Here are the latest reader Qs, along with my answers:
Clement asks:
I am currently in the process of getting a new car. Thus, I am looking for car insurance. I see car insurance as more of a liability rather than an asset. And I do not like that fact that I am being forced to get it. Do you know of any car insurance company that offers deals that will insure that I am gaining money rather than losing money? Are you familiar with peer-to-peer insurance? If so, what are your thoughts on that? Thank you.
My answer:
I agree with you that car insurance is a liability; they money spent on premiums simply vanishes. You do not build equity (as is the case with some life insurance policies). Depending on the car – and the coverage – you might easily spend tens of thousands on “coverage” that is of no tangible benefit to you.
The only way I know to save money on insurance is to buy the least insurance you have to – ideally, liability-only (pays for damages you cause to another’s car and/or medical bills, but does not cover your losses).
In a few states, IIRC, you can also skip insurance by posting a bond or paying an “uninsured motorist fee.” But the sums involved are such that you are probably better off buying the insurance.
Hope this is helpful!
Years ago, when I lived in CA, you could post a bond on yourself with the DMV. It was a lot of $$ (I think north of $75k) Anyways, you gave them the cash, and when you didn’t want the coverage that the bond provided, you could (of course) get your money back. (I think they kept the interest.) You could not use retirement accts (i.e. 401k) as the collateral.
Other than to recite what I hear on commercials, I think Allstate gives you a rebate on a semiannual basis. Dunno how their premiums stack up with the rebate. IOW, their premium may be higher and therefore have the rebates factored in. YMMV, of course.
Swedish ball bearing factory – AB SKF – a leading bearing and seal manufacturing in Gothenburg – Owner of Volvo -says they’ll make only electric and hybrid cars from 2019
https://venturebeat.com/2017/07/05/volvo-to-make-only-electric-or-hybrid-cars-from-2019/
Hi Tor,
I plan to write about this. It means the end of Volvo, if they are serious. Or at least, the end of Volvo in the U.S.
Latest House Bill ends the Obamacare individual Mandate
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/congress-joins-trump-war-on-regs-cuts-a-years-worth-in-one-week/article/2627857
Wow, if they weren’t in enough trouble as it is….. stick a fork in them, they are done.
The level of stupidity is at an all time high. They have no chance of selling a million cars, let alone electric turd ones.
Cucks Anonymous
I admit that I have come to need my soft bed. Clean clothes. Warm sowers. Carpeting. Climate controlled pest free mammal’s den. Electricity. Plumbing. Couches. Chairs. Protection from the elements. Aggressions of other organisms. The menacing menagerie of uncontrolled unpredictability.
Mere servants and tools are now my masters.
I must reclaim my naked sacred inalienable humble humanity.
May all perceived needs be demoted to their inherent want status.
Amen.
Scientists Now Believe the Universe Itself May Be Conscious. Scientists are designing experiments to prove God exists.
Notions once relegated to science fiction are finding their way into esoteric academic journals, and from there, into mainstream discourse. One example of this is theory of “panpsychism,” or the belief that mind is a fundamental property of the physical universe and is imbued into all states of matter.
Physicist Gregory Matloff has brought the idea back into scientific discussions, promising experimental tests that could “validate or falsify” the concept of a ubiquitous “proto-consciousness field.”
Matloff also asserts the existence of volitional stars, suggesting there is verifiable evidence that stars control their own galactic paths.
This theory has several prominent adherents, including British theoretical physicist Sir Roger Penrose, who introduced panpsychism three decades ago.
Penrose believed consciousness arises from the properties of quantum entanglement. He and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff authored the Orchestrated Objective Reduction hypothesis, which asserts that consciousness results from quantum vibrations inside microtubules.
German physicist Bernard Haisch has proposed that consciousness arises within a “quantum vacuum” any time there is a significantly advanced system through which energy flows.
Neuroscientist Christof Koch, another proponent of panpsychism, approaches it from a different angle, using integrated information theory to argue that consciousness is not unique to biological organisms.
The only dominant theory we have of consciousness says that it is associated with complexity — with a system’s ability to act upon its own state and determine its own fate, Koch argues.
This could be true even in very simple systems. Some purely physical systems that are not biological or organic may also be conscious.
Matloff is studying the behavior of stars, specifically analyzing an anomaly in stellar motion known as Paranego’s Discontinuity. Matloff wants to know why certain cooler stars appear to emit jets of energy pointed in one direction, a characteristic that seems oddly and inexplicably ubiquitous in the galaxy.
He is using results from the Gaia star-mapping space telescope to show that the anomaly may be a willful stellar action.
