Monthly Archives: September 2017

Too stupid to function

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Recently I watched something shocking:

This fact, that US military won’t recruit people with IQ 83 or under, is both shocking and intuitively clear to me, because I do understand that in the modern world, there’s a decreasing pool of opportunities for stupid people. In a world that is mostly high-tech and sophisticated, marginally retarded people just can’t find anything useful to do, and if they can’t find anything useful to do, it’s either attempt to create a world more to their image, so to speak, basically retarding the modern world by a few centuries, or separate the world into high-IQ one and low-IQ one, basically having a space-age star trek society and a medieval shithole next door, or extinction of low-IQ people because high-IQ people will need the resources and will be able to just take them, or, most likely, extinction of the high-IQ people because the low-IQ ones are more determined, they never have any self-doubt, they are completely certain of their course, God is always on their side, they reproduce at an exponential rate, and the West is unable to defend itself against this threat in any way, due to its current philosophical constraints.

In any case, take a look at this: https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country

Guess why some countries are poor, and will always stay poor, without any chance of improvement.

Their average IQ is below the threshold of admittance for the US army, and if you’re too fucking dumb to be trained to be a soldier, well, no comment. Maybe they can find some niche in the sexual industry, to put it nicely. Sure, the average IQ doesn’t tell the whole story, Croatian average IQ is 90, which I have no difficulty believing because most people I meet here are stupid as rocks, but if you come to the university the average IQ would be around the MENSA admittance threshold, so you can obviously have a significant number of very smart people in a society in which majority is borderline retarded. However, having in mind that the average IQ in some societies is near or below completely unemployable, don’t get me started about unequal income levels and social differences. If someone with IQ 83 is below subsistence, and someone with IQ 150 is wealthy, that’s not an unexpected outcome in a society that uses computers, Internet, complex tools and international markets to function. The problem is, what will happen when a huge majority of people falls below a threshold of being able to find a normal job that pays well enough to make a living on the market? I’ll tell you what will happen. They will embrace socialism, because it will be the last straw. They can’t make it in capitalism, they’re too fucking stupid to program computers, make web apps or order cheaper things from Alibaba or Amazon. However, they can still vote, and this will be exploited by people whose IQ is much higher than 83, I guarantee you that, but they will manipulate the stupid disenfranchised masses into voting them into power.

There’s another problem, of course. Our civilization is increasingly demanding. It’s easy to dismiss the IQ 83 people, because I would expect that to be close to the higher-end of the Homo Erectus level of cognition. Heck, Bonobo chimps are quoted as having IQ of over 40 (yes, I know the IQ scale is normalized to 100 relative to a population, and not absolute, so read with this in mind). However, in a simple society such a person can function. He or she can pick berries or cocoa beans. In a modern society, the threshold of dropping out is higher. Projecting this trend into the future, it’s conceivable that at a certain point anyone below MENSA admittance threshold won’t be able to successfully function. Projecting it further, you get to the point where only a few thousand super-smart individuals in a few tech companies will be able to function at a level necessary to make good money, while the rest will be akin to chimps living in a world ruled by men. What happens when having a PhD and IQ of 148 isn’t enough to get a subsistence wage job, because there’s only a few jobs that aren’t automated, and they are basically for astronaut-level qualifications, with multiple science degrees and IQ of over 180? Sure, it’s easy to dismiss stupid people who favor socialism because they can’t make it on the market, but what happens when there’s 8 billion people and only 8000 are qualified to actually do anything worth paying them for?

I’ll tell you what happens. Civilizational collapse, and not in the hypothetical aforedescribed future, but fucking now. That’s the reason why everything is falling apart and socialism became popular. It’s because if you’re not a genius, you’re getting increasingly fucked, and even if you’re a genius your life is unbearably difficult, to the point where you don’t have a life beside work. The whole thing is a nightmare for almost everybody, which is why everybody is sending all those smiling selfies, posturing how wonderful their life is. It’s because their life sucks so much they are afraid all hell is going to break loose if anyone finds out, so they posture online and eat antidepressants like candy in private.

 

Vacation, Sony FE 90mm G Macro and misc photo stuff

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I was on Hvar for the last ten days, mostly to try to soak up the last warm and sunny days of the year, and also take pictures. This time I had a new lens to work with, the Sony FE 90mm G Macro:

So, what’s so cool about this one and what is it that it does, that can’t be done with the equipment that I already have. tl;dr: It’s the best macro lens in the world.

