movies seen (letterboxd Diary 2026 edition)

 

okcupid never worked for 18 years.

 

My last actual date was in 2005 with Nikki at a Caribu Coffee. When I was a member on okcupid since 2005, I attracted some women, but they never called me. Some women responded to me, but we never met. I say on my profile I was into anime like cowboy bebop, one piece, into JRPGs, first person shooters, racing games, Greenbay packers and I went to college. I said I liked camping and hiking. I don’t get text messages of women and I never get visitors. st. croix county women were into country music,  conservative, but seemed they wanted rich 25 year old men for boyfriends. I never meet them when I was 23 when everybody  had girlfriends like on myspace. Then I’m 37 now.

When I went premium this year, I met Amanda on okcupid. Amanda was 33 and divorced for only 2 weeks on snapchat before she blocked me. I only took a photo of her profile image for my phone. She talked about she was involved in family, and a crew of friends, played dungeons and dragons. She never met me at the Wow zone or restaurant. My cousin David Hartmon joined the Navy in 2003 and he married Patty in 2013 and had two daughters. He never talks to me on facebook. anymore. he used to like my minnesota state fair pictures 8 years ago, Then I have generation X cousins married for 24 years. One cousin Penny was married to a husband who died in 1999 and now lives with her boy friend for 15 years. I was home alone for 23 years working at 13 jobs that closed or went bankrupt and also went to Rasmussen University for a bachelor degree. I had two boy scout friends that I met in the 2010s who married in 2008. One boy scout i was friends since 1993 was divorced since 2018, because his ex wife became bipolar. Now this boy scout friend  has heart issues.

Video Game Collecting Is Getting Ridiculous

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Oh Boy, This is going to be a long one and I wont even touch on half the stuff I want to touch on. I could write a book about this right now. I’m going to briefly touch on a couple of YouTubers I am a HUGE fan off, but I will let their videos speak for themselves for the most part. I will include links to their channels at the end so please check them out. but here goes

Video game collecting is fast becoming one of the most popular past times around. Almost everyone will say they love video games, and those who don’t, well, they are either lying or haven’t really tried it. From the mind exercising puzzle action of Tetris, to the faced paced platforming of Sonic the hedgehog, From the non stop action of call of duty to the more laid back exploration of world of Warcraft, and from the epic story driven Assassins Creed, to the real world simulation of driving fast cars that is Forza, video games have something to offer literally everyone. Whether you’re into sports, board games, education, fantasy, gritty crime solving TV drama, or anything else, there’s not one or two games directed at you, there’s an entire genre of games.

So with a whole medium that crosses the same level of production as Hollywood blockbuster movies, with an active immersive experience that you just don’t get with film, its no surprise that video gaming is one hell of an industry. With developers receiving budgets to rival marvel franchise movies, some of the greatest directors, writers, artists, and musicians being highly invested in the works, and the advent of mobile gaming on our phones, you can see why I believe that video games are set to replace television and movies in much the same way that television and movies once replaced theatre as the number one entertainment medium.

The video game collectors market has blown up in recent years, with companies like Nintendo, Capcom, Square Enix, and more pushing their IP’s to new levels and refreshing them for the next generation of gamers, its not hard to see why. When Square Enix promotes its latest Final Fantasy game and gamers fall in love with it they look at the franchise, they read the reviews and hear the hype of the previous games, in this case they will read about Final Fantasy VII, often cited as not only the greatest Final Fantasy game, but the greatest JRPG of all time. If you love this game and that one is better… its a no brainer that you’re going to want to buy an original PlayStation and give it a go.

This is where the issues come in. Now if you want a copy of Final Fantasy VII, Or the original Silent Hill, Metal gear solid, Resident Evil, or whatever it is that has you drooling for the classics, its going to hit you where it hurts. Your pocket. For a decent playable boxed copy of one of these games you are going to be paying about the same amount as a brand new retail copy of a game for the current generation of systems. This wont hurt you, if you were going to spend that money on video games anyway, but this DOES hurt the game manufacturers. A copy of Final Fantasy VII for instance may have been passed around a lot since it was first bought. The Developers may have made, say £20 profit on the original sale, but if its been sold 4 or 5 times passed between collectors and people wanting to play it in the intervening 20 years, well that could mean that over £200 has exchanged hands on this one copy of the game and the developers have seen nothing from it.

No problem you may think, but really, yes. Big problem. The more people want to play a game that’s out of print, the more the price on it goes up, its the basic rules of supply and demand. For a highly revered game the interest in it will only ever increase as the gaming market expands, and new gamers find out about the old classics. Ad to that, time, decreasing the amount of limited numbers of the games available and you have an ever increasing price, often putting the games out of the price range of your average gamer. Oh you want to play Earthbound on the SNES? Good luck with that. This isn’t even a rare game, however its so amazing that everyone who hears about it wants to give it a go. And lets not forget that once you have the game you need a machine to play it on. And time isn’t kind to electronic devices. The more that break, the harder they are to find, the more expensive they become.

So here is where we see the issue. Video game collecting has now become far too expensive for the majority of people. And for no good reason. There are two kinds of collectors, Those who genuinely love a game from their childhood and would love to own a copy again, and want it for the nostalgia, for the memories and for the appreciation of the game as an entity, they love their games, and they couldn’t care less about the value currently attached to them. This is video game collecting in its purest form, For this, Take a look at YouTube, The Happy Console Gamer Johnny Millennium, Pete Dorr, and the enigmatic AlphaOmegaSin are but a few of the more popular channels of people who fit this category. Listening to them talk about their passion its hard not to feel the love they have for their games and they are bound to stir nostalgic cravings for your childhood. Johnny Millennium has a boxed copy of Earthbound sitting right behind him on the shelf and its currently worth over $1000, but he doesn’t give a shit. Its his game and he loves it and you’ve got more chance of getting AlphaOmegaSIn to stop swearing than you have of getting Johnny to part with his Earthbound.

The second kind of collectors are profit turners. They have no love for the games. They don’t care about gaming. Most of them don’t even play half the stuff they pick up. They trawl retail stores, Facebook, Flea markets, boot sales, eBay, Craigslist, Garage sales. Buying up anything and everything for the lowest price possible, and then they sit on it. They wait until it will fetch a profit and throw it up on EBay for a ridiculous sum. The biggest example of this in recent times was the release of the 20^th anniversary PlayStation 4 Limited edition model. The PS4 currently sells for about £300 brand new. And people got a chance in 2014 to buy a very limited edition anniversary edition of the PS4, its no different from a regular model, it does nothing special, the only difference is that its not black, but is the classic grey colour of the original PSone. The PlayStation logo is also in full colour just like the original one. This item was sold, not for an inflated price, but for just a little over the retail value, it was a collectors edition, something for the fans who love the system. But who bought them? Guess.

Within days of these limited edition systems shipping, they began appearing on ebay and as of the moment I write this they are fetching as much as £3000. That’s right, you could buy 10 PS4 systems brand new, OR just one in a different colour. And here is the thing, there isn’t just one or two for sale, there are LOADS. In the UK alone there are currently 79 listed on ebay. And since only 12,000 were made world wide, America and Japan being by far the largest markets we can assume that only a small chunk of this went to Europe. And in Europe Germany and France would likely have the lions share. Even at conservative estimates that puts around 10% of all the PS4 Limited editions in the country currently unopened and listed on eBay for ridiculous sums of money. Those who would appreciate this console for what it is and what it represents, cant get one.

Another massive point of contention is Stadium games for the NES. A boxed copy can set you back $30,000. A loose cart can fetch $3000. And the thing is, its not even a good game. In fact its shit. And to top it off, the exact same game is available easily and cheaply on the NES as the game was recalled almost immediately and rebranded as World Class Track Meet. So you can play the quite frankly abysmal game for cheap, but have to sell a kidney to get it with a slightly different sticker.

So how can we fix this? How can we ensure that people who want access to the media they want can get it for a fair price? Well, WE cant. But There is someone who can. Nintendo can. Microsoft can. Sony can. All of these companies now have online stores and consoles with massive hard drives. If for instance Resident Evil or Final fantasy VII were released on the online market, this is pretty much ZERO outlay. They could sell the game for £5, it would sell thousands of copies. And I mean thousands. And it would all be profit in Square Enix’s pocket. This is a business model that has Kept SEGA alive and able to pump out god awful bastardised Sonic game after god awful bastardised Sonic game. Since they dropped out of the console market nearly 15 years ago there hasn’t really been a console released that hasn’t seen a compilation of their old games from back when they didn’t suck. Hell even the PS2, Xbox, and GameCube got a Megadrive games compilation and those were consoles that were actually competing with the Dreamcast.

