If You HAVE TO Learn to Code

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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Ladies, Gentlemen, Oxen and creatures of unknown provenance: this is your final warning.

Okay, that’s a little over dramatic. It’s not your final warning, because this kind of disaster is slow-mo and will be playing out over the next ten years, (and the recovery will take longer than that) and I will try to give more warnings, and yes, material help or intellectual help if I’m in a position to do so (which depends on my getting serious about this crap instead of half measures).

But the thing is, what we’re caught in, the creative destruction of a technology (pardon me this use, but it’s true) paradigm shift, has no set schedule. I don’t know when it will hit my industry full on (it’s hitting it, but no one knows when the crucial grain of sand will go, and the entire industry will shift) and I know even less when it will hit yours.

The fact that this destructive construction or creative destruction is being helped by a generation of leftists who, being the result of the long march through the institutions, feel like it’s their actual job to lecture, to shape society, to change humans, to bring about justice for people who look vaguely like people who might once have been oppressed, makes the situation all the more incalculable. It is also the obvious result of the long march, and the fact it was allowed to happen.

In writing and in journalism, as I’ve told you guys before, I suspect that this creative destruction, the crash of the old and the emergence of the new, would not have happened if the people at the top of the old forms hadn’t COMPLETELY forgotten or never been taught what a “job” or “selling” or “clients” are.  I don’t know the other industries as well, though I have friends in both health and teaching, and I know they’re maybe just a little behind us.  And as for tech… HR departments have been making it just as crazy or the word “shirtstorm” wouldn’t exist.  Journalists could flap all they wanted to, if their flapping didn’t actually affect engineers, no matter how competent.

But I don’t know. We have very few centuries of actual recorded primary source history we can check. And the “historians” of the last century have befouled that pool with their ignorant opinions and screeching enough.  It was after all one of the fields taken over. Narrative over truth, etc.  You can catch them at it, if you see the contradictions. And eventually people who care will sift the primary sources for the truth.  Until then we can’t know stuff like this for sure, but I suspect that the sclerosis in thought is part of the change in tech, because it becomes needed for survival.

So, take in account I don’t know all the details, but I know that “the times they are achanging” and despite people’s insistence on thinking I’m an optimist, I’m not.

I’m just a long-term depressive who has therefore learned to evaluate reality dispassionately and past her biases, so she doesn’t off herself or fall into a spiral where she would off herself.  Note “dispassionately.” There are times the light is small and very faint. But if it exists, I take it into account.

In this case the light isn’t small or very faint. I’m no telling you we will win all battles.  I’m not telling won’t win some battles. And I’m not telling you we won’t lose a lot of them, particularly political.

Look guys, unless Trump cleans up voting his goose is cooked. Colorado has just outsourced my ability to vote for president to NY and CA and their crooked vote machines. FL in the last election passed a law letting felons vote, because, you know, that’s the best way to keep your elections clean, amIright?  I suspect there’s madness of this sort all over.

And even if Trump wins, he is at best a very imperfect vessel (they all are, but Trump is basically a NY democrat, old style. Infinitely preferable to new style, but…)

There will be losses, particularly political.

But in this great technological upheaval, in the way things are changing, there is something beyond hope.  Yes, sure, the tech mavens, the dead hand of the old establishment will fight back. They’re doing so. But in the process they unmask themselves.  Now they’re coming out against the first amendment and yeah as you know, against life and liberty. They’ve long been for “happiness on our terms only”.  The long march requires being hidden.  We can see them now. And their faces are repulsive enough to scare anyone still half-sane sober. Which means even people less aware than us will fight back, or try to save themselves.

And technology favors the individual.

One after the other the old, rotten institutions are collapsing.  Sure, they’ll strike back. They’ll even get blood now and then.

The next ten years are going to be a bag of suckage the likes of which the world hasn’t seen in a long time.  And a lot — A LOT — of good people, a lot of our people, are going to suffer with the bad.

So, this is your warning, if you want to avoid maximum pain, if you want to survive, if you want to be here at the end of those ten years and help the rebuilding (and I do. I wish I were younger, but if wishes were horses…)

This is not gloating because I have friends depending on Journalism and university teaching, and a hundred other endangered fields to make a living.

It’s more of a warning: over the next few years a lot of us trapped behind the cultural lines are going to need to find other means of survival. If you’re one of those, and you know if you are, make plans, look around, find alternate ways to practice your profession or find other things you can do to survive and thrive.

(Yes, I am, but not as assiduously as I should be. That stops today. I need to get serious. I’ve been sensing the future and what a mess.)

Ladies, gentlemen, small startled animals, locate your parachute under your seats, get ready for the oxygen mask to drop and above all LOCATE THE NEAREST EXIT.

Because what can’t go on won’t go on, no matter how long it takes for that to become obvious. Remember these things move very slowly and then suddenly catastrophically FAST. You can’t be sure. You will think all is safe now and then suddenly, before you can think, all hell will cut loose. You will think “not me.” But yes, you. No one is safe in this. Either by our action, the counteraction, or just “change” a lot of people are going to lose livelihood and security.

The important thing is not despair, not to go under.  And to prepare if you can.

I want you to stay aware, to keep your eyes open, to watch.  I can’t know your field. I’m not you.  Think through the trends, think ahead, figure out what happens when the skinsuit collapses, when the alternatives become viable, when people challenge the current mode of work, of selling, of service, or living.

And then find an escape route.  The exit closest to you might be behind you. Or upside down. Or it might be through the luggage rack. Stay creative. Don’t assume you have all the time in the world. Chaotic creation/destruction doesn’t hit in any given order. Tech could go next. Or perhaps construction.  You don’t know.  Keep your eyes open. Be ready to completely rearrange your head to accommodate new concepts of “career” and “how we do things.” (TRUST ME that this is the hard part. Please. I know it shouldn’t be, but it is.)

This is particularly important if you’re in charge of a company and others depend on you.

Creatively think through exit strategies and new ways of doing things.  This is really hard, but you must do it.

And then stay flexed, non-panicked, ready to jump.

This might mean anything from starting a new business now to learning new skills.  (Yes, learning to code if you’re so inclined, so long as you know that that TOO is under the same forces of cracking and structural stress. There are still ways of surviving, but they might be inferior to your current skills. So it might not be worth it.)

I can’t tell you what to do unless you’re a writer, and even then, strategies of escape are still being tested and might or might not work. The same for editors and publishers.

BUT two things I know: There’s always a strategy. And this mess is going to hit EVERYWHERE.

Part of the insanity on the left is that they feel the wave of change coming, (even if they can’t think through it.) and it doesn’t accord to their prophecies, and also will take away the ramparts they’ve built over a century.

We who know that history has no arrow will at least be driven slightly less mad.

But it doesn’t mean it will be easy.

Don’t be afraid, be pro-active.

You’d better learn how to swim code do whatever you can or you’ll sink like a stone. Because catastrophic change is no respecter of persons or ideologies.

And the times they are achanging.

 

 

323 thoughts on “If You HAVE TO Learn to Code”

    2. Notice how the big push to allow legal weed is happening from the same people who want to ban pain relief medicines, smoking anything other than weed, etc. A bunch of docile potheads are a lot easier to control.

        1. Exactly. And given his own “choom gang” experience, I suspect Obama somehow thinks it will make everyone “good comrades”

        2. Here’s your government issued Free Pot. And by “free” we mean paid for the ever-shrinking number of people who work for a living.

              1. The measure’s supporters will indeed make trips, but those may well not involve physical movement.

                Like, wowwwwww, dude!

                1. Well we learned that “Vote Harvesting” is a bad thing . . . if it was done to elect a Republican. If it is to keep Cali Commie, it’s a grand thing.

          2. Didn’t Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium subsidize some drug made from an off-world plant to keep the masses under control? Borloi or something like that?

            1. Yes, it came from the prison planet Tanith, where Falkenberg’s Legion had a contract to deal with a rebellion. By that time the CoDominium was in such bad shape that under-the-table sales by the governor of Tanith in cooperation with the Grand Admiral were an essential funding source for keeping the Fleet going.

          1. We get ’em both, with bits of Atlas Shrugged thrown in. They are ALL how-to, as far as the Leftists are concerned.

  3. The question though is whether the result is just “plus c’est change, plus c’est se chose”, “The more that things change, the more they stay the same.”

    1. Kind of, but not that way. It can’t be. The neo-left is not able to adapt. They depend on their vision of their ultimate victory. By prizing competence less than ideology, they have made it impossible for fourth generation to adapt.
      BUT is it possible to have just as venal and anti-constitutional regime emerge?
      Do bears sh*t in the woods? Is the pope– oh, nevermind.
      Yeah. That’s why we must each of us be positioned to survive and THRIVE so we have a say in the future.
      Capisci?
      A republic, if you can keep it. Yes, that means YOU. Now go find your parachute.

      1. The parachute is sort of built into the screen name, since the underworld will freeze before they find a way to completely prevent people from playing poker. Of course if the Dems nationalize healthcare and take away private insurance, I am basically screwed, because one of the first things that they will eliminate for cost savings is paying for needed medicine and treatment of a middle-aged Portuguese Jew with multiple sclerosis (which is a very expensive disease to have); assuming of course I’m not one of the first people marched off by the Ocasio-Omar_Tlab Democrats to what Hillary once called “fun camps”, but will be of course gulags/concentration camps.

        1. “one of the first things that they will eliminate for cost savings is paying for needed medicine and treatment of a middle-aged Portuguese Jew with multiple sclerosis”

          Awww, don’t be such a negative Nelly! Of course they’ll pay for continued treatment. Euthanasia is a treatment, nicht wahr?

          Back before Bush Derangement Syndrome made NPR unlistenable, one of the single smartest comments I heard during the Hillarycare debate was from a guest on there, observing that letting the patient die was always the least expensive course of treatment.

          1. Wait.
            NPR was once listenable? Inconceivable!
            Closest I get to a listenable NPR was KXT in Dallas that played music. Yeah, it wasn’t full NPR but had a lot of the NPR sponsored music shows.

            1. More than that, they even used to play music, actual by gawsh classical music, instead of a non-stop barrage of instruction from MinTruth.

                1. That classical music may come back, as they play it for the people on the beds in the “rest facility” before shipping them off to the Soylent Green plant.

            2. Back in the 90s, it was actually really good. In Washington, even! (Spokane station.)

              It was so far back that Prairie Home Companion was not mostly dumb political attacks described as jokes, though…..

              1. back, even the left made fun of how bad some of their shows were? (recall some skit by someone very left teasing about how boring things could get)

                1. Ours was 90% classical music, Irish for four hours on Sunday, and lots of actually educational stuff; only one or two political shows.

                  1. WWNO was the first I heard, and sorta WWOZ, but WOZ was always a local music and heritage based station. WNO was a mix with classic as part of it. We’d call in and ask for Metalica, and the DJ would “honor” our request with something rocking normally, but occasionally with something like Morning Mood, “This is for the guys at the Bikesmith”

              2. I remember. Blue Monday was on when I got off work. Prarie Home Companion was worth a listen. Thistle and Shamrock, Mountain Stage, and so on. Even the international news was somewhat even handed, on occasion.

                Whereas now…

        2. So we’re probably related at some level. Interesting.
          The reason for MRIs every six months is that they’re half-convinced there’s MS. (But my doctor doesn’t think there is. Though there’s something weird.)

          1. If you don’t mind my asking what bore MRI are they using. The new 3.0 short bores pick up a lot more than the older one’s do. If you want to email about details, you should be able to email me at the email address in my comment details.

