Karens, Jolenes, Sharons and Helgas

KAREN or KEN

The term Karen (or Ken) is typically used to describe a specific type of person, usually a middle-aged white woman, who is perceived as entitled, demanding, and often confrontational. The Karen frequently complains or asks to speak to the manager in various situations, such as in retail stores, restaurants, or customer service interactions. They are often portrayed as being overly demanding, insisting on their perceived rights or privileges, and displaying a sense of entitlement.

 

However there are also other types of people who fall into different categories.

JOLENE or JAYDEN

A Jolene (or Jayden) is a person who possesses captivating beauty and charm and uses it to pursue the husbands or partners of other women. She exudes an irresistible allure that can cause married or committed men to be tempted and potentially stray from their relationships. Jolenes are often seen as a threat, as her captivating presence and appeal can create insecurities and tensions within relationships. She symbolizes the potential disruption of the stability and fidelity between couples. Also sometimes called "A Homewrecker".

 

SHARON or STEPHEN

A Sharon (or Stephen) likes to work in offices and is an employee whose lack of motivation and productivity is matched only by their catty nature and fondness for nasty gossiping. In addition to her sluggish approach to work, Sharon frequently engages in malicious conversations, spreading rumors and fostering a toxic atmosphere within the office. Office Politics is their game and they excel at it. When a Sharon is not slacking off on their duties, they can often be found whispering in hushed tones or engaging in small groups, eagerly sharing and perpetuating negative information about their coworkers. Lastly, Sharon will always try to climb the corporate ladder on the backs of people that they have badmouthed, and as soon as they become their superior they fires the people they've been gossiping about.

HELGA or HUGO

A Helga (or Hugo) is the epitome of a terrible neighbor, an individual who encompasses vanity, envy, avarice, and deceitfulness. They are driven by a deep-seated need for attention and is constantly preoccupied with their appearance and their house's appearance, seeking validation and admiration from others. Their vanity extends to their real estate and leads them to judge and belittle those who do not meet their perceived standards of beauty or success. Beyond their self-centeredness, Helga is envious of the success, possessions, and relationships of others. Rather than celebrating their accomplishments, they harbor resentment and seeks to undermine and sabotage them out of a sense of jealousy. This envy fuels their spiteful actions and fuels a desire to see others suffer.

 

Chances are likely you've met one of these types? Have you? Tell us about it in the comments below.

List of Books by Fantasy Author Charles Moffat

The Adventures of Wrathgar

The Assassin's Trail

The Blizzard's Daughter

The Coven's Wolves

The Demon's Sacrifice

The Exorcist's Dagger

The Sunken Castle

The Adventures of the Bogatyr

The Bogatyr & the Cursed Inn

Dark Shadows in the Moonlight

The Bogatyr & the Rusalka's Lament

The Bogatyr & the Gentle Giant

A Bag of Silver, A Bag of Bones

The She-Wolf of Eraska

The Midnight Dragon

The Bogatyr & the Cursed Parcel

The Adventures of the Bogatyr: Anthology Collection

The Lilith Bloodstone Series

The Black Rose

Rise of the Red Moon

The Baby & the Village

One to be Reckoned With

The Night of the Dead

On Death's Door

The Emissary of Darkness

The Astral Plane

Out for Blood

The Lilith Bloodstone Omnibus

Wulfric the Wanderer

Portal of Destiny

The Cult of the She-Bear

Born of Blood and Ice

The Scarlet Arena

Shifting Shadows in Iztark

Black Monoliths of Al-Kazar

The Unbreakable Arrow

The Raven's Feast

Chronicles of Korovia

A Hound Named Hunter

The Hab & the Witch

Alt-Earth

A Dark Road in Louisiana

Folly of the Forlorn

Hunting Hitler

The Dragontree of Kaŝe

The Dragonslayers of Kaŝe

The Quorum of Kaŝe

The Girl in the Red Hoodie

Korovia Myths, Legends and Fables

As part of Moffat's world building process for Korovia he created a number of myths, legends and fables set within the fictional kingdom.

