Alien Post Preview

 This is going to one of those 'half posts.' A preview to a future post.

I'm currently reading "Intruders: The Incredible Visitations At Copley Woods" by Budd Hopkins. Budd is an OG legend in the alien abduction/UFO world. An artist by trade, he started writing about UFO's after having an experience himself. He wrote an article in some New York newspaper and began receiving hundreds and hundreds of letters from people who had encounters with aliens or think the may have been abducted or had missing time episodes. Thus began his new career as a researcher and author about the UFO phenomenon. His main book is called "Missing Time" which is one of the most prominent UFO books out there. (I read it and I will discuss it further when I make my post). 

I'm about halfway done with "Intruders" and is even better than I thought it would be. Creepy is an understatement. There's one story in there that I just cannot get out of my head and I feel like I have to share it somewhere (my wife simply cannot hear anymore alien stories from me anymore and I don't blame her. They are beyond disturbing). Now keep in mind, this was just one story on one page of one 400 plus page book. It was a section of a section. 

So this book is largely about ongoing visitations, missing time episodes, abductions and other disturbing things happening to one woman/family in New York. A bizarre fact about the abduction phenomenon is that the aliens seem to target specific people and their families over and over for years and years. Basically their whole lives. In this instance, the main woman in question wrote to Hopkins that she thinks she had been abducted before. Once they start investigating and looking into it, they find out that her parents and sisters have had abduction/missing time experiences, and even her little children. (Among many, many bizarre things, they all have identical scoop like scars in identical spots on their legs that no one can explain). 

When this woman, Kathie, got pregnant, she immediately started getting these weird phone calls, every single Wednesday at the same time. She would pick up the phone and hear what she called robotic moaning and static on the other end. She said it was super bizarre, not quite human sounding. There would be no breaks, no breathing, and it would just go on and on, not even remotely pausing to listen. It didn't matter if she talked or not, it would just go on and on making these noises. As inhuman as it was, she said there was a weird emotionality to it. Like she could tell if it was mad or sad or happy. It didn't seem like a recording. She had her parents and friends answer the phone sometimes and it would be the same thing. It would go as long as they kept the line open. 

She eventually got so fed up with it that she changed her number to an unlisted one. The week she changed it, she got a call from this thing on a Monday, the only time it ever called on a day other than Wednesday, and it sounded angry. After that phone call, they came again every single Wednesday, the same thing, until she gave birth. Then the calls completely stopped.

She gave birth to a little boy who was fairly normal, except for the fact that as a three year old, he didn't speak. He just make these sort of odd sounding groans and moans. The author says that one day when he was finishing up a session with Kathie, she very hesitantly mentioned to the authors female colleague that the sounds that her son made, the moans and groans, sound eerily similar to what the phone calls sounded like...

Creepy! Again, this is just one anecdote in one section of one chapter of one book. If this tickles your fancy, you will love my upcoming alien post.

That's all for today, check back soon!

At The Center Of Elon vs Trump, The Vibe Shift And More

 Kind of funny that within a few days of me mentioning the growing rift between the two main factions on the right, Elon and Trump take it mainstream. Let me break down what's at the heart of each side, as I see it at least.

First off, Elon and Trump breaking up was as embarrassing as it was predictable. It was probably always going to end this way, although I don't think anyone could have possible foreseen Elon calling Trump a fucking Epstein-list-pedophile. I'm sure you know, but the basic gist of it all is that Trump is trying to get his 'big beautiful bill' passed, and Elon hates it. Some say it's because the EV tax credits are being taken away, but I find that hard to believe. I can't imagine someone as smart and as rich as Musk would fly off the handle like that and attack the single most powerful man in the world over tax credits affecting one of his many companies. To burn an ally like that over what amounts to a fraction of his net worth possibly being effected? It feels way too short sighted of a move.  (There is a funny parallel here for any Rick and Morty fans. Elon being Rick and Trump being the President. If you watch the show you know what I mean). Elon says he flipped out because the new bill will 'bankrupt future America', and he might have a point, but even that feels bizarre. Whatever the reason for the temper tantrum, I suppose it really doesn't matter. What's done is done. I think this whole thing made Elon look bad, definitely worse for him than Trump. It is amazing the pure, raw power that Trump has. He's like T-1000. He just cannot be stopped. Elon has since walked back some of his comments, but the damage is done.