              1. Luckily the MS lesions that have been shown are on the small side showed 1 new one that would have shown on the old MRI, but also showed a bunch of smaller ones that hadn’t been on the prior MRI’s. Dr. thinks that it is likely they are older lesions that were simply beyond the resolution of the older MRIs and can now be picked up on the new ones. I actually went through a bunch of testing last spring and through the summer as the Dr. tried to determine if they were from new activity or just old stuff that hadn’t been visible before,

                Good thing is that the small size of the lesions is better as far as long term prognosis.,

                I am just finishing a course of steroids for a flare-up that really became a problem a couple of weeks ago (I think it was slowly coming on, but it finally got my attention about 2-3 weeks ago). I think it is helping, but it usually takes a couple of days after finishing the course, and getting over the side effects, before improvement really is noticeable (at least that’s how it went the prior times I wen through the roid courses, the last one prior to this being about 6-7 years ago as the maintenance/progress-slowing medicine has for the most part been doing its job to keep things fairly stable.

  4. How’s the popcorn industry looking? Because I’m giddy to see McClatchy added to the list of failing media.

    Normally I wouldn’t bask in the misery of others, but their misery is self-inflicted. They’ve demonized, propagandized, and lied their way to Venture Capital prosperity, and the bill has come due.

    When I saw Vice Media employed 2500 people and that they were cutting 10%, my first thought was “2500?? Then 250 is only the first round of layoffs. If you had majored in something useful, you’d realize more heads are going to roll.”

      2. Yeah, the day after he admitted to it. As if “Coonman” wouldn’t remember whether or not that was his costume.

        1. A fellow student said that each person chose his own photo to include in the yearbook page. So, Northam is a lousy liar among other things…

          1. If he chose the photo, isn’t worse if he wasn’t in the picture, because at least if he is in it, he can claim that it was in bad taste but was taken from a “party” where they were trying to attack such depictions and symbolism (it would be a complete lie, but it is the type of lie Democrats grasp at to excuse conduct when it is one of their own).

        2. I saw the following: https://gab.com/Guild/posts/47775964

          Looks like either his “friend” has the same terrible taste in pants (and an identical hair style) or he’s a remarkably lousy liar.

          I’d rather focus on the baby-killing aspect, but the popcorn opportunities are really good. (The cries of “Squirrel!” are deafening here.)

          1. Speaking of his friends …

            A tip from a ‘concerned citizen’ helps a reporter land the scoop of a lifetime about Northam
            The reporter who exposed Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s racist yearbook photo said a “concerned citizen” led him to the story that has prompted widespread outrage and calls for the Democrat’s resignation.

            Patrick Howley, editor in chief of the website Big League Politics, first reported Friday the existence of a photo on Northam’s page of his medical school yearbook depicting a figure in blackface standing next to another person in a Ku Klux Klan hood.

            “It’s very easy to explain,” Howley, 29, said in an interview Saturday. “A concerned citizen, not a political opponent, came to us and pointed this out. I was very offended [by the photo] because I don’t like racism.”

            The tip came after Northam’s comments on Wednesday about late-term abortions, he said. Howley declined to give any further information about his source, citing a confidentiality agreement. But he said it took him just a few hours to confirm that the photo was authentic.

            The source of the tip appears to have been a medical school classmate or classmates of Northam who acted as a direct result of the abortion controversy that erupted earlier in the week, according to two people at Big League Politics, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

            “The revelations about Ralph Northam’s racist past were absolutely driven by his medical school classmate’s anger over his recent very public support for infanticide,” one of the two said. …

      4. Boy, it really sucks when your political enemies reach all the way back to your fricking college days to prove you’re a racist/bigot/homophobe.

        But is sucks even more when you’re a DemocRat and actually -are- a racist who hates women, blacks and gays.

          1. Only if the non-Democrats push it as far as when Kavanaugh was being accused. Which, since he’s digging in his heels I doubt that Northam will get it dragged out at all. Next week there’ll be something else distracting the American populace, and rinse repeat and the next thing you know, it’s 2020.

            1. I hate to say this, but in this case I hope they don’t. Ralphie’s lieutenant is a full stop communist and the situation here on the ground will only get worse if he gets to step in.

                1. At least with less bad, we’d have an ineffective lame duck for the next 3 years. I *like* get-nothing-accomplished government. Keeps their hands out of my pockets and me off the radar.

                  1. Yup. Always been a fan of the government shutdown, too. Just wish we could’ve dumped the Obamacare boondoggle in the two years *before* the shutdown.

              2. Yeah, #2 would not be progress… and then I began wondering if #2 was, shall we say, in on the plot.

                As to the photo, it’s pretty obviously a joke (most absurdly offensive costumed juxtaposition available on short notice, and there was a time when we’d have been able to admit that it’s funny) and if he had any brains he’d have said as much, rather than doing the denial dance while shooting off his own toes.

                1. I’m sure he was. It’s pretty clear by how quickly the whole party has fallen into line that this was coordinated beforehand. Poor Ralphie is so confused, he didn’t understand that the Party eats its own when they become a liability.

                  Yesterday was just embarrassing though. Why don’t you just come out and say, “Man, what a little asshole I was back then! Good thing I learned better in the Army and have dedicated my career to opposing that sort of crap ever since.” True or not, at least it would be defensible and give him a place to stand. His whole, but I have black friends, and anyway it wasn’t really me, and I never saw the yearbook anyway schtick was pathetically awful.

                2. Give thanks for a bullet dodged. At National Review gangblog, The Corner, Jim Geraghty directs attention to:

                  State Sen. Northam spurns GOP offer to switch sides
                  Nov 19, 2011
                  Even as Democrats in the state Senate plot ways to make Republicans share power with them, they might have a more immediate concern: keeping their diminished caucus intact.

                  Republicans have spoken with Sen. Ralph Northam about switching parties, but the Norfolk Democrat said he has no plans to defect.

                  “I guess it’s nice to be wanted,” he said, “but I’m a Democrat, and that’s where I’m staying.”

                  Northam, who’s previously been courted by the GOP, said he was most recently approached about changing sides earlier this week.

              3. And the Washington Compost has covered itself with glory in dealing with Fairfax’s own #MeToo moment. Apparently they found “red flags” so they buried the story. (Amazing just how much more a red flag means when it’s a D in question.)

                The twitter comments are fun…

                Hmm, baby killer racist or baby killer [alleged] rapist? Got any more popcorn?

                1. Notice how this came out AFTER the Governor’s problems, it is almost like they don’t want to risk a Black Governor.

                  1. Throwing shade for the Democrat party? Geeze, I’m so old I remember the Gaslight Media getting burned for covering up the Lewinsky affair.

                    The Washington Post went all-in on Brett Kavanaugh but spiked a similar story about a Democrat
                    If the Washington Post didn’t have double standards, it would have no standards at all.

                    Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax’s office issued a statement Monday rejecting claims by a woman who alleges he sexually assaulted her in 2004, when they both attended the Democratic National Convention.

                    Almost as notable as Fairfax’s denial is the fact that the Washington Post was first approached by the alleged victim more than a year ago and decided not to publish her story. The Post explained Monday that it declined to report the woman’s allegations due to an absence of corroborating evidence.

                    It’s good to see that the newspaper has found a renewed interest in the standard of proof it abandoned entirely when it broke the story of similar allegations of sexual misconduct leveled last year against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. Recall that it was the Post that first got Christine Blasey Ford to go on the record with her allegations.

                    [SNIP]

                    “The Post carefully investigated the claim for several months,” the Fairfax statement said. “After being presented with facts consistent with the Lt. Governor’s denial of the allegation, the absence of any evidence corroborating the allegation, and significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegation, the Post made the considered decision not to publish the story. Tellingly, not one other reputable media outlet has seen fit to air this false claim.”

                    The Post published a slightly different, but mostly similar, version of events Monday: “The Washington Post, in phone calls to people who knew Fairfax from college, law school and through political circles, found no similar complaints of sexual misconduct against him,” the paper reported. “Without that, or the ability to corroborate the woman’s account — in part because she had not told anyone what happened — The Washington Post did not run a story.”

                    [SNIP]

                    … as the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute’s Ted Frank noted Monday, there are fewer red flags in the Fairfax accuser’s story then there were in Ford’s. Unlike Ford, Fairfax’s accuser identifies the exact year and location of the alleged assault. Unlike Ford, Fairfax’s accuser belongs to the same political tribe, and therefore speaks against interest in at least one sense.

                    There are other things that bother me about the Post’s uneven treatment of the Fairfax and Kavanaugh accusers. For example, the paper’s first original coverage of the allegation against the lieutenant governor came only after Fairfax had issued a statement defending himself. Kavanaugh was afforded no similar benefit.

                    It’s fine if the Post passed on the Fairfax story because of a genuine lack of evidence. And there definitely doesn’t appear to be that much to go on, other than the word of a single accuser. But it’s hard to see the Post’s decision to spike her story as anything but politically biased considering how the paper gorged itself on nearly every flimsy and fantastic allegation hurled in Kavanaugh’s direction, no matter how ridiculous, again with no evidence to back any of it up.

                    It’s funny how editorial standards change, depending on the target’s party affiliation.

      5. I am on the ground here in Virginia and can virtually guarantee you that his own party was the source of the story. He became a political liability this week after accidentally telling the truth about his party’s position on abortion (and honestly he has a bit of a fraught history with his party and particularly with the current Lt Gov), so they brought this out to allow them to clean up and start damage control. Also it would allow them to get the full-blown communist Lt. Gov into the seat for almost a full term without that pesky election bit. Which then sidesteps Virginia’s one *elected* term limit allowing Fairfax to potentially spend a full 7 years in the seat. That would be a nightmare.

        I think Northam is vile, I loathe the man, but I also think that if his party wants him to resign, the safest place (for me) for him to be is in the Executive Mansion.

          1. I will say I was legitimately shocked this morning when he decided he wasn’t going to play his party-assigned role and resign.

            If nothing else it counts as popcorn-worthy entertainment. Since my tax dollars aren’t buying me anything or anyone useful, at least they are amusing me for a change.

            1. To add another layer of irony, Northam was heavily backed by Planned Parenthood and supports “abortion” up to and even after time of birth. We just found out about the yearbook picture with the KKK and blackface together. Planned Parenthood founder, Margaret Sanger, openly stated that the purpose of her organization was to promote getting rid of the undesirables, which she called weeds, from society, which expressly included blacks, Jews and other non-whites. She gave speeches to and attended a number of KKK rallies, and photos of her at those rallies can be found if one looks. Nazi’s referenced her and her colleagues by name as inspirations.

              Hillary of course is still proud of her Margaret Sanger award from Planned Parenthood.

              These are simply put, extremely despicable people.,

              3. But Margaret Sanger was apparently well-thought of by Martin Luther King Jr. while he was alive!!! So she couldn’t have been racist, and what you’re saying is a filthy, filthy lie, hater! Misogynist!

                —

                That’s the gist of what I got as a reply during the whole Planned Parenthood sells body parts thing. The people speak as if MLK was an infalliable personage, as opposed to human with flaws and weaknesses and thus could be mistaken or fooled.

                  1. So that means euthanizing black people as societal weeds was not a policy that MLK Jr. favored?

                    2. Remember it was also before Roe v Wade and hat MLK survived that long, and he had soon Planned Parenthood’s mask come off, I suspect he would have been vocal in his criticism.

              4. Yeah, what’s crazy is that when you actually read Sanger, she’s critical of Hitler for not going far enough.

                Batshit Crazy, monstrous, ghoulish, insane…

                No term adequately describes the abyss inside these people.

