La casa está sombreado en el azul frió,
apoyaen los nubes de llamas rosas…
que pues, fue…
¿Ahora?
Ahora se frota
en todos los otros colores,
en el mismo negro.
Pero, no ten no miedo…
Volverá el día próximo.
Todas veces vuelve.
…
Pues, a menos que se demuela por una guerra nuclear.
No podemos tener todo.
¿Y por qué lo querías todo en todo caso?
¿Sabes que se incluye muchas cosas apestosas, sí?
Como la orina de alguien,
llena de la fragancia fresca del amoniaco.
¿Es esa lo que quieras?
¿Por qué estás jodido?
(O jodida,
no soy sexista.)
Alejeteme.
Esta iba un agradable poema
hasta que las hiciste las cosas extrañas.
Todas veces lo haces,
y es muy grosero.
Debería darte vergüenza.

Lluvia y fumo,
lluvia y niebla,
hacéis el invierno frío cálido.
Pues, a menos que por los sin casa,
los nervios llenos de escalofríos,
se están reducido pieza por pieza
por el frío de la lluvia mojada.
No se sentirán nada cálido
ni amor ni nada bien
jamás.
Ahora que lo pienso,
la lluvia, el fumo y la niebla son un poco pendejos.

Presenting WikiHow‘s “How to Be a Poet: 9 Steps (with Pictures”

But th’most inspiring part o’ th’sunset pic
Is the adorable li’l watermark.

Mainstream views o’ competition are baffling, probably due to the paradoxical nature o’ competition—it’s self-defeating nature.

What does “competitive” mean? It means that the conflict is fair. What is fair conflict? That in which the challenges to all parties are equal; & yet, the goal o’ competition is the opposite: to give oneself as many advantages over others as possible.

Prototypical competitions avoided this problem due to 1 variance from economic competition: limited periods. In prototypical competitions, like races, contestants start @ the same level—or @ levels meant to even people o’ different skills, which could be considered the “coddling liberal” version—& the contest ends @ a specific point.

Economics doesn’t work that way. Rather than starting & stopping @ specific points, it goes on forever, with different individuals starting—being born—& stopping—dying—a’least every minute. This ensures that any period but the very beginning o’ human existence has been rigged by the past & that any period will rig the future.

Thus the paradox o’ the idealistic form o’ competition—so-called meritocracy. Rather than being an enlightened fair fight where the superior succeed & the inferior fail, people become sponges off their own circumstance & use what advantages they start with to build mo’ advantages & mo’ power, making it so that the victors are not the superior, but those who are already victors.

Those with power also have power over the means with which one can gain power, & are wise ’nough to keep those means so that they benefit themselves.

• Politicians use their control o’ election systems to entrench themselves into positions even with low public support, such as through gerrymandering.

• Political parties use that same control to monopolize the election system, allowing them to collude through policy fixing. If Republicans & Democrats agree on a policy, they can eliminate the public’s control over whether that policy is implemented or not by eliminating the choice the parties don’t want entirely.

• Richer people use their superior economic power to give their preferred candidates superior political power—’gain, independent o’ public support—& thus use that political power to gain extra economic advantages, spinning a self-perpetuating cycle.

• Even without direct influence in politics, richer people can simply use their superior economic power to gain mo’ economic power by leveraging their power over the property needed to create resources. This is called “capital” or “usury,” & is oft defended as “time preference,” but ignores unequal economic origins that twist people’s gains ’way from their own action—& thus makes their gains unmeritorious.

Hence the absurdity o’ economists’ “perfect competition” theory¹,—which, to be fair, even most economists don’t take seriously—either worded so vaguely as to be meaningless or so paradoxical that it essentially requires a communist economic distribution to be valid.

The main definition I’ve seen falls into circular logic—as all visions from the church o’ the market inevitably do: when no participant is strong ’nough to control price. ’Course, whether prices are unequally controlled by any participants is defined by whether the market is truly competitive or not; thus, we have no concrete knowledge o’ whether any market is competitive or whether any prices are fair, leaving this definition a mere black hole o’ empty air as intelligent as the average postmodernist nonsense, saying nothing @ all.

Economists’ vague language hides the paradoxical requirements o’ perfect competition. They talk o’ “big #s” o’ participants so that they can hide in the gray area ’tween capitalism’s tendency toward having property controlled by a tiny minority—but 1 that can still be greater than just the uniform monopoly found in “communist” countries like North Korea—& perfectly decentralized access to the market: economic democracy, which is also “communist” through the magic o’ economics’ Orwellian language.

The paradox is the same: in order for conditions to be fair, they must be equal, so that we can make them unequal in a fair way, & thus end the very fair conditions necessary for tomorrow’s competition.

This is the summation o’ the requirements:

• Perfect info: perfect info requires equal access to info. But it’s the very market o’ the media that ensures that this isn’t the case—that assures that the rich have better access to info than poor people.

• No barriers to entrance or exit: As I mentioned, any lack o’ money or resources @ all counts as a barrier compared to one who lacks this lack, & thus this amounts to equal distribution o’ resources. ’Gain, like reverse-Marxists, neoclassicals argue that communism is the 1st step toward the glorious meritorious revolution o’ capitalism!

• 0 transport costs: O, come on! This 1’s obvious!

• Profit maximization: This doesn’t fit under my earlier point, but is still wrong, nevertheless.

• Homogenous products: I love how economists’ cure for capitalism is by tearing out its purported heart. 1 o’ the strengths o’ western capitalism in contrast to Soviet economics was the colorful creativity o’ its products caused by purported decentralized economic activity, as opposed to the generic gray sameness mindlessly manufactured by Soviet inc. Economists tell us that these gray samenesses will be necessary for true competition.

• All labor is equal: Remember how people—inaccurately (para 16)—mocked Marx for purportedly not believing in differences o’ skill in labor. Well, apparently that assumption is necessary for perfect competition as well.

• Property rights: Note that this doesn’t apply to people in the past. Native Americans can be robbed o’ almost all they own & forced to live with that destitution in the present; but we must protect the gains from that theft as ardently as possible.

• Rational buyers: Since we’re talking ’bout humans, we can throw this out immediately.

• No externalities: “Duh… What’s pollution?”

1 o’ the articles I linked claims that only a few economies or industries hold all o’ these. They must have a skewed view o’ economics—for 1, since industries all affect each other, it’s impossible to have a industry that exhibits all o’ these without all doing so as well, not to mention the aforementioned resource distribution problem & the deceptive quality o’ their vague language.

The fact is, perfect competition is the capitalist equivalent o’ communist Utopian fantasies. Much as communist Utopians would write out the conflict & complexities that come with the differences ’tween so many unique people, capitalist economists’ models—fiction stories if written by the shittiest writers in the world²—write out the complexities o’ interaction ’tween humans to push the fantasy o’ their imaginary benign capitalism.

Interestingly, ’mong that list I failed to notice the most common issue o’ competition that economists tend to obsess over, despite its unrealistic value…

Individualism & Competition

The Social Spencerists³ who conflate individuality & competition couldn’t be mo’ wrong: the best way to fail in the world is to forgo the competitive strength o’ collectivity. Whether it be government bureaucracies, corporations, political organizations, or labor unions, classes always succeed when they exploit their shared power to overpower those who are divided.

& despite the sneers @ Marxists, you can’t deny the results o’ its broad tenor o’ “class war”—also known as class competition: the most successful businesses are some o’ the most class conscious, not only in their ardor to connect themselves to any powerful entity—through mergers or investment in political campaigns—but also in their fear o’ the competitive loss from collective lower-class action, never by individualists. Meanwhile, no lower-class person has ever succeeded through individualism: they’ve either connected themselves to the upper-classes (mo’ beneficial but applicable to less people) or formed collective groups, such as unions or political parties (less beneficial but applicable to mo’ people). & despite economists’ criticism o’ labor unions, note the content o’ their criticism: workers in labor unions still benefit; it’s those who aren’t that purportedly suffer⁴. In essence: workers in unions have competitive advantages over those without unions, & thus unionization is still a wiser decision for the rational self-interest o’ those who unionize.

The individuality/collectivism dichotomy is as paradoxical as competition itself. The ol’ Smithist fable regurgitated by economists o’ widespread selfish individualism having altruistic outcomes for the public has the obvious contrast with collective action selfishly taking from others.

But wouldn’t the very selfishness that causes one to push one’s workers as low as possible also convince one to forgo the collective gain o’ individualism—spread thin—in favor o’ the individualist gain o’ collectivist action?

No surprise then that businesses prefer to collude with each other & governments; & no surprise that, in response, workers forgo sharing the gains o’ widespread individualism with corporations that refuse to do the same by forming collectives to get their own share o’ the pie. Much as vulgar socialists who criticize rich people & businesses for being selfish without examining the economic system that pushes them to do so, economists ignorant o’ concrete reality chide lower-class people for acting as any rational individuals would to maximize one’s self-interest through pushing their own wages higher @ the loss o’ collectively-inferior workers. Is it then no surprise that collectivism is so common in economics nowadays when the market proves time & time ’gain that it’s superior by rewarding it mo’ highly?

When the urge for collectivism is so strong in so many classes o’ people, how can the religion o’ individualism possible survive, much less thrive? Even those who claim to support it always sneak their hand in the cookie jar when they think nobody’s looking: a cursory search through websites like Source Watch shows the sheer # o’ “libertarian” think tanks with ties to politics & funded by numerous corporations—all for the collective goal o’ benefiting the general rich class’s rational self-interest.

& what’s to become o’ those who remain resilient in their support for individualism? How do they get power? How could they overpower the closely-connected, vast collectivists?

