Stay Frosty

585 thoughts on “Stay Frosty”

1. Amen Sister Sarah!!!! 😀

2. Stay Frosty???

   Frosty the snowman was a jolly happy soul
   With a corncob pipe and a button nose
   And two eyes made out of coal
   Frosty the snowman is a fairy tale they say
   He was made of snow but the children know
   that he came to life one day
   There must have been some magic
   in that old silk hat they found
   For when they placed it on his head
   He began to dance around
   Frosty the snowman
   Was alive as he could be
   And the children say he could laugh and play
   just the same as you and me

   No, I think I’d rather not, thanks all the same.
   –

   1. Dude, you’re way off. Obviously she meant this:

      

      Now stay frosty, people! Preferably vanilla if you can; white’s their least favorite color.

      1. Vanilla “frosty” is horrid nightmare fuel made of NOPE and FAIL! Do not want! Not even for a political statement would I put such a thing in my mouth!

         (but if you like them, yea… whatever…)

         1. My husband likes the vanilla ones. I regard their introduction with suspicion that it’s a prelude to dropping the original chocolate in favor of the more common vanilla-only default.

            I like a good fragrant vanilla. I just don’t think the vanilla Frosty is a satisfactory example thereof.

            1. I expect the Vanilla Frosty Is as good an example of vanilla as the Chocolate Frosty is of Chocolate. It’s just that mediocre chocolate is more tolerable than mediocre vanilla.

               1. Sometimes I do like vanilla soft serve — Chik-Fil-A does it well, McDonald’s well enough that I keep being surprised. I’m still suspicious of the vanilla Frosty and I admit that in my case a lot of it is probably just some kind of outbreak of curmudgeonly tendencies. 😀

                  Sometimes, much like the corresponding hamburgers, a chocolate Frosty just hits the spot, even if there’s no question of mistaking it for a paragon. And to be fair, I am not sure a really superb chocolate anything would be suited to my dipping fries in it….

                  1. McDonald’s chocolate shake is excellent for dipping fries in.

                  2. Wendy’s Frosty is a pale shadow of Friendly’s Fribble.

                     All the Friendly’s in my area are going nips up. *Sigh*

      2. Yep. Meh. I prefer peanut butter. 😉

         1. Somewhere in here belongs the story of a late night out with my friend Irv; McDs was still open, but it was empty and also the last place nearby. As we approached the counter, the register guy asks us if we wanted a “McShamrock McShake”, and Irv, who was hung over, gave him a LOOK and said “You must be out of your McHappy McFucking McMind.”

            It’s a catch-phrase in the family now.

            1. Are those the fabled minty mcshakes?

               1. Yeah. They used to be good, but the quality has slipped. (To be fair, it seems that many McDonalds have difficulties with cleaning and maintaining their shake machines, current day. The old shake machines and mixes seem to have been more forgiving.)

                  1. I wonder when that happened… about ten years ago, I used to keep trying to get a sundae when I’d been working late, and they kept telling me the ice cream machine was broken until one guy finally said it was shut down for cleaning, at which point enlightenment was achieved and I found out it was generally not “broken” if I showed up before midnight.

         2. The Daughter Product had to go on a liquid diet for a couple of days so we made her peanut-butter chocolate milk-shakes with half-and half and French vanilla ice cream.

            You could go a whole day on one glass.

      3. I miss those.

   2. I believe our hostess meant “Frosty” as in “Maintain a cool head and practice proper trigger discipline. Do not fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to start a war, rain hellfire down upon their position and make them curse their mothers for bringing them into this world.”

      1. Si vis pacem…

         1. … para sortes et sortes bellum.

      2. I thought she meant keeping the crushed ice in my juleps refreshed.

      3. Pretty much this:

3. Making predictions is hard, particularly about the future, but the fourth of July heartened me greatly.

   The video from LA of all the fireworks made my year.

   Yep, Americans are still the “because f**k you, that’s why” nation.

   1. Aye. And this Americans just having some fun and using the relief valve as it were. Even my rather mild neighbors in $HOOTERVILLE had a few things with much higher yields than anything I’ve encountered in years. Some real house-shakers.

      1. This one is just under an hour long, but is a good illustration of the breadth and sustainment in the LA basin:

         1. And here’s a short one from a drone in the L.A. area (San Gabriel Valley) around 9pm… no commentary, just lots of glowing middle fingers.

            .

            1. i could see our old house!
               not really, but that was the general area

            2. Being translated: hey, Newsome! THIS! And THIS! HEY Buddy, THIS!!

      2. Same here. The Burgh (or at least my AOA) has sounded like a warzone for the last three nights, complete with artillery bombardments.

         1. I’d swear that one of my neighbors was using commercial and not consumer fireworks.

            1. Same here. Considering how many high-burst were going off, I’d say you’re probably right.

               1. Not sure if commercial/professional but definitely high end consumer ones. Have NO idea where they had gotten them. There are stores in NH but they carry small mortars not the 200′ + stuff I saw a couple of Saturday.

            2. As the community displays were largely cancelled, I suspect that SOME of the fire stations had unusable fireworks, and thought, why not make some of that money back?

         2. I don’t entirely understand why $TINY_TOWN was so quiet on the 4th, though despite because of Kate Brown’s efforts, the local economy sucks more than under Obama. Didn’t hear the usual gathering at the fire hall a quarter mile away, and the drunks weren’t doing their part. I heard two bangs around 10PM, and that was it.

            OTOH, it’s dry, fire season is upon us, and people were reminiscing about the two idiots who started a 2500 acre fire 6 years ago with drunken use of fireworks.. (They’re dead now, nobody knows just why or where, and the level of concern about such is at 3S level. Hmm.)

   2. The video from LA of all the fireworks made my year.

      After thinking about those videos I am left with a question:

      Is California in play?

      1. I have doubts. As a natural pessimist, student of history, and with my own personal and professional bias… Doubts.

         If we change the courts- the 9th Circus has a way to go yet- and if momentum grows in the North and Eastern parts of the state… Perhaps someday. I do not predict it this cycle.

         1. I wonder how many discouraged Republican voters there are in that state and how likely they are to crawl over broken glass just to help Trump win the popular vote.

            1. not likely because it won’t have any affect as the state will still go for whatever the dems run…

               1. It would be a giant “F— YOU!” to the Democrats and it just might flip the state, especially if it’s a surprise.

                  1. i seriously don’t think there are that many disgruntled republicans in CA. Of course, there’s a bunch of (legal) Mexican immigrants that reflexively vote Democrat even thought they are actually conservative, but that’s a different matter.

                     1. Most of the disgruntled Republicans I know are leaving California, as did I two years ago.

                        1. And i left just short of three years ago.

         2. 9th Circuit is getting close.

            My Dad is convinced that the only reason Steve Cooley (the previous LA County DA) lost to Kamela Harris for State AG is due to fraud. It was a *very* close vote. The problem really devolves around the Bay Area. Yes, LA County is liberal. And its big. But the lefty candidates all come from the Bay Area lately. And the leftward tilt is more pronounced up there than it is in LA. There’s a reason why the current LA County DA (who is a Dem) is being challenged by a carpet bagger from San Francisco.

      2. No. Or not immediately. The Fascist Left machine is locked in there, at least until the indictments start coming down. And they will. Trump fights. I may be wrong, but I recall his talk of not just accepting the polls if he lost. The Democrats made a lot of fuss about it at the time, but nobody cared and they passed onto other tactics (which also flopped). I think he had evidence, then, of massive Democrat vote fraud. I think he didn’t bring it out in 2016 because he didn’t have to. But in 2020 they’re clearly going to try again, harder. And I think that, win or lose, Trump is going to hit them HARD just after Election Day. If the rot goes as far up as seems likely, he could have the opposition in serious disarray. Oh, sure, they’d riot in the streets. With what they are pulling now, so what?

         And if somebody serious starts unraveling the Democrat Machine in California all statewide he’ll is going to break loose. That ‘high speed rail’ project has to be chock full of rot and kickbacks. And that’s just the most obvious.

         Will California be in play as of, say, 2022? We’ll see.

4. Says she who just got a newsletter from her church, basically enjoining her to worship the Earth our mother and live communally. Are they all insane? I knew that mainstream churches had gone insane a while ago

   Maybe mainstream Protestant churches, but while you might find that as an aberration in the two largest communions on Earth, the Catholic and the Eastern Orthodox, it isn’t that rotten, although with a Communist Pope (that’s what liberation theology means), the Catholics are getting a little scary.

   1. The church has endured idiot popes before.

      1. Point. And if we could go back and look, probably worse than this one.

         1. Popes, not a big deal, but ti’s the entire hierarchy.

            1. Yeah, but there’s a lot of inertia in the Vatican hierarchy – entrenched liberation theology heresies, but plenty along other axes as well, including the theological descendants of JPII. I have hope for the church – moreso than for those flighty and ephemeral Protestant hierarchies.

               1. I mean local hierarchy. That was from the bishop of Denver.

                  1. Well, there’s stoopid that flows downhill – I vaguely recall an “honor Gaia” shaped thing coming out from Rome sometime in the past months.

                     1. “This is the fiftieth Earthday.”
                        As though it were a liturgical season. NO SERIOUSLY.

                  2. That doesn’t surprise me in the least. I did not often make it to church while we lived in Denver because the ones I’d managed to get to felt… off. Big and overloaded and definitely to the silly side, including the one with the murals with modern kids and backwards elbows (seriously creepy.)

                     1. ……backwards… elbows? D:

                     2. I just couldn’t make myself go to the local parish because of the social justice pamphlets they had. I was so very sad.

                  3. Asked the local priest (who is a hardass traditionalist, moreso because he’ a late convert) what he thought of Pope Francis. Priest clamped his mouth shut and wouldn’t answer, tho red smoke came out of his ears…

                     He runs a Latin mass. I keep meaning to attend on G.P. (despite not being a believer) just to support tradition.

                  4. The rot in the upper clergy can make one’s teeth grow dull in the grinding. There’s been entirely too much “administrator” and entirely too little “servant of Himself” in the office (with notable exceptions) for some time.

                  5. Aeh, he isn’t my favorite. Fired a darned good organist and choirmaster, and his wife the soprano and singing teacher. Which is dumb, if you have such a sweet package deal that you can keep.

                     Needless to say, there -used to be- both major and minor Rogation days, dedicated to praying for crops, rain, safety from natural disasters, nature, et al. But they got rid of ’em after Vatican II.

                     Bishops can bring back Rogation days and Ember days, if they want. Rogation procession complete with dragon, or you’re not serious.

                     1. Denver dude, not Francis. (Although there are Things To Be Said about current year Vatican music.)

                     2. All this Catholic minutia is fascinating to my inner anthropologist.Why don’t movies and television go for the cool obscure stuff instead of Dan Brown’s nonsense.

                        1. I don’t get it, either; catholic dot com had some great stuff in response to the Dan Brown nonsense, and I THINK it was from folks here that I found out about the “Catholic: Under the Hood” podcast, which has managed to teach me more about general history than my school managed, and I hardly ever have time to even poke at it!

               2. Powerline had an article about the ELCA blaming the George Floyd death on training by Israel, with no indications that the relevant officer actually attended the counter-terrorism(!) training.

                  The last time I was in an ELCA church, they appeared to be trying to resist the effects of the national leadership, but I’m wondering if there is going to be either a schism or a migration of ELCA to Missouri. No longer my circus, definitely not my monkeys.

                  1. Last I knew ELCA was lost long ago to the SocJus infiltrators, female pastors and all.

                     Missouri Synod isn’t the only other organization of Lutheran Churches, though.
                     The other one I know of is… American Lutheran Church… Something? I keep reading it on the certificates posted on my mother’s church’s wall, but for some reason it will not stick in my head.

                     1. American Lutheran Church was the Danish flavored version. They merged with the Lutheran Church in America (mostly Swedish, maybe Norwegian) to form (sigh) the ELCA. Missouri is largely German, as is Wisconsin. My understanding is that the Wisconsin members think the Missourians are far too liberal. I doubt there is anything printable they’d have to say about the ELCA.

                        We left an ALC congregation in the 1960s when the pastor was so involved in the civil rights issue (traveling from suburban Chicago to march at Selma) that he didn’t *notice* that my Dad had a near-fatal heart attack. Or, if he noticed, he couldn’t be bothered. Only the treasurer of a 200 or so member church.

                        The LCA church was better, though the writing was on the wall when the junior minister at the church left with the youth coordinator. They were married, but not to each other… (Last I heard, the congregation was ongoing, but Mom had to leave when she moved too far away to catch a ride on Sundays.)

                  2. i looked for a LCMS here. Foundcrypto Satanist who pretended not to understand the emanations and penumbras of “light-bringer”. Lucifer, to his friends…

         2. The Saeculum Obscuram (dark age) of the papacy from Sergius III down to John XII. First 2/3 of the 10th century. Say what you want about the Borgias, but Alexander was at least competent.

   2. Hon. You know where I attend, right?
      It IS that rotten. This was from the MORE CONSERVATIVE of the local bishops.
      Now, maybe it was a clueless secretary, but….

      1. I thought you might be in a Catholic parish, but that seemed more like Lutherans or Espiscopel.

         We can find you Orthodox, you know.

         1. It’s starting to look tempting…

            1. I’ve said it before, but I’ll reiterate it. Y’all are invited to move to east Tennessee and join us in ROCOR, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. We never closed our church during the covid panic; I honestly don’t know what the Tennessee government said about it as we were never going to close no matter what they said. I know that some of the Orthodox hierarchies did bow to the autocrats and limit attendance or close outright–we got a bunch of their parishioners. I also know that some ROCOR churches did the same, in unfree places like Maryland and such where they were monitored closely and forced into it.

               But you’re all invited to come and celebrate with us. Come and see! We never close. 😉

               1. Is one in Denver too.
                  https://www.facebook.com/russianorthodoxindenver/

                  This is already 110% of what I know about it.

                  1. Shhhhh…I’m trying to get everyone to move here…

                     1. I thought we were trying to get y’all to move here 😀

               2. ROCOR here, as well.
                  We never closed, either. The Bishops had to walk a fine line, what with their dioceses encompassing so many insane requirements.

            2. The Denver area includes tons of Maronite, Byzantine, Ruthenian, etc. Catholic churches, all of which are under their own Catholic bishops, eparchs, patriarchs, etc.

               1. St. Rafka Maronite Catholic, Ss. Cyril and Methodius Russian Byzantine Catholic, Holy Protection of the Mother of God Ruthenian Byzantine Catholic, Transfiguration of Our Lord Ukrainian Catholic….

                  There’s also Korean and Vietnamese Catholic parishes. Korean parishes are usually hardcore, and Vietnamese chant is gorgeous gorgeous.

         2. I mean, I need a third layer of religious belief like I need a hole in the head, but this is starting to drive me insane.

            1. I walked from a conservative Presbyterian upbringing through Southern Baptists then through the Catholic Church to get home.

               And I know a lot of Catholics who left for Orthodoxy that didn’t seem to think it was much of a change.

               We also have better music as the entire liturgy is sung.

               1. makes me glad I decided on atheism sometime before my confirmation. egad the church has gotten teh stoopids.

                  1. I sometimes think He prefers atheism over taking blame for stupidity His followers get up to in His name.
                     –

                     1. You might be right.

                     2. Slams against hypocrits are *very* common in The Four Gospels…

                  2. The wheat and the tares will grow together until harvest.

               2. Strong second!

               3. Yeah, but your calendar’s all sorts of peculiar.
                  –

                  1. We like to think of it as traditional. There’s a saying about Orthodoxy: anything adopted without at least 400 years of deliberation is considered to have been done with unseemly haste.

                     1. How many Orthodox Bishops does it take to change a lightbulb?

                        Change?!?!

               4. I wonder when Putin is going to name himself the Head of the Russian Church? What else is there for him? He added Christianity to their Constitution.

                  1. That will never happen. I guarantee that the Russian Orthodox church would refuse, and that Putin wouldn’t be able to enforce such a usurpation even if he did try it.

                     1. Needs them too much as allies, and frankly I wonder how big the church’s influence is over there for maintaining birth rates.

            2. Drag you.

               They’re dragging you insane.

               They’re already nuts.

               ********

               With all the dirtbags that are getting removed, and the multiple failed attempts to weaponize those removals effectively (I think it was Australia where someone else claimed an assault on a boy that the boy denied, and the priest was actually in jail for a while before someone went “oh, FFS, NO.”) it will get better.

               It just takes so. Flippin. Long….

               1. They had to let that senior priest (I forget his name)go when it was proven that there was no way the claims of sexual assault could have happened given the layers upon layers of vestments worn and how he couldn’t even go to the toilet after he was finished putting them on, never mind the claims of ‘whipping out his’ thing and forcing anyone to fellate.

                  1. Plus it was the kind of sacristy where 40 zillion people were in there, all the time, before and after Mass, and it was a large room with nothing but clear sightlines.

                     And IIRC, it was one of those setups where the altarboys actually have a completely separate “dressing room” with multiple adults constantly wrangling them, to make sure the kids don’t destroy the cathedral.

                     (You never actually undress to put on Catholic vestments; you add layers. Lots and lots of layers.

            3. *cough*

               I comprehend the cri de coeur over a fallen Church hierarchy but …

               1. They’re already attempting to overwrite your religious belief, so you’re getting that new layer one way or another

               2. I don’t care if it is your blog, there is a reason Religion is a banned topic.

               3. If you’re seriously contemplating a new religion, have you considered Linux?
               –

               1. At least we Linuxers don’t go door to door asking if you’ve accepted the best operating system…yet…

                  1. I donno. Back when I worked in a little computer shop (many years ago… like late 90s) some Linuxers came in and almost started a “two weirdo riot” over the fact that we couldn’t tell them what of our hardware was Linux compatible and what wasn’t. None of us had ever worked with Linux. They eventually had to be asked to leave they were causing such a scene. Funny thing is, I was (sorta) infected by it because, purely out of curiosity, I downloaded Slackware and eventually a few other Linux distros and started experimenting. The experience didn’t convert me to Linux, but it did open my eyes to a whole world of free and open UNIX-like operating systems, and quite a few years of using OpenBSD for various servers.

                     Funny enough how things go full circle though. Because the company I work for has grown WAY past the point where I can do the server admin and everything else I do, so we now have an IT department that handles the servers. Our IT guys have decided they would rather support Linux. So in spite of the long and winding road, I’m now working on Linux after all. (And it is NOTHING like that original Slackware distro I downloaded way back when LOL!).

                  2. Points to vista machine.

                     Yes.

               2. I’m getting uncomfortable with Linus’ knuckling under to SJW demands. Just a few years ago he would have told them to fribble off in his trademark profane dismissal of stupidity. Now…

                  I’d move to BSD or IllumOS, except I don’t want to set the clock back twenty years as far as hardware support.

