Horse 3415 - YOLO and WOLO

 In late 2012, the acronym YOLO entered pop culture for a brief period of time. 'You Only Live Once' is supposed to express a kind of happy-go-lucky mode of living in the moment; without giving a jot about the consequences. YOLO for a time, became the motto of people about to do something really stupid, or people about to do something which they would temporarily enter woo-mode for, such as drinking excessive amounts of fermented vegetable product¹ in a short space of time, or some kind of mild but ultimately silly attempt at temporary happiness like jumping in a river.

Of course the acronym is utterly pointless to Buddhists and other people who believe in reincarnation, as they do not believe that you do only live once but live many times. YALA 'You Always Live Again', which I assume is the Buddhist equivalent of this phrase, never really caught on though.

As with all vapid and ultimately substanceless things that pass by in the never ending pop culture parade, YOLO eventually faded; just like 'girl dinner' and lime green 'brat summer' have done in the more recent past. YOLO as a concept has also faded due to the fact that the people who would have become obnoxious teenagers and party people in their early 20s just haven't been replaced with anywhere near as much disposable income, even as in 2012, and their ability or even desire to drink excessive amounts of fermented vegetable product in a short space of time, or even adopt a happy-go-lucky mode of living in the moment, has very much been tempered and quelled by the demands of having to pay even more of what little income they get in rent, to their grandparents. The fact that we have struggling nightclubs in my city but record numbers of cruise ships arriving, where the average age of people taking a cruise is 79, tells you where the rewards of the economy are actually going.

In contrast as we cooked away in a Penrith train doing 6km/h, because of blank signals further up the line, I heard the guard in the rear car having a discussion with someone about WOLO happening up ahead. Yes, you read that right. WOLO; not YOLO.

WOLO?

Why Only Live Once?

What On the Livingearth is going On?

WOLO signs generally indicate that either due to the heat, or signal failure, or places where points are locked, or places where the dead man's arm hasn't raised, et cetera, that there are speed restrictions on the line ahead. This might be because the maintenance engineers have determined that there is a chance that the track could buckle, or that the points might unlock, or that because signals are not working that drivers may enter the block but purely operating on sight rules only.

In trying to determine what WOLO actually means, I found several operations manuals across Australia, and even the explanation of "Welded track Operations for LOcomotives" but this has to be a backronym. Unless a car in a set starts with a T to indicate that it is a Trailer car, then they are some kind of drive car in an Electrical Multiple Unit (EMU) or Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU). Actual Locomotives on the railways, are almost exclusively found on freight trains; with the most common exception being the XPT with Locomotives at either end of the train.

WOLO as it turns out, is likely to be nothing more than a code word; which was picked because a telegraph operator could memorise this and tap it out in a hurry. I have not actually found the NSW Railway Telegraphic Code Library but the existence of this tome is referred to a lot; which apparently contains more than 100 four-letter codes which telegraph operator would use to transmit messages around the system in a hurry (RYZY apparently means² that a particular box car has malfunctioning Westinghouse brakes and needs to have some other system applied to them; such as squeeze retarders in a hump yard). If this story is true, then WOLO is like flying the yellow Q-Flag for Quarantine, or the black flag with a red circle on it which is "The Meatball" flag and indicates that a car has a mechanical failure and is forcibly being retired from a motor race. WOLO as both the telegraphic code in the past, and now just as a word on a sign, is about communicating things in a hurry; which is ironic given that the thing being communicated in a hurry is an instruction to move slowly.

Speaking as someone whose days ahead of them are fewer than the days already passed, the benefit of applied and forced wisdom, after also having both the yellow Q-Flag and the Meatball flag applied in life, YOLO and WOLO look very much like two-sides of the same coin.

WOLO signs are about posting limits on operation before a train running over the tracks causes a critical failure. This seems to me to be a useful analogy when it comes to mental health. As I am not a psychologist, concepts like boundary setting and developing resiliance sound fine in the abstract, but I neither have the ability to offer any kind of advice; nor should I do so.  

People generally do not need to be told YOLO before they embark upon some mildly amusing/bonkers/irresponsible endeavour but weirdly people almost always seem to need to be given permission to WOLO. Sometimes people need to be told WOLO or else suffer burnout, or some other kind of mental health failure. Humans are strange. For reasons that make no sense to me whatsoever, as someone who grew up and learned that being bored was acceptable, that watching clouds go by was fine, whose internal monologue was/is constant so I'd better put some kind of output instrument in front of it, that when people say that they can't stop, it makes zero sense to me. 

¹Bread makes people happy. Fermented vegetable product makes people laugh. Money makes the world go round.

²RYZY is different to Skibidi RIZZ Toilet.

Horse 3414 - Yes, Shakespeare Could Have; Easily

The older that I get, the more that I am convinced that the purest of all the Sciences is Mathematics; that the universe itself is underpinned by certain immutable rules; and that even the existence of matter and space and time and here and now itself, is actually just a series of vibrations which are also governed by those same laws of Mathematics on some deep deep deep and unobservable level. 

However when it comes to things which are observable and where data exists (data is beautiful), things can be calculated and explanations given based upon that observable data. As someone who works in a job where simple arithmetic is king, and as someone who doesn't actually live in the real world, I can tell you that data is enough to explain all kinds of lovely things. The maths simply doesn't lie. What does lie, are the people who generate the numbers, and they do so with the stories which they tell. 

While watching a video from Rob Words on Youtube¹, which was trying to work out how many words that William Shakespeare actually gave to the English language, immediately my mind raced to find the explanation of the unaddressed question of if he actually wrote all of those plays and sonnets. This is quite apart from the fact that the biggest reason why his corpus of work has survived where other people's has not, is due the to the fact that Shakespeare operated on the south side of the River Thames and the Great Fire Of London, which was the hottest event of 1666 and 50 years after The Bard died, mostly burnt out quarters of the old city on the north side of the river. Shakespeare's stuff survived because it didn't burn in a fire.

Nevertheless, the question of if he actually wrote all of those plays and sonnets is partly one of asking if it is at all possible; the answer to that can be found in the data.

"Alexander joins forces with James Madison and John Jay to write a series of essays Defending the new United States Constitution, entitled The Federalist Papers.

