Saudade

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

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A couple of weeks ago, at  friend’s gathering, someone asked: How long are we going to put up with this?

This was before the mandatory mask mandate in Colorado, but with everything from public gatherings to churches limited to ten people — strictly six feet apart — per gathering.

The title of this post — Saudade — for those of you gaping at it and wondering if it is the name of a fantasy character (Now I think about it, it would be a pretty good name for a fantasy character) is a word the Portuguese pride themselves on saying is untranslatable.

This sort of claim from any language more or less always makes me roll my eyes. Because it is translatable, of course it is.  Most of the time, in its pedestrian every day use, “tenho saudades” means “I miss.”

Now the thing to remember is that besides basically being the chaotic neutral D&D alignment with borders, Portugal is a place of poetry.  Perhaps because as my older son put it “The damn country is an iceberg. Most of it is in the past, trawling beneath the water, unseen, and affecting everything.”

So saudade, not used in its every day pedestrian sense, but in the sense poets and madmen (most Portuguese) use it refers to missing something with a deep, painful longing, something that can’t be called back/experienced again.

Perhaps the best way to express it is the ballad by Jean Ingelow quoted in Agatha Christie:

Ah, maid most dear, I am not here,
I have no place, no part,
No dwelling more by sea or shore,
But only in thy heart!

Saudade is what you might feel if you lived by the sea, in a beautiful city, and one day an earthquake came, the shore collapsed and the sea came in.  Suddenly all the places that were familiar and commonplace to you, the places you lived in and worked in, and saw every day were ten miles from shore, under water.

In storms you’d hear the tolling of the submerged bells and felt an acute but unavailing need to go back, to walk those streets again and meet all the friends who died that night, not as an extraordinary event, but as they were.

That’s saudade.

Saturday I left eating till much too late (this grief thing is weird. Every time it hits me as though it were brand new, too) and being famished and with us needing to go look in the business mailbox, we went to Pete’s (which is right around the corner from the business mailbox.)

Because Pete’s is an old style diner, the six foot (insane, unsupported, completely arbitrary) rule means that the main dining room is basically unusable. I mean there is EXACTLY one two person booth available.

Also, because some people are insane, some interpret the rule — all hail absolute king Polis, who needs a kicking on his fat ass. Since when does he have the right to violate our pursuit of happiness that way?  Also all of us asthmatics should sue him for violating ADA.  Oh, and Sprouts is on my shit list FOREVER. They don’t “view” a face shield as enough, and don’t make exceptions for asthmatics. WHERE are all the lawyers?– as meaning they can only remove the mask for shoveling food in. (Picture how much touching of that mask goes on, and the eating and just how gross and unhygienic the whole thing is.)

As we drove back, I felt — looking at the mostly deserted summer streets, the masked people — as though I were hearing bells toll under a stormy ocean.

I wanted more than anything to go back to just five months ago, to the normal, awake world, where Americans have freedom of assembly, of taking risks in pursuit of happiness, of having businesses open or not without the fiat and imprimatur of the government.

And the problem is, it can never come back again.  The compact is broken.

So many things we thought utterly unimaginable have happened in the last year.  Oh, some happened before, but we found out about them: like the utter perversion of our system of government by an outgoing president who decided to weaponize the secret services to a) prevent the election of someone he didn’t want b) prevent that person from governing if elected.

In politics, a lot of things are like the genie in the bottle.  Once you let it out you can’t cram it back in again.

The current — orchestrated — distraction might prevent Obama and the Clintons, and the whole vomitous of mass of self-proclaimed and dirty as sh*t (with apologies to real excrement) elites from paying for their crimes.  But it won’t prevent this from becoming the new normal.

Honestly, the only thing that prevented us from banana republic status for generations was the fact that the press wouldn’t report on the casual law transgression that democrats routinely engaged in, which of course gave the democrats a leg up, since Republicans couldn’t retaliate without being torn limb from limb by the hounds of press. But it also kept the fragile form and idea of a constitutional republic in place.

The democrats MIGHT (but I doubt it) have realized that what they were doing was the equivalent of certain diseases and parasites which mask their existence until it’s too late.

And it could be much worse. Without the internet. We are blessed that the enemies of freedom have a TOTAL inability to foretell where things will lead. Like all people greedy for power and control, they see ONLY their desire, not what comes after.

Look, they were never going to get their heart’s desire, which is the equivalent of Stalin’s reign in the USSR, but more absolute and going on forever.  Partly because that reign is actually impossible for any extent of time. (Even Cuba or NK only look that controlled from the outside (besides being smaller areas with very uniform culture.) Partly because… well. Stalin would eat them alive for lunch, without disturbing his mustache one whit.  When it comes to evil our lefty elites are the equivalent of a possessed rubber ducky.  The evil and the intent are there, but the ability to carry it out is matches their (in)competence at everything else. That same press that protected them also made them unable to survive without protection. They’re like the evil possessed toddler let out to play on the highway. …. often, as we’ve seen in the last few months, literally.

What they’ve proven over the last few months is this: They hate us and wish to torture us.  Winnie the flu, that increasingly flimsy excuse, becomes day by day more obviously a paper tiger, and they stomp their little hooved feet and scream they won’t let us out to live our lives, and that we have no rights that don’t come from them.

There is no going back. Even if they donned masks of normalcy and sanity tomorrow…. who would believe them?

There are many paths from where we are.

One doesn’t exist.  That’s their promised land where they get to play “Simon says” with us for the rest of eternity.  First because everything they learned on how to run a society is wrong, and often the diametrical opposite of what allows a society to run.  Second, because we’re a continent-sized country of increasingly restless prisoners.

It doesn’t mean unpleasant alternatives don’t exist.  When societies go out of their nut insane, as ours seems to have gone these last six months, the only thing that seems to stop it is war and more specifically losing a  war.  Considering the state of those who could win a war against us, (enemies foreign and domestic, in fact) I don’t think that would end well or be a viable alternative. Well, not for those of us who dream of living in freedom. (Though you can’t kill an idea and some of us have our scraps of flag, if only in our hearts.)

There are decent alternatives, too, though. Those in which Marxism which has infiltrated so many of our institutions is finally dismantled, and we start rebuilding western civ, now with more sanity.

Tech is harder to monopolize now (yes, yes, I know. the tech giants, yadda yadda. But that’s their attempt at one more yota of control. It’s not actually as easy as you think. There are ways to evade it when it becomes intolerable.) It’s harder to long march through the institutions when institutions are toppling (Largely because they were infiltrated by the gang that can’t tie its own shoes.)

You know where I’m placing my bets. In the end, we win, they lose. Unless we concede the culture fight, which honestly I don’t even think we can. Our very existence threatens them. They can’t cancel EVERYONE.

So be not afraid. I don’t know how long we’ll put up with this. I expect till November, one way or another (which makes me remind you to have food and meds on hand for a couple of months, etc.)

But even though I know the status quo ante was already rotten, and that the people who pulled this on us were already in power throw vote-by-fraud-mail and able to do whatever they wanted; even though I remember all their abuses before this last catastrophic intrusion….

I miss the unbroken sunlit world, where I knew a shop would admit me if I needed to run in and buy a blah blah, without demanding I impair my breathing or — who knows, next week — hop on my leg, or whatever governor shithead Polis dreams up to impose on THEM.

Sometimes the tolling of those bells under the water as the storm gathers fills me with unbearable longing.

367 thoughts on “Saudade”

  1. One thing that’s repeatedly crossed my mind of late is a thought back to when the Wuhan virus arrived, society went into turtle mode, and people noted that suddenly all that woke stuff that so many on the Left were constantly getting worked up over didn’t seem so important in the face of a health threat.

    But now here we are, just a few months later…

    1. Grocery stores will not let you bring in reusable grocery bags. WTF, O?

      So, every time, I ask, “Weren’t disposable plastic bags evil a while ago?”

      1. the leftoid’s favorites are very much a no go, if one wishes to avoid, particularly this, illness:

        reusable bags
        mass transit
        stack-a-prole living

        the list is a long one

        1. Reusable grocery bags are no more likely to ‘spread corona virus’ than your clothes, your shoes, your hair, a woman’s purse, or that germ repository they want you to strap onto your face.

          If they were remotely serious about ‘preventing the spread of corona virus’ we would have to strip and go through a decontamination shower before entering the store.

          It’s like they believe the disease can’t spread except from specific sources, so everything will be fine if they clean or cover just those spots.
          ———————————
          The Democrats are willing to burn America to the ground, so long as they wind up squatting on top of the ashes.

          1. funny thing is, for years folks have been pointing out how unsanitary the typical reusable grocery bag is, and been told to sod off.
            Too bad Trump didn’t say everyone should have to wear a mask, and never mentioned HCQ. We’d not have a rag policy and they might have used HCQ correctly from the outset.

            1. might have used HCQ correctly

              I had a rant started, but I’ll be short instead. I believe that if POTUS never mentioned HCQ, it never would have made it to mainstream media. Too many people on the left find the virus useful. The fact that it serves to reduce the effectiveness of Trump’s and GOP campaigns is just too tempting.

              1. at this point if Trump comes out with “Drink plenty of water, and stay in the shade to prevent heat stroke” the press will claim he is an idiot, promote abstaining from hydration for days, and certain Governors will make drinking water illegal.

          2. If they were serious about the masks doing anything, there’d be biohazard disposal boxes set up everywhere. That there isn’t tells me just about everything I need to know about this masking mandate.

            2. It seems that every national company that I deal with proudly proclaims a mask mandate. Moot, since Despicable Kate Brown already did it for them, but a lot of companies may not have realized just how much good will they’re throwing away.

              With hotels, it’s already a pain for the traveler. In-house kitchens are closed, so not even room service. (How poor *is* hotel occupancy? Guess I’ll get a clue next month.) Now the parent company for where I’m staying is doing a nationwide mask mandate. I’m sure there are some states that haven’t gone the Plague Doctor route, but nooooo. Dammit, if I’m going to have my eyes dilated and die shoved in my veins, I want a pleasant place to stay where I don’t have to worry about getting a meal, especially with my diet restrictions. Arggh.

              There’s another hotel nearby. It had meh reviews when the med stuff started, but might be worth rechecking, particularly mask policy.

              1. Moot, since Despicable Kate Brown already did it for them, but a lot of companies may not have realized just how much good will they’re throwing away.

                AMen.

              2. We got said mask policy here at work, but now 4 people across town have gotten the WuFlu. So, now, All Masks All The Time!! Also they check your temp every shift start. once I was 98º once, every other day it comes back 97.3º to 97.6º.
                Who is getting sick? Well, they are all production line workers, lots of items of shared contact, but I’ll bet most didn’t contract it at work. First one last week was fine when she showed for work, passed the temp but felt ill later in her shift, so left, and got tested.
                Oh, and the mask policy is non-medical, non N95! worn all day, and they issue one to you a day. After the rotten Made in Chin crap started falling apart in a few hours, they relented and allowed home made worthless masks as well as the worthless “Built to N95 stndards but not tested” (but many test to N15 at best, but hey) and “This mask will not prevent Illness” warnings printed on the box.
                Oh and company policy is if you think you need dust protection they did allow you to have an N95, so I don’t know how that works. If I need dust protection I wear my full face respirator (also not allowed for protection from WuFlu) that I have for also dealing with certain chemicals.

              3. RCPete—You have to treat your hotel stay like camping trip at a deluxe camp ground (good beds, no bugs). Carry your own food and beverages in with you.

                1. RCPete—You have to treat your hotel stay like camping trip at a deluxe camp ground (good beds, no bugs). Carry your own food and beverages in with you.

                  –
                  Forgot showers …

                  We get to see how things are in Baker, next weekend. Cousin is throwing a 65th wedding anniversary party Sunday at a park. Sunday is taken care of (guessing). Saturday sister, her husband (mine gets to pass), mom, & I are traveling together. Will meet mom’s brother & SIL in Bend to eat at their youngest son’s food truck business. Then head to the hotel in Bend, more or less tandem. Monday, probably hit breakfast or brunch somewhere on the way home, if hotel facilities aren’t available. Either way I’m packing some extra safe snacks for me.

                  1. From what I’ve seen on the ‘net, both from the hotels and commentary, in-hotel restaurants most likely won’t be open. Hilton has closed theirs, and Shilo seems to be the same. FWIW, Black Bear Diners deliver (Medford and Bend, no takeout or dining room. K-Falls, dining room is open, no delivery or takeout. Go figure.)

                    From what I can tell, hotel travel is down so far it’s not worth it for them to open the restaurants. There’s speculation that a lot of the in-house restaurants will close permanently.

                    1. Baker … so we’ll see. Saturday is at cousin’s food truck. Comes under “it’s family”.

                    2. The Rye Town Hilton is closing forever.

                      No more Escher Hilton conventions with the Trans-Dimensional Corridor.

                    3. I liked the Hilton Garden Inn at Medford. Was there for four eye procedures (corneas and retinas) and myriad followups, so I got to know the staff some. The last trip was in late February, when it was pretty clear that *something* was coming, and it wasn’t gonna be good. The dining room was much quieter than normal, and the parking lot was considerably less crowded on a Friday night than in the past. The restaurant menu was a bit funky, too. Steak in goop isn’t to my taste, and the grilled salmon was missing.

                      The hotel is both business friendly and strategically located for medical procedures (several eye practices, one huge, others thriving, plus a major regional hospital, all in a 1 mile radius), so I think it will survive, but the nearby restaurants a) don’t often serve what I can eat, b) have been hurt by Covid Theater, and c) are in a sketchy enough neighborhood to trigger my “there be dragons” senses.