                  1. I honestly think they threatened families in order to get him to surrender. Nothing else would’ve done it apparently.

                     1. He married badly. Wife and daughters are apparently feminists.

                  2. A few years ago, Linus DID tell the SJWs to go fribble off… And was massively dog-piled for it. I wonder how much of that knuckling under is from being converted, and how much is a trauma induced flinch.

                     1. Resistance might be more subtle, one would hope.

               3. No, it’s her chance to join the one true faith: vi.

                  1. Heathen scum!

                  2. Bring it Brother!

                  3. NEVER, Only Emacs is the true way with TECO as its predecessor.

                     1. We have an i-pad. we call it The Pad of Evil….

                  4. Of all the odd places to trip over a tiny skirmish in the vi vs emacs war…. LOL!

                     And give it up emacs, vi pretty much won.

                     1. vi does not incorporate EDiff. 😛

                     2. As my grandmother used to say, “If everyone is jumping off a bridge does that mean you should do it too ?” 🙂

                        But enough of this, EMACS vs vi can get as ugly as the 30 years war (though with less pillaging and similar).

                        1. Ha! Sounds like that XKCD strip.

                           She: “If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you jump too?”

                           He: “Probably.”

                           She: “???!!”

                           He: “If all my friends — who are mostly sensible people, some of them afraid of heights — were jumping off a bridge, my first thought would be that there was something seriously wrong with the bridge.”

                           The company president where I used to work wrote a whole schematic capture and component management system in ELisp running on Sun SPARCstations. When the company got bought by a competitor, and they brought in the absurdly expensive MS-WIN-BLOWS based ‘professional’ schematic and inventory management systems they used, it didn’t work half as well. It wasn’t just different, it was demonstrably inferior, in all sorts of ways. It was a software engineer’s idea of what the hardware engineers needed. Buggy, too, and where The Boss could fix bugs in the ELisp in a few hours, most of the ‘professional’ package’s bugs never did get fixed.

                           I don’t hate vi or EMACS. I’ve used both. I guess that makes me an enemy to both sides, eh?

                           And who says there’s no pillaging in the vi vs. EMACS wars? Who made that rule? Who followed it? 😀

                           1. it didn’t work half as well. It wasn’t just different, it was demonstrably inferior, in all sorts of ways. It was a software engineer’s idea of what the hardware engineers needed. Buggy, too, and where The Boss could fix bugs in the ELisp in a few hours, most of the ‘professional’ package’s bugs never did get fixed.

                              –
                              I always got a kick out of new client reactions calls on non-custom complaint calls to report a “bug”. Sometimes it really wasn’t a bug, they just needed an explanation of why it worked that way. Then needed to determine if they needed a tweak or not. Or you know really was a bug that no one had reported yet. Either way the “new to the software system” always asked (sarcastically) asks “What release can we expect this to be fixed/added?” The answer “will get back to you on that.” Next call, sometimes within hours, definitely within days (with new clients or a bug effecting all clients). “This is done. Please install this patch.” There response was “Wait! What? Really?” Good/bad or whatever, the software package didn’t have formal releases, nor was there a testing department within the company. Now, it might take their IT forever to install it (unless we had the contract to do that for them, in which the call was different “It is changed/fixed. Let me know.”), but the patch was available.

                              How the company could get away with this was the System was just that. A system with 100’s of programs with linking libraries and overall controlling program. There was exceptions to rapid responses. There were some requested changes that were on the list that were years implementing but those generally came out of annual user conferences. Might be on a plan for years but never got on the schedule or scope meant “won’t get done anytime soon”. But rarely individual client requests.

                           2. I use my old 1986 DOS text editor in a DOS emulator. I wrote and sold two books and dozens of magazine articles, and they are only a fraction of what I’ve used it for. It’s pretty much a direct interface between my brain and the hard disk; after 34 years, it’s more natural for me than speech.

               4. What about 0.45 vs 9mm?

                  1. Oh, dear God no! It might not be as bad as North vs South in the (never to be brought up in this blog) most decidedly un-Civil War.

                     [redacted quote from Jeff Cooper on the subject… 🙂 ]

                     1. Just wait till the 40SW oddballs show up

                        1. I’m warming to 10mm, but off-hand accuracy is a work in progress. 9mm has ten inch spreads at twenty yards, 10mm is 10″ at ten yards (one hand off-hand)

                           1. What are you using to run 10? 1911 or something else?

                              My only opinion (shaped by a little reading) has been that when it comes to pistol calibers, it doesn’t much matter with modern ammunition what you shoot a person with, unless it’s revolver magnums. I hear 10 being minimum agreed on for backcountry use, but I haven’t heard many people using it for EDC / etc.

                              I personally run a G17, but if I can find one in stock, I’m going to make a 80% 1911 in classic 45.

                           2. I’m still impressed at the premium an 80% 1911 frame carries over a finished FFL’d frame. Same for some of the Remington 700 copies.

                           3. Hmm, it’s not letting me reply to weefreeirish directly. Anyway, I carry a Glock g29, a compact 10mm just to make it more challenging. But Florida in the summertime does not lend itself to heavy cover garments. I use it for a woods gun, as there’s a shedload of hogs about. Carry a compact nine the rest of the time.

                           4. The absence of “Reply” buttons occurs a as discussions get further along (I am not sure how deeply nested as I’ve not cared sufficient to count) ad serves primarily to prevent the Right-Hand Wall from reducing replies to vertical

                              w
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                              W
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                              e is a hemorrhoid.

                              Speaking of weefreeirish … after drinking your fill of Green Beer on St. Patty’s Day, what do you do the rest of the night?
                              –

                  2. “They’re what you carry when you don’t carry a real gun.”

                     For real power you need a wheelgun. .454 Casull, .460 S&W, .475 Linebaugh, .480 Ruger, or .500 Linebaugh, and .500 S&W are available for those who aren’t recoil-shy.

                     1. A friend has a .500 magnum, I’ve been unable to shoot the thing without having my middle finger feel like I’ve been rapped by the edge of a metal ruler by the trigger guard. Any suggestions?

                        1. You need to lock your elbows and lean into it, and let it flip up. Sometimes a grip shape simply isn’t compatible with your hand. The stock X-frame grips, for some reason, aren’t shaped to promote that, and they can be a problem. There actually was a reason for the weird not-comfortable grip shape typical for revolvers… the bore axis is high above the thumb web, and it’s *going to* flip, so you might as well let it go.

                        2. There is also a way of hand positioning where the heels of your hands (by the wrist) are pushed together so that they maintain strong contact while the handgun is fired. It worked wonders for a young lady I instructed who wanted to fire one of the aluminum framed Rugar Bisleys in .44 Mag. Once she got her hands in the right place, she handled that thing better than I do. Note: It always feels to me like the off-hand is too far back when holding that way, but it works great for some people.

                           1. I’m having trouble visualizing that, but if you find some pictures or a video somewhere, I’d appreciate a link. It might help a couple of people I know.

                              It’s never too late to pick up a new trick, right?

                           2. I’ll see if I can find the video I learned it from.

                              Till then, just put your hands together like you are praying, then keeping your hands flat, make a “V” where only the heels of your hands are touching (not the sides, the bottom, like where it goes into your wrist but not all the way to your wrist. Ends of your fingers around 3 inches apart). Where your hands are touching is where you want your hands to touch while you are gripping in the two hand grip. And don’t be shy about it, SMUSH them together. Wiggle back and forth to get the feel of how they lock together.

                              The first time, to get the feel for it, it’s easiest to have someone place the (checked and re-checked that it is unloaded or is an inert training gun) gun in your strong hand. Then just grip making sure your contact point stays firmly connected. It can feel weird the first time, but it has really helped some people that I’ve shown it to.

                           3. No dice on finding the video. It was such a long time ago that I saw it I can’t remember who it was that put it out. Rob Leatham? Maybe?

                        3. my suggestion is “if you want rifle performance use a rifle”

                     2. “…aren’t recoil shy…”

                        That’s a funny way of saying “I don’t care what happens to the small bones in my wrist.”

                  3. Points at user name. *evil grin*

            4. I don’t know nuthin’ about it, but …

               https://www.oca.org/parishes/state/CO

               1. At the risk of starting a religious thread, the OCA is sort of the Episcopal church of Orthodox hierarchies. I was OCA till I realized that and went to a more traditional ROCOR church.

                  1. I kinda wondered after a bit more wandering around the site. Russian OC in Russia is apparently all traditional as can be, but I suppose OC has its what-were-they-thinking branches too. Only one I’ve ever been even peripherally exposed to in Real Life is Greek Orthodox, and only because where I used to live they held a big Greek Festival every year (BBQ lamb, Greek pastries, ouzo, and dancing, a good time to be had by all).

                     1. I concede I would seriously consider joining a Geek Orthodox church but the likely theology would probably drive me out …

                        I fear I am innately unorthodox.
                        –

                        1. RES did you omit that r intentionally? If so I think Geek Orthodox would cover much of this set of folks…
                           if not a truly inspired typo, I’d say blame it on the Author Himself

                           1. I confess, that was no typo, that was my wit.

                              Although I allows as some of my best* witticisms derive from typos and the reading equivalent of same (for example, the genesis of “Geek Orthodox” was a minor reading error)..

                              *I suggest we eschew, for now, any discussion of possible values for “best”
                              –

            5. Then just take it back to the beginning.

               “sh’ma yisrael YHWH eloheinu YHWH echad. v’ahavta et YHWH elohecha b’chol l’vav’cha, uv’chol nafsh’cha,
               uv’chol m’odecha”

               Hear, Israel, YHWH our God is one! And you shall love Him with all of your heart, soul, and mind.

               “duetera haute agapeseis ton pleison su hos seauton”

               the second is this: you shall love your neighbor as your own self

               1. Won’t lie and say it hasn’t been in consideration several times. BUT those congregations around here are worse….

                  1. Well, not much as I can say to that, save read the Word. Read read read. His Own words are what fight our darkness inside, and give us the strength to Stand. We are not the wild barbarians who leap and charge as they feel (as much fun as that may be), but we stand on the Peace flowing from Truth, our shieldwall is Faith, and our gladius is the Word.

                  2. I’ve got a half-formed theory that it’s like those bloggers that go nuts.
                     They are “reasonable” and give in to the screamers, who are also often strong with praise for any sign of agreement with them, and get rid of the “disruptive” folks.

                     You end up with anybody who doesn’t agree loudly enough with the peanut gallery or the blog owner being banned, and they are functionally insane compared to what they were.

                     Other than figuring it seems to be rooted in not wanting to argue, and technically the way that, say, someone could say the sky is blue here and get a half-dozen responses ranging from a quote using the phrase “dead channel” to comments on what color their sky is at the moment and at least one “Oh, hey, I heard this really cool thing that is somehow related to the sky NOT being blue and I’m going to share!– that’s arguing…. I can’t figure out what triggers it.

                     Maybe call it the “tired school teacher” effect? They don’t want to deal with this junk, so they tend to reward the kids who don’t make them do as MUCH…even when those kids are on a jihad against everyone on the other side. 25% less arguing, 100% more vicious.

                     1. > go nuts

                        I spent several years on a blog before the owner blew up. “No matter what I write, all you guys do divert the discussion to airplanes! I’m not having that any more! NO MORE AIRPLANES!”

                        Whaaaaatt? I couldn’t remember any threads detailed onto airplanes in the years I’d been there, and search engines only found a handful of entires with “airplane”, all of them from the blog owner talking about his travel arrangements.

                        He had a complete meltdown after that, and I decided there were more-fun places to hang out.

            6. Episcopalians like me who are horrified by all the heresies, like St. Bartholomew’s in NYC hiring a moslem IMAM as clergy!!! … Come join us at the Reformed Episcopal Church/ACNA.org. Anglican Church of North America.

               My pastor says, “We’re basically the Episcopal Church of 1950. And he’s a take no prisoners Calvinist. 😉

               St. Albans, NYC. We are a tiny band of true Believers, hanging tough.

      2. Yeah, the administrative side of the last parish I was active in was mucho red, so I get it.

         I found the best catholic parishes were on military bases, but that’s not a thing out here anymore.

         1. And yes, up the chain too (we’re in an archbishopric here, but same-same). Maybe I’m just a starry eyed optimist.

      3. Well, if you ever want to hear more about my faith, let me know.

         1. Mormon friends for twenty years, remember? We heard.

            1. Of course. Sorry.

               1. Meh, don’t be sorry. As RES reminded me, there’s a reason we don’t discuss religion around here.
                  I was just sucker punched by that email from an otherwise and until today completely sane source.
                  I found myself staring at 50th Earth day and going “WHAT IN F*CK does that mean?”

                  1. We discuss religion here all the time. But we’re adults who can discuss things civilly. I can’t remember you dropping the jackboot down on a religion subthread, and only a couple of times on Civil War subthreads.

                     Perhaps a thread exploded and you or your minions did some cleanup between times I checked the blog. But I’m guessing not often, if any.

                     A different group of people would be whining “But YOU keep bringing up those subjects” or seeing how far they could push things. A different blog owner would be trying to draft and enforce ever-stricter rules to keep threads rigidly on-topic. You understand a pack of Type-As can’t be managed like that, and allow some flexibility without letting things run out of control. Which is a bigger deal than it sounds like; I’ve done my time in the listadmin crab bucket.

                     On the downside, you’ve attracted a crew of problem thinkers, deplorables, weirdos, and a few people who are downright strange…. I hear some bloggers use Chinese bots to get hits and admiring commentary; at least that would reduce the administration problem!

                     1. I think every time it’s gotten in to dangerous territory, the folks involved yanked the cord on religion.

                        I was going to say that we’re not trying to convert folks…but that’s not right, because I’m pretty sure most folks here who are interested in their religion would be delighted to convert all involved. It’s more like, we know the only way to change the mind of ANYBODY here on something like love is to get them familiar enough to fall in love, and we’re genuinely interested in what other folks love, too.

                        Contrast with arguments on objective facts, where you’re going to get arguments from people who agree with you!

                        1. I managed to distract the Voices with the promise of ice cream, but when they finally realize there is no ice cream, I’m going to point them to you.

                           I recommend not engaging the one known as “Alvin.” Besides having a high squeaky voice, I think he’s a Jesuit and therefore prone to arguing both sides of question…

                           1. I think he’s a Jesuit and therefore prone to arguing both sides of question…

                              Isn’t that just being Irish?

                              That, and responding to it with “BOTH sides? What, there are only two?”

                           2. I went to a college run by Benedictines, so I always think of Jesuits as soft headed liberals.

                           3. That’s because they are. Although most just play at “soft headed”

                           4. Understanding is a 3 edged sword…

                           5. Matthew, why are you FH?

                           6. Ugh… stupid corporate email. It keeps randomly adding FH (Fraser Health) as an organization tag when I reply by email.

                     2. I think it less a matter of a verboten topic than a caution against an unproductive one. A topic that is rooted in fundamental beliefs can be productively discussed so long as you restrict the discussion to consequences of those beliefs and NOT whether those beliefs are valid. It is a matter of respect for others’ intellectual integrity that is often lacking in common society.

                        Sarah’s complaint, of course, was not a discussion of religion, per se, but of a Church straying into proselytizing that which its own core precepts ought recognize as heresy. That provided a framework enabling intelligent discussion with minimal shouts of infidel, heretic and such opprobria.

                        The ban is a general rule against straying into the event horizon of a black hole discussion and getting sucked down into the thread that permits no replies.
                        –

                     3. “On topic”. I understand both of those words, but have no idea how they pertain to this blog.

         2. I’d offer mine, but she complained about her church heading that way with the Earth Mother bit.

   3. No, some of the Princes of the Institution are getting scary. Catholics are getting…irritated.

      1. Little word. Big connotation.

         1. Is that like “it’s July, 1939 along the German/Polish border”, or more like December 5, 1941?

   4. Speaking as a *real* white Mormon male (sans the rack), I’m going to claim that the LDS are about as USAian as you are likely to find. In their scriptures you will find a claim that authors of the US Constitution were wise men who were raised up by God for the very purpose of ensuring that no man should be in bondage to another, and that the constitutional principles of freedom belong to all mankind. Although the leadership has been avoiding partisan politics, they have been going about warning that religious freedom is being threatened (most obviously, by the secular clerisy).

      1. It helps that we already have a Mother in Heaven in our theology, so don’t feel the need to worship a pagan earth-goddess.

         And we’re hated by _all_ the right people.

         -Albert

         1. Even Mitt Romney? 🙂

            1. Romney has been a disappointment to the more patriotic types, especially since going never Trump. Harry Reid was by no means representative of the majority of LDS. Mike Lee, the other Senator from Utah, is rather closer.

         2. Ehhh, Mormon feminists get really weird about Heavenly Mother.

            1. I want to point out this isn’t a one up on Catholics. Either having one, or the really weird.

               1. She’s distinct from Mary, for what it’s worth. And we don’t know hardly anything about Her, other than that She exists. Most everything else is speculation. As one of our articles of faith points out, we believe that there’s still a lot to be revealed to us about the Kingdom of God. (I suspect those reveals won’t happen any time soon, since the world-at-present would immediately make a sex-cult out of them.)

                  That said, I like some of the guesses that can be made based on what we know of Israelite worship prior to 600 B.C. Associating Her with wisdom, for example.

                  -Albert

                  1. As I said, I had Mormon friends for 20 years.
                     I was just pointing out Catholics have no need to treat the Earth as though it were associated with divinity. (Any more thanw e are.)

                     1. Eh, spectator sport– folks talking here, I can put about on par with neighbors chatting about their religion, and we’ve got a big enough group that anybody trying to excommunicate folks for not agreeing with them will sink. 😀

                        Even the Catholic stuff I know we’ve had some neat “well, this is licit, this isn’t, here’s the authority for it” type stuff show up. ❤

                        1. Izzat like how Filipino Catholics have folks who are both deeply religious and superstitious at the same time?

                           Just me personally, I was starting to go agnostic when I was early teens but that got derailed hard after a few too many supernatural experiences to NOT believe that God, or Gods don’t exist…

                           1. Kinda-sorta?

                              There’s stuff that gets lumped into “superstition” when it really should be more like “unknown cause” and it gets complicated from there, but I’ve seen folks who will declare whatever they favor as not superstition while what other folks do without understanding that they DON’T favor is signs they’re superstitious idiots. (Because humans. /sigh)

                           2. Probably a better example would be how Catholics are free to believe in warm-puddle-of-muck evolution, but we’re not required to believe either way as long as we keep it properly organized that Himself is in charge and we’re not glorified clockwork. (Um, irony not intended, now imagining actually Glory-fied clockwork androids as a metaphor for shaping us from the mud… bad Fox! Stop!)

