It's time for a change of pace this week, and what better way to change the pace of things this week than to feature the death-metal band Macabre's cover of "The Cat Came Back"!

Why does the cat keep coming back? Perhaps the cat is the equivalent to a super creepy cyber stalker, which occurs to us because of some really unusual and ongoing site traffic we've noted.

21 visits, and it seems that they still haven't found what they're looking for.

What are they really looking for? Here's a clue from our log of their earliest visits (note the host name and IP address in the image below, since their visits are mixed with others from the same city):

Our working theory is that a combination of guilt and paranoia is driving the unusual activity, which frequently features searches of our site for "chìnn" and "alec". We're considering inventing a guest contributor by the name of, you guessed it, "Alec Chìnn" just so they can actually find the imaginary pot of gold at the end of their own personal rainbow.

Update 19 January 2016: The cat came back again!...

And here we had thought he was a goner!

Update 17 February 2016: But the cat came back!...

He just couldn't stay away. And what a way to spend so much of Valentine's Day!

Update 20 March 2016: Once again, the cat comes back, but since Valentine's Day, the cat keeps coming back more frequently....

Does "super creepy cyber stalker" really cover the bizarreness of it all?

Update 31 March 2016: The cat is a nocturnal creature. The timestamps listed below are Pacific Daylight Time, which is two hours behind the cat's home residence of Madison, Wisconsin.

Judging by what they've read, they completely missed the cake we left out for them, since Blogger's calendar archive only captures the latter portion of the month. Which is a shame because they've given themselves away - we now know who they are. We'll have to serve them some after the next time they visit....

Update: 7 April 2016: We didn't have long to wait.

So we served them some over at their place.

And yes. Everybody knows.

Update 8 April 2016: Another late night! Where does the time go?

Update 9 April 2016: Oh, this is classic - the cat went around the clock! We'll apologize in advance for duplicating some of our site traffic log, but to really appreciate the sheer time investment involved, we really do need to show the last two days!...

They must not have liked the cake. They seem... quite agitated.

Update 16 April 2016: Not to mention both obsessive and paranoid.

Although it looks like it, there may not really be such a gap in between the cat's visits. On the days in between 10 April 2016 and 14 April 2016, we noticed a number of visits from a new visitor originating from the same city, which we suspect is the cat "monitoring" our site using their employer's resources, which we base upon a common pattern that we've seen in their site visit activities as documented above. Unfortunately, that's not yet enough for us to confirm that it is the cat. If so, unless they get much smarter in a hurry, which is pretty unlikely based on all that we've seen to date, we have no doubts that their paranoid obsessions will give themselves away once again.

So we're not going to share those particular site traffic excerpts until we have confirmed their identity. In the meantime, we'll be playing the role of Eisenhower to their Eugene McCarthy, which is perhaps the best analogy for describing the behavior of the cat.

Update 8 June 2016: Today's update from our historic site traffic below overlaps some of the traffic we've previously shared for April 2016, but fills in a portion of the cat's visits that we had previously omitted.

The cat seems quite obsessive, even though we've made a point of not provoking them for over two months. Alas, we may have just posted something that could send them over the edge, given how sensitive they are to even mild criticism. Then again, they now have bigger problems than just being super creepy.

Update 16 June 2016:

Let's pick up the action from 6 June 2016, slightly overlapping what we last covered to make sure we haven't missed anything!

We can confirm that we succeeded in setting the cat off on a new frenzy of activity. In case you're wondering, the post that we designed to send them into conniptions is the one they saw first when they visited our site on 8 June 2016 at 6:18 PM Central Daylight Time (their time, or as our traffic log shows, on 8 June 2016 at 16:18 PM PDT), which they specifically visited again on 16 June 2016 at 12:43 AM Central Daylight Time (or 15 June 2016 at 22:43 PM PDT, as shown in our traffic log above).

Could the cat be having trouble sleeping? You be the judge if we're responsible for affecting their emotional state.

Now, if the cat would just stop being so super creepy!....

Update 16 July 2016: The cat just can't stop being so super creepy!

