Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!

Aug22

In the old campy sci-fi series “Lost In Space” from the 1960s, the Robinson family’s robot frequently threw its arms around shouting “Warning! Warning! Danger, Will Robinson!” to warn the youngest member of the family that something bad was about to happen.

And okay, I’m going to make give you a warning and this market call for y’all now.

In the summer of 2007, before the Great Recession fully broke, I saw two hedge funds totally collapse based on housing bond investments. Those bonds were very shaky. That, to me, was the beginning of the end of the bull run market of the 2001-2009 time period. Two major banks collapsed over the following 15 months – Bear Stearns (March 2008) followed by Lehman Brothers (September 2008).

In July 2026, an AI investment hedge fund, Situational Awareness, lost 78% of its value in 3 days. This, to me, is a trigger event. It’s time to pay close attention to markets.

Hedge fund collapses, when they happen, are normally caused by losses between 5%-20% of their portfolio. When a hedge fund collapses because of massive losses in the ranges of 80%-90% of assumed value, this means those assets are worthless! And there are hundreds of billions of dollars of such investments across the entire US, with many pension funds and 401Ks invested in such questionable instruments. How much of your money is tied up in worthless investments right now?

The US banking and investment industry has over a trillion dollars invested in AI alone. Every single day. the AI bubble is looking worse than the internet bubble of 2001.

Right now no AI company is making a profit. None, nada, zip. They are licensing seats at thousands of dollars per seat and still losing money! Does this remind you of the dot-com bubble of 2001? How many companies were going to make amazing profits “real soon now”? Goldman Sachs is predicting one AI chipmaker will see 180% growth in stock share valuation in the next 12 months. Where can such value come from if nobody is making a profit?

Another $650 billion is currently slated for investment in AI data centers from Microsoft, Alphabet (Google), Amazon, and Meta alone, never mind the smaller players.

In the first half of 2026, AI investment in the US alone was $331 billion dollars in an industry that still shows no profits from any of its players!

Wired Magazine sounded the alarm a few years ago that AI is a bubble but now the signs are worsening that this bubble is close to bursting.

I don’t know what to tell you when Trump is wrecking the dollar, running record deficits, and US bond interest rates are rising dangerously (bond prices falling, in other words).

When bond prices fall and stock markets collapse, there are few safe havens left but this bubble feels like it’s close to going boom. And when it goes boom, with Trump wrecking the dollar and US Bonds, I don’t know how bad it can get but it won’t be pretty.

Please take care of yourselves if you have retirement investments. The market isn’t collapsing yet but there are strong warning signs all over. Try to evaluate where you want your retirement funds invested if you have the option and try to find somewhere safe because AI is not the safe or wise investment right now.

If Defending The Human Rights Of Any Group Is A Purity Test, Then You’ve Outed Yourself As Being Pro-Genocide

Aug12

I recently responded to a white cishet man who presented himself as a Democrat that trans people must forgive Representative Robert Vindman for voting against the safety of trans kids. Below is my response to him. I’ve linked the article that generated this response after said man said this was a “purity test” that would hurt Democrats generally.

Virginia congressman’s meeting with transgender Democrats erupts into profanity. Then he walked out.

Nobody gets to declare themselves an ally then betray that community. He betrayed that community, period, full stop.

Hopefully, he learned something in this exchange. Just because he is a loving parent doesn’t mean every parent is. He had actual trans people explaining this to him and he refused to listen.

I guarantee the entire LGBTQ community would have been up in arms if the bill had included outing gay kids because they’ve lived through this too.

LGBTQ kids are 5%-10% of the total under 18 population, based on different attempts to measure that number. Yet LGBTQ kids are over 40% of homeless children. Of the remaining 60% of homeless kids, the overwhelming majority left home voluntarily. Of that 40% who are LGBTQ, 99% left home because they were thrown out.

Vindman is refusing to listen to the lived experiences of trans people who came to talk to him. This is no different than a white man refusing to listen to the lived experiences of Black people and trying to justify a racist vote. It’s the exact same thing.

I want to ask you a question. Do you know what the Lemkin Institute is?

It is a private non-profit organization set up after WWII to try to identify and stop genocides before they become full blown mass killings. They have identified every single genocide in progress since WWII before it became mass murder. They also have never successfully stopped a genocide before it became mass murder because Western governments refused to act.

