have turned out to be the most narrow-minded. See this long Wash. Post article complaining that the NY Times sometimes publishes both sides of a transgender issue. Or how gender activists got a scientific paper retracted, because they did not like some of the data. Even the supposedly conservative Fox News is fully onboard with the trans agenda.

Here is an example of a government building in a conservative state flying the flag. It is higher and much larger than the USA flag.

Canceled for being Set in Siberia

From the Hollywood Reporter:

Author and journalist Elizabeth Gilbert said Monday she is pulling her next book from the release calendar after facing backlash over its setting in Russia.

Gilbert — the author of the 2006 best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love (which was adapted into a popular 2010 film of the same name) — says that the novel The Snow Forest, which was set to be released in February 2024, will not be published as planned after she received criticism from Ukrainians angry about the setting.

She was not canceled for being a narcissistic psychopath, as she revealed in the 2015 NY Times essay:

It started with a boy I met at summer camp and ended with the man for whom I left my first husband. In between, I careened from one intimate entanglement to the next — dozens of them — without so much as a day off between romances. You might have called me a serial monogamist, except that I was never exactly monogamous. Relationships overlapped, and those overlaps were always marked by exhausting theatricality: sobbing arguments, shaming confrontations, broken hearts. Still, I kept doing it. I couldn’t not do it.

I can’t say that I was always looking for a better man. I often traded good men for bad ones; character didn’t much matter to me. I wasn’t exactly seeking love, either, regardless of what I might have claimed. I can’t even say it was the sex. Sex was just the gateway drug for me, a portal to the much higher high I was really after, which was seduction.

Seduction is the art of coercing somebody to desire you, of orchestrating somebody else’s longings to suit your own hungry agenda. Seduction was never a casual sport for me; it was more like a heist, adrenalizing and urgent. I would plan the heist for months, scouting out the target, looking for unguarded entries. Then I would break into his deepest vault, steal all his emotional currency and spend it on myself.

If the man was already involved in a committed relationship, I knew that I didn’t need to be prettier or better than his existing girlfriend; I just needed to be different.

Her book and movie were wildly popular. They were educational for people who didn't know that women think that way.

Also garbage was the work of this novelist who just died:

Cormac McCarthy has departed into the Big Retirement, leaving behind a body of words that rate him admittance into the pantheon of prose alongside such literary titans as Homer, Cervantes, Melville and Joyce.

No, nothing he wrote was worth reading.

Starbucks Ordered to pay $25 Million

Remember the Starbucks racial incident? The company is still paying for it:

A former regional manager for Starbucks was awarded $25.6 million on Monday after a federal jury in New Jersey unanimously found that she had been fired because of her race. Shannon Phillips, who is white, received $25 million in punitive damages and $600,000 in compensatory damages. She is reportedly seeking further compensation for lost wages.

Phillips was terminated in 2018 in response to backlash against Starbucks after two black men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were arrested while waiting for a business associate at one of the many Philadelphia locations she oversaw. Employees at the Center City Philadelphia cafe called the police on the pair after they asked to use the washroom but hadn't ordered anything.

I think they were following company policy by calling police on someone who refuses to either buy something or leave. Now you can loiter in Starbucks all you want, without buying anything. Not sure if you can use the washroom.

Charges against Trump are Entirely Bogus

I see the NY Times Wordle of the day is CRIME. Ha ha.

This prosecution of Donald Trump is bogus, for the following reasons.

The Presidential Records Act lets him take papers. He is not accused of violating that law.

The charges are that he violated the 1917 Espionage Act. That law says nothing about classified documents. The press and DoJ keep talking about the documents having classified markings, but that does not matter to the 1917 law.

That law applies to people stealing documents and giving them to foreign military powers. Nothing like that is even alleged.

The supposed smoking gun is him telling his attorney: "Well what if we, what happens if we don't respond at all or don't play ball with them?". It is Trump's constitutional right to get confidential legal advice from his attorney, and asking questions like that cannot be held against him.

The other smoking gun is Trump saying: “As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t.” That is simply a statement of the law, as everyone agrees. It does not have any bearing on his lawyers' arguments that he constructively declassified it by taking it out of the White House, or that he had a privilege to take it.