We haven't seen any traffic from the cat's Madison, Wisconsin IP address since 28 June 2016, but we strongly suspect they are traveling abroad. To find out for sure, we poked the cat and got yet another frenzied response that culminated in what we would characterize from our layman's perspective as a particularly profound case of psychological projection. Better still, it would seem our prediction from 16 June 2016 has come true....

Here's a sampling of the traffic that we're now seeing from abroad. Note the level of obsession in the following screen shot of our site traffic, which is what first alerted us to the cat's travels, where they are continually monitoring one particular post that would be of very little interest to anyone in the nation they're accessing our site from.

They appear to be traveling about, which is likely why we're seeing their activity being processed through different ISPs.

Filling in some of the days in between - note the continuing obsession:

They also appear to be using the resources of the European Central Bank to facilitate their stalking-like activities. There are some really misguided priorities going on here!

Do you think they realize that the fact that we appear to have the ability to drive their frenzies to this extent means that we've rather completely pwned them? What's even more fun is that they've doubled down on their particular brand of junk science, so they've given us even more material to work with!

Update 9 August 2016: We did some additional digging in our site traffic logs to fill in some of the gaps in what we've previously captured. We apologize (again) for any duplication from visits we previously documented.

But hey, at least the first 31 site visits made by the cat to our site between 23 July 2016 and 6 August 2016 are brand new!

As are the 13 visits over 3 hours on 2 August 2016, which brings their total number of visits to our site just for that day up to 20....

Finally, let's close out their trip to Germany by reviewing all the times they used the resources of the European Central Bank to conduct their stalking-like activities. The first three visits are ones we previously documented.

In case you're counting, they stalked our site 15 times on 3 August 2016. So, on just a two day long period, they visited our site 35 times, spanning nearly 10 hours periods on both days. Outside of updates, which we don't do often, we typically post once each day that the U.S. stock market is open. That is one very, very obsessed cat!

Alas, their trip to Germany appears to have come to an end. They have once again returned to their home in Madison, Wisconsin.

This time, our only prediction is that their creepy stalker-like behavior will not end.

But then, if it weren't for their super creepy stalker-like behavior, we wouldn't have considered it worthwhile to take them on!

Update 10 August 2016:

Sigh. This time, they made 6 visits to just 2 pages over nearly 11 hours.

The sad part? It was all just to produce this half-assed "analysis". The even more sad part, if you scroll up, you can see that they are very clearly ignoring a post that they specifically clicked to review very late at night on 15 June 2016 that rather definitively contradicts their claims, which means that they've just managed to tick another category off on the junk science checklist.

The really amazing part? Check out all the time they spent visiting our site over the last month just to produce that effort! How many page visits over how many hours over how many days? And that's the best analysis a Harvard-educated PhD economist can produce after such a time commitment? Wow!

Update 12 August 2016:

We're trying something new. Taking advantage of the comments at Env-Econ, which linked to that crap analysis we previously mentioned, we realized it would be catnip to the cat. So we dropped a couple of comments at the post (sorry John!), where we hope to achieve some much needed behavioral modification on the part of the cat.

Will calling out their persistent stalking-like activities curtail their bad behavior? We'll find out....

Update 1 September 2016:

The end of August 2016 has arrived, and we have to say the success of our behavioral modification experiment would appear to be mixed.

Compared to what the cat's previous manic activity level, we've clearly achieved a reduction in their more-than-one-year-long-ongoing-creepy behavior. But then, 23 August 2016 rolled around and we find that they're still quite obsessed.

Flash forward to 29 August 2016, and we find that they're quite interested in our fourth example of junk science, where so far, 75% of the content hasn't involved their own pseudoscientific practices in any way. Shame they didn't learn sooner, because that particular lesson is one they'll soon find quite relevant.

Update 7 September 2016: With the cat having resumed their stalking activities again, we've opted to attempt another intervention for them to address their creepy behavior. We've given them some required reading assignments, through the magic of URL redirects.

There is a link in the second assignment to some additional material that they need to read before we will consider allowing them to progress further in their required reading assignments.

Update 28 October 2016: Well, they never completed their required reading assignment. Instead, they've made changes to how they access our site. In the excerpt of our site traffic below, we've captured them using the resources of a university to engage in their stalking-like behavior, in addition to a new home setup.