The Korovia Creation Myth

The Myth of the Dark Eclipse

The Legend of Dark Maya

The Legend of Nordica

The Fable of Sir Fartsalot

The Fable of the Boring Dwarf

The Fable of the Crow and Raven

The Fable of the Dragon's Bank

The Fable of the Graverobber and the Cursed Cutlass

The Fable of the Ice Mephit

The Fable of the Incubus of Izhamet

The Fables of the Jackalope

The Fable of the Sibilant Snake

The Fable of the Wolfkin

The Imp's Arrow

The Princess and the Foxalope

The Turkey Vulture's Tale

Poetry Books by Charles Moffat

a dream of unfettered roses

Dreaming of Zen Archery

Ancient Stories Dreamt Of

List of Unavailable Books

Some of Moffat's older works are no longer available, due to a variety of reasons, but mostly because he has plans to rewrite them.

Paladin Assassin

Ice War

King Culprit

Rise of the Blade

Brutus & Avianna

The Demon's Pawn

Sword & Sorcery and "Manly Books for Men"

 When it comes to fantasy sub-genres there are certain ones that are more likely to be read by men, and certain ones more likely to be read by women.

For example:

• Romance Fantasy = Mostly women.
  
• Sword and Sorcery = Mostly men.
  

And you can pretty much tell which is which by looking at the book covers.

Below is two book covers from the Sword and Sorcery series "Wulfric the Wanderer" by fantasy author Charles Moffat.

Just looking at the cover for "Shifting Shadows in Iztark" and you KNOW this is a book aimed at men. And the description hammers that nail into the coffin. Similarly "Black Monoliths of Al-Kazar", while it doesn't have a woman on the cover, makes it pretty clear that this is a manly book.

Same goes with other books in the Wulfric the Wanderer series like "The Cult of the She-Bear" The crouching woman with a roaring bear behind her? The men wearing the heads of bears / bearskin cloaks? Yup, this is a book that is definitely aimed at men.

Nor is this considered a new thing for Sword and Sorcery.  Behold an old "Conan the Freebooter" book, published in 1967.

Not one, but two scantily clad women on the cover of the book by the legendary Robert E. Howard (and L. Sprague de Camp).

Moffat's book covers look comparatively tame. His book covers have a distinctive sketch appearance, but if you look at the book description for "Shifting Shadows" you will note he is also listed as the illustrator, and the other covers are done in the same style so he must be the illustrator for them too. So evidently he's making his own book covers.

But if you want books aimed at men, honestly you cannot really go wrong with Sword and Sorcery books by either Robert E. Howard or Charles Moffat. Enjoy!

Scientific Arrogance and Ignorance at Work

Men (and consequently male scientists) have often made large mistakes based on assumptions because they are inherently biased, arrogant about their own intellect, and yet ignorant of the things they don't know.

In the words of Samuel L. Jackson's character 'Gin Rummy' from Pulp Fiction:

"Well, what I'm saying is that there are known knowns and that there are known unknowns. But there are also unknown unknowns; things we don't know that we don't know."

And therein lies the problem with certain branches of science, wherein there are too many unknowns and the scientists involved are sometimes just guessing based upon their personal biases.

Take for example Egyptian Archaeology.

We don't know a lot about the ancient Egyptians. Ergo, there is a lot of unknowns, and worse, there are also unknown unknowns.

Thus when archaeologists assert something, I have a tendency to disbelieve whatever they are saying because I have frequently noticed that archaeologists say stuff that is only supported by their biased viewpoint and a lack of evidence.

Let's take for example the following...

A regular person (someone not versed in the history of physics) would probably just look at the above images and think "Hmm. Okay. The Egyptians must have figured out to make a light bulb. That's bizarre and yet interesting."

Except it is NOT a light bulb.

It is something far more significant than merely creating light.

What you are looking at is something similar to a Cathode-ray tube or a Crooke's tube, which were used by early physicists to prove the existence of electrons and sub-atomic particles.

So definitely NOT a light bulb...

But something far more important.

Let me explain...

The Crookes tube (also called the Crookes–Hittorf tube) dates back to early electrical discharge experiments using a partial vacuum, and was invented by English physicist William Crookes, Johann Hittorf and others around 1869-1875, in which cathode rays, streams of electrons, were discovered.

Ferdinand Braun developed the first cathode-ray oscilloscope in 1897, a sort of precursor to the television set.

The CRT became the cornerstone in developing a fully electronic television by 1927.

America's first nuclear explosion occurred on July 16, 1945.

So it only took 70 years to go from discovering sub-atomic particles to splitting the atom using nuclear fission.