It has the least chromatic aberrations wide open, greatest sharpness, wonderful front and rear bokeh, image stabilization, autofocus and weather resistance. If you want to work in the closeup and macro range, which I do a lot, it’s the best lens you can get, with the possible exceptions of Zeiss Makro-Planar 100mm f/2 and Olympus m.Zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro. As a portrait lens, the Sony is so good, they compare it with Zeiss Batis 85mm f/1.8, which is one of the best portrait lenses out there. So, considering what you’re getting, it’s actually a bargain, regardless of the apparently high price. The price seems high as long as you don’t look at what it does and what you’d have to get to match it. So, why is it better than what I used so far, which is a Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 on macro extension tubes? First of all, Canon creates completely different-looking images, so it’s not a direct replacement, it’s a different tool in a toolbox, like hammer and pliers. In the same way, a Minolta MD 50mm f/1.7 on macro extenders makes completely different images, and I would prefer it for some things. What Sony 90mm G Macro does is allow me to take this:

… and in the next moment, without changing lenses or removing macro extenders, it allows me to take this:

 

Essentially, it’s a wonderfully versatile walkaround lens for my kind of photography, and the only thing I need to complement it is a good wideangle.

Talking about wideangles, I was kinda worried about the problems some photographers had with Canon lenses adapted to Sony FE bodies, where sharpness would drop off towards the edge of the frame. The problem is supposedly caused either by a focusing error, or interference with parts of the adapter, or with the FE mount itself, which is narrow for a 35mm. I couldn’t test the issue with my EF 17-40mm f/L lens, because it’s always unsharp in the corners due to its inferior optical design, but I did test it with the EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye, and the problem doesn’t exist with the Viltrox III adapter:

The edges and corners are completely sharp, and the only limitation is the depth of field (as visible on the above image in the bottom corners). Maybe my adapter is just that good; I do think the problem would show itself with the widest-angle lens there is. I would not hesitate to use Canon EF wideangles on a Sony FE body with this adapter, when edge and corner sharpness is critical.

There’s also controversy regarding the Sony FE 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS kit lens and its usability. In my experience, the lens is excellent. It’s very sharp even wide open, it doesn’t create distortions, chromatic aberrations or flare; vignetting is visible wide open but not when stopped down, and if used as a landscape photography lens from a tripod with meticulous technique, it creates stunningly good images and has no flaws whatsoever. Its problems are of different kind: it has poor close focus, so it’s useless for closeup/macro shots, and the aperture is slow, which makes it difficult to isolate the subject from background. When those two aspects are combined, it becomes useless as a walkaround lens for me, and considering how great the aperture blades are designed and how good the bokeh could be if only it focused closer and had bigger aperture, it’s a shame. However, as a moderate-wideangle to light-telephoto landscape lens, it’s excellent:

  

People have been maligning the Sony Vario-Tessar T* FE 24-70mm f/4 ZA OSS because it’s expensive and it isn’t sharper than the “kit lens”. The thing is, if it’s as sharp as the kit lens, it’s plenty sharp, thank you very much. It would be really difficult to get it sharper than completely sharp. As for it being expensive, I agree, but it also has harder contrast and color saturation than the 28-70mm, and it also has fixed aperture, and some dust and moisture sealing, which might make it attractive for some people. For me, the 24-70mm f/4 doesn’t add any real versatility that would make it useful for closeup photography, and I prefer the milder contrast and color rendition of the 28-70mm kit lens.

Another thing I got was the Meike battery grip for Sony A7II.

Essentially, it’s a cheap copy of the Sony battery grip, and is as good. It addresses the problem of poor camera ergonomics, and also the mediocre battery life, at the cost of making the camera bulkier and heavier. I’m not sure the result is as comfortable as a Canon 5d body, but is significantly less awkward and tendon-pain-inducing than the Sony A7II body alone with a large and heavy lens attached, when you go for long photographic walks. I recommend at least trying it; it might not be the solution to everyone’s problems, though.

As for the camera I used, the Sony A7II, I’m in love with the colors, resolution and the depth of information in deep shadows during the long exposures. I would like it to be less noisy during the long exposures, in higher ISO and in deep shadows, but regardless, the image quality is fantastic. The only problem with Sony that I had so far is that the first copy of the FE 90mm G Macro arrived with dead electronics – it was completely fubared: no aperture, no focus, no nothing. Some flat cable probably had a flimsy connection, or was subject to G-shock in transit, but I returned it, received a functioning replacement and my experiences with the lens so far were superlative, except that it’s a heavy brick. There are several other lenses I’m considering: one is a wideangle with better geometry and field curvature than my EF 17-40mm f/4L, and another is a telephoto, which is something I never bought because the good ones are very expensive and very heavy, and I would probably end up not using it much, but I still miss one considering how much I liked ones I had for review years ago. But yeah, that’s about it, rambling over. 🙂

 

About hurricanes and global warming

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Are the hurricanes caused by global warming? Julian Assange apparently thinks so.

Yes. The globe is warming during the summer, and in the beginning of autumn the oceans are cooling off in a chaotic thermodynamic process called hurricane. This removes the excess of heat accumulated into the oceans; the more heat, and the greater the thermal difference between oceans and atmosphere, the more violent the hurricane.