The plan was to write a total of twenty-five essays with the work divided evenly among the three men.

In the end, they wrote eighty-five essays in the span of six months.

John Jay got sick after writing five.

James Madison wrote twenty-nine.

Hamilton wrote the other FIFTY-ONE!

"How do you write like you're running out time?

Write day and night like you're running out time?"

- Non-Stop, Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda (2016)².

How many layers would we like to cut through in this meta-onion? LOTS. The actual number of essays that Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers was unknown until textual analysis could be completed with computers in the 1960s. Again, the data already existed; there just needed to be the means to calculate it. 

The PDF of The Federalist Papers which I am working with, contains all 85 essays plus a foreword plus discussions on how they relate to the US Constitution. The PDF contains more words than are contained within the 85 essays; so is an over-estimation. This is excellent for our purposes.

There are 189,274 words in the document.

189,274 / 85 = 2227 rounded up to the nearest number.

Using me as the guinea pig, and a comparable example of an essay writer, doing a countback of all the words in this blog, lands in Horse 3286 and the word "is". If Hamilton wrote 2227 words per essay, and I wrote 1503 words per essay, then we can assume that Mr Miranda's question posed "How do you write like you're running out time?" is answered "pretty easily". If I can put out an equivalent number of words to the entire Federalist Papers, working alone and in my spare time, every year for more than 20 years, then Hamilton could have easily done this in a semi-professional capacity. 

Turning our attention to The Bard of Avon, we can do a similar word count to find out what he wrote. Again, the PDF of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare which I am working with, contains too many words.

There are 884,647 words in the document.

When we consider that the entire corpus of Shakespeare was written between 1589 and 1613, that gives us a 24 year period.

884,647 / 24 =  36,860 words per year.

Now, I already know that at my slower rate of writing, which has consistently been 154 essays per year and at 1503 words per essay, that gives us 231,462 words per year. When you consider that I do not do this in a professional capacity and that Shakespeare's job literally depended upon him writing plays to be produced and tickets sold, then my output at a rate which is 6 times as fast, makes Shakespeare's entire body of work not only possible but very easily so.

I have written more than five times the number of words that Shakespeare did, in a non-professional capacity and in a timeframe which is four years shorter. Could Shakespeare have written all of those plays and sonnets, at a rate of less than 20% as fast as rank amateur? Very yes.

Also, when you consider that something like National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) encourages people to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November, at the rate of 1667 words per day, then someone beavering away could have written the entire works of Shakespeare in a year and a half. This is not just in the realm of possibility, but probably an actuality for professional writers and novelists. Think about "War And Peace" by Leo Tolstoy, "Les Miserables" by Victor Hugo, and "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, and you find large works of more than half a million words; which are all more than 50% of Shakespeare's entire output in 24 years.'

Shakespeare absolutely could have written all 

¹Rob Words - Shakespeare:  https://youtu.be/z_UtRe9DgvE?si=Va1TZNkhfUvwhbw2

²Non-Stop - Hamilton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPgE7PNzXag

Horse 3413 - Flying The Flag Of Pain

 "Today, I am content, and that is enough."

- via Twitter, 29th Oct 2024, (name withheld)

On a few occasions I have seen Mosman Municipal Council accidentally fly the Australian Flag upside-down. Now this council/suburb being right on the harbour and with a naval presence, should be well aware that when a flag is flown upside-down, it either means that the ship has been abandoned and may be claimed, or that the ship is in distress and requires assistance. Likewise, when I see people protesting with the Australian Red Ensign which is upside-down, part of me wants to assume that they either have been abandoned and may be claimed, or that they are in distress and require assistance. Likely the latter.

Flags are useful and proper at communicating something in a hurry and from a distance but humans, which are ridiculously complex and nuanced beings, and so much bigger on the inside than the outside, often can not communicate something in a hurry, much less even adequately. What do you do about the whole realm of things like emotion, which can't really be communicated with words, can't really be communicated with tone, and can't really be communicated with expression? How do you communicate that which at times can not be described, much less transmitted to someone else?

What also doesn't help, is that essentially, we are all living in the fortress of our minds; with nobody else ever truly seeing the kosmos as we do. This isn't just a case of eternal parallax but genuine cosmic loneliness, where the entire of the universe must always be observed from a unique perspective. Granted, we can share experiences, participate in community and communion, and feel and do all those things like love, hate, joy, ennui, pain, worry, boredom, et cetera et cetera et cetera.

Flying atop the keep in the fortress of our minds are the occasional flags of those things that we feel and do, but even then, those flags do a bad job of communicating the uncommunicable; which means that the fortress of our minds is also an inescapable prison.

The ironic thing about all of this is that I write all of this as someone who can observe emotions but not necessarily express or even feel them. Through a combination of genetics, the kind of household I grew up in, and the unrelenting fact that I have mismatched chromosomes as the base source code in every single cell in my body, I have a highly limited emotional colour palette. Happy, Sad, Angry, Ennui - I have at worst a CGA emotional card and maybe at best an EGA emotional card. I do not have VGA with 16 colours, I do not have Super VGA with 256 colours, and I certainly do not have 16 and 24 bit cards. 

I am one of those people in the population (mostly men) for whom any and all emotions simply cease to exist once they have been nailed down. For many people, especially men, the whole project of going to therapy, as it is currently conceived, is  completely useless. If I have a problem, then I want it fixed. Asking me how I feel about something, or to walk through the emotions, does nothing when I simply never felt them or never had the emotional toolkit to describe them in the first place.

However, I can look at other people and observe that they do in fact feel things, deeply; and in thousands upon thousands of shades which simply do not exist for me. This is to be expected. I am also red/green colour blind, so I already know that people see the world with more colours than I do. That's fine. 

What's even funner and compounds this even further, is that other people's heads are black boxes. It is simply impossible to look at someone else and know what they are thinking. Even worse, if someone is sitting with an emotion that is barely contained by language,  then it is more impossible to look at someone else and know what they are thinking. Even more worse, if they are thinking abstract thoughts, that is thoughts that don't even have language, then it is more more impossible to look at someone else and know what they are thinking. If you have something which is impossible, doubly impossible, and even triply impossible to know, then how are you expected to make any kind of informed thesis about what is going on inside another person.