                           3. LOL

                              I gathered honestly that Catholic belief in evolution was considered acceptable since it doesn’t really contradict it, just that evolution is more ‘nuts and bolts’ level.

                              It seems to be a Lefty conceit anyway that scientists tend not to be religious.

                           4. *big happy grin* Not that I’d ever address a bunch of scientists by their religious titles rather than just “doctor” or “professor”….. more than a few times…. in a single conversation…. per person….

                           5. “It seems to be a Lefty conceit anyway that scientists tend not to be religious.”

                              More an expression of ignorance, as the foundation of Western Science is that G-d is not a maniac, nor are there individual gods controlling local affairs. G-d is consistent and to better understand His creation is to better understand His mind.
                              –

                           6. Wasn’t it Cardinal Newman who said something to the effect of “just because it appears random to us, doesn’t mean it’s random to God.”

                           7. Perspective matters greatly. My conception of the Triune G-d was greatly enhanced when I envisioned the perception of a Flatlander to my poking index, middle and ring fingers through his plane.

                              Just because one cannot understand a thing does not mean it cannot be.

                              Which is probably a good thing; I doubt there are more than a half dozen people who truly grasp Quantum Mechanics and they don’t agree — and yet, them particles they do spin, no matter how “far” between ’em.
                              –

                           8. “Catholics are free to believe in warm-puddle-of-muck evolution, but we’re not required to believe either way as long as we keep it properly organized that Himself is in charge”

                              Shrug – He created Time, He can use it as He likes. Whether He spends a few million years to evolve Life or makes those years pass in the blink of an eye, it doesn’t make much difference to me, and I’m not even Catholic. The distinction is essentially subjective. Like taking a nap on a long car trip, lack of awareness of travel from point A to point b does not mean the travel didn’t take place.

                              When an artist creates the time spent on envisioning the result is more important than the time spent achieving it.

                              On the more common conception of superstition, one can believe in the supernatural — elves, goblins, leprechauns and the like — so long as one does not believe them all-powerful. It is not especially wrong to believe in Lucifer, but dangerous to believe what he tells you.
                              –

                           9. It is not especially wrong to believe in Lucifer, but dangerous to believe what he tells you.

                              *eyeballs the wallaby*
                              Should I be checking to see if you’re dressed as GK Chesterton? That is extremely well said.

                           10. [curtsies] Danke.

                               Sometimes we gets lucky, we does, and we stumbles into coherence.
                               –

                           11. Pretty much my take (and a not uncommon Jewish take generally). G-d created the universe and set the rules to let things run more or less smoothly without direct interference. In the end, all things trace back to Him.

                     2. Well, Catholics _shouldn’t_, but there’s been that thing recently about putting pagan idols in positions of honor in Catholic church buildings. The false-pope seems to be in favor of that sort of thing.

                        -Albert

                        1. That one was kinda convoluted…. the artist wasn’t even from the same area, but it was inspired by a goddess-spirit-thing from some tribe or other, and it was for an exhibit, and the Vatican has a lot of actually explicitly pagan art on display because we don’t burn that stuff. On the other hand, not an appropriate place for the display, and I’d buy the guys who chucked it in the river a beer.

                           1. With me buying the second round. I read about that Earth Goddess.
                              NASTY.

                           2. Amazon.

                              The nice guys of south America’s nice god required young teen girl sacrifice, but not very many and they drugged her before leaving her to freeze to death.

                              Add in that goddesses tend to be hungry, and for children…..

      2. Ya know, there’s the thing. Whatever the faults of LDS, I’ve never met a Mormon who wasn’t at least enough of a patriot.

         1. The LDS have also been supporters of Israel and generally friends of both Israel and Jews generally. The treatment by the left of the LDS is appalling; recall all the leftists who touted the Broadway play The Book of Mormon which basically mocks the LDS at the same time they were screaming “how dare people criticize any aspect of Islam or anyone who is Muslim”. Of course the left has no problem with denigration of any other religion except Islam (well also except for Marxism and its neo-Marxist offshoots).

            Before the People’s Republic of New Jersey was shut down by decree of the Murphfascist, there was usually a group of LDS members who walked around the neighborhood every couple of weeks. Even though they knew we had no intention of converting, always had very pleasant conversations with them,

            1. I love the church’s response to that play. They put in an ad that essentially said “You’ve seen the play now read the book, it’s better.

               1. This is where I really miss the laugh emoji from Facebook.

               2. LOL,that’s perfect. 😀

                  1. Yeah, I could put on a hat just to take it off to them for that.

            2. As I said, Mormons are hated by _all_ the people you want to be hated by.

               -Albert

   5. There are Protestant churches in between what Lawdog called the Shia Baptists and the New Age Religion Of The Month Club, but they are mostly keeping their heads down and doing their work; missionaries to the Third World (and China, which is arguably Cloud Cuckoo Land), schools in the Inner Cities (and scholarships for same). The Lamestream Media do their best to ignore them, except when they can be painted as dangerous extremists, but they are out there. If you follow alternative news sources you can regularly find stories of them winning lawsuits against the Fascist Blob.

      My problem is that I grew up with a certain amount of Methodist solemnity, and my Lady has gone Baptist folksy.

      And forget the Unitarians. They really HAVE gone all New Age. Before he retired, the Unitarians in Ames Iowa found out that my Father was an expert of Joseph Priestley (who founded, or helped found, the Unitarians) and asked him to come ‘give a,talk’. He gave them a genuine Priestley sermon, and said afterward that you could hear the eyeballs bouncing on the floor.

      1. Unitarians: Even you don’t agree with us, we agree with you.

         Baptists: Even if you agree with us, we don’t agree with you. Or each other.

         1. Somewhere, I think it’s in WASP, WHERE IS THY STING, Florence King elaborated how the names of American Protestant sects tell you where the schisms took place.

   6. I went to my one and only ELCA service on Easter Sunday, and was shocked to my bones when the preacher taught on his fishing trip and how the inspiration of Easter was new life and saving mother Earth. That was… Over 3 decades ago?

      Stuck to Catholic services after that if there were no LCMS churches handy.

5. Right now I’m thinking a very few major-urban-area- or region-geolimited major khaki-drops, with the rest of the country eventually supplying pacification forces and receivership.

   But from thought-provoking discussions here if things go further, I now think there are three strong-man-on-a-horse models for worst case, none of which is arrow-of-history aligned – As a shorthand, these are the Franco model, the Cromwell model, and the Napoleon model. Note all three of these result from widespread conflict, so if things stay sufficiently geographically limited I think we could actually skip all three.

   But it should be more than obvious after the past 4 months that everyone should have sufficient food and supplies put aside, and keeping ones powder dry is always a good idea.

   1. The thing that worries me and makes me think there could be a Franco is the anti-religious and anti-rural nature of our left map well to the left in 30s Spain. I guess a big part of that is commies are commies, but how they have infiltrated culture fits that pattern more than most other places.

      Even promises of land reform by the left in Spain didn’t overcome that anti-religious issue in getting much of the country side on the Nationalist column. The left here doesn’t even have that promise, but instead has out and out hatred for the non-urban.

      1. Shades of the French and Russian Revolutions, too. Makes me wonder if urban snob intellectuals just hate the common people.

         1. Yes. See Bloomberg’s farming comment.

            1. They not only hate people who live outside of urban areas, they are utterly ignorant of who such people live and work, as exemplified by those Bloomberg comments. And they are not confined to him, For a political party that professes that it is for “the workers” they have an unbridled and now rather open contempt for those very same workers.

               1. When have leftists not had contempt for the workers they claim to support? Same as every other group they claim to support, but instead prey upon, create problems for, and then indoctrinate into believing it’s everyone else but the leftists and the indoctrinated who are the cause of the problems.

                  Bloomberg’s farming comment reminded me of a book. Haven’t been able to remember which, but the urban people decided to villainize the Grangers, and their propaganda about farming was basically what Bloomberg said. Grangers didn’t have to work hard, were really lazy, and yet controlled all the food. Therefore, it was the right of the urban people to take it by force. The mother’s family were Grangers, and her indoctrinated daughter didn’t want to hear anything contradicting the propaganda, refused to help around the farm when they went there, etc. Then the shit started going down and the daughter got her eyes opened the hard way.

                  Idea nibbling at the back of my mind that it might be one of the Bolo books.

                  1. “The Road to Damascus” John Ringo, Linda Evans

                  2. “Undercover Boss” had an executive boss try a few of the jobs on the corporate farms, one of which was in the field. He couldn’t do the job. The field supervisor in the “frank interview” said if this wasn’t a special thing that the corporation had arranged the guy would have been off the field immediately (said more politely).

                     Not like the “boss” was being dismissive of the position. He was there to see what the job was like, what improvements were needed. It was important to know “it ain’t easy” where can improvements be made. It was noise in the background. I do get a kick out of the last 15 minutes or so when bosses reward their trainers, but otherwise show is meh. Something to get away from news.

                  3. John Ringo “Road to Damascus”

               2. Remember reading an article a while ago pointing out that modern Democrats are largely “gentry liberals”: college educated, upper middle class, suburban or urban and filled with that aristocratic certainty that their innate superiority gives them the right to organize and run the country. For the common good, of course.

                  1. Not sure why, but the remark about the gentry made me remember a conversation between two rulers that happens in the Tamuli by David Eddings. The Emperor described how, in the ranks of nobility, it was not uncommon for their children to have their teenage rebellious years spent trying to formulate ‘revolution’ against their government, and they’d be arrested and spend small stints in the lockup -great for the men because it usually got them laid after they were released to continue marching around with placards and throwing rotten produce at the guards. It was considered something of a rite of passage game, not taken seriously, and later the previous rebel would take his or her rightful place in the hierarchy. (The Emperor notes that it didn’t matter what vile names he called his father, he just never could manage to get himself thrown in jail.)

                     This was brought up because such things wouldn’t be tolerated in the continent where the Church Knights came from, since the rebellions there were no game, but serious attempts to distabilise the governments where they would occur, and put down with the necessary brutality and bloodshed needed to deter that from quickly reigniting; and as the Emperor had requested this help, it was going to be difficult to separate the real revolutionary from the youthful nobility who thought this was but part of their usual game and were being used… and more than likely a fair number of the youth were going to find themselves very dead.

                     It strikes me that for some time now, the ‘youthful game’ is how previous riots have been …treated, as it were; a game for the youthful elite to blow off steam, and we’re all supposed to just let it slide… and this ‘cycle’ of ‘youthful rebelliousness’ is ‘supposed to continue’ when convenient (and useful) for the older Democrats to maintain, and use against their opponents, and their opponents are supposed to just… let it go, and not use the same tactics, and not retaliate or penalize seriously.

                     1. Mmm. I’ve been thinking about that too. Boiling oil doesn’t care who just showed up for a good time…. Lead, even less.

         2. Forgot the ‘/sarc’

   2. The Pinochet model might be optimal, if we have to go down that road. I particularly like the idea of privatizing Social Security.
      –

      1. The problem with privatizing any government function is that the government functionaries don’t go away, they just metastasize into a layer of do-noting bureaucracy between the treasury and the contractor.

         My town outsourced its garbage pickup. The Santitation Department is still the same size it was before, except now they’re paying a contractor to do the actual work. And the price of garbage pickup went up more than 4x.

   3. If the riots ramp up after Athe election in November, I think it will be short lived. Again, the Fascist Left have ridden a hobby horse into the ground; there isn’t going to be a lot of sympathy left if Trump clamps down, and as we’ve seen Antifa doesn’t have the guts to make much of a real fight against determined opposition. Oh, CNN may pull out the fainting couch, but if (as I suspect) a lot of Democrat operatives are under investigation for massive election fraud, it isn’t going to impress too many people.

6. I sincerely hope you aren’t a Methodist. But we’re not only crazy, we’re right on the edge of having a schism. Only the WuFlu has kept the church from holding its “amiable divorce,” vote.
   And yes, a lot of older folks fall in the category of good, decent people who would never lie, deliberately distort news or commit fraud, so they firmly believe no one else would, either. Especially in the news media. They really are the salt of the earth. Which makes them natural victims.

   1. Only on the edges of the Methodist church myself, but my husband, who’s more closely involved with the leadership, can’t wait for the divorce to occur in hopes that once both sides have split up, they’ll remember that they’re in the business of running a church, not being a gay marriage debating society.

      I will say, though, that the behavior of the higher-ups during the WuFlu mess has not given our local Methodist church much in the way of motivation to stay with them after the split…

      1. Possibly slow suicide. Don’t open, don’t open, don’t open….it might not be safe.
         I really like open communion and they let me preach, but I don’t know when I’ll have the chance for either any time soon.

         1. Our church is open. They made us jump through more hoops than a Cirque de Soleil acrobat, but we are holding live services. We have to have Communion in the little cellophane containers, but at least it’s something.

         2. The one I attend is open, and even having Sunday School, but the governor’s mask thing is making choir Odd.

         3. Open here in N.J with masks and distancing and all of Gauleiters Murphy’s merry pranks. the parish is having 30 days consecutive Gregorian masses for the people who couldn’t have a proper mass during the lockdown. They set up a little plexiglass shield with a slot for communion. It’s like going to the bank. Nice to get back though.

      2. Lutheran Church already had the same schism. Long lawsuit short, ultimately all-but-killed the one I mostly grew up in. (Fortunately the upshot was moving to a younger neighborhood, and getting a bit of a revival generation going.)

   2. I’m a Methodist, and I’m ready to walk.

      My inlaws are Southern Baptist, and one of the marriage agreements spelled out was no infant baptism. They can’t see it as legitimate, and I believe God wouldn’t turn unbaptized babies away, so . . .
      And my church can’t get itself in gear to offer Third and Fourth a Confirmation/Baptism class. And is still not open.

      And whatever happens with the schism, that’s not acceptable. I really don’t care if the five or six kids ready for Confirmation/Baptism aren’t ‘enough’ to justify a class, that should be the Church’s highest priority.

      Ok, maybe I’m more angry about this than I’d realized. Now to figure out where to go from here . . .

      1. Uh…. doesn’t it say somewhere that even a single soul is worth saving? I’d think a class of one would suffice, if only because without your next generation, you have nothing.

         1. There is the parable/pericope of the lost sheep (Luke 15:4-7 parallel in mathew 18 12-14) This is Luke from the NET

            Which one[e] of you, if he has a hundred[f] sheep and loses one of them, would not leave the ninety-nine in the open pasture[g] and go look for[h] the one that is lost until he finds it?[i] 5 Then[j] when he has found it, he places it on his shoulders, rejoicing. 6 Returning[k] home, he calls together[l] his[m] friends and neighbors, telling them, ‘Rejoice with me, because I have found my sheep that was lost.’ 7 I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner[n] who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people[o] who have no need to repent.[p]

            1. Might be what I was thinking of, thanks.

         2. Yes. My parents pastor is working like a dog, bless the man, because he’ll go house to house, if that’s what it takes.

            1. Good for him. Walkin’ the walk. (Literally!)

   3. My great-grandmother insisted adamantly that to her, pro-choice meant that in a situation where continuing the pregnancy meant the mother and baby were definitely going to die, it could be right and legal to make the very sad choice to perform an abortion.

      Nothing seemed to convince her that this was not what the people she voted for meant by it. I don’t know if it would have had much effect — she genuinely agreed with them on some other things — but nevertheless.

      1. That definition does actually get used– I’ve found it in some of the surveys from that abortion promotion place, Guttenmachter or something, when they actually post the question they used to get stuff like “80% of those surveyed are pro-choice.”

         Noticed that after that went around the block a few times, and folks realized the definition of “pro choice” they were using was so broad that the Catholic Church was pro-choice…. they stopped posting the text of the questions.

         Just interpreted the answers and reported that.

         1. Ergh.

            1. Yep. That tactic has got so old it was probably around in cuneiform.

   4. I’d say you were talking about my Grandmother, only she has not and never will be (and would probably disown any of her descendants who became) a Methodist.

7. Or that form of leftist nationalistic dictatorship that the left keeps telling itself they live under now.

   I think that’s just them wishing. While they think they are wishing so they could be the brave resistance, they are actually wishing because they want to be the guards.

   I think that was Peterson’s great sin. He challenged their assumption that they just wouldn’t go along with the Gulag or the Final Solution. Then, he said if you want to make sure you wouldn’t go along the first step was to admit the ability to commit those things was present in you because you are a human being just like the guards were. Only after facing that part of yourself, he argued, can you build guards against it.

   That’s not just work, which is bad enough, but that was denying there were inherently superior and enlightened. That was unforgivable.

   1. “they are actually wishing because they want to be the guards.”

      Hah! Most will be fortunate if they get to be kapos.
      –

      1. And in a generation, maybe two, the living would envy the dead. Best we not tred that path to its inevitable bloody conclusion.

      2. The Fascist Left has been studiously ignoring for decades the historical fact that, whatever other scapegoats are selected, a Communist/Socialist revolution ALWAYS liquidates the Intellectuals. If they give up on Teh Revolution, they will have to admit A) that they are mostly jumped-up clerks and drones and B) that they have been cheerleaders for a class of monster that makes Torquemada and Richelieu look like goddamned Boy Scouts. Neither realization is something their fragile but overinflated egos could withstand.

8. And despite what you heard about how bad it was in New Orleans over Katrina, let’s say the media was as honest about that as the “we’re all going to die!”
   Also remember NOLA is often very much NOT like America due to being run like those places that such does occur on a regular basis. They had a prelude to the Dome Fail for Hurricane Georges and Nagin made a big deal of making a plan so that would not happen again . . . and promptly screwed the response by ignoring the plan. Apparently the smarter folk went to the Convention Center and were self extracted by a kid who “borrowed”city buses. Fecking HATE most of NOLA.

   1. “Nagin made a big deal of making a plan”

      I still marvel that a city elected a cablevision executive mayor. Sure, they could have done worse – they could have elected a cell phone executive — but it would have required a real effort.
      –

      1. Nagin is the best mayor NOLA has inflicted on itself in a very long time.
         Not that he is that good, but the others were that damned bad.

      2. and it was Cox cable, so a slightly better slime mold than the average.

   2. What everybody forgets was the Parking garage right next to the dome. The people there worked 24/7 and did over 2000 flights, saving countless people. They got no credit. As far as the Media said they didn’t exist but they were right there. The Media had to make sure not to show them in the reporter videos they showed.
      Also in the Dome, they NEVER ran out of water or food. The people who complained were doing so because they were not given what they WANTED only what they needed so that having plenty for everyone was assured.

      1. Oh, of course, when there’s a legit version of “to each according to his needs” that doesn’t mean “we get to decide,” they whine….