The "Tinfoil Hat / Ancient Alien" people out there would like you to believe that Ancient Egyptians had much greater technology than we care to admit, while the stodgy "I wouldn't stake my reputation on it" scientific crowd would never dare to even talk about such things.

Both groups are talking from a position of ignorance, and also arrogance.

They don't know, and therefore they make assumptions. And they base those assumptions on their biases and whatever side of the railroad tracks they've decided to setup camp on. It is basically tribalism.

"I am right because I say am I right, even if you have evidence to the contrary."

The people claiming such Egyptian devices are light bulbs from aliens are the true morons, because they are assuming that Ancient Egyptian scientists couldn't just invent these things on their own. Meanwhile the Egyptologists denying the existence of such devices or refusing to talk about them for fear of damaging their reputations are just as bad, because shunning the pursuit of knowledge or trying to slam the door on the investigation of such devices means they are choosing to willfully ignore historical evidence.

There needs to be an open space in the middle, where people can freely discuss things on a purely scientific basis (without any mention of either crackpot alien theories or damaging reputations).

Which leads me to the idea that perhaps such ideas should be discussed anonymously, so that scientists who are worried about their reputations can just do so anonymously without fear of losing their job or damaging their reputation because they supported a theory that Egyptians may have been a lot smarter than what we give them credit.

The Egyptians did manage to build the pyramids, one of the few man made structures easily visible from space, using rocks so big that modern scientists still don't know how to lift them or cut them with such precision. Do you know of a machine that can lift a 200 tonne rock?

That is the problem. We are still just ignorant.

And every time we ignore that the Ancient Egyptians were more technological advanced than we give them credit for indicates that our arrogance on the subject needs to be corrected.

...

Here's some genetic science for you to think about...

Almost every redheaded person in Ireland can trace their genetics back to Queen Scotia, who according to Irish legend was the first queen of Ireland and Scotland (hence the name), having conquered the region from the tribes who used to live there.

But where did Queen Scotia come from? According to legend, Queen Scotia came from Egypt. She was the daughter of a pharaoh. She brought to Ireland with her the Stone of Scone (upon which Kings and Queens would later be coronated), a stone which scientists have since determined is made of a type of rock not native to the British Isles, but matches the types of rocks found in Egypt.

Now naysayers of the stories will no doubt tell you that there is no way Queen Scotia really was the daughter of an Egyptian pharaoh. She couldn't possibly be. Right?

But then scientists checked the DNA of various Egyptian mummies with red hair and made some startling discoveries... 70% of the redheaded people in the British Isles, mostly in Ireland and Scotland, were direct descendants from Egyptian pharaohs.

So if you're Irish or Scottish and have red hair and just learning this now, congratulations! You're descended from Egyptian royalty!

Honestly a lot of people on the British Isles apparently are... So you're not alone. There's a whole lot of you...

But this just goes to prove several things.

#1. We should never ignore the possibility that ancient myths and legends might actually be based on true events.

#2. When in doubt find a way to scientifically check to see if it is true. Checking the DNA is a pretty accurate way of confirming something.

#3. We cannot just assume things must be true or false based on lack of evidence. We need to find evidence that definitively proves something is true or false. Otherwise we are just dealing with unknown unknowns.

Food for thought!

Rich White Men at Work

 Do you know what the biggest difference is between rich white men and poor white men (and everyone else for that matter)???

Well, financially speaking it boils down to one thing:

Stocks.

Seriously the stock market is the biggest difference between the rich and the poor, of which the majority of wealth in North America is owned by rich white men.

• Jeff Bezos
• Bill Gates
• Mark Zuckerberg
• Warren Buffett
• Elon Musk
• Etc

It is a long list of rich white men, sprinkled with the rare woman like Alice Walton.

Or the rare person who isn't white and male.

And what do they all have in common?

Stocks.

Most of their networth is based on how many stocks they own in valuable companies.

Companies like PayPal, which is basically a bank, and it is mostly owned by Elon Musk.

And here's the rub...

• Stocks go up in value.
• Stocks pay dividends on the company's earnings.
• The government doesn't really tax stocks the same way we tax normal income. It is almost completely tax free.
• If you're rich enough you can borrow against the value of your stocks.

