The Niña, Pinta, and Santa María were the ships Christopher Columbus used on his first voyage in 1492 to cross the Atlantic, with the Niña and Pinta being fast caravels and the Santa María a slower, heavier nao (cargo ship) that served as his flagship before running aground. While officially named Santa Clara, La Pinta, and La Gallega, respectively, they were known by the nicknames given by their crews, and the Santa María ultimately sank on Christmas Eve 1492
Voting Districts
Republicans could gain 19 more House seats after an upcoming Supreme Court ruling, ensuring that the GOP would control Congress. Democratic voting rights groups are preparing for a nightmare scenario if the Supreme Court guts a key part of the landmark civil rights-era legislation, the Voting Rights Act — a very real possibility this term.
Ahead of the court’s Oct. 15 rehearing of Louisiana v. Callais — a case that has significant implications for the VRA — two voting rights groups are sounding the alarm, warning that eliminating Section 2, a provision that prohibits racial gerrymandering when it dilutes minority voting power, would let Republicans redraw up to 19 House seats to favor the party and crush minority representation in Congress. via Politco https://www.politico.com/…/republicans-scotus-vra-00597212
Bullet Points:
** More on the shrewish mulatto who married the British prince. I don’t care, but it is funny.
** Sen. Kennedy (R-LA) discusses illegal immigration.
** 83 IQ and the US Military. I swear that I ran into people who could barely fog a mirror – maybe an IQ of 60. Somewhere below room temperature.
** In Quebec, three queer men adopted a three-year-old girl. ABOMINATION.
Helplessness
I have discussed projection and habituation on the blog. Today’s psychological topic is learned helplessness, which can be seen as a negative and maladaptive type of habituation. It is a state that results when a people’s past experiences teach them that their decisions cannot change their situation, so they adopt a helpless passivity.
The concept originated from some very depressing animal experiments, which I prefer not to think about, since I like most dogs more than many people. The short version is that dogs in a partitioned cage were given electric shocks that affected both sides of the cage, so that moving to the other side wouldn’t help. After enough of that, even when the other side of the cage was not electrified, the dogs wouldn’t attempt to move to escape the shocks. What does that teach us, other than that some psychologists should be put in cages and randomly shocked?
Heartbreakingly, once the dogs learned that their decisions made no difference, their will was broken, and though they could easily escape the shocks by crossing the cage, they would no longer take those simple steps.
Apparent similarities to human behavior abound. Sometimes, external forces can lead people toward a state of learned helplessness. A society that is racist or sexist or religiously bigoted can tell you that nobody of your race or gender or religion can ever get an education, or be financially successful, or amount to much. Foul or abusive parents or spouses can tell you that you’re stupid or worthless. Many people give up after being told that – and experiencing it – often enough.
Sometimes, internal forces can also have the same effect. An instinctively pessimistic person tends to focus on obstacles and problems rather than opportunities or solutions. As a result, you are more likely to find or notice what you are looking for. Since there are always plenty of obstacles around – and plenty of people to agree that they cannot be overcome (or just that YOU cannot overcome them) – it can be very easy to hunker down and stop trying.
Self-sabotaging behavior creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, which then reinforces the pessimism and helplessness. If I tell myself I’m the kind of dummy who doesn’t do well in school, I don’t study very much (because what’s the use?), and then I fail the test, which proves that I’m stupid and destined to drop out. The result is often depression, substance abuse, and a self-reinforcing spiral of negativity and failure.
I once heard someone say of someone in this condition, “He’s got a lot of quit in him.”
The most effective path out of learned helplessness typically involves a combination of strategies to establish positive habits. Cognitive therapy can be helpful, as can setting defined goals, cultivating a more conscious gratitude, and developing a more optimistic outlook.
It helps to think about inspiring people who have overcome adverse circumstances. Take JD Vance, for example. His early life had “learned helplessness” written all over it: absent dad, addict mom, raised by eccentric grandparents in Appalachian poverty, the deck stacked against him six ways to Sunday.
Never did the phrase “white privilege” sound so hollow and ridiculous. (Spoiler alert: it usually is, especially when being wildly exaggerated by naïve elitists who’ve never been within 100 miles of a holler or a trailer court.)
What picture of himself would society paint for a young JD? Toothless hick, Hillbilly, white trash. Bound for a life of coal mining or a Dollar Store or prison, with stops at bar fights and corn-liquor-involved DUIs along the way. (By the way, racial slurs are supposed to be bad, right? But can you think of a more insulting, dehumanizing term than “white trash?” Anybody in polite society would sooner cut their own tongue out than be caught using the N word. Still, you can call poor whitey “trash” in any faculty lounge or posh dinner party, safe in the knowledge that you’ll get knowing nods or condescending smiles all around.)