      2. the first time, no one brought food, and some event was to be held so the concessions were stocked and everyone complained they were fed , free, food from the concessions, (“All dae done gave us was hot dogs, fries and Pepsi!” to which my buddy replied “Shut Up B*tch. That’s a $25 meal during a game!”), and they broke into the offices in the complex and trashed those, just because.

         1. LBJ got what he wanted: A voting bloc infantilized, immiserated, and tantrum-ing for more gimme-dats.

            -ALbert

            1. eyup

   3. Katrina has long been a berserk button for me. I was there, on the ground, part of the thousands in the federal response that George Bush supposedly hadn’t sent. I left a 3 month old baby at home to be there. And the utter corruption I saw on the ground made me ill.

      The fucking pissing contests going on between FEMA, the NOLA government, and the state government where they all did everything they could to get in each other’s way in order to be the ones to take the credit for ‘saving’ the good people of Louisiana, while my field hospital was dragged across half the country to sit unused in a parking lot in Belle Chase because FEMA would not allow it to be used to treat civilians. We used doctors as chainsaw operators.

      And then every single major media report on it was a lie from beginning to end. That was the last time I ever believed anything I saw in the news that I hadn’t been there for myself.

      1. Nagin had endorsed Jindal over Blanco, and she held that grudge like a 200 neodymium magnets stuck together.
         One of the most corrupt of the agencies down there was/is the Levee Board. SO the one you really need to rely on for protection is the one least reliable. 9th ward had an overdue for replacement levee collapse, but the second levee that collapsed was recently updated, so a new one might well have done nothing.

         1. That explains a lot, actually, not having any real feel for their politics from over East Coast way, I could see the effect, but not the cause for the obvious bad blood. Got to spend a highly educational day doing admin work in the state control center when we first arrived and the obvious dysfunction was obvious.

            1. Lousyana in general, and NOLA especially are noted for their corrupt political works.
               GWB was acting as a go-between for two people who were busy slamming him for their inabilities. Nagin ran as an almost republican, and beat the Machine candidate in the end by leaning on Governor Foster’s backing (Foster was a once Dem who switched parties to become Gov. because above local politics there exists no place for a fiscally and somewhat socially conservative Dem) and explained his Jindal backing as “Bobby would be better for NOLA Business than Blanco”. This was before the cesspit of corruption sucked Nagin in. He had just cleaned house and even a nephew of his was arrested for corruption. It went downhill fast from there, and I left just before all this carp hit (I moved in early 2004 to Texas) so I got to miss the garbage. I lived out in the Burbs anyhow, but I worked at the Airport, which is an extension of NOLA (uses the NOLA police, and NOLA City hall runs it) so I dealt with their stupidity for many years in my work.
               Even outside NOLA you get things like the former Sheriff of Lafourche Parish being jailed for leaving a bomb in the desk for the incoming Sheriff. I could rant on and on.

               1. “GWB was acting as a go-between for two people who were busy slamming him for their inabilities. ”

                  Any semblance to Trump, Cuomo and DeBlasio is purely coincidental.
                  –

         2. It must be admitted that events supported Nagin’s opinion of Blanco, as she’d have been out of her depth in a half inch of water.
            –

            1. oh yeah. Blanco was a blank 0

      2. Katrina is actually a local berserk button around here for two reasons. 1) We sent a lot of charitable help that way, and… well, like you noticed, getting anything done to actually help people was like running into a badsaw.

         2? We got a lot of the people who “washed out” of the lower areas of N’Orleans post-Katrina, who moved in with relatives/people they knew/etc. in this area. The crime rate went up. Significantly. Oi.

         1. You must be in Houston. I’ve heard the same from a lot of friends there.

            1. Nope. Those who fled NO spread through the whole Gulf Coast.

               On the one hand, you have to credit them with a modicum of intelligence with getting out of the city. OTOH….

   4. well part of the problem involved the bus drivers that were supposed to evac people didn’t even know and self-evac’d, then he never activated the busses, and well, there are photos around of what happened to the busses.

      1. The yard down by the river was dry, and that is where the kid went and opened it up and borrowed the buses that first showed up in Houston.
         The Plan that never got activated was to tell the Drivers to show up and they’d load the masses to transport to higher ground. the First Step of The Plan was never looked at. By the time the yard was flooded someone thought “Hey, weren’t we supposed to like, use those for something?”
         On the other side of things, I know of a guy who lived Uptown, and was starting his laundry when he got a phone call from a friend saying the levees went down, best leave, Now. His street went from a bit of water in the gutter of the street to at the sidewalk as he drove out of the yard in minutes. Luckily he just tossed the laundry into the car, grabbed his cat, and headed out in minutes. Though at Hollygrove, he had to hit “speed bumps” when a crowd tried to Reginald Denny him.
         Flood waters washed the blood off for him. NOLA went from fine really, to that level of breakdown, in minutes.

9. If the left lived in the nationalist fascist supremacist dictatorship they claim, they’d already be being disappeared right out of the helicopter doors out over the Pacific.

   The fact they are saying such things, and burning stuff, and killing 8-year-olds, is proof they are lying.

   1. “The fact they are saying such things, and burning stuff, and killing 8-year-olds, is proof they are lying.”

      Do not assume lying when irrationality, hysteria, and stupidity are equally adequate reasons.
      –

      1. the 4 combined are a powerful driver

   2. No. Not out of helicopter doors. There would be elaborate show-trials where the ‘deviationists’ were made to confess, and THEN they would disappear into some sub-basement. Or be shipped to some communal farm, on land uniquely unsuited to farming, to work themselves to death.

      Twits.

10. Tangent, but I just got an email. DragonCon is officially cancelled. I knew it was probably going to be through the volunteer grapevine.

    Memberships will automatically roll over. I have one uncommitted one, so I need to see what will happen with that.

    1. Its on my “one of these days” lists to volunteer at. *sigh* Too many irons in the fire this year, so perhaps the next one will work out.

11. > They do not understand the American character, which is to be quiet, quiet, quiet and then erupt in sudden, unimaginable violence.
    —
    Nagasaki. Hiroshima. Dresden. Berlin. Ploesti.

    Atlanta. Vicksburg. Savannah. Richmond.

    “Do not call up what you cannot put down.” – HPL

    1. Yeah, back during the Iraq war the oppositional press (so, all the press) kept publishing polls with growing “% do not approve of how GWB is running the war” numbers, with absolutely no effort to disaggregate “Too much force” and “Not enough force” opinions. I maintain there was a significant chunk that was basically saying “Why are they all not dead yet? Why are we not bouncing the rubble?”

       1. Bingo. I loooooved the “Don’t nuke Iran” protesters at Flat State U. Most of the comments I heard were along the lines of “Why not? They’ve been asking for it,” with a few in the minority muttering back, “Because Israel claimed first dibs, remember?”

          1. It’s a real shame that the Left insisted on undermining the goals of Bush’s limited war by limited means in Iraq and Afghanistan. Before we pulled the trigger (and for about half a week after) I kept hearing that Iraq had the ‘fourth largest military in the world’. Yeah, maybe they did. We took that military, much admired in the region, down in – what? – two weeks? A nice, clear object lesson, that. Contrary to the lies the Left pushed so hard, we found plenty of WMDs as well as clear signs that Iraq was working on more and worse. And the lesson took in some quarters; Muammar Gaddafi sent us literally tons of WMD project materials, saying (in effect), “Here’s the stuff I was working on with Saddam. I’m out. Please don’t hit me.”

             Thanks to the Left, the lesson, “Don’t piss off the United States, they can take you out with one hand.” got lost.

             1. Wait, what? I thought I was relatively well versed in OIF I – and I never heard about actual finds of WMDs. I heard about former WMD sites, but that was it…

                1. I heard. but I was on the mailing list of people deployed.

                2. “Pesticide” is not kept in hardened bunkers held by Republican Guard units with machine gun emplacements and anti-aircraft guns.

                   I saw reports from people in-country that they found stores of hastily-buried artillery shells loaded with binary nerve toxin. They found out the shells were loaded when they broke open being unburied.

                   And there was one story, quickly disappeared from the internet, that as our troops were going into Baghdad, there was a huge chlorine plume in one of the rivers, estimated at a couple of tons of liquid mustard gas.

                   Oh, yeah, and all the French and Russian new-build missiles in violation of the armament restrictions.

                   1. and munitions treaty controlled parts for their Super Etendards and other French-built aircraft that were clearly marked with manufacturing dates after the embargo…

                3. I can say with a great deal of confidence that there were plenty that you did not hear about. And that is all I’d best day about that. Although quite a bit of it did eventually make it into the media retrospectively, once Obama was in power and it was no longer a potential embarrassment to admit the former administration was right. But that was 5+ years later and no-one could get very excited about it.

                4. There was a lot of bait and switch going on- about the only thing that would have been reported as a WMD find would be if they popped open an active nuke bomb plant and the scientists were all genuflecting to a picture of Saddam as they came in to work.

                   Here’s a page from ’07, starts with a link to a list of stuff that was available at the time, and the comments have more stuff as it was found.

                   http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1785035/posts

                5. Here’s Hotair linking a Wired article (because I don’t trust Wired to not remove/alter their stuff) from 2014, on the Wikileaks data:
                   https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2014/07/12/wmd-in-iraq-a-rather-nuanced-issue/

                6. And here’s Iraq Watch’s web archive:
                   https://web.archive.org/web/20150814141445/http://www.iraqwatch.org/index.html

                   It’s from the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, about which I know nothing, but the data was good waaaaay back when.

                   1. Damnation. Thank ye so much for being gracious enough to give me information.

                      1. I had a whole folder of stories on this that amazingly has disappeared from my browser after a sync to a new system and Foxfier has filled in most of them with those links. Among the stuff not considered “found” was stuff marked for disposal, but illegally kept, “outdated” stuff (no leftoid was willing to take up my offer to let them test the effectiveness of this “less effective” stuff by being on the receiving end) mostly left over from the Iran war, and a crapton of yellowcake given to Canada for conversion/disposal.

                      2. Hell, thank you for wanting it.

                         I’ve lost more than one friend because they, too, hadn’t heard anything — and had then spun stuff on top of there not being anything.

                         Some of my Marines talked to the grunt Marines who had talked to the guys who got a snoot full of WMDs on the ground from the improvised devices with stuff that was SUPPOSED to have been destroyed years ago, certified by the official inspectors, so I knew there was something there and could go look.

                7. I heard stuff from people who’d been there. Nothing we’d get in trouble for, but enough to contradict the shrieking harpies in the media and Code Pfink.

                8. We found chemical shells for sure. I didn’t hear or read about any ASSEMBLED bio or nuclear weapons, but we found aerosol delivery systems Saddam wasn’t supposed to have, which would be pretty useless without chem or bio. We also found heavily contaminated HIDDEN nuclear labs, many TONS of yellowcake, precursor chemicals in large quantity, and biological feedstock suitable for making bio weapons. We also found a lot of missile systems Saddam wasn’t,supposed,to have anymore.

                   Basically, Saddam never came within shouting distance of meeting the surrender terms of the First Gulf War, and was clearly working feverishly on WMDs. The ‘We didn’t find any WMDs! Bush lied!” Narrative is a bigger work of fiction than THE PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION.

                   I really wish Bush had done two things differently about the Iraq war.

                   1) Said, “Saddam has never met, or even come close to meeting, the terms of surrender from the First Gulf War. We are therefore STILL at war with him, and only unconditional surrender will be accepted.”

                   2) Wrecked Saddam’s government, found Saddam, hung the stupid bastard, and then LEFT, saying “Don’t annoy us again, or we’ll be back.”. ‘Nation building’ is for dupes.

                   1. We also never found what was in those trucks that went over the border during the…what, three day “surrender or else” time.

                      Did find some of the trucks. Burried in the desert. Drivers still in them- although they did at least shoot the driver before burrying it.

                   2. “Nation building’ is for dupes.”

                      HEY! Colin Powell hisself said it: you break it, you own it!

                      Not, perhaps, the strongest argument from authority I might make.
                      –

                   3. Nation building has it’s place, the Marshall Plan, which was post WWII nation (re)building ensured we’d have valuable allies in Britain, France, Germany, and Japan…

                      Okay valuable allies in Japan, and Britain on a good day.

                9. It actually made the news. Briefly. Then they went back to “Bush lied!”

                   1. Well, everybody (at the New Yawk press cocktail parties / struggle and denunciation sessions) knows, so it must be so!

                      It continues to amaze me how the media continues to be so gobsmacked that they are not held in any sort of elevated regard when the consistent and universal experience of every single person with any direct experience of any newsworthy event finds press reporting on that event at vast separation from their firsthand observed reality.

             2. Thanks to the Left, the lesson became, “If you can survive the initial blow from the US you can outlast them because their Left will always turn Quisling.”

                It also increases pressure on our troops to win fast before the politicians can stab them in the back.
                –

                1. It also increases the motivation for a Republican president to go full option zero because if he does not the next Democrat president will undo all that the lives of our service members have bought us,

                   1. The meme from those days that annoyed me most was people who I knew perfectly well would not have supported ANY war Bush started saying, “Well, why attack Iraq? Saudi Arabia was more involved!”

                      I’d say, “Because if we attack Saudi Arabia, we win. And if we win a war with Saudi Arabia we end up in control of Mecca and Medina, which have to constitute the two biggest recurring administrative headaches in the world…and that’s with Muslims running them.”

                      Jaws tended to drop.

                      1. Part of why they didn’t want us to actually do anything is that screaming on how the US wasn’t doing anything for the Marsh Arabs when Saddam gassed them was a very useful club.

                         That roommate I’ve mentioned who became an Aviation Ordnanceman because she was an artist… in New York… with a very expensive studio…with a great view…. *shudder*

                         She had a copy of the New Yorker magazine with an article on that in it, and it was recent enough that she had it on hand, and that was before we rolled into Iraq.

             3. Not to mention how Obama’s taking out Qaddafi undermined the whole, “if you give it up, we’ll leave you alone” part of his turning over his WMD materials.

       2. That’s the same thing they are doing now with questions re Trump’s performance and most of the other polls they run. The most bogus poll questions ever all start with “are you satisfied” because it encompasses both positive and negative views and can be twisted to whatever narrative the pollster or the party retaining the pollster wants.

    2. Charleston and Columbia.

       I think the Civil War should scare the left more than WW2 for two reasons:

       1. A CW is what they want.
       2. We did that to our nominal country men, who we later built statues to (or accepted the need as part of reconciliation at least).

       Sherman in Georgia and South Carolina is what we will do to our kin when our dander is up.

       1. Hurrah, hurrah, we bring the jubilee.

       2. They like Sherman’s march and are sure that when it happens again the red states will be the ones burning.

          1. Which is even bigger hubris than the Southern Planters displayed. They, at least, had a martial tradition on which to base their belief they could win.

    3. Slightly OT, a meme linked from Peter Grant’s blog this AM:

       

       1. A nuke only destroys once.

          1. And not very permanently. The meme SHOULD show Hiroshima circa 1955.

             https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.worthpoint.com%2Fworthopedia%2Fhiroshima-japan-aerial-view-10-years-1883983592&psig=AOvVaw07B-bU9-8EZHpjuqVAcfKM&ust=1594173748375000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCOCMkJeGuuoCFQAAAAAdAAAAABAD

    4. Point of order! Dresden was done at the behest of the Brits.

       OTOH, Curtis LeMay’s forces were doing as much and worse fire-bombing in Tokyo …
       –

       1. I’d still be typing if it was a comprehensive list…

       2. Neither atomic bombing was the deadliest of the war. It was LeMay’s first incendiary raid on Tokyo in March of 45.

          1. To be fair, a Little Boy or Fat Man dropped over Tokyo could very well have done more damage than the Meetinghouse raid – the USAAF and Los Alamo folks picked the initial military target city list because those cities were geographically contained and mostly untouched for better damage and yield assessments.

             1. As I recall, the damage done at Nagasaki was less than planned, because they were not able to aim at their preferred target due to clouds. (Nagasaki wasn’t the planned city either. Can’t remember the original city, and weather was a problem for that sortie.)

                1. It was Kokura. The three targets in order were Hiroshima, Kokura and Nagasaki. Hiroshima had good weather and was completed. They had lots of clouds and could not target Kokura so they went on to Nagasaki which was the alternate target.

             2. They had also had to give Kemah a list a of what cities he was not allowed to burn down. He was working down a list by population and had already burned everything else the size of Mahattan Project targets.

             3. Also, my point is in context all the atomic bomb changed was efficiency. We were routinely doing that level of destruction nightly. It just took more than one plane.

                1. Agreed. And looking up the details I was surprised that Meetinghouse only required getting fewer than 300 B-29s over Tokyo that night to do that level of damage when the numbers I’m used to seeing for raid counts in the very different environment of the ETO were so much greater. B-17s, B-24s and Lancasters were smaller planes, but flying shorter distances, and against significantly more effective defenses, but still.

             4. IIRC, there was also concern that dropping one of the bombs on Tokyo risked decapitating the Japanese leadership. And if that happened, there wouldn’t be anyone left who could surrender.

    5. “Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed”

       I’m sure for this crowd, it needs no attribution, but still: from the Declaration of Independence.

       It is interesting to read through the litany of the injustices imposed upon the colonists by the crown and go “yup, we deal with that. Yup, that too. Oh, we’re not dealing with that yet, thankfully.”

       1. In fact, sometime during Obama’s insanity, I did a post with links under the “yeah, we’re dealign with that.”

12. A few of the local communities here in southwest Ohio went ahead with fireworks, but cancelled the bulk of the organized ground festivities. Instead, they fired their rockets a bit higher, and made arrangements with the local businesses so that people could park in the lots to get a good view. Traffic was actually better with that approach, though I missed the music and organized festivities a little, and using the gas station bathroom was beat porta-potties hands down.

    And I got to see the impressive DIY displays on the drive home. Along one half-mile stretch of highway, there were like five sets of fireworks being launched along the north side, and another three sets to the south, and the highway was being bathed in smoke as dense as a thick fog. Impressive.

    1. State College in PA had a local radio station do the music while they did the same thing.

    2. I really like that option if they’d think about using the radio for the music in the future– and let the festivities go ahead, but if the fireworks are higher then people who want to leave early/beat the rush/avoid crowds are out of their hair for the human management angle.

       1. Drive-In Firework Shows is what the licensed Pyrotechnic we know is doing. Don’t know how he’s handling the themed, timed, music, or if he it. I do know that the actual 4th of July program he does is visible from I-5, and vehicles regular park on the sides of I-5 to watch, well outside the music range in regular years.

13. > BE NOT AFRAID

    “Afraid” isn’t even on the table.

