People talk about resolutions at the turn of the year and immediately break them. The gym marketing campaigns are in full swing now to lure in the January tide. This tide will wash out by mid-February. Forget resolutions. Create goals.

It seems as simple as writing them down, but the idea of a goal is a concrete challenge to yourself to improve in some manner or achieve something currently out of reach. A resolution is a behavior change and can be broken quickly and forgotten by summer. A goal to be achieved by year end just stares at you all year.

It does not matter how you get there but you know the destination. My lift bros always share their goals. Some get hit. Some are missed. Setting lifting goals does not require you to re-enter the gym or up workouts and keep going. You may fall off. The key is that the goal is out there and you can get back into the groove and strive for it by the next December.

Goals can fall into any category. There are the online larpers or fake trads, but setting goals related to social behaviors or resurrecting traditions can help separate you from the e-trads. After enough practice, the larp becomes second nature. If you do it for your kids from day one, they will never know it was a larp.

It is not hard. Just look back to photos of your parents’ childhood. Boomers discarded all the ethnic stuff and plenty of interesting habits that they rejected because they associated it with old people and they weren’t ever gonna be square, man. Bring those decorations, statues and celebrations back. I’ll bet someone in the family even keeps the statues in their basement. Let them see the light of day again.

On to the links…

Analysis of Pedo Coding – Atavisionary goes through multiple products of Hollywood that in retrospect seem blatant pedo signaling. “Never touch the clown, let the clowns touch you” seems like the mental legalese these rings would use to rationalize their acts.

The Russian ’90s – This is a nice essay on the kleptocracy and kakistocracy in Russia in the early post-Soviet era. It was a massive looting that America worked hand in glove (literally dual role bureaucrats) with Russians to steal and set up a clique of oligarchs. One point I’d add is that the epilogue notes how Berezovsky got Yeltsin to appoint Putin his successor and Putin turned on him. The sources I have read stated the battle between the oligarchs who wanted to adopt the ’90s American values and the security state that feared being under American dominion created a fight between Berezovsky and Primakov for who should be in control. Primakov fooled Berezovsky by proposing Putin as a compromise candidate. Berezovsky felt Putin could be controlled and would be open to the Western rapprochement. He was fooled as Primakov got the last laugh.

The World’s Top 100 Websites – This is a nice graphic as to why nothing will be done about porn. Three in the top 15 sites are porn sites and that is a lot of eyeballs to socially program and sell ads to. Please note that Wikipedia comes in at number 5. This makes their fundraising drives so pathetic. As the number 5 website, they could maintain integrity (of being properly liberal) by having one advertiser like Coca-Cola and be set forever. Their claims of wanting to remain free of corruption is akin to NPR being considered neutral because it is public.

A Cameron Postscript – This is a good read on the failed British politician David Cameron. He was an empty suit. He was also a possible road for the right in the West, for Americans unfamiliar with him, think an even worse and much dumber Mitt Romney. The electoral victory of Brexit and subsequent rise of a populist right signals Cameronism’s death. He will not see the immediate destruction of his legacy a la Chamberlain, but he will fade into oblivion except as a figure of derision.

A new cartel, same problems – The cartel game is never going to end if we never get serious about immigration. Hard to run the cartel if there is not a ready made community for them to hide in within our borders. Note the money laundering discussed throughout the article. Got to target this. Why must we crack down on all the illegals, event he lowliest of yard workers? Our answer, “Ciro Macias Martinez led a double life, working as a horse groomer by day and overseeing the flow of $30 million worth of drugs into Kentucky by night before being imprisoned in 2018 for meth trafficking and money laundering, federal records show“.