Truth A Blast From The Past From May 2018

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Truth A Blast From The Past From May 2018

face-1602484

I realized recently that I have a “hunger and thirst” for the truth.

This might be strange for someone who writes fiction, and knows she does, (I always giggle at “this book was dictated by a supernatural entity/famous dead person” because I know that when I get a fully realized character that’s what it feels like.  The voice comes through (no, not auditory hallucinations, though some writers have them) but just a consistent voice in my head, and the story is told to me, as though it came from elsewhere.  But I know it comes from my subconscious.  I know if I exert will I can shape it and change it (sometimes harder than others) and I know it’s just a story.

But working in that half-light is part of the reason I need the truth, or to approximate the truth.  Look, I don’t think it’s possible to know the full truth this side of death.  The human brain is simply not designed to process it.  But knowing even a part of the truth, knowing what’s behind things like economic or political events, knowing when I’m being lied to, knowing why, all that is vitally important to me.

I spend a great part of my life reading about biology and evolutionary biology and paleontology and archeology, because … because I thirst for “as close to the truth as I can get to.”

Even building imaginary worlds should be based on a general truth: truth about people, truth on how things work.  I can have much fun with stuff like the brooms and anti-grav in Darkships, because a) it’s cool and b) I think one should introduce an element of “that should be impossible from what we know today” into any science fiction more than 100 years in the future.  This is because the future is not only weirder than we can imagine, but I guarantee some of our certainties will be upended.

On the other hand, stuff like the biological effects, I try to stay as close as we can to real science.  There are things we don’t know about the body and genes, and places I can fudge, but I try to stay within “what we expect will happen” because that is of course the “science”part of the book, the “true” part, and the cautionary tale and dream all rolled into one. (Weirdly, except in the actual engineering of humans, I haven’t even gone beyond today’s science.  All those viruses?  Yep. Biology graduate student, high school lab, about 10k in materials.  It does suck.)

And of course, I try to make humans work as they have historically.  Because if you’re not writing about people who feel and act real, why bother.

There’s more to my craving for truth: I grew up in a village, where finding the truth of even the most ridiculously small event was almost impossible.  Each household, each head of household, each cleaning lady had their own version, and you had to be  master detective to figure out who stole the schoolmistress’s hairbrush and why it turned up in the fishmonger’s stand.

If I’d loved that kind of slipperiness, I’d have made a great politician, but I didn’t.  I wanted to know what had really happened.  And the times I managed it gave me more insight into the village and the hates/personalities/loves roiling through than anything else could give me. It gave me a firmer place to stand, a place to act from.

The truth, when you figure it out, is a wonderful thing.  When I find a book that reveals a facet of some historical event that is obviously true and obviously illuminating, it’s like turning on a lantern in my mind.

Also so many of the lies I was told growing up were such limiting, destructive lies: “Humanity is a blight upon the earth and is killing it.”  “There are too many people” “the individual doesn’t matter, the future is inevitably communist.”  “We’re going to run out of fossil fuels in ten years.”  “You’ll live to see an ice age.”  (Well, that last one… never mind.)

Of course, we can’t be everywhere or know everything, but there are guidelines I’ve found to discovering the truth:

1- If a story is too smooth, it’s a lie.  Whether it’s a political theory/prediction or a narration of an historical event, if everything fits, works together smoothly and everything clicks, and particularly if it tells you about history always moving in ONE direction, it’s a lie.  Real life is messy, self contradictory and confusing.  Real history stumbles, falters, weaves across the road like a spider on LSD.  I mean, sure, we live better than in the 19th century in many ways, but we lost other things along the way.  Are we freer?  Well, in some ways.  And in other ways–
Which is why, btw, either triumphalism or utter despair about the cause of freedom are always wrong.  Always.

2- If a source, be it person, newspaper or school lies to me about one thing, I’ll never trust it about everything again.  Yeah, the lie might seem minor and inconsequential, but how can you trust the big stuff now.  I don’t dismiss them out of hand, but I verify, verify, verify.