The prosecution is entirely political. Pres. Biden and AG Garland ordered it in order to stop his 2024 campaign. Many others have similarly taken papers and not been prosecuted. Biden's spokeswoman today did not deny that Biden personally signed off on the prosecution.

PBS TV is partisan, and never presents issues fairly. It rarely gives Trump's side of anything. Yesterday, in a rare move, it showed a clip of Trump defending himself against the charges, and showed this disclaimer on the bottom of the screen:

EXPERTS WARN THAT INFLAMMATORY RHETORIC FROM ELECTED OFFICIALS OR PEOPLE IN POWER CAN PROMPT INDIVIDUAL ACTORS TO COMMIT ACTS OF VIOLENCE.

Everyone who says this is a legitimate indictment is lying to you.

Gay Birdwatcher Remembers Emmett Till

NPR Radio Fresh Air interview:

The man, Christian Cooper, has written a new memoir and is my guest. One chapter is devoted to the Central Park incident. The rest of the book is about growing up as an outsider and how he turned that to his advantage. Growing up in the '70s, he was a young Black birdwatcher in a world of white birdwatchers, a closeted gay boy and a Marvel comic book nerd before that was considered cool. While at Harvard, he came out and then became a gay activist. He was one of the first openly gay writers and editors at Marvel and created what he thinks was Marvel's first lesbian character and was in on the creation of Marvel's first openly gay male character....

Up until then, it had been the second-oldest story in the Ramble, which is dog owner versus birdwatcher. But now, suddenly, it had a racial dimension because it took us to a place where a white woman is saying, a Black man is putting my life in danger. And that has led to so many dark places in our nation's history, you know, most famously, Emmett Till, the lynchings in the South, so many instances of a white woman making a damsel-in-distress call and the full weight of the authorities coming down on, sometimes, entire Black communities as a result.

So he blames her for what happened to a Mississippi boy in 1955.

The show ends:

GROSS: Christian Cooper's new memoir is called "Better Living Through Birding: Notes From A Black Man In The Natural World." Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll talk about how the American Catholic Church, for about a century, relied on the profits from enslaving and selling Black people to fund the building of schools and churches, support its clergy and keep expanding. My guest will be Rachel Swarns, author of a new book about the Catholic Church's involvement in slavery and the families it enslaved. I hope you'll join us.

They have race hatred all the time, I guess.

The Problem with Female Leads

I agree with this video:

Why Modern Movies Suck - The Strong Female Character

One of the most tiresome tropes of the past ten years in moviemaking is the "Strong Female Character." Not women who are smart, capable, well written and complex, but bland, boring, superficially "strong" characters designed to pander to simplistic ideals of female empowerment.

A lot of new movies have female leads, but they are usually implausible and annoying.

The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, has just died in prison. Besides being a notorious terrorist, he was a brilliant thinker.

Objecting to Transgenderism is Child Abuse

California news:

An updated bill in California has introduced the inclusion of “affirming” a child’s sexual transition as a requirement for parental responsibility and child welfare. This means that failing to affirm transgenderism for a child would be considered abusive according to the proposed California State Family Code.

AB 957 successfully passed California’s State Assembly on May 3, and subsequently underwent amendments by a co-sponsor in California’s State Senate on June 6. The proposed amendment to Section 3011 of the Family Code outlines several factors that the court must consider when determining the best interests of the child in custody proceedings.

This addition suggests that a parent’s support and affirmation of their child’s self-identified gender would become a crucial factor in evaluating the child’s well-being in custody cases.

This bill proposes two changes to existing law. First, it states that if one parent objects to a name or gender marker change to affirm a minor’s gender identity, the court should strongly consider that affirming the minor’s gender identity is in the child’s best interest. This does not require the court to side with the objecting parent but adds it as a factor to consider.

Second, in child custody proceedings, the court would be required to consider a parent’s affirmation of their child’s gender identity when determining the best interest of the child. This bill does not uniquely impact parental rights and is in line with the court’s responsibility to make decisions based on the child’s best interest.

“When you say that gender affirmation is in the child’s best interest for health, safety, and welfare, it takes nothing to say [non-affirmation] is now abuse—because you’re not taking care of the health, safety, and welfare if you’re not affirming them,” said Erin Friday, a San Francisco attorney.