                2. There’s a filmed interview on Da Tubes. Sanger comes off as somewhere between knickers-too-tight and completely unhinged.

          2. And mine. Better the wounded devil we know than the outright commie who will hold office with a guaranteed free pass to do whatever he wants from the establishment.

        2. The due diligence of the Gillespie campaign over this is quite impressive. As usual, the GOPe commits far more energy and resources into beating down non-establishment people than going after the Dems.

          I know that Dan Bongino had a copy before the election. (He said he couldn’t verify it, so stayed quiet. Arggh.) If the Gillespie people had it, they didn’t do anything with it. It’s kind of like the GOPe has more enthusiasm against the right than against the Dems. Bloody uniparty.

          1. To channel Professor Reynolds, the establishment/country-club Republicans are fine with being the minority party because it allows them to posture without having to do anything while preserving their opportunities for graft and self-enrichment. This of course is yet another reason for why Trump won the primaries and the general election.

            1. They’re going to do whatever they can to ensure that will never happen again. So the establishment Republicans will side with whomever the Democrats put up as long as s/he isn’t too vile and has a platform that will appeal to the userbase.

              That might be Elizabeth Warren, if the rumors I hear of her going to the production-level industries and campaigning now are true.

          2. I know that Dan Bongino had a copy before the election. Say what?!

            There’s the difference between Democrats and decent people. Decent people need to verify that shit is shit before they sling it.

            1. My wife watches Tucker Carlson, who was quite surprised about that news.. I gather he told Dan that if something like that came up again, contact him and they’d do their best to verify it ASAP.

            2. More than that, back before Kavanaugh the Gaslight Media would have shrugged it off and accused the GOP of race-baiting, insisting that what happens in college stays in college.

              What happened here is that they were moving the goalposts so rapidly that they scored an own goal.

              1. “What happened here is that they were moving the goalposts so rapidly that they scored an own goal.”

                I think RES is correct, and it’s the same phenomenon exhibited in the #MeToo movement, which was started to ensnare Republicans (Trump they hoped), but backfired big time when most of the slimy perps turned out to be Dems & leftists.
                They are still trying to have things both ways on accusations against Dems: believe the woman, but don’t fire the guy.

        3. You’ve got to admire a good tightrope walker. He treads the line between “I stand by my party leader” and “I stand ready to replace my party’s leader.”

          Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax breaks silence on Ralph Northam
          Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, D-Va., broke his silence in the wake of a scandal engulfing Gov. Ralph Northam on Saturday but pointedly refused to say his boss should stay as governor, suggesting the state needed “leaders with the ability to unite” Virginians.

          “Like so many Virginians, I am shocked and saddened by the images in the Governor’s yearbook that came to light yesterday. They are an example of a painful scourge that continues to haunt us today and holds us back from the progress we need to make,” Fairfax, who is black, said in a statement issued after Northam’s press conference to discuss the racist photo in his medical school yearbook.

          Fairfax thanked Northam for apologizing for offensive behavior in his 20s and said he has never seen a racist side of Northam. But Fairfax said that cannot make up for these new revelations.

          [SNIP]

          “At this critical and defining moment in the history of Virginia and this nation, we need leaders with the ability to unite and help us rise to the better angels of our nature,” Fairfax said. “I remain committed to serving and helping to heal the Commonwealth moving forward. Now more than ever, we must make decisions in the best interests of the people of the Commonwealth of Virginia.” …

          1. Easy to forget in the Democratic Party storm of condemnation of Northam is that the Democrats as recently as 2010 feted ACTUAL KKK MEMBER Robert Byrd, that Hillary to this day has not expressed regret over her repeated vocal praise of Byrd, nor have any of the buildings named after Byrd been renamed or the SJW’s demanded that his name be removed and all images of him purged from existence. So bad taste yearbook photos that may or may not be evidence of actual racism are more worthy of condemnation of an actual KKK member who was a Democratic Party leader for decades and who is still praised by the Democrats today.

  5. It’s never a bad idea to learn new skills, at any age. There are usually evening courses at whatever the local community college may be. As I’ve advised many folks, if you want to be guaranteed to get a job in any economic environment, learn to weld.

    But really, any new skill can come in handy. Just pick something you find interesting, and will enjoy doing, and go for it.

    1. I would modify that to “Learn to carpenter.” There is no guarantee that we will be left with even a metals based economy. Primary production and recycling of metals are both energy-intensive processes, and the Left is systematically attacking energy production.

      1. “Learn to carpenter.”????

        Okay, but I’m not sure I grasp the purpose.

        (sings) “We’ve only just begun …”

      2. LOL. Yeah. That will work for maybe a few years.
        Tech has never gone back in human history.
        “But what about the fall of Rome?”
        TECH HAS NEVER GONE BACK IN HUMAN HISTORY.
        You can take areas North Korea. But there seems to be a time and space limit on that.

        1. Not completely but there are things/processes that have been lost or were lost for extended periods. Greek Fire for example.

          1. But “greek fire” isn’t the whole of metalurgy.

            Heck, what’s his face the English king with all the wives managed to wipe out a new smelting technique that was almost modern-levels of effective– it had just been designed at a monastery, and…well, you know how he was about that. Was discovered to have happened because they were messing around with the slag pile.

              1. And with that we have a lovely shot at an alternate history. Henry (Duke of Cornwall) the infant son that died at like 2 months instead grows up healthy becomes an heir and Henry the 8th just messes around with the Boleyn girls (and every other pretty young thing withing pinching reach) on the side as was traditional with marriages of state. Church of England stays in the Holy Roman church, Henry doesn’t grab the various abbeys and other church properties. Lots of difference especially likely Henry the IX, plenty of folks with the name FitzRoy and a younger sister married off to Spain… HUGE divergence really potentially interesting. Decent iron almost 200 years earlier to a power that’s about to expand like mad (Unless that’s predicated on Elizabeth?).

                  1. An excellent question Mary, I’d forgotten that he was looting the Abbeys etc for actual spending money instead of just for spite and the land value. Also LOTS of that land was handed off to assorted nobles to buy them off. I’d have to go back and see what particularly he did with the money, who he was paying off as well as figure out which nobles lose out. Still it seems like it would be fun to wander down that alternate, certainly we can muck with enough other stuff to keep Henry VIII and England solvent.

                    1. Maybe he dies younger.

                      Queen Catherine certainly managed to reign decisively in his absence, down to an invasion from Scotland. She’d manage as regent after his death.

        2. Tech has never gone back in human history – for very long, or in a global sense. For periods of time, in some regions, it has gone backwards.

          What has kept it going in Western countries is that there was always a nearby repository of the previous tech level. (Yes, the Arab world was such a repository of the technology known at the end of the Empire. They did very little to expand upon it, however.)

          I’ll agree that globally, mankind is unlikely to regress all that much, even if and when the West succumbs to the destruction of relatively cheap, reliable, and high density energy sources. The East will continue to use and develop such sources.

          But, if the entire world were to follow the lead of, say, South Australia – we could say goodbye to much of our capabilities.

          2. I’d argue the Roman Empire was more of a repository than the “Arab World” and much of the modern Arab world that was such a repository do so before becoming part of the Arab world.

            Spain is maybe the one place Muslims retained European tech, but there are good arguments that the Renaissance in southern Europe owed as much if not more to those texts and individual brought out of the late Eastern Empire during the Latin Kingdom after the Fourth Crusade and those feeling the final fall of Constantinople in the mid-15th century.

            Why the West has been so damned determine to forget half of Roman survived another millennia after the “Fall of Rome” (and they did not call themselves or think of themselves as Greeks…they were Romans and their neighbors considered them Romans) is beyond me.

            1. Blame the “Holy Roman Empire” for the misnomer. Can’t have those pesky Byzantines complicating the Hapsburg’s title.

        3. Tech does not go back except for exactly once that I can think of (the Shogunate’s successful elimination of firearms in Japan), but material availability does routinely. I’d argue a good deal of tech development is material substitution.

          That is where skills like carpentry are valuable in hard times. Timber grows almost everywhere people live so although plastics, metal, or masonry might not be forgotten the loss of access to key materials can happen.

          To use “the fall of Rome” as an example, we now know that Roman town life, complete with typical Roman civic structure built in wood continued in at least one location in sixth century Britain.

          1. Actually, the Tokugawa didn’t so much eliminate firearms as strangled them with regulation. There’s no particular shortage of original Japanese matchlocks today.

            Not to mention that matchlocks were an OK battlefield weapon, but anyone who has shot one (I have) can tell you there was a reason why the Three Musketeers wore swords. Off the battlefield, the blasted things were useless.

            1. “Off the battlefield, the blasted things were useless.”

              Nonsense!!! A well engineered club is never useless.

  6. “FL in the last election passed a law letting felons vote, because, you know, that’s the best way to keep your elections clean, amIright?” So the advocates of stealing other people’s stuff are letting those convicted of stealing other’s stuff vote?

    1. They are also severely restricting the power of employers to do criminal background checks or consider past criminal history, unless directly related to the specific job responsibilities, while not doing anything to limit liability of the employers if they hire a former criminal who then commits a criminal act while in the employment of the employer and which connects in any way to their job. I.E. the employer can get sued for negligently hiring a criminal even though the government bars them from doing the necessary background check.

      2. IIRC, the immigration laws have the same Catch-22: you aren’t supposed to hire illegals, but you aren’t allowed to check their ID … something like that.

        1. Well, you are supposed to ask if they have things that indicate that they’re here legally.
          Like a social security number. And if they aren’t a USC or LPR, you’re supposed to check their visa.

        2. Some states make it so you can’t try to check their ID; that said, you’re supposed to have a social security number for everybody on staff, and when you’ve got 60 guys and five SSNs it’s kinda hard to insist that you couldn’t tell there were Issues.

  8. Think Task Rabbit on steroids*. If someone needs something bespoke, they can ask for it or find a vendor on line. The future will be more individual as stated. Bezos’ genius was figuring out that there was money to be made connecting suppliers with demanders (totally a word). Figure out what you do well, figure out how to advertise it cheaply and eventually the money will trickle in.

    Unfortunately, this is a global phenomenon and as our hostess once pointed out, we’re going to be competing with people all over the world. Not sure how to factor that in.

    *I don’t know if it exists yet but imagine a place where you can get just about any digital service (including some chunk of code that adheres to an interface) or bespoke craft/piece of clothing/toy with the click of a button. Hate invoicing people? Bob in Peoria will do it piece work. Want a Dr Who Scarf? Paul in Davenport will make one for you. Need insurance for 90 days while you try something new? We can get you three quotes in five minutes.

    1. Eventually yes, but I suspect that Democrats will do their best to criminalize as much of this as possible, and tax it death if they can’t outright ban/criminalize it. It is going to require constant vigilance and effort to fight the effort to impose socialist tyranny.

    2. One thing that will need to be addressed for this to work is to get around the “operation chokepoint” aspect of it; i.e. the refusal of any of the e-wallet or credit card companies or banks to allow the transfer of funds necessary to pay for goods and services through on-line commerce. We are seeing this happen already, as various non-leftist efforts are losing access to PayPal, Visa/MasterCard, etc. This will be a huge hurdle, as such businesses are highly regulated.

      1. One lesson from history is that government attempts to choke off business by regulating currency pretty much never works. People will find a way to pay for stuff they want. Which often hurts the government trying to put the controls in.
        One point of Adam Smith’s was that the exchange of goods and services for a profit is what people naturally do. It’s better for everyone if you just let them get to it.