The Lemkin Institute has issued three separate warnings that the Trump administration is on track to commit genocide of transgender people. Such a warning has never been issued against the United States before. Yet now we have 3 warnings from the Lemkin Institute.

If they are as successful as they’ve been in the past, assholes like you will be erecting monuments to dead trans people saying “Who could have seen it coming?” and “I wonder what we could have done to stop it?” once this is all over.

Yet some huge number of trans people are going to end up dead if this continues down this road. And now we have Democrats piling on to the genocidal actions of the Trump administration.

Genocides start by identifying the target, dehumanizing the target, making them an enemy that the majority no longer cares about, separating them from the “good” majority (often for their own “safety”), and then eventually, mass killing them as a final solution.

The Trump administration is actively engaged in those first three actions listen above and Republicans across the nation are calling for trans people to be segregated from public life. Some are already calling for them to be “rounded up”. What do you think comes after “rounding up” trans people?

The only expectation I have from any Democrat is that they are not bendable on human rights. Because any Democrat willing to throw one group under the bus has proved himself willing to throw other groups under the bus.

Vindman is a privileged white man who refused to listen to trans voters or Black voters who tried to talk to him then tried to justify his actions against human rights as “being a parent”.

Fuck Vindman. If that’s the sort of Democrat he is, trans voters don’t need him as a representative, because, to us, he’s no different from a Republican.

And don’t bring up other rights and freedoms of other groups because if we’re being put in camps, what good are those “freedoms” to us?

The Cesspool of Hate and Bigotry Right Under Many Parents’ Noses

Jul31

Let me make some feminist observations coming from a place you probably wouldn’t expect to find feminist observations at all – online video gaming and especially massive multiplayer online video gaming (MMOs).

One game I’ve played is called Black Desert Online (hereafter abbreviated BDO). It has one of the most extensive character customization editors in the entire online gaming world. The character face alone has 39 separate small regions that can be adjusted in every conceivable dimension including the ears. The body has 19 separate regions adjustable via sliders and that’s not counting the hands, each of which has 3 adjustable regions per finger and the palm region which is a total of 51 potential adjustments across the body from neck to foot. (Toes are not individually adjustable.)

You can create a character template and then save it. You can share saved templates publicly. And shared templates can be named.

I’ve seen some incredible templates done, which look nothing like the default character that Pearl Abyss has created. I’ve seen hundreds of celebrity templates that, depending on the gender of the specific class (classes are gender locked), look like famous actors, actresses, sports figures, or even a few politicians.

But for all of this extremely creative work, we then find the other templates. You don’t find this with male gender classes, only female gender classes.

Templates in which the character’s breasts are so large you wonder how the character can possibly stand. Character templates with buttocks so large that you wonder if something is medically wrong with them. Character templates titled “Mommy”, “Waifu”, “Cutie”. There used to be a lot of “Ho” templates but Pearl Abyss apparently cracked down and forced those to be retitled or deleted. You do still see some character templates with “THOT” in them.

Another game I’ve played is Star Wars: The Old Republic (SWTOR). SWTOR doesn’t have character creators. You can basically choose one of 4 body types but you can make extensive face adjustments, just nothing like BDO. But SWTOR’s brilliance is that it has so many character outfits you can put your character into. Mandalorian armor sets (a few dozen choices), Jedi robe or armor sets (a few dozen choices), Sith robe and armor choices, several dozen choices that look like smuggler and bounty hunter type armor. And the beauty of this system is that almost any class can wear almost any outfit set. (A tiny number are gender locked.)

And given these choices, as a role-player, I almost always had my female characters dressed in full coverings most of the time. The rare time they were not was usually some in-character function, like attending a gala and wearing an evening gown.

And further, you can have dozens of potential companions in SWTOR to fight alongside you (one companion at a time but you can switch any time except in the middle of a fight). And many of those characters are female too.

So what do many of those female characters and companions get dressed in most often? The least covering most revealing outfits possible.

Then let’s talk about MMO game chat systems. Most MMOs have channels that are pretty wide reaching. In BDO there are several channels that reach the entire instance of the game world. In SWTOR there are general channels that reach wide sections of the game world. In WOW, there are general channels that reach wide segments of the game world.