The proposed California bill that would charge parents who do not affirm transgenderism with child abuse has ignited a contentious debate.

This is really sick. Transgendering a child is child abuse. This is backwards, and a gross invasion of parental rights.

USA Today reports:

The Southern Poverty Law Center is for the first time labeling Florida-headquartered Moms for Liberty and 11 other right-wing “parents' rights” groups as extremist groups in its annual report, released Tuesday.

Moms for Liberty and the other organizations are being designated as “anti-government extremist groups,” based on longstanding criteria, explained the law center's Intelligence Project Director Susan Corke. Corke said the grassroots conservative groups are part of a new front in the battle against inclusivity in schools, though they are drawing from ideas rooted in age-old white supremacy.

If you are against castrating boys, then you are a White supremacist.

Federal Indictment of Donald Trump

US Attorney Jack Smith says to read the indictment:

I invite everyone to read it in full, to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.

Okay, I am reading it. The gravity is that the Biden DoJ is attempting to obstruct justice by using an indictment to wrongly smear a political opponent.

It says that it was illegal for Trump to take boxes of documents from the White House. So why is he just being charged now, 2.5 years later? Apparently none of the documents are particularly sensitive, except that one is embarrassing to Gen. Milley.

It quotes Trump as saying that he will protect classified info, in 2016. After leaving office, it quotes him as saying that he could have declassified the documents as President. Yes, that is the law. Apparently his legal position is that he did declassify them.

I will look for some more informed opinion, but this all seems rather trivial to me.

Update: I heard a couple of people say: Trump's main legal argument is that he constructively declassified the papers by taking them out of the White House on Jan. 20, 2021. But he contradicts that by saying that he could have declassified them as President.

I don't see the contradiction. Everyone agrees that he could have declassified the papers as President. So it is reasonable for him to say that. There is some disagreement about what he has to do to effect that declassification. I guess people are trying to say that because he did not make his strongest argument in a private conversation, he forfeits it. No, it does not work that way.

Example:

(CNN) Former President Donald Trump acknowledged on tape in a 2021 meeting that he had retained “secret” military information that he had not declassified, according to a transcript of the audio recording obtained by CNN.

“As president, I could have declassified, but now I can’t,” Trump says, according to the transcript.

No, this Trump statement does not imply that he had not declassified the info. He cannot declassify the info now, but it may have already been declassified.

Professor Disciplined for Explaining Testosterone

You would think that distinguished tenured medical professors would have the academic freedom to say that there are physiological differences between boys and girls. Apparently not.

The AFA announces:

The Academic Freedom Alliance (AFA) today sent a letter to the Mayo Clinic denouncing its treatment of Dr. Michael J. Joyner, a Mayo Clinic physiologist and Professor of Anesthesiology, over his comments to The New York Times about transgender athletes. Dr. Joyner’s comments, as well as later comments made to CNN about COVID that also led to reprimand from the Clinic, were related to his scholarly research and expertise and, as such, should be protected by principles of academic freedom and the Mayo Clinic’s own policies. The Clinic has nonetheless subjected Dr. Joyner to disciplinary action, including a one-week unpaid suspension, denial of any salary increase at his next contract renewal, and threat of termination.

Googling him shows that he has been quoted in the media on a variety of topics within his expertise, and here is the one that got him disciplined:

Michael J. Joyner, a doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., studies the physiology of male and female athletes. He sees in competitive swimming a petri dish. It is a century old, and the sexes follow similar practice and nutrition regimens.

Since prepubescent girls grow faster than boys, they have a competitive advantage early on. Puberty washes away that advantage. “You see the divergence immediately as the testosterone surges into the boys,” Dr. Joyner said. “There are dramatic differences in performances.”

Wow, this is not a political opinion at all. It is simply a factual medical explanation from an expert medical professor.

Remember this when you hear of some reputable medical organization endorsing trans ideology. Their members have no free speech.

A newspaper published a letter criticizing a public drag (ie, men dressed up as women) performance for children, and now apologizes:

Last week, Good Times ran an anonymous transphobic letter to the editor. It was an error to publish this letter, and was contrary to our long-held publication standards and tradition of supporting LGBTQIA+ rights. We apologize, unequivocally, to the community in general and to anyone in particular who was offended or hurt by its appearance. There is no place for hate speech in this community — or in these pages, period.