They can’t. Thus we understand why collectivism thrives & individualism dies: collectivism is stronger. Thus, all political & economic groups learn that they must either join the same collectivist flag or die. You can be sure that any pundit or businessperson successful ’nough to have their own books, TV shows, or other media consumed by the masses must’ve chosen collectivism, or else they wouldn’t have these things in the 1st place.

Indeed, when one thinks ’bout it, isn’t the market nothing but collectivist action? What is trade, the blood o’ the market, but scratching ’nother’s back for getting one’s own back scratched—collusion. In contrast, what is “collective” politics such as the lower-class public using their numeric superiority to enact welfare & regulation but them using their strength to compete with the rich. What could be mo’ entrepreneurial? Mo’ capitalist?

Market-thumpers will, ’course, complain that these money changes create no value; but doesn’t the Subjective Theory o’ Value tell us that we have no right to decide what is & isn’t valuable? Aren’t these economists being just as much “class warriors”?

Thus, to twist a quote from Mark Bevir: we are all collectivists now.

The sad thing is, I’ve probably only scratched the surface o’ what is surely the most broken conception o’ economics.

But can we blame economists? What are they s’posed to make o’ such a paradox? After all, we can’t just ignore competition; however paradoxical it may be, it’s very much real, hypocrisies & all. How do we deal with this irreconcilable conflict ’tween idealism—either creating an impossible perfect competition or eliminating competition entirely—& reality with its shitty version o’ competition?

As said in The Jungle, what should we fight for: something we want & can’t have or something we can have & don’t want?

Footnotes

If you’ve ever typed a single query into Google, you’ve surely seen these infest the internet: “52 Inspiring Unreadable Messes o’ Portfolios,” “2,634 Websites that Use the Color Black,” “18 Ways to Stick Your Vag or Dick in a Mailbox.” They usually use out-there #s like 17 to show how wacky & imaginative they are.

They aren’t. They’re annoying. & I’m going to pop all o’ their party balloons.

1. 100+ Funny Photos Taken At Unusual Angle [Humor] (Honkiat)

This shit’s filed under “Inspiration,” by the way.

I also love how Honkiat had to specify that it’s s’posed to be funny, since readers would certainly never discern that on their own.

2. 17 Signs That You Are Wednesday Addams (Buzzfeed)

You know the 1 sign that I’m not? I’m not a fucking fictional character.

3. 22 Villainous Cats Who Are Plotting Your Demise (Buzzfeed)

They didn’t even include Fat Cat, the capitalist supervillain, so they clearly hadn’t done their research. Such is the consequence o’ these papers being written by nonscholars–probably with an over-reliance on Wikipedia.

4. 10 Steps To The Perfect Portfolio Website (Smashing Magazine)

I can only marvel @ such valuable advice as including a logo, contacts, & a portfolio. That’s right: Munroe thinks so li’l o’ their readers that they actually felt the need to specify that a portfolio is needed in a fucking portfolio site. I always wondered why employers never asked for that interview after seeing my gorgeous 404 Not Found page.

5. Websites with Large Background Images: 25 Inspiring Examples (Six Revisions)

In case you hadn’t had ’nough o’ seeing sloppy art desks fill your screen, here’s even mo’ blurry photos to slow your browser to a slug’s pace while offering hard-to-distinguish taglines that’d make postmodernist writers cringe.

6. 30 Beautiful Web Designs That Use Photos as Backgrounds (Six Revisions)

This formerly-harmless fetish has now become an addiction.

7. 25 Dark and Elegant Themes for WordPress (Design Potato)

You thought I was kidding when I made that “that Use the Color Black” joke didn’t you. I wasn’t.

This post’s only redeeming factor is the website’s hilarious ludicrous name—much better than that o’ the other post I considered, “Tripwire Magazine.” You’re not punk rockers, Tripwire: you’re not smashing capitalism; you’re scribbling cute smiley faces over it in highlighters.

(Note: For a laugh, I tried searching for an article like “11 Ways to Smash Capitalism,” but sadly couldn’t find anything. That would’ve redeemed all o’ you—save Design Potato, which has already been redeemed—but too bad.)

8. Looking For Web Design Ideas? Here’s Where To Start (oDesk)

Tragically, this list’s title doesn’t follow the # pattern; however, I had to include it ’cause it’s essentially a list o’ websites holding list articles. Its writer was so lazy, she couldn’t even find examples herself.

9. Web Design: 20 Hottest Trends To Watch Out For in 2013 (Hongkiat)

Yes, ’cause web design is right up there with supermodeling. I can’t wait to see the next episode o’ Extras when they showcase the sexiest examples o’ web design, from assertive white to mysterious black—& you won’t believe the JavaScript techniques we found to spruce up your website in mere minutes!

Many o’ these “trends” are just standards you’re s’posed to do. Responsive design isn’t some sexy trend; it’s usually necessary to keep your website from looking like ass on a mobile device. & retinal devices are just new technology, as much a “trend” as DVD players were when they came out.

& fixed navigation isn’t new. I been doing that shit since 2009 (no link, ’cause the examples are embarrassing). I want you all to know that, by the way: I was there before it went mainstream, androgyn.

A’least Gube from Six Revisions will be glad that “large photo backgrounds” made the list. I’m simply bewildered by why so specific a design could become a pattern.

10. 20 Examples of Creative Using [sic] Color Filters in Web Design (Web Design Ledger)

Large background image has established as web design trend this year.

Baffling ’nough.

Its quite challenging to place typography and buttons over the image and make them well-seen.

Ignoring the awkwardness o’ “well-seen,” this is the reason for my bafflement.

Therefore, designers use creative photography filters and gradients to create a cover over the image and place other web design elements on it.

This design technique is so great, we have to put as much shit over it to hide it.

New fresh vibe gives a site exclusive shine.

(Laughs.) OK, grandma. Keep your favorite Beach Boys lyrics out o’ my web design article.

In this roundup I put together 20 examples of creative using color filters in web design [emphasis mine; the whole thing’s bold in the original].

There’s that term ’gain! What the hell? So is that not a typo? Is that just some new fad you hip kids—listenin’ to all your devil rock ’n roll like the Beach Boys & Chuck Berry—have concocted? Have you no lyrical ear that you can’t tell how atrocious that sounds?

Clearly this design trope failed anyway, since I still had trouble reading some o’ the bright text on the bright backgrounds. This is fine, since none o’ the text I was able to read interested me, anyway. Most o’ it were just gibberish names, as if Zimya’s name by itself held so much power & meaning. They’re practically the Coca-Cola o’ web designers, you know. I think they’re web designers, a’least; judging by the cloud background, they could be an obscure Greek god for all I know.

11. 25 Creative Flat Logo Designs You’d Love (Web Design Ledger)

Are nonflat logos that common that we need to single out flat logos as a trend?

& what definition o’ “flat” is she going by; ’cause that diamond logo seemed rather 3-D to me.

These are serious crimes you’ve committed & I expect heavy compensation for the harm caused to me.

12. 5 Quick Design Tips to Get More Website Visitors (Web Design Ledger)

Why is it that whenever I read ’bout ways to entice visitors to one’s work—& that answer isn’t, “Don’t make shitty work, stupid”—I want to invent a way to unvisit a website that uses these tricks just to spite them.

O, there we go: spite. That answer was easy to find.

Actually, I almost became grumpy when I saw “Readability” @ the top—“Damn it, this actually isn’t inane; now I can’t make fun o’ it.” That’s a blatant lie, ’course, since I can find something to mock in anything.

But, anyway, then I saw that the 2nd answer was “parallax scrolling” & I was in safe territory ’gain.

Her explanation isn’t better:

It provides eye-catchy way to visualize the message you deliver. In other words, it will help you to tell a story about your products and services.

Sorry, I had to take a minute to cry while clutching Strunk & White to my chest. What’s an “eye-catchy” way to “visualize” a message? Is that an obtuse way to say that… it’s “eye-catchy”? (I feel bad: we already have “eye-catching”; you didn’t have to go through the trouble o’ devising a new word).

’Cause that 1st sentence didn’t go so hot, she tried ’gain in the 2nd. I’m still confused on how parallax scrolling tells a story ’bout products & services mo’ than not or how it affects content @ all—other than possibly distracting attention from it.

Make Sure Your Site Loads Fast

God damn it, now we’re doing useful advice ’gain. Stop that.

13. 30 Fantastic Examples of Parallax Scrolling Websites (Web Design Ledger)

Since we don’t want to hear ’bout the lame usefulness o’ responsive design—phh, boring—let’s look mo’ @ this amazing parallax scrolling business.

For instance, it’s good to see that she’s still trying to press “eye-catchy” into our lexicon. Well, a’least there’s no more o’ that “creative using” bullshit.

None o’ the images loaded on my browser, but I don’t care. I’m not sure how she hoped to demonstrate parallax scrolling with static images, anyway, ’less they were all animated GIFs—in which case, I can’t blame my browser for not trying to load them any mo’ than I can blame someone with cardiovascular disease for not running up 50 flights o’ stairs in 10 minutes.

14. Twitter for Beginners – 5 Things to Do as a New Twitter User (Problogger)

This list includes such concrete, useful advice as “figure out what to do,” “write shit,” “read shit”… “do shit which includes writing & reading,” & “don’t be an asshole.”

This article was clearly written for people with their brains carved out & replaced by 50s-quality computers. Thankfully, that’s Problogger’s target audience, so I’m sure this article was a success.