Did you know that EVERY SINGLE Sega Megadrive game ever released fits on to a 2GB SD card? That EVERY SINGLE Super Nintendo game fits on to a 2GB SD card? That every single Gameboy, NES, Master Sytem and Game Gear game combined, fits onto a 2GB SD card?

And that Emulators exist?

And that these companies already have access to ALL of this. And it would take almost NO work to get this up and running?

Now many people will point to the Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy VII remakes coming out and say “Well why would they do this when it could hurt sales on these titles?” well the answer is, because it wont. The new generation of consoles launched were almost immediately swamped with Remastered HD versions of games that had been out for a while and were still on store shelves. The Last of us and Tomb Raider being the most notable titles, but this didn’t hurt sales at all. Likely a release of Resident Evil 2 or Final Fantasy VII on Xbox Live and PSN would just boost popularity and excitement for the upcoming remake while lining the pockets of the developers so they have more to invest in future games.

Making things like this easily available for people who want to try these old games, means companies can continue to make money from their old franchises and continue to have income from them to put towards new and better games. It would also be a great way for them to judge what franchises people are still interested in. Its been 25 years since Konami released Sunset Riders. However amazing that game was how does Konami know whether its something people would be interested in seeing more of today? And more to the point, maybe if all of Konami’s amazing classics were available this way it would generate enough money for Konami to show interest in its gaming division again and stop pissing their IP’s up the wall.

So that’s what I would like to see. Bulk additions to the online stores allowing anyone anywhere access to all of these great games. It benefits everyone from developers to consumer alike. And more importantly will cause serious damage to the second hand value of classic games allowing those who collect them for the love of owning the physical games they grew up with and have a strong emotional attachment to, to get hold of their games without having to auction off their children to afford.

If you got this far I urge you to go check out these guys, this is what Video game collecting should be about. not about financial gain but about love for the whole lifestyle of being a gamer.

Johnny Millennium and Rob Man (The Happy Console Gamer Show)

https://www.youtube.com/user/HappyConsoleGamer

AlphaOmegaSin (Warning, do not watch his videos if you are offended by hilarious swearing rants so skilfully verbalised that make the south park characters envious)

https://www.youtube.com/user/AlphaOmegaSin

And Mr nice guy Pete Dorr

https://www.youtube.com/user/PeteDorr

Men are rapidly losing their close friends, poll finds

 The decline in male friendships has been precipitous. A May 2021 poll from the Survey Center on American Life revealed the number of American men who view themselves as having “no close friends” quintupled over the last 30 years, increasing from 3 percent in 1990 to 15 percent in 2021. What’s more, just 15 percent of men consider themselves as having 10 or more close friends, a steep drop from the 40 percent of men who reported such bromances in 1990.

    
Men have experienced a much steeper decline in the number of close friends they have. It's dramatic. pic.twitter.com/dGiDHJtYDB
— Daniel Cox (@dcoxpolls) June 25, 2021

Although female friendships have also taken a hit over the years, their decline was less dramatic — 11 percent of women report having 10 or more close friends this year, down just 17 percent from 1990, and 10 percent say they have no close friends at all.

Oh, brother.

The May 2021 American Perspectives Survey polled 2,019 adults from May 14-May 23, 2021. Results have a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. See more results at the Survey Center on American Life.

Life Under Communism: Hell on Earth

Communism begins from the outset with atheism. Communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism.

Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.[1]

Our Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.
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John Adams, our second President.

Anti-Life Philosophy.

Many Soviets viewing the current chaos and nationalist unrest under Gorbachev look back almost longingly to the era of brutal order under Stalin.

Mike Wallace, on the February 11, 1990 edition of “60 Minutes.”

I think that Soviet historians are exaggerating. I thought Stalin was a good leader.

Gus Hall, chairman of the American Communist Party.[2]

Communism is inherently superior to the corruption-riddled failure of Capitalism. Unlike Capitalism, Communism does not feed like a vampire upon the blood of the masses. In order to accomplish its goals, Communism does not need to exploit the masses and oppress them by stripping them of basic human rights like the freedom of reproductive choice.

Eventually, the entire world will be a Communist paradise.

The Process of Destruction.

The whole system we live under is completely worthless, and no basic change for the better can come about until this system is overthrown.

Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA (RCP).[3]

Life Under Communism.

The more than forty newsletters and newspapers of the American Communist propaganda machine constantly churn out attacks on the “corrupt capitalist system” we live under. They say that the Communist economic system is ideally tailored to the needs of humanity. Its alleged goal is to create a worldwide “People’s Paradise” in which all people will be equal, with no race, gender, or class distinctions, and where all will “struggle” for the common good.

They craftily omit a working description of living conditions under the actual system that oppresses almost two billion people in the world today.

In the “People’s Paradise,” there is plenty of struggle but very little good. Far from dwelling in Paradise, the people who are mired in Communist nations know from long and agonizing experience that their governments are incredibly oppressive, corrupt, and inefficient. The Communist/atheist rulers and their toadies are invariably bullies, liars, cheats, and incompetents who are afraid of any opposition and who are literally terrified of free speech. Significantly, these are prominent characteristics of the atheists and Communists in the United States as well.

Basic Strategy.

Although the overall strategies employed by the Communists vary somewhat from country to country, they basically use one tried-and true master plan that is executed in three steps;

(1) “prepare the ground” by infiltration and subversion of anti-Communist organizations and churches while preaching total freedom in order to get people “hooked on entitlements;”

(2) seize power as quickly and as ruthlessly as possible; and

(3) immediately reorganize society to focus and centralize power in the hands of a very few powerful men.

These steps are briefly outlined in the following paragraphs.

Preparing the Ground.

The most important part of any Revolution or counterrevolution, for that matter is prior preparation. This preparation is based upon the vital strategy of weakening your strongest opponents by infiltrating and subverting them, while simultaneously strengthening your own forces.

The Christian Church and the family have always been the most formidable opponents of Communism, both before and after the Revolutions. The other three teachers of national morality have traditionally been the law, the schools, and the media.

The latter three have been turned against traditional morality and the Church has been effectively neutralized. All that is left is the family, which is under increasingly focused attack.

The Communists are at last beginning to realize that the Church and the family really thrive only when they are being oppressed, and that it is literally impossible to entirely stamp out belief in God and the family.

The reverse of the above, unfortunately, is also true. When the Church enjoys complete and unfettered freedom, it gets fat and undisciplined, because it becomes larded with “believers” who want to be Christians without cost. The concepts of Satan, sin, sacrifice and suffering are the first to go. Pastors forget their God-ordained mission and preach humanism instead. Eventually, the Church becomes a great social activist’s club as it has in the United States, and it gives up the saving of souls in favor of supporting such atrocities as abortion and homosexuality, all under the banner of “freedom of choice” (for further information on the disintegration of the clergy in the mainline churches, see Chapter 42 of Volume I, “Church Positions on Abortion”).

As the Master of Revolution, Vladimir Lenin, has correctly stated; “We will find our greatest success to the extent that we inculcate Marxism as a kind of religion: Religious men and women are easy to convert and win, and so will easily accept our thinking if we wrap it up in a kind of religious terminology.”[4]

During times of prosperity, the definition of the other great bulwark of democracy the family also becomes unfocused and weak. More and more people discard marriage entirely and instead “shack up.” Married couples have only one or two children if they consent to have children at all. These kids are incessantly indoctrinated in the joys of total freedom from responsibility by our schools. Homosexuals lobby for the “rights” to marry, raise children, and receive the benefits of being a family. Open marriages abound, and “sequential monogamy” erodes the sanctity of the institution.

Two quotes illustrate the above principles very clearly. The first demonstrates how thoroughly our churches have been subverted. In January of 1970, Clergy and Laity Concerned issued a “Policy Statement” that claimed;

What we are about today is not simply an end to the war in Vietnam, but a struggle against American imperialism and exploitation in just about every corner of the world … Our task is to join those who are angry and who hate the corporate power which the United States presently represents, and to attempt, in our struggle, to liberate not only black, brown, and yellow men in every corner of the world, but more importantly, to help liberate our own nation from its reactionary and exploitative policies.[5]

The second, taken from the Revolutionary Communist Party’s New Programme, shows how the Communists subvert the family in the post-Revolution environment;

The right to abortion will be guaranteed … As far as the policy toward the family, it will be recognized for what it is: Not some holy or sacred institution to be preserved for all time … not only will the family be a secondary form for determining children’s upbringing, but its influence in promoting conservatism among its members, especially the women and children, will be actively combatted. While the parents will still have significant responsibility for their children, this does not mean they are “theirs,” and there will be struggle to prevent parents from imposing old values, and conservative, non-revolutionary thinking generally on the children.[6]

Other tactics used by the Communists in the pre-Revolution environment are described in Chapter 95, “Lenin’s Rules for Revolution.”