        1. Absolutely. Part of my PSA; The three things that never work: Prohibition, Socialism and Appeasement.

          1. PSA – Needs to be put on an auto-play loop on every media station in the world.
            Never gonna happen, though.

        1. I’m beginning to think we’ve failed to recognize the threat. The threat is not confiscation. The whole point of the “red-flag” laws, and things like the SAFE Act in New York isn’t to confiscate the guns; it’s to make sure you can’t practice without arrest, you can’t use them against criminals or hired mobs like Antifa without being charged instead of them, and you can’t pass the skills, weapons, or attitude down to your kids because they won’t understand why they should risk learning them or keeping the tools.

        1. Their name is the only thing I need to know about them. 99.9% of those who support the Second Amendment will also staunchly support the First. (Only reason I don’t claim 100% is because nothing’s totally 100% in politics and there’s always an outlier).

        2. I figured it was one of the processors they sprung up after operation Chokepoint would be the ones to work with Gab and, I suspect, SubscribeStar.

          The Left’s biggest mistake will be forcing us to develop a parallel infrastructure. Each piece of it removes that much more of the soft power they rely on.

    3. The global part is part of it. It means we’re gonna hurt, in the first world. But probably not for a while, because other countries are slower on the uptake. Hence, start now.

    4. *noods* The gig economy. My daughter and I just handed off one of our independent-publishing clients to another local author friend desirous of being a marketing coach for the innocently-newly-independently published. She’s good at the social media stuff, and knowledgeable about what it takes, once you are in print . She only needs to be on a retainer for a couple of clients, to cobble out a decent income stream.
      (I had a client with a real estate blog, for a good few years – he paid me for two posts a week, of exclusive materiel for his blog – and over time it gave me my walking-around-money. Raised his discoverability, generated a small income stream for me; what’s not to like?”

  9. I started my (second) career writing FORTRAN. I remember the introduction of that new-fangled thing called a “mouse”. I’ve used 7 computer languages over the years, and I realized early on that I had to learn a whole new way of doing things every 5 years, going from punch cards to line editors to IDEs and GUIs, from pixel pushing to dialog boxes to PhotoShop, and from Structured Programming to Object Oriented to Cloud Computing, and from spreadsheets and simple math to AI.
    I believe it was Elon Musk who told a gathering of teachers, “I believe teachers should be paid a million dollars a year. (wild applause) Unfortunately I’m only going to need about a thousand of you, (stunned silence)”
    I try to be in the thousand category in what I do.

    1. Elon has a point. We don’t need $20,000 a year colleges. We could replace most of the luxury university experience with a combination of high quality on-line courses and local tutorial/resource centres.

      As for programming, too many nifty languages, too little time. But I’m thinking with all the holes in C/C++ there may be a need for the better code of Ada and Rust.

      1. Yet another reason that Democrats are so intent on destroying alternate education methods (such as charter schools and other non-traditional child and adult education). The drive for “free universal per-school through college” (which of course is not free as the money to pay for it will be confiscated from us) has less to do with a genuine desire to improve the lot of people and more with the power that comes from complete control over the financial aspects of the education system. Through that control, they can dictate who can study what, what may or may not be said in the classroom, and who is entitled to teach. It is why they fight home-schooling so much. They view the education system the way Mao and Stalin did; as a tool to teach people to be widgets whose sole purpose and devotion is to enthusiastically serve the state and its Dear Leader(s).

      2. As for Ada, would it were so, but I don’t see it. I guess I missed Rust. So much of what I do these days uses opaque cloud libraries that no one except the DoD bothers to look into. With Cognitive Neural Networks (the real CNN), nobody even knows how the code does things. See https://techcrunch.com/2018/12/31/this-clever-ai-hid-data-from-its-creators-to-cheat-at-its-appointed-task/. Not quite as scary as the headline makes it sound, but in AI we do have the phrase “detecting snow” that grew into AI jargon the same way “bug” grew.

        1. I had a bug in my hardware once.
          No, really.
          It was a very early disc drive in an industrial setting.
          When it stopped working, we opened it up and found a cockroach inside.

          1. A cockroach! That must have really messed things up. IIRC the progenitor bug was a fried moth found by Grace Hopper and her team.

      4. We could replace most of the luxury university experience with a combination of high quality on-line courses and local tutorial/resource centres.
        Or a decent old-style high school.

    2. Only 7 languages Frank? I’d bet its more. I’ve gone through coding at systems level in that many operating systems in my career :-). I think I counted languages at something like 16 (not including various assembly languages, that adds another 1/2 dozen or so). If there is one thing working in tech has done it’s made me able to learn new tech stuff. Because it’s been changing rapidly (and sometimes randomly) throughout my 35+ year career. I wonder if this is what it felt like to be an aeronautical engineer who started his career in the early 1930’s? Except I think our changes have been 6 -7 orders of magnitude not a paltry 2-3.

      As much as I have a bit of schadenfreude for the assorted laid of news folks, I also feel for them. It really sucks for a gig to end and the older you get the harder it is to pick up and go a new direction. They chose to be buggy whip designers as Henry Ford was starting to crank out model T’s. On top of that they’re not even particularly good buggy whip designers. I saw one tweet where one of the laid of people had a rolodex full of contacts. A rolodex? How retro 🙂

      1. I think you have me beat Tregonsee314 although I may have missed a few assembly languages. Of course it’s my second career. First career was scuttled by proto-SJW movement. I intend to go back to writing when I get more time, Yes, Sarah, I know, I know, but as George Hamilton would say, “It’s what I do.” Early on in my career, I remember seeing guys who thought they could continue to do the same thing for 20 years. Wasn’t going to happen. I have taken time off from coding to run things here and there.

        1. Frank, I think you are selling the changes you’ve had to deal with short. My computer career was right at 35 years. Just off the top, I counted over 12, & I started late, never programmed on cards, teletype but that wasn’t professionally. Never developed at the assembly level. Debugged & read it, but never worked there. I also never got into online programming.

          I remember being told my generation needed to be prepared to not expect to work for the same employer their entire career, we’d be lucky to stay in the same field. Not true for hubby, he worked same employer, same job for 35 years (not that there were a lot of job choices). Me. Over 40 years, nine, (10, if you count the very brief attempt at self employment) employers, two careers.

          Not getting any better.

            1. I was never that lucky …

              If you count employers’ that way, then I’ve had 11. Now note these are employer’s since HS. Including every part time job during colleges (which there were three sessions). Since settled into the final long term career, there have been 4, middle two didn’t change what I did. Would still be with them except the company that bought us went bankrupt.

              OTOH. My sister. Also a engineer/programmer worked for the same employer but changed jobs every 18 to 24 months for 25 years.

  10. I understand the schadenfreude of throwing “Learn to code” back at those folks, but if they want a serious way to make a living, take up plumbing. People always need a way to get of their waste and clean things. Indoor plumbing did put those (mostly female) water carriers out of work. Probably can’t have that sort of change today, so plumbing may be safe from the SJW mob even if it makes those elite city folk uncomfortable to have someone who actually works with something other than a keyboard in their houses,

      1. You miss the point, you only have to shovel shit when the plumbing fails. A properly designed and maintained septic system ensures that you never need get down and dirty with the waste matter.

        1. Except no matter how well you design and plan it, then some idiot mandates low-flow toilets (and subsidizes the even lower-flow two-button toilets with the tiny diluting flush for urine-alone), never thinking about what percentage of flush water was baked into the assumptions about moving the solid matter downstream.

          I remember when the toilet plunger was an implement in the garage you had to fetch on rare occasion, not a fixture next to the toilet.

          1. After a certain point, the gods* get involved and then 99% of politicians and regulation makers become expendable… Not that it does much good for those that are left. I very much hope it does not get to that point, but my pessimism tends to strike at the darndest times.

            *:of the copybook headings

        2. I reckon if they do as well at plumbing as they do at journalism we’re all back to outhouses within a decade.

          Because you know they’ll insist any problems are not a result of their inability to properly design and maintain a septic system, it is that it is more “natural” to experience the great outdoors when we poop.

            1. You say that like it’s a bad thing.

              Hard times make sure you only have useful people around. I worry than I’m on the margin, but I’ll work my a** off to stay on the useful side of the line even if it is only by a millimeter.

    2. I recall during the media/dnc/sjw(BIRM) take-down of Joe The Plumber, some commenter (evil right wing lady iirc, or a Camile type who occasionally makes sense) stating the two millionaires she knew personally were plumbers.
      Laundromats were also one of the easiest and surest ways to making millions. I knew a guy who had one . . . he paid someone part time to come in every night, to clean and lock up and at 6am it the alarm system automatically unlocked the doors and turned on the lights. Open for Biz!

    3. Plumber, Electrician, Finish or Framing carpenter, Tiling/Stone work, maybe Masonry. But that’s serious physical labor (especially Masonry and stone work). And some of those take serious physical strength. When we built a house in the early 1990s my father in law offered to build our chimney and tile and other decorative brickwork. One catch, he would provide the materials and his labor, but the mixer and the labororers stayed at the paying site(s). My wife and I were the labor. I (a relatively in shape 30 year old) was worked into the ground by a guy in his late 50’s. He could pick up a piece of 8″ flue pipe (75-80 pounds of material) and happily one hand it into place. I had to grab those things with both arms held close to my body to bring them to him.

      I think our friends from the various news organs that are getting funemployment opportunities would find any physical labo a stretch even if they hit the gym on a regular basis :-).

        1. One of the more valuable books in my stash is volume 1 of Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking, followed by Carpentry and Building Construction (Ferrar and Hutchins, if memory serves).

          Computers (usually attached to an integrated circuit tester) kept a roof over my head, but improving and furnishing that house meant those books were critical.

          1. I was a bit young to learn carpentry from Grampa Pete, though Dad (son in law) taught me a chunk.

            1. One of the most frightening things I have realized is how head and shoulders my knowledge of basic handyman stuff is above much of my generation and especially those after me.

              But until I got serious about learning some woodworking a few years back, I was at the “I can hang shelves and patch a hole in sheetrock” level at best.

              1. We’re far enough out in the boonies that if you don’t have handyman skills, you either need a fat checkbook or a whole lot of luck. One couple I know of is in the latter portion, and I’m pretty sure they’re running low. OTOH, in a situation requiring choosing priorities, they can be counted on to make the worst choice. Every. Damned. Time. They broke our giveadamns several years ago…

      2. From my experiences last summer, the tradesmen are busy as hell and can use people at any skill level. The landscape contractor didn’t need much help for my small job (started talking in March, but he wasn’t free until November) while his much larger competitor couldn’t find the time to even talk about my project. Plumbers were busy as hell, and so was the custom cabinet shop in town. The biggest problem these guys have is a shortage of workers, and not just the skilled guys.

        .

        1. Wells yes, are are trades like machinists. Of course people are pushed away from those and told “they must go to college and get a four year degree” because not going to college takes away a big part of the leftist indoctrination machine, as well as the government funds gravy train.

          1. Roughly half of the courses for a traditional college STEM degree are liberal arts fluff intended to produce a more “well rounded” graduate. Translation: highly paid busywork that pays the salaries of a marching army of professors while doing their level best to indoctrinate the students into right thinking liberalism.
            Another 25% of the coursework is designed to bust out the less dedicated students thus leaving them degree less but still with heavy student load debt.
            The remaining quarter of courses actually have some book application to the discipline the student actually intends to pursue.
            For the most part, all a four year degree does is demonstrate to a potential employer that you might actually be trainable into a job they need filled.