                      Depending on the results from the eye exam, I’ll have to repeat at 6-8 month intervals, or at worst case, 3 months. 8 months might possibly enough for the rioters to [give up|get arrested|discover vigilante justice], so that’s my hope. Unfortunately, there aren’t any retina specialists over here in the deplorable, civilized area east of the Cascades.

                2. Pretty much what I’ll be doing. I had to bring a start of a breakfast anyway because reasons. Just have to bring more with the suite setup.

                  The hotel had a coffee maker plus mini-microwave. The Suites place next door (same ownership) has what they insist is a full kitchen. Cooktop for sure, microwave and dishwasher. Doubt there’s an oven, but take-n-bake pizza is off limits. OTOH, there’s an Abby’s down the road that has a good gluten-free pizza. (it’s not lifestyle, it’s survival) If the Chinese place I trust is alive, there’s that, but I know where the grocery stores are. I might just bring the old backpacking kitchen set (minus the Optimus stove 🙂 ) to be sure…

                  Fortunately, it’s not a procedure trip. Those happened early morning, and I’d sleep when I got back, then build a sandwich. ‘Tis a periodic followup, with the possibility of having fluorescein dye injected to see how the blood vessels in my eyes behave. Adds a colorful note to the bathroom jokes… Dilated eyeballs always happen, but I go for an early appointment so there’s a bit of recovery by noon. With the suite, I’ll have lunch already, so no problems if Plan A is obsolete.

              4. Just did some traveling. Most hotels have no food, coffee (!) available. However, I stayed at Bed and Breakfast which was amazing. The small inns and B&Bs are getting killed (breaks my heart), and the ones still open are bending over backwards to make it worth your while. Might look into that.

                1. Um…. We’ll consider bed and breakfasts….
                  As I said traveling across country…. September. Because, you know 2020 is full of fun and gig.
                  OTOH loved meeting you.

                  1. We had a great time! Come visit us if you come to the East! Not that I recommend the East right now. The cities are burning. Though I’m not sure Denver is doing better.

                    1. We’ll be one state over from you. Not sure how far. But I’ll email our travel plans when they’re firm. We might be able to meet at a central point somewhere….

                2. My usual hotel relied on business people and trades during the week. (Hilton; even electricians like a comfortable bed. 🙂 ) Not only is the restaurant closed (Hilton) but the airport shuttle is not in use. *That* says a lot, none of it good.

                  1. Years ago, a fellow in Huntsville Alabama was the one who set up hotel reservation for visitors to $FACILITY (I forget which, not trying to obscure) and he approached one smaller hotel and asked a couple questions…

                    “Is Memorial Day weekend your slowest weekend?”
                    ‘Yes…’
                    “How would you like me to FILL you hotel that weekend?”
                    ‘Yes!… what’s the catch?’
                    “Well, some of them might look a bit odd… ”

                    And that’s part of how Rocket City FurMeet (Damn, I miss RCFM) began. A few years later hotel ownership changed hand and it was *obvious* that the fur were No Longer Welcome. I can only wonder if their Memorial Day weekend business dropped like a rock…

                    And, one of the RCFM founders was Navy, and held a right, proper Memorial on Memorial Day.

                    RCFM moved,,, and it just wasn’t the same. Then one hotel tried to have RCFM *and* Security Theater, Inc. (aka The Airport Gropers) at the same time… and the Airport Gropers would NOT allow anyone in full costume (“How can we SEE who to harass?”) and that cancelled that year… and things Never Recovered.

                    WHEN the TSA is tossed on the ash heap of history, where it BELONGS, I shall not mourn it. I have other reasons (Ever fly and mentally play the “How would I defeat TSA?” game? Ox did. Ox stopped playing as it was TOO EASY… for *ox*.) BUT the death of RCFM is the Big One. As far as I am concerned, if EVERY upper-level TSA bureaucrat had to eat a bowl of lethally infectious viral/bacterial stew each year… it’d only be a good start.

                    1. doesn’t take work to defeat the TSA in most places
                      When I was at NOLA fueling SWA they had 3 handguns get past security, (one case was impetus for forming the TSA Poke and Grope Squad as opposed to using contractors).
                      The one case that helped give cause to drop contractors?
                      it was the FIRST time it happened. The other two times was under TSA’s watch.
                      I’ve an uncle who was TSA for a micro “International” airport (iirc 5 people total in the “force”), and his little group was the only one of a regional manager’s locations that caught the testing they do periodically. Worse, the testing is stupid easy (Those I’ve SEEN: Wile E. Coyote type bundles of Dynamite with alarm clocks attached for the fake bombs, Solid metal pistols in a carry-on with mostly whites, and a fake single stick of fake dynamite with fake fuse, to be stuck in a back pocket by a ramp worker who has to go past the security) and this stuff gets past all too often.

          3. Reusable bags though are very good at spreading bacteria, particularly those that cause food poisoning.

            1. and washing them eliminates the chance that you will use it enough to make it even neutral, because making them is environmentally wasteful

            2. But they are great for carrying 2 liter pop bottles and heavy canned goods. Not so much for meat and produce or frozen things.

              1. Now I think of the “We grew up [in the 1980’s/1970’s/1960’s]” memes… natural selection. If you survived all that, the rest is No Big Deal.

                I get the feeling the very IDEA of being exposed to, say, lead(led), would lead(leed) some of today’s youth into panic attack. Here’s a [gasoline/diesel engine] car battery, some fishing sinkers, and some solder (and the *resin* is nastier than the lead in it, really).

                1. Are you kidding? I grew up in the Fifties/Sixties and back then we not only rode bicycles sans helmets, knee pads and elbow pads, we played with molten mercury. Back then a typical chemistry set permitted real chemistry, and kids often went without adult supervision for hours at a time.

                  The terms we applied to any kid who wore armor for cycling or required constant adults presence would likely be deemed hate crimes today.
                  –

          4. “… as long as they end up squatting on top of the ashes barking orders at people.”

            FIFY.

          5. The difference is that while your clothes only come in contact with you, your reusable bags come in contact with a lot of other things. These can include the conveyor belt that moves your groceries, and the person who bags your groceries for you. People *have* seemingly gotten food poisoning from the bags (from what I’ve heard, the number of food poisonings doubled in San Francisco after they banned non-reusable bags; but the number that got doubled was so low to begin with that it wasn’t really *that* big of a deal), so there is a possibility.

            Personally, I don’t mind. I never liked carrying the things around. And they’ve stopped using those stupid thick plastic bags at my local supermarket, and gone back to the super thin ones.

            1. stupid thick plastic bags at my local supermarket, and gone back to the super thin ones.

              –
              Super thin small ones that break with any kind of weight? Work great for most fresh stuff, fres h stuff I”m bagging already in the produce area. Don’t need to pay for a second bag at check out. It adds up if you are spending $.05/bag and it takes 15 bags to load up. Don’t care if it is pocket change. Every time we take our accumulated pocket change to the bank it totals $200 – $500. It freaking adds up.

              They forbid taking in reusable bags (& they’d better be monitoring as I come in) … fine. Just put items back in the cart, that they are spray disinfecting between use. I am not paying them for bags. As it is, even Costco, will allow you to take bags in. They won’t handle them. You can’t put them on the counter for them or you to fill. They won’t fill them if open in the cart. They will grab another cart to put the items in then you can transfer at your leisure. As RCPete has already stated OSHA is Herr Brown’s enforcer’s of choice. OSHA is an organization that no one messes with, that is long, long, standing.

                2. OSHA can go to HEL

                  –
                  Why would they want to go back, after going to so much trouble to get here?

          1. See the Biden plan to kill off suburbs. One of the ROTC guys I knew in college had a Gahan Wilson cartoon; a soldier, standing alone, surrounded by post-battle gore. “I think we won!” Somebody took it to heart.

            1. Lefties always love them some apartment buildings and some transit. Rack ’em and stack ’em. No private cars, no private houses. Because everything is so much more “efficient” that way. (And if they act up they can’t get very far on foot.)

              As if “efficiency” was the primary goal in life. They get you from the cradle to the grave in as uniform, prepackaged and bland a fashion as can be imagined. True utopia.

              And if they lose a couple million to disease now and again, well, peasants are a -cost- you know. Costs are best minimized.

          2. Loved how NYC thinned the subway users then dropped the number of trains so the smaller number were just as crowded . . . but hey, at least they sanitized the trains from day one . . . oops.

            1. Ha yeah, they cleaned the train cars once a day. Like that is supposed to be a big deal.

              Has there been a worse response to Corona than NYC? I can’t think of one.

              My personal favorite was the governor -requiring- seniors homes to take Corona cases. Sweden is bad enough with their “let them die!” policy, but in NYC the bureaucracy actively introduced the disease into residences.

                1. Did they?

                  Last I heard, about the time they were agreeing to add all the deaths-at-home-from-refusal-to-treat-cardiac-arrest as kung flu, they had a PLAN to START disinfecting, once a day, starting in a month’s time.

                    2. Buddy back in the day owned an Exxon station and loved that the restrooms were lined and tiled so he could spray bleach and cleaner with a bug/garden sprayer and then hose the things out

      2. NY made them illegal as of March 31st. A lawsuit extended the deadline one month.

        Somehow, no one seems interested in enforcing it now….

      4. We can bring in our own reusable bags but they won’t pack them. But you still have to pay for crappy thin or plastic bags, even though plastic bags are forbidden locally. But since paper bags are scarce … guess all those wood pulp chips are going into TP … 🙂 I’d link it but FB links are translatable. Cousin posted a picture of a log truck loaded with logs on timber back road with the caption “This is your TP in raw form. Too bad we can’t log anymore …” OTOH hopefully the timber going to China has stopped; & a lot of timber goes out of Weyerhauser export log yard out of Longview. Still stuff going to Japan, I guess … That is the one thing that was good about when International Paper sold the western region timber lands. The companies that bought them are all domestic use, only; no more log export. Okay. Yes. I lost my job. But still …

        1. Oh yea. I am in the habit of using self check out anyway. Because I’m particular on how the bags are packed. Also, I refuse to pay for bags, which are worthless unless doubled or tripled.

          1. Put items on cart. Swipe. Toss items back into buggy. Push buggy to car, strap to wheelchair lift. Drive home, push buggy into kitchen, unload.

            Of course, it’s perfectly okay for winos and bums to steal shopping carts, but I bet they’d send a SWAT team to arrest normal peoplee.

            1. I’m even being rude at Costco by refusing to take their boxes for to recycle for them … I have the reusable collapsible boxes (Albertson’s & Fred Meyer/Kroger has them) that I pack once I’m at the car …

              1. At Fred Meyer, it’s now up to the cashier as to whether they’ll pack reusable bags for you. Learned that last week; was chatting with the cashier and she volunteered to do so. Didn’t happen today, but it wasn’t somebody I’d run across before. (Small enough city; friendly people chat, and until Kung Flu, there’s be one or three cashiers we knew who were on duty. Now, it’s a mess. 2020!)

                Bi-Mart ran out of paper bags today. I had my trusty “One cat short of crazy” bag, so I was OK. Person behind me, nope.

                We’re seldom doing dedicated trips to Costco, so I’ve been skipping their boxes to squeeze Costco merchandise in with the luggage. Cardboard *used* to be fairly valuable as a recycled item. Not sure with the current situation. Last I looked, the food court was takeout only. Bunless hot dogs and salads ain’t gonna be eaten in the car… Arggh.

              2. I briefly worked in Costco a few years ago, and most people preferred to just keep stuff in their cart (since the customer is not in charge of the reloading of paid for groceries) and then sort how they load them into the car on their own. There are some people who do go for boxes, but not many really.

        2. I can see shipping lumber to Japan; the whole country is the size of New Jersey and densely populated. They could very well need more wood than they can grow. China, not so much.

          1. I don’t think China has much in the way of forests. Not of trees suitable for lumber, anyway.

            It would be cheaper to get lumber from Russia, which has no shortage of the stuff. Balance of trade may be the determining factor on that, though.

            1. There’s an infrastructure issue on getting it from Sibera to where it would need to be in China; whereas there are plenty of ships traveling the pacific.

              1. Not to mention strategically it’s in the US’s best interest to keep as much of China’s trade going through easily blockable ports as possible.

                Notice, while the ChiComs talk about their Carrier-Killers a lot, you don’t hear them bragging nearly as much about their ASW capabilities.

              2. Vladivostok is on the Pacific, and it’s the rail and shipping nexus for all of Siberia.

          2. After the big Japan earthquake, a lot of logs were going straight from lumbering areas here to ships bound for Japan. There’s a bit of Lodgepole Pine that being harvested, and I’m guessing some of the logs went to rebuilding temples.

            1. Japan has a has a lot of forest, but a lot of forest was replanted like the UK with too many pine trees in rows, and a lot of forest is hard to get at. Add earthquake, tsunami, and the plague of US raccoons destroying wooden temples.

              1. Logs were going to Japan long before the more recent earthquakes. I worked export log loading when in Longview, when ships were in, early ’80s. Mostly pulling tags, unless a tag was missing, then it had to be measured & graded. It could be interesting getting to work.

                Every time there was a new guard stationed at the dock entry, had to call both our supervisor, a Weyerhouser supervisor, & a dock supervisor. Women weren’t allowed on the docks … This was before cell phones (about 10 years before we had one anyway). Guard wouldn’t always let me use the phone to call my supervisor who would then call the other two. Generally one of my co-workers on the same shift would pull up behind me (sometimes in the same car, hubby also worked for the same company). International Paper had large export docks in Longview too. Company I worked for didn’t have their export dock contracts. Why we eventually got transferred out of Longview. Weyerhauser went to in house private log scalers on their export logs (30 contracts the company lost).