Learned helplessness is devastating to individuals, but it can be advantageous to politicians, especially if those politicians are leftists, skilled at inculcating and profiting from the anger, pessimism, and depression of most lefties. (Side-bar, chicken-and-egg question: Does leftism make people depressed and angry, or are depressed and angry people naturally drawn to leftism? Discuss amongst yourselves.)
Such leftist pols cleverly set up an ecosystem of identity politics in which the most valuable currency is victim status. (“Victim” is practically a synonym for someone with learned helplessness.) Then they set about trying to convince voters that they are all powerless victims trapped in a cage built by evil conservatives, even as they themselves are the mad scientists conducting a heartless political experiment. They see some black and brown people, and they hit them with a relentless sequence of rhetorical “shocks” to teach them to see themselves as impotent: “Amerikkka is a racist society, built on slavery and stolen land and immigrant labor. White cops are the leading cause of death for black men while unarmed, and for brown people, it’s being “disappeared” by Gestapo ICE agents. The white power structure has been keeping you down for 400 years, and it’s never going to stop.”
They see women and they pull out the verbal cattle prods: “The patriarchy has been brutally oppressing women for 4000 years. Sexism is in the air you breathe and the language you speak, and men want to force you all into handmaid costumes. All heterosexual sex is rape, and it’s called “the battle of the sexes” because brutish men are going to fight you to the death, and beat you if you don’t submit.”
They see poor people and they attach the connected electrodes of communism and socialism to their cage: “Capitalism is the evil force beneath all of your troubles, and capitalists are voracious slave-masters who will exploit you for their bloodthirsty greed and profits until you are worked to death in their infernal mills, factories, and cubicles.”
They see sexual eccentrics and they attach the electrified nipple clamps of gender re-education: “All of those hetero-normative cisgender bullies want you to conform to their Aryan beauty standards and engage only in pregnancy-producing sex in the missionary position because their small, bigoted minds can’t appreciate the appeal of your many piercings and body-modifications, your unidentifiable genitalia, and your erotic squirrel and raccoon outfits.”
“They prudishly refuse to accept that you can be healthy at any weight, and want to body shame you out of their ignorance of how good transgressive sex can be, especially when it requires the deployment of a forklift and a complicated system of chains and pulleys to lower you onto each other.”
You can see the results in the generational dependence among those who have listened to the left’s siren song. They’ve been in that cage for a long time, and they’ve learned that they can’t get themselves out. They get their housing, their food, their education, their health care, and their spending money from the government, and they’ll crawl over broken glass to vote for the party that promises to keep taking care of them in their box.
You can also see it in the mostly younger people – whose depression has turned into anger – in the nihilistic riots of Antifa and BLM, and in the pro-Hamas thugs on campuses, and in the murderers of Charlie Kirk, and of the Christian kids in Nashville and Minneapolis.
The armies of the left have been miseducated in thousands of Skinner Boxes on campuses and chat rooms, and they’ve internalized all the wrong lessons. They see America, capitalism, free markets, stable families, and the Judeo-Christian West as oppressive forces. They see themselves as oppressed victims, powerless in the face of a threatening, fascist omni-enemy, cowering in the corner of a small box…
Until some manipulative, authoritarian leftist leaders come forward and promise them a way out, and a moral crusade that directs their anger at a demonized enemy, and recasts their insurrectionist violence as a noble, anti-Nazi “Resistance.”
They don’t have to feel guilty when they’re assaulting cops and shooting at ICE agents who are just doing their jobs, enforcing our democratically passed laws, and wanting to go home to their families at the end of each day. Because they’re ACTUALLY bravely stopping the Gestapo from rounding up and killing salt-of-the-earth, undocumented Americans.
Meanwhile, we conservatives are offering them a very different way out of the Skinner Box they have been manipulated into. We’re telling them the truth, that America is not a capitalist dictatorship, and that there is no white, patriarchal “system” that is hell-bent on keeping them down. That this is still a land of opportunity, and that their fate is in their hands.
We’re trying to show them that the left has lied to them about the cage they’re in, and that it’s not really electrified, and that the door is open. They can walk out at any time, breathe the fresh air, and take advantage of the possibilities and opportunities all around them. We’re praying that they’ll do it, for their own good, and for America’s, hopefully, in time for the midterms.