Koch is approaching the experimental phase of the theory using brain-impaired patients. He wants to know if their information responses match underlying neurochemical foundations of consciousness. He plans to test this by wiring the brains of mice together to see if their minds merge into a larger information system.
Panpsychism places consciousness at the very heart of every physical entity. Matloff, Penrose, and other proponents are developing this theory to reconcile intractable contradictions and anomalies exposed by quantum theory.
Are stars conscious? – G. Matloff
http://www.gregmatloff.com/observational.html
Woody Allen expressed this idea best in the movie “Sleeper” –
“I believe that there’s an intelligence to the universe, with the exception of certain parts of New Jersey. “
Sam Francis
The bizarre system of misrule I describe as “anarcho-tyranny”—is when we refuse to control real criminals(that’s the anarchy) so we control the innocent (that’s the tyranny).
Sam Francis: Anarcho-Tyranny—Where Multiculturalism Leads
https://www.unz.com/sfrancis/anarcho-tyranny-where-multiculturalism-leads/
Sam Francis: Archive
https://www.unz.com/author/sam-francis/
Sam used to smoke in the office…and I had a bottle of booze in my desk drawer.
Can you imagine?
And it was only some 20 years ago.
My High School teachers would sit in the back of the classroom smoking while we watched a film. (32 years ago)
At work we all went out for drinks at lunch as recently as 15 years ago.
The sheepish social compliance of drinkers, smokers, casual sex hounds, non PC language speakers, and all other demonized groups makes my teeth ache.
To a man/woman, they all claim to be grateful for the demonization because its “helping them to quit.”
Fuck them all in a pile of rotten fish heads.
The people who have been at my employer tell me about how it was 30 years ago. Hard to believe its the same company.
But if I had to put up with cigarette smoke inside when working I would find another job where I didn’t have to.
I remember being able to get beer for a work lunch at the local to that job brew pub in the late 90s. By the very early 00s that was now ‘bad’.
But BrentP,
You already put up with people shitting and pissing inside!
Isn’t this a similar engineering challenge to those of indoor plumbing externalities?
$2,300 Portable Smoke Air Purifier is a good start
http://www.airpurifiersandcleaners.com/electrocorp-9975-smoke-portable-industrial-commercial-air-cleaner
Engineers have made it possible to excrete waste indoors in a NAP compliant way in a shitters’ room.
Those same engineers devices can provide any workplace with a comparable NAP compliant way to socially smoke in a smokers’ room.
The same protocols used by your co-workers so they don’t smell like shit and piss can be adapted so they don’t reek of smoke and drink.(Vodka is odorless)
All Men Getting Their Own Way(MGTOW) is real. Praise Kek.
Hey, If an employer isn’t going to make the smokers go into a special room that isolates their byproducts as done for biological wastes then I am going to work for someone else. It’s that simple.
It’s just a libertarian property rights for me to work for some other company as it is for a company to give smokers free range.
To each his own, it’s observational not personal. Spreading self-awareness not needing anyone’s behavioral change.
It’s all cuckanomics. Plucked caged chickens cackling for their synthetic feathers and artificially flavored feed.
Pooper scooping feces. Banning public urination. Banning animals in urban areas. Using tissues for your nose. Fabreeze. Lysol. Purel. Sneezing into your elbow. Cowering from loud music. Bothered by crying babies and screaming children. Abhoring nudity, public affection, outdoor fucking.
HOAs. Zonings. The watchful eyes of intolerant self-hating neighbor-informants.
You who hate the living. Why the phony civility. The pretense of manners. Gritted greetings through clenched teeth.
Fantasizing about prole depopulations.
You deserve better you think, gloating as the costumed property rights enforcers squire the ugly mammals out of your unconcealed loathing disapproving sight. Schadenfreude sublime.
The cuckocracy is something mass men want and come to need.
Now, at lomg last you have your desolate well-deserved sanctuary. But suddenly the roles reverse. You’ve morphed into public enemy persona non grata number one.
An even higher classed higher standarded uber connoisseur has found objectionable the very existence of you. Off you go as well into ruination and wandering diaspora.
You too join the infinite frog march of the intolerable obsolete.
If you want to live in an open cesspit keep it and all which is emitted from it on your private property. I will respect your property by never setting foot on it and never restricting your use of it so long as you keep your property, on your property.
Morning, Brent!
I have never smoked and don’t like it but regard the crusade against it as so over-the-top and typical of busybody Yankee control-freak-ism that I often think about taking it up, just to spite them.
Like the seat belt thing, it is ultimately about controlling us utterly – for “safety” and for “health” reasons.