                Note. Any company that buys government timber can’t export raw timber. Processed lumber, yes. Raw logs no. They can’t export their private stuff & then process the public timber domestically. Only large land timber owners can afford to export.

          3. China has always had a timber problem. Something about all its land being fit for agriculture, just about.

      5. Oops, forgot to mention, the store I go to, that will not allow reusable grocery bags, is self-bag ONLY. Nobody else is going to be touching your bags, so, what is the risk?

        It’s all Political Plague Theatre. We have always been at war with Eastasia. Those words never existed. Take your Soma, and be happy you’re a Beta!
        ———————————
        Bring out yer dead!

      6. My grocery sends plastic bags when I get stuff delivered, but they have a paper bag option, that costs more.

        So I get the plastic bags, which I can use as bin bags for my room bins, or for all those other uses for plastic grocery bags that we all used them for.

        1. the local chain has either paper or plastic and the no reusables rule is diktat from Whitless on the Michigan side. Mayhap Wisconsin did the same, don’t know. I use plastic 99% of the time.

  2. “In politics, a lot of things are like the genie in the bottle.”

    In the current instance, not politics but something broader – philosophy, perhap – Liberty is a soap bubble: glittering, beautiful and apparently indestructible but in fact fragile and evanescent.

    But we can blow more of those bubbles, once we rid ourselves of the bubble-popping poopy-heads.
    –

        2. We are given a choice; thought that has been thought out and hashed over by a thousand voices over two thousand years, or thought that has been generated by an excess of emotion, not thought out at all, and expelled from the other end of the Alimentary Canal.

      2. Every word of this!

        Of course, I’ve found that those who pride themselves in their Wokeness in today’s culture react with inordinate violence, sometimes, when one threatens to think their thoughts out.
        Maybe (just maybe!) I remember a little bit of HTML and the tags aren’t outdated or blocked from WordPress…

  4. We’ve been putting back a fair amount of canned and dry goods. Every time I go to Ollie’s or Big Lots, I look for some canned meat, because I have a feeling fresh and frozen meat will be in short supply this winter. Worst case, we have a bin full of bags of beans, so we will have protein. Maybe not as pleasant, and it could get a bit aromatic around here, but protein.

    The garden has been helping provide fresh veggies. Not as much as I would’ve liked — it’s been decades since I last planted one, and I got some stuff planted too tight, so they’re not bearing like they should. But we’ve had some meals from it. Last night I saw another zucchini that should be ready to harvest soon, and there’s a pepper that will be as soon as it turns red.

    And I’ve been building a stockpile of thyroid pills ever since my endocrinologist gave me a new prescription shortly before my March appointment, just in case the situation led to the appointment being delayed — and then gave me a second prescription when she increased my dose. I’ve been filling both of them, so by the end of the year i should have almost a year’s supply. Given that, without that little pill, I’m non-functional, I want to make sure I have enough.

    If things go truly pear-shaped, we probably won’t make it. Just too many health issues for “grab a backpack full of emergency supplies and run for the hills” to be a viable option. But I think we can pull through something on the order of your “It Could Be Worse” scenario (and I’ve realized that something like that is part of the background in one novel that I’ve never been able to get traction on). It won’t be fun, but I’m hoping I’ll be able to get some projects finished before it’s time to check out of this hotel called Life.

    I planted rhubarb and strawberry plants this year. An action of hope that there will be a future, when for the first time in decades that “will there be a next year?” is creeping back into my thoughts. (Yeah, I know that dates me).

    1. Soaking beans prior to cooking them makes them much more digestible. Cooking in an electric pressure cooker seems to help as well. My family member who went years with discomfort when eating beans reported that the beans I prepared in that manner we’re unobjectionable. And when the beans are a regular part of the diet it also helps with digestion. I assume the bacteria shift in the gut.

      1. Thanks for the tip. I always soak beans, but if I can get hands on an Instant Pot or imitator, I may try that method

        Is there any way to check a used on at a thrift store for safety, or should I plan on buying new. I’ve seen a few at Goodwill, but I’ve been hesitant to purchase them.

        1. From what I’ve read (same worries as you) the big selling point of the modern things is that their failure state is “stops working,” not “explodes.”

          1. The other selling point is that I can set it all up before I get hungry then do other things. Cooking when I can’t think clearly is hard.

            As far as deals go, when I looked around I saw off brand model for $45 and name brand for $65. It was basic, but fine.way cheaper than $120. And you might be able to get new in box used. MiL bought one for $20 with coupons, but has never used it. Pretty sure she’s not the only person with one sitting unused in it’s box.

            And the modern ones are supposed to fail without exploding, so if you can steam cycle it you are probably fine? The lid is rather disassemble-able, you might be able to replace a couple of the bits. And the seals are replaceable. And the outer jacket can be dented, it’s the inner one that needs to be in good shape, at least on the IP brand.

            1. $SPOUSE got a stovetop pressure cooker a long time ago as a present. It’s been idle for years, but she tried a run of potatoes & carrots to replace the garlic potatoes that needed a bit too much oil. Worked like a champ, and we’re doing that fairly often. It’s the type that uses a weight for control, and it’s quite friendly with a gas range. Haven’t seen any of that size on the market; pressure canners are showing up, but they’re huge. OTOH, wear parts are available from the usual suspects.

              Our electricity is pretty reliable, but in T-storm season, it’s nice to have a solution that needs only a match.

            2. I I like that word “cosmic” it’s just the way that people
              Tend to use it that offends my sense of survival
              –Guy Clark “Who do you think you are”

              1. I was inside our house, on the wrong side, and the neighbor’s house was on the far side of THEIR house, and when the seal “went” on theirs I heard it.

                Thank God, nobody was even in their kitchen at the time, the mom was fighting the boys’ hair, but the entire kitchen ceiling was covered with tomato chunks.

                Before that, I did gage calibration in the Navy. In training, there was a big chunk in the cement ceiling. That’s where someone had not followed procedures and the gage came loose. Luckily, nobody was hurt. It was repaired while we were there, so not one of those “lies to scare folks straight” things.

                1. one of the few Mythbusters I watched was the “Can a compressed gas tank become a missile?” show and boy howdy did I cringe at how blithely they were operating until it surprised the crap out of them. I thought Jamie had more sense than that. Seen the Hot Water Heater bomb show too. That one was just me yelling how they were setting it up wrong.
                  The welding shop at the community college where I was supposed to take High School class (broke my lag and was not going to be able to wear steel toes too long and dropped it), had a repair left unpainted to showcase what an Oxy tank did when knocked over. It was up at the ceiling 10 or 12 feet up. Landed out in the parking lot, well away from the building.

      2. There are also thing like Spam and other canned meats; may be overly salty and becomes very boring very quick, but its protein. Also, dried fish, like dried cod, or dried meats, like beef jerky, are another staple that can be stored longer term.

        1. I’m going to learn to make Spam musubi. We have the ingredients, and the marinade makes it taste good. And everything in it is shelf-stable.

          1. Is truly dead easy.

            Just rice, slice the spam, marinade if wanted (can even do it in the can) and fry, put on rice pat.

            Amazon has kits for it, too, so you can form it into those awesome not-a-sandwich things easily.

            ***********

            If you like that, you may also like moco loco. Mushroom gravy over rice, crack a raw egg into the hot rice before you cover it with the boiling hot gravy, hamburger patty also an option. By the time you can not burn yourself, the egg is soft-cooked. (Can also do a quick fry, or crack the egg in, microwave for 30 seconds, and then put the gravy on.)

            Mushroom gravy made by frying canned mushrooms with cheap instant beef bullion, dash of worstershershire sauce, the drippings from frying the hamburgers and onions to taste. Can substitute in dried onions (or onion soup mix) and canned green beans.

            2. Recommending unscrambled eggs in the microwave can be problematic. Your suggestion is probably fine for microwaves of less than 1000 watts, but over that, there’s a good chance the yolk will explode in 30 seconds. Ask me how I know. 🙂

              Note: You can reduce the likelihood of yolk explosion by stabbing said yolk several times with a fork, but even that’s not guaranteed.

              1. You really don’t want to scramble it, though, the yoke needs to be over easy at hardest.

                I usually do 30 seconds at a go– we have a minimarket surplus microwave.

                But that’s a bit more fiddling than most folks want to bother with– and if you worry about it blowing up you can break the yoke with a fork, then put on the gravy and it stops the steam from going pop if you’re not hard-cooking it.

              2. How much over 1000 W is your microwave? I thought ours was 1100 and it cooks an egg on top of stuff decently. On the other hand, for scrambled ones I put something over the dish….

    2. I get 90 day prescriptions that can be refilled in 83 days. I’ve been doing this for a long time (8 years on one med, while others had changes that let me use the old med while building a stash of the new medication.)

      One, I’ve been on for only a year, but I kept the old (not quite so effective) medication as a backup.

    3. I’ve been grabbing a package or three of (real) bacon bits every time I’m at my local Aldi’s. A little over a dollar, shelf-stable, and I can “meat up” a casserole or batch of bean soup tolerably well with a pack.

  5. I’m familiar with that feeling from way back. I’ve lost people, institutions, even groups within institutions. Less on the physical end, more on the community end. Ah well.

    Tomato sauce is cooking down on the stove. The freezer is full. Canning will be a process this summer and fall. We’ll be good.

  6. Your “Restless Prisoners” got me to thinking, “What if I get horned off enough I say “Yaknow what? #@(% this, I have had it” and leave, but due to Whitless the Wonder Gov, selling my old – needs work – house is impossible? What sort of hit do I take just upping stakes and turning the place over for the next tax bill?
    Calculator says . . . If I was renting this past 4 years, I would have paid almost $10,000 over the amount I have in the house and roof work etc.
    Escaping a State of Stupidity, just got less agonizing if needs be.
    This, for whatever reason, gives me a slight uplifting feeling.
    Now to plan out a Galt’s Gulch or three.

  7. I am so fucking tired of hearing about the ‘peaceful protesters’! After two months of riots, any ‘peaceful protesters’ damn well KNOW what they’re holding up a fig leaf for, making them as guilty as the looters, arsonists and murderers. They are accessories before and after the fact at the very least, and, I would argue, active conspirators.

    As for those ‘leaders’ — the mayors, governors and other politicians trying to quell the riots by appeasing the mobs — they might want to ask Maximilen de Robespierre how that worked out.
    ———————————
    “Neville Chamberlain was very keen on peace!”

    2. Chamberlain got *exactly* what Parliament sent him to do, and gave him a ticker-tape parade when he came back.

      When it didn’t work out like they wanted, suddenly it was Chamberlain’s individual fault, and they had nothing to do with it, no sir.

      Chamberlain wasn’t the only fool, just the one left holding the bag.

      1. And let’s not forget that, according to Churchill, Chamberlain basically worked himself to death during the war.

        1. We should also recognize that at the time of the Munich agreement Britain had so disarmed that it had little military choice; Chamberlain’s “piece of paper” bought badly needed time for British rearmament.

          Too little, too late, of course — the British Liberals had wreaked too much damage on their military to be overcome so quickly, and Neville’s fingerprints are not exactly absent from those policies.

          As Hannibal’s family told Carthage, the time to arm is before the war starts!
          –

  8. I can’t see the Chinese Commie Crud lockdowns lasting much past November; I honestly think most Americans will have run completely out of patience, when it comes to the holiday season. Tell them that shopping will be limited, no Christmas Eve midnight service, no gathering of friends for Thanksgiving, no parties. Especially since the CCC doesn’t seem to be about as threatening than the regular flu season.
    The other big thing is the election. I believe (much as I hope that things won’t) that things will get violent no matter who wins. The Vile Progs will be as pissed as hell if Biden and whoever his VP turns out to be loses to Trump. Especially if it is an overwhelming Trump victory – they will be insane with rage, and things in blue-run cities will become … interesting, in the Chinese curse sense of interesting. And if Trump loses, and the shenanigans of vote fraud and dirty tricks is just too open and blatant to ignore … conservative voters will be pissed, and the Vile Progs will be vengeful.
    Yes, indeed. Stock up on canned meats, meds and ammunition.

    1. “I believe … that things will get violent no matter who wins.”

      I was listening to a podcast the other day, two sports guys reminiscing about their favorite teams and what it was like growing up as fans … discussing suspension of Sports due to COVID one of the guys admitted he never paid much attention to “News” before this lockdown but had been desperately trying to figure out what the virus’ effects were … and the realization that News reports constitute two different realities. Not two interpretations of Reality, but different realities.

      Those realities will collide in November and no matter which prevails it will be severely damaging. There are contradictions which cannot be resolved and people will NOT long submit knowingly to being gaslighted.
      –

      1. Things that make me go “WTF?” My comments in italics.

        Trump responds to Reagan Foundation request to stop using Ronald’s image
        … In a tweet posted Sunday afternoon, the commander-in-chief called out Frederick J. Ryan Jr., chairman of the Reagan Foundation board and publisher and CEO of The Washington Post, after the foundation told numerous news outlets it had asked the RNC to stop using the former president’s name and image to raise money.

        I remember the Reagan Presidential Years (hereafter: IRTRPY) and the Post’s coverage of him; if anything they’ve moved MUCH farther Left, so how is their “publisher and CEO” even ON the Reagan Foundation board, much less its chairman?

        … The snub is not the first time the 45th president was snubbed by a group or individual tied to the 40th president.