“Cleansing” After the Revolution.

After the Reds have accomplished their bloody Revolution, the entire conquered society must be totally subjugated and transmogrified, and all institutions and entities must be forcibly crammed into an approved Socialist mold, including the Church, all levels of government and schools, and, most importantly, the family.

As soon as possible after the Revolution, the Communists jail and silence Church leaders, including bishops, priests and ministers, and leading lay people. They also immediately disband Bible-believing religious organizations or severely restrict their activities, because these entities preach morality and are the antithesis of atheism and Communism. The objective of such oppression is the total eradication of the visible Church.

Avraham Shirfrin states in his The First Guidebook to Prisons and Concentration Camps of the former Soviet Union that tens of thousands of Christians are still trapped in more than 2,000 slave labor camps for the heinous crimes of “… reading religious books, posting up notices, or demanding religious instruction for their children.” And, in Albania, making the sign of the cross is punishable by three years in prison.[7]

Although the Christian Church usually bears the brunt of post-Revolution atheist rage, it isn’t the only institution that is mercilessly dismembered. All native intellectuals and professionals are silenced, removed from their jobs, or even shot. Those indigenous turncoats who assisted the Revolution are invariably executed, because they are members of an activist class of individuals who may turn against their new masters.

Vladimir Lenin summarizes the communist’s formal program in his August 22, 1922 letter to the Politburo; “The more representatives of the reactionary bourgeoisie and the reactionary clergy that we manage to shoot the better. Now is the time to teach the public such a lesson that for many decades they will not dare even to think of any sort of resistance.”[8]

Every available tool is used if it advances the interest of the Communists; promises, lies, threats, blackmail, torture, execution, and even genocide. The Communists, in enslaving half of the world’s population, have murdered an estimated 120 million to 150 million people. The megakillers include Mao (50 million murders), Pol Pot (12 million), Lenin (6 million), Stalin (25 million), and uncounted others. The American Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) applauds this genocide and excuses it with such limp euphemisms as “unfortunate excesses of the People’s Armies” and “necessary readjustments of the social order.”

And these are the same atheists who constantly plead for peace and understanding while condemning pro-lifers for clinic bombings!

“Life” for the Masses.

To be Red is to be dead, only more slowly.
1
    
Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn.

A Grey Existence.

The common worker behind the Iron Curtain, so relentlessly lauded by Communist propaganda, leads a grey, dirty, lifeless existence. One must stand in line for hours in order to obtain the shoddy merchandise and bland, gummy food produced by the noble workers of the “People’s Paradise.” The vast majority of quality goods and food produced by Soviet satellites is shipped directly to the Soviet Union, leaving the dregs for the workers.

If people are fortunate enough to find the items they are looking for, it may be impossible to purchase them. The average wage in Communist satellites is about $600 per year just $12 per week! This is a deliberate program of enforced and universal poverty used by the government: If penniless people must constantly stand in line, they begin to realize that they are helpless to do anything other than scrabble to survive. They are cowed and humiliated. Such persons will not be thinking of counterrevolution. They will be thinking only of satisfying their constant, gnawing hunger.

Most families have to wait for ten to twenty years for the privilege of buying a grey, dirty, rundown apartment with one bedroom, cold running water, and intermittent electricity.

While its people go hungry, the Soviet Bloc imports millions of tons of grain annually because its agricultural sector is comatose. This is partly because the Soviet Union consumes nearly half of its GNP in the manufacture of weapons for use by armies all over the world.

Remember that these same Communists are the primary instigators of the peace movement in the West.

Drugs and Drink.

Because of the intolerable grey sameness of their existence, huge numbers of workers have turned to drink and drugs. The alcoholism problem in Russia and its satellites is the worst in the world. At any given time, five to eight percent of the entire Soviet population is drunk. This is really no surprise since the State’s chief source of revenue (after military weaponry) is its 80-proof vodka.

Communism = Feudal Monarchy.

For the Communist overlords, human beings are mere barnyard animals to be bred, aborted, and worked for the benefit of the fortunate elite on top.
1
    
Father Paul Marx of Human Life International.

Introduction.

The proliferation of Communist newspapers in America tell us that their system is vastly superior to Capitalism. They say that, under Communism, everyone will live equally, from the highest bureaucrat to the lowest farmer and from the most skilled doctor to the most inept janitor. The catchy Communist slogan is: “From each according to his abilities and to each according to his needs.”

Communism is indeed a perfect system but only for perfect human beings. Communism would function perfectly if human beings were not susceptible to any kind of temptation.

However, as long as there are imperfect people in this world, Communism even more than Capitalism will be powerless to prevent poverty and graft. As the American Communists cry out that our system is “incurably corrupt” and rife with “gross inequalities,” they totally ignore the astounding disparity in living standards behind the Iron Curtain.

Behind the Curtain, those who are fortunate enough to be in power have opportunities to pillage the wealth of the people to a degree unheard of in the West. While the Communist overlords force the masses to live under atrocious conditions, they live literally like feudal lords.

The following paragraphs give examples of how Communist leaders have pillaged the wealth of their countries while their people shiver in coldwater flats.[9]

Nicolae Ceausescu, Feudal Lord. Nicolae Ceausescu, Communist dictator of Romania for 25 years, lived in splendor that would make the Rockefellers turn a rich, deep green with envy.

While in power, Ceausescu claimed repeatedly that he lived just like an average Romanian did.

Meanwhile, he wore a different $500 suit every day. In the evening, the suit would be discarded and burned. Over the course of Ceausescu’s quarter-century reign, the cost of this indulgence alone was more than $4 million, or equivalent to 600 years of the average worker’s salary.

His primary residences were two 150-room mansions with golden walls and solid 14-karat gold furniture. His black Labradors ate imported caviar in their very own marble-lined rooms.[10]

Ceausescu squandered another five million dollars on a yacht he visited only once, and blew more than two million dollars on tens of thousands of formal photographs of himself and his family.

He loved to hunt, and in a single day shot 100 deer illegally. These deer had been driven into his sights by a company of soldiers. When he went fishing, military frogmen would be stationed at his favorite spots ahead of time so that they could attach trophy-sized perch to his line.

He built more than 80 homes for himself all over Romania, including 23 lavish, fully-equipped hunting lodges. While his people shivered during the harsh winters due to the constant shortages of coal and natural gas, he kept all 23 lodges fully heated continuously in the off-chance he felt like dropping in on a whim. He never visited most of the lodges.

Ceausescu bestowed upon his wife Elena, a fifth-grade dropout, the title of “the country’s leading chemical engineer,” and he appointed her head of the National Council for Science and Technology, although she did not even know the chemical formula for carbon dioxide (i.e., CO2).

Ceausescu had five sons, all of whom he appointed to important government posts. His youngest son Nicu was constantly accompanied by bodyguards, and on numerous occasions would drop into a restaurant for the purpose of raping a woman customer. He would select a woman, have the bodyguards clear the restaurant, and then assault her. Any hint of resistance or even a verbal protest from a husband or boyfriend would result in his being beaten almost to death and jailed for years.

When Nicu was finally arrested by police after his father’s December 25, 1989 execution, the police found all of the toilets in his house clogged with paper money, and discovered millions of dollars worth of currency stacked in boxes and bags everywhere.

Ceausescu is the dictator who outlawed abortion and contraception in his country, and who demanded that each woman bear the State five children. This is the only known case of “mandatory motherhood” known in the world today and, just like forced abortion, such atrocities against human reproduction are always committed exclusively by Communists.

The Kings of East Germany.

Until October of 1989, the 23-member East German Politburo dwelled in splendor at a lavish compound located at Wandlitz, about 15 miles north of Berlin.

While the average East German worker earned less than $8,000 a year, this compound cost $32 million annually just to maintain (and this doesn’t count paying off the capital costs of construction)!

In case you are in the market for a little piece of paradise, the following are just a few of the features of this prime piece of real estate;

    247 manicured acres, patrolled on a 24-hour basis by a 44-man platoon of the Stasi (State Security Police);
    25 mansions, each boasting a cadre of full-time butlers and maids;
    An exclusive boutique modeled after Nieman-Marcus (all items, unlike those showcased by Nieman-Marcus, are free);
    Hothouses that provide fresh vegetables of every description even during the bitter East German winters, when the masses are huddling in unheated flats. Three full-time botanists are on staff to tend to Premier Willi Stoph’s plot of tropical plants.
    Two mechanics tend Communist Party boss Erich Honecker’s seven cars, which include a customized armored $95,000 1988 Mercedes 560 SEC and a top-of-the-line customized $55,000 Jaguar 12-cylinder XJC.

