Dark Arse

It’s a competitive world and it’s bloody hard to get your more than far share of resources, power and fame.

As such, I have noticed that some women that wander into fields dominated by men (science, technology, engineering etc), lacking the talent and skills to succeed naturally, turn to the dark arts.

They use a three pronged attack:

1. Coquettishness – subliminal flirting to the blokes, looking for a leg-up, so to speak. This is always aimed ‘upwards’ in a company, or a field. Its all about getting ahead by patronage based on unmet desires of old blokes with old wives, dreaming of the youth that they wasted in hard work,(how they got to their positions).

2. The inequality card – many of these same women will also talk up inequality, the lack of female representation in their fields or companies. Of course they are the direct beneficiary of any corrective action, so this makes sense. They especially love affirmative action – the promotion of a less qualified woman over a more qualified bloke.

3. The victim card – at some point they will seek more attention by claiming that one of the targets of Coquettishness crossed the line. If you stand close to the fire it will eventually burn you. When they go public as a victim they are actually seeking compensation in the form of promotion of their position. Or they are just seeking attention, something else they crave.

I have noticed that the chicks that play these three cards usually don’t end up in happy relationships, or relationships at all. It would appear that blokes aren’t that stupid as a class of humans. They can sense the self serving stupidity of these women.

The very best thing you can do is completely ignore them; it drives them crazy.

Just for the record

Well there’s nothing like a Sydney train and bus epic to focus the mind is there?

I understand that you’re channelling a lot of emotion at the moment but I don’t think there’s much upside in calling me a liar, which is what you essentially did last night. Especially when I’m not. I had to say that out loud or it it was going to start eating away at me, very slowly. I have been there before and the outcome isn’t good.

Just to recap, I had planned to go back to Brisbane this weekend so I could spend some time with Lola. You decided to come to Sydney and that scotched my plan. I hold some resentment about that but held it in so as not to create harm. I feel like I have just lost my daughter all over again and seeing her would have been good for both her and I. God knows what damage I have done by telling her not to visit this weekend.

Then I planned a drink with Dave well ahead of knowing exactly when you were arriving. And that has now been construed as me not being committed to the relationship or somesuch.

You are pregnant. My fault? I guess, it is my sperm. And yet on so many occasions there have been tears because I wouldn’t give you the same sperm when you wanted it. It is very confusing.

And now you feel lonely because we can’t decide what to do about it. You have decided that it might be compelling to blame me for the upcoming abortion, claiming my lack of commitment as an excuse. Rather than your own commitment to not being a mother again, a hard as that is, I know.

I will tell you what. I won’t blame you for this abortion if you don’t then blame me. That way we can make it through without blowing things up.

My gut feeling is that the hormones have got a hold of you. Nature is cunning beast and they do this to fuck you up and make you a mother. Unfortunately the core of the approach is to appeal to the bloke’s empathy. I have been so fucked over by women for so long, that it just doesn’t work on me any more. I have empathy for you, seriously I do, but it won’t make me do anything I don’t want to do. My days of being a sucker are long over.

I especially like the irony of no sex nights. It’s like my living nightmare all over again.

Invention of the day

A service on how not to hire someone.

Replace a job hire with technology.

Evil.

Local Hero

I did not enter one single blog entry in June 2017.

And just a few in July.

Why-for this sudden reticence?

Well, I am practising a form of zen. I am letting things through to the keeper, not reacting. And, by and by, I don’t feel outraged or dismayed at the monumental collective stupidity of mankind.

So now I aim to be much more selective about what I write here.

Also, I have weened all my readers off the blog, so I can write into this private blog without any thought of an audience. This pleases me greatly.

Frogs in quickly heating water, we are. Just by keeping a weather eye on the news I can see this is the case.

Climate change, resources, population growth, rent seeking political systems … it is a formula for disaster of our own making, which has been well documented here and elsewhere.

But humans are very adaptable. If, for example, there was no oil as of tomorrow, we would cope somehow. The human condition is to deny adversity and suck it up. Fear of loss of what we have motivates people to stay put in the hope that things will get better.

So I believe that we will have a series of ever-worsening disasters and setbacks, and we will adapt to life after these. While some will bemoan what has been lost, I am forecasting that much will be gained. Life will be more uncertain and much more local.

It is in this latter characteristics that people may recover a sense of belonging that is very much missing in modern day society.

Unfortunately it may be accompanied by a reversion to general ignorance, meaning a hell of a life for any outstandingly bright individuals that emerge.

I would like to see the internet surviving. It provides a mean for localised folk to expand their horizons at very little cost. Like all broadcast media it is subject to the will of the powerful self serving, in oh so many ways that can’t be effectively controlled by anyone or thing.

End of ramble.

Axagram

Fungible corflutes…

Quality control

From the smh…
“After 112-years of Australian ownership Ansell will sell its condom business to a Chinese consortium for $800 million. Ansell says the time is right to exit the fluctuating sexual wellness market and focus on rubber gloves.”
Makes you wonder doesn’t it?