        In June 2018, Reagan’s daughter Patty Davis said that she believed her father would have been “appalled” by the Trump presidency. … “He would be appalled and heartbroken,” she wrote, “at a Congress that refuses to stand up to a president who not only seems ignorant of the Constitution but who also attempts at every turn to dismantle and mock our system of checks and balances.”

        IRTRPY and all of the ways daughter Patty attempted to undercut and embarrass her father. Of the four Reagan children only Michael ever expressed support (heck, the others expressed open hostility) for their father’s conservative philosophy. If Ronald Reagan would have been “appalled and heartbroken’ by anything it would have been his daughter’s behaviour and ignorance about the Constitution and our system of checks and balances.

        I noticed she never said “Boo.” about the Obama Administration’s abuse of the Constitution and disregard of our system of checks and balances.
        –

        1. Yeah, Patti’s useless as a means of figuring out what Reagan would have wanted. Of course, Patti’s last name (the same as her mother’s) should probably be a clue…

        2. I remember Patti Davis openly opposing her father’s political ideas. Seems if she’s against something, her father probably would have been for it.

        3. I think Reagan wouldn’t care for Trump’s lack of civility. After all, Reagan was a more quiet, dignified person. As for Trump’s policy, I don’t think Reagan would have too much of a problem with it. After all, Reagan really was all about lower taxes and smaller government. Trump has at least taken a decent stab at lowering taxes.

          1. Trump has also taken a decent stab at reducing regulation. That’s just as important.

          2. And I think that if he’d been treated to the previous administration he’d be right there with Trump.

          3. Trump’s “lack of civility” is more bruited than demonstrated. A large part of it is, as Andrew Klavan noted early on, typical behaviour for natives of Queens. It’s “guy talk” and mostly in fun, but his detractors use it to justify clutching their pearls and pulling their skirts over their heads in faux horror. They’d be less inclined to get their knickers all knotted up if they weren’t such tight asses.

            As for Reagan, I don’t doubt he heard far worse while still in Hollywood; he worked for Jack Warner, after all. He certainly seemed able to tolerate some mighty crass efforts at humour from some of his underlings (although the transgression* of Ag Sec. Earl Butz was a Ford Administration incivility.)

            *Look it up
            –

            1. I can vouch that Trump is actually a very civilized version of Queens guy talk. If they can’t hack Queens what would they do with the people who lived in Brooklyn before we were priced out by hipsters? All these douce little pissants are one generation away from people who talked just like Trump. Nothing worse than a nouveau aristo. it’s no wonder Trump shows admiration for Andrew Jackson.

              If politics is Hollywood for ugly people and Hollywood is politics for stupid people, what does that make the news media? they Hate Trump because he does what they dream of.

              1. I’ll be honest: I heard worse growing up.
                SERIOUSLY adults used to be able to say “oh, just efffe off” and no one clutched pearls.
                WTF is wrong with people?

                1. [feral grin]

                  I can just imagine their reaction if they were able to translate Genteel Southern, bless their hearts.
                  –

                  1. They really can’t. “Bless your heart” is a fairly simple concept, but it takes a native to be aware of the subtle distinctions between “in a state”, “havin’ conniptions”, and “throwing a hissy fit”. (If the aforementioned “state” has graduated to “PITCHING a hissy fit”, then don’t try to interpret, just RUN.) I’ve mostly ever seen “conniptions” used as a threat, but I’ve been at ground zero for a couple of hissy fits.

                    I once saw a socialist used-to-be-friend waxing self-righteous about some senator using the phrase “your boy Obama” because OMG he was trying to invoke Jim Crow-era bigotry and REEEEEE! Glancing at the context proved to me, at least, that the senator was using it in the Southern sense of “person whom you support beyond all reason and logic because 1) he’s yours and 2) you feel vaguely patronizing toward them”. I lived in Columbia, SC at the time and mostly saw it with “your boys in the Gamecocks”. But that was a little more subtlety and context (and contradiction!) than the masters of nuance could handle.

                2. Like most professional people I have modes and don’t do it all the time. The wife doesn’t like it anyway, though she can play the city girl, which she is, when she chooses. Growing up, we used f-ck as punctuation and it’s funny sometimes to drop it into a conversation and watch the little girls blanch and In Ireland! I’ve heard bishops f’in and blind’in there. yes, it was at the rugby and they were in mufti, but still.

                  These people are shut asshoe.

                  1. Shortly after we moved to Ireland in the ’70s I remember standing in line at the Town Hall Theatre in Galway one afternoon and hearing the boys in front of us having a conversation where a single sentence could use “f**k” as a noun, a verb, an adjective, an adverb, and possible a few other parts of speech too.

                    1. Ireland is a special case. There is no parallel use in Gaelic to the informal English use of coitus words, much as Gaelic does stuff like actively avoid the word No. Coitus words are not “dirty,” although there are other swear and curse categories, and strong animal and fairy name taboos.

                      But English in Ireland makes much informal use of “feck” without actually having the social load of anxiety about it that most English speakers elsewhere have, whereas No and (some) species name taboos continue to be evaded in the same way.

              2. I’m convinced a lot of “conservative,” opposition to Trump is class based. He is Not One of Them. Mind you the taunt that many of them are simply comfortable being “the loyal opposition,” gaining the perks of aristocracy without the power may have some truth as well.
                And they may even see him as a “traitor,” to his class because he seems more comfortable with ordinary Americans.

                1. Say rather class pretension. Truly upper class people are usually quite rude and often quite crude. They are secure enough not to care. It’s the climber and the pretender. the nouveau aristo that worries about such nonsense.

            2. Trump is “rude” in the sense that he’s not pretending that they’re being polite.

              Which, yes, is traditionally rude– thing is, that tradition is in the network where someone being rude had consequences, and not “then they were praised for their bravery by all authorities in social areas.”

                1. Yes, but– I think it was over at Crossover’s blog— it’s like the “no white after Labor day.”

                  If you divorce it from “or before Memorial day,” it doesn’t work. It’s always after Labor day.

                  Just like all the other Progressive things, they really want the rights without the responsibilities.

                  1. White shoes between Easter and Labor Day, UNLESS you are the bride at a wedding. Velvet should be worn only between October 1 and February 15. Cotton gloves are for summer, but even then, kidskin’s better. One button at the wrist for day-time.

                    Why are all y’all looking at me like that? Didn’t you grow up reading manners books from the 1930s-60s?

                    1. *laughs* If I could’ve FOUND one, I would’ve….

                      I knew it was a rule of thumb, related to summer, but it took digging to find out the first part of the order!

                    2. UNLESS you are the bride at a wedding.

                      –
                      Had to read that through a few times. You mean the bride always wears white shoes, NOT that she doesn’t wear them between Easter and Labor Day, right?

                      Oh, and you forgot nurses. White shoes will make any kind of shoe-borne contamination obvious.

                    3. Imaginos, brides may wear white shoes outside the “official” window without attracting comment. I can assure you from personal experience that, depending on your environment, wearing black shoes after Easter will be noticed. And commented upon. And I had bruises left on my arm from the dear little old lady’s grip during her vehement remonstration with me about same. (In my defense, I was in college, and would be leaving for home in two weeks, and having Mom and Dad ship my shoes to me for three weeks seemed a little foolish. But I said, “Yes, ma’am. Yes, ma’am, thank you ma’am.”)

                    4. if I remember correctly, a court in NY found it legal to punch out the crown of a skimmer (straw hat) worn after Labor Day.

                    5. wearing black shoes after Easter will be noticed. And commented upon.

                      –
                      How are your shoes anybody else’s business? Unless you’re stepping on their feet or kicking their ass.

                      I wear big black biker boots all year round. Polish ’em up nice and shiny and they’re good for all occasions.

                      I know next to nothing about women’s fashions, other than ‘that looks nice’ or ‘that looks baggy’ or ‘that raises my blood pressure (in a good way)’ or ‘that looks fiendishly uncomfortable’ or ‘what was she THINKING?’ Don’t ask me what any of it means.
                      ———————————
                      It’s all Political Plague Theatre, the show sucks, and I want a refund!

                    8. You CAN wear black shoes in spring/summer if the shoes are black patent or peau de soie (a kind of fabric, and generally worn with formal wear). Black calfskin, black kidskin, and black suede are worn in fall/winter. And yes, I had copies of Emily Post and Amy Vanderbilt growing up.

                    9. Nah, 19th century. One does not ask Mr. Jones how his wife is, but how Mrs. Jones is, or Mrs. Smith her husband, but Mr. Smith. Likewise, one refers to one’s own husband by title and surname, thus encouraging others to respect him by showing you yourself respect him. (This was explicitly a lady’s book.)

                      Also, the reason for a bachelor party is for the bridegroom to say farewell to his bachelor acquaintance. He and his bride might renew the acquaintance after, but might not, After all, a husband must be more respectable than a bachelor, and some of them might be somewhat fast.

            3. About 80% of Trump’s ‘Lack of Civility’ boils down to his not being a Good Republican who will roll over and wave his paws in the air every time some Leftwing twerp attacks him. Remember the fuss they tried to make over his not attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner? He simply declined to attend, so far as I can find out. Hey didn’t ‘t say, as he clearly could have, “What? Come to a dinner so you can all make fun of me, while I’m supposed to grin and just take it? I have more important things to do. Like watching paint dry .”

              1. Trump stomped along in the Dem circles for years, and much time spent with Bill and Hillary at events.
                He is acting like they do, actually milder than Hillary. He is just now doing it from a Republican stance, so the left hates their own medicine, and the Establishment GOP hates seeing how effective he is using it. They prefer being the polite losers over such “crass” actions.
                Also, the leftoids need to remember, they set this up when 0bama cheesed off Trump at one of their Press Dinners (in retaliation for Trump’s birther work for Hillary) and Bill and Hillary twisted the knife a bit as well.

          4. > lack of civility

            I have yet to see a case of him being nasty to anyone who wasn’t nasty to him first.

            That may be “uncivil” by Woke standards. Frankly, I’m to the point where “civil” would be enbalming the heads before spiking them onto the White House fence so the smell doesn’t annoy tourists.

            1. No one, outside the swamp creatures, who worked for hIm have ever had a bad word to say about him. Quite the contrary in fact. Given how long he was in the public eye, how intense the scrutiny has been, and the potential payoff the fact that they have to lie about him is remarkable.

              1. the press and he have never have had a amiable relationship, even as he was winning the leftoid humanitarian awards from the likes of the NAACP etc. His employees for the most part, seem to appreciate him, and only heard grumbles from those biz associates who lost out in some of his sillier schemes where he lost out more, and they shoulda known better. I know he (or one of his staff) stiffed a former employer of mine for a large landing fee, but said fee should have been a part of his bill, not separate, so as to be weeded out and set aside. Then again he paid full retail for the ramp parking and Jet-A pumped into his 727, so it was a blip on the boss’ profit.

    2. I’ve been timing a lot of things to happen as soon before the election as possible. If I can get into my dentist early (only open slots are in November), refills on vital meds (I’m functional without them, just utterly miserable to be around for about three or so months after stopping), picking up an extra can of peas and corn every time I go grocery shopping, etc, etc, etc…

      Fingers crossed that Trump wins-I won’t say “in the bag,” but we’re seeing about the same “oh, nobody we know will vote for him!” comments in the press last time around. Biden will be a lame duck president, so we need to know who his VP is. Her (and, Biden has pretty much said that it’ll be a female VP) policies will be very important indeed-and terrifying. Considering the people currently running the E!Democratic Party, we will be seeing the Green New Deal, White Racism and law enforcement being “dealt with,” and a whole lot of things that will make us happier to see Obama…

      My big question is-if/when Trump wins, will there be a “revolt of the adults” in the E!Democratic Party? Or will they double down on everything they’ve been doing so far?

      1. I think they’re laying groundwork for not having debates. …

        Notre Dame withdraws from hosting first presidential debate because of COVID-19 constraints
        The University of Notre Dame on Monday withdrew as the host site for the first presidential debate, citing “necessary health precautions” posed by the COVID-19 pandemic that would have “diminished the educational value” for hosting the event on campus.
        –

        1. Not holding the debates works almost as well for Trump as the debates would. He can spend the next three months running “Where’s Joe?” and “The President doesn’t get to hide in the basement” ads.

        2. Funny…

          I mean, they should be able to do live/real-time simulcasting of both candidates without any issue. Hell, offer to do it exclusively on YouTube and Google will break their own back to show it…

          Maybe someone has something to hide…

          1. almost like they dont want biden to be speaking unscripted

            notice how short his ads are on YT and how even then he stumbles some?

            1. This is one of the reasons why I think he’s starting to suffer from some form of neurological disorder/dementia. And, why we need to keep our eyes on the VP pick, because she might just be President VERY soon…

              1. Take Seven: “I’m Joe Biden, and uhhh what am i doing again? Can I have some pudding?”

                2. It is hard for me to watch Biden. We had a friend whose wife we watched spiral down into early dementia, quickly (or it seemed so at a time). She ended up living with her daughter in Idaho, leaving her husband behind. Don’t know how long the wife is going to be able to stay out of specialized homing. She was going down that fast. Why she wasn’t with her husband? They were married just under 10 years when this all got OMG seriously bad. Looking back, it’d been creeping up for the prior 8 years, at least. I think the marriage has been annulled, but don’t know for sure. She’d be 67 now. Her prior husband of 25 years, dodged a mess.

                  2. And my MIL has no idea who we are. She cycles in and out of being 19 and thinking her husband is her dad.
                    For the record, though, that’s diabetic dementia.