Perhaps my only insight into how someone else feels emotionally, is my own hopeless analogue. After being hit by a car in January of 2022, and then having surgery to insert screws and plates in my leg and arm, I have been left with a constant pain in my left shoulder. At best I can describe it as being stabbed by a pin but a whole line of them; constantly, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, without ceasing. The fun thing is that even that doesn't actually describe what this feels like. The funner thing is that I don't even know if it is real or not; because it could be just the damaged nerve endings constantly firing off and sending messages. If I can't properly describe the pain that I feel in my shoulder or even know if it is real or not, then what hope do I have in understanding anyone else's pain, which appears on a spectrum of knowledge which is triply impossible to actually understand?

And yet even with a highly limited emotional colour palette, operating in EGA, I still know that pain however it is metered, is unpleasant. If it is physical, emotional, or whatever, pain is like the blinking warning light indicating that something has gone wrong, or that some system requires urgent attention. 

The thing about pain is that it demands to be felt. The almost hilarious thing is that is all that it does. It demands and it demands and it demands and it demands and it demands. Yet here I am, forced to listen to the demands of an author with no words, the bruised apprentice of a teacher who offers no useful lessons at all, in a place where the light and darkness converge, and to be quite frank I will be damned if I sit and watch pain get what it demands. I can not entertain the demands of a tyrant. If I only have four colours in the palette, then I will fight pain with anger and either internally ridicule it or ignore it. As the owner of my emotions, I choose the terms and the conditions.

As someone with only a limited emotional colour palette, operating in EGA, that either means that I am simply unable to even experience the kinds of pain that other people do, or that I have resilience operating as some kind of patch or firmware to deal with the very obvious hardware inadequacy. Perhaps like Androcles, the famed idiot and slave from the Roman folk take (and for whom George Bernard Shaw wrote the stage play), I am able to survive even the threat of a lion because I am simply incapable of feeling the fear/pain which would have left me terrified. If about 20% of the population can and will experience depression in their lives, the unspoken opposite for whom everything is seemingly hunky-dory all the time are the 10%-20% of the population who never experience serious depression in their lives and likely can not even do so.

When I see other people experience pain, I know that I am never going to actually feel what they feel. Despite what people might say, there are no true empaths. At best an empath can synthesise the emotions of someone else and feel those but that's still very much like The Treachery Of Images, where 'Ceci n'est pas une pipe' rings true. Empathy is a synthesis and Sympathy is still only worry and sorry for someone else. To the people lost and lonely, hurting and in pain, inside the fortress of their mind, this is of no help at all. 

Hoist the flags. The wind will blow, the flags will be unfurled. This too will pass. The bells will ring inside your mind. The night will end. The sun will shine on you again. Platitudes are stupid.

Horse 3412 - The UK's Inheritance Tax Is Stupid

 https://www.bbc.com/news/business-36014533

The Chancellor Rachel Reeves has announced a series of changes to the inheritance tax rules which she said will raise £2bn a year.

Relatively few people actually pay the tax, but many think they will - either owing to its complexity or because they aspire to be suitably wealthy to end up paying.

Inheritance tax is charged at 40% on the property, possessions and money, external of somebody who has died, above a £325,000 threshold.

- BBC News, 30th Oct 2024

Let's put this on the record, Inheritance Tax is stupid.

It must be said that The Sceptred Isle, that little jewel set into the sea, as a fortress to defend against war and infection, does have some completely bonkers mental hatstand laws. Even though there are Select Committees who look into the drafting of laws, the fact that the House of Lords is unelected and has people who are very much self-interested to maintain the status quo, and the House of Commons has literally no oversight whatsoever that might have curbed it taxation laws, those bonkers mental hatstand laws have bonkers mental hatstand consequences.

One of those consequences is that when it comes to Estates and Inheritances, the laws which are only ever designed to affect the very wealthy, affect people who have run into wealth suddenly, and including circumstances where merely inheriting something doesn't even mean that that new found wealth is realised. 

Perhaps the most egregious outworking of completely bonkers mental hatstand laws having bonkers mental hatstand consequences, is when someone dies and leaves their family the farm. By nature, a farm is a going concern which employs the real estate upon which it sits as the means of productive output. The United Kingdom with its arcane taxation law, hasn't yet quite grasped the fact that a farm, which might very well be a going concern and which might have been in the same family for several hundreds of years, might run at very thin margins, and the imposition of an Inheritance Tax which only happens because someone had the audacity to die, could be enough to shatter the farm as a business. 

His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC) currently extracts an inheritance tax on the value of an estate when it is passed from one person to another through that unavoidable practice of death. The tax is 40% upon every pound in excess of the value of the estate of £325,000. This sounds reasonable in theory until you realise that in many cases the estate which is being inherited is either a house which someone is currently living or have been hoping to live in or worse, the estate is a family business like a farm or a small manufactory. Especially in the case of a farm, which might already be running close to the edge in terms of profitability, the death of someone causes the inheritance tax to be triggered on a going concern; which the farm as a business might not be able to absorb.

It doesn't take a gammaminus semi-moron to realise that the current inheritance tax system in the UK, is monumentally stupid. Even Blind Freddy can see that the imposition of a tax on the going concern of a farm, or the physical object of a house, where no real profitable action has warranted it, is nothing more than a cruel and cynical exercise in knavery. This is where my little Commonwealth of Australia, which follows in the Westminster tradition of law, is yet again better at some aspect of how the law is written and should be learnt from and copied.

The two biggest principles in the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 in Australia are found in Sections 6 and 8 of the Act. Firstly, income isn't income until it is income. This sounds like such a basic ontological statement because it is. A thing isn't a thing until it's a thing. Secondly, deductions must relate to the income. If someone decides to go to school, say a hairdresser decides that they have chronic fear of hair and want to become a lumberjack, then learning that new trade is not related but if a lumberjack decides to take a chainsaw course to improve their skills, then that is related.

Those principles were actually right at the heart of the beginning of the Capital Gains Tax legislation debates in Australia in 1985, and they are quite instructive. Generally speaking, most people are not actually in the business of inheriting property from their parents and other family. Having a parent die and then leaving you the farm in a will, is not exactly something which is reproducible; at most it can happen twice. So then, the Capital Gains Tax legislation assumes from the outset that inheritance which is not a reliable source of income, is not necessarily income. We have no direct inheritance tax. 