    I’m wavering between “annoyed” and “angry.”

    1. angry and enraged here.

    2. Yeah, with those defined as “side arm” and “home made, single use canister”.

    3. It might be said that I was born angry.

       I’m working on calm and forgiveness now. Because things are close enough to a valid excuse, and I don’t want to be the one who screws things up by acting in the wrong circumstances.

    4. Yeah, I’m not afraid.

       Borderline depressed at what I’m witnessing, and simultaneously alternating between “Ugh… Please just make it stop already…” and “SMITE THEM ALL AND ALL OF THEIR PROGENY AND ALL OF THEIR ANCESTORS AND SALT THE EARTH THAT THEY DARED DWELL UPON!”

       But not afraid.

    5. I hit “cranky” back in April and have not come back yet.

       …Given I consider Logan (Wolverine) to be a model of decorum and force applied only when necessary….

    6. I’m a hopeful cynic (yes, I know it’s weird); I’m torn between disgusted and amused. I really think that in a year’s time Nasty Pelosi and Gavin Noisome and a lot of the other Democrat Panjandrums are going to be under indictment and fighting for their political lives.

       1. Assuming they don’t fake up enough votes to “win” and then shred/delete all the evidence.

          1. I think that Trump had evidence before the election in 2016, which is why he made the comments the Left spun as “He says he’ll rebel if he doesn’t win”. I think he didn’t use them then because he didn’t need to. In his place I would have used the last few years getting chapter and verse on the Democrat Vote Fraud machine in at least two major venues, and be ready to drop it on the Democrats from a great height.

             So, the Democrats declare, “We’ve Won!” and t=Trump says, “No, they didn’t. They stole the election; here’s how they tried it in 2016. The following people are being subpoenaed.”

    7. Afraid, yes. I am afraid for what my kids are going to be dealing with. What they are going to see. What old evils under new names they will have to deal with, and I am afraid that I am not teaching them about the Most High well enough.

       As for everything else – Ranger Up had (has?) a tshirt that says – “I survive on caffeine and hate.” I have taken that as a motto. Mildly tongue in cheek – but also very much not.

    8. I’m still oscillating between an unhealthy rage and despair personally.

       1. Go with rage, Despair is worse both physically and morally.

          1. The Terminator: “Better. Anger is more useful than despair.”

          2. Despair is a sin as Jerry Pournelle reminded us.

14. About two years ago, my husband was loaned this book by a coworker:
    Days of Rage, by Bryan Burrough

    He keeps either predicting what pattern the junk will take, or pointing out the history it rhymes with.

    They didn’t win last time, either. 🙂

    (Link edited to include the last half of the Deep Pink link, because I R No Brainzor 2day.)

    1. I have thought about buying that book.

       The thing is, I remember the late 70s part, being born in ’66, but it seems like everyone else has forgotten how extensive, and for how long, the Weathermen et al kept up “fighting”.

       I guess if we didn’t memory hole that part, they would be able to get tenure.

       1. That and the Puerto Rican separatists, who killed tons of Puerto Ricans. Using funding from the Episcopal Church. Because one of their members got on a national Hispanic church committee, and put all the other terrorists on it, and had the Episcopalians pay their airfare and explosive bills.

          1. Sigh, that sounds about like something we would do. I love my (c)hurch, but my (C)hurch has a lot to answer for.

             1. An Eastern Orthodox priest my dad took a history class from (long story) said, “The church survives despite believers and sometimes To spite believers.” I think he summed it up quite neatly. 🙂

                1. AGREED!

       2. The Fascist Left of the ‘60’s had more guts than the twerps we’re seeing now. They had no realistic chance, but they had more guts.

    2. I have the book in e-book format. It’s a good read. It’s also somewhat troubling how many of those people essentially got away scott-free with the stuff they pulled, and are well-connected these days.

       1. That, and how few arrests the FBI made, and only a handful of those convicted… yet another Fibbie failure.

          1. The reason for the FBI’s failure back then was excessive zeal. They infiltrated these groups with so many agents provocateurs that several juries quite rightly questioned whether any of the most serious acts of violence the groups committed would have happened without the infiltrators egging them on.

             Today we have the opposite problem. Just like the KKK before them, today’s Antifa and BLM include (or at least have as supporters) so much of the Democratic party that they can count on “resisters” throughout the bureaucracy to prevent the government from taking any effective action.

             If Trump is unable to purge those people en masse before he has to leave office, then the only hope for the country is a Pinochet. No system is well enough designed that a huge horde of bad guys can’t overwhelm it, and Soros is having great success in recruiting that horde.

             Which implies to me that “Americans are decent” is a Pollyanna view. And so is Heinlein’s “This I Believe.”

             1. I think it will be instructive to see how the case against the Obama crew goes these next few months. Trump’s timing is a hell of a lot better than the Left’s; it wouldn’t surprise me in the least to see a lot of it break wide about the beginning of October.

                1. The Durham investigation is likely one reason the Dems will pull out all stops this Fall. If [Biden] wins they can probably end the prosecutions before juries give verdicts — especially as defense counsel and judges know that January 20 end date is en route and thus have every reason to stall.

                   It isn’t as if the MSM will demand continuing the process, is it? Hell, they’ll probably still be calling for Trump’s impeachment come January 18.
                   –

             2. More than “progressive zeal”. The FBI openly engaged in – and frequently screwed up – blatantly illegal activities against some of these groups. Mark Felt – of Watergate fame – is mentioned in the book as one of the members of then-FBI leadership who was involved in these illegal activities. Ironically, in some of the later instances of FBI wrong-doing, the book notes that J. Edgar Hoover himself had specifically rejected the actions that the FBI took and got in trouble over.

                Felt, of course, would be the unknown “Deep Throat” informant that the left cheered on not long afterwards.

                Unfortunately, I can’t remember whether the involvement of other members of the FBI leadership meant that the people involved ignored Hoover’s wishes about this, or it was after he was no longer at the FBI.

                1. > Felt, of course, would be the unknown “Deep Throat” informant

                   Felt claimed that. I read his book.

                   Based on many other books I’d read on Watergate, some by primary sources, Felt was a sorry little weasel, and (among other things) his timeline doesn’t agree with the ones people who were there wrote down.

                   On preponderance of evidence, Deep Throat was *not* Mark Felt. He was just, at the end of his weasel life, making a book deal with a publisher who couldn’t be arsed to fact-check his drivel.

                   1. Woodward and Bernstein said he was Deep Throat. So if Felt lied, then he somehow convinced the two reporters to go along with his lie.

                      But yes, Felt was a weasel. As “Days of Rage” reveals, he was caught doing things worse than Watergate.

                   2. Uuuhhh… Woodward and Bernstein aren’t exactly models of probity and truthfulness.

                      1. I’d lay my bet on “Deep Throat” being an imaginary single source, and the actual sources being a mixture of different people, plus pure imagination.

                         That’s the problem with secret sources. If you have one and he’s hidden, or you admit to having more than one (which I seem to remember they also said– that some of the stuff from Deep Throat had come from different sources) then it is flatly impossible to fact check. It can always be someone else.

                         Which is why bearing false witness lead to the right to confront your accuser and rules of evidence and such.

                         1. Most of the informed opinion I’ve read on this agrees with you — “Deep Throat” was a convenient construct for advancing the narrative. Aside from the (many) reasons I can conceive for Woodward & Bernstein to go along with Felt’s claim, not least would be their unwillingness to admit there was no Deep Throat.

                            They’d published their story and were compelled to stick to it.
                            –

                   3. “… a publisher who couldn’t be arsed to fact-check his drivel.”

                      IOW, a bog-standard publisher. If an assertion cannot be proven false it is no bar to publication. See, for example, surfacing claims i Mary Trump’s book that The Donald paid somebody to take his SATs.
                      –

    3. I’ve seen some reviews of that book. It looked pretty interesting.

15. “Making predictions is hard, particularly about the future,”

    Nyah – it’s easy-peasey.

    Making accurate predictions is hard, but if you project them sufficiently into the future it won’t much matter if you’re wrong.
    –

    1. If you make enough of them, one or two are bound to be close enough for government work.

       1. Unless your last name is Erhlich.

    2. Making predictions about the future is easy in one respect: anything the Left is saying is drivel.

    3. Unless you are the Babylon Bee which has an amazingly prescient track record.

       1. Oh, hell, from the looks of things what happens is the Bee says “wouldn’t it be silly and stupid if the Left did this?” and the Left says, “Hold my Chardonnay!”

          1. The Onion Effect is hurting the Bee now, at least for their political and social humor. And with the churches doubling down on Teh Crazy, even their religious stuff isn’t automatically funny now.

16. Apologies for going off topic, but hoping someone here can provide a pointer. I am watching the local university during all this craziness, and they are starting to mainline the BLM koolaid. Something that came up in one of the PDFs they posted said something about “hierarchy of human value”, and a Google search only links to lefty sites. Same with DuckDuckGo. I am trying to find an analysis of this that presents issues with this hierarchy. I am getting nowhere and would appreciate either better search terms or names to look for.

    1. First one Duck spit up using the quotemarked phrae.
       https://www2.gmu.edu/news/575791

       The leftyness seems to mostly revolve around a Dr. Gail Christopher.

       [Anyone else having trouble getting Duck to even WORK since Google did the big overhaul a few days ago, that killed the old Mobile Youtube interface? Effing YT is now an unusable trainwreck; as much as possible I shift vids to invidious instead. Thinkin’ they also messed with the API that Duck uses, given it’s really just a simpler interface to Google search.]

       1. No problems yet, but I’ve been doing pretty specific searches. Aside from trying to track down a short story title (didn’t remember the author, or the title, or the collection or magazine, so I expected to have to work).

          1. What browsers are you using. I am using Firefox and have had no problems with Duck searches.

             1. Ixquick or Duck on Firefox.

             2. Seamonkey. Was fine until the same day Youtube nuked the old mobile interface.

       2. It’s easy to get in the habit of using only one search engine.

          At the very least you should have Google, Bing, DDG, Dogpile, and Yandex at your fingertips. Each has its own filter bubble; you may get *very* different results from one to the other.

          Also, most of them keep track of things you’ve searched for previously, and “shape” the search results they send back. The results you get on your computer will usually be different than if you’re using a different computer.

          You can avoid browser fingerprinting, but it’s inconvenient and takes some effort to set up.

          1. Just disable javascript and disallow cookies, and all the browser tracking and results-shaping goes away. However, when the search engine is broken so it doesn’t work without javascript…

             1. Yeah, and then 3/4 of the WWW breaks after you nose-dive into the settings and turn off Javascript and cookies.

                Did you ever notice no browser has a convenient “turn this stuff off temporarily” button? Konqueror used to let me configure them by individual web site, but that broke a while back and apparently isn’t going to ever be fixed since KDE has pulled the plug on it.

                1. This is why my primary browser is SeaMonkey with Prefbar and NoScript, so I can toggle all that crap with one click, to whatever degree of control I desire.

                   And yeah, I was quite annoyed that Konqueror got pitched on the ash-heap. Apparently had not been maintained since the 4.x days, so out it went. KDE would be better if they’d quit chasing all the modernism fads.

    2. All I see is leftwing objections to the traditional American “hierarchy of human value”, which suggests it is a strawman they are fighting against.

17. I’ve always been ‘ready to roll’… Years of living in earthquake areas and one embarrassing incident of running out the door at 0200 in my underwear fixed that… I have everything staged on/in the nightstand and pants and a shirt laid out already preloaded.

    1. Had far too many early AM emergency calls over the years to *not* have the works pre-loaded ready to roll. Just makes more sense these days.

18. “Americans are DECENT.”

    So what are you saying? That BLM and Antifa rioters aren’t decent? Aren’t American? That’s dark, Sarah. You trying to stoke culture war, is that it? Stop being divisive – exploiting racial divisions is unAmerican!

    The American Mainstream Media is disappointed in you.
    –

    1. Sigh. They don’t want to be American. Nothing to do with race. Most rioters are white.

       1. That’s not quite right.

          If they just wanted to not be American, they’d leave.

          They don’t want anyone being American. They’re afraid of freedom and others having it rubs their noses in their fear.

          1. Eh. I look at it like they are doing with language. With education. With the civil rights movement (and the list goes on…).

             They want and are in the process of doing the same thing to a whole country, with not a few who are stubbornly resisting. Resisting both the shrill and angry tantrums in adult bodies, and the growing temptation to do something irrevocable and permanent about it. The left wants to gut a nation and wear its skin, demanding respect from the *world.*

             Ain’t. Happenin’. Captain.

          2. They fear freedom because it necessarily includes the freedom to FAIL, and they are at least somewhat aware that they are failures.

       2. We should take up a collection and buy them all plane tickets to Beijing. One-way, of course.

          1. It doesn’t have to be Beijing, I’d be happy for them to emigrate to Toronto, as long as they stayed gone. It’s that last bit, I don’t think you can make surrendering your citizenship an enforceable part of a contract, that’s the hard part.

             1. The problem is the Canadians will ship them back, because most of them can’t qualify for residency visas.

                1. That is another complication in the plan, making sure that wherever we ship them will actually take them. I’m sure the furthest Left regimes won’t be a problem, they’ll happily parade those who “fled” the “failed capitalist imperialist America” until they become inconvenient, then ship them off to the local equivalent of the GULAG. After all, not many of the Americans who went to join the worker’s paradise in Russia were heard from after 1930 or so.

                2. Depends. Can we confine them to TO?

             2. How about Vancouver?

                Investigators would like to speak with the driver responsible for defacing a recently installed Pride crosswalk at 16th St. and Esquimalt Ave. If you have information, please call 604-925-7300. https://t.co/ywkNR4DMAv pic.twitter.com/ViW0ZxcxYN

                — West Vancouver PD (@WestVanPolice) July 8, 2020

          2. That would be bad. They way to do it is inform each of them a free, all-expenses paid, first-class three-week tour of Beijing!!!

             Once the tour is there and underway, say about four days in, declare bankruptcy and strand them.
             –

             1. Dang. You’re good.

                1. I probably ought to have credited the various police department stings, such as this one depicted in the Al Pacino movie Sea of Love:

                   –

                   1. I should also probably credit Cyril Kornbluth (The Marching Morons) for the subconscious memory.
                      –

             2. That is a truly evil plot.

                I LOVE IT!!!!! Let’s do it!

                1. It occurs to me that it is customary (or so I gather) on such tours for the tour director/tour guide to hold the passports of all tour participants, facilitating processing through various regions and checkpoints. It would be A SHAME if those got lost in the confusion over the company’s failure.

                   Any efforts at stealing re-assigning participants’ identities while they’re dangling in the breeze at loose ends would just be mean.
                   –

    2. I know you know this (who knew that wallaby’s tongues fit so well in their cheeks?), but it isn’t that we’re trying to stoke the culture war; our big no-no is actually taking part in the culture war. How dare we call bullshit, bullshit? Don’t we know we’re supposed to just swallow whatever crap they serve up to us? Well, as Sarah said, they don’t know us very well, do they?

       1. Pretty much.

          They love to punch “Nazis” and then get mad when “Nazis” punch back.

       2. And if we’re really Christians we’ll meekly accept any abuse that’s heaped upon us. And never, ever argue.

          1. Every time I hear that, it reminds me of my New Testament course I took in college (small Christian school). Our poor prof darn near tore his hair out trying to convince some of my classmates that Matthew 5:39 did not mean passively accept any form of abuse or violence leveled against you, that it was relating to pride and perceived insults, i.e. to strike a man on the right cheek would be considered a grave insult, but to strike a man on the left cheek, the instigator would have to back-hand the victim (this being the ancient world where the left hand was reserved solely for wiping one’s @$$), which was considered assault.

             But they just. Did. Not. Get. It.

             Funny enough, IIRC the classmates in said group later turned into the most hardcore lefties I knew on campus.

             1. All cultures are valid, except that… the ancient middle east…didn’t have one….?
                Or they’re only valid when they say what someone wants to hear?

                1. I dunno. I gave up trying to figure out those morons’ rationale years ago. IIRC they’d latched onto the part about “do not resist an evil person” and considered that since Christ had commanded it, then it was absolute: do not resist evil in any way, no exceptions, and to do so was a sin because it went against Christ’s teaching.

                   Given that these were some of the yahoos who vocally condemned our killing of bin Laden (that happened right smack at the end of my Senior Year) since, and I quote, “Jesus said that we should love our enemies, not kill them!”

                   Yeah…

                   1. I really need to get a t-shirt made.

                      “Remember that flipping tables and chasing people with a flail are valid options.”

                      1. Yup. A point which I remind Mama Raptor of whenever my blood gets overly heated and I being voicing cries for mayhem and revenge and she inevitably whips out the old WWJD line?

                   2. Love thy enemies, sure.

                      Sometimes your enemies need tough love.

                      Sometimes that tough love needs to be dispensed in 7.62x54R.

                      1. I’m partial to 5.56×45 myself. Weighs less, so I can carry more of it, and recoil is pretty much a non-issue, thank God. Stupid buggered-up shoulder….

             2. We had a minister in Asbury Park who had been a Jesuit before he got married and was now a Methodist minister along with his wife. He said something similar. He also said there was a hook in, “and if someone asks you to walk a mile, walk with them two.” According to Jerry, a Roman soldier was allowed to conscript someone to carry his stuff, but for no more than a mile (or whatever measurement gets translated as “mile”). If he got caught with a conscript going two miles he was in heap big trouble.

                And of course there is the mystery of just what Christ meant when he told the disciples go buy swords. They told Him they had two, and he replied, “That’s enough.”

                1. Mile is one of the words we got from them– I think it means something like “soldier.” (Miles O’Brien’s name origin. Baby name books are scary, scary things. 😀 )

                   Was about a thousand paces (mille, get it?) so about a modern mile, maybe a bit less. All the basic stuff says 5k ft, but I kind of remember reading about how the guys reporting it rounded down/simplified stuff a lot, and then complained about it not being very precise.

                   1. Oooh, which would mean that “one thousand miles” would be a thousand thousand paces….

                      1. ….to fall down at your door?

                         1. Yep. 😀

                   2. Yeah, I’m pretty sure miles was one of the Latin words for soldier.

                   3. The Roman mile was 5000 feet. In the 16th century England shortened the foot, so a mile became 5,280 feet so that the surveying measurements didn’t change.

                      1. I can’t find if they shortened the foot vs the Roman foot– which had already been changed/standardized at some point– or vs the French foot. You’d THINK Britannica would help on that, but nothing popped up.

                   4. Roman infantry was probably trained to take very precise strides – t would have been essential to most maneuvers in those days of swords and shields. Military formations were highly dependent on your sword defending the guy to your rights and your shield covering the guy to your left, and any unevenness in formation was prone to become a break and then a slaughterhouse.