Identify the Ship
1
2
3
Two views to aid you.
4
5
Two Views
End
Identify the Ship:
1. HDMS Hvidbjørnen
2. HSwMS Stockholm
3. HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën
4. French frigate Jean Bart
5. Vietnamese Petya-class frigate
It’s good to have you back, if even for one day, Surly.
:)
Were they relocating Surly’s data center?
Firmware replacements and a software update followed by a reboot.
Glad to see you back!
– Kle.
1 is HDMS Hvidbjørnen (older Danish for polar bear) a Thetis-class patrol.
2 First ship of Stockholm class Swedish Navy
3 HNLMS De Zeven Provinciën (Dutch).
4 is Jean Bart a Cassard-class anti-air frigate (French).
5 is Petya class frigate (Soviet).
Very good, RCC!!
Helplessness should be in the forward of every high school book issued. Everyone knows of instances in their life where they gave up on a problem. Persistence versus Resistance, the choice is always your own.
Stubborn persistence combined with common sense works surprisingly well in most situations. Helplessness, and you put one of those liberal cow rings through your nasal septum, and dye your hair blue.
Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. -Calvin Coolidge
Resist the urge to dye your hair blue, HogsbreathSS!
Hey, Coolidge, was a good president. Look at the mess he had to clean up from his previous administration! Dye my hair blue? I don’t think my girlfriend capital AH would like that.
-STA Lethal
Silent Cal, one of the most under-rated presidents we’ve had.
“Columbus Day”…guessing you didn’t get the Teachers Union memo on now what is called “Indigenous People “Day (that they have off). As typical the Union didn’t specify ‘WHAT’ indigenous people, just assumed we thought ‘Indians’…but…ya know, those Norwegians got around. For those of us unencumbered by Liberal Think, it was always Columbus Day, as the man did the hard work and took the risk…coupled to persistence that most in the Teachers Union wouldn’t know if it hit them upside the head (as we used to say in 8th Grade while goofing around with the pals on our Columbus Day off).
PDJT has declared it to be Columbus Day again.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/10/columbus-day-2025/
Righteous….thanks Ed, had not seen The Presidents Proclamation undoing the last few decades of slandering Columbus that our generation always viewed as courageous (2 months at sea on tiny ships?).
Read a comment that speaks to what happened overnight in Israel, but applies here as well…something the naysayers said could never happen (because they didn’t want it to):
“Thus, He reveals His purpose for the man He spared at Butler.”
So yes, it’s Columbus Day – again. And Indigenous People (whatever that really means) can also celebrate. Maybe the cavemen can go back to peddling car insurance in television ads?
Exactly…’indigenous’ could mean the Neanderthal (if one believes in that), or the Tall People living inside Mt. Shasta, or the so-called native Indian tribes scattered about. What timeframe are we talking about here? (They never define it.) heck, I’m Order of the Arrow…when the BSA was excellent…does that make me Indigenous Inclusive Adjacent?
Wow… surly was fast. I knew the French and Ruski ships but the others a blank. Plus even if I could figure out the ship remembering how to get a ø on an iPad keyboard would take me an hour.
*
I saw two youngins working to earn and be Eagle Scouts last weekend. There is still hope that helplessness isn’t the default youth option.
*
IQ under 83 is certainly a problem. Worse, IQ average isn’t the same globally. There are places in Africa such as Niger where the average is 71 and some places in Asia the average is 113.
*
(Remainder of this post is sarcasm) Not very equitable to have Asians score so well vs Africans. Perhaps the IQ calculations should be revised using DEI protocols. Of course the bell curve would be destroyed but that’s a small price to fix this IQ inequity.
Surly was recharging the batteries…at one of those Biden charging stations…took a while to get back into the game.
Happy Columbus Day.
Have a fabulous day and week. :)
Helplessness; H/T!!! This writing is like the words of the psalmist. Describes my own position, informs me that life as God has given it, is to be abundant and free to all. Prayer, that I need help with, is written to give me words that I have yet to come up with on my own. The prison of our own minds and the depression is the egg that the “chicken” naturally lays if he/she cannot make a paridym shift in percieving the reality that the door is wide open.
👌 Amen.
X2
This Italian bristles at having had to celebrate Indigenous Peoples Day (mandatory in NYC schools). I refuse to even compare the Maya, or anyone else, with Columbus. Or Anerigo Vespucci. Or Verrazzano. They earned their placed in US history.
Just had the Columbus Day parade Saturday, in Providence.
