“But Love and Grace took Glory by the hand, And built a braver palace than before.”
The Church Militant
Joined July 2014
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The philosophy of dirt and rats is crumbling all about us. This is a time of Triumph.
ALT "The Man Who was Thursday," GK Chesterton
Bits of Paul retweeted
Race is, of course, predictive in models of loan defaults. But since decisions about loans would be made on these accurate models, the result would be "discrimination", which is illegal.
Follow me closely here.
It's not that race causes loan payback or default, but that race correlates well with loan defaults.
With race forbidden, modelers had to use other measures, such as zip code. Zip code was predictive, too, but not as predictive as race. The result was again still "discrimination", because it turns out proportionately fewer blacks received loans, because blacks (and others) enjoy living next to each other. So zip codes have to be illegal in models, too.
You can keep going like this, outlawing anything that would lead to models making good decisions, but because it just is true that blacks default proportionately more, thus any model that makes good decisions would be guilty of "discrimination".
Good models are thus illegal. (See, inter alia, Science.)
To save the situation, tou might think you will instead measure whatever it is that in fact causes loan defaults, which won't be race itself, but some characteristic or characteristics of individuals and their circumstances. This would be True Cause (which would not be race).
Suppose you discovered these causes and redid your model, which now predicts perfectly, with no race in it.
Alas, since it just is true that blacks default more, on average, even this causal model would be illegal.
In the end, banks are forced to give money to people they know cannot pay the money back. Forcing rates to be raised on those who can, to subsidize those who cannot.
But this is not "discrimination", because that only applies to blacks and other Victims.
Equality destroys everything it touches.
Racial disparities in credit scores are significant.
“Black individuals from the 90th percentile of parental income have similar average scores to White individuals from the 25th percentile…
By age 30, 73% of Black individuals have a 90+ day delinquency on their credit report, in contrast to 36% for White individuals…
What are people falling delinquent on? The most common source of 90+ day late payments is non-medical collections. Most of these items are past-due utility bills (e.g., phone, TV, electric, and gas bills), with average collection balances around $984 among those with positive balances.”
Bits of Paul retweeted
In many ways millennial white men have been sacrificed on the altar for the supposed sins of their fathers and grandfathers. A lot of Gen X too. But the Boomers and older kept their jobs while this went on. To me that’s the scandal. Old white men sacrificing their own.
A statistic that sounds fake but isn't: Not one single white American man born after 1984 has published a work of literary fiction in The New Yorker.
It's not because they stopped writing. It's because The New Yorker has refused to publish them. The publishing industry has blacked out a generation of male writers & then they wonder why boys don't read.
Bits of Paul retweeted
there’s something psychologically terroristic about these kids books that are full of adult platitudes. “there’s nothing wrong with asking for help”. yeah. my 5 year old never would have thought there was. “you don’t have to be extraordinary to be loved”. do not tell my kid that
Bits of Paul retweeted
I run a corporate consulting firm that specializes in small businesses, and I've dealt with more dysfunctional owners like this than I care to remember. I can tell you EXACTLY what's going on here.
This guy had HALF his competent workforce walk off the job, can’t retain new hires even after doubling wages, and the workers who do stick around can’t even clean a fish tank without causing thousands of dollars in damages.
And his conclusion is that an entire generation is unemployable?! Complete and utter nonsense.
I can practically guarantee that if I sat down with the employees who quit, it wouldn't even take five minutes to figure out why they all left:
An arrogant, insufferable, Boomer tyrant who treats his employees like garbage, blames everyone else for his own failures, and has created such a miserable working environment that anyone with two functioning brain cells and another employment opportunity immediately slams the eject button.
Which, incidentally, explains why the only employees he can retain are apparently too stupid to tie their own shoes.
The most incredible part is that this guy thinks offering $35 an hour somehow vindicates him.
Do you have any idea how thoroughly you have to screw up as an employer to make $73,000 a year CLEANING FISH TANKS sound like a bad deal?
And rather than engage in even a moment of self-reflection, he takes to X, publicly announcing that everyone who has ever worked for him is a lazy, incompetent moron.
I cannot imagine why people don’t want to work for this man.
I've got news for you, pal, and you might want to pay attention because I normally charge $400 an hour for this:
When everyone who has the ability to leave your business does so, and the only people left are the ones nobody else will hire, it isn’t an employee problem. It’s a YOU problem.
And the fact that you apparently had to shut down an otherwise profitable business before figuring that out tells me everything I need to know about why you had no business running one in the first place.
The newer generations are unemployable, so I shut down a business yesterday.
I have many small businesses I got involved in, one is a Saltwater fish store. It sells fish, corals, aquariums etc.
The most profitable part of one of these stores is outside Maintenance. Going to peoples houses, changing the fish tanks water, cleaning glass etc.
This is a very simple job, you run a hose in from the truck, suck water out, pump water in (nothing manual), and use a magnetic razor blade to clean the glass. Take a water sample and leave.
We had 4 trucks and 6 guys doing this... then 5, 4, 3... each person that quit put more work on the ones left.