          2. should be able to do live/real-time simulcasting of both candidates without any issue.

            –
            Doesn’t matter. If we can’t see ole Joey boy on the stage with Trump without someone hiding somewhere off screen feeding him his lines. Without the knowledge that there is no ear bud with someone feeding him his lines … Without those assurances, every thoughtful pause is suspect to anyone with an oz of intelligence common sense.

            1. Gee, I dunno — the idea of Biden trying to simultaneously walk “authoritatively” about the stage and deliver his lines while simultaneously following the instructions in his ear piece could prove hilarious.

              Especially when he calls out, “No, NO, you idiot, look at the camera while saying that!”
              –

    3. was just discussing with my s.o. that the crud would be magically cured on nov 4th if Biden won.

      1. I don’t think so. short, victorious wars tend not to be either. the media may play it that way but these people have the democrats more than us. A heretic is much worse than a pagan and there’s nothing worse than an apostate.

    4. I really hope you’re right. Here in deep blue California, it seems a majority have either given up or actually believe the nonsense given the increased number of masked people I see out of doors, and the comments on NextDoor. I try to be a counter voice when I can, but few welcome it.

    5. > The Vile Progs will be as pissed as hell if Biden and whoever his VP turns out to be loses to Trump

      Remember the Great Meltdown of 2016? Schools closing because the students and faculties were traumatized, government employees signing statesments that they would oppose the new administration, TV presenters crying on broadcasts?

      That was when their loss was unexpected. Only the stupidest of them can believe Biden will win. They’ve been preparing for the new chimp-out for a long time.

      It will be *very* ugly after the election. For a short while, anyway.

      1. And that’s why I made the decision to get my first gun this year even before the COVID panic and riots. The left rioted last time they lost to Trump and, despite his failing to live down to their predictions of tyranny, have only gotten crazier since then. The riots were just extra incentive, as COVID delayed me from actually getting armed until after they had started.

    6. I caught a little bit of Rush Limbaugh’s show this morning. His take on the “Trump won’t step down when he loses” is that the Dems know they’re going to lose, big time, and are projecting like hell”. As he points out; if the polls really were correct, with Biden walking away with every Trump precinct, you’d think they’d shut up and just win. Yep. Rant on, Donks.

      I recall the October 2016 variant of the same shit. Now, just who has had a hard time accepting loss in an election? Remember the Republican riots in November 2018?

  9. their promised land where they get to play “Simon says” with us for the rest of eternity.

    From a historical perspective it is rarely (i.e. never) the people who manage to start the game who get to be Simon, at least not for very long – inevitably there’s someone with a stronger will or more troops or better swords or more air support who comes along and displaces the old Simon to take over as the new Simon. And one can’t leave the old Simon hanging around causing trouble. Better to ensure public order by quietly giving them half a helicopter ride one dark night.

    Bummer, Gavin.

    1. They think this will bring them a French Revolution and set them up as Nappy, but they are more like Robespierre without the skill and charm.

    2. They can certainly try to play “Simon says” with us for the rest of eternity, and I wish I were more confident about them failing to impose their “new normal.” Consider how many post-9/11 “Simon Says” measures are still in place.

  10. “The current — orchestrated — distraction might prevent Obama and the Clintons, and the whole vomitous of mass of self-proclaimed and dirty as sh*t (with apologies to real excrement) elites from paying for their crimes.”

    I saw interviews this weekend with Lindsey Graham, Devin Nunes and others discussing the newly declassified FBI memos and the failures of the Mueller Cover-Up Investigation, the pending Durham indictments and thought: the Dems, if they win in November, can halt the Senate investigation just as they did in the House and decline pursuit of Durham’s charges (or plea bargain wrist slaps for minor players.

    But they can do nothing about the stench, except force people to declare it fragrant.
    –

  11. is a word the Portuguese pride themselves on saying is untranslatable.

    This sort of claim from any language more or less always makes me roll my eyes. Because it is translatable, of course it is.

    Usually, I translate it as “I don’t feel comfortable with the amount of time and thought it would take to accurately convey the meaning.”

    ;^)

    For example, I just found out that in German the word “closed” (for business) and “locked” (as in a door) are the same.
    Assuming there’s no complication to that statement– taking it as a very simple statement of fact about a language quirk, like how in English “check” means both a mark and to inspect a thing– then I could tell someone that there is no translation for the word, and there isn’t a single meaning. We can say a store is locked up, but it’s not exactly the same as closed….
    but if I understand both languages, and am confident it won’t be a waste of time, I can convey the meaning.

    1. Words are translatable, but the concepts they represent can be more challenging. There is a world of difference between mañana and tomorrow, just as the phrase “just five minutes” can encompass a world of meanings, none of them equivalent to three hundred seconds.
      –

      1. The different tones and body language can change it, too– there’s “maybe later,” and “eh, maybe I’ll think about it next week, if I don’t find something better.”

        Plus the cultural norm sometimes associated with it, of “what do you mean, I missed my appointment– it was for noon, and it’s only three!”

        1. One of my favorite actual meanings are not literal meanings phrases is “We need to talk/have a conversation.”

          A conversation involves the “exchange of thoughts and feelings” while what that phrase generally entails consists of a one-sided litany of complaints t which the only acceptable response is “I see your point; I will try to improve” whether that “conversation” is initiated by your spouse, your boss or a liberal politician.
          –

            1. It’s a balance of power thing, ennit? When said to a partner it can be an important step; when said by an employer, commanding officer, or US Attorney General it is a polite fiction, such as prefacing an (implicit) order with “Please.”
              –

              1. Oh, yes, the military euphemism express. One of my favorite is a ‘request’ from a superior to come to him (or her) ‘at your earliest convenience’. This, of course, means, “Get your (tail) in front of my desk RIGHT F-ING NOW!”

                1. Officers get “Your presence is requested in…”
                  Enlisted get “Report to…”

      2. When I had the consulting gig, we discovered that the USA terms “concept” and “proposal” were backwards for the Germans. (To us, “concept” is a sketched out idea, rough draft. “proposal” is a fully developed plan, submitted for your approval. Precisely the opposite for the clients. Whee!) This made for some interesting rabbit holes when we had to do workarounds for various problems.

        As usual, the clients had better English and we did German. I could muddle through a grocery store with my ancient High School “sehr langsam [very slowly]” and point, but technical Deutsch was out of our zone. OTOH, the client went bankrupt before we were truly finished. Sigh. (Wasn’t our fault; CEO was induced into an Edifice Complex just as the Dot Com slowdown hit electronics. Nice building, no idea who has it now.)

        1. Parkinson’s Law of Corporate HQ. When a profitable business moves into an elaborate new HW, sell. They’re worrying about things that aren’t important.

          1. My understanding the boss (originally a partnership, don’t think it was a corporation) was talked into it by a “friend”. When the dot-com bust hit home, said person helped arrange for a competitor to be the vulture who picked up the pieces for pfennigen on the Mark cents on the Euro.

            The original building was just barely adequate for the business in 12/2001. The new one was 3-4X bigger, while the demand (March-Sept, 2002) fell off a cliff. He needed about 5 years for the business to recover, at which point the stuff we were helping on would have made a bundle. The vulture did fine, as I heard.

            “You fucked up! You trusted us!”

    2. I would imagine that the deal with ‘check’ comes from ‘check mark’, which is the mark that you make after checking and confirming that something is ready or completed.

      1. *nods* Same here– just as the link the between the shop being closed and the shop being locked is that is what you DO when you are not accepting custom.

        1. In the early 1980s I went with a friend to pick up some steel in Memphis. He’d placed the order by phone. We drove out to the steelyard, which was in an industrial park, and were confronted with a steel door, locked. No window, no bell. We found another locked door in back of the building, and a couple of gates in the fence around outdoor stock, securely chained shut.

          After standing there for a while WTF, we got back in the truck and drove back to his place. This was before cell phones. He called to ask what the deal was, and their dismissive reply was that all the doors were locked for security, and if he needed to pick up his order he would make an appointment instead of just showing up whenever on the day it was supposed to be ready.

          He told them they could keep their metal, he didn’t want it any more. Sent them into a screeching frenzy. Much of it was cut to length, which probably hosed their inventory system. And I don’t know how it figured on their scheme of things, but the bill was more than I made in a month.

          Ran into that at a couple of small industrial-supply houses in Little Rock a decade later. The door would be locked, and the drones would just stare at you through the windows, apparently without the slightest intention of ever opening the door. They all went away not long after, probably sincerely believing it was “the internet” that did them in…

          1. They all went away not long after, probably sincerely believing it was “the internet” that did them in…

            *nod*

            I’ve noticed that, too.
            They jerk folks around in really stupid ways– like not mentioning “I’m sorry, but we keep the doors locked to make sure all of your order is still there when you show up; can we get a half-hour window when you’ll be arriving?– and then are shocked folks don’t cheerfully leap through them.

    4. Someone who was from the Ukraine once mentioned to me that it was strange that English had the word “drugs” to mean both illegal substances and pharmaceuticals. But the interesting thing is that the English conflation is also correct; many pharmaceuticals can be used in the manner of illegal substances, and many illegal substances have pharmaceutical value to them. The dose makes the poison, after all.

      1. I’m currently reading a novel in which the protagonist’s mother had been an addict whose abuse of choice had started as a legit medicine for Alzheimer’s patients. (It’s suggested but not said that her heightened empathy was the result of prenatal exposure).

  12. I feel this way about the 1960’s. It used to be safe for me as a little kid to ride my bike all day, go to the YMCA on the bus by myself, go to the store, we never worried.

    I miss that.

    1. The thing is, outside a few enclaves of exceptional Leftist stupidity, it’s been that safe for a number of years…right up until the Loonies decided that “We hate you, submit to us” was a viable strategy. Violent crime was DOWN. Hard down.

      What was up was nannying. The obsessive worry, by absolutely everyone, that unsupervised minors would be abducted/molested/chopped into chutney. According to Free Range Kids, 7.8 million reports of abused or neglected children are made to CPS every year…and 7 million of those calls are unfounded.

      1. The Left wanted to nanny adults, which meant they had to double down on nannying children – that or treat children as pets who could talk and who ought to be subject to leash laws. So teenagers got treated as pre-teens, and pre-teens got treated as toddlers.

        I suspect this is why so many twenty-somethings are messed up. For twenty years they got bombarded with the message that acting like an adult was Bad and Wrong, in conflict with their instincts that acting like an adult was something they should aspire to. Their contact with actual adults was also strictly limited, lest they pick up the forbidden knowledge of how to act like a responsible adult.

  13. Saudade. A Japanese word, a bit of Japanese slang, came up in a conversation I was having with a friend yesterday; ださい、(dasai). It isn’t untranslatable, it means, more or less, uncool. However, as with many words, such as, I suspect saudade, many of the nuances get lost in translation.

    Alas many words in our own language; nuances lost, meanings of many words diametrically opposed to their original meaning. Woke now ain’t the same as yesterdays woke, modern meaning of gay is a bit queer, racist, in today’s lexicon, really has absolutely nothing to do with race, etc. Mostly peaceful protest is a strange way to say mayhem and murder

    It’s hard to have a conversation when they not only keep moving the goal posts but also plow up the playing field over and over and over.

    1. Leftoids do not speak English (or French, or German, or Spanish, or any other normal language). The rest of us find that confusing because the words are spelled and pronounced exactly the same, but the meanings have been twisted beyond recognition.

      What they hear, is NOT what you said. That is why their replies bear no relationship to what you were talking about and make no sense.

      1. homophobe was the first one I remember really hitting me in the face. Just because I don’t agree with the lifestyle and don’t want to see it glamorized in every bit of mass media out there doesn’t mean I have an illogical fear of gays nor do I hate everything they touch. If I did, my daughter’s babysitter would have been out on her ear rather than invited back.

        1. Oh, I had several years worth of fun, while living in DC, telling various self-righteous twits, “No, you fail to understand. I don’t fear you. I’m bored with you.”

      2. They speak Newspeak, and are now at the point where they openly acknowledge their goal is to change the language so that ungood thoughts cannot be thought of, much less expressed.

    2. According to Rasmussen, only 15% of Americans accept the “woke” definition of racism. It’s important to remember that although the Ctrl-Left is loud, they are nowhere near the majority. A lot of the college kids they try to brainwash give the answers they need to to pass their courses but don’t internalize them because they realize they don’t make any sense.
      https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/lifestyle/social_issues/americans_say_blacks_more_racist_than_whites_hispanics_asians

      1. Oh yes. They’ve been self selecting for “facile with words and thick as pig shit”for a while now.
        Part of the reason I say they can’t win. We CAN lose, but they can’t win.

      2. A good yard-stick for this for me was when the word “woke” came up when I was talking to my kids (one of whom has declared themselves to be a “they” as opposed to a “her”). Apparently the term “woke”, and especially those who think themselves/declare themselves to be “woke”, are considered idiots.

  14. And on the deep state coup attempt, I expect partisans are setting up networks on both sides as I type this, in order to run the game again no matter who wins. This will be a feature of every election from here on, and in counter to that, every election will henceforth result in massive purges across any GS civil service positions that might be able to run this game, not fired due to civil service protections, but reassigned to the North Dakota Administrative Complex, or Nuuk Station or the Outer Khazakstan Mission Center of Excellence.

    And much like the Roman Republican forms were carried forward under the Emperors, the independent civil service will in theory still be independent “merit”-based, but in actual practice will return more openly to the pre-Pendleton Act patronage format.

    1. We actually have two diplomatic facilities in Kazakhstan–you could get your pick between Nur-Sultan or Almaty. I’d take Almaty, just because it’s easier to get other places.