After these extraordinary excesses were revealed in late 1989, Opposition leader Rolf Henrich, a lawyer with the New Forum, complained that “They told us we were sacrificing for a better future. But in reality, as the German saying goes, they were preaching water and drinking wine.”

Wine? More like fine aged whiskey kept in gold-lined barrels!

Other Examples.

Quite simply, when a small group of people is given absolute power, they will inevitably get greedy and begin to “acquire” the belongings of the people for themselves. There has never been a Communist government that was not totally corrupt on all levels, and this corruption is generally prevalent enough to literally sap the life blood of a country.

Bulgaria’s dictator Todor Zhivkov, whose academic career never went beyond the seventh grade, had ghostwriters pen more than fifty books for him. His total royalties for these volumes was 1.5 million leva, equivalent to 500 years’ salary for the average Bulgarian. He also helped himself to 80 pounds of gold coins from the national treasury, and built 33 luxurious mansions for himself all around the country. Sofia University law professor Yanko Yankov spent five and a half years in prison for failing the dictator’s ignorant son on a first-year law exam.

Hungary’s Defense Minister Lajos Czinege used army troops and government materials to construct a huge mansion and a luxurious country villa on his personal 24-square mile hunting preserve, which was surrounded by 85 miles of electrified fence.

Even the “ultimate Communists” in the former Soviet Union are not immune to such pervasive graft. Every member of Moscow’s Politburo is assigned a large personal staff, including an Army officer who headed a cadre of three cooks, three waitresses, a housemaid and a chief gardener with several assistants.

If a Politburo member wants a new suit, he is fitted for one free of charge in his own room. If he wants to give someone a lavish gift, an assistant brings him a detailed catalogue, and all he has to do is select the gift and give the assistant the name of the person to whom it will be sent all completely free of charge, of course.

Conclusion.

Such abuses are typical of the Communist overlords. Boris Yeltsin, former member of the Politburo, writes that “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs. And so it is for those at the top of the Party pyramid. Their abilities, alas, are not outstanding. But their needs! Their needs are so great that so far it has only been possible to create real Communism for a couple of dozen people.”

Communism is simply not compatible with human nature. When you have the people under iron control and all resistance and speech is crushed, you can get away with literally anything you like. You can kill. You can rape. And you can force women to have babies or force them to have abortions.

And this is the system that most pro-abortionists lean towards! There is not much “freedom of choice” in anything behind the Iron or Bamboo Curtains!

Examples of Suffering Under Communism.

Freedom of conscience, that is the right to profess any religion or not to profess any religion, to perform religious rites or to conduct atheist propaganda, shall be guaranteed for all citizens of the USSR … The church in the USSR shall be separated from the state and the school from the church.
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Article 52 of The Soviet Constitution.

Poland’s Endless Martyrdom.

Theologians generally believe that the Christian Church requires oppression from outside sources in order to thrive. Proof of this theory is abundant in Poland.

The attack on the Polish Catholic Church began in 1953, when Marxists broke up Masses, killed scores of Polish priests, and imprisoned the Polish prelate, Stefan Cardinal Wyszynski. The atheists then prohibited the building of all churches for thirty years and banned any church publications at all including parish bulletins![11]

In early 1981, the Communists were finally forced to back off by Lech Walesa’s Solidarity. However, Solidarity eventually gained too much strength for the Communists’ liking. On December 12, 1981, the government suddenly imposed martial law, and arrested 10,000 Solidarity members and the leadership of the Polish pro-life movement (the Communists didn’t like the Polish pro-life practice of placing lighted candles before the homes of pro-abortion officials and abortionists).[11] More than a hundred of these prisoners died from convenient so-called “tragic accidents” or “suicides.”

One of these “accidents” was inflicted upon Poland’s twentieth-century martyr, Father Jerzy Popieluszko, who inspired the nation by the way he lived and the way he died. “Jurek” was a personal friend of Solidarity boss Lech Walesa and the leader of Poland’s pro-life movement as well. The Communists tried to kill the priest three times and, on October 19, 1984, they finally succeeded.

After celebrating Mass one night, Father Jerzy was intercepted by three secret policemen, who beat him, tied him up, then tortured him to death. Suspecting foul play, Catholics all over the country rose up and demanded to know where he was.

Forced to produce his body, the grinning secret police dragged his unrecognizable corpse out of the River Vistula eleven days after he died. In spite of the government’s demand that he be buried in obscurity, he was laid to rest in a tomb surrounded by a large Rosary shaped in the outline of Poland at a funeral attended by more than two million. Since then, his grave, at the Church of St. Stanislaw Kostka, has been visited by more than ten million pilgrims, including Pope John Paul II.[11]

Jerzy was not the last to die. Many Polish priests are still murdered by the cowardly Communists. The pro-Solidarity priest, Stanislaw Suchowolek, a frequent victim of government harassment, died of suffocation in his home, which then mysteriously burned down. Father Stefan Niedzielek, 74 years old, died of a broken neck inflicted on a dark Bialystok street in January 1989. The local community believed, once again, that this was the work of the government. They are, by now, familiar with the cowardly atheist attacks on old men in the dark.

The Communists are not only cowards, they are incurably inept. In Poland, the Communists confiscated all hospitals and schools run by the Catholic Church. Today there are only three kidney dialysis machines in the entire country. Doctors are paid less than common laborers, because the Communists know that those persons with education and intelligence must be humiliated and worked like animals if they are to remain harmless. Surgeons must endure double shifts because their woefully outdated equipment is so scarce. Virtually all advanced medical equipment and medicines have to be imported from the “decadent” West.

It is wise to remain healthy behind the iron curtain.

As Christians have known for 2,000 years (and as tyrants seem incapable of learning), the Church may well be healthiest when it is persecuted. For example, despite all of her tribulations, the Polish Catholic Church currently ordains more priests than any other country in the world and more than twice as many as the United States, which possesses three times Poland’s population! Additionally, Poland is only the size of New Mexico, but has more than 3,000 centers dedicated to teaching natural family planning. This is ten times the number of NFP centers in the entire United States![11]

Standoff in the Ukraine.

In the Western Ukrainian village of Holyn, close to the Polish border, the Communist authorities told the people that they could finally open a church as long as they footed the cost themselves. The enthusiastic villagers went to work and finished their beautiful church in 1977. But the atheists, liars as always, announced that they were then going to seize the church and convert it into an “atheist museum.”

However, the villagers would not be bullied. The atheist Soviets, showing the true colors of ‘tolerant’ atheists everywhere, bulldozed more than 150 churches in the Ukraine in 1977 alone. So the villagers stood guard for more than ten years, day and night, to prevent atheist thugs from destroying the church. The atheists gangs attempted more than 100 times to gain access to the church by beating up and tear-gassing the guards, who did not yield. Finally, the atheists poisoned the water that the village men drank, and several of them died.

The church, however, was not closed.

The Spiritual Battle in Bulgaria.

The Church had been a constant thorn in the side of Bulgarian Communists for decades when the Communist Party Congress finally got fed up and passed a resolution in 1988 to “finish the Church.”[12] And they weren’t talking about completing its construction!

The Bulgarian Communist government strictly controls all printing, and the personal possession or manufacture of any religious articles or books is strictly forbidden. Many church buildings dot the Bulgarian countryside, but most have been converted into discos and ice-skating rinks. The larger cathedrals and more well-known and popular church buildings are kept permanently closed by “reconstruction” activities and cannot be entered.

But Bulgarian Christians carry on. As one of them said, “God had me born here because if I had been born in the West I would have died of temptation in one day. Here the enemy is visible.”[12]

References: Life Under Communism.

Here they [the Soviets] are, trying to emulate our system, which is collapsing.
1
    
Ted Turner to his wife, "Hanoi Jane" Fonda.[13]

[1] Karl Marx, quoted in D.L. Cuddy. “Are Public Schools Opening the Door to Humanism?” National Federation for Decency Journal, October 1986, page 21.

[2] Gus Hall, chairman of the American Communist Party, quoted in National Review, February 5, 1990, page 14.

[3] Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party of the USA (RCP), quoted in the Revolutionary Communist Party Worker, July 10, 1989, page 2.

[4] Lenin: Selected Works. 3 volumes, 2,225 pages. Distributed in English by Progress Publishers, 21, Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow.

[5] Cal Thomas and Wayne Stayskal. Liberals for Lunch. Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books, 1985. Page 20.

[6] Revolutionary Communist Party’s New Programme. “The Proletariat, Upon Seizing Power, Will Immediately Take Up the Transformation of Society,” page 78.