These are a built in feature of almost every MMO in existence. And if you listen to these channels, you find yourself immersed in a total culture of absolutely pure misogyny and hate. Hatred of women, hatred of anyone not white (the use of the N-word is common), hatred of anyone who is queer but especially hatred of trans women and gay men, and more.

These channels are among the most toxic, abusive channels of communications in the world today. And none of these companies police these channels. No policing action is done. The most vile, hateful things are said in these channels.

There is non-stop racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic chatter going on in these game channels 24 hours a day, 7 days a week except when the servers are down for maintenance.

People talk about 4Chan and 8Chan as toxic places on the dark web but MMO game chat systems, and the cultures they create which are inhabited by MILLIONS OF YOUR MEN AND TEENAGE BOYS are conditioning these young men and teenage boys to become bigots in every part of their corrupt little souls.

Are there those that resist? Sure, but most don’t fight the tide. Those who don’t want to hear it, because they have no real policing powers and the owners of the games refuse to police their chat systems, usually just turn off global or wide reaching channels that becomes hotbeds of bigotry.

The online social media culture of hate and negativity that we see on Facebook, Threads, BlueSky, X, and other social media platforms did not arise overnight from whole cloth. It arose from these MMO game chat systems that have been unpoliced since the mid-1990s, places of toxic hate and abuse against anyone the majority deems “less than”. Then those people grew up and moved on to other social media where they brought their sense of entitlement, hatred, and bigotry with them.

You cannot clean up social media systems without first going after related communication systems like MMO game chat systems, the systems that start programming kids who are in their early teens to hate and mock anyone different from themselves.

And that’s going to require legislation that neither major party wants to touch right now.

Big tech is out of control, not just in AI, but in its open support of sexual abuse, its support of production of child sexual assault materials (CSAM), it’s production of openly racist materials.

If this is not reigned in on a society wide scale, it will destroy civilization. Elon Musk fears people of color and people of religions other than Christianity. He and his tech bros are a bigger threat to civilization than any other single factor right now.

Trans Women Are Not Men And Never Were

Jul6

In the last 20 years there have been 50 peer reviewed scientific studies examining over 6099 trans athletes asking whether trans women have an advantage in sports over cisgender women. None of these studies have shown any advantage, yet ignorant people continue to claim that “common sense” insists this is true.

Body composition and physical fitness in transgender versus cisgender individuals: a systematic review with meta-analysis

New Study Once Again Shows Trans Women Have No Physical Advantage Over Cis Athletes

The critical error of most transphobes is in thinking that transgender women are just men making a choice.

But there are now 30+ years of biological research showing that trans women are biologically distinct from cisgender men. Neurologically, trans women have brain structures that closely match cisgender women. Frontal cortex thickness and neuron density matches that of cisgender women. Multiple structures in the hypothalamus match those of cisgender women.

A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality

Male-to-female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus

A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identity

There are other signs as well. Well over 90% of cisgender men have ring fingers longer than their index fingers. Cisgender women have index fingers as long as their ring finger or longer. Most trans women have female index to ring finger ratios, not male ratios.

Digit ratio (2D:4D) and transgender identity: new original data and a meta-analysis

There are physical things that men generally cannot do but women can. Trans women can often do those actions but cisgender men almost never can. These “tricks” rely on women having a lower center of gravity than men, usually due to more combined muscle/fat mass in the lower body. After several years on HRT many trans women can do these tricks too, because they’ve acquired female proportions, not male proportions.

The US Air Force discovered that, even before starting HRT, trans women performed 18%-30% lower on average than cisgender men. They also showed that after 2-4 years of Gender Affirming Hormone Therapy (GAHT), that trans women showed no advantages over cisgender women in lower body strength, or in run speeds and only a tiny advantage in upper body strength.

The goal of the study was to determine when transgender Air Force service members, both MTF and FTM, should begin to be tested on the scale that matches their gender identity and not the scale that matches assigned sex at birth. It gave a definitive answer to that and showed that after 2 years of GAHT they should be tested on the same scale as their gender identity, and that after 4 years or GAHT, any remaining advantages they saw early on were gone or nearly gone.

Fit Transitioning: When Can Transgender Airmen Fitness Test in Their Affirmed Gender?

A British study showed that trans women, after 2+ years of GAHT, had decreases in VO2 Max (amount of oxygen reaching the muscles) that matched the VO2 Max levels of cisgender women.