      1. “They’re sending me to Nuuk. Where did you get?”

        He showed me his posting paperwork.

        “God – Almaty. Sorry Tim.”

        “It could have been worse: It could have been Bangui.”

        We both shuddered.

    2. Whether the pitcher hits the stone or the stone hits the pitcher, there is money to be made campaigning against the anti-pitcher forces.

      As T.S. Eliot reminded us, “there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause” so long as somebody can make a buck off the refighting of it.
      –

    3. those of us already in ND might welcome some company. unfortunately, too often it seems, we stuck with the neo-marxist liberals coming to teach us uncouth hicks how to go about things we’ve been doing quite competently for many decades. the college towns are getting over-run with them.

  15. “Suddenly all the places that were familiar and commonplace to you, the places you lived in and worked in, and saw every day were ten miles from shore, under water.

    sounds like Doggerland

  16. I also live in Colorado, but in a more rural area that’s turning suburban. When I look at swaths of land that used to be open where antelope showed up regularly and see bulldozers ripping away, houses and roads slowly covering it all, I’ve always labeled the ache I feel as regret and nostalgia, but your saudade may be a single better word. And, yes, Lord knows I feel it even worse for Yesterday America. We did it to ourselves. The greatest nation there ever has been set out to commit slow suicide, and it’s working. I believe Reagan bought us 20 years, and Trump is trying, but if he loses in November everything he’s done will be swept away in a year or two.

    A real ray of sunshine, aren’t I?

    1. Not slow suicide, setbacks in the post-Cold War peace. We eliminated the Soviets, but we failed to go after their minions here. So they burrowed into our institutions and corrupted them, just like what happened on Centauri Prime. The good news is that those minions don’t reproduce well, so what we’re dealing with now isn’t as intelligent or a subtle as their predecessors, and we’re far better at spotting them.

  17. The choir got a lecture this past week about wearing masks as we sing. The director then informed the administrator that the lecture had been given, and ignored. Duty done, attempt made, honor satisfied. (I suspect someone saw the internet broadcast and fussed, or warned that someone else might fuss.)

    What can’t go on forever, won’t. I’ve seen several people with masks made out of window mesh, old tennis or other sports nets, and two made of eyelet fabric. Legal, ineffective, and point made. I’m also seeing more little signs saying, “Government says you have to wear a mask. If you are not wearing a mask, we assume you have a medical condition and we are not permitted to ask because of HIPPA. Come on in.”

    1. On the other hand, places around here in Northern Virginia are increasingly posting signs stating “Wear a Mask-It’s the LAW.” Ummm…an executive order isn’t a law, so don’t treat it as such, especially when the Governor specifically said the Police wouldn’t be enforcing the order; Department of Health would take appropriate steps if violations are found.

      Yep, I’m ready for this to be done.

        1. The store signs in NJ have been changing from law or CDC regulation to quoting Gauleiters Murphy’s decree. I know I’ve complained and others must be. If there’s hope in northern NJ there’s hope everywhere.

          The number of masks on the streets is way down.

            1. Saw a mask the other day “This mask is just as worthless as worthless Gov. Katie Brown …”

              1. Mine says “MASKS ARE ALMOST AS USELESS AS GOV. NUISANCE”

                I’m expecting my Steampunk Medieval Plague Doctor Bird Beak Mask any day now. THAT will show ’em!

                1. I saw a picture of one the other day, made of rolled newspaper, with eye holes.

                  I thought it made a nice statement.

            2. I was waiting on yet another doctor for the appointment, where it was just me and the receptionist/Dr’s Right Hand Woman. I told her about Fauci’s maskless baseball game. She looked it up, and her low opinion of Fauci dropped well into negative territory.

              I try my best to be helpful.

        2. Same here in CT, Executive order 7BB.

          It drives me nuts when a store has the actual text of the damn thing posted on their door and then tell me I can’t come in without one or I’m breaking the law. I tell them there is a medical exception and according to my doctor I qualify, she doesn’t want me wearing the stupid things.

          The store clerks invariably agree that there is an exception and then repeat I can’t come in without the mask. /facepalm

          There are a few places I will never go back to.

          1. That would be because the government is telling businesses that no, they won’t arrest anyone; they’ll let some Karen call the tip lines and yank the business license, liquor license, food service, and in LA, they’ll cut off water and power. Don’t like it? Hire a lawyer.

            1. The thing is, that I’ve called the tip line to report the refusal to let me in to a store because I can’t wear a mask. And it had positive results. So did tweeting out a complaint with an @ to the head office.

              2. Not that easy when you have a Service Dog. Trust me. I haven’t personally had problems. But I’ve read a lot of rant/break downs on save closed FB places. Also read a lot of positive encounters too. But the negative ones? The corporate route is your best bet. Next state. Then DOJ. The latter two won’t do anything until a number of complaints pile up. Last route is lawyer, and then you have to worry about what type of judge

    2. Mad Mike just posted on his FB that his eldest daughter, who’s a manager at a Thornton’s, said that Corporate has issued a policy that they are to assume that anyone who isn’t wearing a mask has an ADA-covered disability preventing them from doing so, and convenience store employees are not allowed to ask for particulars on its nature.

      1. My multi-national employer just mandated that all employees must wear masks while on-site and in common areas. I don’t remember whether this was US only, or worldwide. But it’s still a lot of people.

        It doesn’t affect me, mind you, since LA County is already under that restriction.

      2. stopped by one of the convenience stores last week. the first place I saw the sign that said “everyone must wear a mask” was at the cash register as I was walking out. I checked the door as I was walking out, wasn’t there.

      3. I was at the Ford dealership this afternoon. They had a big sign on the door saying, “Masks required in all indoor spaces.” They had an equal-sized sign beside it saying, “Customers who choose not to wear a mask are presumed to have a medical reason.”

        I normally don’t approve of being passive-aggressive, but sometimes it’s just the right tone to take.

        1. I got a message this morning, from the Planet Fitness chain – now, masks are required, even when you are working out on a machine. Not just from the door to the machine – but while you are on the machine of choice, The Daughter Unit and I had expected to go for our thrice-weekly workout … but this sh*t is a bridge too far for us both. We took an extra-long walk with the dogs, instead.
          We’re done with the gym, until this crap is over with.

          1. My husband got to restart his cardiac rehab last month (halted in March). The hospital has required that they wear masks the entire time. The therapists think it’s stupid, but its either masks or no rehab at all.

          2. Me brother in law got into a bit of a row with some eejit at his crossfit gym, since Brown said you have to wear a mask if you at a gym NO MATTER WHAT (up until Friday it was you are free if you were, you know, exercising). He’s an EMT / Firefighter with the county Fire Dpt and he and his wife are fecking done with this shite.

    3. One variant here (where masking is a DKB executive order, close enough to a law because reasons) is “if you medically cannot wear a mask, call XXX YYY-ZZZZ and we’ll do this curbside”. The paint store had this. *Not* the kind of thing I’d want to do via remote control. It’s not too common, so far.

      She’s sending the OR-OSHA and the health Stasi to check for compliance. Oh, she’s sweet, our Kate.

      I see the cardiologist this week for my annual. Will ask about masking; it’s rather uncomfortable for me, and I wonder how much damage it’s doing. I do expose my nostrils, but it’s not always sufficient.

  18. “They can’t cancel EVERYONE”, but they sure can try, and will do so, whether they win or lose, and they can leave millions dead in mass graves or as crematorium ashes along the way to their defeat. They certainly have expressed the desire to “get rid” of people they find inconvenient, which includes the entirety of those groups they consider to be “oppressor groups”. No doubt they will have no qualms when the Antifa/BLM crowd and the anti-Semites such as Omar and Tlaib demand a “final solution”.

    1. They don’t figure to cancel everyone — if they make it clear they can and will cancel anyone they figure everyone will fall in line. Pour encourager les autres is the operating principle (and you thought they were without principle!)
      –

      1. I think it goes beyond that. They have made it very clear that they believe certain groups of people are inherently evil and must be wiped off the face of the Earth; this is why so many leftist professors outright call for genocide of those groups.

        1. I think they would like to make it so but they need society to collapse before they can realize their dreams. Every one of them is a Saint-Just or Stalin or name your killer. For myself, though, it’s the combination of incompetence and cynicism in our elected “leaders” that bothers me. Killers tend to burn out unless they are maintained by others interest.

          It was about the time of the little sisters of the poor case came to my notice that I realized that the state was not indifferent toward me as I thought but inimical to me. Everything since has reinforced it. The political class is the enemy. What a pity.

          1. It boggles my mind that they don’t realize how awful a breakdown of society is. I guess that they think they are so special that they won’t die even if everyone else will.

            1. I think the hardcore rioters want just that, they’re antinomians to a, I was going to say man. The politicians are stupid and cynical, and their supporters simply lack imagination.

              if you look at Saint-Just, Stalin, the Austrian guy and all the rest. They were all bad, failed, artists. Marx and Lenin, failed scholars. All lazy and essentially shiftless.

              A great example of Antifa is that the guy who was just picked up for murder is a pedo. It seems that a very large portion of Antifa are, what’s the word, bent? Whatever floats your boat and all but people who get their kicks hurting and exploiting aren’t likely to stop At the bedroom door.

              Saint-Just is more the example than even Marx. He was a libertine and pornographer who mooched off other people and sold his mother’s stuff. He found himself in power and destruction followed. He died well though, which can’t be said of the rest of them though a distressing number died in their beds.

              1. Actually, though the director of the art school ridiculed him while denying his application for school, the Austrian guy wasn’t bad. Worked mostly in charcoal and watercolor, not my things, but he was good enough to make a living as a commercial artist, which is more than most painters can claim. And better than Churchill’s watercolors, which were barely above “elementary school finger painting.”

                The Austrian also did time as a construction worker, hauling bricks and cement up ramps using a wheelbarrow. And he was a bona fide war hero by anyone’s standards, though he missed the end of the war due to being put in a convalescent home after sustaining lung and eye damage from war gas.

                Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, Marx… shiftless layabouts, yes. But the Austrian had seen the elephant, no matter what he chose to do later. Actually, it makes him even worse, because he knew from personal experience what he was doing to his own people as well as his victims.

                1. Perhaps that’s why he was the only “right wing” killer in my list then. he wasn’t right wing really but the others surely weren’t.

                  There was a book about the Austrian guy where the author walked around Yeshiva University in NY asking people about the personality of the painter of some architectural views of Vienna. They all, every one, said he must have been very pleasant since the paintings were so sunny. The shock when the signature was revealed must have been interesting.

                  The other point in the book was that the Austrian guy couldn’t draw people, which is why he failed Art school. Make of that what you will. he was not a bad architect in an oppressive Roman sort of way.

                  The percentage of failed artists among political mass murderers is striking though.

                  1. A lot of criminals are potentially talented artists or otherwise “right brained.” The trick for school art teachers is to persuade certain kids that there is a better way, same as English teachers with the high verbal aptitude “hoods.” (Rapper criminality is no different than poet criminality in other ages.)

                    Hitler is one of those guys who had every chance to live a decent life. He just liked becoming a tyrant more than anything else.

                    1. He was born and raised as a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and emigrated to become a subject of the German Empire. He supported German nationalism and the Kaiser enough to enlist in the Army; which involved more than the usual paperwork due to his citizenship status. Most of Europe was monarchies of some sort. The only democracy of note in Europe was France, which was hardly a shining example of how to get along without a Big Boss.

                      Expecting him to embrace a representative government system seems unreasonable. Monarchy worked, no matter what label you slapped on it. Most of the world and almost all of known history backed that up.

                  2. He might well have *been* a very pleasant person then. But after the war, he wasn’t that person any more.

                    Remember “shell shock”, WWI’s equivalent to PTSD? The Austrian didn’t just volunteer for combat, he was right up at the front being shot at, in a job (courier) that made him a specific target. A job with a ridiculously high mortality rate, even by WWI standards. And he kept re-upping when his time was up. Then he was blinded and sent to a soldiers’ rest home. No real treatment then, other than “learn to feel your way around and maybe you’ll get better someday.” A lot of men didn’t.

                    The man who eventually walked out of there probably had little in common with the enthusiastic young man who’d volunteered for the Kaiser’s army. As far as I know he never made any attempt at art after that. The artist was someone else, in a different time.

            2. You have to understand most leftist activists are rich and privileged to a level you and I and normal human beings don’t even understand.
              Sandy Occasional Cortex might have cosplayed at bartending, but REALLY she was never in any danger of starving. So, you know, she thinks rents are just because landlords are greedy. Or something.

              1. Why are they trying to bring the system down? If I had their money I’d just enjoy life. Buy books, expensive groceries, enjoy not having to work etc.They are truly warped and depraved.

                1. I honestly think they aren’t trying to bring the system down. They are ignorant enough to believe that you can pull the supports out of the house, but the roof will still stand. Think of it more as spoiled children who want their cake and eat it too. We as a country need to make consequences obvious again.

            3. They have no odea what a collapse would entail. They have never known anything but prosperity

    2. They are the Ignorant Intellectual Idealists. They don’t have a clue how the world works, but they all have the same fixed Belief that they can make the world perfect by removing all the imperfect people. Starting, of course, with everybody who tells them how full of shit they are. Some of them pretend there will be some sort of ‘re-education’ but they always wind up with Gulags and mass graves.

      They did not arrive at that Belief through any rational means, therefore they are unable to think rationally about it. They are unable to question any part of their Belief, or modify it in any way, no matter how hard the Real World bonks them over the heads. The more insane their Belief proves to be, the more desperately they cling to it.
      ———————————
      You can’t have the government take away the freedom of only the people you hate.