[7] “Short Endings.” Fidelity Magazine, June 1990, page 23.

[8] Vladimir Lenin’s August 22, 1922 letter to the Politburo. Quoted in Keston News Service, National Catholic Register, July 1, 1990, page 8.

[9] Charles Parmiter. “The Red Aristocrats.” Reader’s Digest, October 1990, pages 151 to 156.

[10] Holly Danks. “Romania Tries to Claw Way Out of Pit Dug by Ceausescu.” The Oregonian, March 12, 1991, page A3.

[11] Human Life International Reports. “Poland’s Endless Martyrdom.” Number 37, November 1987, and “Inside the People’s Paradise.” Number 38, December 1987.

[12] Dennis Englemen. “Bulgaria’s Embattled Christians.” Catholic Twin Circle, April 16, 1989, page 3.

[13] Ted Turner to his wife, “Hanoi Jane” Fonda, in Moscow Square in October of 1990. Quoted in National Review, November 19, 1990, page 13.

Further Reading: Life Under Communism.

AA-1025. Memoirs of an Anti-Apostle.
109 pages. Order from Our Lady’s Book Service, Nazareth Homestead, R.D. 1, Box 258, Constable, New York 12926, telephone: 1-800-263-8160. AA stands for Anti-Apostle: a Communist agent who has agreed to enter a Catholic seminary or pastor’s training for another church and who works to destroy conservative churches from within. Lenin sponsored and encouraged this system, which is not just a figment of the imagination it is real! This book helps to explain what is happening in the Church today why it is paralyzed and seemingly incapable of effective action.

Warren H. Carroll. 70 Years of the Communist Revolution.
Paperback, hardbound. Order from Stella Maris Books, Post Office Box 11483, Fort Worth, Texas 76110, telephone: 1-800-772-5928. This book explains the nature of Communism and details its history with great clarity. An excellent basic text on the scourge of Communism.

Robert Conquest and Jon Manchip White. What To Do When the Russians Come
From the Conservative Book Club, 15 Oakland Avenue, Harrison, New York 10528. Although somewhat dated in light of recent events, this book is still generally useful. It shows how the Communists will conquer this land, how various groups are likely to fare under the new government, details on the resistance movement, famine in America, and how life in general under a Communist regime would be.

Hamish Fraser. Fatal Star.
1954, 296 pages, hardcover, softcover. Order from Our Lady’s Book Service, R.D. No. 1, Box 258, Constable, New York 12926, telephone: 1-800-263-6160. The story of a militant member of the Communist Party and how he journeyed from atheism to the Catholic Church. The author shows in detail how the Marxist system has an utter disregard for human rights and the truth, and describes the hideous threat it poses to an unsuspecting and passive Christian Church.

Father Giacomo Gardin. Banishing God in Albania.
162 pages. Order from: Ignatius Press, 15 Oakland Avenue, Harrison, New York 10528, telephone: 1-800-528-0559. Father Giacomo, who spent a decade in prison merely practicing his faith, tells the brutal story of how atheistic Communism attempts to crush the spirit of religious people everywhere. He outlines in detail the Communist methods of mock trials, labor camps, and other tortures, and tells the story of suffering, persecution, and martyrdom of his friends at the hands of the atheists.

Greenhaven Press. Communism: Opposing Viewpoints.
Greenhaven Press Opposing Viewpoints Series, Post Office Box 289009, San Diego, California 92128-9009. 1986, 216 pages. Each section includes several essays by leading authorities on both sides of each issue. The topics covered include peaceful coexistence between the USSR and the United States, Communism in the Third World, and personal freedom and life in the USSR. A catalog is available from the above address and can be obtained by calling 1-(800) 231-5163.

Vladamar Kozina. Communism as I Know It.
60 pages. Order from Our Lady’s Book Service, Nazareth Homestead, R.D. 1, Box 258, Constable, New York, 12926. Telephone: 1-800-263-8160. A true story about Communism by one who survived it while watching his mother, father, and brother murdered by the system. Gives an authentic view of living under the oppressive Communist overlords.

John Koster. The Atheist Syndrome.
This great book shows how atheists have rewritten history to show only the best side of atheism and the worst side of Christianity. It also shows just how savage and degenerate most atheist “heroes” like Lenin, Marx, Darwin, Freud, and Nietzsche really were.

Father Vincent P. Miceli. The Gods of Atheism.
485 pages. Order from Catholic Treasures, 626 Montana Street, Monrovia, California 91016, or from Keep the Faith, 810 Belmont Avenue, Post Office Box 8261, North Haledon, New Jersey 07508, telephone: (201) 423-5395. Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen called this “as complete a study of atheism as exists in any language.” The author shows that, while we have been spending trillions of dollars defending against the Communist onslaught from the outside, our country has been eaten away by the atheism cancer on the inside. God is even outlawed in our schools. Father Miceli shows why Communism must be atheistic and why it is the ultimate spiritual evil; why Christian parents must firmly inculcate their children with Christian beliefs; and how atheism is the great temptation of the educated and/or intelligent. Covers the similarities between Neoliberals and Communists, the roots and virulent nature of atheism, and the proper Christian response to it.

Charles Moser, treasurer of the Free Congress Foundation. Combat On Communist Territory.
240 pages. Order from Trinity Communications, Post Office Box 3610, Manassas, Virginia 22110, telephone: (703) 369-2429. The author gives a detailed account of the struggles of the Freedom Fighters against Communists in eight countries.

Pope Pius XI. Encyclical on Atheistic Communism.
50 pages. Order from Our Lady’s Book Service, Nazareth Homestead, R.D. 1, Box 258, Constable, New York, 12926. Telephone: 1-800-263-8160. Why the Catholic Church officially and irrevocably condemns the scourge of Communism: because it is irretrievably not only atheistic, but anti-Christian.

Father James Schall. Liberation Theology.
402 pages. Order from Keep the Faith, Inc., 810 Belmont Avenue, Post Office Box 8261, North Haledon, New Jersey 07508. The author draws on important contemporary research articles to produce a thorough indictment of the basics of liberation theology.

Grazyna Sikorska. Jerzy Popieluszko: A Martyr for the Truth.
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 255 Jefferson Southeast, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503. 1985. Reviewed by Chilton Williamson, Jr. on page 50 of the June 28, 1985 issue of National Review. The life story and struggles of the Solidarity priest who was beaten to death in October of 1984 by Polish government secret police.

Although there is much to be said for liberation theology, this concept has been the perfect vehicle for left-wing groups to exploit. For information on the propagation of this theory in the Catholic Church, contact;

Catholics United Against Liberation Theology
2414 South 208th Street
Seattle, Washington 98198.

If you would like to help ease the pain of a fellow Christian trapped behind the Atheist Curtain, you can write to them to help them keep their faith. For information, contact

The Persecuted Church Commission
Box 1340
Kingston, New York 12401.

The PCC is interdenominational, and its goal is to help God’s children behind the Iron Curtain in any way possible.

Other groups that minister to oppressed Christians in Communist countries include;

Christian Rescue Efforts for the Emancipation
of Dissidents (CREED)
787 Princeton Kingston Road
Princeton, New Jersey 08540

East European Harvest
998 Dauphin Island Parkway
Mobile, Alabama 36605
Telephone: (205) 471-5761

For further information on Communism from the Christian point of view, call or write to;

The Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation
Post Office Box 11321
St. Louis, Missouri 63105
Telephone: (314) 991-2939

The Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, founded in 1958 by a missionary expelled from China by the Communists, is a worldwide, non-profit educational organization that offers reliable and documented information on the nature, propaganda, and goals of atheistic Communism. The Foundation issues its monthly Mindszenty Report and a quarterly Red Line magazine. The Foundation is named after the late Joseph Cardinal Mindszenty of Hungary. After the Communist takeover of his country in 1949, in keeping with typical Communist treatment of church leaders, he was sentenced to life imprisonment on the usual totally false charges of “treason, espionage, and currency offenses.” He was imprisoned until freed by Hungarian nationalist rebels in 1956, and then took refuge in the United States embassy in Budapest for 15 years. In 1971, he was exiled to Rome and died in Vienna in 1975.

On September 22, 1989, an official Hungarian State Commission exonerated Cardinal Mindszenty of all of these crimes posthumously, and revealed that the primate had been tortured extensively during his incarceration.

Job termination is a conspiracy.