Upon someone's death, they must complete a tax return. Their estate which is then a going entity also completes tax returns for the period in which it exists; if necessary it might pay tax upon a capital gain if it makes one but in the event when property is transferred from someone to someone else and no consideration has been made, then there isn't really any income to speak of and what we have is a Capital Gains Tax event.

We do not actually have a Capital Gains Tax in Australia. What we actually have is a Tax on Capital Gains; which is keeping in the Section 6 ontological principle that income isn't income until it is income. So what happens?

To simplify this to the point of discussion, upon the death and transfer of a thing, the value is taken up at the date it was transferred. In the case of shares, debentures, and tradable securities, then the market value at the date of transfer is a known and reliable take up rate. As for things like real property where the thing itself might not have been realised, then there is almost always some kind of valuation report before the dispersal and final divestment of the estate. This means that we also have a known and reliable take up value. There are then CGT Rollover provisions which mean that the thing being inherited by the new person, although it might have triggered a CGT Event by virtue of having changed hands (even if one of those hands was dead) still does not constitute income. Income is only income when the thing is finally realised; using the take-up value when the last CGT Event happened; and then is taxed at the usual marginal rates for person/company/trust/SMSF et cetera.

Conceivably a farm could have passed from Jack, to Jack Junior, to Bubbah Jack, to Little Bubbah Jack, and still not have been sold. A farm which remains in the family, remains in the family and if there is never a sale, there is no income upon which income tax can be laid. Income isn't income until it is income; so when that farm is finally sold, that sale would be income and the relevant CGT Event would be looked at.

Very clearly this is a far more sensible system, because it follows the basic ontological principle that income isn't income until it is income. And as the rules were invented in 1985, things which were bought back before 1985 are treated as being exempt from Capital Gains Tax but as that is almost forty years ago, the number of those things is dwindling.  

The other massive provision which the Income Tax Assessment Act 1997 in Australia has but the UK tax system does not, is that one's principle place of residence, that is where someone lives, is also exempt from Capital Gains Tax. This would have two massive effects on British taxation law if it were to be implemented. Firstly, it would mean that someone selling their house quite apart from inheritance provisions, would never incur a tax on capital gain. Secondly, as small family owned farms almost always have a farm house or homestead, then as that farm is also one's principle place of residence, then it would also never incur a tax on capital gain as it is also exempt from Capital Gains Tax.

The reason why these kind of things aren't implanted as part of British taxation law is that law generally and taxation law especially is glacial when it comes to change. This is mostly because the people who are most affected by changes in taxation in a pure raw numbers monetary sense, usually also have the greatest lobbying power with Members of Parliament. Money talks; sometimes it yells. Richer people usually have schemes and plans worked out to avoid tax, and while tax evasion is illegal, tax avoidance and using the legal means to do so is not. People who have eked out an advantage for themselves are highly unlikely to want to change the legislation; even if some other system also benefits them. Law is stickier than people assume that it is. 

John Bull, if you're listening, take some advice from Billy Brown from Sydney Town. You may have exiled us here for stealing sheep and handkerchiefs but in the time that we've been allowed to have a country for ourselves, not only did we improve how the Westminster System works, and how voting works, and how the franchise works before you, but we also improved Capital Tax legislation. 

Horse 3411 - The Badness Of The US Constitution - 25A, 26A, 27A

Amendment XXV.

SECTION 1

In case of the removal of the President from office or of his death or resignation, the Vice President shall become President.

-

The motions to move on what become 25A began almost immediately after President Kennedy's head exploded due to gun shots from the grassy knoll, the book depository, the car behind, the car in front, and because of the CIA, the FBI, the Mob, the Mafia, a Mad Man, and his own security detail. Every conspiracy theory is true at the same time; President Kennedy was shot over 9000 times.

25A S1 is completely redundant as the text of Art II, S1 already provided that the office should devolve on the Vice President in the case of Removal, Death, Resignation, or Inability of the President. Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President while on an aeroplane as per the existing legislation and so I have literally no idea why the Republican opposition thought it necessary to change it; much less have an amendment passed with words to exactly the same effect as what already existed. 

SECTION 2

Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.

- 

Although, Art II, S1 already provided that the President "shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States," in the 176 years which followed, even though literally every SCOTUS assumed and upheld that office of the Vice President fell under the realm of Art II, S1, the Republican opposition thought it necessary to have an amendment passed to clarify what was already in existence.

The utter stupidity of this is that Kennedy was the fourth President to be assassinated and the eighth President to die in office; so it's not like the Vice President assuming the office of the President, as the original 1789 text had assumed, was a novel idea.

SECTION 3

Whenever the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that he is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, and until he transmits to them a written declaration to the contrary, such powers and duties shall be discharged by the Vice President as Acting President.

-

Again, I have no idea why this ever needed to be said. 25A is magnificent in its glorious redundancy. 

SECTION 4

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.

-

Imaginations of machinations of things that never existed but could do, led people to arrive at the edge case of an edge case that the Vice President could invent reasons and grounds that the President should be removed from office; likely in the grounds of insanity, or disability, or other infirmity. Remember, this generation of politicians probably had lingering memories of the fears that they had had while Roosevelt was President (he did eventually die in office), or of of the fears that they had had while Eisenhower was President (because of periods of sickness and where it was generally assumed that Nixon would run the administration). Now that Kennedy had died, those fears ran rampant and legislators chased at shadows.

What's really crazy about 25A and especially 25A S4, is that if there was going to be a conspiracy to remove the President on the grounds of some invented insanity, or disability, or other infirmity, then it specifies in writing what the terms of that conspiracy are. In other words "we don't care that there is a conspiracy, just as long as it is a legally compliant one".

Without 25A, if such a conspiracy to remove the President existed, then a reasonable challenge which would have likely been drawn up by the Congress would have been passed to SCOTUS for them to make a ruling. As it is, 25A imagines the edge case of an edge case and it is so magnificent in its glorious ridiculousness that the imagined reasons which prompted its passage are unlikely to ever occur.