            1. Yes. Kid has a chemistry degree. At the time he was in school there were 3 labs locally he could hire on with. All 3 were purchased by bigger fish & have disappeared out of the area.

              Where he works, making cabinets, moved him to supervisor, something they normally don’t do internally, because he has his degree; well that & his Eagle might have helped. But a friend who helped him get the job, never could get promoted to supervisor over the 8 years he worked there; the friend doesn’t have the degree. Kid moved up in less than 5 years.

              Knowing who is involved, I can with no qualms, fair or not, it was the degree.

            2. Yeah, there was a bit of fluff even in 1970-4. 2 semesters Sociology, 2 Music Appreciation, and 2 Astronomy as a technical elective. Oh yeah, 4 semesters of Phys Ed. Protip: never do a session of rapier if you are severely hung over.

              There were also non-required courses (Practical Astronomy, Music & Electronics, and Music Theory), though the latter two were for a possible career building/running a recording studio. Didn’t happen, but they were interesting.

              Theoretical and Applied Mechanics was supposed to be a flunkout course (I was an EE), but they dropped the requirement just before the drop date. I kept going, since I had a solid A going. It actually helped a bit, but not in professional work. If a house renovation gets intense, the TAM can help one understand the structural bits.

              Most of the rest were useful.

              12 years later, I got my MS and focused tightly on what I needed. I had to take 2 quarters of a math course that was barely useful, but I was able to keep most of it beneficial to me. (Except for programming; the school said they offered a C course (late 1980s), but the only thing I could get was Pascal. Way too restrictive for me…

              1. Keep iin mind that the “fluff” was once the primary purpose of a college degree. Used to be that if your family could afford* to send you to college your living was pretty much assured. The purpose of a college education was to enable you to enjoy things beyond making a living — art, music, philosophy, theatre — to live a full life in its traditional sense.

                Like so much else, of course, Progressive termites bored into those courses and rendered them too flimsy to support any serious thought.

                *not just tuition, room & board but also opportunity cost of four years spent not earning money

                1. I would go further and say that the Liberal Arts were designed to give the first son of a titled family enough of a thorough grounding to be an effective Lord, and the younger sons a career in law or similar should they not go into the Regiment or Royal Navy.

                  1. Oops – I forgot to add: College also provided far-flung social connections at a time when travel was difficult. Sam from Chicago might not know anybody in New York, but when his business sent him there he’d find plenty of fraternity brothers for recommendations and references. Less time spent integrating into distant social networks paid for itself.

            3. I’m working on a degree in Finance right now through UMUC. All online. The finance part, being more quantitatively focused, means less opportunity for SJW-preaching. On the other hand, I was highly discouraged by the number of people in one “personal and financial wealth management” class advocating for higher taxes on “the rich” because “they can afford it.” I think–I HOPE–that that is merely ignorance speaking, and that they applied the lessons learned in that class, but I doubt it.

              On the other hand, going to all-online, or mostly-online classes, like you used to see in SF of the 80s, might do something to alleviate the “protest as social time”/performative outrage thing. Or it might not, we’ll see.

              One of the discussion questions for my class this week was about telecommuting and telework. I brought up the fact that trash would still have to be picked up and pizzas delivered and the physical infrastructure maintained, even with an increased drive towards telecommuting. That’s an in-person class, so it’ll be interesting to see how my classmates respond.

              1. “advocating for higher taxes on `the rich` because `they can afford it.`”

                Not only can the rich “afford it,” they can afford to avoid those taxes, either through relocating, investments that incur lower rates of taxation (e.g., tax-free municipal bonds, establishing “non-profit” foundations), using tax loopholes (both by paying clever accountants and tax lawyers to find those loopholes and paying lobbyists/politicians to create such loopholes) and a variety of other dodges — all legal, all moral.

                For example, I put $1B into establishing the Wallaby Trust Foundation (WTF), dedicated to funding research into improving lives in the Third World. RES, Beloved Spouse and Daughtorial Unit will be corporate officers, because who better to see that WTF’s purpose is carried out properly. The Foundation sponsors fact-finding tours for the corporate officers, visiting such remote and exotic locales as Bali, Bora-Bora, Calcutta and Paris. WTF maintains a private jet to ensure Foundation officers can travel securely and maintain communications with WTF headquarters. For similar reasons all officers will be put up — at WTF expense, a deductible cost of Foundation oversight — only in first class accommodations. Fund-raising dinners and trips to various resorts for fund-raising and donor conference purposes would also all be at WTF expense. While corporate salaries would not be particularly generous, the need for the Foundation to provide suitable housing, clothing, meal and expense stipends for the officers should be obvious.

                A class project analysing the tax avoidance structure of the Ford Foundation or the Kennedy Family Trusts might open a few eyes (or at least, those not deliberately squeezed shut.)

            4. That “well rounded” bit used to be why you WENT to college. Back when a “liberal” education meant “classical liberal”.

      3. Indeed – I am having a bathroom renovated by Local Handyman Guy – who is not officially licensed at anything – but he is multi-skilled at carpentry, tile work, painting, installing basic electrical and plumbing fixtures, and is a perfectionist.
        He has more work in the local market than he can get to readily. Everyone knows him, and trusts him personally. I get a break on his pricing for work, since I am willing to assist (demolition, cleaning, painting, wall-paper-hanging and general aid).
        I wish that I had been permitted to do wood and auto shop classes in high school when I was of the appropriate age. But it was a sex-based thing when I was in HS. Girls did home ec, boys did shop. Useless, pretty much – I already knew how to cook and sew.

        1. That was the one thing I appreciated about kids HS. They still have a shop that everyone takes at least 4 months withing the first 2 years. They can then choose to take it more last two years. They even build electric go cart type race cars & race them their Jr & Sr years, from scratch. Only the instructor’s car & one private car don’t get scraped at the end of the season.

          OTOH the school has dropped any type of sewing. Not sure about cooking, don’t remember if they had a culinary option or not.

          Yea. Home Ec didn’t do much for me either. Just ask family. Cooking is so not my thing. I can sew. But honestly it is not the least expensive route, unless you are into the fancy stuff, which we aren’t. I also knit, crochet, embroidery, macrame, etc. We can’t wear knits. Only need so much of the latter & it doesn’t pay to do it for pay; you MIGHT make the cost of your supplies.

          Ask me how I know. Guess you could call that my 3rd career. Granted that was long before Amazon, let alone Ebay or Etsy. Also, getting paid for it made it work, NOT fun.

          1. re: Sewing.

            Used to, not sure if still true, you could buy off the rack (or at used clothing stores/estate sales), rip the seams and reassemble the garment to something that fits like it was made for you. Quicker, cheaper than working from pattern.

            Yes, there are limits – if your hips are where your butt should be, or you’ve an extreme waist-to-crotch distance (either way), or a barrel chest this isn’t going to serve you as well — but off the rack obviously isn’t working for you, either, in such cases.

          2. Have you looked at the cost of off the rack SCA outfits for us BIG people?
            Sewing is needed. Of course I go overboard, everything from a 1800 chain stich to Singer 19, to Leather machine. All cast iron frames.
            Brut force and ignorance sewing but it fits and works.

      4. When I moved to TN, there was a couple-week stretch after I got hired at the warehouse, before I began it. I spent that stretch in the gym, working hard every day at getting in aerobic shape… and I needed it! I wasn’t in terrible shape before, but there’s a difference between commuting a couple miles by bicycle to the shop and back each day and having to work on your feet all day at full tilt. I still spent my first week basically getting some dinner in my face, and then faceplanting on the bed and not moving until it was time to get some breakfast in and go to work (okay, more than a few hot showers were squeezed in, too.)

    5. FYI basic plumbing no longer needs an expert. PEX with either crimp-on or various styles of compression and push adapters has overtaken copper and sweating. Drainage, waste, and vent piping is all screw or glue PVC. Supply piping is easy. DWV piping requires more knowledge, the basic being- shit runs downhill. The vents are necessary. As are the traps unless you enjoy raw sewage smells….

      City plumbing involves code enforcers. I don’t do plumbing for a living because the nearest city requires plumbers be licensed. And I was told I would never get one since all licensing tests are administered by- local licensed plumbers who want you to work as an apprentice for 5 years before you can take the test. And most of the paying business is there. Out here in the country everyone does their own.

      1. The latter is why I skipped on the plumbing business years ago. I was a steamfitter’s apprentice and looked into it in my twenties.

        Nowadays, the jobs are going begging in some places because they can’t find anyone *willing and able* to do them. Prices have gone up. Bur finding folks who are willing to show up sober, work hard, charge honest, and do it all the hours the clock has ’till the job is done is getting hard. Instilling a good work ethic in children is a severly overlooked lesson, in my book.

      2. The county lets you do most everything on your own and get it permitted. I did a pumphouse (contracted the well) and did the building construction and the interior wiring. I’m not very good at plumbing and the well is 300+ feet from power and the water line, so I contracted out the 1-1/4″: PEX feed and the trench electrical. If I had been willing, I could have done that. IIRC, PEX tools at the Home Depot level stop around 3/4″.

        The state fire marshal started insisting that gas heater installation had to be by a licensed pro; not the case in 2005. I assume a few people did something really stupid. I had to get a PE complete the ground mount design for the solar array and contracted out the hole/concrete portion, but the rest is me, including the damned trench electrical. Only 100′ this time.

        It cost a fair amount of bucks to get the permits, but it’s pretty hard to hide a 3600W solar array. They don’t ask about electrical circuit additions in the barn/shop and I don’t tell.

      3. WordPress Delenda Est! Ate my comment.

        When we did a new well, I had to get permits for the electrical/plumbing and the gas heater. (The well drilling is a separate issue, and fairly easy at the residential level.) I did the building construction (no permit needed) and the interior wiring. I didn’t have the time or inclination to dig a trench for electric and plumbing (300′ worth), so those were contracted out.

        I could do all the work myself except for the gas heater. That changed since 2005, so I assume somebody screwed up big time.

        The solar system needed a professional engineer to sign off on the mount. I had a canned design, but the PE added more weight to deal with a higher wind and looser soil than the original. I contracted the construction of the mount; but the rest is all me. That trench is only 100′, so I did all of it.

    6. I don’t think of “learn to code” as a literal injunction. I’ve always seen it more as a “learn something useful” response, which is how they meant it to coal miners.

      Of course, they fancied what coal miners did as obsolete and their clickbait, leftist reinforcing articles as the single most important thing in the world.

      I’m also enjoying #learntocoal.

  11. “I have friends in both health and teaching, and I know they’re maybe just a little behind us.”

    They’ve been eliminating teaching in favor of instruction & indoctrination for (at least) a generation now. Teachers don’t teach, they merely present approved course of material.

    Yes, a few teachers cling bitterly to their calling, but thanks to unions and certification requirements those are largely relegated to private sector schools, those poor refuges of those who believe schools are for the benefit of the individual, not of society.

    1. When mom got her minor in education in the early 70s, almost none of it was teaching– it was “classroom management” and such.

      1. Do not get my mother, who has retired from teaching twice, the second time at two months shy of 80, started on “schools of education”.

        If you get her talking she thinks education should be an apprentice system. She’ll even tell you that’s what her degree essentially was. Sure, you didn’t student teach until your senior year, but every semester you were in a local school working in and learning some aspect (this was late 50s/early 60s). You learned from teachers, librarians, etc. Even most of the professor types at the uni had taught in schools.

        Now days ed students show up their last semester to student teach and do less hours as student teachers than she did even though unlike her and her peers they haven’t been in the school every semester for four years. Their profs haven’t seen a primary or secondary school’s interior since they were 18.