We're going to let them think that they're getting away with it for now. As it stands, we can claim some success in that we've succeeded in both reducing the volume of their stalking-like activities and in making some of their behavior visible to their employer.

Update 23 December 2016: They just can't stay away!

It's really creepy just how obsessed the cat remains with us!

Update 31 December 2016: They just had to visit one more time - perhaps because they've included us in their annual enemies list. (It's pretty bizarre that the cat actually thinks that's a good idea, given the kind of personality traits that go along with the kind of people who have had or who may have enemies lists. Even if one has those kinds of personal shortcomings, it's just not well considered to advertise them by publishing evidence that you share those characteristics.)

Update 22 January 2017: It's a new year, they have a new IP address that we missed in the previous update. And so, the cyberstalking-like activity continues in 2017, with the cat wearing a new mask....

We've been watching Leah Remini's show discussing some of the seamier side of her former church, and we just can't help but see the parallels between the kind of intimidation tactics alleged to be employed by the church under the mantra of "fair game" and the stalking-like behavior of the cat. We have to say that we're really sympathetic to the situations of our fellow journalists, where the main difference between their situation and ours is that while that church employs private detectives to function in that role, the super creepy cat does it themselves. Just scroll up for the proof.

Update 11 April 2017: Guess who's back? Back again?

Yes, the cat's came back! Not as often as before, but they still can't quit their obsessive behavior! The latest site traffic log overlaps some of the previous update from their new IP address.

And it appears that they're making limited use of their employers' resources again.

Update 4 August 2017: Look who's baaack!

Update 22 October 2017: New format for our site traffic reporting, but same old stalking, covering a period from 9 August 2017 through 19 September 2017.

Update 26 October 2017: Was somebody's ears burning?

Update 26 December 2017: We've been sitting on this following site visit for some time - the snapshot below is from a different filtered view of our site traffic, which overlaps their previous visit at the end of October 2017.

Interesting side note - we've discovered that we're not the only site that receives such narcissistic and obsessive attention from this particular visitor.

Speaking of which, for the real reason we've updated this post today, check out how they spent their Christmas Eve!...

Obsession makes one sad and lonely....

But wait, there's more! While we've been doing some cleanup work behind the scenes during our annual week-long holiday, the cat came back again!

The cat's ongoing obsession with us just never stops. We wonder if it would continue if they knew just how close to Harvey Weinstein-level creepy their behavior is.

Update 27 December 2017: Wow! Look who's obsessing again!

Update 30 December 2017: The cat keeps coming back.

Took a day off, but just couldn't stay away.

It looks like the cat has dedicated quite a lot of hours over multiple days just to weakly criticize our analysis of California's employment situation and the data that the state's Employment Development Department generates to track it in near-real time. Sadly, they failed to provide any worthwhile insights into any better approaches that don't involve waiting months or years for revisions that, for state politicians who might like to respond quickly to early evidence of potentially deteriorating conditions before they might become entrenched, would be an incredibly useless and counterproductive exercise. At least we can now also confirm that they do not comprehend Pareto's 80-20 principle either in why serious analysts or observers would choose to pay closer attention to the conditions of the largest state economies within the nation over that of a single, smaller state where the narcissistic cat is employed at a local university.

Update 4 January 2018: Guess who's already failed their New Year's resolution to give up their stalking-like behavior?

Worse, they seem intent on launching into a new frenzy of obsessive activity.

What inspired this latest round of frenzied obsession? Your guess is as good as ours - the best we can come up with is that they were highly angered by our last post of 2017, in which we simply linked to our Examples of Junk Science series since we brought up the topic of falsifiability in science as it related to what we called the biggest math story of the year, where our series coincidentally features multiple examples of the cat's analytical deficiencies.

Other than that, they seem to be really getting themselves really worked up in yet another masturbatory exercise aimed at diminishing their critics through the posting of their annual enemies list. Which this year, appears to also include taking on relatively anonymous people who simply posted mildly critical comments on their blog, even though we would guess that over 95%, if not 99%, of their site's regular readers would never know those comments existed. Gotta puff themselves up to feel big!

Update 14 January 2018: Back again after a fortnight away.

Update 25 January 2018: It looks like we've found the cat using their employer's resources again to conduct their unending stalking-like activities.