3- Never trust anything coming out of a country that tries to control all flow of information.  Particularly do not trust GOOD reports coming from such a source.

4- Never trust something awful said about someone you already hate.  Verify verify verify.

It would be impossible to manage this, btw, if I gave a hang about most people’s private lives.  I don’t.  Trying to learn what I can of the truth about science, politics, economics and current events is about all I can manage.

And it’s also why, btw, I — and our side in general — doesn’t try to silence anyone.  Even if we know they tell us lies, their lies are a way to discover the truth behind them.

The other side?  The other side is enamored of a “Just so” story, a convoluted morality play in which it’s always the fault of someone else when you fall and break your nose. It’s a weird system, so smooth, so perfectly fitting and so without flaw, provided you don’t apply it to real people.

Because real people are messy and real history is confusing, and yep, “victim groups” can be victimizers and groups you hate can produce saints.

Admitting that would crack their entire system to pieces.  And so they must keep us muzzled, must pretend that we too believe in the system, and that our attempts to poke holes in it come from “hatred”.  Which is how they come to call supporters of almost no government “nazis.”

It’s also why they want to tear down statues and destroy physical reminders of the past.  Because if they manage it, nothing will rear up to disprove their oh, so smooth, so internally consistent system.

Except they don’t realize that humanity itself would still do so.  Because humans don’t work the way they think they do.  And their system will never survive an encounter with the truth.

208 thoughts on “Truth A Blast From The Past From May 2018”

  1. I’ve been thinking about “Trust” recently.

    There’s (at least) two types of Trust.

    One, is Trust that the other person won’t knowingly Lie.

    Two, is Trust that what the other person says (and believes) is strongly based on Truth.

    The Left fails in both areas. They’ll Knowingly Lie In “The Service Of Their Idea Of A Greater Truth”. Their Idea of a “Greater Truth” is NOT Based On Reality/Truth.

    1. Three, trust that someone will put effort into being accurate roughly correlating with how strongly they push a thing.

      Blowhards, basically, fail this.

      1. Trolls also.

        I’m certain that there have been a number of things that I’ve pushed several times, despite knowing that they are false. I don’t want to spend the time and energy in a headspace that would help me recall some good examples of them.

          1. I’m beginning to think that failing to invest in bulk shredding providers is as bad a financial error as not investing in surgical glove producers when HIV/AIDS hit in the Eighties.

            Sidney Powell Claims That Dominion Is ‘Shredding Documents’
            Sidney Powell joined Larry O’Connor for an exclusive interview about her legal case on behalf of the Trump campaign in the 2020 presidential election. In her much talked about press conference with Rudy Giuliani on Thursday, she claimed that President Trump won re-election in a landslide, and they were going to prove it.

            O’Connor pushed her about her claims that computer software used in the election, particularly Dominion Voting Systems, has been tainted, and he wondered how she would prove it. For starters, Powell said that her legal team has pictures of votes being manipulated in real-time.

            “It is terrifying, and it is a huge national security issue,” Powell said. “Why the Department of Justice and FBI have not done something, Dominion is closing its offices and moving. No doubt they’re shredding documents. God only knows what else. More than 100 Dominion people have wiped any connection with Dominion off the internet.”

            She also claims that they have testimony from witnesses opening military ballots and trashing them if they were for Trump, and substitute ballots were put in for Biden.

            “I’m essentially staking my personal and professional reputation on these allegations, and I have no hesitation from what I’ve seen in doing so,” she noted. “In fact, I think it would be irresponsible if not criminal of me not to come forward with it.”

            She also says she would LOVE for Dominion to sue her over her allegations so she can conduct civil discovery. Powell also reacted to Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s criticism of her on his program on Thursday night.

            You can listen to their full interview below.
            –

        2. Last night I heard on either Hannity or The Ingraham Angle that there was a raid on Dominion’s servers in Germany. Somebody’s agents seized the computers, or at least the data.