 I was in communism in my childhood. In Boy Scouts, they had Axel honneth and Jurgen Habermas in boy scouts. I wasn’t a Missouri Lutheran, I was in the ELCA my entire life with woman pastors. Critical Theory was in Catholic Churches too. So this David Speath was stealing people’s jobs at Laptop Chips through his career exploration program he earned in the military. I found out that three Speaths working at Laptop Chips and David Speath left Laptop Chips a year later. There was also this conspiracy around Syd Berret. My manager told me that Aaron operates the warehouse like a prison, and that other manager has animal logins from Pink Floyd Animals album. The employees were wearing Vietnam flag, Dragon Ball Z and Dark Side of the Moon T-shirts. I took a ASVAB test in River Falls and, I had a 4 year college degree. The employer backstabber me after I talked to him after work every week chitchating by laying me off anyways. Communication problems is bullcrap. I was working constantly at laptop chips. The employees would go to Subway, and return when I started lunch break. Employees didn’t eat together. Very long So I was worried about 5 year plans in 2019 in Wisconsin, before everybody in Wisconsin wanted Tony Evers and Joe Biden, right? Before that, Wisconsin wanted Bernie Sanders. I send my resume online at other companies, and they didn’t want me and I had 8 jobs in my life. The internships don’t keep me for 3 months. I worked at a software company and hospital. The hospital said they didn’t have spare money for another employee, because they screwed up their project. The software company, I finished everything and was replaced by a military, because of nepotism. The software company wasn't ethical, they hire Indian, and Chicom programmers. This serviceman was related to the CEO of the software company. Then I find recruiters who cold call while in Wisconsin and Minnesota, and they pick other people mainly because they wanted me to work on the coasts or Texas.

Why Do We Lose Friends in Middle Age?

 An old friend and I recently sat down to catch up, and one of the topics that came up was the fact that we’d both — in our late 30s — found ourselves with far fewer friends than we’d had in our 20s or even early 30s. Why does this happen to so many people?

I likened the loss of friends during our 30s to the pruning of neurons that occurs during key stages of development. These friendships, no longer necessary, are pruned and cleared away. This ultimately makes room for more depth and growth in the friendships that we do keep, but it can be a painful and confusing process…and maybe even significantly damaging to our self-esteem.

Here are some factors that could lead to the demise of friendship in middle age:

1) We Just Don’t Have the Time

Sometimes the main reason for losing friendships is simply not having enough time. We tend to get more invested in our romantic relationships and careers at this age, and it’s also the time most of us start having children (or more children). It becomes increasingly difficult to carve out time for friends. We become more selective in planning coffee and dinner dates, choosing only those few we are most excited to catch up with. We’re simply not as “socially promiscuous” as we were in our teens and 20s.

This is also the age when many of us begin spending more time helping our parents and older family members, due to injuries, chronic illness, and the natural decline in health and vitality that comes with old age.

2) We Know Ourselves Better

By the time we’re in our 30s and 40s, we’ve become much more discerning about who we spend our precious time with. We have a better sense of who we are, what we want, and what we definitely do not want.

We often have the wisdom now to recognize which friendships are toxic or are no longer serving our own growth, and so we know it won’t hurt to stop contacting certain people. We may begin to see the benefits of staying clear of those who may suck our energy, drag us down, or otherwise be destructive forces in our lives. Life is short. We know to NOT let faux friends ruin it!

3) We Change, for Better or Worse

All of us change and grow as a natural part of getting older and a “side effect” of our experiences. Change is indeed the only constant in life. Sometimes that change includes losing a significant amount of friendships, and sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes the reason for losing a particular friend isn’t clear to either party, and that’s okay. Insight may come with time.

Sometimes change happens suddenly and unexpectedly, with surprising results. A traumatic event can occur in our life or in the life of a good friend, for example. We could lose a spouse to death or divorce, we could lose a parent or sibling, we could become very sick or develop a chronic illness. This kind of trauma can change us, knock us off our feet, rearrange our priorities, and make us turn inward. Trauma like this can make us question everything.

And “everything” can most certainly include every single one of our friendships.

4) Burned Once, Burned a Thousand Times

Pain results when we are at the receiving end of a friend who no longer responds to our invitations — in other words, when the friendship breakup isn’t mutual. If this happens often enough, we can find ourselves becoming needy or clingy with the friends who are still around, perhaps out of a codependent desperation to keep them.

Or, on the other end of the spectrum, we might find that we distance ourselves from our friends — worried or fearful that they will also find a reason to leave. This can ignite old wounds and insecurities, and churn up a lot of unfinished business.

Neither of these extremes are healthy, but they occur often enough to make the list here. We can begin to doubt ourselves as people and our ability to be good friends. Over time, we may begin to struggle with depression and social anxiety. This has led some to suggest that since we have therapy for romantic relationships and therapy for family, we should also have friendship therapy, to aid us in times when fractured friendships have a soul-crushing, psyche-disturbing impact.
Nurture the Friendships You Keep

No matter what causes the loss of your friendships, be sure to nurture the friendships that you keep.

    Set a regular time each month to meet up.
    Do more than chat on social media.
    Do something fun that you’ve never done together, or partake in an activity that reminds you of the time you met.
    Involve your friend and their family in family dinners, outings, and other events.
    Celebrate your friendship anniversary or an important date that you both cherish.

As with all human relationships, increased depth and connection often comes with challenges, disagreements, and miscommunications. If these “growing pains” are handled with grace, compassion, and patience by both parties, the friendship bond will grow that much stronger.

july update It's like Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust

 

My social networks like instagram is in decline subscriber wise. There are websites now saying that all social networks are in decline. My mental health decline started in 1994 with anxiety when there was class rank, Iq testing, sports, algebra, science, social studies, literature, wood shop., communication deficits, Calvin Academy in the 1990s. Everybody had girlfriends back then. There was prom. I had Disney World in 1997, and Caribbean cruise in 1999 back when message boards and personal webpages (geocities) were popular . I had a pretty good childhood. I had church, boy scouts, cable tv, videogames, and cousins that came over to my house and I went to their house. I thought I was going to be a celebrity on instagram in the 2010s, because my subscribers were increasing. I thought the employer would see the subscribers on my instagram and youtube, and hire me for over 2 years. I was really successful at a warehouse, away from mean customers at circuit city. I originally wanted parties. I grew up with movies like Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, Chasing Amy, Breakfast Club, Office Space, 10 things I hate about you where friends met at restaurants, and took photos. I had party buses in my 20s bar hopping around St. Croix County. I was at a bachelor party for my boy scout friend Randy on one party bus trip visiting road houses and honky tonks and that was a party. Randy used to go to Eau Claire nightclubs after the party bus with his future wife. That used to end up with testosterone trouble with brawls that I avoided by not going. Wisconsin has a huge bar culture in the 2010s.

Isolation problems since 2000

I have been a loner since grade school with the exception of two boys from Boy Scouts of America and my cousins David Hartmon and Brian Hartmon on sleep overs. We went on trips together like Ely, MN, and Mall of America. I was in REM Wisconsin for two years looking for jobs and a partner for bar crawls. Then when I move to Minnesota in 2020, I have a address book full of people who I just phone. I have 25 people on my address book. I have made acquaintance with mom’s friends for over 30 years. I just talk to them and boy scouts friends I made in 1995. The problem has always been my social skills were below average since grade school since I’m not in relationships. Sure, I was on OKCupid and PlentyofFish looking for women. Plentyoffish IP bans me after I text too many women. OkCupid has the A List with a credit card. I don’t have credit cards. The women on OKCupid don’t answer me much but I have a lot of interest. Then former laptop Chips employees look me up on Snapchat. Its something to chat with. I needed photographs of working because 3 stores of the 7 stores I worked at closed permanently. Wisconsin had the castle doctrine (cars, houses, workplace or with them) so I wasn’t excited to bar crawl in my 30s. Before that I thought it was stranger danger in grade school. In fact, I think they booby trapped the bars with cops. But whatever, I have photographs of rock concerts and bar crawls when I went in my 20s when Myspace was still the scene in 2006. I have photos of these parties and party buses around 2008-2010. I don’t see these friends in person anymore….I just have their phone numbers. I saw boy scout friend Randy in 2019. I saw randy a lot in the 2000s and sometimes in the 2010s. Randy is Catholic, yet his wife is Lutheran. We used to go to boating trips like Bass Lake in between hudson, wi and somerset wi. Then Randy and I went to the bars together in New Richmond, wisconsin. Chiefly the Champs Sports Bar. There are a lot of crazy people. I thought I meet women off Okcupid and that was safer then winging it in bars. I was bar crawling and coffee crawling random people in my 20s. Its been a constant downhill after age 30 in Wisconsin. I was able to do 1700 people on linkedin, 2600 facebook friends, but I can’t count on them for a relationship. It’s like the culture in Los Angeles, where LA people add social media profiles to look favorable to employers. Everybody in Los Angeles rely on handsome appearance and there is a public sphere / circle that people don’t leave. Entering the circle takes some brilliant social bartering.