        She thinks as a group they are less than useless.

        1. The problem with the old system is that potential teachers got into the classroom early enough to decide “oh, no, no way” & change careers without investing a lot into the process. Now, by the time they’ve hit the actual classroom they’ve got to much sunk into the process to switch. Hubby fell into the former category. Math major, figuring on teaching, late ’60/early ’70, got into a math middle school class for student teaching … decided that career was not for him. He got out. He’s good with kids, just not in a classroom setting. Well guess it’s not so much the kids, more the adults one must put up with. He really doesn’t do well with the BS & he doesn’t hesitate to not be quiet about it.

        2. My great-aunt, a couple of decades ago, thought what was then (and now) Southern Connecticut State University had been much better when it was New Haven Normal School.

      2. I recall Zeb’s rant from TNotB. Personal experience (mine and BIL who’s a retired teacher) doesn’t contradict any of it.

        1. Sister is a teacher. She wouldn’t contradict any of this either. She’s got this year & next to get through, then she’s done. Provided they figure out the insurance portion … otherwise, they are set. All 4 kids out of the house & financially stable. Everything else in place.

  12. “the “historians” of the last century have befouled that pool with their ignorant opinions and screeching enough. ”

    “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”

    1. I fondly remember respectfully debating whether FDR knew beforehand about Pearl Harbor with a US History prof. It was all about research and finding actual evidence and logic, nothing about feelings or ideology, Also I remember learning about the Black Legend and the White Legend in Latin American History. Again the debate was about facts, research, and logic. Sadly I doubt that kind of education exists at my alma mater any more.

      1. “the debate was about facts, research, and logic.”

        They’ve fixed that for us.

        THE LEFT STRIKES WHERE IT HURTS–DEBATE
        A pair of Utah high school seniors lost a debate round because they read quotes from Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro and clinical psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson, who were deemed “white supremacists” by the judge.

        Layton High School senior Michael Moreno and his debate partner, whom The Daily Wire will not name, were participating in a round with a topic relating to immigration. The specific topic of the round was “Resolved: The United States Federal Government should substantially reduce restrictions on legal immigration.” …

        Instead of arguing in the affirmative, Moreno told The Daily Wire, the other team read a “slam poem” about how terms like “legal” and “illegal” are dehumanizing. In documents provided to The Daily Wire, these students quoted from numerous professors critical of assimilation and the notion that immigrants must act American to live “the good life.”

        “Promises of citizenship and the ‘good life’ force non-normative subjects into a slow death, working towards the unbelievable goal of the American dream,” the students said. …

        1. “…who were deemed “white supremacists” by the judge.”

          And those students learned that there ain’t no Justice when the judge is bought. Which is a lesson they will likely never, ever forget.

  13. “Because catastrophic change is no respecter of persons or ideologies.”

    Our culture has seen many “paradigm shifting” technologies arrive and crash the entire social structure in living memory. My grandfather was born into and remembered the time before the internal combustion engine got stuck on wheels and called a car. Before -electricity- was even a thing. Before mass production, antibiotics, aircraft, all of that. He lived to see men on the Moon. I remember him talking about it, how much everything had changed in his lifetime.

    And Clan Phantom came through it all, by the Grace of God. Mostly because Grandpa Phantom was smart enough (and tough enough!) to ditch Scotland for the Colonies back at the turn of the Century. He saw the handwriting on the wall, Scotland in 1900 was pretty well fucked. If you didn’t have money already, you were not going to get any. The only life any Scotsman was going to get was overseas.

    Two World Wars later, plus the Cold War and whatever the hell war we’re in now, Scotland is still fucked. Nobody is emigrating from anywhere to get -to- Scotland. There’s nothing going on there, no forward motion. Everybody is either on welfare, or fighting to stay off it. All the industry left and went to China 30 years ago.

    So the history of the 20th Century is CHANGE. Constant, relentless, chaotic upheaval. And the one, single rock that did not move during all that time was Western Civilization. England is the oldest remaining -country- on Earth, followed by the United States, followed by Canada. All of Europe fell and was remade TWICE in the 20th Century.

    The current upheaval caused by computers and networks is small beer compared to what happened in the 1890s with the shift in manufacturing and weapons of war. The Gatling Gun, 1861. Center-fire cartridges, 1866. Dynamite, 1867. The Maxim gun, 1884. The Ford Model T, 1908. Combine all that together with a minor contribution from the Wright Brothers, Dr. Tsiolkovsky in 1908 and Dr. Goddard in 1912, and you get The War To End All Wars, aka The Great War. WWI, 1914 to 1918.

    That was the death rattle of Feudalism. Killed a lot of people.

    Fast-forward through the 1917-1996 lifetime of the United Soviet Socialist Republic, put the hammer down and drive past the rise of China as THE manufacturing powerhouse of the world, and here we are, finally, at the death-rattle of Fascism/Communism. The notion that people are stupid and must be controlled by an all-seeing, all-knowing government has FINALLY been brought into question.

    I believe that it finally happened this week. https://phantomsoapbox.blogspot.com/2019/01/punch-terf-made-lesbians-angry.html
    Radical Lesbians gave a talk at the Heritage Foundation. This is an historic occurrence, my friends. The Grrrls gave a speech about how the Big Government of their dreams was turning on them and grinding them up, and the gay-hating Nazi-Republicans gave them a standing ovation. Lions lying down with lambs, and having a lovely time as well.

    Here’s the thing we’ve been fighting since the 1860s. Its the same thing that the Revolutionary War was fought over, that created the United States of America. For that matter its the same fight Martin Luther had against the Roman Catholic Church. It is the notion that government exists to control people.

    People are beginning to understand, now in real time, that Government is not a real thing. You can’t point at it and say “that, right there, is government.” It is an agreement between individuals, and more insidiously at this time, an unequal distribution of knowledge and force.

    But, thanks to the Internet, the distribution of knowledge is exploding.

    Random example, I was watching a YouTube video of a guy creating optically smooth metal plates using easily available lapping paste and some elbow grease. He showed the whole process. Having seen that, I can create a plate that is flat to within one wavelength of light, in my garage, whenever I want. A flat reference plate is the first requirement of precision machining, and now I can make as many as I want. I can do it with a handful of pennies and some epoxy glue on a piece of scrap metal if I can’t get anything else. That used to be laboratory-only technology, and now it is casual garage level technology.

    What does that mean? One thing it means is that the unequal distribution of force is going to end as well. If precision machining is now garage tech, everything you can make with it is also going to be made in the garage. Any weapon, even any weapon -system-, up to radar-guided projectiles, is possible.

    For those people now laughing at me, consider the Palestinians. They’ve been making rockets to shoot at Israel out of irrigation pipe for 20 years. Imagine what a trained engineer in America could make.

    Which means, ultimately, that government CANNOT control people. It will try, and it will possibly kill a lot of people trying, but in a world where a thing like “According To Hoyt” exists, no government or similar arrangement can control people who don’t want to be controlled.

    Getting back to the TERFs, it means that they will not be having men in their bathrooms. One way or another, that is not going to happen. Be it by the ballot box or the ammo box. And they are serving notice they’re not that picky which it ends up being.

    TERFs are a tiny, tiny little piece of the population. How many are there, really? Maybe 20,000 all up? But they are the canary in the Lefty coal mine. The crack in the dam that people like Occasional Cortex are screaming SQUIRREL!!! to divert attention from while they frantically stick their fingers in.

    It isn’t that women and men are biologically distinct that is in question today. The question is whether government has the power to declare that distinction void in law. And the answer, increasingly, is NO! Whereas in 1936 the Nazis had the power to disarm the German public and kill 6 million of them for political purposes, now in 2019 that is probably no longer the case. So the Grrrrls have decided they aren’t going to put up with this shit, and from what I can see they’re going to win. It is no longer possible to call Group X anathema and make it stick, because Internet. And if Internet is insufficient to get it done, they can always go out the garage and start machining some shit that will.

    The government, my friends, is afraid of 20,000 pissed-off lesbians. Imagine how terrified they are of us, the science fiction/nerd people who do everything and make everything and fix everything. You know why Robert Goddard spent all that time back in 1912 inventing rockets? HG Wells and Jules Verne. That’s who we are. The science fiction weenies whose wild flights of fancy are going to inspire a future generation to invent teleportation, or self-aware machines, or some crazy shit we can’t even think of right now because the very notion of it has yet to be thought up.

    Bottom line, my friends. Grandad Phantom waaaaay back in the day was not some kind of UberGenius with a crystal ball. He saw what everybody saw. He did what he had to do, same as everybody did. Same as you do.

    You’ve got this. Non illegitimi carborundum. “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

    1. “You’ve got this. Non illegitimi carborundum. `Don’t let the bastards grind you down.`”

      To paraphrase a recent quote in the news: We aren’t trapped in this society with them, they’re trapped in it with us.

    3. Actually computers look like small beer. It’s not. It’s more pervasive than all of the ones you mentioned, because in the end it will affect the way commerce is conducted EVERYWHERE. And for what. Don’t underestimate it.

      1. I would note the pervasiveness of the work-arounds created by the ability to trade info, goods and services that modern technology allows is a big reason why the left is so invested in controlling it and in using schools and entertainment to indoctrinate people to love government, think of government as the source of all that is good, and to try to convince people that their job is to obey government, not participate in it. In essence, they have turned government into a deity with themselves as its priesthood.

    4. I would also add breach loading artillery and rifles to the list of major arms inventions that had a major impact. The increase in the rate of fire cannot be understated.

    5. One minor nit. While true that Nazi Germany killed somewhere on the order of 6 million people for the crime of being Jewish, it’s often overlooked that they killed an additional 7 million simply because they were deemed undesirables. That general term included gypsies, homosexuals, those with physical or mental deformities, and a host of others all determined on strict assessments by government officials of course.

      1. And they were only stopped by their being completely defeated in the war. Next time around, it may very well be the leftists in the countries who fought the Nazi’s doing the “ridding of undesirables” and there will be no outside help. This of course is why the left is so intent on barring private ownership of guns and outright confiscation. It stands in the way of their gaining full power, including the power to create the “perfect society” by getting rid of those who resist them. In other words, just like every other leftist regime.

        1. “Next time around, it may very well be the leftists …”

          Next time around??? The Soviet Union was doing before the Nazis took power and did it long afterward, just not so organized. Mao’s troops did it as well, as did Pol Pot’s and Fidel’s and Hugo’ and everywhere else Communism is installed (it is part of the requirements of the upload.)

          Of course, the Iranians have done it, too, so it isn’t just a Red thing.

          Totalitarians and mass graves go together like mac & cheese.

          1. I was referring to the leftists here in the USA, in the UK, and the other countries that were on the side of the Allies in WWII, not the Soviets. I thought I had structured the sentence better so that was clear. Obv it wasn’t

            1. Sorry – I saw “the leftists in the countries who fought the Nazi’s” and my Stalingrad Light flashed. Instead of sticking to places like Yugoslavia and Albania I veered off into the Far East. (Yes, I realize “Far East” is Eurocentrist – find a large sour pickle and suck on it. The fact I am typing this in English rather than Kanji should amply express the degree of concern I feel.)

      2. Absolutely true about he Germans. The Khmer Rouge only killed between 1.7 and 3 million. But the lower estimate is 21% of the population. 70 million people in Germany in 1940. So they didn’t come close in percentage kill. And they killed from more than just Germany proper. And they performed this mass killing with a war raging around them. Khmer Rouge didn’t have that distraction.