          No word yet on whether it was us seeking evidence, or them destroying it, BUT: President Trump is Commander In Chief of America’s armed forces. Including the Judge Advocate General’s office. Just the friendly folks you’d need to secure some evidence.
          ———————————
          If ordered to ‘secure that building’:

          The Army would break in and eliminate all resistance.
          The Navy would post guards outside the door.
          The Air Force would take out a lease, with option to buy.

          2. These days, the Air Force would likely post a few drones overhead.

            Gotta keep up with the times!

            2. Oh, come on, the Navy at least knows the difference between a ship and ashore. On a shore base, it’s turn off the lights, lock the doors and post guards.

              1. …because all the shelves are already secured for sea.

                Yes, we really did that at every single base I was on.

                Theory was that it kept people in practice for when they went on ship.

      2. Well, you can stoop now. Next time don’t bite them, start painting on a titanium laminate and file the ends to properly sharp points.

        Be careful while scratching, of course.
        –

        1. And now they’re looking to amend the state constitution to allow for “expanded mail in” permanently. Expecting to clear legislative hurdles by January, send to a referendum this fall.

          I know this is actually weirdly hopeful–what actually happened that they’re so spooked to so quickly push permanent fraud in *New York*, of all places? (I hear that we had “red mirages” in races across the state.) And frankly Things Are Likely To Happen elsewhere before the referendum.

          On the other hand, argh!

          1. I think depending on the state, Cheating Biden got somewhere between 10 and 25% of the vote attributed to him. I’m usually pretty good at this internal-feel thing.
            Of note, check the reviews of anything conservative on Amazon, and look at 5 and 1 star. 1 star (usually didn’t read/watch) are the left true believers. 5 star are the right true believers. The ration is always 75% 5 star to 25% 1 star.
            Be not afraid. My guess is they’ve been cheating since Reagan, lost control with the electorate, lost more and more vote, frauded more. (I know they cheated before that, but I mean consistently and massively.)

      2. That is one seriously fucked-up web page. I don’t know what they did to it but it’s 90% gibberish.

        They probably composed it with some Microshaft product.

  4. “You’ll live to see an ice age.”
    Lol reading the history of the environmental movement is always a fun and enlightening excercise. I found a first edition copy of The Population Bomb by Paul Ehrlich in my dad’s garage. Provided weeks of great entertainment.

    1. I still remember an old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic book I had, which ended with the teleporting space cow head accidently depositing the heroes in a future ice age caused by mankind’s neglect of the cause of the hour at the time.

      He prickly gave a sad soloque and time shifted the heroes back to their proper time, but it’s hard to forget, if only from the floating cow head…

      2. There was also an entire series of Green Lantern/Green Arrow comics where the two of them traveled with a rogue Guardian seeing the consequences of ignoring the “vital issues,” of the day. Like overpopulation. Gorgeous artwork, stories that hit you over the head with a hammer.

  5. I agree with the power of the truth. The thing is, when you have a Ministry of Truth, even if it is unofficial, the ability to insulate the people from the truth is strong. I don’t think we’re there yet, but our society does seem to have more and more people looking at North Korea and China and saying, “You know, that’s not a bad idea…” And then trying to implement it. Just look at CTH.

  6. “ It’s a weird system, so smooth, so perfectly fitting and so without flaw, provided you don’t apply it to real people.”

    Or real physics, or apply real math to it. Their system is an air dream of pot smoking sophomores.

    1. cspschofield I think you wrong pot smoking sophomores. At least some of the time their schemes make sense or add up even if you’re not inhaling with them.

  7. Seen on the internet: “The Left tries to silence you. The Right wants the Left to just keep talking….”

    I was raised in a household that swore we were going to have an ice age, so I’ve eyed the whole Global Warming shenanigans with, “Really, guys? You do know that just a few decades ago the Best Minds wanted coal dust spread to melt the ice caps before it was too late….”