And here's the problem, precisely because 25A specifies the terms of the process to remove the President, it has given rise to imaginations to do so upon its grounds.

During the second term of Reagan, there were increasing fears about his mental capacity; which would turn out to be proven much much later when it was revealed that he eventually would suffer from Alzheimer's Disease. Likewise during the term of Trump, 25A was brought up again as a suggestion that he should be removed on the grounds of insanity. Likewise during the term of Biden, there have been repeated calls for his removal from office due to mental incapacitation. When he announced that he would not be pursuing a second term and Vice President Kamala Harris would be running for President, there were calls almost immediately in the right-wing trashmedia for Biden to be removed in the grounds of 25A.

Now that Mr Trump has been elected as the 47th President, he will in fact be marginally older than Joe Biden when he was elected as President. Depending on Mr Trump's how mental faculties progess over the next four years, 25A could very well be up for discussion again.

Amendment XXVI.

SECTION 1

The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age.

-

There are three really insane points of note with 26A.

One: 26A was passed during the Vietnam War; which meant that there were young men who had been conscripted into the army to fight a war on foreign soil, and still did not have the right to vote. Think about that for a second. The United States can and did force people to carry a gun and fight people in foreign lands, and at the same time did not trust them enough to give them the right to buy cigarettes, buy alcohol, or have the right to vote to object to it. Surely this is a leftover of the strange Puritanical bent which founded the colonies on the east coast in the 1620's; where Puritans hated fun but lived the idea of persecuting people who didn't conform to their ways. 

Two: 26A amended 14A S2. This is an amendment to an amendment. How bad was the original legislation that it had two be amended twice? Very. 

Three: Even though 26A is an amendment to an amendment, it still doesn't explicitly confer the right to vote on the American People. The latest battleground to deny the franchise to Americans, for no other reason than outright knavery, is over Voter ID laws. Since the United States abjectly refuses to grant the right to vote as an explicit right, this nutwittery is going to keep on happening again and again and again.

SECTION 2

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

- 

Every time I see this, I want to bang my head on a coffee table and pass out. Seriously. What the unholy jinkies is wrong with you?

Amendment XXVII.

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of representatives shall have intervened.

-

In principle, 27A should have been obvious. There is a very real present and dangerous conflict of interest that places those in charge of the purse strings of the nation, with the right to alter how much the purse of the nation pays them in remuneration. Of course politicians who have access, shouldn't be given unfettered grant to stick both hands into the cookie jar. 

Here's the weird thing, it was obvious. The very real present and dangerous conflict of interest was so obvious that 27A was originally proposed on 25th Sep 1789. It wasn't ratified until the 7th of May, 1992. With 203 years having passed from proposal to ratification, that does at least give hope to the Equal Rights Amendment which has been sitting in limbo since 1923.

Horse 3410 - The Badness Of The US Constitution - 23A, 24A

Amendment XXIII.

SECTION 1

The District constituting the seat of Government of the United States shall appoint in such manner as Congress may direct:

A number of electors of President and Vice President equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives

in Congress to which the District would be entitled if it were a State, but in no event more than the least populous State; they shall be in addition to those appointed by the States, but they shall be considered, for the purposes of the election of President and Vice President, to be electors appointed by a State; and they shall meet in the District and perform such duties as provided by the twelfth article of amendment.

-

Although the United States Constitution contains a provision that the district constituting the seat of Government shall not be part or a state, it contains no directions about how big or small that that state needs to be. In consequence, what we ended up with is half of a diamond shaped thing, bounded on three sides by Maryland and on the other by the Potomac River. The site which was chosen for the nation's capital, was famously a stagnant swamp which stank then and it stinks now. 

The problem with carving out a district which is not part of a state, is that under the other provisions of the Constitution, they were originally not entitled to any kind of representation in Congress despite housing the very buildings and infrastructure which house it. As a result of not being entitled to any kind of representation in Congress, the citizens of that same district were also not entitled to any kind of vote for the President either. This is a bad thing.

The background to 23A involves a slow brew in Cuba and the people in nearby Puerto Rico being naturally worried about the spread of communism; backed by Soviet nuclear weapons. This story would continue to quietly boil until the Missile Crisis of late 1961 but rather than give the people of Puerto Rico direct franchise in the US Congress, they would quietly kick that can down the road; as giving the people of Puerto Rico direct franchise and representation in the US Congress would dilute everyone else's power in Congress.

However, this also fired up tensions in Washington DC, and rather than changing the Constitution to alter the franchise and representation of the people of DC to afford them seats in Congress, 23A is such that the people of DC would now get a number of Electors in the Electoral College as if it were a State.

As an aside, the District of Columbia has been afforded a seat in the United States House of Representatives but that seat comes with no voting rights on any legislation. Being Representative for DC is either the worst job in the world because it comes with literally zero power to do anything or the best job in the world because it comes with literally zero responsibility.

SECTION 2

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

-

I know that I have mentioned this before but every time I see this kind of legislation, it really bothers me. 

This should have materially changed Article I, Section 8 but for some reason, US Title generally retains previous paragraphs and attaches new paragraphs to the end of legislation. Art 1, S8 already contains the opening clause of "The Congress shall have Power" which should have been enough to have already said this.

Amendment XXIV.

SECTION 1

The right of citizens of the United States to vote in any primary or other election for President or Vice President, for electors for President or Vice President, or for Senator or Representative in Congress, shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State by reason of failure to pay poll tax or other tax.

-

Once again, 24A is about trying to close yet another loophole that state legislatures have imposed as a barrier to entry. Once again the United States Constitution fails to explicitly grant the right to vote in elections at law. 

SECTION 2

The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

-

Cut, paste, rise, repeat.

Horse 3409 - ...And Now We're Forced To, Again.

Cue theme song - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl90ZByp4XY

Wheel of Democracy turn turn turn, what is the lesson that we must learn?¹ The lesson is that is that Donald Trump has been elected as the next President of the United States of America. Oceans rise; empires fall. I think that this is possibly how the world felt in 1933 after the mustachioed man came to power. Open Fascism as a technical term, which was promised in all but name by the presumptive president-elect, seems to be a viable and acceptable course of action to millions of people. 