        1. Not only that, but the Nazi’s withheld resources that could have been used to fight the war, so that they could keep the genocide of the concentration camps running. Trains that could have been used to carry war supplies were used to ship more Jews (and others) the camps for extermination.

          2. OTOH, you do have to pay for the war, and the Jews’ property was confiscated as abandoned for that end.

            1. Speaking of Poland, what Stalin had the Russian;’s do is a very good example of how the communist strain of socialism has been just as happy to watch Jews (and others) get slaughtered as the national socialist strain. The Soviet Army was actually just outside of Warsaw during the Warsaw Uprising and could have intervened and crushed the Germans. They were ordered by Stalin not to do so, and were content to let the Germans crush the uprising and to slaughter the people (mostly Jews) who were fighting the Germans. Only once it was over did the Soviet Army then move in. Stalin was quite happy to have his troops sit back and watch Germans kill more Jews.

              1. Let us not overlook the events of Katyn Forest.

                Poland lost a significant element of its human assets there, at Russian hands. The failure of the Untied States to keep this in the public mind is one of the great missed opportunities of the Cold War.

              2. Side note: You’re conflating the two uprisings.
                The Warsaw Ghetto uprising happened in 1943, and was the Jewish insurrection. The Polish Home Army didn’t do a lot to help, mostly because they thought it would be a waste of time and resources.
                The 1944 Warsaw Uprising was the Polish one, and that was the one the Soviets refused to help with. In fairness, they were at the end of their logistical tether, having advanced hundreds of miles in less than two months (consider the problems the Western Allies had in France, supplying men across a considerably shorter distance with a better road network).
                However, what made it obvious that the Soviets wanted to let the Poles die was the fact that Stalin refused to let Allied supply planes land on Soviet airfields to refuel.

              3. That was because, anybody that would fight the NAZIs would fight the Commies. Can’t have that.

      3. Poles and other Slavs who resisted classification as Germans. . . well, they were planning to wipe out a large chunk of the Poles but didn’t really get started on that.

    6. Smart grandfather– took great-great-grandma about a decade more to decide the clan would leave Scotland.

      Not-a-cousin-John’s family makes a decent living with sheep dogs, but that’s not exactly the sort of thing that can be a national industry.

    7. *spends a few minutes figuring out if TERF was defined in the comment. Searches*

      ….Phantom, luv, could you please give a “place pillow on desk” warning for those things?

      For those wondering, it’s a trans activist attempt to name-call and discount feminists who think a dude in a dress isn’t a chick. Like demanding you label a woman a “cis-woman.”

      1. TERF is “Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist,” and they are all kinds of crazy. These are the bitches screaming PATRIARCHY!!! all the time, the ones that really -hate- men.

        Yes, the ones who hate men so bad that they’re not willing to go along with the Trans cosplay thing. They showed up at the Heritage Foundation. And asked for the mean Patriarchy people to help them. Because men in dresses are -men-, they don’t like men, and they just got kicked out of the LGBT thing with extreme prejudice.

        That’s a huge deal. A whole group of Reality-challenged hard core Lefty fruitbats had to climb down off their bullshit and reconnect to the rest of us who live on Planet Earth full time. They are instant conservatives.

        1. I saw that Ocasio-Cortez made a statement apologizing for her “cis-gender privilege; because apparently being born according to the end result of millions of years of evolution and is the method by which the human species reproduces is now “privilege”. And they call themselves the “party of science”. Remember when they used to mock people on the issue of evolution?

          1. Yes, Occasional-Cortex has been running her mouth something ferocious lately. “Cis-gender privilege,” forsooth.

            I was heartened when the other potential Dem candidates started doubling down on Occasional-Cortex’s 70% income tax. Warren actually proposed a wealth tax, and some other idiot said 70% was nothing, they should go for 90%.
            Republicans, all they have to do is say they’ll have a 5% tax cut and they’ll win.

    8. I just watched this series:

      and it struck me that WW1 was not “the death rattle of feudalism” but rather the first explosion of Marxism.

      2. I would put the death of the old Aristocratic order in 1848, when the need for conscript armies forced the vote and constitutional government on many of the old school aristocratic governments.

    9. * Glances at the Amateur Telescope Making books and muses “So coarse as full wavelength?” *

      But yeah, it’s downright astonishing if not outright worrisome what *ox* can think of. Now, someone GOOD at it…

      I’ve said before that even if someone did some manage to ban firearms and suppress them (ain’t gonna happen), all that will do is set off an arms research program that will make the Manhattan Project look like peanuts. No, there won’t be personal nukes, but what will result will be so varied and uncontrolled that laws couldn’t be written fast enough to deal with them. Think of so-called “designer drugs” only with a much higher involvement. And what, regulate machinery? A vine and tree-limb and board and you have the beginnings of a lather. And in world of electric motors (battery powered lollipops, for heavensakes – power, motor, and a free lollipop thrown in!) and microcontrollers… no need to go so crude.

      1. “And in world of electric motors (battery powered lollipops, for heavensakes – power, motor, and a free lollipop thrown in!)”

        Mr. Taurus, as legal representative of the Lollipop Guild I must present you with this order to Cease and Desist all promotion of free lollipops, as such items would undercut the market for my principal’s products and render significant harm to their recognized vested interests.

        1. I would note that such was said facetiously and that the entire object, including the confection at issue, is sold as a unit and thus the lollipop is not truly free (gratis) but rather has the illusion of being so if (and only if) one views the unit of sale as primarily a means of obtaining a small DC motor and electric cell to power it. That said unit also contains a switch, a handle, and a sugary confection is then mere bonus. The obviously intended (“as advertised”) purpose of the unit of sale is, of course, the confection itself, now with the convenience of being electrically driven such that the tongue has less work to perform. Note that the lollipops are “free” (with X you get Y) but NOT free – they are perhaps to be considered subsidized (The price of ‘X” must carry Y).

          Perchance you ought to relax a bit and hear the good works of the Lullaby League.

  14. “Learn to Code”. Well, really, if you are seriously looking for work in IT, I would recommend networking. No, I don’t mean talking to friends, etc. to find a job. Something more hardcore. ‘Coding’ is subject to fads and fashions and can be very hard to keep up with. Except for ‘Object-Oriented’ coding there hasn’t been anything genuinely new in programming in 40 years or more.
    Networking as I describe it is learning the guts of the Internet from cabling up to programming routers and switches. There’s some overlap with desktop and server software so you have to be aware of that, too. The thing is, networking changes a LOT less than other areas of IT. I say this as someone who has been in the biz for over 30 years. So, in place of ‘live long and prosper’, I will offer a simple ‘good luck’.

    1. If you want steady long term in-demand IT work, aim to be the cyber security person. If you are not that technical, aim to be the cyber security policy compliance person.

      The IT folks who can make the network go and keep the servers running are certainly in demand, but the network security and intrusion investigation and compliance documentation folks will not lack for work over the next years.

      1. And f you really really want an in-demand-always job, learn to weld.

        High end welders start at six figures and live where they want.

        I’ve seen final-exam work from the local welding program that the union runs here in Silicon Valley: It’s just freaking amazing that someone can do that to metal.

        They told me that the main high-paying welding employer in these parts is the medical equipment industry, which needs people able to weld teeny tiny stainless tubes for bio-safe gizmos and drug-making bioreactors.

        Employers scout the kids in the training program like Major League Baseball scouts, and there are bidding wars for the best of them.

        And the welders who are willing to go work the oil-shale fields are making a lot of money in retention and location bonuses.

        1. I hold BSE and MSOR degrees, but the ticket I’m probably the most proud of is the one issued by the American Association of Railroads as a certified stick welder authorized to perform repairs on railroad rolling stock. You were given quarter inch steel plates and required to join them together using the classic welding positions, flat, horizontal, vertical, and overhead. They then tried to break those welds, and if they could do so without power equipment you failed. I passed first time through.

          1. Not about welds, but once upon a time Pa did injection molding and one customer was concerned about “cheap plastic” failing. So Pa said he’d go with nylon, and with 66% [I think] glass fiber reinforced (hell on the machinery, but it paid, so…) and then they got the first samples. And they tested them.

            And sure enough *SNAP* and things go flying.

            “Cheap plastic.”

            But then someone went over to pick up the pieces. Uh oh.

            The “cheap plastic” was 100% intact. The steel pin they were absolutely sure of? Well, that was another matter.

            Pa sold a lot of “cheap plastic” to those guys after that.

        2. In 1998, the highest paid woman at Southwest Airlines was a lady welder who could do FAA approved repairs on all the aluminum stock in the 737s. She made lots and lots of money, and credited her father for insisting that she learn a good skill.

    2. > learn to code

      And that’s a very fungible global profession nowadays. You’re going to be competing against someone who lives in a hut in Uttar Pradesh or a council house in Scotland, who’ll work for less than US minimum wage.

      Programming is just about the last thing I’d pick for a long-term career…

    3. There’s also the fiber tech/cabling and infrastructure jobs, which can pay very, very well. Even in low-cost-of-living Speck, teeny little wide spot in the road, one can make about three times minimum wage after taxes. When the input line to the business goes out, you call the fiber guy. When you’re upgrading your network infrastructure, same deal.

      Dedicated IT and network security guys can double that, but it’s a good place to start if you’re good with your hands.

    4. Honestly, while languages have changed, I think you could go back sixty years and only see maybe two major software-only innovations: Object Oriented coding and Relational Databases. Most of the other “innovations” in software have been more a matter of improving hardware making it possible for the newer languages to support on a microcomputer or embedded device software features that existed by 1960 but were impractical outside the mainframe world for decades. Heck, C was invented in part because the microcomputers the UNIX development team were working with couldn’t handle the compiler for richer languages, and they wanted to write software with a higher-level language than assembler.
      The rest of the innovations have largely linked to advances in hardware, like GUI’s (most of which work was complete 40 years ago) or programmable GPU’s.

  15. I will survive. My career path will still be needed at the end. People will still need and want to connect to God, in some way, shape, or form. It may not be the way I’ve been doing it, but it will still be needed. And God has a way of bringing his people through the darkness and calling his own to himself. My biggest concern is surviving what is coming.

  16. What can I do? Write. Teach. Dig in records and archives. Basic carpentry. Survival sewing. Cook. I’ve thought about contacting the local home-schooling associations to see if they ever want/need a free-lance teacher who can do US and World history at the High School and college level.

          1. Let me know.

            ….By which I mean, mention it here, I’m not asking you to keep track of me personally. *grin*

      2. I’ve given serious thought to writing “Dr. Boykin’s Halfway-Decent History Book” but the cost of image and map permissions is a serious deal-breaker.

        1. There’s so many public domain maps these days, but alas they are mostly either modern (e.g. streetmaps) or specialized (e.g. campaign maps produced by Army historians), not say a map of the US on the eve of the Revolution or of Europe after the Peace of Westphalia.

        3. Hell, have links/pointers. Or even “Do a web search for…” if that can give a useful enough result. The TEXT matters. The problem with most histories, much like the problem with recent chemistry texts is that they might have information but can’t convey it in a meaningful/useful/tolerable manner. It *still* amazes me that they’ve managed to make chemistry dull. That’s an accomplishment, but a really [crappy] one.

          1. The purpose of schools is to make *everything* dull.

            I’m pretty sure the goal of the history classes I had in high school was to make their victims recoil from anything that might be construed as “history.”

  17. We’ve discussed unintended consequences before as one of the key concepts the Left just cannot grok. The crap they are doing absolutely will not, and never ever will, lead to a modern Stalinist state in the USA with them as the leaders.
    It may lead to a breakup of the Union.
    It may lead to lots of Leftist decorating lamp post.
    If it goes on, it will lead to chaos.