Strength, power and aerobic capacity of transgender athletes: a cross-sectional study

Over and over again, science tells us that transgender women are biologically distinct from cisgender men. It tells us that, except for genitalia, they are biologically more like women than men.

I recently saw one discussion where a pro-trans advocate answered the question “What is a woman?” from a medical perspective. Her response was that a woman is any individual born with a neurological template that more closely matches the average female neurological template and that a man is any individual whose neurological template more closely matches the average male neurological template. And that’s a scientifically correct answer that is grounded in the research that has been accomplished over the last 31+ years. (Zhou et al. discovered the initial BSTc differences in the hypothalamus in 1995, which opened the floodgates for transgender neurological research.)

I’ll accept a call for more scientific research into this question but right now, today, in 2026, there is NO DATA that supports the claim that trans women have an unfair advantage over cisgender women in sports. I’ll even accept a call for each sport to study the issue, scientifically, as to whether trans women can play that sport. Would more research help? Yes. And perhaps sport by sport rules would alleviate concerns.

But if you claim otherwise, that trans women have some inherent “advantage”, you are a scientifically illiterate bigot and your opinion is garbage unworthy of serious consideration.

America’s Odds Of Collapse Keep Rising Thanks To Trump

Mar26

The Bulwark, a set of political blogs I sometimes read but don’t always agree with (too right wing sometimes) is sounding the alarm about the dollar. A collapsing dollar, becoming irrelevant to the global economy, is one of the preconditions I’ve mentioned in the past that can lead to the collapse of the United States as a single coherent nation. Below is the comment I left on their page about this article.

Years ago, I began pointing out that Putin’s then ongoing support for white nationalist and state secession movements was mirroring how US policy in the 1980s and 1990s helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Putin had a front row seat to what we did to the USSR, and he took notes. The most important point for Putin was that once the USSR shattered, international pressure led to nuclear disarmament of several former Soviet states.

Apply this backwards – if Putin can cause the Balkanization of the United States, will the world simply allow Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Nebraska, and Colorado to retain those ICBM silos? No. In all probability, those new nation states would be pressured to disarm in order to receive international financial aid to rebuild and stabilize their economies.

So there’s a rational underlying goal behind Putin supporting white nationalist and secession movements. This explains Putin funding racist organizations and even Russia supporting Republicans who screamed bloody murder about idiocy like Jade Helm even before Trump was elected.

Then we arrive at Trump’s election. Putin now has a completely vain idiot leading the US, whom he can manipulate with ease by playing on Trump’s narcissistic ego. Before Trump’s election the first time, the dollar was close to parity with the euro. Under Trump, the dollar fell to 0.83 dollars per euro.

Under Biden, the dollar climbed back to 0.96-1.04 versus the euro.

In Trump’s second term, in the first 12 months, the dollar again dropped clear down to 0.83 dollars per euro.

At that point, add in the Iran war, add in the growing white nationalist anti-Israel sentiments, add in Trump trying to withhold funding to blue states, and the pressures at the state level to ask “why are we part of this union anymore?” start to feel obvious.

California alone has the 4th largest economy in the world. They don’t need Trump’s BS to live successfully. California could easily cut deals around the entire Pacific rim within a few months that would be better for California than the current mess. If Oregon and Washington joined California, it would be the 3rd largest economy in the world.

Likewise, New England, as a group of states together, would be a top ten economic powerhouse in the world if they broke away. If Pennsylvania and Maryland joined them, they’d be the 5th largest economy in the world.

So think about it. Trump and the GOP, slashing government services AND wrecking the dollar, are creating a situation that can lead to the collapse of the United States as a single coherent country. Slashing government services alone doesn’t create that situation, but if the dollar is also becoming irrelevant or even worthless, some of the larger blue regions of the country will be left asking themselves, “why stay in this union?”

And when we reach that point, coupled with white nationalism becoming a structural security threat to the rule of law in America, then the potential for the collapse of the United States, will reach a peak.

I think Trump is too stupid to do this himself but he is clearly vain enough to be manipulated to where the US dollar and the federal government both become irrelevant to the everyday lives of the American people. And when that happens, the US dies, and Putin gets to remove American nukes from the global chessboard without firing a single shot.

And THAT will be a moment that will go down in history showing the power of espionage and diplomacy.

https://open.substack.com/pub/thebulwark/p/kill-the-dollar-bill?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web