Gronkski

Say Gonski, think education.
Actually it’s a bloke, some wrinkly old school dude in the Australian corporate world, former lawyer (what else).
A self proclaimed genius and oracle it seems.
By happenchance I just managed to see a video of him talking about innovation.
Oh my god, it is awful.
He says that Australians have an ‘institutionalised’ fear of failure, which is why we aren’t innovative as a nation.
His evidence is a couple of anecdotes of very poor quality.
Obviously he never studies logic or any school of rational thinking at uni.
The truth is that collectively we are just a little too comfortable to be innovative.
And we focus all of our gambling genes on shit like the horses, the dogs, the footy and the lottery.
In other words, our collective and individual greed and stupidity are well misdirected,
There is no fix for this because these are lifelong habits that are virtually impossible to unlearn.
The best solution is to get everyone to move onto the next buzzword after “innovation” – “agile” seems like a good pick.
Means nothing and is sort of techie, it being a word used by software types.
However, I wonder if the Gronk might have stumbled onto something?
If (if!) it exists, is our fear of risk related to our love of rent seeking?
Hard to prove otherwise I would guess. Its the unknowable, unless you are a journo, a rent seeker (of the higher grade), or a politician.

Rent seeking club Australia

What I always thought. Some economics researchers have analysed Australia’s wealthiest people and shown that there’s not an innovator or entrepreneur amongst them.

In fact, they’re all experts at the dark arts of rent seeking. That is, influencing their unfair advantage, their monopolies or whatever, through the control of politicians that have the power to grant monopoly rights.

This is done the old fashion corrupt way, brown paper bags, or through influence of voting intentions through media, or by directly corruption of the very weak minds of the politicians with cleverly forged fabrications.

Because of their psychology all the rent seeker’s wealth, once earned, is either spent on maintaining their source of income through more rent seeking, or stashed somewhere safe like in real estate. None of it ends up as risk capital. Thus our excess wealth gets trapped doing nothing.

Mind you this isn’t just the wealthy. It also applies to the paid up members of corporate Australia. They behave the same as the wealthy through the companies that they work for, and their zeal is focused on climbing the greasy pole within, at the top of which lies the honey pot they are all helping to create.

Is there any way to stop this culturally ingrained rent seeking? I can’t see it, if there is.  There’s too many people in on the game. Deep down they know where their bread is buttered. They will resist any changes very effectively through the very same dark arts that they have perfected.

Innovation and entrepreneurship is a casual victim of this situation. There’s no exporters of tech because our big companies are busy rent seeking instead. Without exporters, there’s no M&A exit market for tech companies, without which a tech sector cannot flourish.

One possible solution is to not tax foreign earnings of our companies. That’d be interesting; they’d be compelled to generate profits in markets where they have no influence over politicians. It might force them to be innovative and take risks.

It might backfire though; we might end up exporting our first class rent seeking ways to the rest of the world. Then we’ll all be fucked.

60%

The US executed the perfect formula for social unrest…

First they spend 60% of federal taxes on military, ensuring the existence of an underclass due to a lack of investment in education, health, welfare and investment in industry growth.

Then the underclass hangs around the places where:

1. There are the best scraps for living rough. i.e. where the wealthy live, and
2. Where there is the least aggravation, i.e. places like San Francisco

The Mission in San Francisco is weird. A warehouse down the road from me just sold for $48m. It is being turned into a headquarters for some internet unicorn. Outside of the $48m offices will be a tent city of homeless people, urine smells and plenty of rubbish collected by the homeless.

“Keeping it real” say the hipsters around here, in total denial that it only one possible reality.

Why spend 60% on military? So the wealthy classes get to maintain their sources of income resulting from the US control of foreign resources & trade, shares in military corporations,and the unrealistic high value of the US dollar.

It won’t end happily, of that I am sure. Either they will run out of money – 60% of zero is still zero, or social unrest will white-ant them from within.

Flowers not weeds

Having just watched Michael Moore pick flowers, not weeds, in Europe, I’ve been pondering the social conditions in a society that lead to effective breakdown, as the Americans have today. And that Australia is on the verge of having as well.

How does a minority aggregate into a self serving controlling unit, hypocritically moralising about preserving a long lost and better past era?

Having read Fukuyuma’s book, I suspect it’s the similar to the conditions that lead to political order and disorder. As in the the order of development of political and administrative systems.

Effectively, rule by law is the weapon of control managed through control of the political process, combined with control of the media. The motivation is fear and greed. Historically, the breakdown of local community and values in large immigrant cities must play a significant role in unshackling the guilty from any sense of shame.

I suspect it doesn’t matter. I doubt that there’s any answers in understanding the development of our current dilemma. It’s effectively an irreversible process.

Oddly, there are plenty of good people around, hoping to improve things. Like Michael Moore. But even these folk are negated since their good intentions are corralled into either whining at the moon, or into even more self serving rubbish, such as corporate charities. 

No one with any genuine ability is even allowed remotely near the steering wheel. 

It’s a bugger, all right. Nowt to be done about it though. Best to burrow down into a comfort zone and ignore the rabble.

Deceptive writing

These days, kids at school are sucked into mandated “persuasive writing”. Curious as to the origin of this abomination, wiki reveals that Persuasive writing is a form of writing in which the writer uses words to convince the reader that the writer’s opinion is correct in regard to an issue.

Otherwise known as PR or advertorials.

It looks like we’re training a whole generation of kids to grow up to become journos for the reader’s digest.

I’m not sure why.