At the center of it all though, the real debate here is between two different ideologies that are fomenting and swirling and taking more and more shape on the right. It's what I talked about in the last half of my South Africa post. It's between people who think America is a 'collection of ideas' and those who think we're a Nation of people with our own identity, values and characteristics. And the real center of it, I think, is this basic question: does the economy of a nation serve its people? Or do people serve its economy?

Elon seems to be on the side of nothing is more important than the economy. I don't think he would ever come out and say that, and maybe he doesn't even really think he believes that, but his actions would say otherwise. Just look at his life for a minute. He fled South Africa for Canada, left Canada for California and left California for Texas. I doubt he'll end up in Texas, too. He has 14(!) children with 4 different women, none of which are his wife. He kind of lives like life is a video game, maxing out stats. He's a tech-nomad. A genius spazz. And look, that's all fine. We need people like him, obviously. But is he a role model? Do you think he's happy? Would society be better or worse if everyone had over a dozen kids with multiple women? No roots, no real allegiance to anyone or anything other than himself. He's a 'proud American', for now. To be clear, I am and always have been an admirer of Elon and he may very well save us all by getting us off Earth at some point. But I admire him like I would a really effective mercenary. It's great when he's on your side and we can all objectively marvel at his accomplishments and continue to root for him, but would you really be shocked if he moved countries again and went to battle against America? If Denmark or Germany or Australia offered him some kind of massive business incentives to move there, do you think he wouldn't?

The Trump side of the argument is that, essentially, the economy serves us, not the other way around. What good is a couple more GDP points if it doesn't actually help anyone but like 10 people at the very top? If Jamie Dimon adds a couple more zeroes to his bank account, what good does that do? 

America's GDP has about doubled since 2007. Has your life gotten twice as good since 2007? Has the quality of life in America DOUBLED for the average person since then? If not, then what exactly is the point of a rising GDP? For the vast majority of people, it's numbers on a screen. Stock prices have risen when measured in dollars, but the value of those dollars has decreased substantially since then. So I ask again because I think it's important and at the very center of this issue; if a rising GDP doesn't equate to a rising standard of living for the vast majority of citizens, then what good is it?

The average American right now lives in a world he barely recognizes. The insane immigration of the past decade has transformed us, pretty profoundly. 

Here is a video from yesterday in NY of Andrew Cuomo wearing a turban, addressing a room full of men wearing turbans, saying that there is '180 different languages being spoken in our public schools. That's a strength, not a weakness.' How? How is that possibly a strength? Adding tens of thousands of children to schools that don't speak English, that will all need specialized instructions will add a ridiculous amount of inefficiencies and burdens, to say nothing about a complete lack of cohesion and identity. To also say nothing about the obvious various conflicts that will inevitably emerge. 

Shifting gears somewhat, the LA 'protests' are on their 5th day in a row now, and this might honestly be the single dumbest 'protest' I have ever even heard about. It feels like a turning point, a defining bookend for an era. Masked men standing on burned out cars waving the Mexican flag, apparently protesting for their right to...not live in Mexico? To not be sent back to the country whose flag they're waving? It's absurd. And unlike the BLM 2020 riots, they have largely lost the public. The vibe shift is real. People are getting more and more fed up with all of it and you can definitely feel it. I remember a nervousness during the BLM nonsense, even among those who vehemently disagreed with the whole thing. People were afraid to discuss it. Now? Not so much. 