  19. Bells under the waves… reminds me of the story of Kêr Ys. Which means that hiraeth also works.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiraeth

    “homesickness or nostalgia, an earnest longing or desire, or a sense of regret.” With implications that it’s more like the homesickness of the exiled; you quite literally can’t go home again. I’d say that about covers everything. Five months ago the world made sense. Now?

    We can’t store much because we’re going to have to move. But we are trying to get any needed health stuff taken care of ASAP in case things go crazier.

    Mostly I try to throttle down the rage to function. Going to dig out of this no matter what the craziness throws at me. One step at a time.

    1. Exactly — I was reading Sarah’s post and thinking that “hiraeth” has the same connotation of “saudade.”
      What I had is gone, forever.
      But what am I leaving for my children, and other’s children, that they will feel a similar connection with?

  20. Meant to add– I think the feeling may be related to the forced isolation.

    I have been feeling homesick for….Wrath of the Lich King.

    -.-

    Missing the midnight walks in Japan, that makes sense– but a video game? /sigh

      1. Odd is good, but stay away from weird. I’ve noticed that every place with a Keep X Weird sticker has dissolved into chaos.

        1. My reply is that they need to keep only X weird.. I don’t want their weird spreading to my area. And if it spreads, it won’t be weird anymore!

    3. Simpler times. Back when all you really needed to do was run around with a half dozen death knights, completing quests and slaying Nordic giants.

      1. I was the Discipline Priest dot-farming, or the pali tank AOE farming cloth and rep, but yeah.

        It was a non-required grind where I could turn off my brain. It felt the way that people doing katas look.

  22. I remember walking up West Broadway in NYC a good 20 years ago and seeing that all the shops and businesses had been replaced by mall chains, boutiques with one dress, and galleries selling bad art for huge prices. What had been a neighborhood was now a bunch of itinerant rich children. I found myself singing the song The Town I Loved So Well. It’s about Derry and so probably matches NY now better than it did then but the line My God, what have they done to the town I loved so well resonated then and resonates more now.

    Some of it is age. NY when I was young was no paradise and many of my acquaintances died young —. Heroin mostly. It was dirty, run-down, and often flat out dangerous, but we were young but, as the tune says I learned about life and found myself a wife in the town I loved so well.

    There’s no place for me there anymore, nor for people like me. Only the rich and those who serve them. When NY had its troubles back in the 70’s, there’s were enough people, rich and not so rich, who loved it enough to bring it back. The clowns now just went back to daddy or their place out in the hamptons.

    What a parcel of rogues in a nation.

    1. “Only the rich and those who serve them.”

      And those who feed on them both.

      There’s many songs as bespeak the situation, but the biggest hit among them may well have been by Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” — a song unironically grossly over-played on radio … “don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till its gone …”
      –

    2. I enjoyed New York in the 1970’s and 1980’s, before the ‘rebirth’, but A) I was day-visiting B) I looked large and relatively poor and C) I have low tastes; I LIKE sleazy third-run movie theaters and porn palaces and used magazine shops. And the ‘rebirth’ isn’t what killed the 42nd street movie crawl; that was the work of the VCR.

      1. I miss the NY in which a working stiff could afford a pair of tickets to a Broadway show.
        –

        1. You could sit up in the gods at the opera or symphony for $5. It was great.

          On the other hand, you had to carry a bottle in a bag and mumble to yourself so the thieves thought you were a wino to get home on the subway.

          Ya pays ya money and takes ya choice.

    3. I’m getting a little concerned about here. The city invited in a bunch of 20-somethings who founded craft this and gallery that, and who insisted that the city pay for all kinds of amenities. ‘We come for experiences and then get jobs” one told the TV news. The youngsters don’t like the western heritage of the city and are all “Yellow City” or now “bomb city.” [Um, this ain’t Albuquerque or Los Alamos, Junior.] I’m not overwhelmed with optimism that many will last out the current mess.

    4. Another song, Irish, which catches that mood perfectly is The Rare Ould TImes. Best recording ever by Danny Doyle.

      “The years have made me bitter, the drink has dimmed my brain
      ‘Cause Dublin keeps on changing and nothing seems the same
      The Metropole and Pillar are gone, the Royal long since pulled down
      As the grey unyielding concrete makes a city of my town

      Ring a ring a rosie, as the light declines
      I remember Dublin city in the rare ould times

      Fare thee well my Anna Liffey, I can no longer stay
      And watch the new glass cages, that rise up along the quay
      My mind’s too full of memories, too old to hear new chimes
      I’m part of what was Dublin in the rare ould times”

  23. My state has a mask order, but the only place I’ve been stopped for not wearing one is Wal-Mart (and I wore it with the nose uncovered there, for reasons that don’t need explaining to this crowd). In other places even the employees don’t always bother.

    1. The wife dragged me out of Costco for playing hopscotch on their safe spots. It’s all magic.

    2. I saw a report that Wal-Mart has instructed staff to not insist customers be masked — they have decided there’s more to lose than gain from such confrontations.

      I imagine the liability suit from an employee injured in such a confrontation could be cause for corporate trepidatio.
      –

      1. That, or the realization that they’re pretty vulnerable to a class action ADA suit…

      2. They forgot to tell the staff in the Wal-Art we went to on Sunday. Door-girl loudly objected to the three of us not being masked, even when my companions said “Can’t wear them”.

        Should have just ignored her and walked past. Selective deafness has multitude of uses.

        Oh well, different store got our business instead.

        1. The housemate has had good luck with the selective hearing method. He has to wear one 40 hours a week at work, so he figures he’s done his bit.

          My daughter is taking the distance college option this fall so she doesn’t have to wear one 24/7 on campus unless she’s in her dorm room. She can wear it for a few shifts a week at Wegman’s, but even that’s pushing it. And this way she has much cheaper lodging (with family), can keep working part-time at her job, and doesn’t have to get tons of paperwork filled out so she can have her emotional support guinea pig, not to mention getting to cat sit.

          1. “My daughter is taking the distance college option this fall …”

            Catching news about the effectiveness of distance learning for college I was moved to observe to Beloved Spouse that it seems only yesterday that Yale hauled those four Yeshiva students into court (fighting it up to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals — by which time it became moot by their graduation) for asking to be excused the corrupt experience of having to live in the dorms their first two years of college, insisting that it constituted an essential element of their college experience.

            https://www.jweekly.com/1998/08/14/orthodox-yale-four-to-appeal-judge-s-dismissal-of-suit/
            “The students, known as the ‘Yale Four,’ brought suit against the university alleging that dormitories that feature coed living conditions and bathrooms, as well as alleged sexual activity, are in violation of their Orthodox heritage and beliefs. The suit claims Yale requires that, in lieu of a housing waiver, freshmen and sophomores are required to live in university dormitories. … said Dorothy Robinson, Yale vice president and general counsel; ‘Yale College’s residential requirement is premised on an educational philosophy which values bringing people of diverse backgrounds together in a vibrant community. Yale’s rule does not conflict with any legal requirement.’ ”
            –

    3. Sam’s Club has security guards from contractors to handle the mask thing, because of the Michigan mask shooting. Wal-Mart in this area under the new state mask mandate, I don’t know.

      The terrycloth baby bibs are still working for me. Everybody thinks they are clever and agrees they wash and wear better, and deal with humidity better, and are easier to attach custom strings to; and I can sing in them. But they look so stupid that nobody follows my example. I think I am a sort of negative incentive for my coworker who makes custom embroidered masks; the more I look stupid, the more her masks sell. 😉

      I have not seen the fishnet with sparkly jewels masks yet, but somebody the other day was wearing a bellydancing veil. Gauze, right? Heh! The sarcasm is great!

    1. I’m old enough to remember 1972, if dimly. The Left were SURE that all the protests and outright riots were going to put them in the White House. I think the current crop think that the ousting of Nixon was linked to the riots instead of to a concerted effort by several political forces that are much less powerful now. Oh, they’ll make a run at Trump again, but fewer people trust the Media now, and four years of bumbling failure do not make a solid base for another effort on the part of the Democrats in Congress.

      I may be whistling past the graveyard, but I think that, come November, the Left is going to find that they pissed off more voters than they intimidated. A LOT more. And, as I’ve said before, I suspect Trump has been sitting on a lot of evidence of 2016 vote fraud, and if the Democrats are actually stupid enough to bring up the possibility of fraud in the 2020 election (or claim to have won) he will drop it on them from a great height. It also would not surprise me if aspects of the ‘collusion coup’ attempt came to a head just about October.

      The Fascist Left may hang on, in some form, after 2021 but I believe they will be bleeding badly from numerous self-inflicted wounds.

      The rioters and their masters mistake the ability to turn several Fascist Left controlled cities into wasteland with the cooperation of local authorities for actual mIlitary power. They may have some guns, but they don’t have a gun culture that would teach them how to use guns effectively. The Antebellum South at least had a military tradition. It wasn’t as good as they thought it was (nobody’s ever has been), but they had one.

      The fallout of a Trump victory, or of a failed attempt to steal the election, may be messy, but I think it’s likely to be short lived.

      1. “I may be whistling past the graveyard, but I think that, come November, the Left is going to find that they pissed off more voters than they intimidated.”

        It is important, when looking at polls, to consider questions not asked.

        For example, a recent poll found only something like 29% of people found the nickname* of the Washington football team offensive. What they didn’t ask was “How many think the furor over the nickname of the Washington football team offensive?”

        Similarly, when they ask the Wrong Way/Right Way question they never ask the obvious follow-up about i which direction do the think the country should move?

        *I propose they be called the Washington Anonymous Sources
        –

          1. Foggy Bottom Pedophile Swamp Lizards is my choice if they name it after the city or Badly Socialized Violent young men who still can’t win if after the players. Truth in naming.

            1. Foggy Bottom Pedophile Swamp Lizards

              –
              On behalf of lizards and innocent swamp dwellers everywhere, I object!

            2. But I have to admit that I like Alex Smith, one of the QBs on their roster. And the man has been through enough crap in the past two years that he deserves a decent team. He’s not going to get one, of course, but I think he deserves one.

      2. How many veterans are participating in the ‘protests’? How many are watching, doing a slow burn, and reflecting on how much it looks like Afghanistan, Bosnia and Somalia? EVERY F’N NIGHT?
        ———————————
        Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

        1. There is a group of supposed veterans providing protection against Gestapo for the Portland rioters sooper-peaceful protesters.

          Needless to say, I have my doubts as to whether any “journalist” has confirmed their service.
          –

            1. Ehm, according to their Twitter:

              “PDX-based network of womxn and non-binary mother-identifying folx dedicated to supporting the current civil rights movement to end police brutality. #blm”

              Jayzus, Joseph, and Mary. And all the saints.

              How da feck am I supposed to say WOMXN? Tá Gaeilge éigin agamsa, ní XHOSA.

        2. I know there’s been a couple of loud “Imma VET!” types, but I notice the military “can you all go f yourselves, now, please, kindly?” type groups were sharing the memes pointing out how Somali “refugees” are turning their new home into their old. With photos.

      3. Re Nixon, I’ve posted on this before here at length, but in the end that was mainly self inflicted – all Dick had to do was disavow the plumbers. The tapes would have never even come up, he would have been still in office to deal with the NVA offensive, and the 1974 electoral massacre in Congress would have not happened so no War Powers Act or all the other crap that went through. And certainly no Jimmeh presidency.

        But McGovern was never not ever going to win.

  26. Thoroughly off-topic: anybody a fan of Zenna Henderso? BTW – ebooks seem available in your preference of mobi or epub.

    This arrived in my Inbox this afternoon:

    Believing: The Other Stories of Zenna Henderson
    A new NESFA Press title—Hardcover and eBook!

    Somerville, MA, June 10, 2020—We are pleased to announce the publication of Believing: The Other Stories of Zenna Henderson. This volume is a companion to Ingathering: The Complete People Stories of Zenna Henderson, published back in 1995. Together they comprise the sum of Zenna Henderson’s published Science Fiction.

    The stories in Believing have a common theme—belief. A girl believes that the hills are lost beasts and leads them home; a boy believes he can fight evil with a pocket piece made from Popsicle sticks; a boy believes he can build a noise-eating machine — with fatal results. Believing: The Other Stories of Zenna Henderson contains every non-People story, all long out of print. Thirty-three of the stories in this volume are from her collections, The Anything Box and Holding Wonder. The remaining five stories and three poems were previously published in other magazines and anthologies. Welcome to Zenna Henderson’s world.

    Introductions by Sharon Lee and Brother Guy Consolmagno, SJ. Edited by Patricia Morgan Lang.

    Hardcover and eBook copies of both Ingathering and Believing are available on our website https://nesfapress.org, and through Amazon.

    NESFA, the New England Science Fiction Association, was founded in 1967 by fans who wanted to do things in addition to socializing. What we do has changed over time, most notably with the growth of NESFA Press, but the club is still organized on that principle. NE
    –

    1. I think I’ve read one or two of her stories. The name . . . can’t recall when or where, but I know her name.

      1. One of the stories… I won’t say which one, inspired the filk:

        The villas are alive
        And they’re out to get you.
        They know where you live,
        They’ll be there tonight!

          2. Were-houses. The gazebos have been hunted to near-extinction by low-INT adventurers.

      2. Zenna Henderson wrote a lot of school sf from a teacher’s POV, so I think you would enjoy it or find it interesting. Sometimes she is a comfort read and sometimes she is wrenching. Lots of psychic stuff, lots of Western stuff.