                      So everybody was heavily trained to take the same length stride.
                      –

                      1. And it would likely be a bit short, to account for that formation-wide consideration.

                         I spent a good half hour last night putting my mind really in the framework of that world, as best I could. We put up a fence recently, and my husband… *sigh* He’s not a perfectionist. But he tries. 😉 Getting the fenceline to be mostly the same distance over the ground, AND mostly even, AND close enough to the poles being the same distance apart that he can’t see the difference from 40 feet away, AND not killing eachother over it….

                         The Romans managing to get more accurate than my setting the car to cruise on 60 and counting to 60 is really impressive, even if my brain keeps trying to compare it to the GPS’s distance, which doesn’t have to deal with up and down.

                2. Said prof used the exact same logic/reasoning/interpretation. The Absolute Pacifist Yahoos either didn’t, wouldn’t, or couldn’t make themselves agree. Oh, they accepted the law about the soldier commanding one to carry a pack, but apparently context only applies to some verses and not others.

                   1. I’ve noticed they have that same approach to Constitutional interpretation, as well. Not are some rights more inalienable than others but some people are more deserving of the full Bill.
                      –

    3. Sarah may or may not be saying it, but I am. These people are twisted:

       https://hotair.com/archives/ed-morrissey/2020/07/06/atlanta-mayor-enough-enough-protesters-murder-8-year-old-girl/?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_term=atlanta-mayor-enough-enough-protesters-murder-8-year-old-girl&utm_content=0&utm_campaign=PostPromoterPro

       The number that keeps getting tossed around is that the police kill 9 unarmed blacks a year. Any bets on how long it’s going to take for “Black Lives Matter” to surpass that number?

       1. What do you mean, “how long?” They rocketed past that number a while ago.

          1. They killed 20 in the riots just in Minneapolis. And Chicago managed 60+ this weekend.

             I believe Trump will regret being too chicken to send the army into places like those.

             1. Wait til after the election, when he no longer needs to court the undecided Dems.

             2. Don’t confuse “too chicken” with “not interrupting the enemy when they are making a mistake.”

                1. Shifting the Overton Window and seeing who he can rely upon.

             3. Why in the world would you subject decent men who volunteered to serve their country, to the very real probability of a lifetime in prison for using violence to put down “peaceful BLM protesters”. If even one of these “peaceful” protesters is black, the army grunt, and his wife and famiy, even his mom, is screwed.

                Let the locals deal with it. They voted for these people. They fought for these policies. Shoot, they helped to destroy the lives of people who tried to warn them about the consequences of the very choices they marched in the streets and screamed for.

                Mr. Trump owes them less than nothing.

                1. Not to mention giving footage of army laying into civilians to give credence to the left’s “fascist” chants.

                   1. Yes.

                   2. Yup. Said footage would end up being compared with Tianenmen Square.

          2. Take Chicago if you want numbers. These aren’t strictly rioters, but there’s quite a breakdown of where the numbers lie.

             https://heyjackass.com/

       2. I haven’t checked last year’s numbers, yet, but I know the last time I dug through the actual incidents, the “unarmed” folks had stuff like knives, bats, shovels, large vehicles they had already deliberately run over someone with and they were going for a second hit…..

          “Unarmed” just means “didn’t have a loaded weapon out.”

          1. Think it was Tucker who lately went over the list from a year or two ago. Ten “unarmed” blacks killed by cops: Two attempted rundowns-with-vehicle, several charge-with-blunt-instrument, and two that apparently DID have guns at some point in the standoff. NO wholly-innocents.

             Someone else (maybe John Lott) lately pointed out that on average those killed by cops, unarmed or not, are 5-time violent felons, not sweet innocent children as we’re supposed to believe.

             1. >> “Think it was Tucker who lately went over the list from a year or two ago.”

                It was from 2019:

                1. Yeah, I think that’s the one I saw (so many videos, so little indexing by my brain)…

                2. It IS very hard to hold bad police officers accountable for the murders they commit.

                   The great crime of BLM is demanding that they’re the special snowflakes, and the only possible solution is kabuki white breast-beating about Racism and gibs to professional hustlers.

                   They make it even harder for the innocent to get justice and the guilty to – at the very least – get kicked off the force. Worse, really heroic cops, like the guy who led the Rodney King takedown are crucified, further demoralising the good apples who might agitate against the bad.

                   But AWFLs must have standards low enough to get women and marginally literate immigrants on the force, which means low enough to guarantee a truly incompetent force. And the PTB need complacent badge gangs to protect their noble socialist gated communities. And the police unions need their dues and their graft, so as with teachers, don’t fire the vicious or inept, send ’em to the “worst” neighborhoods where no one has the education or clout to complain. And the devils plaintiffs attorneys will run scam lawsuits like water hoping for a cop-payday against the city. And the schools will run race-hate indoctrination campaigns, and the quasi-open borders guarantee masses of trespassers amongst which predators can prey and hide. And… And…

                   Holy Hannah in a hand basket what a mess.

                   But hey, let’s all stand up agains Whiteness. That’ll help.

          2. I like to point out that “unarmed” does not mean “not dangerous.” There’s a reason why the language contains the phrase “beaten to death.”

             1. Like this?

                https://m.worldstarhiphop.com/android/video.php?v=wshh280R84MAwsna3CSu

                1. Pretty much.

                   And remember, the unarmed usually kill more people each year than those armed with rifles, including the dreaded assault weapons (whatever those are).

                   1. The difference between “Unarmed” and carrying calls Aral Vorkosigan’s argument about stunners vs disrupters.
                      –

                   2. “There are no dangerous weapons, only dangerous men”

             2. I’ve actually pointed that out, and usually find out that guns are magic in their minds.

                Being shot while trying to murder someone is somehow much, much worse than being murdered, as long as they weren’t also shooting you.

                Shooting someone who has a gun pointed at you is somehow much worse than pulling a gun on someone to rob them. See, if you’d just given them your stuff, then nobody would have been hurt. Or something.

                Etc.

                1. Guns are magic wands which compel obedience. Or so some people believe.

                2. Obviously bullets damage people’s souls.

       3. They are already an order of magnitude higher.

       4. They’ve killed at least that many in Atlanta alone since this whole craziness started.

    4. So dark. Much divisive.

19. “They forget some of us can count and do percentages.”

    IIRC, Scott Ott recently retold how his sojourn in J-School revealed that journalism students are terrible at math. Since they’re better than the rest of us there is no way they would understand the super power our mathematical ability grants.
    –

    1. I switched majors from engineering* to broadcast studies (because cool equipment, yo) and OH MAN, the math phobia. In a basics class, the professor was talking about lighting being 1 over the distance squared, and I said “oh, inverse square law” and most of the class looked at me as though I were a monster. (The ones who didn’t were ALSO interested in the technical side.) I not only believe you, my experience supports that assertion.

       *Yes, I thought I wanted to be an engineer because Heinlein. Turns out I was not enjoying it enough. It’s still fascinating material, but I’d go bonkers if I were doing it all the time. And everyone around me was saying, Yeah, you never struck me as an engineer, artist girl.

    2. I noticed when I was still in Jr High School that nearly any article in the newspaper (apart from the Stock market numbers) that had two or more related numbers, they rarely “matched” – as in, if one of them was correct, the related one could not be.
       I decided then that most journalists were innumerate and I should not trust any calculated results they printed.

       1. Well, I have a Journalism degree (Technical Communications to be precise, but it didn’t require math), but getting the MBA did require calculus and statistics. So not all journalism majors are mathematical illiterates.

          1. That’s why I said most.
             My father was a young journalist who switched to working in PR for NASA when I was very young. Definitely numerate or he couldn’t have handled the job. But the typical news story in the local Papers (Cleveland Plain Dealer & Cleveland Press when I noticed this) wasn’t written by folks like you.

             1. Like him, hell, the AP sent a guy who doesn’t have even sneezing acquaintance with basic Catholic theology to cover the Pope visiting with IIRC a Spanish official when the reporter didn’t speak Italian or the official’s language. Only came out when he reported some…stuff… that meant WAY different from what he was either meant and was only vaguely based on what actually, on video, happened!

                And that is still not one of the worst example of “reporting”. (Because the Vatican is such a backwater assignment, and it’s not like the AP is important or anything….)

    3. Heh, I always hoped to marry one. 😋 But you can make art or do research if you’re an absent-minded klutz. You can’t build bridges.

       1. Well, you can build ’em, but they fall down.

          1. No, no, no. YOU draw them and support them with WTF ever, and then when I (the guy who does it for a living) have the temerity to say, “Are you sure? This seems … odd”, you beat my with the damn Stamp &c, and then it’s MY fault when crap goes tango uniform.

             BLAHGH

20. “… taking action means at best tossing our chances up in the air and hoping they come down right.”

    No, at best it means that we have to put down some innocent animals that were simply poorly brought up but cannot now be corrected. That is always depressing.
    –

    1. Speaking as a pro dog trainer, I would assert that the poorly-brought-up can nearly always be corrected (sometimes necessarily harshly, but it can be done), but the natural outlaws will always be outlaws, and at best can only be forcibly suppressed. Behavioral traits are inherited, not made. In my observation, humans are not so different.

       There’s an interesting theory that the main reason the West has a lower crime rate than adjacent regions is because for the past 1000 years we’ve taken our violent criminals out of the gene pool (mostly by killing them), while in the rest of the world, these same criminals would wind up in charge. See also the Russian silver fox experiment.

       1. The outlaw, she will.always be an outlaw (*Ask first, miss out*) but with love and discipline you can reach her to respect (and obey) legit authority, and use her outlawry for good.

          What do you think of shaper training?

          1. Until the moment there’s something more interesting, and then the outlaw who thinks they can get away with it will once again be an outlaw. Love is a human construct; dogs seek leadership.

             I don’t know “shaper training” by name, but I have yet to see ANY of the newfangled methods (treats, “purely positive”, clicker, etc.) do anything but select FOR the selfish wild-animal traits that we’ve spent 10,000 years trying to suppress and breed out. Or, why the desire to please man, rather than to please themselves, is fast being lost.

             Conversely… some of my pups (12th generation of my own line) at 4 months. Not drilled (we do this once or twice a day, but they learn Wait by 6 weeks). Thought the camera was going sooner, but they’d been waiting long enough for me to walk this far away:

             http://doomgold.com/kennel/videos/Lukas-Skid-come-4mos_001.mov

             The best reward for good work is … another chance to work.

             1. I don’t know “shaper training” by name,

                –
                I was waiting to see what your response was to the “shaper training” method question. I’m thinking overgrownhobit is referring to how the local agility trainers want their students to train their dogs. That you give the dog the opportunity to interact with an object but don’t place or lure with a command word. Command word doesn’t come until the action is fully shaped.

                I know Pepper, my Pom/Chi (mutt – indication of size) gets frustrated with this type of training. She learns better if she has a clue of what you want. For agility and tricks, I’ve learned to introduce each step with shaping but watch for frustration to start, then lure or place the action, depending on what it is. She also doesn’t do real well on 100% the “Healing Free Method” which is consequences/correction based; which a German Shepard I had 40 years ago, thrived on (never ever had treats for her although with what I know now that would have raised her abilities 10x). It also worked on my in-laws female malamute that weighed as much as I did. Process was interesting, but dang it, she quit pulling on the leash when I walked her (we dog sat … a lot). I am not a dog trainer. I don’t do it professionally. I don’t raise dogs.

                Current (now 3) is our 3rd dog. The last one didn’t train beyond walking on a leash. She was a 2 1/2 English Toy Spaniel rescue. She didn’t need training. It is hard to explain. We had to encourage her to bark. The current one we got as a 6 or 7 week puppy, because I wanted a puppy after our last dog died. I’ve learned with her to train the dog I have. Whatever methods she requires. We’re off agility training for now, if we ever go back. She has to loose 6#s first (25%). Agility was something extra for us to do together. I have no desire to compete. Maybe B-matches if we go back. She is also my medical alert equipment (natural, now trained/reinforced, alert). I’ve worked with 4 trainers, three of the off and on, two regularly. All have slightly different approaches. The regular two, one is the agility trainer, the other is a “balanced trainer”. I guess what I use for Pepper would be considered shaping & balanced. I have one, but don’t use the invisible leash with her, it is just not needed with her, where I thought it might help, 100% didn’t.

                1. Yes. Got this from one of the adoption trainers with our first greyhound, who recommended the training model and some books.

                   Command word doesn’t come until the action is fully shaped.

                   Required a lot of paying attention and helping to “shape” the behaviors (like how to go up and down stairs) Different tools could be used to link the behaviour to a command / reward / penalty.

                   I always wondered if a lot of it wasn’t just “the best fertilizer is the Gardner’s shadow”.

                   But like you, not a pro, just trying to get out dogs to live with us in ways that we both appreciate and the humans can tolerate (Basically Jordan Peterson’s Rule for kids which is hella creepy when not applied to an animal). It’s worked for everything but Mr. Poppy-head the FOMO barker.

                2. Oh, I see — it’s clicker training with even FEWER clues. But dogs are just like little kids — making them GUESS what you want is the best road to neuroses. And so we have a host of behavioral problems (and the well-paid specialists to ‘fix’ them) that in the Before Times were seldom seen. But it sure dovetails neatly with the ‘self-esteem’ movement in human classrooms. How’s that workin’ out for y’all??

                   http://charwinccrs.com/PP.html

                   Written by someone I’ve known for 45+ years.

                   1. making them GUESS what you want is the best road to neuroses. And so we have a host of behavioral problems

                      –
                      What I observed with my pup when we started agility. One of the reasons while doing homework practice I was perfectly willing to use luring and placement or even guiding her through the exercise wanted after a certain point. Then practice & practice the homework. By the time we’d get back to class to demonstrate progress, my pup would have it nailed. I would mess up and miss cue her, but she followed the cue sequences given properly. OTOH by the time we started agility her obedience training had been completed a long time ago, and I wasn’t dealing with adolescent doggy brain. I did not use Shaping for obedience training.

                      I am happy to learn any method. But I won’t be a convert to any one method. I train the dog that I have. I will use almost any method that works for the results I want. If she is getting frustrated or shuts down, if backing up to prior step where already had success, or stopping & retry later, doesn’t work, whatever method being tried for desired result is wrong. Try something else.

                   2. never shy about voicing his disapproval any time I (or anyone else) use any correction, technique or method he doesn’t approve of.

                      recent episode happened on Facebook of all places. Someone, who I wasn’t aware was a crazy PPer er, I mean subscribes to a different training outlook than I, posted a video clip showing how an e-collar can be used in the same way a clicker can. Her reaction, as well as that of about ten people before I saw the video was extremely over the top so I posted something along the lines of “please don’t bash a tool you obviously don’t know anything about without at least educating yourselves on it’s use”.

                      –
                      Granted most FB pages are closed for members only, but SD training groups are rampant about PP training. That is the ONLY method allowed. Any talk or suggestions otherwise gets comments deleted, you muted, and too many ultimately banned. I left a group because I copied, with quotes, for the rules of a Pack Walk I participate in with my dog. It was answering “How do I socialize my dog without dog to dog contact”. I then posted the link to the site’s rule. The comment removed (by an admin) because the trainer who puts these pack walks on is a Balanced Trainer. Which means among other things, she teaches limits, accountability, and uses corrective tools and words, when appropriate. Never mind that this trainer puts on this pack walk for small donations to feed the rescue dogs she accepts from various rescues and local owner surrenders. You know the dogs that if she doesn’t take and train, next stop is euthanasia. That is the extreme. Dogs brought in from Rescues she has no choice to take in. Otherwise the rescues return them to the shelter pulled from. Owner surrender, that is a last ditch effort, as she tries to get them to do board & train, private lessons, or even group training, if possible. In her career I can’t even guess how many dogs lives she has saved.

                      so we see things like “no harsh corrections” in match flyers, which is coming to mean NO corrections. What good is a match without being able to correct a dog that messes up? This is particularly an issue in the stays, when there are PP dogs mixed in with non-PP dogs – when the non-PP trainer goes back to, say, pull his dog back into a sit when it’s gone down in error, extreme care must be taken to not freak out the PP dogs, since they don’t have the experience to deal with any negatives that may happen around them. I’ve also noticed far more dogs that just get into every other dog’s face at matches and trials because, of course, their owners have no control over them, and don’t appear to want to since that would crush his spirit or some such nonsense.

                      –
                      I did county fair Obedience Competition with my German Shepard 40 years ago. Didn’t get anywhere. She never got the “Stand Stay” for the length of time needed. I could drop her on a down stay at a distance, when she was running chasing a Frisbee but I couldn’t get her to stand stay. She wouldn’t leave the spot set, but she’d drop every single time. She was trained with the “Healing Free” method, without treats. Everything else she was rock solid.

                      My current dog is also my medical alert SD. I’m constantly getting “She isn’t siting when you stop” or “She downed when you stopped”. So? Did she stop when I stopped? Did she sit or down when I ask? Butt out. The other line I get is “she moved out of position (to the front) when you stopped” … well yes. How else do I keep people from stepping or running over her? With her directly in front of me, they have to run over me first. FYI, that is a trained response.

                      OTOH I won’t hesitate to tell her “No”, or issue a correction when I know she knows better or we are working on something, where No/Stop is the correct method. We have cats in the house. We allow interaction. But controlled interaction. She has to be careful. She has to be even more careful with the (now) 10 week old kittens. OTOH with the kittens, they don’t interact unsupervised, anymore than I’d allow with a baby or toddler. Her food? I’ll admit she thinks it is horribly unfair that they can push her aside, eat her food, and she has to take it, but she can’t even reach their food. Life ain’t fair. I have photo proof that she lets the cats do so. There were a lot “No”s training that response.

                      I do have an ecollar for her. Have worked it with her, but it isn’t the best tool for her, unless we are going to do off leash field work, which we aren’t. Don’t have a prong martingale. Do use a cloth martingale. All I have to do is use her regular collar and set up so that it comes off, and they shut up about the cloth martingale.

                      One of the things that every dog trainer should know is that there is NO ONE RIGHT WAY TO TRAIN DOGS. Each dog is an individual so a good trainer will be flexible and have many tools in their bag so they can adapt and best serve each unique personality.

                      –
                      Amen. Even if you are only training your own dog. Train the dog before you.

             2. This one needs clarification given the limiter: taught to respect and obey legit authority. Seriously, I do not follow.

                Until the moment there’s something more interesting, [????!!!]and then the outlaw who thinks they can get away with it will once again be an outlaw.

                Clicker, positive reinforcement etc.are all just tools. Shaping is (if I”m reporting correctly) establishing leadership and relationship in order to be bloody manipulative. Works on puppies and kids, within the limits of personality, and (in the latter case) ethics.