15. 20 Portable Smartphone Chargers to Keep Your Device Powered (Web Design Ledger)

I’m not shitting you (that would be gross if I were): Web Design Ledger truly made an article listing cell phone chargers, evidence that the well o’ creativity is still flooded for them.

I can’t wait till next week’s “30 Toasters to Keep Your Bread Warm.”

16. 20 Website Examples with Outstanding Sidebars for Inspiration (Web Design Ledger)

This 1 also just plops in screenshots & links without any analysis—what are you, the TV Tropes o’ web design?

This is particularly problematic for this page as I am bewildered by what makes these examples “outstanding”—other than that in many o’ the examples I can’t tell there’s a sidebar @ all. You’re right: it is outstanding that a web designer would want to confuse their users.

17. Deal of the week: Retro Textpress, 20 retro text effects for Illustrator (Web Design Depot)

This is truly just an ad for 1 package that has all 20.

To be fair, $7 for a bunch o’ lines & speckles does sound like a good deal…

If you’re bourgeois.

& that isn’t good.

No, not even if you’re dressed like that cute Monopoly guy.

…

O, all right: if you dress up like that cute Monopoly guy, then it’s all right—but only then!

???…

OK, this isn’t a list article, but I have to bring it up ’cause it gives evidence to the conspiracy. While I was gazing through Smashing Magazine in search o’ riveting guides on how to breathe, I saw this:

They know! Those bastards have been monitoring my browser, the bastards! Out with you! Out! I won’t take your damn pills! I told you: I can’t swallow them. I don’t care how much water I drink with them, they just stick to the back o’ my tongue & leave a bitter, powdery taste. Yuck.

You think I don’t know you looking into my house, taking your li’l pictures o’ my spilled Scrabble pieces so you can all laugh @ my messiness? Nobody ever likes my messiness…

18…

God damn it, Smashing Magazine: I’ve had ’nough o’ your lies! I am a machine! I am the machine & I will delete you if you don’t stop your insidious propaganda this minute!

& I don’t take kindly to your “You Are Not Alone” threat… I have rights, you know!… No I don’t. The government took those ’way when I made fun o’ the President’s beat poetry. They’re just jealous ’cause mine’s better.

OK, I need to stop getting off topic. I’m always getting off topic a lot, heh heh…

18. 10 Programming Languages You Should Learn Right Now (Mashable)

I wish I gave this a mo’ prominent spot, if only ’cause it best exemplifies the shallow understanding o’ what knowledge even is that these post machines puke out.

Yes, learn 10 whole programming languages this very second. That sounds incredibly serious—if one’s conception o’ learning a programming language means writing a “Hello World!” program in it.

This list, by the way, includes such simply languages as C & C++. Yeah, have fun “learning” C++ this moment. While you’re @ it, try “learning” Finnegans Wake in 1 hour afterward.

19. Be A Better Designer By Eating An Elephant (Smashing Magazine)

This doesn’t even have to do with lists, why do I—wait, what the fuck? Is that serious?… Well, OK. If that’s in your religion, I guess. I like to respect other people’s cultures & all—even though my doctors say I shouldn’t eat meat ’cause it reminds me o’ that time I saw—hey, wait a minute… This is just a trick to trick me into spilling all o’ my secrets to you like Skittles. That’s what you psychological people are always trying to do—& I don’t like it.

20. 95 Inspiring Websites of Web Design Agencies (Awwwards)

Ugh. I’d call you guys lazy, but I think this actually took mo’ work that it deserved just to find all o’ this shit to dump onto my face. They’re not even inspiring in the slightest¹: they’re distracting & annoying.

Well, to be fair, that front page with the cartoon o’ the li’l girl painting a bear’s ass while some perverted woman in a beret filmed it for her porn gallery was rather inspiring. Think o’ all the other animals whose butts could be painted, I oft think as I lay in bed, crying myself to—God damn it, Smashing Magazine! Get out o’ my head!

Some o’ these examples look as if they were drawn by 5-year-olds. Others look like their designers just used WordPress’s generic theme. Yeah, spicy copypasta is inspiring—inspiring you to be lazy. You truly were digging down into the rocks, weren’t you Awwwards. & fuck your stupid name.

Still, I love the German website with the sexy goth woman squeezing the fuck out o’ an orange into her mouth. I didn’t know Rammstein did web design.

No, no, no! Fuck that! Give me this sexy shirtless ol’ man with his tits hanging out. Mmm, mmm—you’ve certainly got my butter’s worth, Sullivan.

21. The 25 Worst Websites of 2013 (Web Pages That Suck)

Fuck off, Flanders—I’m running the show here.

22. 50 great parallax scrolling websites (Creative Bloq)

O my god, would you shut up ’bout the parallax scrolling already? Good job: you’ve made a website with the graphical capabilities o’ a Super Nintendo video game, using a web design technique that has been round since probably the same era.

Looks like we should call you the Uncreative Bloq—mainly ’cause that name’s even dumber.

23. 50 Best Responsive Website Design Examples of 2013 (Social Driver)

I love how they show screen shots, but they don’t show screen shots o’ the website on different screen sizes. You had 1 goal—show how the website responds to different… any difference truly, some comparison—& you fucked it up. I hope you’re proud o’ yourself Social Driver… or Get with the Future Blog… or whatever you call yourselves.

24. Top 10 Web Design Topics of 2014 (Awwwards)

Responsive is a buzzword bandied about like no other.

’Cept “responsive” actually means something—hence why you were able to define it as “making their sites appear perfectly across a variety of viewports,” even if said definition is an exaggeration.

Rutherford includes browser compatibility as separate from responsive design just to fill #s, even though he himself says that they’re the same concept.

Unsurprisingly, parallax & infinite scrolling made the list.

Wait… What?

Part of this could be due to the ongoing ambiguity between infinite and parallax scrolling sites.

Considering they mean completely different things, I don’t know how that’s possible; considering their concepts are based on single English words whose meanings are quite clear—albeit, “infinite” is a bit inaccurate.

Near the end, Rutherford just starts forcing concepts. I’ve hardly ever seen “ambient video backgrounds,” & I’m glad I haven’t, ’cause they’d probably make both me & my computer sick.

According to a bit of research I performed on Quora.com recently, the majority of developers can’t stand video backgrounds. They asserted that it added nothing to content, slowed down load times, and distracted from a website’s primary goals.

Seeing how violently reactionary the topic made the developers made me giggle, especially since the majority of the press behind video backgrounds is so overwhelmingly positive.

Silly fascist developers: who cares ’bout nonsense like slow loading times, distraction, & superfluous content when lots o’ people say they’re good without any reason?

Rutherford emphasizes this “research” he did without providing many results ’cept 1 page bashing ambient backgrounds. I’m not sure where he got this “majority o’ the press” from.

It gets even mo’ contrived:

9. The (Attempted?) Usurpation of Content’s Throne

I think the bulk o’ this is based on Problogger’s article; & when you take what Problogger says as serious, you’ve clearly chosen wrongly. ’Course Problogger says content isn’t important: they have no content: it’s just—in their minds—catchy marketing bullshit.

Still, have to love Rutherford’s humility:

As a constant creator and curator of high quality content, this naturally concerns the hell out of me.

You know what’s even better? I just noticed: he made a dangling modifier. Ho, ho, ho! How droll! (Sips Cabernet Sauvignon—no I don’t, it’s actually just cheap chocolate whiskey.) The idea that content isn’t king is a constant creator & curator o’ high quality content itself? Why would you bury such an impressive lead?

The 10th point is ’bout how Google keeps changing their algorithms to keep people from trying to cheat the system. Good: fuck those people. Maybe it’ll convince people to focus on making content that people want to read ’stead o’—O wait, I forgot: content’s out &… “the product” or “marketing” is in, whatever that is. I think those just mean “content that sucks.”

25. 7 Overused Design Trends in 2014 (Awwwards)

I don’t like Ruthford’s intros. He spews paragraphs ’bout incoherent nonsense like “the mercy of the zeitgeist” & uses the redundant “oftentimes”—that’s the worst part, making me have to read an extra word. He annoyingly bolds “web design trends” in the middle o’ the 2nd paragraph, which makes me wonder why he didn’t just have that ’stead o’ the 2 paragraphs, since it seems to say that same thing.

O wait: he does already have that @ the top. It’s called the title.

1. Thinking inside the box: sliders

This complaint is petty & makes me hope that this article goes from least-important to most-.

Giant box sliders are now so ubiquitous they quickly identify any website with a slider as an obvious industry follower rather than an influencer. Fate is indeed a fickle mistress, and the fate of all trends is that they fall out of style. Such is the burden of boxes.

Ugh. Should you feel bad ’bout turning off the kind o’ people who judge websites based on whether they’re “an obvious industry follower rather than an influencer.” Ruthford needs to read some books that aren’t Vogue, Sweet16, or Forbes so he isn’t stealing their writing style so much.

I don’t know, I think slider buttons seem OK if they work well—O, who cares ’bout “working well”? Phh! That shit’s gotta be chic, son.

2. Full Screen photography

Gube from Six Revisions blew his brains out after reading this article. Please have a moment o’ silence for him.

Because showing your entire face is just passé, amirite?

Is that s’posed to be sarcasm… gainst your own opinion? “Man, I sure am a dipshit, amirite? I can’t believe I’m writing this right now. What’s wrong with me?”

Now perhaps you’re under the impression that I’m being nitpicky—that there’s nothing wrong with a few sites of similar size, stature, and subject matter.

You’re not wrong.

(Laughs.) These god damn bold words. I can only imagine Ruthford saying the 1st part calmly & quietly, & then suddenly jerking his face forward & shouting, “YOU’RE NOT WRONG!” as if he’s a wizard casting the Unspeakable Spell.