With Republicans taking control of the Senate Majority in addition to the House and a generational majority on the Supreme Court, we can stop pretending that there is are any checks and balances to power at all. Domestically and with the Republicans in charge of all three rings in the circus of horrors (executive, legislative, judicial), it means that any and all progressive projects that they United States may have thought about, will be cancelled.  Get ready for "Jim Crow II: Electric Boogaloo" for fascism has arrived in America; wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. 

America has decided that it wants a thirty-four times convicted felon and a rapist in charge; with unchecked power. Aided and abetted by a Republican Party which is nothing like the party which ended at the end of the Bush II Administration, we will finally see what happens when evil clowns get into power, they will laugh you into hell.

It speaks volumes about the character of the American people when two of the most qualified women in the country ran for President against an unqualified, openly racist game show host who had a history of committing fraud and sexual abuse and the country was still split 50-50. Furthermore, we should probably congratulate JD Vance on his ascendency to the Presidency in 2026; once Mr Trump has fulfilled his usefulness to the rich and powerful.

If there is anything to be learned from this is that people genuinely are willing to accept literally anything if it means that they have more money in their pocket. This is a natural consequence of human selfishness and it is something that students of sociology, political science, economics, and most religions already know; even if that promise is false.

As Donald Trump has become only the second person to serve two non-consecutive terms as President² and is elected to the office, there are some things which we can guarantee can and will happen due to executive orders by the end of January next year.

Firstly, as Mr Trump has already stated that he would end any and all aid to Ukraine in terms of any and all support with weapons, armaments, bullets, and funding, we can safely assume that this would happen before the end of January. I fully expect that if this is true, then Trump's promise to end the war in Ukraine would be fulfilled, by ending Ukraine's existential crisis. I do not know how long that Ukraine can hold out by itself as a stand alone nation but I can guarantee that without American backing, Mr Putin will be emboldened to want to roll tanks into the centre of Kyyv. I do not think that NATO would be able to mobilise very quickly; though they should start thinking about it by 10pm tomorrow night.

On that note, the second thing that Mr Trump has already stated that he would do, is try and end America's involvement in NATO. What is curious is that NATO was started in the wake of the Second World War, once it was determined that the Iron Curtain of Soviet influence should be draped over Eastern Europe. What the founders of NATO could have never have imagined is that when the Soviet Union fell to pieces from about 1989 and the various Eastern Bloc states all asserted their independence, is that Russia itself would basically shift very dramatically across the top of the political compass from top-left to top-right. The same people ended up being in charge but instead of being in charge of a leftist system, they are now in charge of a hyper-rightist system, where Syndicates replaced Soviets.

Also on that note, we can basically assume that the flag waving types in Washington, will also rally behind Benny from Cheltenham. Benny from Cheltenham would like to buy more smart bombs to equip its home-brew F35 air force and unlike Australia who is condemned to pay loyalty and fealty to big brother, Israel has very successfully convinced the religious right (who are prepared to accept a felon and a rapist as President) to fund their exploits. Admittedly not very much changes on the ground if you are an innocent Palestinian, you might want to start getting prepared to meet your maker much more quickly than you would wish to.

As far as Australia is concerned, we must be very careful in future when dealing with the new administration. We must assume that AUKUS is worthless and even the idea that we're ever going to see any of the submarines which we've signed up to pay $368bn for. That money is as good as burned. From a foreign policy standpoint, the two options for Australia are for the Albanese Government to retain Joe Hockey or to  appoint either Scott Morrison or Tony Abbott as Ambassador to the United States in the hope of buddying up to the new administration, or to follow New Zealand and run away from the nuclear armed bear. Do not poke the bear.

The result of this election, which might very well be the last for quite some time, is like someone stepping out of the shower and deciding to put their soiled underpants back on. 

¹ - Today's Lesson is: don't duck tape your head to the side of a tractor

² - the first being your loveable pal, Grover (Cleveland). 

Horse 3408 - We Can't Imagine A Mentally Incompetent Buffoon In Charge Of A Great Nation

I have been recently rewatching the 1989 anime Kyatto Ninden Teyandee (Cat Ninja Legend Teyandee); which in English is called Samurai Pizza Cats. The English Dub was purely played as a gag dub and in many respects abandons the Japanese script entirely, either because the translators were never furnished with it or because the translations were so poor that they were useless; so what we got is arguably anime's most delightfully dubious dub. 

Yes the anime is in many respects just like any other Monster Of The Week show, and yes it does play with tropes and frequently not only breaks the fourth wall but hangs a lampshade on the pieces of broken glass left behind, but because it was so bonkers bananas mental, it was also able to play very heavily into satire.

Given that this is now 35 years later and that there are wikis and podcasts for everything (including this show), if you want to do a deep dive then you certainly have the ability to do that but for now, I want you to consider the Emperor Iei Iei Tokugawa. He is not a main character. He does not appear in many episodes. However, he is himself a problem and the elemental cause of many of the troubles which become plot drivers.

Emperor Iei Iei (who is a Panda) is in every respect a mentally incompetent buffoon. He speaks in nonsequiturs and straight up gibberish, he makes nonsensical decrees, he is possibly quite quite senile, and it is often hinted that he might not actually be aware of where he is.

Now given that the show was written in 1988 and put into production while the actual Japanese Emperor Hirohito was also quite old, it probably reflects the very real worries that Japanese society had at the time, with regards the mentally competence of the Emperor. Fears were soon dissipated though as Hirohito died at the age of 88. In relation to Kyatto Ninden Teyandee, this meant that the sting of the satire was taken out a bit, as Hirohito died before the first episode aired.

Nevertheless, there are two very long sub-plots which play out over the course of the show.

One is that of the Royal Household trying to either get Emperor Iei Iei's daughter Princess Usako married off so that they can install her as empress, or trying to make Princess Usako aware of the responsibility which she is going to inherit. Princess Usako though, is incredibly selfish, stupid, conceited, and at the same time completely fully aware of the power that she wields, and she does so in a selfish, stupid, and conceited way. In keeping with the naming conventions of this show, her name Usako means "Bunny Girl"; which seems rather straightforward as she is a rabbit. 