We tried to hire, it's a very low skill job. Most maintenance guys make $15-18 an hour. We went upto $35 an hour to try and get people. Beyond that we cannot be profitable.
The job is easy, you have to have a license (actually hard as hell apparently), and pass a background check (youre in peoples homes, also hard as hell). Pass a drug test.
At $35 an hour we got the following.
Someone that caused almost 8k of damage when they started pumping in water, went out "for a smoke" and the tank overflowed.
At least 5 hires that went through background tests, drug tests etc then didn't show for work the 1st day and never called us again.
Someone that intentionally pulled the guard off the water pumping hose, and sucked someones fish into the pump.
Someone that scratched the District Attourney of las vegas, Steve Wolfson's tank by deciding to not use the magnetic razor, and "do it by hand"... fo no fucking reason. (4k bill)
A wrecked van
Someone who stole our water tester (1500 dollar machine).
I have no empathy, at least in Las Vegas, for people complaining about no work, no jobs blah blah blah.
$6000 a month to put hoses in and out of a tank and look at pretty fish.
Bits of Paul retweeted
Cutting out coffee is a great way to reduce caffeine intake and completely eliminate your will to live.
Bits of Paul retweeted
Abortion is like suicide. If you take away the means, the vast majority of people get over it and move on without any additional changes.
Someday, just about the only things anyone will remember of me—or you—are words. Choose them carefully.
Imagine staring daggers into someone whom you claim to Love with sprinkled words of persiflage, and then suddenly: it’s over. The curtain falls. That will be your legacy.
Bits of Paul retweeted
This is your rules-based order in a nutshell. This is the "even playing field." Act accordingly.
Wow. For years, an official in Arkansas allegedly tampered with bar exam scores, pulling points from some test takers and giving them to others.
This caused numerous failing exams to pass, and resulted in "at least one instance" where an otherwise passing exam fell below the requisite threshold.
cc: @BarExamTutor
Bits of Paul retweeted
The 2024 election helped a lot of people forget that they're going to hell for what they did during Covid
Superlatively wise words from beloved Lady Astor. Passively observing one’s friends’ perceived missteps in silence only to publicly harangue them later is gauche and weak.
Happy Friday everyone, but especially my old friends, my beloved band of brothers since the day my father passed away in June 2015.
I’m a mere woman who loves her friends and family, and wants to protect them. It hurts me when I see people I care about fighting on main. Although I understand why it happens.
I will say this, if you care about me and you consider me a friend, talk to me when you believe I’m making a mistake, ignoring something or bringing the wrong person into my circle. Say something. Don’t let me walk blind and then get mad at me because of something I don’t know.
Blessed be ❤️
Bits of Paul retweeted
One of the infants fighting sepsis from pneumonia opened his eyes for the first time during my reading. They are all going to make it.
Bits of Paul retweeted
Reading “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” to kids in the PICU today (one of them is the son of a friend).
It’s important to give your time to others. Donating money is not sufficient, and more often than not supports a bloated leftist salary.
Cranking out 5500 words in about six hours ain’t half bad. I suppose I have been thinking about this piece for over four years, though. Still. It’s encouraging when my brain still functions at more than a shadow of its former powers.
Bits of Paul retweeted
✋😔🤚 “Wow ... Really...? Wow... no, I didn’t know that... you’re ... you’re telling me that for the first time.”
Holy sh*t. Claude Code just found a hidden chip inside my Chinese power bank from Guangzhou. Every time I charged my iPhone, it quietly copied the whole phone…
It also read our saved Wi-Fi password off my iPhone, got onto our home network and sent everything to a server.
I bought it for $19 at an airport kiosk there 3 weeks ago. No brand, 30,000 mAh on the label, and it felt heavy.
The first time I plugged in, the screen asked "Trust This Computer?". I tapped Trust without thinking and went on with my day. That one tap gave it access to everything.
This morning I finally set up Claude Code to warn me when any device starts reading my files. An hour later, 10 seconds into charging, the screen filled with yellow warnings, then red ones: data was moving when it should only be charging.
I asked Claude Code what was going on. My phone saw the power bank as a small computer with 64 GB of storage and its own internet connection.
A USB cable has wires for power and wires for data, and a normal charger only uses the power ones. This one used both, and it had already copied all of this:
→ /device → IMEI and serial number
→ /contacts → 1,206 numbers
→ /apps → every app I have, including my 2 bank apps
→ /photos → 3,912 pictures, my passport among them
→ /wifi → our network name and its key
→ /wife's iPhone → her photos too, she charged from it twice and tapped Trust too
Each time we plugged in, it used that key to get online and send out the new files:
sends to → 47.***.***.12
uploads → 19 in 3 weeks
last one → last night at 2:14, while we slept
I pulled the cable right away. Then Claude Code blocked that address on our router and walked me through changing the Wi-Fi password and the logins for my bank apps.
I had it opened at a repair shop, and what was inside is in the first comment. A 30-second check for your own is in the second one. Save this and test every power bank in your house today.