    2. Yippee! I like the non-People stories better, and my paperbacks are basically disintegrated.

  27. So saudade, not used in its every day pedestrian sense, but in the sense poets and madmen (most Portuguese) use it refers to missing something with a deep, painful longing, something that can’t be called back/experienced again.

    My immediate though on reading this was “Tolkien!”

  28. “Saudade is what you might feel if you lived by the sea, in a beautiful city, and one day an earthquake came, the shore collapsed and the sea came in. Suddenly all the places that were familiar and commonplace to you, the places you lived in and worked in, and saw every day were ten miles from shore, under water.”

    Thanks Sarah for the word saudade. The joys of languages is for another comment, but the feeling of saudade is very familiar to me. I live in San Diego. Before Dita Beard and all the craziness that our then mayor wanted to distance us from, the city motto used to be “San Diego, a City in Motion.” Very apt. If you didn’t go somewhere for 6 months, when you went back, they’d moved it. The little beach town (just a name for a neighborhood, not an actual entity) we live in used to be small shops of stationery, antiques, crafts, etc. Now the main drag is nothing but bars and tattoo parlors (the connection should be obvious). That set of businesses was in downtown San Diego when I was younger. Although they catered more to sailors than to college kids. San Diego once built a neighborhood of 10,000 people mostly in single family houses in less than a year. It took 5 years for the freeway to catch up and be widened to accommodate the new traffic. The ranch I grew up on, 10 miles north of the nearest small town, is now time-share condos. The small town now numbers about 140k residents. When the old 2-lane highway that fronted our ranch was bypassed by the 4-lane interstate, they found building further into the hillside it twisted around impractical, so they filled in the valley next to the hill with a ramp a mile and a half long and 300 feet wide using one dump truck after another, and built the road on top of it. To me it was as awesome in its ambition as the pyramids.

    Aww, I’m gettin’ all weepy.

  30. One place where I have to disagree with you is that I don’t think the game we’re being asked to play is “Simon Says.” I think it’s more like “Mother, May I?” Progress in the game depends entirely on “Mother’s” favor and her being willing to let you move. Before you can do anything, you must acknowledge Mother’s superiority by asking her if you can do what she just told you to do. And of course, Mother can withdraw her favor at any time and say no when you ask for permission, and again, this permission is for what she just said you could do.

    It’s easy enough to get the two confused, given that both games seem designed to make otherwise reasonable activities forbidden based on almost arbitrary criteria. They both seem designed to get kids used to the “don’t step on the invisible spot or you’re a racist” game that the Leftists will play with them when they get older.

  31. If schools are going to be closed because of corona virus, they don’t need any money, do they?

    If the teachers are not teaching, the teachers unions should not collect any dues, right?

    1. I’d like to see DeVos announce that federal money won’t be going to schools that remain shut, instead it will go as a voucher to the parents, just so I can time how long it would take for all the districts to come up with a reopening plan and all the teachers become OK with the risks of Wu Flu.

      I’m guessing 10, 15 minutes, tops.

      1. Local schools should not be getting ‘federal money’ in the first place. Reagan should have eliminated the Department Of Education before it bloated into the School Borg.

        40 years and 2 TRILLION dollars later, are our schools better than they were before being ‘improved’? Are our children learning more, are they more prepared to become productive, responsible members of our society?

        The bigger the School Borg gets, the harder it is to kill, and the more it needs to be.
        ———————————
        People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.

        1. If Reagan had tried to eliminate the DOEd the media would have portrayed him as anti-education. The media doesn’t have the power it once did. I’m confident that some day soon we’ll be able to get the message out that the Department of Education has done nothing but waste money and should be scrapped.

      2. You underestimate the process clogging power of administrators.
        There would be lawsuits filed in every federal court district, with at least one of those courts issuing an (illegal) nationwide injunction, long before a single new reopening plan was agreed upon.
        And given that attending meetings lowers your IQ (SCIENCE says so!)
        https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/attend-a-meeting-lose-iq-point-science-says-meetings-actually-make-you-dumber.html
        and creating these plans would entail many meetings, any such plans would likely be crap.

        1. attending meetings lowers your IQ

          –
          That makes perfect sense. Politicians, bureaucrats, mangers and executroids spend most of their time sitting in meetings. No wonder they’re all dumb as posts!

          Meetings put me straight to sleep. I have to struggle to stay awake in any meeting that lasts more than 5 minutes.

          I did discover a trick, that also works for staying awake during long drives: stop breathing. After half a minute or so, you will be wide awake. Something about increasing CO2 levels, I suppose. Trouble is, you have to keep doing it over and over.
          ———————————
          It has been brought to the attention of management that nothing ever gets done around here because everybody spends all their time in meetings.

          There will be a meeting at 10:30 to discuss the issue and propose solutions.

          1. Meetings put me straight to sleep. I have to struggle to stay awake in any meeting that lasts more than 5 minutes.

            –
            What! I’m not the only one? Classes were generally he** on me. Didn’t matter if seminar or college. I had to be doing something else too, besides taking notes. My notes otherwise were pure gibberish.

  32. OT…what is the definition, of any, of being an “Odd”? I’m going to be surprised if I’m NOT one, but I don’t know the standard.

    1. Per the FAQ (and BBQ) – “Those who march to a different drummer, tinker with things to make them better, boldly go where no man has gone before, and tend to be “That Uncle/ Aunt” at the family reunion.”

      We’re the curious, irritating, egg-shaped pegs in round holes, the kids who insist on using 2D20 on probability assignments in math class, the tribe of “never quite fit in but sure accomplished a lot” at the high school reunion if we bother to attend them. We quote Kipling and Robert Service, we’re the person who has heard of that band/anime/manga/fandom, and so on. Most of us are polymaths, lots of us can pass as normal if we have to (but not all of us).

      2. Ok. I was the second female tech writer/editor at a major Army logistics command, so not quite gone where noone has gone before, but close. Definitely out of step growing up, read tons of Jung after leaving home, regarded libraries as second homes. Will quote Kipling a bit, plus Dante, plus Heinlein…Yes, I think I’m an Odd.

      3. I thought about a high school reunion. Missed my 50th, I suppose. My best friend (another Odd) rom that time attended one, and it lived down to his expectations. The puffed up kids, are now puffed up adults. No thanks.

    3. They say I can’t be a nonconformist because I’m not like the other nonconformists.

  33. Some of the rhetoric is so stupid:

    “Millions dead in the streets!”
    “100 million will die of COVID-19!”
    “This will last 10 years or perhaps forever!”

    1. “This disease that will inevitably kill you in 21 days.” As close as I can get to an actual comment Imgot on Twitter.
      I hope none of the people believing this is the Great Death ever see a real plague.

    2. If this was the 1918 flu, there would be over a billion cases and 50 million dead today, 9 months in. 2.8 billion cases and 140 million dead after two years. THAT was a pandemic. THIS is a nasty cold virus. Our grandparents would have laughed at it.

      Hardly anybody today remembers when people died of diseases. You get sick, you get better, or take a few pills from the drugstore and get better, or go to the hospital and get better. They are Shocked, Shocked! when people actually DIE.

      And so they panic, run around in circles and squawk about The End Of The World!! because about 1 out of 700 people die of it, almost all of them over 70 and with serious health problems before they caught it. Outside of those high-risk groups, death rates are maybe 1 in 50,000. Like a typical flu season.

      The panic will kill more people than the disease. Count on it. And the Leftoids will blame it on ‘conservatives’.
      ———————————
      I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.

  34. I feel you. I want to restart the 21st century. We were supposed to be on the moon. I was promised flying cars. Where are my flying cars? (One car launched into space is a start, but doesn’t count.)

    1. Yeah. When I was in jr. high, back in ’79, one of my art class assignments was to draw myself as I’d be in twenty years. I drew a figure in an admittedly comics-influenced protective suit, working on some kind of machinery, with a window in the background showing a moonscape beyond.

      I really thought we’d have at least one moonbase by 2020. Just as soon as we got the Space Shuttle working, we’d start moving upward and outward again, and start realizing those sf dreams that had been postponed when Apollo was canceled.

      I think I still have that picture in a box somewhere at the storage unit. But I have too much else to do to go search for it and take a walk down memory lane.

    2. Flying cars sound neat, but given the Number of people who manage to get a drivers’ license who can’t manage two dimensions, adding a third sounds an awful lot like a eugenics project.

      Also, I have noticed a tendency, over the course of my adult life, to try to combine two or more technologies into one. Sometimes it works, for certain values of ‘work’ ; the combination tv/vcr did ok. More often, you get one thing that does several functions badly, and costs more then the individual devices it is meant to replace.

      1. And if one function goes kaput, you have to scrap the whole contraption.

        I’ve got a surround-sound stereo receiver; its built-in CD/DVD drive crapped out in less than a year, but well after the 90-day warranty. I have never seen another drive that size and shape so it can’t be replaced. Thing is, the receiver is less than 3″ high and fits nicely under the HDTV, and the tuner and amps work fine. It would have been better without the CD/DVD drive. It sits next to the region-free DVD/Blue-ray player now, connected to the TV’s digital optical audio output. The system works, if not as conveniently as it could.
        ———————————
        “Oh, no. You can’t-a fool me. There ain’t-a no Sanity Clause!”

        1. The tv/vcr worked because it filled a need: simple conference room av. The vcr part generally held on ok if not abused, and tube TVs lasted a lot longer than most people wanted them to.

      2. I’ve often said that I’ll forgo my flying car in order to keep that $@#! who cut me off this morning from getting HIS flying car.

        Although actually, given that I am every stereotype of a woman driver, I’m probably one of the people who shouldn’t have one.

    3. a) They are technically possible, but there are other factors that may make the thing unwise. As CP alludes to.
      b) So, there is a case that they would be unwise. Which I could expand on, but it is past my bed time, and not really my area of competency. 1) If a significant chunk of FAA regs are truly necessary, flying cars would probably be prohibitively inaccessible. 2) The maintenance issue might be prohibitive, even if automation can handle the piloting. Look at airplane maintenance costs, then look at level of maintenance for consumer vehicles.
      c) General aviation in Alaska might count already.
      d) There happens to be a big Air Force push on this right now. They are trying to get people with VTOL/STOL airframe concepts together with people with the other bits of technology needed for working systems.

    4. Flying cars we’ve long had … single use only has been the sticking point.

      Flying cars that can do soft landings is what we want.
      –

      1. I suspect that flying cars are going to be novelties until somebody cracks ‘antigravity’ or something that operates the way antigravity does in SF. Simply a matter of wingspan, mostly.

    5. The Cessna 172 is pretty close to a “flying car” for certain values of flying car. I remember looking through my grandfathers aviation magazines: In the 1960s, the middle class could afford, and regularly owned, general aviation aircraft. Small airports were everywhere across the country. I think something like 5% of the US was flying, compared with 0.1% now. My grandfather, a highschool educated x-ray gauge engineer for Schaeffer, jointly owned a small plane with two of his friends and took day-trips from Ohio to New Jersey.

      We were closer to the Jetsons back then than we are now.

      Don’t give me this crap about flying cars being impossible or unwise. We *had* them. They were taken from us.

      1. As for flying cars that can do VTOL: That is a nearly mindless control exercise, especially with modern computers. We could have, and did, do automated drone aircraft (target drones and the like) with gyroscopes and PID controllers back in the 50s. If you can build it on the scale of a quadcopter, you can scale it up and slap a gasoline generator on it.

        This isn’t a technology problem, it’s a society problem. We had the technology in the 50s and 60s.

      2. FAA regulations make everything aircraft-related cost 10 times more than it should.

        Back in the 1960’s, a car cost maybe 1/3 to 1/2 of a middle-class annual income. Today it’s a whole year, and a fancy one is 2 or 3 years. Hell, a 1960’s house cost 8 to 10 years’ income; now it’s 20 to 40 years.

        But you can get a computer that couldn’t have been imagined in the wildest 1960’s fantasy for $75.

      3. I’m personally risk averse enough that I would prefer not to travel by plane at all.

        In so far as I’ve paid attention to the FAA’s efforts to minimize risk, it has seemed reasonable, because I have zero skin in the game, and zero cause to be thinking about what things are sufficient grounds for an acceptable risk.

        0.1%, 5%, and whatever the current % of car owners is are different categories of possible safety. 0.1% is probably so few that there are greater safety hazards from the scarcity of exposure to aircraft. 5% is probably still a little too low for the ideal situation where skills in the population are concerned.

        Cost of skilled and unskilled labor may have been increased by government employment regulations in that period of time, perhaps also increases in productivity and wealth production.

        Solid state systems, and mandated ‘smartness’ may have served to decrease the number of drivers who really understand their automobiles.

        I’m not sure if there are any good estimates of change in fraction of substance abusers, or of actual education quality.

        These all potentially impact the achievable safety levels in a consumer wheeled automobile.

      4. Jeff Greason says they’re completely possible. They’re just against every regulation in the book. So, the “They were taken” should be “Go-varmint took it from us.”

  36. November 1, 1755 may have some bearing. The 8.4 Lisbon quake and Tsunami smashed Lisbon. Is that a memory in Portugal? The capital city they knew was gone. Memory the only reminder.

    Speaking of earthquakes. For anyone in the SF Bay Area. Noted a small 2.6 earthquake northeast of San Jose on the Calaveras fault. This section is locked from San Jose north. Any earthquake could be a sign of breaking of what locks the fault. This section of the fault has had NO activity, so this may be significant. So make sure you check your emergency supplies, fill your car, and make sure you have an emergency supply of water.

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