Thus we're talking about rich people who don't pay income taxes like the rest of us, borrow money against the value of their stocks so they never have to cash them in, and they are making hand over fist as the stocks continue to go up in value plus pay stock dividends.

 

There are many types of stocks too.

 

Growth stocks, which go up dramatically over time.

Dividend stocks, which go up and down, but pay you a share of the earnings every year, every quarter, or sometimes even every month.

Growth/Dividend stocks which do both at the same time.

 

And in order to be financially stable many people diversify their stock portfolios so they have a little bit in tech stocks like Google, Apple, Shopify, etc, a little bit in mineral mining (eg. gold, silver, copper, etc), a little bit in ETFs, specific retail stores, etc.

So let's pretend that you invest in growth stocks, and your stocks go up (on average) in value 10% per year.

Put $1,000,000 into that and a year later it is worth $1.1 million.

Wait another year. $1.21 million.

Another year. $1.331 million.

In the USA if you take a percentage of those stocks and sell them then you pay 15% taxes on any profits you made. Not the value of the stocks, only 15% on the profits.

So if you sell $100,000 worth of stock that you originally paid $70,000 for 3.5 years earlier, you made $30,000 on the stock. How much taxes do you pay?

$4500.

Peanuts. You sold $100,000 worth of stock and only paid $3500 in capital gains taxes.

You can also... get this... sell $100,000 worth of your stocks that aren't performing quite so well. Let's pretend some of your stock portfolio wasn't doing so hot and you didn't actually make money off of those stocks.

So you sell $100,000 worth.

Guess how much taxes you pay on those stocks?

Well, if you didn't actually make any money off those specific stocks the amount of taxes you pay is zero.

Yup.

Zero. Nothing.

Your other stocks are going up in value, but you are just selling the stocks that aren't performing that well.

Or maybe they only went up in value say about 1.11%.

From $99,000 to $100,000. So you only made $1000 off of those specific stocks. How much do you pay in capital gains tax?

You only pay $150 in taxes for cashing in $100,000 of your poorest performing stocks.

And you wonder why the rich get richer and the poor stay poor? It is because the rich people don't really pay much in terms of taxes on their earnings, and the poor people don't own any stocks.

Seriously. Do YOU own stocks?

Do you?

Chances are fairly even that you do or don't.

Only 56% of Americans own stocks, although some of them own very little. The other 44% of Americans don't own a single stock. So roughly half of all Americans don't own any stocks.

Only 65.6% of Americans own a home (January 2021 stat).

It is no wonder so many Americans have problems with poverty. Roughly one third of Americans are unable to save money, invest in stocks, buy a home, etc. It is amazing that the poor haven't just risen up and started killing the rich. Buying a gun is so much cheaper in the USA.

The banks don't make it easy either. They charge people fees to buy stocks, which basically keeps the rich wealthy and the ability to buy stocks out of the hands of poor people. Some of the banks charge as much as $10 to make one stock trade. So if you only want to buy $100 worth of stock, but you are paying $10 per trade you've already lost money on purchasing the stock. It makes no sense.

But there are companies working to fix that.

RobinHood in the USA, and its counterpart WealthSimple in Canada, are two apps which allow poor people to buy and trade stocks, but they don't charge such ridiculous fees because the trades are all done via computers. Instead the apps make money by offering premium services while just using the apps with the basic features is free.

In fact in Canada if you join WealthSimple they will even give you two free stocks to trade. Use this link, and get two free stocks to trade: https://my.wealthsimple.com/app/public/trade-referral-signup?code=I30GVG

What you really want to ask yourself is, aren't you tired of the banks taking your money, charging you bank fees, and then giving you almost zero in interest? Isn't it time your money started working for you, instead of just benefiting the bank?

Seriously. The banks just nickel and dime you with fees these days, buy pay almost nothing in interest because the interest rates are so low.

Meanwhile stocks like TXF are going up in value and paying 10.02% in dividends. See the stats below to see what I mean.

You don't even have to know much about stocks these days. You just have to know that if you buy ETFs that your money is being spread around between different companies and the people managing the ETF fund is doing all of the work for you. Just look at the yield below to see how much the ETF pays out per year in dividends and you will realize that certain stocks pay for themselves.

Seriously. There's a reason the rich white men keep getting richer. They're making all of the money off the stock market while the rest of the poor schmoes do all the work.

Isn't it time you got a piece of that??? Make your money work for you!