    The nasty thing about the Population Bomb was how it was used as a very, very cruel club to people in my generation. I grew up constantly told that I should never have children, it was too selfish. Oh yes, I was one of four kids, because my mother wanted a big family, but I should never, ever be that selfish and destructive of the planet.

    Extrapolate that out to a lot of people, and you can see where part of the nihilism comes from. After all, if you’re a Bad Person for wanting a family and descendants to pass on your world and values to, what’s the point of trying to uphold a lasting culture? Or anything at all?

    1. After all, if you’re a Bad Person for wanting a family and descendants to pass on your world and values to, what’s the point of trying to uphold a lasting culture? Or anything at all?

      The cruelest ideologies are based on taking a person’s deepest instincts/drives, and folding them back on themselves.

      Want to have kids and care about them? Congratulations monster! You hate children! is merely the simplest version.

      1. Indeed.

        I’m too burned out to have a family; I ended up raising my siblings and a lot of other stuff that shouldn’t have happened, and my health is probably never going to recover. But damn it, I’ll fight so other people can have families.

      2. And don’t forget the obsession over hormone free milk and meat while at the same time downing enough birth control pills to turn amphibians into hermaphrodites from the tainted urine.

        I have a hunch if a non-hormonal birth control became as common as the hormonal stuff is now, you’d see a dramatic decrease in infertility (defined as a couple failing get pregnant within a year of trying).

        1. While I was raised to be vaguely suspicious of the hormonal birth control, and to believe that, yes I am capable of self control. I did try it, but dang, it made me depressive and I switched off it. Women who stay on it for years have the double whammy of whatever the long-term effects are combined with waiting until 30 to try to deal with when trying to conceive which has it’s own issues for first time pregnancy.

          1. Yeah … have some lingering anger issues wrt my mother for pushing it on me when I got married young. Her reaction to my engagement when discussing it with my dad? “Maybe after she pushes out a kid or two she’ll realize college is more important.”

            I probably would have had issues with fertility anyway, but being on birth control for a decade in the vain attempt to prove I wasn’t wasting my potential with motherhood could not have helped things.

              1. She reminds me of our hostess’s point about how you get so indoctrinated into ideas that even when you think you’ve gotten rid of them (or managed to never contract them), they’re still in your head. Sure, if you’d ask her directly, she’d say children are a blessing and gift from God. But catch her off-guard, and the anti-natal prejudice comes through. Other examples:
                Me: “Must be nice for Brianna and Aaron to have their mom home all day.” Her: “I don’t understand why women with degrees waste their education staying at home.”
                Her: “Staying at home is infantilizing.”
                Me: “No one I’ve met, from the married career women to the single mother living with her dad, regrets having children.” Her: *awkward silence* “Well, some people do.”

                At least she has the good grace to not comment aloud about the fact that she was the last of her sisters to become a grandmother.

              2. Many women of a certain era had this. They were force-fed the idea that spending time and energy observing and directing their children’s growth was less rewarding than clerking in a supermarket travelling the world as an international woman of mystery. They tend to disregard that most jobs involve more drudgery for less reward than motherhood does — and more opportunity for the government to program your children.
                –

                1. In Mom’s case, it’s nursing, but yeah. Ironically, the woman who couldn’t be arsed (and there really is no American equivalent of that phrase) to stay home with her kids is now the one child of the family taking care of her mother and step-father/father-in-law (yes, my mom’s mom is married to my dad’s dad) and her grandson.

                  1. Spotted this Thursday and thought it relevant:

                    Flexible Work Options Mean More Women in Senior Roles
                    By Carrie Lukas

                    A friend just shared this new study by Zurich[1] Insurance: It details the big jump in female job applicants (and hires) for senior management roles when those positions were described as potentially including part-time, job-share or other flexible work options.