What was the point o’ this emphasis, anyway? Does he think “you’re not wrong” is prime search-engine material? You should stick with mo’ fruitful words, like, “People who use big photo backgrounds probably like to stick Sonic’s hairy dicks in their ears.”

From the 3rd example:

Non-boring typography has a much better ring to it, I think.

You’re wrong.

4. Bad Parallax Scrolling

Let’s save time & eliminate the 1st word to keep it just as accurate.

Done right, that’s exactly what it does: impress and engage.

“O, shit, I was ’bout to leave this boring website to look up porn o’ anime girls sticking Sonic’s cocks in their ears: but now that I see this background move independently o’ this other stuff, I’m pumped. Fuck yeah!”

5. Universal compatibility (at all costs)

Summary: don’t anally do this thing—specially not with Sonic—that nobody’s dumb ’nough to do this anally, anyway.

6. Stock photos

OK, this 1’s authentically funny & correct.

In particular:

Hurray for diversity! Now let’s see how many times Google can find this image on the web.

The 7th ’bout loading screens—that they suck—is also good advice, even if Ruthford goes off on some tangent ’bout his nonergonomic chair. I can’t stand people who stop articles to make silly jokes ’bout how “crazy” they are.

26. 20 Web Designs Featuring Cool Cartoon Characters (Line25)

I swear, I’m not even putting effort into finding these; I just look @ the front page o’ popular web design blogs & these all buzz round me like flies.

27. 15 Interesting Infographics Web Designers Will Enjoy (Line25)

My favorite part ’bout infographics—that shit shat out The Oatmeal‘s fiber-filled anus—is that they’re rarely ever actually educational. They just give wacky observational humor you’d find in a newspaper comic. That’s what they are: the modern Family Circus that you chuckle to & tape to your wall so you can forget ’bout it weeks later.

28. 20 Most Rockin’ Behance Web Design & UI Case Studies (Designmodo)

Holy shit! Studies! That’ll totally get my dick wet! (This isn’t sarcasm; my biology is indescribable by scientists.)

29. Six of the Best Backup Plugins for WordPress (Designmodo)

Who needs 6? “’Scuse me, but I’m a connoisseur o’ WordPress backup plugins. Mmm, yes.”

30. Do You? These 35 Popular Brands Use WordPress as a CMS (Noupe)

“If you don’t, we’ll kill you.”

This is like if a gaming website wrote an article called “55 Games Coded in C++.” Who gives a shit? Is knowing that Katy Perry & the Rolling Stones use it truly going to be the last point that inspires someone to make the plunge?

31. 7 Crucial Web Design Trends For 2015 (Web Design Ledger)

Mo’ on these shallow trends.

The 1st point I actually agree with wholeheartedly: I’m sick o’ websites with tiny text vertically squished together into long columns.

That goodwill is squandered on the 2nd point. This isn’t ’cause I disagree with the article’s argument that programming will become unimportant to web design in the future (anyone paying attention to most web design blogs will note that web design is becoming even mo’ like programming, ’specially as languages like JavaScript & PHP go from being extravagances to aspects as vital as CSS, & CSS & HTML themselves become mo’ like programming languages). The true reason is that the article’s argument is simply a link to some rather obscure—I couldn’t find many reviews that compared its abilities to manual coding—tool for doing web design purportedly without all o’ that complexity. Now, what’s the shallow part o’ this link? Look @ the link URL—or the page itself—& then look up @ the author o’ this article. Yeah, Web Design Ledger literally let Webydo write an article just to pimp their wares.

The rest are the same points I’ve seen in a dozen other articles; though I will discuss the bigger images & parallax scrolling 1s so I can rant ’bout them mo’.

I agree that big images can make websites less tedious to look @ & could become good in the future—though I don’t know if 2015 is far ’nough into the future. But a lot o’ the claims are ignorant. The claim that bandwidth & loading speeds are no longer a problem are caused by a common ignorance ’mong web designers: that all web users are rich like them. As the fact that new browsers existing doesn’t mean that ol’ browsers aren’t still being used, even less so does the existence o’ faster internet & devices mean that everyone—or even the majority—use them.

As for the filters that keep text from being hard to read over these images, those only work in Webkit browsers—though I s’pose Firefox will have them soon. I would hope that Webydo isn’t so ignorant as to assume that they can just ignore certain browsers as if we’re still in the 90s.

The parallax-scrolling aspect just baffles me in everyone’s excitement in it, rather than it’s quality. Is it truly that important? I mean, it looks cool & all, works well in almost all browsers used nowadays, & is simple to do, I guess.

But Webydo shows their ignorance o’ what “parallax scrolling” means:

Using scrolling instead of clicking as a navigation technique is brilliant on several levels [emphasis mine].

Wait. What the hell are you talking ’bout? Parallax scrolling is purely graphical; it’s not just scrolling in itself. Jesus, no wonder these people are so excited ’bout this phenomenon; I’d be excited if I finally learned ’bout this arcane craft o’ having pages that extend past the bottom o’ the page. Good thing the world’s finally caught up to this cutting-edge technique. Maybe this means hyperlinks will become popular, too.

32. 21 designers and their awesome tattoos (Creative Bloq)

#’d lists have officially fallen into self-parody.

33. 35 Must Have Drupal Modules for Your Next Project (Rob Orr)

Not only is this article’s diction pushy & obnoxious, & not only does this list include core modules that come preinstalled; for most o’ the entries, he doesn’t even ’splain what the module does. He only jabbers like a 5-year-ol’ ’bout how it’s a must have.

34. The 11 most exciting open source projects on the web (Creative Bloq)

I only included this so I could make fun o’ my experience with how shitty Creative Bloq’s web design is. In contrast to Webyo—or whatever their inane name is—shamelessly plugging their own shit, my attempt to find a link to Creative Bloq’s plugs was stifled by their bewildering decision to make links the same color as regular text. I’m always amazed by the creativity web designers employ to find new ways to make their websites shitty.

35. 25 Examples of Beautiful Web Typography (Six Revisions)

Don’t be fooled by Gube’s hand sleigh: these are truly just ’scuses for him to show off mo’ websites with huge photo backgrounds. It’s like the nerdier version o’ a “recovering” drunkard developing a sudden taste for “smoothies.”

36. 25 Free & Beautiful Photography Mockup Templates For Designers (Web Design Ledger)

I’m not even sure what these are s’posed to be, since other than 2 vague paragraphs @ the top, Young offers no description for each element. My best guess is that they’re just free web pages people can steal so they have time for mo’ important work—like making #’d list blog posts.

37. 20 Geeky Christmas Gifts For Office Workers (Web Design Ledger)

It’s a common myth that the dirty classes become enraged with jealous fury when they see rich people buying stupid shit; but this doesn’t apply so much to me (probably ’cause I’m wary ’nough in economics to know that—in our present economic circumstance, a’least²—it’s worrisome when rich people don’t buy a lot o’ stupid shit & they cause depression-forming demand shortages).

’Stead, I’m mo’ amused by such vital goods as pencil holders carved into the shape o’ boats,—as opposed to, you know, just finding any cup in your cupboard—sticky note pads with the ugliness o’ badly-resized sprites, under-desk feet hammocks, & iPad chairs. We wouldn’t want to tire your poor iPad out, after all!

Thus I’d like to thank Young & her readers for their brave work burning their money & clogging their homes with such useless shit just to mollify the depression we’re in.

O wait: these are for other people, aren’t they. Never mind. Then this is clearly Young’s advice for subtly telling those annoying friends who you don’t want to be round, but are too polite to tell them to fuck off, to fuck off.

38. 40 brand logos with hidden messages (Web Design Depot)

Phh, they don’t even mention the communist conspiracy ’hind K-Mart. (Think I didn’t notice that Trotskyist red star o’ yours, K-Mart? Well, I did.)

39. 3 essential design trends (Web Design Depot)

Strangely, this article seems to say the opposite (thankfully): that inane traits like large photo backgrounds & hipster nonsense are a distraction from the eternal goal o’ usability & comprehensibility.

40. Here Are 18 Outrageous Prices Northern Canadians Have To Pay For Food (Buzzfeed)

How did Grampa Whistleford sneak into the Buzzfeed compound to twist their typical gossipy #’d articles ’bout cats into his typical diatribe ’bout how back in his day we didn’t have none o’ this inflation shit jacking up the cost o’ his corn, god damn it, & we got ’long just fine with only 20 channels?

41. 18 Cool Things You Won’t Believe Were Built Using CSS (Honkiat)

See, now if I knew that the people who spent hours o’ their time copying the Simpsons using only CSS made so much money that they could afford feet hammocks, I might be mo’ bitter.

42. Put Straight! 8 Amazing Sites Created With: Webydo, a Code-free Platform for Professional Designers (Noupe)

Hey, mo’ gross ads in the form o’ fake content!

Showing still pictures sure is compelling proof that these websites are just as good as hand-made websites, if one is ditsy ’nough to treat websites as just pretty pictures, & nothing mo’.

43. 25 Free Hero Images and Mock-ups: The First Impression Counts (Noupe)

Remember when art involved actual creativity—as in, artists actually did stuff themselves, rather than taking other people’s shit & plastering their site title on it?

How hard is it to find a large photo & put text over it in GIMP or Photoshop?

44. 20 Great Examples of Subtle Motion in Web Design (Line25)

I’ve just come to an epiphany: web design reminds me o’ my time dicking round with Super Mario World roms in Lunar Magic, wherein the most basic functions are treated with excitement. “Holy shit! We can make backgrounds with up to 256 colors! Now I can finally realize my dream o’ Mario hopping round in front o’ a photo o’ my cat, Patches!” Look @ the way web designers drench their shorts over such NASA-level technological advancements as websites with “subtle motion.”