The keeper of the Royal Household, Inuyama Wanko-no-Kami (which means "Dog Mountain") is basically the last remaining line of defence against both Emperor Iei Iei and Princess Usako from running the city of Edoropolis into total chaos. Inuyama is also the one who contracts the Pizza Cats to do various jobs including fighting the Monster Of The Week; which almost suggests that Inuyama is actually the one who runs the government in lieu of Emperor Iei Iei's incompetence and Princess Usako's uninterested belligerence. 

The second long very long sub-plot involves that of the Prime Minister, Kitsunezuka Ko'on-no-Kami (which means "Lord Fox"), who somehow even though he lives in the Palace complex, is actively trying to overthrow the government in almost every episode. As with many Kitsune (foxes) in Japanese folk-lore, Lord Ko-on is a trickster. Somehow, he is able to command a private army, and unleashes said Monster Of The Week in the form of some ill-thought out and underfunded robot, all while doing so on the public coin.

Probably the best thing about Kyatto Ninden Teyandee as a show, is that it is not real. It is an animated cartoon. There are no lessons that we can learn from a piece of media as frivolous as this. The situation and the satire is not real. There are no real world parallels.

In 2024, we can not possibly imagine a mentally incompetent buffoon in charge of a great nation, which may or may not be in possession of nuclear weapons, who speaks in nonsequiturs and straight up gibberish. We can not possibly imagine that mentally incompetent buffoon being quite senile and unaware of where he is.

In 2024, we can not possibly imagine the leader's presumptive second in command, inheriting the office, and having to keep at bay the society of animaloids who are driven into mass-hysteria by media networks.

In 2024, we can not possibly imagine a trickster who is actively trying to overthrow the government, who is somehow able to command a private army however unorganised, and we we can not possibly imagine that trickster abandoning all notion of truth in favour of a constant barrage of lies which end up being the political equivalent to the Monster Of The Week. 

We especially can not possibly imagine anything like this in the real world, on 5th November 2024... yet.

Horse 3407 - The Horror Of The US Election Hidden In Plain Sight (Voting Machines)

If there is one thing that that orange coloured racist cussjack, Donald J Trump, has got right in his knavish rants, it is that the United States voting system is utter garbage. There aren't enough cuss words to describe how bad it is at every single point.

When I saw this on social media, and found out that this kind of thing was happening in 43 states, I was horrified. 

I have to admit that from the outset that my area of expertise is not working with computers. While I do know how to scribble electronic circuits, and write code in some programming languages, as I am not specifically an IT person, generally speaking that whole realm of tech professionals will view both me and the rest of us as luddites. Here's the fun thing, at the same time, they perfectly well know that selfishness propels people to steal from banks, hack into secure networks, and disrupt things for no other purpose than sport. Billions of dollarpounds are spent all over the world on cyber-security because while tech professionals view us commonfolk as uneducated scum plebs with out fingers up our noses, they know very well that electronic systems can and will be broken.

This is why I find it ludicrous that any kind of electronic voting should be allowed at all; much less be employed in the election of the most powerful person in the world. I don't care how secure you think that your electronic voting system is, or however fancy you think your blockchain system is, the political motivation to either disrupt or discredit an election is the size of global geopolitics; which means that tech professionals are either delusional, blind, stupid, evil, or any combination of those things. As I write this on November 4th and with the US Presidential Election (and a bunch of other elections) on November 5th, I already anticipate that if Donald Trump doesn't win the election, then people will accuse the system of being rigged and given that nation's predilection for murder, people will be killed.

There are three main elements that an election of this kind must fulfil:

The election must be Anonymous.

The election must be Verifiable.

The election must be Reliable.

Anything, yes anything, that weakens this at any point in the system, is bad.

I also have to preface this by saying that I live in Australia. We have in person, on paper, anonymous ballots, which are deposited into a box which is taped and secured on election day. During the count, the boxes of ballots are opened in front of scrutineers and ideally with representatives from the interested parties to oversee the count.

Not only are the votes Anonymous, as they are on paper they are Verifiable; they are also Reliable as if there is a problem with the count, the whole count can be restarted again if necessary. Australian Elections meet the three most important elements.

I do not care if in person, on paper, anonymous ballots, which are deposited into a box, are archaic. Being technologically advanced or even quick are irrelevant in an election. If you do not get the final results in one night then too bad. If you are a man-baby who has a whinge because you do not get the final results in one night then maybe you need to change your adult diapers and have a lie down. 

In person, on paper, anonymous ballots, which are deposited into a box, are a voting process which has been tried and tested for hundreds of years. Yes there are flaws such as the physical destruction of ballots, or the stuffing of extra ballots into boxes and even despite this, we know the flaws and we know the defenses. Even if we assume that the election is being tampered with from the outside, in person, on paper, anonymous ballots, which are deposited into a box, are excellent, because those attacks are not scalable. At the last general election in Australia, there were 151 electorates and more than 6000 polling places. Even if there was a conspiracy to tamper with the election, it would have to be so massive and so well organised, that it would be too big not to notice. At any rate, even if there was a polling booth, or a seat which was suspected of being tampered with, we could hold a by-election.

In person, on paper, anonymous ballots, which are deposited into a box, are anonymous. Votes where it is possible to identify who cast the ballot, are discarded. Even when gentleman's sausages are drawn on ballot papers while it may be vulgar, is not possible to identify who cast the ballot. Having said that, the idea that you can hold in person caucuses where you have people in a room vote by a show of hands, fails as it is not anonymous; even though it is reliable.

At every step down the line, every single electronic process, even if it is just to telephone the results, is a weakening of the process. If you have an any kind of electronic voting machine, there is no guarantee to the voter that the machine will record their vote accurately, or even at all for that matter. Even if an electronic voting machine offers the voter a receipt, there is no guarantee to the voter that the machine will record their vote accurately, or even at all for that matter.

If it is an old machine or a computer that hasn't been updated, then there is no guarantee to the voter that the machine has accurate software, or can't be tampered with from the outside by a USB Stick or other such thing. There is also no guarantee to the voter that the vote will be counted accurately at a central office, or subject to a man in the middle attack, or a DDOS attack, or myriad of other ways that people with nefarious designs have to tamper with the election.