Why are careers in information technology unfulfilling?

 

I hate working in tech

I know this may sound dramatic, but it’s true. I hate working in tech. While the tech world seems to be a boundless, relatively uncharted territory for creation and problem-solving, my personal experience working within it led to see that it is almost the exact opposite. IT lacks the freedom and sociability I crave. The framework most developers are forced to work within is highly limited and impersonal. While having to perform highly robotic and mind numbing functions for the bulk of the work day, I found myself losing sight and understanding of basic human qualities and how to think more creatively.

Not only that, the majority of my challenges were caused by the fact that tech is constantly breaking and/or versioning. The smallest thing can be coded incorrectly or be out-of-date, and the entire system will breakdown. Having to identify the error and provide solutions to a group of people who for the most part have no foundational knowledge of IT is very labor intensive, stress inducing and serve a major time suck.

What does an information technology person do?

As the U.S. and the rest of the world become more reliant on a digital economy, there is an increasing demand for talent that specializes in technology. Despite these radical changes in the way the world operates, many people in tech have a way less glamorous life while working to support these technological efforts. They would not consider themselves a part of the lofty “innovation sector” that I was once very attracted to. Rather your average IT person is thinking in basic 0’s and 1’s and trying to help anachronistic systems communicate better and more efficiently.

These roles could fall into any of the following categories: software development, computer system analysis, IT security, web development, network architecture, IT management, database administration and support. While there are a few other categories that exist, much of the foundation of these jobs are built on what I’d call “basic computing” functions which in my opinion can be pretty boring stuff.

Information Technology isn't about people

The large majority of us humans feed on the enthusiasm and interaction with people. Even the most introverted among us need people in our lives to feel like we're connected. People enable very organic relationships that most of us intuitively understand. With people, we aren't dealing with the 1s and 0s of computer languages where every damn decision is computationally determined based on a series of predetermined variables that aren't governed by emotion or external factors. Computers aren't organic.

Careers in information technology and software development are about systems, not people. We work with inanimate objects. Machines. We don't get to converse with them and establish relationships like we do with people. It's just code, or hardware, or networks, or machinery. So impersonal.We don't get to "change a computer's life" like we could with another human being.

Connections like those simply do not exist in technology very often, and that absence of an organic relationship while working at various tech companies can, over time, begin to drain our sense of purpose. All we do is work with machines. Dumb terminals. And at the most basic level, they are all pretty much exactly the same. Over time, this becomes relentlessly tedious.

Information Technology is full of stress and pressure

Technology is everywhere. We depend on it in virtually every facet of our lives, and when it works, it's great. Everything seems to be tied into "the system". All things are connected. Cities can monitor every stop light through a series of cameras accessed from a central location. Internet providers can pinpoint sources of congestion and bottlenecks through sophisticated network monitoring apps. Schools uses technology to connect students to the world outside. Businesses rely on technology for their livelihoods.

When everything works, life is good. But, almost nothing always works in information technology. Tech systems are connected in weird and complicated ways. Variables change. Insanely tight deadlines encourage even the most knowledgeable or talented software engineer to cut corners. And, people interact with systems in ways that we didn't (or couldn't) anticipate. In some cases, hackers and other nefarious entities intentionally screw with the systems that we've put together. In other words, things go wrong...all the time.

Here's the larger problem: When our entire world runs on the collective hum of technology, problems are instantly magnified. Businesses lose money every second that the network is down (imagine if Visa couldn't process credit card transactions for 10 minutes - they'd lose millions). What if stop lights in your city suddenly went dark? Or the power grid collapses?

Technology problems have profound consequences, and those who work in information technology feel that pressure. Pressure leads to stress, and that stress builds over time. It becomes a nearly constant strain on our lives. And, those of us who work in tech support or have program management jobs feel it the most. Managers want to look good by keeping their systems operational and often put pressure on their staff to do whatever it takes to keep everything humming along.

We might be able to keep up with this pressure for a few years after landing a new job. Eventually, the pressure of technology begins to break us down. We fix one problem only so we can move on to another. Problem after problem, we keep churning through "the system", fixing this, enhancing that, developing a new cool feature that we hope never breaks. And around and around we go.

Tech salaries keep the golden handcuffs cinched tight

If information technology is so unfulfilling, why do so many people work those jobs? We work them primarily for the money. Tech jobs pay well. In fact, they have to pay well or most of us simply wouldn't do them.

We use those higher salaries to help ignore the stress of the job. We buy things to make us feel better and relax. Our expectations change over the years and we soon begin to depend on that money to fund our lifestyles that become more and more expensive as we earn more and more money.

The golden handcuffs keep us working stressful IT jobs because the alternatives seem dire. If we bring in $150,000 a year working a highly stressful tech job at Amazon, there aren't many who would entertain a $75,000 accounting job at a local firm, even if that job is far less stressful.

We want the money, and our careers in technology keep us wanting that money. It happened to me. It happens to a lot of us.

The longer we work unfulfilling jobs, the more frustrated we become. Until, one day, something finally breaks and we just can't take it any longer. We decide on another path. Maybe a different career. Or, at least in my case, that path was early retirement from full-time work.

Technology jobs can suck because...

It comes down to three primary factors: Technology jobs are about machines, not people. Those jobs are typically highly stressful and pressure-packed because our entire society relies on those systems working harmoniously together. And lastly, money keeps so many of us working jobs that we don't enjoy. Pulling the plug on lucrative careers can be tough.

Too tough for many of us.

Sometimes, society can dismiss a lot of early retirement talk by chalking it up to highly paid tech workers. "So, Steve made a ton of money in technology and then retired early? Yeah, just like every other early retiree. Go figure!"

The reality is it's a lot harder to escape highly paid jobs than people realize. After all, this is what we've all worked so hard to achieve. We all want a high paying job, right? Once we have them, it's tough to give them up!

All that work we put into getting our college degrees (and racking up student loans), reading books, working incredibly long hours, putting up with insanely complicated layers of management that expect miracles...all that finally comes together into a highly-paid job that probably comes attached with "success".

To give all that up - even with a lot of money in the bank, isn't easy. Though high incomes can make it easier to retire early, they also make it tougher for many of us to stomach the stark difference in cash flow. To go from $150 Gs a year to zero (minus capital gains, of course)?

Don't take that for granted. Believe it or not, it's much easier said than done.

Why I left information technology

To further substantiate why I want to leave the world of tech, I’d like to share more in my experience and the positive upshots of my vocational departure.

First, I was experiencing an overwhelming amount of stress for the majority of my waking life. My day-to-day was spent fighting a multitude of uphill battles where I was committed to insane deadlines to fix or troubleshoot problems that affected tons and tons of people. It’s nice not having that kind of pressure anymore.

My work-life balance was also very much partial towards the work side of the paradox. I wanted to be able to focus on activities I actually enjoyed doing like exploring nature and photography, and be able to spend more time with my family.

And lastly, the subject matter of my work became extremely drab. I was no longer excited by 0s and 1s. I wanted to free myself to explore ideas and concepts that were not bound purely to binary systems. I can now think more out-of-the-box as I am less confined to a prescriptive set of code.

So, How Do They Dump Biden?

 As the Democrat presidential campaign degenerates into “Weekend at Gropey’s,” a question arises: Assuming the Dems and their media minions somehow drag that rickety, basement-dwelling weirdo across the finish line, how do they get rid of him post-inauguration? Clearly, he would be a figurehead as Dr. Demento – sorry, Dr. Jill – and Kamala Harris joust for control before a backdrop of scheming pinko puppetmasters. But sooner or later, probably sooner, the Dem elite is going to try to put him out to pasture. How could they pull it off? And can they? Let’s see…

A few caveats: I think Donald Trump is going to win, so this is all hypothetical. The only bright spot for the Dems is the garbage polls his lying mainstream media allies keep pushing, and the liars are even having to concede that those are tightening, especially in states that matter. We’re days away from them pulling Grandpa Badfinger out of the debate. My money is still on the “I won’t normalize Trump’s racist cisgender sexism by appearing on stage with him” excuse, but “I fear the flu” is a close second. His recent catastrophic appearances outside his dungeon lair demonstrate that this guy couldn’t hack a debate if he was snorting rails of Namenda like Hunter hoovering blow on New Year’s Eve in Medellin. Trump holds an indisputable edge in other important areas, too, like enthusiasm, ground game, and continence.  