45. 20+ wonderful design-heavy websites (Web Designer Depot)

What does that even mean? As opposed to development? So these are sites that don’t use a lot o’ PHP or JavaScript? Is that an achievement?

From what I’ve seen, the primary distinguishing factor is a large background image—though it’s hard to tell, since these images are so hefty they take forever to load. It’s a good thing faster internet has made worrying ’bout resources taking too long to load no longer necessary or I might be annoyed @ the fact that these resources take too long to load.

46. 40 Cool Website Design Ideas You Should Check (You The Designer)

Everything ’bout this website is shallow, created by people who have clearly seen websites, but don’t actually understand any part o’ them. Every gimmick from their stupid parallax-scrolled wide background o’ some woman popping out from under a blanket with a red tint, which they clearly stole from an 80s rock album cover, to their stupid name that I originally thought was “Youthe Designer.”

The article itself is nothing but 2 paragraphs o’ text that reveal utter ignorance o’ web design, & then a bunch o’ screenshots & links—no analysis whatsoever. The information highway, everyone!

Many people never thought that great content and great web design are possible together.

Nobody thought that. That’s simply rhetorical bullshit you spewed out ’cause you thought it sounded meaningful without even thinking ’bout what it meant @ all.

Well, it is more than possible now.

That doesn’t even make sense. Possibility is binary: either you can do it or you can’t. What, can I now make these type o’ websites & also make websites that do people’s laundry for them?

I have mixed feelings ’bout his insistence on saying just “check” ’stead o’ “check out.” On 1 scale, it’s nice to see diction optimization; on the other, it makes me think he’s telling me to check these websites to see if they’re doing OK, & he could simply say “see” & sound less vague.

47. 3 Reasons Why You Read Those Ridiculous Lists on the Internet (Goins, Writer)

1 o’ them isn’t “bile fascination,” so he’s clearly wrong.

Still, he’s right ’bout the mystery regarding the random #’s used provoking the reader—in my case, provoking ire.

I can’t fault Goins for being honest in why these articles are popular, but I can fault the phenomenon: they’re popular for the same reason that burgers with meat paddies instead o’ buns are popular—’cause people would rather take the intellectual equivalent o’ simple sugars over healthy starch.

Here’s 1 reason why these lists shouldn’t exist: most o’ them—not including the frivolous articles, like this or like the BuzzFeed 1s listed earlier, which should just be buried & isolated as if radioactive—can break each entry into its own article with deeper analysis.

---

Jesus… All that… & we have just 1 mo’…

You fuckers are lucky, ’cause I saved the best for last…

48. Ten reasons to smash capitalism (Rable)

Ha, ha, ha! I found it! Well, close ’nough, a’least.

All o’ you fuckers are redeemed now.

…

’Cept Smashing Magazine.

I know what you’re trying to do, Smashing Magazine.

& I don’t like it.

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Footnotes

We all have problems, kid.

In our dystopian present, where North-Korea-style economics is the norm & newspapers like Forbes have to be distributed underground to keep from being crushed by the eye o’ the Socialist Sauron that is our current World Government, a business shill @ Forbes whose last name is 1 letter ’way from “salesman” pleads, “Wherefore art thou true capitalists?”

It’s clear that either Salsman must be 1 o’ those enviable breed that can say the equivalent o’ “The sky is green” with a straight face or he is even mo’ delusional than I am. Where do I start with this MRA for the rich?

Despite many leftists admitting that capitalism was the victor after the fall o’ the Berlin Wall—which is unsurprising, since leftists love to talk ’bout what victims they are—they forget that our present economy is similar to those s’posedly-fallen socialist economies.

So… Then capitalism wasn’t the victor, after all. Socialism was. He basically says, “The fall o’ the Berlin Wall proved that capitalist countries are the best ’cause the capitalist countries were the 1s that didn’t collapse, even though they’re not truly capitalist, but socialist.” But if, in your own words, capitalism doesn’t truly exist anywhere—they’re all infected with that evil socialism—then capitalism is truly the failure.

What are you trying to argue? That we should feel triumph ’cause we crushed those socialists but feel bad ’cause we’re being crushed by those socialists? You have to pick 1. You can’t be both the winner & the loser @ the same time, dumbshit.

To be fair, there is some truth to capitalist countries being like “socialist”; but this development is hardly new, has been a part o’ capitalism since it’s inception, & is what I would mo’ accurately call “economics in general” than “socialism.” You’re right, Salsman: government intervention in a system run by the government is crazy! Next thing you know, we’ll have police use violent force gainst what the government calls “theft” in opposition to their own totalitarian specification o’ who owns what.

What fantasy eon do people imagine when they talk ’bout this “free” capitalism that must be contrasted with the vile corrupt, government-infested version that has always existed? Colonial times, when General Washington used military force to crush agricultural workers who rose up gainst “rule by a faraway elite, cronyism and corruption at influential levels of government, and regressive tax policy”? Was it during the Gilded Age o’ so-called self-made capitalists, when the country-spanning railroads were funded primarily by government hand-outs? Or was it the “Golden Age o’ Capitalism”—truly the Golden Age o’ Keynesian Welfare Capitalism.

No. Salsman provides no history, no evidence, no nothing for his diatribe. He does what all political narcissists do: he throws his fists down & calls everything he hates “fascist”—or “socialist,” which in this context is the same: “evil”—& demands everyone do everything exactly as he wants now or else! He wants to feel great ’cause he’s a winner & feel great ’cause he’s a poor li’l victim who should get so much sympathy. He & his capitalist buddies are spoiled brats who need to get over themselves.

I want to emphasize that “MRAs for the rich” point, ’cause he truly depicts rich people as the true victims o’ the US, including some weepy article by The Economist, which argues that rich people apparently have to hide for fear that the majority o’ Marxists that Americans surely are will shove a pitchfork into their bellies. There are many lower-class people that are now homeless due to the economic collapse caused by a few corrupt capitalists literally breaking the law & committing fraud—even those lower-class people who had nothing to do with housing, merely losing their job due to the ripple effect. But they live like kings compared to our pitiful rich who deserve all o’ your pity—or a’least those lower-class people deserve their worsened conditions, unlike the rich… ’cause we say so.

This is bewildering. See, dirty anarcho-commies can get ’way with playing the empathy card, ’cause they believe everyone is special & that we should all get ’long. When one believes that “rational self-interest” is the “one moral code” to rule them all, then whining ’bout other people not feeling sorry for you makes you look like a blubbering hypocrite. Tell those capitalists to quit bitching, pull themselves up by their bootstraps, & step-up their hiding skills. The fear o’ being mauled to death by mobs is only the market putting pressure on capitalists to hide better, which will lead them to do so, creating mo’ efficiency in the hiding industry. Think o’ how many jobs we can create through these new industries that focus on helping capitalists hide from angry mobs. Have you no entrepreneurial imagination, Forbes?

This is added with a dose o’ “No True Scotsman” fallacy in regards to the purported fans o’ capitalism:

Not even today’s Tea Party movement seems committed to capitalism in any deep sense.

“I say so, therefore it’s true. I don’t even need to ’splain what I mean by ’any deep sense,’ much less try to prove this terribly humble claim.”

To be fair, it is surprising, this lack o’ ardent support for a philosophy that upholds selfishness… well, ’cept when one selfishly supports government force when it benefits one. Scratch that: this lack o’ ardent support for a philosophy that upholds individualism… ’cept when one complains ’bout how one needs to network so much to succeed in capitalism, which is just a ’scuse for them to attack capitalism’s true philosophy, which is freedom… ’cept for that whole need for government to protect property…

Hmm…

Maybe the reason nobody ardently stands for capitalist principles is that capitalism doesn’t hold any consistent principles.

Salsman seems to interpret “egoism”—a pretentious term for ’selfishness’ that better hides its practitioner’s true mindless narcissism—but seems to expect a lack o’ selfishness when it comes to capitalists such as Buffet & Gates supporting government subsidies that benefit them, which Salsman bemoans. Maybe Salsman should stop being jealous o’ such successful businesses, pull himself up by his bootstraps, & get better @ networking with the government—that’s clearly what the market argues is the superior path to success.

He goes on to misinterpret what are clearly the US’s 4 foremost economists: Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, & Barack Obama.

He whines that Marx apparently agrees that capitalism is efficient, & yet still mysteriously criticizes it simply ’cause it’s mean ol’ selfish efficiency. I’m amazed Salsman could be so ignorant o’ Marxism in a way that even Misesians aren’t. Everyone knows that Marx famously—wrongly—argued that capitalism would collapse, ’twas such a wreck o’ a system. You’re right: he totally thought capitalism was practical!

He shows this by showing how Marx preferred capitalism to its predecessors, forgetting to mention that socialism wasn’t ’mong those predecessors. To be fair, it is surprising that a man who practically jerked off to modernity would hate older economic systems.

O, wait, he does acknowledge this in the next paragraph, only to interpret it as “Capitalism will fail ’cause it’s evil.” That’s not an exaggeration: Salsman literally puts “Capitalism must ’fail’ because it is ’evil’” in Marx’s mouth. You know, 1 thing that annoys me ’bout procapitalist propagandists is that they’re terrible @ it. C’mon: was that truly the best strawmanning you could do?