We have removed this letter from GT’s digital channels and have taken steps to ensure that future editions are more carefully reviewed to prevent a recurrence of this type of mistake.

We will be following up with LGBTQIA+ community members and leaders to discuss how Good Times can support a safer and more inclusive community. Our commitment to a conversation about values we share as a community and facilitating dialog in a journalistic context will continue.

Note how they say that they are committed to a conversation, right after saying that only expression of one political view will be tolerated.

The newspaper also apologized specifically for granting the request to be anonymous. Apparently it now thinks that it is good for the haters to cancel the letter writer for having politically incorrect opinions.

Update: Here is the depublished letter:

Letter to the Editor: Woke Up Call

[Editor’s note: In no way, does this letter reflect the opinion of Good Times] In honor of Mother’s Day, I am using my voice as a mother of five to strongly encourage individuals to think critically about introducing gender ideology to children. Business owners who have the audacity to hold events such as Drag Story Time should really read the room and think about the moral and societal implications of exposing vulnerable children to the use of pronouns, the idea that you can choose your gender, and cross-dressing giant overgrown makeup-covered men.

The Watsonville family center called Raíces y Cariño is holding a Drag Story Time on May 21 for all ages, and to encourage families to participate, it’s free, of course! Despite the moniker “children are resilient” that was thrown around the last three years regarding how much their lives were turned upside down, as a mother and as an adult working in healthcare, I can see very clearly how children are vulnerable, and we need to protect them.

The most disturbing trend in the last few years is the destruction of the innocence of childhood in an attempt to validate insecure and mentally ill adults.
—Anonymous

Wow. That was so offensive that heads rolled, and online copies were purged.

The Lesbian Seagull Hoax

The RadioLab podcast reports:

In the 1970s, as LGBTQ+ people in the United States faced conservatives whose top argument was that homosexuality is “unnatural,” a pair of young scientists discovered on a tiny island off the coast of California a colony of seagulls that included… a significant number of lesbian couples making nests and raising chicks together. The article that followed upended the culture’s understanding of what’s natural and took the discourse on homosexuality in a whole new direction.

In this episode, our co-Host Lulu Miller grapples with the impact of this and several other studies about animal queerness on her life as a queer person.

This podcast explains how this story was celebrated by queers all over the world, and published in the top AAAS Science journal, as proof that homosexuality was natural. Laws calling sodomy an unnatural act were proven wrong, by science.

It is very difficult to even tell the difference between the male and female seagulls. The male does not have a penis, or any outward physical difference. Maybe a human lesbian would prefer to avoid a penis, but the concept does not even apply to seagulls.

But then, towards the end of the episode, it reveals that the whole thing was a hoax. Scientists went back to the island, and there were no lesbian seagulls. The seagulls all mated in the opposite sex manner.

It is not clear whether the earlier Science journal paper had faked data, or merely misinterpreted a naturally-occurring sex imbalance. Possibly there was an excess of females. There were still having sexual relations with males, and laying eggs, but not finding enough males for pair bonding.

The poscast does not mention it, but there have been similar hoaxes involving penguins and other animals.

I do not think that we should be looking to animals for guidance on human behavior, so the whole story is misguided. I post this to explain that these stories are just pro-queer hoaxes.

Russians did not Destroy a Russian Dam

Tucker Carlson's first broadcast, as a free man on Twitter, says Ukraine blew up the dam.

Biden and Ukraine and NYT say Russia did it. The dam made a reservoir that supplied water to Crimea, and was under Russian control.

The claim that Russia did it seems as ridiculous as the claim that it blew up the Nord Stream pipelines.

Carlson also there is a report that a space alien aircraft has been found. I think he is trying to capture the conspiracy theory market.

How We Can Indentify Systemic Racism

There is no known reliable test for diagnosing Alzheimer Disease, nor is there a known cause. It is correlated with certain genes, so it could be genetic in many cases. Probably a subtled combination of genes and environment, like most things.

NPR Radio News reports:

MARTIN: Black Americans report similar experiences when they become caregivers to aging parents with Alzheimer's. African Americans are 40% more likely to develop Alzheimer's than white Americans, according to federal data. But all along the way, family members say they struggle to get adequate information, treatment and support from medical providers.