  18. Sarah, you realize you’re sounding like Vox, don’t you?

    I’m more cheerful. Trump is weaker than I would prefer, but he has an insane talent for highlighting just how incredibly incompetent the old political elite really was. And how dishonest the Propaganda Press is.

    What we’ve seen over the last few months is the rise of the Rabid Left. And I get the impression that most people are looking at the Rabids with disgust.

    The next step is to mount the counteroffensive. The Dems want vote-harvesting? Fine, we’ll go harvest some ourselves. Play by THEIR rules. And we have the advantage of being able to field candidates who aren’t insane. The key will be to keep the Old Establishment Good Little Losers out…they had their chance and failed. Now, it’s OUR turn.

    Damn it, it’s time to stop playing defense. As Admiral Hayward said in 1979, at the very nadir of the Cold War, “I’m tired about hearing about ‘the threat’. Let US be ‘the threat’! I want to hear about how (Soviet) Admiral Gorshkov is losing sleep about our threat to his navy.”

      1. Admiral Hayward’s wise counsel still applies. Let US be “the threat”. I want Leftists quaking in fear at the very mention of my name.

        1. I was hoping we’d get that with Mattis.

          It’s starting to look like Trump is in the same situation as Lincoln; having trouble finding a general who’ll Do His Freaking Job.

          1. That’s because Trump hasn’t offered me the position of SECDEF. After nearly 40 years, I know the acquisition system, have been marinating in serious strategic thought since college, and heartily despise bureaucracy. Countering the Iron Law demands someone with fire…and coping with the demands of the future will take a serious navalist.

      2. I’ll add that I see 2020 shaping up like 1972. Nixon was not terribly popular (and not a good President, he was Lyndon Johnson’s 2nd term), but the Democrats had gone off into the Far Left wilderness. And Nixon crushed McGovern. Only Watergate prevented a major political realignment in the mid 1970s.

  19. I don’t know when it will hit my industry full on (it’s hitting it, but no one knows when the crucial grain of sand will go, and the entire industry will shift) and I know even less when it will hit yours.

    I think it’s hitting my “industry” of home-making with children right now pretty hard– on par with refrigeration and home appliances where it comes to educating your own kids.

    I compare folks who did homeschooling before there were all these websites, and they bought (usually without any way of knowing if it was good) curriculum, or painstakingly built their own like a school teacher would build hers, and finding material on what to cover and when was NOT a five minute “hm, which set of standards should I look at?” exercise, if you could even GET a summary of what the school was doing.

    Math? Free for use, Khan Academy. Phonics? Starfall, PBS kids. Basic curriculum and practice? Education dot com. Music lessons? My daughter taught herself “Twinkle Twinkle” with youtube. (And knows more that I did, after two years of Music Class in grade school. Amusingly enough, she’s even using my old keyboard for this!)
    Mythology? The biggest issue is finding stuff that hasn’t been “adapted” too much.

    This is the washer and dryer of education.

      1. I’d actually suggest D’Aulaires’, they do a much better job of getting the “feel” right without skimming stuff entirely– at several points in junior high I noticed that our copy of Bullfinches skimmed stuff that might scandalize.

        That said, it’s also waaaaaay better than the “Zeus turned into a goose because he was playing a game” level kids’ mythology.

        Yes, Elf and I audibly snickered about that.

        1. I will concur. Bullfinch’s is well enough for a First Approximation, but not much more. I do not proclaim myself an (let alone The) Authority, but, well, yeah.

        2. I’m not entirely sure I’d introduce a child to much mythology. High school, yes – they need it for cultural references.

          2. Public school is great for mythology. In California in the 1960s, we were taught that the Pilgrims discovered America, among other things.

          3. I have fond memories of reading my parent’s copy of Grave’s Mythology in 5th grade. I was in the stage of “devour everything I can get my hands on,” and didn’t have many options outside their library. (Missionaries. The nearest English language lending library was 500 miles away.) The nature and deeds of Zeus was eye-opening, let alone Aphrodite…

            1. My memories of D’Aulaires’ Greek mythology were so fond that I haunted the used book sales until I managed to their it– and when I discovered they were on Amazon for less than thirty bucks, and that they HAD OTHER BOOKS, well….you can guess what Christmas was for anybody I know with kids.

              I was a really skittish kid, easily freaked out, and it managed to convey stuff without freaking me out.

  20. Does mastering the skills necessary to bypass the security of the homes of the outer party/Nomenklatura to liberal goods for the masses qualify as a survival skill? Asking for a friend.

    1. I always thought a stolen pickup truck was all one needed for that. Plus a broken off broom handle to jam the throttle…

        1. You steal the pickup from a Lefty. A Prius will also work, or so I am told.
          Chainsaw doorway works great until you hit a power line. Ouchie!

          I’m told if you staple some det-cord to a sheet of plywood it will cut through a door just like a chainsaw, but faster.

          People tell me things, y’know? ~:D

          1. Oh, you leave the power intact? That can be Dealt With (without shooting or bombing anything). I suppose if there’s a backup generator or battery bank there might still be an issue, but knocking out a grid connection? Well now.

      1. Are you suggesting that while the number of rich progressives is high, it isn’t high enough for looting them to be a lasting occupation? If so, I agree. Now if we could just convince the likes of Elizabeth Warren, AOC, and Kamala Harris (and their supporters!) that their version of loot-the-rich scheme are equally unsustainable…..

        1. If I recall the numbers correctly, seizing the entire current wealth of the United States would not be sufficient to payoff the Federal Debt if one includes not just the operating accrued debt of $22/0 trillion but the unfunded Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security liability which is well north of $100.00 trillion dollars; This does not even include the massive debt and liabilities accrued by State governments

          What cannot go on, won’t, and the Democrats policies can only end up with the US becoming Venezuela.

          1. “the Democrats policies can only end up with the US becoming Venezuela.”

            Which is no problem if you’re not planning to stay. It ain’t no accident Rosa Chavez is filthy rich. Heck, it’s no problem if you stay, as Fidel Castro knew.

  22. On the other hand, I genuinely like to organize things and there are people who hate doing that so hopefully I’ll land on my feet.

    1. A college friend of mine made a very tidy living for a decade or so running errands and doing cleaning/organizing/house tidying before Craigslist and so on emerged.

      2. Hanging pictures and curtains for rich old ladies and busy yuppies used to be a job in Toronto in the 1980s. Hang a few pictures, paint the odd bathroom, lots of guys paid the rent doing that.

  23. Survival trades- if the SHTF- what should you know? Well, first answer the question- just you, or a plus 1, or a family? Makes a difference.

    Just you (and maybe a plus 1): learn how to entertain. There will always be a demand for singers and musicians, jugglers, magic acts, whatever, that can actually hold people’s attention. If nothing else, throughout history such acts have been good for a meal and a bed at the local inn.

    A family? Honestly- learn how to be a middleman. Shopkeepers are reviled around the world because they’re usually better off, even if just slightly, than the general population. Buy low- sell high. Everyone feels they’re getting ripped off because they know you’re selling the product for more than you paid for it- but if you weren’t doing it, the product wouldn’t be available, and the reasonably intelligent also know that.

    If you don’t already have one, build a still. Now, while parts are available. Practice with it using local fuels. learn what’s grown in your area that makes suitable feedstock and learn how to prepare it. There will always be a demand for distilled alcohol. Beer and wine also if you want to make those. Again, get the supplies now while you can.

    For technological change, which is going to happen in unpredictable ways, well, keep abreast of what’s happening. Small changes in technology can mean big changes in employment. Also changes in society can make big differences in employment. Example of the first- containerization. Dockworkers and longshoremen used to be lifetime low skill occupations. And employed a much larger number of people. They’ve been mostly replaced by higher skill crane operators. The lower number of dockworkers was actually foreseen in the early 1960’s. But a huge number of people didn’t see it coming even as it hit them. Possible changes from the second- the prison industrial complex. I worked in a correction facility. There’s no correction going on. All those “counselors” will freely admit- to family and friends- that they’re getting paid to accomplish nothing. Inmates are con artists. And the supermaxes? Well, if society decides to start using the death penalty again- fast and frequently- we’ll only need one as a sort of transient holding facility. And administrators- the explosive growth of them in the educational establishment is astounding. When the taxpayers wake up and decided to do something about it, a while bunch are going to be unemployed. And hopefully in the near future we can eliminate all jobs in both government and industry that have the words “diversity”, “equal opportunity”, or anything similar in either the office name or job title.

    1. I recall John Taylor Gotto commenting that he was once able to help student that had issues and needed a bit of help by finding an empty classroom or office and making use of it. But, even 20 years ago now, he could no longer do that – all free spaces were consumed by “administrators.” It is far past time to free up those spaces for more useful things. Even nothing, really, which is at least not a net-negative contribution.

      1. In a world where Jordan Peterson’s lectures on biblical stories are closing in on 3.5 million views on the first lecture alone….

        I think the universities severely underestimate the threat of online lectures because _they_ can’t figure out how to monetize them, so they think they can’t be monetized.

          1. And its difficult for people posting the videos to monetize them, because the Google/YouTube monopoly controls who can earn money through large scale monetization of videos and is engaged in an active effort to demonetize and outright purge at times non-leftist content; particularly content that directly challenges leftist orthodoxy. The EU and others are pushing even further for this as they demand that anything which contradicts their desired narrative be removed as “fake news” or “hate speech”.

          2. That’s an issue right now because of regulatory capture: that is, the way employers are blocked from conducting skills tests on employees. After that happened, they went to outsourcing the skills tests via credentialing – first high school diplomas, then college.

            If you remove the root cause, the whole system will collapse a lot faster than the people who mistake “the way it is” for “the way it always will be.” Because most people don’t go to college because they want to go to college; they go to college because they’re told they have to in order to get a job.

            This can be done either by removing the barrier to skills testing, or by an alternate credentialing system that removes all the dross, and presents the skills test results the employer actually wants. It doesn’t have to be a diploma.

            2. The original Supreme Court decision, Griggs vs Duke Power, actually limited the use of **high school degrees*, as well as written employment tests, in the selection of the category of employees in question.

              Somehow, the Degree part of the decision seems to have either been eroded–either by legislation or by later court decisions. I want to research the history of this when I have time.

              I think excessive education-based credentialism has done this country a lot of harm…some of this is due to a belief that it can be a safe harbor against litigation, much of it is due to a simple desire to deal with the absolute flood of applicants or to just not really thinking through the job requirements intelligently.

        2. And yet places like MIT and Cornell put their entire curricula online, free to anyone who cares to look.

          Because they’re selling credentials, not education.

      2. The problem with administrators is that they do not administrate; they delegate, instead, and create more paperwork for others, instead of lessening it.

        1. Aye. The most useless “engineer” (programmer, really, if that) was the fellow who insisted his office door be moved so as to be with the rest of the “engineering” area – though it already was a proper, locking door. And then proceeded to ALWAYS use speakerphone to Sound Important (door open, of course!) The physicist who did have important conversation? Pick up the handset and closed his door. The same fellow (not the physicist) would invite himself into any meeting he could. Those who had real work to get done did whatever they could to avoid meetings.

  24. God, I hope journalism doesn’t go first. Unlike Americans who call themselves journalists and think that they’re all Woodward and/or Bernstein, I’m a typical British Fleet Street hack who calls himself a reporter and got into the business because life went to pot and I needed a bolt hole. I have absolutely no desire to find out what’s on the rung below this one.

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