In case you're wondering, yes, their ears were burning again. Must suck to be so narcissistic that they cannot bear the concept of anyone even being mildly critical of their kind of "analysis"/"ongoing smear campaign".

Five hours later, they checked in, again, from home....

In between, we made some minor changes to the post that got their ears burning, where we also added a bit of extra information to the bottom. Let's see if they address any of the shortcomings that they've so far declined to even acknowledge.

Then again, that refusal to acknowledge their misconduct also means that they have never disputed that it occurred - we view their whole campaign as a poorly-considered attempt to distract attention away from their bad behavior.

What we did is actually a bit of an experiment - if the cat links to our post in their next smear attempt, they know in advance that extra information calling attention to their misconduct is there, where everyone they might get to click through to our site will see it. Will that deter them? Or might they take the opportunity to finally come clean and acknowledge their misconduct? Or their very creepy and obsessive behavior? It's all a question of their personal compulsion, isn't it?

Update 28 January 2018: Let's see, the cat has been engaged in their stalking-like behavior for at least 132 weeks (actually longer, but we only began documenting their narcissistic, obsessive behavior in July 2015 - just scroll up to confirm our description for yourself).

So yes, the cat's bizarro crap has been going on for over two and a half years. Know what's really scary? We're not the only site that receives this kind of attention from the cat - there are others who might not know of the cat's strange devotions.

Update 12 February 2018: Here they are accessing our site using their employer's resources again:

Well, this last one is interesting. The cat is specifically focusing on a post that really digs into the shared personality traits of pseudoscientists and sexual harassers - particularly the ones that abuse their positions of authority to go after whistleblowers who challenge their misconduct - which is surprisingly timely given the recent zeitgeist involving Hollywood's latest sex harassment scandals, and as an added bonus, addresses how President Eisenhower defeated a powerful rival with similar personality traits (Senator Joe McCarthy) on the anniversary of the latter's launching of his signature smear campaign.

Do you think the cat realizes that the article *isn't* written about him? Or is the cat so narcissistic that they actually think it is?

Update 13 February 2018: We appear to have struck a nerve....

No matter how you slice it, creepy.

Update 15 May 2018: Imagine, if you will, being stalked by a narcissistic individual who dresses like a creepy clown and who repeatedly runs up to the windows of your house, looks in, makes noise, then scampers off to proclaim their "greatness". Then, one day, after they realize that we've called them out for their bizarre behavior, they do it again, behaving exactly the same way they repeatedly have before, only this time, they've dressed up like a creepy French mime. The cat is now using a Proxy VPN to attempt to disguise themselves.

Do you think they realize that their creepy behavior is what is giving them away?

But wait, it gets better! We ran a proxy detection test for the IP address associated with the VPN proxy that they're now using. Check out how it's associated:

This IP address (107.77.207.215) is a proxy connection and is NOT associated with any SPAM/mail blacklists. IPQ's fraud score algorithm has rated this IP address as high risk, scoring 95 out of 100. We are weary of users or transactions originating from this IP address. This decision is based on high confidence due to recent abuse from this connection.

Abuse. Fraud. Sounds about right for the cat.

Update 16 May 2018: The cat is going on quite the frenzy.

Note that the cat is aware that we're exposing their creepy, stalking-like behavior. And yet, the cat is either unable or unwilling to change it. Perhaps we were "closer to the truth" than we previously realized....

Update 28 May 2018: A creeper's gotta be creepy:

Update 28 June 2018: And the creepy stalking continues. Fun side note, the creepy cat might have finally caught on that they had an ethics problem, where they've been falsely representing our views regarding recessionary conditions in California.

Let's update the latest examples of their creepy obsession with us:

It looks like they're still using a VPN proxy to try to hide their stalking-like behavior. They don't seem to realize that its their obsessive and narcissistic behavior that keeps giving them away....

Update 29 June 2018: We're surprised that they're still doing that stalking thing, especially with this incident just in the news - the level of narcissistic, obsessive behavior is certainly similar, and we can completely sympathize with the woman who was being stalked by the individual.

Like the offender in this incident, the cat doesn't seem to be able to either constrain or correct their stalking-like behavior.