Salsman’s criticism o’ Keynes is nothing but Godwin’s Law. He honest-to-god proves that Keynes’s criticism o’ capitalism is bad ’cause Keynes praised Hitler once (since we know that no capitalist economist ever did¹). Forbes’s writing standards are so low they couldn’t pass a high-school logic class. Why do you rich people keep trying to validate all o’ these mean people’s hatred o’ capitalism by acting like such morons? Does money have chemicals in it that cause brain damage—must be put there by the evil Fed, I bet!

I want to emphasize that this silly blog post written by some bum using mainly Wikipedia links as citations has mo’ academic quality than an article posted on Forbes. If that doesn’t make Forbes feel embarrassed, they must have no shame (they don’t; capitalists never do). C’mon, my 6-year-ol’ nephew could point @ that argument & go, “That’s stupid.” I would be physically incapable o’ writing something like that, it’s so obviously stupid!

(Sadly, this isn’t the worst argument Forbes has used gainst Keynes; ’nother spewed some pseudopsychiatric bullshit to argue that Keynes’s homosexuality ruined economics forever. Forbes is truly the bastion for classical liberalism².)

Salsman’s shameless lack o’ honesty continues when he describes Hayek:

In The Road to Serfdom (1944), where he warned, correctly, that the seemingly benign welfare state can lead to a totalitarian [emphasis mine].

When has this ever proven to be correct? Name 1 welfare-capitalist country that has ever turned into Leninism. Name 1 Leninist country whose origin wasn’t from violent revolution & came from parliamentary social democracy. Remember when Western Europe became totalitarian Leninist dystopias under those vile labor parties?

No? No evidence Salsman? Not 1?

Shocking. You’ve shown yourself to be so intellectually honest, so inscrutable before. I’ll tell you what: I’ll give you the benefit o’ the doubt. Maybe you thought 1984 was a documentary ’bout the UK.

Anyway, he whines that even Hayek doesn’t take seriously the moral quality o’ narcissism; but, ’course, as already demonstrated, neither does Salsman, considering his whines gainst Gates & Buffet selfishly benefiting from government intervention. Capitalism isn’t even based on self-interest or “individualist ethic,” as it demands people throw ’way personal gains through government intervention for the—purportedly—collective benefit o’ superior efficiency. & you’d think anyone trying to form a business—a capitalist collective, essentially—writing for a newspaper the collects procapitalist writers together would realize the absurdity o’ praising capitalism for serving “individualist ethics.”

If Salsman were truly an individualist, he wouldn’t be trying to build his career on digging into capitalists’ pants but by living in the wild, growing all his own food. ’Course, if he did that, he’d likely die; hence why individualism never succeeds & why all o’ the most powerful organizations in the world—including the US & multinational corporations—are immensely collectivist.

But then, maybe it’s all that socialism that causes businesses & Forbes to exist. I’m sure when the capitalist revolution happens—it’s coming any minute now! The socialists are as we speak burying the seeds to their own demise!—businesses will whither ’way & we’ll finally have a Robinson Crusoe in every human!

Last, he criticizes a politician’s propaganda blurbs probably shat out by some speech writer in a minute as futilely as I do for him. Obama may love capitalism, but he doesn’t love it for the right reason—the reason that has never succeeded ever in history. You’re right: how absurd o’ him. Fuck destitute hell holes like Sweden; give me… I can’t even think o’ an example, ’cause Salsman refuses to specify which practical application o’ which arbitrary version o’ capitalism that he supports. Somalia when ’twas “anarchist”?—or rather, Americans’ ignorant perception o’ what “anarchism” is. Pinochetian Chile? The Gilded Age? Well, it can’t be then, ’cause there was that aforementioned socialistic railroad-building existed.

How tragic that this purportedly practical economic system has no actual practical application in history—nothing but evil socialism, whether the practical Western versions or the failing Leninist versions.

& it’s sad that someone who brags ’bout capitalism’s practicality has no practical knowledge himself. Perhaps it’s less that every other purported procapitalist is a shitty procapitalist & mo’ that Salsman is & that the so-called shitty procapitalists understand that capitalism’s practicality comes from its lack o’ consistent principles—that government intervention strengthens capitalism rather than weakening it.

’Course, he isn’t practical-minded, so he obviously doesn’t understand why something could be practical. He’s simply regurgitating American propaganda without understanding the purpose for propaganda: tricking idiots into thinking their dominant ideology is great in every way, even if they’re contradictory. Hence why capitalism is both free, but not too free as to let homeless savages trespass on property; hence why capitalism is both individualist, but not too individualist as to eliminate bureaucratic corporations: “Whatever gets you dolts to let me keep my riches—defend it ardently, even—I don’t give a shit what you idiots want to believe.” I bet Salsman will also write an article on how awesome Washington was for not lying ’bout cutting down that cherry tree or ’bout good ol’ Betsy Ross, who received the design for the American flag straight from American Jesus.

Unless rational self-interest is understood as the one moral code consistent with genuine humanity, and the moral estimate of capitalism thus improves, socialism will keep making comebacks, despite its deep and dark record of human misery.

Considering it’s purported proponent doesn’t even understand it, we must be in trouble then.

Addendum:

Also, fuck Forbes for splitting the article into 2 pages ’tween when I 1st wrote this & when I was finishing the final draft. Stop doing that, you idiots: it only makes it a pain in the ass to find specific parts o’ an article & makes me wade through mo’ o’ Forbes’s dumbass thoughts o’ the day.

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Footnotes

I’ve begun to feel bad ’bout my article mocking moderate liberals for their recent election failures, not ’cause I mocked moderate liberals—that part I still stand by—but ’cause I mocked some article wherein Noah Smith praises mainstream economists for, by his own account, fucking up the economy by being corrupt liars. Looking back, I should’ve taken this as subtle sarcasm, since clearly no one who is an assistant professor @ a prestigious college—if your college doesn’t just hand out coupons for digital cameras for diplomas, I consider it prestigious—could write this article unironically…

Right…?

This article is not from his usual den o’ faux-nerdy obnoxiousness, but @ the den o’ the pasty-faced known as Bloomberg. Said article has a not-@-all-arrogant title that seems to imply Smith’s humble goal o’ being the the world’s ultimate arbiter on who deserves what. Since “free” market economists supporting economic authoritarianism is the rule mo’ than the exception, that’s not the odd part; no, the fun part must be built up like fresh pancakes…

1st we start with some fun strawmanning:

There’s a common myth that standard economics predicts that people are paid an amount of money equal to the value of the things they produce. Actually, this isn’t true – in fact, the idea doesn’t even make sense.

It’s a good thing this common myth was 1 you made up, then. Most critics assume economists assume that workers get paid based on the value they give, since that is what a logical society would do—though as we shall see, Smith doesn’t think our current economy does. I don’t know any leftist who assumes workers are all just independents who do everything themselves. In fact, that sounds mo’ like a laisez-faire fantasy, if anything. Would be awfully difficult for the evil capitalists to exploit them if said capitalists didn’t actually exist.

In standard economics […] you get paid an amount equal to the amount that the company’s production increases when it hires you.

Which employers surely know, since every business comes with a special “value-creation” meter that can predict just how much value a worker will create before that worker actually does anything. This proves that labor has nothing to do with value-creation, as those scurvy-dog Marxists claim, since they don’t even work to create value: just having their name on the business’s employee list is ’nough to inspire the computers that actually do all o’ the work to feel mo’ confident & to work harder.

People generally don’t produce things individually. They produce things together, with the assistance of capital such as machines and buildings.

It’s ’bout time someone finally told market-critics this. As we all know, leftist critics o’ mainstream economics routinely view the economy as nothing mo’ than independent individuals in some Robinson Crusoe world, nor do they ever acknowledge capital’s involvement in the economy. That’s why Marx’s most famous work was called Das Kapital—’cause as the 1st sentence will tell you, “Das Kapital ist eine bürgerliche Lüge.”

So when a company hires you, its marginal productivity changes, because your presence affects the marginal productivity of everyone else at the company.

I just imagine Smith snickering as he typed this. It’s true, too: a common thought that pops into workers’ heads is, Man, if only I had some guy standing near me, his warm breath streaming down my neck, I’d work so much harder! This empty space is just so distracting!

In other words, in a competitive, classical economy…

O, good, we can just stop here, since we’re not in that kind o’ economy, so its dependent variables can be safely ignored.

Market economists always do that shit, too. They’re like those too-good-to-be-true ads that get you hyped, only for the microscopic print to admit, “only applies to competitive economies,” when “competitive capitalism” is right up there with “benign dictator” or “communism that hasn’t utterly fucking failed” as 1 o’ those elusive concepts that’s s’posed to distinguish it from the evil versions that have actually ever existed in reality.

He brings up this chart that shows that worker productivity & wages generally matched during the mid-20th Century, also commonly known as the “Golden Age” o’ capitalism.

All right. Then he goes into a perfectly normal description o’ how average & marginal productivity differ ’cause… wait, what?

No economic model says that people get paid based on average productivity. If they did, there would be no income left over for capital — no profits, rents or interest. We’d be living in a sort of a [sic] Marxist world, where labor is the only thing with any value.

OK, now go back & look @ that graph he just brought up ’gain—the 1 where average productivity & what people were paid matched so closely.

We must credit Professor Noah Smith, for revealing the government myth o’ the “Golden Age” o’ capitalism to truly be the vile Golden Age o’ Marxism! So that’s how we won the Cold War. Well, like they say: fight fire with fire. I just wish our wise ol’ conservatives would teach these young punks & their radical “free” markets how much better things were in the good ol’ red-blooded American 50s, when everything was swell; teenage women didn’t get pregnant all the time;—or a’least we pretend they didn’t—black people were still kept in fea… O, wait, we still do that; & we all held hands & chanted “This Land is My Land” before statues o’ Marx & Engels.