The funniest thing is, the CO2 model of anthropogenic global warming would actually require the hurricanes to be less violent, because less solar energy accumulated during the summer would be released into space due to the glasshouse effect; this energy would stay here, and cause milder winters, which would in turn cause less growth of the polar ice during the winter, and increased melting during the summer. This would quickly cause the polar caps to melt and the sea levels to rise. The violent hurricanes mean that the energy that would cause this was safely released into space.

Also, the fact that a hurricane is more devastating doesn’t make it stronger. What makes it devastating is when it hits areas with expensive real estate and wealthy people. When it pulverizes Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti or Philippines, and a huge number of poor people lose their cheap homes, everybody shrugs. When it hits St. Bart’s where rich people have their fancy vacations, it’s suddenly the most devastating tragedy ever. The hurricanes didn’t become better or worse – they simply wreck things in their path, and if you’re in their path, you’re fucked. They aren’t the creatures of anthropogenic global warming, they are the creatures of seasonal global cooling. The most devastating one in US history happened 1900 in Galveston. It killed between 6000 and 12000 people, not because it was that huge (it was category 4), but because it hit a densely populated area just right, creating a storm surge of 4.6m. Essentially, it’s the flooding that’s the problem, and when it hits low-lying towns, you can get massive destruction.

According to measurements, global warming between the 1980s and 2017, anthropogenic or otherwise, is in the order of magnitude of a tenth of one degree Celsius (0.1 ºC). This is well within any conceivable margin of error in measurement; essentially, it means no global warming was recorded. It could be argued that any measurements between 1900 and now, that show warming, are due to uncertainty in measurement and local statistic variance, than anything else. Basically, the whole thing is a storm in a teapot. Those minuscule differences amount to exactly jack shit regarding global climate change. In fact, in the 1970s people thought they observed a global cooling trend, and what’s interesting is that the proposed “cure” was the same: it’s the evil capitalist industrial society that’s to blame, and we need more state power to regulate things and wind down the rampant capitalist development, or we’ll end up in an early ice age. Now, it’s we need more state power to regulate things and wind down the rampant capitalist development, or we’ll end up in an glasshouse jungle, the polar caps will melt and the hurricanes will get us all.

It’s all communist bullshit. When the communist bloc fell apart (in fact, when the extent of Stalin’s crimes was revealed), all the university-educated leftist fucktards in the West lost their main hope for communism to rule the world so they switched their world-saving efforts from class warfare to environmentalism. Now they are adding cultural warfare for transgender bathrooms and language policing to the list of their world-saving efforts.

The leftists are not saving the world. They are fucking it up, from French revolution onwards. The only thing those “progressives” are good at is inventing bullshit theories based on which they kill millions and destroy everybody’s lives. The only ones I know of who were actually saving anything and making actual progress are the likes of Jesus and Buddha. The guys publishing “scientific” articles about anthropogenic global warming are just milking the state funding for what it’s worth.

The evil of antifascism

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What does the extreme-left madness of Antifa and similar groups tell us?

First, that we live in a society which has a very messed up moral compass, because apparently evil is defined as the “extreme right”, as “Nazi” or some other label; and when you look into it, it’s just crazy people hysterically yelling at other people and trying to provoke violence, and if you want to kill people, you need to first make killing them socially acceptable, so you find a group that’s killable (Nazis, right?) and label the people you want to kill as members of that group. You don’t really need evidence if you yell hard enough and pretend to be a victim of something, because victims have the right to be violent “in self-defense”.

Second, we live in a society which is defined by moral standards set by the winners of the second world war, who of course were good and whose vanquished enemies were evil. It’s interesting, however, how throughout history the good guys always happen to win. The Neanderthals lost because there was something wrong with them, Christianity won over the old European religions because it was superior, Islam spread over the Middle East because it was superior, and in both world wars the good guys happened to win. Communism, unfortunately, never did lose a major war, so today there are people who proudly declare themselves Marxists, from the position of moral high ground, as if communism wasn’t the only economic system that’s scientifically proven not to work, and in the process of providing evidence killed hundreds of millions of people.

Instead of defining good vs. evil through winners and losers of the last big war, I have a different idea: how about defining good as most resembling God, and evil as least resembling God? How about defining good as that which is of reality, consciousness, bliss, beauty and wonder, and evil as that which lacks all those things – which is of delusion, stupidity, suffering, ugliness and baseness? Oh shit, that requires thinking, and that’s difficult for bat-wielding communist idiots.

And finally, fuck antifascism and fascism both. Both are evil ideas of the 20th century, that produced only suffering, ignorance and destruction, and if there was anyone truly good in that entire affair, he must be sought among the countless victims of the flag-waving hysterical idiots and murderers who all thought they are the seedlings of a new and better world.

Guess what, assholes: if you want to improve the world, start by being a worthwhile person. Invent something useful, achieve greatness of all kinds and help others achieve it. Meditate on God and shine His light so that others find God by thinking of you. That’s how you fight evil. Being an “antifascist” is how you become evil and do evil.