STAFFORD: What we found was that a lot of Black caregivers, they encounter the same things. You have providers who aren't listening to them. Even getting a simple diagnosis is hard. So not only are Black people more likely to have Alzheimer's, they are also less likely to be receiving equitable care that they need to take care of this disease.

MARTIN: How do we know that this is a systemic issue? Because as you certainly know that we live in a time when there are a lot of people who are just really reluctant to - and even hostile - about the idea that there is something called systemic racism. So what convinces you that this is something about the systems that people live in and under?

STAFFORD: The fact that there are decades worth of research, statistics, all of these things that have laid out clearly the role that structural racism plays in inequities. We also made an intentional effort to highlight the voices of doctors, historians, folks that have really been rooted in this work, to really lay clear why these disparities exist today. And one thing that they all were very keen on pointing out was this cannot be explained by genetics alone. There is nothing genetically wrong with Black people. But what we are seeing are the effects of socioeconomic conditions, social determinants and all of these things that manifest because of this legacy of structural racism.

Just to be clear, there are tests for dementia, but it can have many causes. Alzheimers can be a cause, but only an autopsy can determine for sure.

There you have the explanation of how we know it is systemic racism. We do not know much about Alzheimers, but somehow we know that Blacks get it more, that it cannot be genetics, and hence it must be systemic racism. There is a whole body of work from doctors, historians, and other folk leading to this conclusion.

Sweden Became a Gangster’s Paradise

Overseas news:

Between January and May 2023, Swedish police recorded on average one completed bomb detonation every two days. If you add the bombs that were in preparation, but not yet detonated, Sweden experienced one explosives-related crime per day. Rival gangs increasingly continue to target each other’s relatives with revenge attacks.

In early May 2023, National Police Commissioner Anders Thornberg stated that more than 1,000 people are initiated into criminal gangs across Sweden every year. ...

And after all of this only twenty percent of the populace is in favor of allowing firearms for self defense. ...

Unfortunately, Sweden’s fate at the hands of their Coloured “guests” was both predictable (I’ve been posting about it on fb since at least 2016!) and, to the surprise of no one reading this, self-inflicted—karma doesn’t have a menu, you get served what you deserve. ...

It isn’t native, white Swedes that are in these gangs. This is a wholly imported and self-inflicted problem. ...

The perplexing thing is that many modern Swedes are descended from ancestors of that warrior race the Vikings. But whatever it is that animated those warriors of old, the modern Swedes appear to lack.

The Future is Trans

Jeremy Boreing writes:

Twitter canceled a deal with @realdailywire to premiere What is a Woman? for free on the platform because of two instances of “misgendering.” ...

Specifically: In the film, a father refers to his 14-year-old daughter as “her,” and a store owner uses the “wrong” pronoun in a confrontation with a trans person.

From a Time magazine essay:

Trans people are not new. We have always been here. As long as there’s been recorded human history, we have always existed. But we have been written out of the human story ...

So there cannot be Black Lives Matter without the centering of Black trans women. Because if we’re able to secure the rights for the most marginalized, then everyone is going to have rights. What we’re proposing in this latest BLM moment is a reimagination and an expansion of Blackness—and a fundamental understanding that we’re all going, or none of us is.

Black trans women are essential to creating the future, because when everything fails you, you’re more clearly able to reimagine what it would look like if things worked. This is why Black trans women are, in many cases, the most visionary and progressive leaders within social justice movements.

Now Elon Musk has personally approved the movie on Twitter, and fired the chief censor.

Twitter is now worth only a third of what Musk and his co-investors paid.

Google YouTube announced:

with 2024 campaigns well underway, we will stop removing content that advances false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches occurred in the 2020 and other past US Presidential elections.

Many USA elections have been questionable, and a free society must allow dissenters to say that the election was stolen. This policy was a purely partisan attempt to make sure Trump leaves the White House.

Update: I watched the movie. It does not misgender anyone. The complaint is bizarre. It does mention a father who was punished for supposedly misgendering his daughter. That is, he used "she" to describe a girl. The movie itself just reports the story, which might be of interest to anyone, regardless of favorite pronoun policy.