We either have a border or we don't. There isn't a functioning country on EARTH that has 'open borders'. Even the words 'open borders' do not make sense. The idea that a country cannot control who comes into it is one of those ideas so fucking stupid that only a PHD nerd could possibly entertain it. And finally, the backlash has arrived, like a boomerang to the fucking face. Charlie Kirk, Matt Walsh and many others have floated the idea of a complete end to ALL immigration, at least for a while. Those are pretty mainstream dudes. It really is pretty unreal how much the Overton Window has moved in only 5 years. Imagine where it is in 10 years.

Let's look at some funny things from X this past week.

Look at this tweet. It's hard to believe this is even real:

Notice the ratio. People are fed up.

Here is multi-millionaire, Juilliard/Harvard trained Tom Morello, miles away from any 'protest', posing front and center with his cool baseball helmet in what looks like a reddit meetup. Honestly, is this the least cool thing you have ever seen in your life?

Here are two pictures from a street in Mexico. I can't confirm this, but apparently signs like these are everywhere. So for some reason, Mexico is for Mexicans and America is also for Mexicans. Again, the dumbest fucking protest I have ever seen.

Here is the daughter of Ilhan Omar, a Somalian refugee who is somehow a Congresswoman from Minnesota. Ilhan fled a civil war in Somalia and spent 4 years in a refugee camp before she was graciously taken in by America. Not only did this awful, racist country take her and her family in at our expense, we somehow elected her to office! She's a multi-millionaire, famous politician now. And this is what her daughter thinks of us? 'Death to America', the ONLY country that saved her and her family from certain, brutal death by her own countrymen. If she said anything like this in her home country, she would be executed. So I ask again, why are we doing this? Why would any country continue any kind of program that saves people from themselves, only to be despised? If it weren't for America, Ilhan and her daughter would probably have died a brutal death that no one would have even heard about. And forget gratitude, they openly hate us! It's so absurd, it's almost comical. 

Here is step 2 on the 'let's kill/chase away all the White farmers from our land' plan. The brutal, dumb, short sighted, wanton killing of animals. Kindness to animals is largely a White trait. Something people may take from granted. Also, if that was a group of White men standing behind that dead elephant, would you feel differently about that picture? Ask yourself why.

Presented without comment

More nonsense. Stuff like this is interesting because it is so outrageously false. Really, is there one single educated person on the planet who believes stuff like this? From 100,000 BC to about 1960, there were basically zero non white people in what is now the UK. That is fairly common knowledge. So you have to ask yourself, why the lie? What's the point, exactly? Is it to dehumanize? Repeat a lie enough and it starts to seep through national consciousness. And if someone can get you to believe absurdities, what else can they get you to do?

Here is an eerily accurate 4chan post from 2013. 

More evidence of the Overton Window being flung the fuck open. This story is worth reading about. Below are the e-mails that caused the pearl clutching headline above.

Look at this graph!

"Your universe has no meaning to them. They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door."

What the fuck happened to Harvard? Imagine replacing the word White with ANYTHING else. Why is this ok??

"So-called 'white race'"

Notice the authors, Levitt and Segal, going way out of their way to not capitalize the W in White. I watch shows with the subtitles on a lot, and a really bizarre thing I've started to notice is that the B in Black will ALWAYS be capitalized, but the W in White NEVER will be. 

Here's the picture of a South African farm murderer with the $20k signal jammer I talked about in my SA post:

More fun in Africa:

Here is an illuminating recent picture from Britain. A Muslim man running for office wants you to be more concerned with Gaza than the hollowed out industrial building directly behind the ad. It's so on the nose that, again, it's almost comical:

I'm posting this stuff not only because it's so shocking, but I feel like a lot of people on the left/center don't realize what's going on. I can't tell you how many times I've been in casual conversations with people and mentioned something in the news that I thought was common knowledge, only to have them be completely fucking shocked/unaware. We have to put this shit out there. It's uncomfortable, I know, but what is the alternative? Just get dwindled down to nothing because we didn't want to appear mean to people who live among us while openly despising us and calling for our deaths? What do you think happens when we actually are a minority in our own countries? They speak and act this way in a roughly 60% White America. What do you think happens when that number is 40%? 25%? Really think about that for a minute. It's a terrifying thought.