Even if there is in person, on paper, anonymous ballots, which are deposited into a box, are anonymous, if there is an electronic counting process, then all you have done is transferred each and every possible method of attack one step down the chain; to where the public can't even see it. If there is an electronic counting process, for all purposes, it is exactly the same as electronic voting, just with the extra step of filling in a ballot instead of pushing a button. 

Granted that if there is electronic counting with paper ballots, you could take random samples to estimate how accurate your system is, but if you're going to that effort all you've done is save counting time at the expense of the reliability of the system. It would have made more sense to count all votes by hand in the first place.

One of the reasons why Donald Trump was able to sow discontent at the results of the 2020 Presidential Election was precisely because electronic voting, or indeed any kind of machine voting, has always been a bad idea. Machine voting famously proved that it was neither Reliable nor Verifiable in 2000 with the so called "hanging chads" that were left behind after voting machines failed to punch through the ballot cards properly. Likewise in 2020, there was always reasonable doubt about the Reliability nor Verifiability of electronic voting machines like the ones supplied by Dominion Voting Systems Inc. That discontent was readily fermented because Donald J Trump is a orange coloured racist cussjack, who has actually has the power to persuade people to storm the Capitol Building and kill members of Congress. I have no doubt that as we have seen four more years of fermentation, that his supporters who are that way inclined can and would do it all again.

Horse 3406 - PERSON J V ONTARIO [2024] - Judgement

The Fake Internet Court of Australia

PERSON J V ONTARIO [2024] - Judgement

H3406/1

Having learned that The Fake Internet Court of Australia is prepared to make rulings which are binding on all people at all times and in all places, and forever, a prospective litigant which wishes to remain anonymous and will be henceforth known as Person J, has decided to apply for this court to make a ruling in a case versus the Canadian Province of Ontario. 

The case in question which has demanded this fake internet court's attention, relates to a kind of pepperoni pizza which appears to be exclusively made and sold in Ontario. Person J alleges that the kind of pepperoni pizza which is made and sold in Ontario is "cringe" and that regular pepperoni pizza is "based".

These are the facts as this court sees them:

Rather than thinly slicing pepperoni before placing it atop a pizza to be set in the over, the people of Ontario allegedly shred their pepperoni before putting it on pizza. Presented into evidence is the photograph which will be ticketed as Exhibit A; in a glorious example of administrative pettiness, will be the only thing submitted into evidence.

There is no method described by Person J as to how the pepperoni is shredded before placing atop the pizza; so whether it is cut many many times, or run through with a fork, or put through a cheese grater or other such device is unknown. However the photograph does suggest that the method of shredding produces a not only relatively fine aggregate of pepperoni but uniform grade of size.

The reason for this, in the imagination of this court, is to do with increasing the available surface area of the pepperoni to be exposed to heat radiation. It is a well known phenomenon of physics that heat is transferred from one body to another via convection, conduction, or radiation; and increasing the surface area of a thing is an excellent strategy for doing so.

Pepperoni on a pizza, even with no other topping, is a fine thing. Whether the pieces are small or large, whether they curl up around the edges or not, whether they form small cups or not, or whether they develop micro char and become crispy or not, it is perhaps impossible to get a bad pepperoni pizza. In increasing the available surface area of the pepperoni to be exposed to heat, the reason for doing so is immediately obvious. The people who do this, are obviously chasing crispiness. This seems like a perfectly sensible motive for wanting the pepperoni to be shredded before placing atop the pizza.

There is no justification put forward as to why shredding pepperoni before putting onto a pizza is "cringe", nor is there any justification put forward as to why putting normal sliced pepperoni onto a pizza is "based". This court accepts the latter of these two propositions as an irrefutable axiom and/or law; so makes no attempt to disprove that statement. It is also unclear whether or not using the word "cringe" is itself "cringe", either ironically, unironically, or by way of demonstration, or means of hyperbole. 

Final Judgement:

This court notes that as presented in evidence, shredded pepperoni atop a pizza, looks perfectly acceptable. There is nothing in principle which is strange, scary, weird, or repulsive about this pizza. This court notes that although shredded pepperoni is not a thing which is familiar in this part of the world, the reasons for why one would want to shred one's pepperoni are logical. If this is a localised thing which a particular region is known for, then this is sensible. If this is a localised thing because of the characteristics of the pepperoni which is available in the local area, then this is also sensible.

If there is a material case to be decided here, then the questions which follow are:

- Would one eat this pizza? Yes one would. 

- Would one be happy to receive this pizza? Yes one would. 

- Would one be weirded out by this pizza? No; don't be daft. 

In trying to decide this case, this court has seriously begun to question why it was ever brought forth. Given that it might very well be impossible to ever get a bad pepperoni pizza, then this court wonders if this is the invention of a deranged mind. Granted this court has made rulings against both Pineapple on a pizza, and Banana on a pizza, but asking this court to rule against a particular kind of Pepperoni on a pizza seems almost like an act of trying to defy the forces of nature. This court wonders if Person J needs to be sectioned under their local Mental Health Acts, for fear of the harm that they might to do to themselves and the world at large. This court also wonders if pondering if there is such a thing as a bad pepperoni pizza, might itself be some kind of cognitohazard. 

In fact, given that literally everything about the evidence which has been presented looks both sensible and delicious, this court wonders what if any grounds could be invocated in order to justify ruling against Ontario. This court hereby orders that henceforth, that the people of Ontario continue to do their thing; in quiet enjoyment of their surrounds, and in quiet enjoyment of their shredded pepperoni pizza. This court has no beef with the people of Ontario, and we hope that we can continue to acquiesce in a mutual sense of conviviality and friendship.

As for Person J, you have wreaked vexation and frivolousness in this court. You have brought hateration and holleration into this fake internet court and as you have no sensible business by bringing the good and fair people of Ontario to court, we order you to desist and stop this egregious nonsense. If we ever see you back before this court, the penalties will be severe. Get out; lest you make a mockery of my courtroom. We are already perfectly capable of making a mockery of this fake internet courtroom as it is. You are malevolent and have now ensnared others in your villainy. Can you not see what trouble thou hast wrought? 

- ROLLO75 J

(this case will be reported in FILR as H3406/1 - Ed)