Despite all the Pinkos on College Hill, always going to be Columbus Day here.
– Kle.
25 minute mark:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1KYEAy2UuJQw6meXKK2GJO?si=9DQYT-NrTL294M-ls2BhjQ
Timely…and very interesting. Nicely done.
Quebec – eh, maybe it isn’t the best odds choice for success, but it could
work out okay.
*
Don’t forget, this is government fostering, and that has a long and adamant history
of farming kids out to the worst people on Earth, so they can make money off the kids.
Not that some foster parents aren’t great, but the government (any government, AFAICT)
doesn’t care to choose the good ones, and in many cases seems to prefer the worst.
– Kle.
I want to know what’s the ship painted green. It’s in the background of the second to last ship photo.
I’m not complaining, this is not a woe is me. I have been beset by adversity since early on and until today. So has everyone. But mine are usual+ I know that for many times through the years various people, including learned professionals, have said (paraphrased); That’s unusual, I don’t know anyone else that has happened to, Better you than me.
I’ve been endowed with a terrific tenacity. Others call it stubbornness. That coupled with stayed by God’s grace. I do believe that most afflictions are due to the lack of faith.
Too, a victim needs a villain. If one not immediately available, use imagination to manifest one. That game is for losers. Blue hair signals their whereabouts. The truly asinine part is they paid for it. Yet I wonder if the hideous markings, including hog ring, are to the purpose of affinity identification. Misery loves company. A twisted mind considers the affirming properties of such markings.
Best I can do with bad eyes is a X-Bow ship.
Armada offshore support vessel. Oil exploration.
Learned helplessness – years ago a British fantasy author, in one of many storylines within the series, had the main character in an island country that was so used to having others do things for them that when they were invaded…the residents had no idea what to do. Eerily prescient.
Morlocks and Eloi (The Time Machine)
Brit authors like to mimic each other’s writings :)
HG Wells, being the socialist bastard that he was, got the Morlocks and Eloi all wrong.
–
The Morlocks are the heroes. They’ve kept working, kept fixing, kept innovating, so much that it affected their physiology. They even have taken care of the Eloi, who would have completely died off if not for the Morlocks.
–
The Eloi, on the other hand, sit or lie around or flit, can barely keep themselves clean, don’t build houses, don’t understand the concept of the wheel (a big thing in Bean’s world view, you ain’t worth spit if you can’t grok the wheel in all its wonderful variations,) and can’t even grow or collect food. They’re useless. Completely useless. They’re so useless the Morlocks have to provide food for the useless gadflies.
–
Seriously, HG ended the book too early. His ‘hero’ kills the Morlock, and becomes the ‘rescuer’ of the Eloi. So? Who finds the food for all the Eloi when it comes food time? Who makes clothes for the Eloi? Who makes shelter? Who protects the Eloi from wildlife? Hero goes from being the savior to being the zookeeper.
–
At least the citizens in “Idiocracy” were somewhat useful and could be trained. The Eloi are worthless, even more worthless than hoodrats.
–
So the Morlocks are the bad guys for eating basically human-shaped tilapia?
I have always identified with the Morlocks.
– Kle.
* 83 IQ
Circa 1960’s, Combat Engineer selection was 4 out of 5 with the lowest scores and 1 in five with the highest scores on IQ tests. The problem was those troops who grew up attending bad schools didn’t do well on the tests. Most, but not all, were black. The 1 out of 5? Almost, but not all, white. From personal experience, I can say it made for tense times in the barracks.
———–
Off topic
News reports are all remaining Hamas hostages still alive have been returned. Some reports estimate up to 15,000 Hamas fighters remain, mainly in Gaza City. By now, Isreal problem knows where the remaining tunnels are located. What a wonderful opportunity to gas rats.
Meghan Markle
It is tempting to call her vapid, but she has secured herself a comfortable lifestyle. There must be some talent there, somewhere. Do we really want to delve into her talents?
Markle the Sparkle is right up there with Chucky ‘I grill cheese on a cold grill’ Schumer for being fake. Right up there with Elizabeth ‘Warbonnet’ Warren. So fake, perfect example of why English royalty should stay away from American divorcees.
–
Hamas can still copulate this up. It’s what they do best after all.
Starship Flight 11 has successfully made it back to Earth.
it’s a miracle.
Not a miracle. Lots of very good engineering and mechanic-ing and skull sweat and plenty of feedback on past failures.
–
But it was epic. And beautiful. And awesome and awe-inspiring.
–
Looking forward to the future Block 3 boosters and ships.