                    This could be a silver-lining of COVID-19. More employers recognize that at-home and non-traditional employment arrangements can work for businesses. That means that women (and men) who want or need those options are more likely to find such opportunities. Women who might otherwise have sidelined their careers while raising children are more likely to find ways to continue to work and climb the economic ladder. Expect to find more women in corner offices and boardrooms down the road as a result.

                    This article in Crain’s New York Business[2] presents the issue and findings matter-of-factly, but as is typical for coverage of this issue, there is always the sense that women are being unfairly forced into the role of caregiver. This article puts it this way: “Despite increasing economic participation in recent years, women are still more likely to undertake the majority of domestic and caring responsibilities.”

                    Undoubtedly that’s true, but it’s important to note that many women want to be present when their children are young; it isn’t just something that is unfairly forced upon them. The new paradigms of being able to customize work relationships, rather than face all-or-nothing full-time employment relationships, make that possible.

                    Unfortunately, this progress is jeopardized by proposals that would make it harder for businesses to offer non-traditional employment options. California’s AB5, for example, is destroying work opportunities for women like Monica[3], who has been running a florist and event business, and men like Patrick[4], who had been an emissary for Santa Claus in California but is out of work due to AB5. House Democrats, and both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris[5], support imposing such restrictions nationally, which would derail this progress and make it harder for people — particularly women — to find flexible work options when they need it.

                    Embedded Links:
                    1] crainsnewyork . com/workplace/flexible-work-options-could-boost-womens-applications-top-jobs-20?utm_source=morning-10-wednesday&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20201117&utm_content=article4-headline

                    2] crainsnewyork . com/workplace/flexible-work-options-could-boost-womens-applications-top-jobs-20?utm_source=morning-10-wednesday&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20201117&utm_content=article4-headline

                    3] iwf . org/2020/09/09/chasing-work-a-florists-business-survived-breast-cancer-but-ab5-might-kill-it/

                    4] .iwf . org/chasing-work-independent-contractors

                    5] forbes . com/sites/carrielukas/2020/08/03/biden-misunderstands-workplace-flexibility/?sh=3d592be64f8f
                    –

          2. Took 5 years after stopping BC and a loss of 50 pounds before wife got pregnant. And not from lack of trying.

              1. And second son was born after two years of (medically prescribed birth control) conceived first month. BUT that’s not normal.
                Also, you’re supposed to wait. It just never occurred to me I COULD get pregnant. I mean without treatment.

              2. I’ve got multiple relatives and two neighbors who were certified completely unable to have children. The neighbors spent a lot of money to get their miracle boy…and then had two more kids in the next few years.

                Glad your wife’s system was able to recover from what amounts to a hormonal sledge hammer, but it really isn’t normal– Irish Twins run in her family? (The recovery is similar– my mother’s system rebooted after about four months, mine takes about nine, and as siblings born at different ends of the same year show, some women manage to reboot almost immediately.)

                I’m one of the few girls who didn’t go on hormonal birth control shortly after hitting puberty, at my high school. My sister and the Lady’s Catholic Prayergroup leader’s daughter were the only two others I knew, although it’s possible a few of the girls were lying. (Mean girls suck, if anyone was wondering, and they delight in violating boundaries, like any other predator.)

                I only know of two who did not have trouble conceiving, and one of my sister’s college friends has a system that’s so broken she can’t conceive unless she’s on hormonal birth control. (They have four kids. After about three drinks, she’ll explain which birth control she was using in each case, and no she didn’t mess up or “mess up” while using them, one was a hormonal IUD, and yes that boy is fine. After #4, her husband was sterilized.)

                1. To be fair, when I got pregnant the last time I was on “therapeutic birth control.”
                  MY system was so screwed up by then, that the doctor said I was marginally MORE likely to get pregnant on birth control.

                  1. There’s a Catholic geek blogger gal… I think the blog was “care and feeding of geeks” but it’s not coming up when I search… who had really bad miscarriage issues because she needed progesterone supplements or her body decided she was not pregnant.

                    Was a constant fight to keep doctors from deciding that she didn’t, and she lost a few times.