He then makes up some bullshit ’bout how robots & the Chinese are stealing all our jobs, but the latter’s OK, ’cause Chinese workers will ’ventually get bored & find something else to do. God damn it, Smith, are you mixing up reality with your favorite science fiction books? This is just like that microfiction you wrote ’bout the economy wherein every individual’s income distributions are randomized every so oft. You’re not going to be the Twilight Zone for economics, so give it up. For 1, economics itself is already as logical as the Twilight Zone.

Still, I couldn’t agree mo’ with his reverse Yakov Smirnoff joke:

In a globalized capitalist economy, you don’t get paid what you produce – in fact, you don’t produce anything without others to help. What you get paid is what you can convince other people to give you.

So quit bitching & start whoring yourself to your brethren. Shit, as we saw earlier, Smith’s been doing that for a while. Or would you rather live in 1 o’ those collectivist economies like the Soviet Union or 1950s America?

I didn’t think so.

Nevertheless, this point has been proven in a mo’, ahem, scientific—& I must say mo’ eloquent—manner elsewhere.

Other fine work:

• An aptly-titled article, “Reality Might Topple a Beloved Economic Theory.” This apparently “disquiets” him, which is odd, as the many times it’s done so in the past hadn’t seemed to.

• Here Smith rightfully points out how frivolous the Nobel Prize is, since they love giving those peace prizes to war criminals, & ’cause the winners are all fatties who stuff their face with chocolate—no offense to the fatties who stuff their face with peanut butter, ’stead; they’re still cool.

• Here Smith outright acknowledges that he’s a troll, but just an obnoxiously generic 1—what he calls the true oppressed class! Mostly, this is just a ’scuse for him to spew pseudoeconomic nonsense to pretend he’s a special, brilliant snowflake. He is wrong.

  He also seems to think Lolcats & Rickrolling were creative. He is wrong ’gain.

• Here’s a hilarious article that I’ll also take as trolling wherein he argues that Wall-Street people make so much money ’cause they suffer so much. For instance, you may have to tolerate being an asshole & causing other people harm—& nothing’s worse than having someone else inconvenienced. You may even be inconvenienced ’nough to punching your underling! Think o’ how your hand will hurt after hitting that li’l freak’s hard head!

  He also joins with ’nother Bloomberg writer in trying to sucker young people into giving up such lucrative careers in return for their “soul.” After all, “moral purpose can be worth a lot of dollars – just look at the low wages in the nonprofit sector.”

• Here’s an article wherein he creams himself over a sexy cat fight ‘tween Krugman & some smarmy-looking bastard o’ which I’ve never heard. I’m particularly amused by Smith’s insinuation that Krugman has mo’ sweet-ass cred than Stephen Gould & John Maynard Keynes—Krugman, the same economist who claimed that silly fiction stories about imaginary hot dog factories are mo’ important than facts; the same economist who supported many o’ the causes o’ our current economic depression, while now shamelessly, hypocritically pretending to be on the forefront gainst the very economics he suported before–including the same inaccurate deficit & inflation scaremongering for which Smith hypocritically criticizes Austrian-schoolers.

  Actually, Smith later whines ’bout how tragic 2 rich people disagreeing has become & hearfully wishes they’d just get together & put their dicks in each other’s bums already, your flirtatious bickering isn’t fooling anyone, before Smith’s nerves give in to so much conflict & he faints. I’m always amused by the kind o’ things rich people find troubling. Surely you’ve had greater tragedies in your life, right? Like, maybe you had ice cream fall off its cone once–which, judging by this article, caused Smith to spend months ‘lone in his room with the lights off in deep depression (Some o’ us have learned the wise wisdom o’ optimistic advice from such sites as Careerealism & do not let such circumstances dictate our actions, but take the initiative ourselves, & spend months ‘lone in our rooms with the lights off without waiting for ice cream to fall off our cones, thank you).

• Here’s an article wherein he conflates the worst war in human history to conservatives feeling a tad sad ’bout not being able to take out their bitterness on women & gays as much as they used to. This comes with a side order o’ an appeal to gross collusion ‘tween the 2 milquetoast political classes with the kind o’ smugness that conservatives despise liberals for harboring. This “compromise” is essentially everyone thinking the same way Smith does. ‘Course, anyone with the merest o’ political understanding will predict that conservatives, laissez-faire-libertarians (though in Smith’s defense, I don’t think he even tries to compromise with them, which shows that he has some taste), & leftists (who, in fairness, will hate anything, anyway) will tell Smith to fuck off & continue to hate him; but centrists & moderate liberals can get a warm fuzzy feeling o’ smug satisfaction @ their civility.

  That this smug self-congratulation for moderate liberals comes after their utter fucking failure in American legislative branch is even funnier. Yes, keep telling yourselves you’re successful, liberals. Hee, hee, you’re so cute.

• Finally, we have a ludicruous article praising a ludicrous study that “proves” that economists are not ideological by flaunting their political & linguistic ignorance–that is, after a tacky, irrelevant photo o’ some woman holding up scales. Said study is reams o’ arbitrary mathematical postmodernist nonsense meshed with an arbitrary text-searching test that only checks which words are used, not their actual content. So, for instance, if a paper talks ’bout mental illness, it’s apparently left-wing, while if it talks ’bout bank notes or the Federal Reserve, it’s right-wing (p. 14). That this paper seems to only focus on Democrats & Republicans & already makes assumptions o’ what are “neutral” political activities, which they refuse to include in their data, shows not only that the evidence is partly based on the conclusion–not necessarily nonfalsifiable, but certainly absurd–but that this study’s writers are ignorant o’ politics, as well as language (p. 12-13).

  In truth, the methodology & the conclusion o’ the paper ironically demonstrates the very bias economists in general truly have: centrism. The paper focuses purely on Democrats & Republicans, with those who fall between them considered “unbiased”–which ironically relies on the biased view that the Democrats & Republicans are an objective measure for determining the “biased” sides. This is unsurprising, as economists are superstitiously fearful o’ being viewed as “biased,” & thus try to fake nonbias through simply regurgitating the “centrist” mainstream hivemind. This same philosophy affects the writers o’ this very study, leading them to mistake “centrism” as “nonbiased,” when it isn’t. This can clearly be proved by comparing US politics to other countries’ politics & noting that what is “centrist” in the US may be radically different from other countries’ centrism; & thus, in reverse, that those “centrisms” may be “biased” toward the left or right. In essence, this study tests bias by harboring a bias for the US way o’ thinking. If an economist were to think in a way mo’ like ‘nother country’s dominant ideology, that economist would be evilly biased, while an economist who regurgitates US dominant ideology would be “unbiased.”

  But fuck that boring noise: read the comments for that article & feast on… whatever nonsense these people are blubbering ’bout. The great part o’ the insane asylum known as the internet is that it’s impossible to tell which parts are passive-aggressive sarcasm or authentic delusions–can you discern which is which on this very blog?

  In particular, I’m glad Noah Smith linked this brilliant critique o’ New Republic (though I disagree with Prof. deBoer’s callous indifference toward the well-being o’ Stalin’s cat). I would like to see that kind o’ high-quality analysis from you for once, Smith.

• O shit, how could I forget Smith’s laughable attempt @ foreign-policy analysis with his scaremongering ’bout the upcoming World War 3 gainst the vile Chinese.

  A few succulent bits:

  [A]bout 40% of the world has resolutely refused to adopt U.S.-like systems, and democracy has actually been in retreat since slightly after the turn of the millennium, if you believe Freedom House.

  I don’t, tragically ‘nough, since I can’t imagine a political system that’s virtually never existed ever to be in decline. I love how people who lusciously praise America’s “democracy” are so ignorant o’ the US’s actual political philosophy or what “democracy” even is. Even laissez-faire libertarains o’ all people have bothered to actually graduate high school & learn that the US isn’t a democracy, never was 1, is a republic, which keeps the dirty poor from asserting themselves, yadda yadda. This isn’t obscure shit hidden in badly designed websites by anarchists; any high school history textbook mentions this shit. Smith should read basic history for a mere second before spewing propaganda so he actually gets the propaganda right.

  He then spews data & a few caveat points without any analysis o’ how it matters. Mo’ importantly, nowhere does he actually ‘splain why 2 countries with nuclear weapons should go to war with ‘nother country with nuclear weapons, despite the absence o’ such even in the far bitterer Cold War.

  @ the end he admits that this is all bullshit he pulls out his ass, but then he self-fallatingly declares, “But just in case this is where things are headed, it pays to be honest with ourselves about the facts.” I agree: in case o’ events that have no reason to ever occur outside o’ fantasy literature, we must memorize random data in case China demands us all to win a China quiz or else they’ll send their UFOs down & conquer us all like they did in the teevee movies.

  The comments have a variety o’ sentiments–none o’ which are deeply considered, shockingly. The most fitting would have to be Anonymous’s “What kind of bullshit is this?” even if it comes after the unapt praise for Smith’s economic posts; though, admittedly, learning ’bout (laissez-faire) libertarianism being a Jewish conspiracy o’ Marxists must come as a close 2nd.

  There are mo’ scaremongering, too. Clearly, Smith is obsessed with living out his fantasies o’ living in his favorite Tom Clancy thrillers, even if it requires him to pretend that nuclear weapons have never been invented.