Anyway, that's about it for today. Never know what you're gonna get around here. Some sports betting, some modeling, some crypto, some slice of life, investing, politics, economics and a sprinkle of White Nationalism :)

A Review Of 'Statistical Sports Models In Excel' By Andrew Mack. The Most Discouraging Book I Have Ever Read

I recently bought this book after a recommendation from a commenter I've been trading e-mails with. I didn't realize it, but I've heard a couple interviews with this guy already before. He's 'gingfacekillah' on X and is a good follow (if he'll confirm you). He did a good interview on the Circle's Off podcast and another good one on the Pinnacle YouTube channel. (It's amazing the amount of good, real sports betting information Pinnacle puts out. They are truly unafraid. Pinnacle really is the top of the food chain, I don't care what anyone says). You can search Andrew Mack on Youtube and find a few more of his interviews. They're worth watching, he's a good communicator and obviously a really smart guy. He's not super nerdy either.

Before I start, let me say that I think this book is good at what it's trying to do, probably worth reading if you're a modeler or trying to be one, I don't regret reading it and I might even get Volume II which is specifically about props. But I shit you not, I actually threw this book on the ground in frustration while reading it. Not even kidding. Let me explain.

The first couple chapters of the book are good. I was practically licking my chops during the first chapter, thinking I found a real hidden gem. He explains modeling as a concept really well and gives you access to all kinds of ready made models and calculators in Excel. The book is probably worth it for the negative binomial calculator alone, which I will make use of when/if I continue to model. There's a section in the beginning where he goes through different kinds of distributions, including negative binomial and poisson, and where you can apply them. (Embarrassingly, the whole concept of 'distributions' was/is kind of foreign to me. I just learned about poisson and only attacked markets where I could use it. So this chapter was illuminating for me).

However, once you get into the nitty gritty of each model, you might be as disappointed as I was. Every single model he shows you uses only one piece of data: the final score. That's it. (Actually one model gets as deep as Home points scored, Home points allowed, Away points scored, Away points allowed). Each model is just excruciatingly, brain numbingly, massaging final scores and excel functions and coefficients into, I guess, a working model. Then there's a model at the end that models all the models together. It is as infuriating as it sounds.

Now look, the models almost certainly do work, especially for small market stuff, which he points out. He even makes the point that they're perfect for obscure sports where you don't have access to advanced stats. Something like Icelandic Women's Basketball. And if you can make money using it and betting on obscure stuff like that, all the power to you. But if this is what modeling is in 2025, if this is how you beat sports, I can honestly say that it just is not for me anymore. It's soulless. There is no joy in it, no artistry, no thinking deeply about the sport. It's just Excel add-on and function after add-on and function. Models modeling models. 

Maybe I'm just not smart enough to really get it. That's certainly possible, if not probable. Computer science, big data, messy Excel functions, these have never really been my thing. But I have won a good amount of money from betting on sports for more than a decade, and a lot that came from self made models, so it's not like I'm some random guy picking up a book he doesn't understand and shitting on it. The basic logic of what he's doing isn't lost on me. And this book would almost definitely appeal to people who come to sports modeling from the computer science/engineering world. But personally, I had a real, visceral reaction to this book and his whole approach. Which, again, I'm not saying doesn't work. I'm sure it does! And the reviews on Amazon at least are pretty glowing. But it is just so godamn soulless! It's probably how a robot would try to beat sports, which probably appeals to some people.

I realize as I'm writing this that this probably says more about me than the book. But as good as his interviews are and as good as he probably is at winning money through modeling, I really haven't seen or heard much about this book or him until I specifically looked for it. It didn't seem to create much buzz that other books have. 

So I don't know. It probably is worth reading if you're trying to make money modeling these days. If I read this when it came out I probably would have given it more of a chance. It's actually, somehow, 6 years old now so it might even be a little dated. And he keeps saying in it that it's for beginners and how he's moved on to R and Python. Maybe people nowadays just come equipped right out of the box with way more skill and knowledge with Excel and data science. My high school typing classes were on typewriters! I guess I am a little bit of a dinosaur with this shit.