                    So not an unknown situation, and if the various “feminist” organizations were worth the paper they push they would be all over that actual systemic failure to meet health needs. But no, much more important to be able to pressure girls too young to drive to start using birth control, without their parents knowing.

                    2. It seems to me that the Playboy Foundation donated lots of $ to Planned Parenthood in furtherance of their efforts for female empowerment.
                      –

                2. I was shocked how many at my college dorm were on bc. Only one had a clear reason like too much testosterone.

                  I was also an outlier in the non bc young female group. And was oblivious until after the fact that that was so normal. It’s like bc is viewed as having zero downside or downtime effects by prescribers.

                  1. Your folks must’ve chosen a really good doctor– the hard sell I got to start using them without mom’s knowledge was, looking back, suspicious as heck.
                    (Female doctor, for what little it’s worth.)

                    1. Hmm, we didn’t do a great job at meeting regularly with a doctor. We went in when sick to a gp, mostly. I was living on my own and wanting to get married, so I found an ob/gyn for birth control because I wanted a year to figure stuff out without wondering if I was pregnant or not. And that’s when I found that the bc made me depressive. The considerations are a different list after marriage, and since then we were saying, well kids would be different but ok, I stopped taking them, and just updated my doctor about it. I’ve never had suicide ideation before or since, so I kinda don’t want to use them again. And how would I have known it was birth control if I’d been taking them for years on end?

                    2. And how would I have known it was birth control if I’d been taking them for years on end?

                      It’s possible you wouldn’t know, because you would have done the permanent solution to a temporary problem before then.

        2. This –
          My father the research biologist warned my sister and I about the Pill when it first became available. Reproductive medicine wasn’t his specialty, but he knew enough in general to strongly believe that no good would ever come from massively interfering with hormones. To complicated a system, too delicate to be blundering around in.

          1. I’ve had to go on hormones for other reasons, and whoa nellie, that’s definitely throwing a wrench in the works. (I shouldn’t have to go on them ever again, and I am grateful for that.) Basically, as I said the first time, “It does what it’s supposed to do but the side effects are unacceptable.”

        3. Especially since non-hormonal methods usually involve looking at the signals related to existing hormone systems, which would allow you to identify issues in a manner where you can actually fix them.

          “I haven’t gotten pregnant yet” is very different from “going off of my resting heart rate, my cervical mucus and my basal temperature, my body is over-producing progesterone for the entire cycle.” or “huh, looking at when we have sex vs when symptom-charting says I would be fertile, we have just not been having sex during the three days prior to ovulation.” *check symptoms* “Oh, those are the days I do extra long work-outs because I actually have energy, and after dinner is my only free time.” or “those are the days after my hours of sleep usually drop to four or five hours, and because we’re trying to have a baby and lack of sleep causes infertility, we focus on sleep instead.”

          ….

          Yes, I am a bit pissy about six years of “responsible sex” and not so much as a week’s worth of “female hormone cycle and recognizing it.” We got more training on how to trouble-shoot a laundry machine than our own bodies!

          1. Of course not. There are multiple *industries* that are set up to handle your health needs. Even if you’re an M.D., you simply don’t have the specialized training necessary for endocrine and gyno work. “So just be a good prole and don’t worry your little head about it.”

            The medical profession has degenerated into credentialism and data entry operators. And even if your doctor actually knows something useful that applies to you, “practice management” pressures him to pull a diagnosis out of his hat and get you out of the exam room as quickly as possible.

          1. Agreed, but it happened so slowly I don’t think people realize the effect it’s had. At the same time, we had a massive increase in fertility treatments in addition to other factors. A mass switch from hormonal BC to other forms of sterilization (and no other cultural changes) with an attending rise in fertility would make the “trickle-down” effects of hormonal birth control (and never has that phrase been more gross and yet more apt) quite clear.