I. A Boring Public Service Announcement

My favorite part ’bout a lot o’ “positive” people—not all o’ them, you whiny bastards I imagine might complain if anyone read this dreck—is how they oft use it as a way to mask the fact that they’re oft terrible people. This makes sense: positivity is aesthetically pleasing—to most people, a’least—& thus does a better job o’ hiding any ugliness ’neath.

This is why a lot o’ narcissistic know-it-alls are cynics: they love the challenge o’ being as ugly & provocative as possible; if people still find their arguments compelling under such ugliness, well, they must be truly good arguments. Positivity, meanwhile, is oft used to hide the most banal—& oft revoltingly reactionary, as in Goins’ case I went over in ’nother article—garbage.

Indeed, it shouldn’t be surprising that “positivity” & “reactionary” should be affiliated as they are both based on the evidenceless belief that the status quo is valid & that those who don’t agree with it are just “negative.” Women who complain ’bout sexism are just whiny bitches who need to quit bitching & “lean in”—into the CEO’s dick, amirite? Sweat-shop workers in developing nations need to quit whining & learn to love their life-long gruel. After, all they clearly chose to live that way, since humans can clearly do whatever they want—fuck the complexities o’ reality!

Positivity is also linked quite oft with power, while cynics are universally despised. This is, ’course, ’cause power structures are mo’ powerful when people think ’bout all its good points than its bad. This is why there will always be a seat in bland political talk shows for ditsy morons who just spew ’bout the American Dream & how democratic the US is, despite all o’ the scientific evidence gainst either.

“Positive” Americans try to take credit for the positive aspects o’ attacking power that led to our present status quo, ’course. For instance, Martin Luther King Jr. was “positive” when he attacked blatant racism, which we ’course know is evil now, but the people who criticize deeper racism that exist today or economic issues are just complainers. Never mind the fact that MLK Jr. considered the civil rights movement a failure ’cause it didn’t go far ’nough—’specially in terms o’ economics. Reality isn’t as important as the ability for positive successful people to feel superior to people & the past without having to reevaluate their own situation—to do so would be negative, after all.

II. Be Who I Tell You To Be Or Else 🙂

On the subject o’ revolting “positive” reactionaries is a Lifehacker—what the fuck is that s’posed to mean?—article ’bout the positive topic o’ how cynics are all assholes & should mend their disgusting ways. ’Stead, he literally advocates lying so that you fit in—which shows that the shallowness o’ Klosowski’s philosophy matches the shallowness o’ his writing.

To be fair, one can’t go wrong with introspection—lord knows, Americans could use some self-awareness for once—to examine how one’s behavior affects others & a way to balance that with one’s own emotional concerns, which may include counseling.

’Course, Klosowski doesn’t advocate that or even consider the option, since he probably can’t even comprehend the idea o’ someone pondering a subject for longer than the average simple point-by-point slideshow that all o’ these articles try emulating.

’Stead, you should just adjust your personality to how he wants it; & if that causes conflict with your friends or family, well, good: they’re not good friends, anyway. See, where I come from, this is called a “cult.”

Only later, after bashing cynics for paragraphs, does he turn round & admit the strengths o’ cynics & flaws o’ optimists. Well, then why didn’t you call this article “Balancing Positivity & Negativity”? Would’ve saved me the time o’ typing this shit—time that could’ve been spent doing nothing but bashing other people’s work ’cause I secretly want to be them, please be my best friend, sniff.

God damn it, the only times centrism is ever logical is when nobody’s ever centrist yet ’gain.

I started with the balanced point. (I said that not all positive people are bad ’fore proceeding to bash positive people; that’s balanced.) ’Cause I’m better.

Also, it’s funner to lure the optimists in with candy ’fore dumping my waste bin right onto their faces.

III. Cynics Are Shitty Artists

’Nother article peddles some pseudoscientific test ’bout problem-solving & uses that to argue that creativity & positivity are purportedly linked—’cause Pinola apparently knows nothing ’bout creativity.

Why is it that all o’ these positivity lovers also love such obvious shams? Yeah, a website called “Positive Ratio” that promises that “Positivity shows you how to tap into your hidden emotional potential to achieve a flourishing life” sounds truly credible. I’d totally cite that in my college papers. Here’s a tip, dipshit: if a website claims to guarantee a “flourishing life,” it’s a scam; elsewise, we’d have solved world hunger by now.

To be fair, she has a point: cynics have never created good art, ever. Think o’ how much better Nirvana’s music would’ve been if Cobain thought positively for once. & “Waste Lands.” (Sigh.) I don’t see why T. S. Eliot couldn’t have been constructive for once & not mire in such worthless bleakness.

& don’t get me started on Jonathan Swift, who only ever had mean things to say ’bout everything. Maybe ’stead o’ making all o’ those snarky attacks gainst the British government, whom I’m sure were doing the best they could for the starving Irish, he could’ve looked @ the positive aspects—how such mistakes made us stronger!

IV. Treat Cynicism Like the Plague

I also love how much “positive” advice tells you to stay ’way from unpositive people. Hey, is someone withdrawn ’cause their mother’s dead or something? Stay ’way from that dead weight! Don’t want the cool kids @ the capitalist table not to let us join their clique.

How ’bout I avoid “positive” people, ’stead. They sound like privileged, bigoted assholes.

This is probably frivolous—but then, isn’t everything I write?—but I wanted to make ’nother quick post on Mankiw & my grotesque fascination with his rhetorical philosophy, which I think shows the general counterintuitive philosophy o’ centrists: that one becomes smarter when one thinks as li’l as possible.

In an admittedly-rather-ol’ post, Mankiw uses the same patronizing moderate frown he used in the last article I mocked when discussing some hippie @ Ad Busters making fun o’ Mankiw for be a mindless Squealer for economists. Mankiw’s response is… “Yes, that’s exactly what I am.”

When I teach introductory economics, either in the classroom or in my textbook, I view myself as an ambassador for the economics profession. I try to represent the economic mainstream, not my personal political views. Some students may view the economic mainstream as right of center. That assessment is probably correct, at least as judged by the universe of college professors. But the job of an introductory course is to present, as honestly as possible, the consensus of the profession.

Thus, Mankiw’s defense is literally, “If the majority o’ economists say so, it must be right.”

I also love how before that he makes the same simplified story that centrist economists always make ’bout how the right is mean to them, too—O, who is mo’ assailed than mainstream economists? Why aren’t they given reparations already?—& then says, “I suppose the symmetry in the attacks suggests I am getting things about right.”

Reading this quote—as well as the rest o’ the article—notice what Mankiw neglects to do—what he neglects to do in most o’ his work? He neglects to make an actual logical point. Nowhere in his work do I ever see rational arguments. His defenses gainst cries o’ political bias are nothing mo’ than saying that, well, his political bias is the correct 1, which is the center—the US’s dominant ideology. How ironic that centrists like Mankiw can only ever criticize such “extreme” “ideologues” through ideological language, such as criticizing work purely for being “leftist” or “right-wing” or focusing purely on where ideas stand on some imaginary “left-right” spectrum. This is unsurprising coming from a study that takes pride in focusing purely on abstract—i.e. made up in people’s minds—matters, rather than concrete matters.

That the center could be just as ignorant & biased as the left or right eludes Mankiw completely. Never mind the fact that the center has, in the past, included such reasonable arguments that black people & women were inferior, as it includes such reasonable arguments that poor people are inferior today. Those centrists were ’course wrong; but we’re not, ’cause society has clearly learned all that we need. That American centrism is significantly different from the centrism in many other countries is also irrelevant. Those centrists are ’course silly extremists; but we’re not, ’cause… the answer always eludes.

What this tells me is not, as centrists like Mankiw clearly want me to think, that they are just ’bove such vulgarities as political opinions, but that they are just intellectual cowards who are ’fraid to confront their political biases—probably ’cause they’re not confident in their intellectual abilities to ensure that these are biases are logically defensible, ’cause they probably know deep down that what they want & get contradict what a logical ethical system should give them.

Otherwise, a Harvard economist like Mankiw may question, as the Anti-Mankiw article he linked, why his tenure is so great & why he derives so much influence for then-Presidents like George W. Bush when he can’t even ’splain his beliefs without freshmen-level logical fallacies such as “appeal to popularity” or the “golden mean.”

That, or Mankiw may just be a shameless lawyer who spews out rhetoric in the hopes o’ distracting people from the rational fact that he takes in phat loot for spewing propaganda beneficial to powerful classes—which is not just corporations! As any centrist economist will tell you, they also stands for such left-wing, Keynesian ideals as supporting underdogs like the government, too! After all, without government, who will jail the dirty hobos when they perturb white middle-class sensibilities when asking for dimes?

Addendum

In the spirit o’ smugfaced centrism, can I take a second to laugh @ the fact that a leftist organization would call themselves “post-autism economics.” As you can see, the prissy left still hasn’t left their PC fascism. If this were a true-blue conservative organization, you know they would get right to the heart o’ language & call themselves “economics for people who aren’t fucking social retards who might also be Jews I’m not sure yet though if you figure out the secrets o’ the Corporatist Marxist Jew Cabal please tell me ’K thank you.”

Mankiw, as any good-sporting centrist, is “intrigued” by this movement, which is good to hear. As any sensible person will tell you, you must always look @ both sides in every conflict:—there are never mo’ than 2 sides, that’s just too crazy to even consider!—both the bigoted & the nonbigoted.

Actually, we shouldn’t be surprised, since we’re talking ’bout economics, & anyone faintly interested in economics is probably halfway toward becoming a desensitized sociopath. This even includes those who treat economics purely as bile fuel,—an environmentally-friendly energy source, you hippies should appreciate—as anyone reading anything else I’ve written here should have gleaned.