It's 40 bucks and you can read it in an hour so it's not like it's a huge investment. If you're here, there's a good chance you'll get something out of it, and like I said, I probably will get Volume II on props. But even the fact that there's a book like that out there, dealing with props specifically, with 'beginner' concepts in them like mean loss reversion and log loss and ridge analysis and excel functions 6 lines deep is discouraging. I'm pretty sure the prop jig is up and has been for a while now. Like I said before, I used to handicap props with a pen and paper when I started, and I made good money doing it. Boy has that changed.

And by the way, this is going to sound really cunty, but there's a little something off/weird about the author. I don't know. The picture he put of himself on the back of the book is a weirdo gym selfie, complete with him flexing in a tank top and a half duck face. And his X profile pic is like an instagram face-tuned cartoon selfie of himself. And during one of the interviews I saw of him, he had his whole background very oddly blurred out. I don't even know what the fuck it means or what I think it means or what I'm trying to say. There is just something slightly off-putting about all of it I can't quite put my finger on. Like an uncanny valley type of thing. 

So that's about it. In summation, I thought it was an interesting book, I got a little something out of it, I'll probably buy volume II. I also viscerally despised it, threw it on the ground while reading it, will probably never pick it back up, and think the author might not exactly be a human being. So take from that what you will.

In other news, the Stanley Cup finals start tonight. No props tonight but I might have some up for this series if anyone even gives a shit. Like I mentioned at the top, I've been learning about distributions more broadly and have discovered the negative binomial one. It's apparently much superior to poisson but it's harder to use (you have to plug the players total season long data into it. So for instance, for SOG, you'd need to put in his game by game results for the entire season. It doesn't sound all that hard and if/when I get back into it, I'll figure out a way to do it. But it'll definitely take more time for each player). I never considered the fact that using poisson could be the issue with my props so there's a little ray of light of hope for me and props in general. But I'm finding it harder and harder to even care all that much about sports anymore. It just feels silly sometimes. When I think about all the full Sundays I spent in front my TV and computer, all through my twenties and then some, it does feel like a bit of a waste. Like a bread and circus kind of thing. I saw a video recently of this Toronto Maple Leafs fan in his basement 'man cave', all completely dekked out in Maple Leafs shit. He was actually wearing hockey pads and a helmet! His entire life was being a fan of a hockey team. It was beyond pathetic and I thought I don't want to be even in the same universe as a guy like this. Especially considering the devastating transformation Canada has gone through the past 5 or so years. Like, you're a 40 plus year old man wearing a hockey helmet and pads with a 20 year old mans name on your back, rooting for a team that wouldn't even know if you died, all while your country turns into Canada-a-stan. Nobody can afford a house, your money is fake, your government openly hates and discriminates against you, and you're literally crying because a hockey team lost. It all just feels wrong. I'm not even sure exactly what I mean or how I feel. I'm going through some changes myself, just the way I feel and the way I see the world. And I'm not sure that betting a hundred bucks on a few props here and there is something that is or should be important to me anymore. I don't know! I think I will at least try out the negative binomial thing, if not for hockey then maybe baseball or football. And if I start making good money again maybe I'll feel different. But we shall see. Either way, I'll discuss it here and I'll always keep this going.

That's about it for today. I'll probably have something like a Part II to my last post. It was really rambly and I ended up discussing like three different topics I've wanted to get off my chest for a while and I don't think I did a great job getting my points across. I need to think about everything some more. I just finished a great Jared Taylor book that I had to mail a check to buy since it's banned on Amazon. Spicy! Maybe I'll touch on some of that stuff again and I'll have a crypto post up sometime soon, and of course my alien post will be here someday. I've been reading like a mad man too so I will have another book review post too.

Talk soon, thanks for reading, bye for now!