I also want to put aside the very serious issue of the Democrat transition disruption plans, a plot so staggeringly unwise that only our garbage elite could conceive of it and think it would work out all right for them. Their dual track strategy of stealing the election through legal and extra-legal shenanigans, followed by cementing their own power via attacks on the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, giving statehood to territories, defunding cops, and disarming the populace even as they attempt to limit free speech are a recipe for disaster. So, let’s put aside the second civil war these fools seem intent on provoking – our esteemed elite does not seem to remember that Democrats are already 0-1 – and assume the peaceful transition of power they would deny Trump (and you).

Let’s focus on how they try to get rid of Bad Touch Biden should they win, because it’s pretty obvious that he can’t function as president, and it’s pretty obvious that other people want that gig. They are sharpening their knives already.

There is one huge problem with getting rid of him: his wife. She wants to be president so bad she can taste it, and she’s more excited to be president – uh, I mean first lady – than Brian Stelter, who is a potato, is at the thought of visiting Golden Corral. She’s going to do everything she can to be a limo lib Edger Bergen to her husband’s less-animated Charlie McCarthy. Moreover, the Joe Junta of advisors wants its payoff. With Depends Boy as figurehead, they not only get jobs but they get a whole lot of lightly supervised power. So, there will be a potent Dem faction supporting the Presidency of the Living Dead.

But others in the Dem elite want Oldfinger out of the way. Of course, Kamala Harris is the grasping, striving avatar of this faction. She’s already talking about “a Harris Administration.” If I were Dr. Jill, which would be weird, I’d send some intern out to start Air Force One in the morning and hire a taster to clear Joe’s mornin’ mush. Now, am I saying that Kamala Harris would physically harm Joe Biden? Let’s just say that I’d rather gulp down Ruth Gordon’s smoothies in Rosemary’s Baby than roll those dice.

Regardless, she (and the Democrat establishment using the crusty crustacean as a Trojan Horse to retake power) will want be rid of him. The 25th Amendment is the most obvious play. And, frankly, it would be legit, since he is manifestly incompetent, not that stuff like facts and truth matter in modern politics.

The 25th Amendment, one of the rare parts of the Constitution that Democrats like, has been their fantasy Hail Mary play since Trump beat Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit. It is worth reviewing the entire process for replacing the president as outlined in Section 4, since, if America is dumb enough to elect the Dementiacrat in seven weeks, we’ll all be getting really familiar with it:

    Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

    Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

So, here is how it goes. President Biden gets inaugurated showing up for the ceremony in his untied bathrobe and confusing the oath with the Armour hot dogs jingle. Very quickly, Dr. Jill and the Biden Bunch start running things in his name while he spends his day upstairs in the Lincoln Bedroom, sitting on a stool, watchin’ his stories. The media gets busy covering for him because no contrary memo has circulated.

They ice out Kamala, who tries to assert control. Instead of wielding power, she’s sent off to do veep stuff, like appear at the bar mitzvah for the nephew of the High Poobah of Burkino Faso. This annoys her, and her allies – remember, due to her notorious flexibility, she is the candidate Obama and the establishment really wanted.

The trigger for the coup will be when Biden’s handlers are unable to push through the entire lefty agenda through Congress in the first 100 days. Banning guns, packing the Supreme Court, single-payer, Green New Scam. Assuming the worst case, that Schumer takes the Senate majority, they have to kill the filibuster and outmaneuver Cocaine Mitch to do all that. They need an active, potent president, and the one they are stuck with is busy slurping oatmeal.


The rush to the left bogs down because Biden can’t lead. The Democrat base starts getting restless, and it accurately assesses that the problem is that they nominated and elected a senile old weirdo. Dr. Jill gets a visit from a delegation of Dem bigwigs who tell her it’s time for him to resign. She refuses. She probably does not even let them see Joe, who is busy with a puzzle.

A decision is made: Kamala needs to take over.

The cabinet is full of folks like Pete Buttigieg, and with the aggressive action one would expect of the Audie Murphy of Kabul, he leads the other cabinet members (all of whom imagine they could be the next veep) to declare in writing that Joe is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Kamala takes over as acting president.

But the fight has only just started. Dr. Jill and the Biden Battalion send their own letter to the President pro tem and the Speaker of the House denying any disability. Within four days, Kamala and the cabinet send their response saying the opposite. Now Congress has to decide the issue. It assembles within 48 hours and has to vote within 21 days on whether Biden gets booted.

That’s when the snapping Murder Turtle bites hard. See, to remove Joe and permanently install Kamala, you need “two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” McConnell now holds all the cards. There's no two-thirds without his GOP bloc. He goes to Dr. Jill and says, “You chill on the leftism, and we let President Magoo – and you – run out the clock until 2024.”

Of course, she agrees. She’s got no choice. It’s either run a center-left presidency without the insane leftist nonsense Diddles ran on, or pack her stuff and get the hell out. That’s an easy call. President Biden gets to stumble through the next four years while Kamala gets to spend her terms doing potlucks with el Presidente de Paraguay.

Think it can’t happen?

Dude, it’ll be 2021. After 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and now 2020, do you believe there is any insane scenario that can’t actually happen in 2021?

My 10 core beliefs on United States

 

Ten core beliefs.

1.) I believe America is a noble nation. I do not believe that any country should be held accountable for past injustices. Every nation on Earth have commited injustice in its past. Look at England, look at france, look at italy, look at Russia, look at China, the killing of natve americans is disturbing, but the slavery was hanius. You don’t hold modern day Americans accountable for what happened 100 years ago. That tears the fabric of our county apart. You can look at all the money spend freeing people around the world. No country on Earth is even close. Thats why we’re an exceptional county and remain so.

2.) Reforms are necessary. Police lethal force has to be standardized. It has to be clear to the American public. The FBI should be involved in this, and the training should be through the FBI standards. There should be a manual, but this time to train police. This is what you do in the FBI, this is what you do locally in the state. We need new drug laws, because they’re not being enforced. Barack Obama is telling us that heroine is a non-volient crime. To me that is insane, heroine kills people. Meth kills people. Its not a volient crime to sell it. What can we put up in this country as far as drugs. There needs to be better voting laws. If you’re going to send the ballets to everybody, you’re going to have massive fraud.

3. We need new abortion laws, we can’t abort fetuses 15 minutes before birth. You can’t do it and call yourself a country based on law. We need a definition of what is allowed and what isn’t.

4. Capitalism is good. Capitalism gives to most people the most opportunity. Why do you think 20 million people have snuck into this country. The United States invented the airplane and light bulb. We invented everything. Why? We’re rewarded economically when we do due to the patint system. You don’t have innovation coming out of Russia or China. Lets see if they did the vaccine. As soon as someone invents something there, the government takes it away from them so you don’t have innovation. So capitalism is a strength not an exploitative weakness.

5. Self protection, because the government and law enforcement can’t. So we must protect ourselves with firearms within reason. No bazookas. No mortar. No surface to air missile. Thats a public safety hazard. We have the right to protect ourselves. We can have a debate about clips.

6. The federal and state governments have to respect religious beliefs. If I believe abortion is wrong, you can’t give my money to other people under the US constitution. You can’t else you violate the Constitution. You can’t force someone to attend a gay wedding and that has to be respected.

7. We have to adopt the United Kingdom system of civil litigation. Fri-bilious lawsuits, you got to pay.

8.Law enforcement and judges must be protected from lawsuits. If you sue a police officer, you’re not going to have any police officers left, because they can’t afford to defend it. If you can sue judges for a outcome. Democrats want that. That’s how you destroy law enforcement. Nanci polisi is villian #1 in this. The federal government needs guidelines for the public school system. The public school system isn’t fair for the poor. Not running day to day classroom. There should be uniforms.

9. I believe in term limits for Congresspeople. Two terms for Senators. It should be bye after that.

10. Balanced budget. We have to stop the madness. United States owes 30 trillion dollars.

We were told the economy is growing and growing, but these are government census workers. Total claims is 13.385 million an increase of 93,000 previous. It’s complete milpiation in front of our very own eyes. Those educated people are using those same quota numbers. The continuing claims for unemployment insurance is setting at 13.4 million. The labor department said there was 884,000 Americans that filed jobless claims, but only 839,000 jobless claims were reported. Most people have a gig job and if they didn’t have a side hustle, the economy would be stagnate. New York City has seen 15,000 empty apartments in August. There is this small group of people who are better then ever before with this K shaped recovery. People don’t care if the JC Penny or Best Buy goes under, because its not going to affect them. There is a group of people with full time work and high salaries, but there is also other people affected growing in percentage. There are buying up on a tanker and letting it sit in the middle of the ocean. They’re running of room to put the oil, but the federal reserve can print more money and that will fix it. The shipments are 1296 on the baltic drive index and is declining. Fed Balance Sheet has been increasing. They’re retracing some of their steps. The federal reserve is buying bonds, because they want to help the little guy with the mainstreet lending program.