                I never met anyone who used the method in real life – just read about it and used books like wossname ‘s Dog Training In Five Minutes A Day, and this puppies and toddlers text I found.

                1. These newfangled methods are why I can charge $150/hour for fixit lessons. (Usually it only takes one, plus some applying a whip to the owner, until they unlearn bad habits.)

                   1. Despite the fact that dogs really do have different “base” personalities, I’ve always been of the opinion that training the person trains the pets. Sounds like you earn your wages!

21. Still considering guest posts? Something clicked the other day, and I have come to the opinion this current culture conflict is, in large part a conflict between allegiance to one’s ancestory vs allegiance to ideals, with the US being the first country to successfully draw it’s source of legitimacy from an allegiance to ideals, rather than to blood.

    Fair warning, the half I got through is pure high dugeon, so might end up finishing it off that way, or revamping it as a persuasive piece instead.

    1. Yup. The US is at base a creedal rather than an ethnic nation. That’s why the whole TWANLOC concept resonates so strongly with so many of us. For those who are unfamiliar, TWANLOC stands for “Those Who Are No Longer Our Countrymen.” It means that those who reject the principles upon which our country is founded have essentially declared themselves not Americans, and we will no longer look upon them as fellow citizens but as fundamental threats to our country. By the same token, there can be Americans who just haven’t managed to make their way here yet. Many of us have recognized this for years, but aren’t quite sure how to put it into a concrete immigration policy. 🙂

       1. America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just. It certainly does condemn anarchism, and it does also by inference condemn atheism, since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived. Nobody expects a modern political system to proceed logically in the application of such dogmas, and in the matter of God and Government it is naturally God whose claim is taken more lightly. The point is that there is a creed, if not about divine, at least about human things.

          Now a creed is at once the broadest and the narrowest thing in the world. In its nature it is as broad as its scheme for a brotherhood of all men. In its nature it is limited by its definition of the nature of all men. This was true of the Christian Church, which was truly said to exclude neither Jew nor Greek, but which did definitely substitute something else for Jewish religion[Pg 8] or Greek philosophy. It was truly said to be a net drawing in of all kinds; but a net of a certain pattern, the pattern of Peter the Fisherman. And this is true even of the most disastrous distortions or degradations of that creed; and true among others of the Spanish Inquisition. It may have been narrow touching theology, it could not confess to being narrow about nationality or ethnology. The Spanish Inquisition might be admittedly Inquisitorial; but the Spanish Inquisition could not be merely Spanish. Such a Spaniard, even when he was narrower than his own creed, had to be broader than his own empire. He might burn a philosopher because he was heterodox; but he must accept a barbarian because he was orthodox. And we see, even in modern times, that the same Church which is blamed for making sages heretics is also blamed for making savages priests. Now in a much vaguer and more evolutionary fashion, there is something of the same idea at the back of the great American experiment; the experiment of a democracy of diverse races which has been compared to a melting-pot. But even that metaphor implies that the pot itself is of a certain shape and a certain substance; a pretty solid substance. The melting-pot must not melt. The original shape was traced on the lines of Jeffersonian democracy; and it will remain in that shape until it becomes shapeless. America invites all men to become citizens; but it implies the dogma that there is such a thing as citizenship. Only, so far as its primary ideal is concerned, its exclusiveness is religious because it is not racial. The missionary can condemn a cannibal, precisely because he cannot condemn a Sandwich Islander. And in something of the same spirit the American[Pg 9] may exclude a polygamist, precisely because he cannot exclude a Turk.

          https://www.gutenberg.org/files/27250/27250-h/27250-h.htm

          Quoted because I think you’ll enjoy it. (Even if you already know it, and in fact had it in mind as you wrote!)

          1. It’s a really good book. Mr. Chesterton strikes again.

       2. The problem is we claim and operate as creedal, but give citizen without limit by blood and geography.

          As much as I’m not a fan, he who is not to be named, is right that current US law is citizenship by blood and soil. That used to be not much of a problem because the entire culture focused on teaching the creed. Now half of it tried to tear up that creed.

          We either need to test for creed for citizenship or accept we’re just another blood and soil nation within two generations.

          Or we could teach the creed as a culture again, but that seems even less likely than testing. If the left gets their Civil War I will not be surprised to see some variation on Starship Trooper’s limits on the franchise come to pass.

          1. I’d be willing to accept that citizenship be predicated upon the taking of an oath based on the first clause of the National Guard oath of enlistment: “I, (state name of enlistee), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and of the State of (applicable state) against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to them.” And that there be an enforceable penalty for abrogating or renouncing the oath, that being the loss of citizenship.

             1. I would think including the revocation of US citizenship on the list of legal penalties under criminal law could do wonders.

                Revocation of permanent resident or asylum status on the first conviction for a felony makes perfect sense to me, but why not for natural-born citizens if convicted of serious enough crimes?

                1. Revocation of permanent resident or asylum status on the first conviction for a felony makes perfect sense to me, but why not for natural-born citizens if convicted of serious enough crimes?

                   –
                   In a way those convicted of certain crimes lose most of their citizenship rights, if not their actual citizenship, even when they are released from confinement and complete parole. They lose the right to vote during confinement and parole. They lose their second amendment rights unless they receive a pardon from the state governor (where convicted or resident, that I’m not sure of. The one case I’m aware of same state.) Not sure what other rights they lose.

                   I agree. Too bad we don’t have the equivalent of Bombay (where the convicted are transported only). *I am aware that Bombay transports weren’t just convicts. They were also the inconvenient & poor.* There was a short story that was a “What if there was this undeveloped island, instead of prisons.” — No guards. Just prisoners. If you survived at the end of your sentence you could rejoin society. You couldn’t commit a crime. You didn’t know how long the sentence was. One unintended consequence, no matter how short the sentence, 24 hours, no matter how minor the crime, no one ever left the island. Or was that by design?

          2. I don’t know. In their desperation to get votes, I expect the Democrats will try to extend the franchise to cats, trees, and krill next.

             1. Hmm… Cats don’t listen, expect you to serve at their whim and never go away you’ve made the mistake of giving them free food…

                Oh my God, cats are natural leftists!

             2. My cats are far too smart to vote Democrat. Are they going after the feline graveyard vote? The Pet Sematary vote?

                1. Cats are NOT democrats. At a minimum they are monarchists. More fully I would say they’re the epitome of Heinleins panteistic multi feline solopists.

                   1. Cats are the version of the Good Folk that we are used to.

                      1. I don’t know, I’ve met a couple cats I would have sworn were Sidhe. One named Murdock in particular lived up to his namesake. He would turn and use teeth while purring and petting. Even got me once and I had 30+ years of handling cats from house cat to full on ferals. Absofreakinglutely NO warning. There’s a reason we don’t keep large cats as pets…

                         1. S.M. Stirling called them, “little furry Republicans,” in “Dies the Fire.” Something about bad temper and hating change. (For the record, while he are currently petless, I am a cat person).

                         2. Many cats may be Seelie, but there are the few (or more than a few) who are absolutely Unseelie

                         3. Cats are Anarchists. They reject any form of organization or authority, rarely with violence, but simply apathy. “You want me to do what? Have fun with that. [goes back to sleep]”

                            1. I still hold to my monarchist interpretation with them as the monarch. Their ignoring you is simply a case of Noblesse oblige.

          3. he who must not be named -? Lord love a duck.

             But yes, I agree with you both. Not ethnic or even racial per se, but if your race or ethnicity defines your creed (Or your creed requires racial purity) and said creed is counter to that of the U.S.A. Well, then, your race or ethnicity cannot be American. And is not that a can of worms? (Paging the Irish…)

             To paraphrase Mr. Franklin: A creedal nation – if you can keep it.

             I find myself daily sliding into the anti-Federalist camp, because it’s dead obvious we cannot, any more than we can run a communist nation. Well, anywhere other than into the ground.

             1. How about “He Who Shall Trigger Botageddon”?

                Oh, if folks ever need to increase the number of hits, mention… uh… things that look like bees but are memetically ax-crazy homicidal SOBs, and spray, and non-lethal defense options.

                You get bots showing up to inform you it won’t work and it would hurt people. They don’t respond if you point out that you don’t care if it kills them, or maims them, you care about surviving when you cannot have a…force multiplier that goes “bang.”

                (Dodges bots, hopefully.)

                1. Uh. Okay. I got the first sentence! More sleep would probably help, in my end.

       3. You can’t. Even those who agree with the creed, need to come, live here and integrate before they can be Americans. And some will fail. Trust me. Been through it. But, yes.

          1. Healing power of “and” on this one. Also in support of Mr. Herbn ‘s claim it was a lot easier to do that in my mom’s day, and easier still in my oma’s because of that relentless pressure to FIOFO and the pro-USAian cultural norms on every side.

    2. Very much so, yes.

22. “Is anything guaranteed? Oh, heck no.”

    Death. Taxes. An inexhaustible supply of human stupidity, ignorance and gullibility. That evil lies in the hearts of men, women and the remaining fifty-five genders. That no race is without good people and bad ones.

    That wallabies are utterly adorable. (Some people do not share this opinion; avoid them. They are not good people.)

    There might be more.
    –

    1. >> “That wallabies are utterly adorable.”

       And unable to be housetrained, from what I’ve read. Being cute only gets you so far. 😛

       1. We always return the seat to the agreed upon default!

          Beyond that, it depends on how broadly you define toxic waste. Solid and liquid waste are always deposited in appropriate receptacles but the gaseous kind … well, we admits we’ve been known to clear a room in next to no time.
          –

23. I have noticed a rather curious anomaly here in Texas, among my neighbors and in the places where we shop, and that is people seem to be more courteous, more considerate and sympathetic. I have not noticed any displays of hysterical Karenism – more like ‘all in this together, friends and neighbors!’ It’s interesting to observe…

    1. Noticed that when I was in northen San Antonio area. Better drivers than East Coasters for sure (and a marked difference from Arkansas- you could tell without looking at the plate).

24. Now that the riots have mostly petered out, what will they do next? They can’t let us start getting back to normal.

    I’m still wondering how they plan to interfere in the election. Not the hidden fraud, but the open attacks. Will there be thugs outside the polls? Campaign offices torched in ‘protests’?

    Or what I speculated earlier — Biden killed by ‘right-wing white supremacists’ even though that wouldn’t make any sense. Biden is not only pasty-white, the little remaining hair is white.

    Those of us still clinging to sanity are already past Plan A, and Plan B, and Plan C. We’re rapidly approaching Plan O — for Oh Shit!
    ———————————
    The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.

    1. Very dark humor around our house:
       “Biden is probably going to be shot, you know. By a communist, who will then be declared a radical right Republican.”

       1. I’m not sure it will be Biden. I thought of someone far more beloved in liberal/progressive circles who is also personally ambitious…which could get in the way of whoever’s planning to be the eminence grise of a Biden Administration. Martyrs can be so very useful.

       2. My money’s on a “stroke” right before one of the debates. The real Democrat primary is going on in the background as we speak.

       3. After he goes trans and claims to be preggers and changes his name to Maria.

    2. Don’t you mean “now that the coverage of the riots have petered out”?

       Fredrick Douglass statute was pulled down over the weekend and damaged enough it cannot be put back up. “Occupy Wendy’s” in Atlanta killed an 8 year old girl (and don’t let the press get away with “near the Wendy’s”…it was at that lot), and they’re still blocking the freeway in Seattle while wearing black, behind a curve, and playing in traffic at night (although that stupid game provided a stupid gold and silver over the weekend).

       That said, the call for riots on July 4th some groups made either didn’t happen or was hidden because it didn’t poll well.

       There are claims the new swine flu in China is as bad as COVID, so that’s how they’re going to justify continued/redone shutdowns through the election and consequent fraud by mail.

       1. The really stupid part about the swine flu freakout is that flu vaccines are a known quantity, as opposed to coronavirus vaccines, so with a four-month lead time, we can put that sequence in next season’s flu vaccine. Boom, done. The issue with the coronavirus is that we have yet to make a successful vaccine that doesn’t stimulate a worse immune response than the virus itself—though they’re getting close on several fronts, yay.

          1. On the bright side, if you play-like this is the all access real-deal CCPox: R-6 or higher. Week long asymptomatic contagious carriers the norm. Fecal-oral contamination AND aerosol transmission on the table…

             With open borders and microbial breeding grounds from Asia to Africa, learning how to manage a real plague might come in handy.

       2. Those idiots gave the state police the excuse they need to actually arrest the “protesters,” though.

          What amazes me is how quick it seems to have stopped at no information or actively removing information they previously shared, once the driver turned out to be 1) black, and 2) the citation for entering the freeway by using an off-ramp the wrong way was from a twitter account that had them closing the I-5 a good ten minutes after the accident. Possibly because they also pointed out it’s illegal, always and everywhere, to protest on the interstate– because it’s fing dangerous.

          The…creative… use of tone in describing “guy comes around corner in freeway, sees a half dozen black vehicles with no lights parked across it, manages to swerve past the white van that’s on the side of the road and then slams on his brakes as he sees PEOPLE” in terms of “he drove around cars blocking the road for the protester’s safety and hit two protesters. Motive unknown.”
          There’s video from multiple angles. With sound. *Shudder*

          Seems KOMO ditched the notation that the guy was immediately tested for drugs and alcohol, and was clean.

          Driving. On. The. Interstate. Gosh, what could his motive be?

          Oh, he’s also black, and actually lives in the area, unlike little-non-binary-vet-aid-playing-in-traffic who came up from Portland to kill herself with stupidity.

          For those not scared **** about their parents in Washington:
          https://komonews.com/news/local/driver-accused-in-i-5-crash-that-killed-protester-injured-second-due-in-court

          1. They thought they’d finally got a Charolettesville, just like they thought they had in Louisville, KY, which disappeared even quicker when it turned out the shooter was one of the protesters.

             I’ve hearing a lot of “I’m sad she died, but she should have know not to play in the street”. The sympathy level seems very low.

             1. Especially when people see the video, and realize that the car wasn’t going around the corner the wrong way– they were in the worst possible spot they could pick on a not very good entry to the freeway.

                THE PROTESTERS had to drive the wrong way on the freeway to park and block traffic in an exceptionally dangerous way.

                Hope they get charged. Know they probably won’t.

                1. Have you seen Seattle Freeway? It is a rat’s maze. Lanes change direction depending on the time of day. Lanes exit on both the right and the left. I don’t even know how many lanes there actually are. Thank God for Waze, we went through at 8 PM on *Sunday!!!! (AND hubby had me drive! What the heck was he thinking? I grew up driving the freeway in Eugene. You know, just 4 lanes, for both directions. Okay it is actually 6 lanes, for about 2 miles … now.)

                   * Last summer on home portion of our trip from Canada. Original intent was to get hotel after crossing the border. Then we realized we’d be facing Monday traffic on I-5 in Seattle, Olympia, Portland, then Salem and into Eugene. Nope. Nope. We got home at OMG AM Monday; kid was even still up (he keeps his week sleep hours, swing shift).

                   1. I had the “pleasure” of picking up Elf when he was doing volunteer security work to fund-raise for the air force at Century Link when we lived in the Blob, and when… I think it was Halfprice Books…. opened a store, the kids and I went to the grand opening. With just a nuvi, no traffic report or anything. Thank God I didn’t have to use a map or– insert dark, satanic laughter here– the road signs.

                      This is a relatively simple area, opposite end of i5 in Seattle from the stadium and International District, one of those big swooshy on-ramps that has trees between it and when it hits the freeway until the last moment (to kill sound) and both of them are doing a right turn, but it’s curved. Not too long after one of those “OH DEAR LORD NO AAAAAAAAHHHH” merge on from the left lanes. It actually looks a lot like some of the areas near the airport.

                      That said, when you can get widers hots– lots of concrete cliffs, both road-side and the buildings. I THINK the shows-the-most video was taken from the opposite lane, which is on the hill above– think as high over as an overpass would be, but going in sort of parallel.

                   2. Freeway? This thing you mention, just what is it? 🙂 US 97 has a tiny stretch of limited access near Klamath Falls, for perhaps a few miles. OTOH, I don’t think that section has a median break, but I’ve been on that stretch precisely once in the past several years. (A few months ago, but I wasn’t going to look at the sights.)

                      I grew up having to deal with Chicago freeways, including a fair number of Interchanges Of Doom. Happy to not have to go there again.

                      1. Freeway? This thing you mention, just what is it?

                         –
                         Hmmm. Now that you mention it. Hubby says the same thing of I-5 through Eugene, well most of Oregon. He concedes that Portland, might, might mind you, have somewhat of a freeway. He is equally dismissive of the local morning commute with 10 to 15 minute slow down traffic jam delays. … He grew up driving San Diego & LA.

                   3. Can confirm. The freeways around Seattle are a maze of potential deathtraps. The only worse place I’ve driven in the U.S.is Washington D.C.

             2. I’m not even sad that she died. She was an enemy of the US Constitution. I am sad that she lived at all.

       3. Yeah, hilarious new insight, originally precipitated from arguing with some dude on an anime ish website.

          Nobody really knows what is going on here.

          American knowledge of what is going on is at best fairly local. The lockdown has further narrowed spheres of awareness.

          You can estimate by guessing which information sources are worth trusting. But the degree of novelty means that previously trustworthy people might no longer be trustworthy, or at least not collecting the same information as when they were reliable.

          Right now, people maybe know what is going on in their neighborhoods, unless they’ve been devoting a fair amount of time and skill to gathering information.

       4. > Fredrick Douglass statute was pulled down over the weekend

          I’m confident I’ll collect on my “they’ll be vandalizing Martin Luther King” statues before November” bet.

          I guess it’s too much to expect that, after being pounded with Black History from kindergarten to baccalaureate, they would have any idea who Frederick Douglass was.

          Of course, being that he actually got a nomination for President at the 1888 Republican National Convention probably means he was irremedially contaminated with Republican cooties, and therefore was a racist honky even if he’d been an escaped slave earlier.

          On the other hand, given the intellectual level of the people we’re dealing with, they could be operating on something simple like “statues are racist”.

          “In a speech delivered on November 15, 1867, Douglass said: “A man’s rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.”
          –Wikipedia

          Ol’ Fred was right. And I still shake my head in wonder, that so many of my cartridge boxes are marked in Cyrillic…

          1. Statues are all the same color — bronze. They can’t tell the difference by sight, and they don’t know any history so the names mean nothing to them.

             The memory of people who actually achieved great things just grinds their faces into their own worthlessness. They have to tear down what they could never equal.
             ———————————
             In this world there are people who build things up, and those that tear them down. I have zero regard for the second group.