I miss the America of lawn darts, no seatbelts, smoke if you wanted to, make a joke if you wanted to.
This country is a kind of East Germany with more colors, that’s all.
When I was in college in the mid 90’s, the jihad against smoking was in full swing. When I was a freshman, 18+ and upper classmen could still get smoking rooms (yes smoking indoors in your own room) in the dorm. Anyone could smoke anywhere outdoors, and there were still a few indoor designated smoking areas left.
They had already begun to restrict smoking. They had once allowed smoking anywhere including classrooms and the cafeteria. Up until the early 1980’s only the library, science labs, maintenance barn prohibited smoking due to fire hazard.
But by the time I graduated the smoking dorms, all the indoor smoking areas, outdoors (except for a few designated areas) where gone. The were planning on banning it completely the school year after I graduated. People had to smoke in their cars for the most part, and they didn’t like that even (banned smoking in the parking lot!).
It’s discouraging, the vast herd of bubble-boy cucks who can’t tolerate smells and air impurities these days.
It’s a lower class habit. Much of the ire is against the filthy smelly poor I’m sure.
Clean healthy air is a luxury, though. Luxuries are necessities for women and children.
Not men.
A man should not fear smoke, grime, filth, nor all the challenges of dirty jobs that make us wealthy free.
The plastic hardhat, safety vest, protective eyewear, dust mitigation water truck, orange cone, warning sign, surgical mask, gloves, germicide, seat belts, airbags, condoms, child proofing, child seats, and on and on.
These all dehumanze, disassociate from nature, sterilze, effeminate, sissify, domesticate, emasculate, and ad infinitum.
Say fuck no to all safety cults. Live with risk to obtain greater reward.
You can’t always avoid this stuff.
But you can avoid any man who likes being cornholed with mandatory protective dildos by the safety fraus.
Which why I always considered creating a small hand held device device that burned used motor oil or released two stroke engine exhaust. I even sometimes sort of like the smell of hydrocarbons from a pre-catalyst car’s exhaust. All would create a condition that most smokers would find offensive, but according to their theories and yours they should have to tolerate it.
There are numerous offending odors that don’t bother me in the least and don’t trigger reactions from my body that cigarette smoke does. I will be perfectly willing to subject smokers to them in response if this the argument.
Hi Brent,
So much of this – and not just smoking – comes down to common courtesy, which of course isn’t (common).
Example: The coffee place I often go to regularly features self-important douchebags who love to have loud conversations on dey sail fawns. I do not regard myself as especially courtly, but if I need to speak with someone on my phone in such a place, I go outside to do so.
The worst offenders are the double douches who put their convo on speaker.
Smoking is like this.
It ought to be self-evident that not everyone likes smoke and that some people may have health issues that make being around it a real problem for them. Ergo, go smoke outside (and at that point, I defend them – I think people who get pissy about the merest whiff of smoke outdoors are hysterics).
I don’t smoke. Drive fast. Play loud music. Etc.
But I do defend principles. And act out online, because it isn’t real or harmful. Men need stress to improve.
I see tolerance as being a manly aptitude.
How much you can withstand.
Can you silence your inner clover.
These are strengths you hone in the dojo of the NAP.
I can’t stand to be in an environment filled with cigarette smoke for more than a very limited period of time. I will not do it for it 10 hours a day, five days a week, for years on end. If that’s what an employer expects of me then I will go elsewhere. It’s that simple. It’s not a crusade for me, it’s just about my health coming before any job.
As far as the crusade goes the assholes among smokers brought it upon them IMO. I would go some place where smoking was allowed, find a relatively smoke free corner to stand in and of course a smoker would come over to pollute it. I would move. Rinse and repeat. Furthermore smokers hang their cigarette hand away from themselves and towards me. Same as when they are driving. They hang the damn thing out the window so the smoke goes in my direction instead of containing their property (the smoke) in their own vehicle.
I don’t believe in the bans. Places just lost my business when the environment was unsuitable for me. However I understand what brought them about and its the behavior of smokers. Too many smokers made sure to put their emissions in other people’s faces and since american society today is about making laws rather than telling assholes to stop being assholes, laws were made.
WARNING: Independence Day (July 4th, 2017) DUI Enforcement is in full effect!
Expect Checkpoints and Saturation Patrols in your area.
Be safe, don’t drive drunk!
Recent DUI Checkpoint Locations
http://www.duiblock.com/dui_checkpoint_locations/
Check your state’s locations. Be safe amigos.
Looks like the Trump regime is not backing off on VW’s dieselgate.
http://jalopnik.com/volkswagens-former-engine-chief-will-be-arrested-if-he-1796391443