The Great AI Panic

Nearly all the AI big-shots have signed onto this statement:

AI experts, journalists, policymakers, and the public are increasingly discussing a broad spectrum of important and urgent risks from AI. Even so, it can be difficult to voice concerns about some of advanced AI’s most severe risks. The succinct statement below aims to overcome this obstacle and open up discussion. It is also meant to create common knowledge of the growing number of experts and public figures who also take some of advanced AI’s most severe risks seriously.

Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.

For details, see the 8 Examples of AI Risk. Here is a paper with more examples. Or Wikipedia on AI Alignment.

The OpenAI CEO Sam Altman testified before Congress that AI was so dangerous that it needed to be regulated. Congress showed no interest in any of his suggestions.

An exception is Yann LeCun. He says that the USA would not exist, if not for the French philosophers who inspired the French Revolution, and we similarly need open large language AI models in order to inspire future products. See this lecture.

Wow. Do Frenchmen really think that?

Here is another expert opinion, saying that the warnings are alarmist and unproductive. We are more likely to avoid extinction if the technologies are more widely worked on.

The LLMs require special expertise and millions of dollars to develop, so the market will probably be dominated by a couple of large tech companies. But let's consider the extreme alternatives -- that US government regulators control development and use of the good LLMs, and that the LLMs get open-sourced where anyone can use them.

Going down the list of 8 risks, several of them appear much higher if centrally regulated. Such LLMs are more likely to spread misinformation, be used for proxy gaming, seek power, lock in value, etc. With open LLMs in the market, we are more likely to be able to choose the more reliable information, safer use, etc.

Possibly allowing unrestricted use of LLMs would allow non-state actors to weaponize them. I assume that USA, China, and Russia are pursuing military applications, and will not pay attention to regulators.

I am wondering what is behind this. I am sure Eliezer Yudkowsky sincerely believes in the dangers of AI, but he is not on the recent letters.

There is no specific regulation proposal, nor any explanation as to how it would ameliorate the dangers.

Possibly they are looking for regulatory capture, in order to lock in the market for big companies, and make it impossible for small players to competer.

Maybe it is some sort of virtue signaling, where they can appear to be responsible citizens, while they kill 50 million jobs.

Maybe they are all just typical authoritarian leftists. They see the new AI as powerful and influential, and they want leftists to control it.

Either way, I think it is a con job.

Update: An ex-Googler says people should not have kids now, because of the uncertainty of AI. He had a child die, and he would not want to bring that child back. He also mumbles something about geopolitical economics and climate change.

The $70 Trillion Debt

A Canada site reports:

While much of the focus is on having wealthy governments pay their fair share, a new study argues that fossil fuel companies should pay “climate reparations,” too.

In a recent peer-reviewed paper published in One Earth, researchers used data on emissions tied to the world’s 21 top polluting companies to determine just how much and landed on a total of $5.4 trillion over a period of 26 years. The largest sum would come from Saudi Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company, which would be responsible for $1.1 trillion, or $42.7 billion per year, followed by Russia’s state-owned Gazprom, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Chevron....

The researchers also decided that companies from less wealthy countries, including Gazprom and Mexico’s Pemex, should pay only half the sum their emissions would suggest. Those from developing nations, including Algeria, India and Venezuela, were deemed not responsible for reparations at all.

“It seems arbitrary and it is,” Heede said.

The paper says the fossil fuel debt is $70 trillion.

CNN:

In the first quarter of 2019, the United States’ total public- and private-sector debt amounted to nearly $70 trillion, according to research by the Institute of International Finance. Federal government debt and liabilities of private corporations excluding banks both hit new highs.

Those are not the only $70 trillion debts:

In his book, Rochester breaks down how racism and discrimination have cost Black Americans trillions of dollars over the course of several generations — $70 trillion, by Rochester's estimate — and how discrimination has created the massive racial wealth gap that exists today.

Are all these debts $70 trillion by coincidence? Or is that just the biggest number that economists can conceive of?

Saying that the oil companies owe us $70T is saying that we would be $70T richer if no oil or gas had ever been extracted from the ground. No, that is absurd. The oil and gas has made us $70T richer.

Without fossil fuels, we would all be farmers, and not have any modern conveniences. Several billion people would have starved to death.

Possibly we would be $70T richer if Blacks had never come to North America.