          2. You got a taker on that bet? Wow!

    3. I’m thinkin’ there may be some mysterious polling place fires where the wrong sort of people congregate to vote. They’re open enough with the fraud now to try that.

25. Let’s not forget the report of bubonic plague. Though it sounds like the sort of one-off we sometimes get here.

    1. China reported one (1) case of Bubonic Plague. And we have great confidence in their reporting, right?

       1. If China has reported one case, the only thing we can say for sure is that China has either no cases or several.

    2. It’s not rare in parts of the American Southwest. Don’t pet the ground squirrels and use flea repellent, and you’ll be fine. Plus it can be treated with antibiotics.

       1. Bubonic Plague isn’t rare in the Rockies to the Pacific Ocean. Not sure how much further east the endemic extends.

          Don’t feed the wildlife, including the cute little squirrels and chipmunks that will eat right out of your hand. Mosquito repellent isn’t good enough for fleas unless it repels ticks too. It can be treated with some antibiotics, usually, when identified soon enough.

          Have some tourist get sick, go home to be seen by personal physician where Bubonic isn’t endemic and the tourist can get dang sick before Bubonic is recognized.

          1. I don’t think it ever really leaves Yosemite, especially the valley. We’re far enough north, and high enough so that fleas are seldom a problem, but it can get interesting in the Sierras.

             (Ground squirrels and chipmunks are in short supply this year. A semi-feral cat is raising a litter of kittens in our neighbor’s log pile, and Mama is doing a fine job at rodent control.)

26. Churches have lately become…interesting. Ours (Baptist) had a lecture about white privilege last month. It’s getting weird.

    1. Churches, yeah. The United Church of Canada (I went as a kid) doesn’t require its pastors to believe in God anymore. Not the members mind you, the pastor. Wish I was kidding.

       I used to go at Christmas and Easter to keep my mother happy. The sermons were… interesting.

       Last time I went to my home church was a long time ago, and all the white people were my mother’s age. Which is to say over 80. Everybody else in the place was Korean. Apparently several Korean churches in the area pooled their congregations and they all went to my old church.

       It was an improvement! The sermon was actually about Christmas and didn’t make me cringe, first time in ages.

       I have no idea what goes on there now, I expect they have some guy from the NDP giving a sermon on pronouns every Sunday morning.

       1. We found an open Baptist church in north central Michigan this weekend. Believe me, they did NOT talk about white privilege.

27. Dragon, staying frosty…

    George knew if they fired any of their orbiting weaponry it could kill millions. That was why he was standing right at ground zero where it was all pointed. He hoped the look in his eye and his strong right arm would be enough to deliver the message. Or maybe they’d get lucky and no one would come.

    “Hey tough guy,” said a voice next to his foreleg. “How are you?” It was Elizabeth the robot ninja, completely invisible even though he knew exactly where she was.

    “Worried,” he admitted, blowing out a breath.

    “Me too,” said Elizabeth. “We all are, but we’re keeping it frosty. Are you frosty, George?”

    “Like ice cream,” he said and grinned down at her. “I’m cool and delicious.”

    “Same old George,” she snorted and thumped his leg with her hand.

    1. Do you have a release date?

       1. As usual, I am stuck on the cover for book 2. Hoping to have it out the door later in July. I’ll work on it.

          The WIP that snippet came from, I’m still finishing that chapter. Bad guys arrived, time for the robot girlfriends to do some hitting. And this time they don’t have to hold back, orbital strikes are a-ok.

          1. Looking forward to it. If it would not have our hostess screaming, I would say just use a blank cover for now so that I can buy it and update it when you get the real cover finished.

             1. Truthfully, I’m of the opinion that the sales wouldn’t be much worse with a blank cover. I don’t think it matters at my level.

                But blank covers seem extremely lame, so I’m not doing it.

                1. Use a fancy font!

28. c4c

29. Not sure this is the right place but in the interest of scrupulous honestly and not encouraging folks to underestimate this whole COVID thing, I mentioned last we that we all had it here and were only mildly ill. Now I’m in the hospital awaiting approval for remdesivir.

    Extreme low risk, no comorbidities. Only things not in my favor were Type A blood and the fact that health care workers in general have been doing worse than others.

    That doesn’t change the fact that most people will have mild illness, but if you do get it do continue to take it seriously until you fully recover. I did that weird but common pattern where I was fine, I was fine, I was fine, hit day 9 stopped getting better and the respiratory stuff kicked in all at once and went downhill quickly.

    Also if you have a pulse ox at home use it! Otherwise I’d have probably stayed home until I needed an ambulance.

    Anyway this feels weird to be sharing, so I’m going to go back to watching junk TV on the hospital cable, since I don’t have any at home.

    1. *hug*

       Get better, thank you for telling us– and thank you for not being stubborn!

       People die every year of “it’s just a bug,” I don’t want to lose any of ours.

       1. That is the darn truth. And why I spend a lot of time every winter trying to get my patients to take flu seriously.

          That was the real point a lot of us were trying to make when all this started when we were comparing COVID mortality to flu, *not* that COVID wasnt serious or that it was “just like the flu” but that in fact that flu is a serious illness that people underestimate and even if this only had flu mortality, it was worth taking seriously. Not shut down the bloody economy seriously, but seriously nevertheless.

          Also as a 90% of the time lurker, it feels pretty good to be “any of ours”. Our hostess and this comment section has been keeping me sane since the last election cycle.

          1. That was the real point a lot of us were trying to make when all this started when we were comparing COVID mortality to flu, *not* that COVID wasnt serious or that it was “just like the flu” but that in fact that flu is a serious illness that people underestimate and even if this only had flu mortality, it was worth taking seriously.

             You got drowned out by idiots.

             I was making the same points, and pointing to the studies (based on Chinese lies, we now know) to point out it may be worse.

             The you’re-a-racist idiots declared that 1) everyone should be forced to have a flu shot, and 2) if you had the shot, you couldn’t get the flu so it’s fine to go out when you’re sick and infect everybody.
             -.-
             Stuff like this is why I am “anti-vaxx.” I know it’s a hacked immune system, not bleepin’ magic.

             1. if you had the shot, you couldn’t get the flu so it’s fine to go out when you’re sick and infect everybody

                What… I… what… how do….

                *stops, deep breath*

                I recognize that for many people, the exigencies of normal life require and/or strongly incentivize working and continuing to send children to school or daycare while ill, and therefore they tend to become inured to any symptoms short of fever and vomiting. I admit that didn’t usually stay home from high school or college classes for a cold, although I did wash my hands and try to stay out of people’s faces, and I plead “I was apparently too sick to think straight” regarding the time the laboratory admin assistant ejected me via strategic application of guilt. (Somehow nobody else apparently caught that one, including my husband. I have no idea how.)

                But I thought the flu shot was fairly famous for “they have to guess which strain it will be” and I recently ran across somebody grousing that people will always think they got it wrong because whatever gets left out causes whatever trouble there is in a given year….

                1. Most of the folks I was arguing with are my age, but school is their primary “go even if you’re sick” experience.
                   (I just realized that 99% of the stupid drama is the folks who never really got a life– and they’d interpret that statement as being about clubbing or other ‘social’ type stuff, not…you know, a life, where you are in charge of you and not carried by everybody else.)

                   I’ve ranted here before about schools making it hard to not infect everybody, via their attendance policies. Graduated with a gal who had really never missed a single day of school. Even then, I could figure out that she’d been the infection vector for a lot of things.

                   ***********

                   I know I saw, and used, the jab of “Flu shot? Yeah, last years was exceptionally good– I think they actually broke 50% effective!”

                   and I plead “I was apparently too sick to think straight” regarding the time the laboratory admin assistant ejected me via strategic application of guilt

                   *snickers* dear husband has been sent home a few times, but that’s as likely to be from allergies and meds or simple exhaustion as getting sick. He’s rattled off the difference between being dazed on anithistamines vs being sick so often that the office has weaponized it against the guy who really does always come in sick.

                   1. *snickers* dear husband has been sent home a few times, but that’s as likely to be from allergies and meds or simple exhaustion as getting sick.

                      –
                      I don’t have allergies. You’d think I learned not to go to work “just because my throat ached & was scratchy”. Hey, just the fall morning cold air, otherwise sunny and 80 to 110 F, in the afternoon, & hotter in the canyons we were working. But fall morning cold air was “just drying out the throat and sinuses”. I was miserable by the time we finished and worked our way out of the canyon that day (on foot, no roads, no trails). A 104 F Fever, thrown in the *hospital later … not only tonsillitis but strep throat tending to pneumonia. But nope. My rules were stay home if: 1) Fever. 2) Vomiting. 3) NiQuil needed to breath (it puts me to sleep, even the DayQuil version). Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have stayed home more. But couldn’t be seen “shirking”. I mean my 35 career was such that I could work at home sick. Didn’t matter. We won’t discuss college rules. You dragged your tail to class and labs. The only time I got excused from a lab was wreaking my car (going to the lab). Although the last math class I had was perfectly willing to excuse my absence should the baby arrive early; baby did, only he was a week early, and class was done 10 days prior.

                      * Only one night. Mom bailed me out. Flat out told doctor & hospital wasn’t sure their insurance would pay & I didn’t have my own (wasn’t enrolling fall term). Insurance did pay as working was a requirement for graduation & I was enrolled winter term. Instead of hospital I was parked at grandparents place for 10 days. It was 14 days before I was allowed to go back for office work & 21 before I was allowed back in the field.

                      1. There an, ahem, liiiiiiittle bit of difference between working in the field (lumber or ag, matters not) and working in an office!

                         Should’ve seen my folks’ reaction to the “there’s no sick leave for mommies” commercials they did a while back, because they’ve never worked anywhere that “you will get the office sick, you’re rubbing elbows for 8 hours” was A Thing.

          2. “Our hostess and this comment section has been keeping me sane since the last election cycle.”

             I just want to go on record as observing it is one Hell of a Thing when this clown car is keeping anybody sane.
             –

             1. It’s a Hell of a World out there right now!

             2. At least our clown car doesn’t have the arrows of history or the struggle sessions.

                And when you have a multidimensional clown car it’s not nearly so crowded inside – we have the lounge, the bar, and the alcohol serving room, plus the various gun rooms…

                1. I’ll see their Arrow Of History, and raise them Bullets Of Destiny! 😀

                   Preferably .308, or even .50 BMG.

                   1. Nyet tovarisch, not .308, use 7.62x54R, has proven track record against both fascists and communists.

                      1. Try finding an FN-FAL chambered for that.

                         1. Just remember excellent rifle of Keptin Mosin can shoot both .308 and 7.62x54R, because overrunning the enemy supply chain is a thing, and so’s the opposite.

                            And this is becoming dangerously close to breaking the prohibition on Religious threads.

                            1. which is. of course, urban legend.

                2. What do you mean we don’t have arrows of history? I plainly saw the arrow Odysseus shot through the axeheads in the armory. Or is that an arrow of literature?

                   1. The arrows of Odysseus were History for everyone at whom he shot oe.
                      –

                   2. Oh, there are indications that history (or at least the maps) may get all arrowy again in the not too distant future…

                   3. The Arrow of History ≠ Historical Arrows

                      The latter has an actual use.

    2. Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

       It’s a beast of a bug, but the docs seem to have several handles to grab onto for treatment that are keeping the worst outcomes under control – the latest tracking looks really really quite positive:

       

       1. I’m in good hands. Promise. And have the right credentials to make that call, lol.

    3. Hopefully, your doctor has at least heard of this study:

       https://www.henryford.com/news/2020/07/hydro-treatment-study

       “Treatment with hydroxychloroquine cut the death rate significantly in sick patients hospitalized with COVID-19 – and without heart-related side-effects, according to a new study published by Henry Ford Health System.”

       1. He has and they were using it a lot earlier, but are having more consistent results with the remdesivir, so he wants to try it if he can get the approval now, rather than waiting until after I need supplemental O2. I am very confident in the pulmonologist here, I speak the language, even though it isn’t my specialty and we’ve gone over all the labs and the reasoning together.

          1. This is gonna sound stupid… but there’s a fair amount of evidence that Rona doesn’t like high temps. So if you can stay hydrated and not overheat, and if you can place them strategically, Mr. Heating Pad or Mr. Microwave Sock Thing may be your friend. It helped me a lot back in December, when I had Mysterious Not Flu with Breathing Difficulties yet Dry Cough and No Mucus — put my little lowpower heating pad on my chest between my pjs and my huge number of blankets, sat up on pillows, and gradually bleh-ed back to being able to breathe.

             I’m sure you’re trying everything to nurse yourself and your family. But if it doesn’t actually interfere with your meds, piling on All the Remedies probably won’t hurt. (If only so that your body gets reminded to do its part in the healing thing.)

             1. It helped me a lot back in December, when I had Mysterious Not Flu with Breathing Difficulties yet Dry Cough and No Mucus — put my little lowpower heating pad on my chest between my pjs and my huge number of blankets, sat up on pillows, and gradually bleh-ed back to being able to breathe.

                –
                #MeToo – same time period. Electric Blanket cranked way up with quilt piled on top, Tylenol, and mainlined NyQuil. In fact it was the cranked up Electric Blanket that clued hubby in that I was really, really, really, sick, that and the vague wave he got heading off to play golf. I rarely use the electric blanket anymore (stupid hot flashes). I didn’t quite get to languish in bed, dog wouldn’t let me. Dad let her out for first run, but she insisted on being fed. She was also persistent about me eating. That is her job, to nag me when my BS is low. My BS wasn’t exactly happy due the lack of appetite. Hot drinks and hot showers helped too.

             2. Huh! That, actually… yeah. I was feeling lousy, so I just piled the blankets on and baked myself.

                In Florida. With the temps hitting the 80s inside the house sometimes.

                For a week.

                After that, started slowly getting better.

          2. I’m glad you are getting the care you need. I will add you to the nightly God blesses.

             The scary thing about this is that it can go from the CCP Herpes to the Wuhan Gurgling Death. May God preserve you from the latter.

             1. From your lips to His ear. It is scary how much it can turn on a dime. And yet it usually doesn’t.

                I still think most healthy folks should take the attitude of generally reassured by the numbers, while respecting it just enough to know the warning signs that you have drawn a short straw and need to get seen ASAP.

          3. The problem I have seen with most HCQ use/”studies”/”trials” is that they 1) do not start using it early enough, i.e. at the start of symptoms, not when the patient hits that break point and is already hospitalized; 2) do not use the full protocol of HCQ + antibiotic + ZINC!!!! and then complain it doesn’t work; 3) give it at known overdose levels/durations and then complain about heart problems.

             I have seen multiple doctors say that other countries who DO use it at the start of symptoms and use the full protocol at known-safe dosage and duration have reduced their hospitalization rates by up to 95%.

             1. Yep, and at the point you would have needed to use it on me to be effective, I wasn’t particularly ill. I did that thing where I was just fine right up until I suddenly crashed. But this is just a totally natural and not at all lab manufactured bug 🙄

                1. Or to put out another way, you’d probably have to treat 100 barely symptomatic patients to prevent one crash like mine and that does get into complicated risk/vs reward questions involving NNTs that are beyond my level of expertise to opine on.

    4. I think I was relatively lucky; when I caught it back in February (when no one knew WTH was going on) I was definitely not fine, so I spent a lot of time just in bed, not making it any harder to breathe.

       Took me a month to stop coughing, and another to get brain back online. Still having a little lung trouble given the Saharan dust currently in the air.

       1. Docs are talking about seeing folks who are “Happy Hypoxic” from ‘rona – low SpO2 but not really aware of it. People with this mode act like they at the starting-to-get-goofy-level in an altitude chamber for the same reason it happens in the chamber, which is not enough O2 getting into the blood, though in the ‘rona case it’s because of the blocking inflammation in the lung tissue.

          As noted a pulse oximeter is handy to have around.

          1. Don’t think I hit that, thankfully.

          2. Appearently, I’m weird. Went into the ER several years ago with a bad case of the flu, my O2 sats were 80 when they hooked my up. Never reached the euphoric stage just fought a horrible headache the entire time.

             1. I’ve been under sixty. Mostly nauseous and trying to pass out.

    5. *more hugs* Prayer flag raised that you’re on the mend soon. It would be terrible to lose one of the occasional voices of sanity 😉 around here.

       1. If you think I’m sane I clearly need to post more 🤣🤣🤣

          1. Around here might mean in comparison to me. 🙂

             1. Bob! we don’t do that to anyone. We do get scared when you sound sane.

                1. XD

                   Should be pretty safe feeling around here for the next few hours or so then. 🙂

                   1. I reckon I don’t start to fret until you seem to be going out of registration.
                      –

             2. Point taken. I’ve seen some of your comments. 😂

                1. So hurry up and get well, so we can see your contributions to the general craziness.

                   1. Breaking News: as a result of the events of 2020 it has been determined the over-abundance of craziness has necessitated reductions in rank. Henceforth we will only be experiencing Major Craziness.
                      –

                      1. The kind of Crazy we’re getting seems to be led by E4s, not O4s…

                      2. On the other hand, Mayhem was promoted to General a couple of months back…

                      3. What they really need is Corporal Punishment! 😀

    6. Get well soon and May God bless!

       1. Thanks

    7. Here’s to your quick and full recovery.

       Side note, the health app from Samsung will show your (presumably approximate) blood oxygen levels. Ordered a dedicated one just now though.

30. Guys: Muriel Bowser is calling gun violence an epidemic.

    You know, if this is true, the implication is that felons should be quarantined until they are no longer infectious.

    1. To the enemy, that analogy would then make law-abiding gun owners asymptomatic carriers …

       1. And surprisingly, we still don’t kill people!

    2. We keep trying that, and then people complain the prison sentences are too long….

       1. Well, I’m all for shortening prison sentences. Might I suggest a guillotine? 🙂

       2. Fun tip: whenever people talk about shortening sentences, do so in terms of drop.

          1. *sigh*

             interpret it in terms of drop.

31. Hey, guys, there’s a comet visible in the early morning! Naked eye visible! Comet NEOWISE or something.

    Also, there were noctilucent clouds on the nights of July 4-5 and 5-6, in various places all over Europe and on the West Coast of the US! Dang it, that is just too cool! Space Weather has some great pics of European cities with noctilucent clouds.

32. Just Binged Neowise, it passed perihelion the 3rd and will be visible low in the eastern sky until around the 11th, then will become an evening object around the 15th or 16th. By then maybe I won’t be surrounded by tall trees.

    1. Ditto. I love the shade, especially right now (excessive heat is excessive). Don’t love the lack of star view. Nor do I love the super lights the city is putting in, and the super lights at the big-box stores, and . . . *hops off of soap box* Shoo! Go away, shoo, go home, soap box, go home!

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