Update 22 July 2018: And the creepy cat is back! First, let's catch up on where their stalking-like activity since our last update (the first five entries duplicate site visits that we've previously tracked):

And let's catch up to today....

"Coincident"? Or just more creepy stalking-like conduct? (Yes, that was an intentional pun!)

Update 24 July 2018: They're definitely on a new frenzy. Also seem to be doubling down on their peculiar brand of pseudo-science at their site in the last several days.

And they're now up to 8 straw man attacks on an article that has never said what they've claimed for longer than they've been attacking it. In fact, to repeat an earlier entry, we can demonstrate that they've known otherwise since they accessed our article twice on 27 December 2017, more than 24 hours after we had modified it to better reflect our thinking on the likelihood of California being in recession, where we settled on the data being more consistent with "recessionary conditions" being present within California's economy:

We guess they're going to have to go for "out of context" to try prop up their straw man. To quote cartoonist Scott Adams again, "misrepresenting an opponent’s views... means you’ve lost the debate". But, a creepy cat has gotta puff themselves up to feel big!

Update 24 December 2018: We've taken a few months off from reporting the creepy cat's stalking-like behavior, but since they seem to now be on a new frenzy, it's time to fill in a portion of the gap. Here is a frenzy they went on from 21 September 2018 through 25 September 2018:

In the middle of that, they continued their frenzy of accessing our site using their employer's resources on 24 September 2018:

We wonder if the cat has ever abused their position to direct other members of their employer's workforce to participate in their obsessive stalking-like behavior.

Here they are again in early December 2018:

And finally, here is their new late night frenzy (just for the record, the timestamps are shown in Pacific Time, where times after 22:00 (10:00 PM) correlate to times after 0:00 (12:00 AM) in the cat's Central Time zone.

They are likely gearing up for the annual presentation their perceived enemies list. Funny - we haven't mentioned them at all outside of updates to this post and one other in the past year - the cat's bizarrely obsessive behaviors continue, where it seems they've got to puff themselves up to feel big!

Update 28 December 2018: Want to see how the cat is spending more of their 2018 Christmas holiday?

Oh, and they are now up to 12 episodes in their latest smear campaign/straw man attack. Do they realize that they're providing detailed documentary evidence of their crazed obsession with us?

Update 19 January 2019: But why stop all the obsessive stalking-like behavior in 2019?

Make that 13 episodes for their smear campaign/straw man attack series, which only seems to appeal to the syncophants in their echo chamber. The poor cat must be feeling pretty low to continually have to puff themselves up to feel big in their own mind.

Update 8 March 2019: It's really surprising how little time we spend paying attention to the cat's ongoing creepy behavior, which we're now updating through 7 March 2019. By comparison, the cat spends far more of their time engaged in their stalking-like activity in their obsession with us, which also appears to involve using their employer's resources.

Update 10 September 2019:

The creepiness never stops! First up, here is the creepy cat's periodic stalkings from a very familiar IP address:

And from three others:

If it seems like the cat has diminished its stalking-like behavior, that may be because they appear to have become quite obsessed with disproving speculative comments left on their blog about future soybean prices. Talk about bizarre obsessions!

Speaking of which, guess what? The cat came back, again!...

Update 26 December 2019: Guess how this creepy cat is spending yet another Christmas! And lots of their abundant free moments, often while using their employer's resources, as long as we're catching up since mid-September 2019....

Update 20 January 2020: The stalking never ends! Looks like the super creepy cat may be working themselves up into yet another frenzy to attack their straw man target!

A creepy cat has got to puff itself up to feel big!

Update 31 March 2020: This is the last entry we've seen for the creepy cat, coming right as the coronavirus pandemic reached the U.S. and triggered lockdowns, including the disruption of classes at universities. We suspect that disruption has a lot to do with the cat's "break" from its regular stalking.

We don't know how long the cat's break from stalking-like behavior might last. At some point, we think the very angry and obsessive cat who both learns and forgets nothing won't be able to resist the urge to return, if only because they need to feed the urge for yet another impotent straw man smear attack!

Update 2 June 2021: The cat came back! The following excerpt from our site traffic logs shows their signature behaviors giving themselves away yet again:

How long before the straw man attacks resume?