            1. One of the peculiar side effects of hormonal birth control is that it interferes with pheromone receptors. This means the female is unable to ‘pattern match’ a good mate for immunological health (information for that being carried by pheromones), and instead tends to seek mates who match her father’s genotype.

              In other words, it tends to select away from healthy offspring… perhaps contributing to the generation of neurotics (that being ultimately bad brain chemistry) we suffer from today.

                1. Well, since the “prettier” males have less testosterone, which is strongly correlated with male mental health, selecting for them would increase neuroticism.

                  1. I know there is, but the weird thing is it’s all over the world, even in places where these things aren’t prevalent (and I only found flaxseed like 10 years ago)
                    But you know what’s everywhere? Oral contraceptives.
                    And they’ve tested drinking water. EVERYONE is getting a dose.

                    1. W.C. Fields’ comment on drinking water still applies.

                      “I don’t drink water. Fish ____ in it.”

            2. We’d also be able to start separating out how much of the water issues are from hormonal BC, how much come from giant livestock farms, how much come from pesticide use in row crop farming, and how much is industrial estrogen mimics, esp in plastics.

          2. It’s not anything in the water. It’s the soy products in the diet, and 3x worse, flaxseed. Both very high in phytoestrogens, which sufficiently mimic natural animal estrogens to basically cause an overdose (plus being a thyroid inhibitor, so the natural feedback between gonads and pituitary gets broken).

            Here’s probably the best compendium of research; ignore the frantic tone, and read the linked articles. And remember that flaxseed is 3x higher in phytoestrogens than soy.

            http://web.archive.org/web/20110812014148/http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/

            My firsthand experience comes from 50 years as a professional dog breeder; I use up to 12 tons of feed per year, and have tried a lot of different formulas (as well as manufacturing my own).

            Diets containing soy don’t generally have an impact on canine fertility (probably because soy is poorly absorbed and mostly gets ‘eaten’ by gut bacteria), but you will occasionally see unexpected midline and limb deformities, and I’m suspicious that it also may contribute to patent ductus arteriosus (heart defect). Switch away from the soy-based diet, and the defects disappear.

            Diets containing flaxseed meal (which is far better absorbed)… fertility drops from the species-norm of ~87% to around 40-50%, and EVERY litter has at least one deformed puppy, almost entirely males (open skulls, guts on wrong side of body wall, failure of peripheral tissues like lips and toes to finish developing, genitals extremely small or partially absent). Switch off the flaxseed diet, and fertility returns to normal, and the defects disappear. (Yes, the same dogs.)

            See that? FERTILITY DROPS TO HALF OF NORMAL with a diet high in phytoestrogens.

            One paper put it that “100g of soy was equivalent to one daily contraceptive pill” and that “feeding an infant soy formula is the equivalent of giving it five birth control pills a day.” (And remember, flaxseed meal has 3x the phytoestrogens of soy, and is better absorbed.)

            What d’ya think that does to reproductive health, future and present??

              1. Soy is not a major ingredient in oriental cooking; it is a condiment. Also, it’s not merely cooked as in the west, but rather is fermented, which tends to break down complex molecules like hormones a lot more thoroughly.

                In prefabbed western food, it’s become pervasive. “Textured vegetable protein” is basically soybean meal. And soybean oil is everywhere.

                Read the above-linked papers; they’re biochemistry, not opinion.

                2. I’m afraid you’ve been misinformed about how fermentation messes with the estrogen mimics, etc– chart here has soy foods and how much they have.

                  https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/soy/

                  Read the above-linked papers; they’re biochemistry, not opinion.

                  I’m not seeing papers, actually.

                  I’m seeing a lot of yelling, and links to their own stuff, and some big red flags that do not have a source linked. (Specifically, the babies on soy milk one– which catches my eye, because one of the things they warn new parents about is the effect of the massive amount of estrogen the mother passed on to the kid. Can cause alarming but harmless side-effects.)

                  The estrogen comes in through breast milk.

                  Trying to find it I find the same statement, I find a similar one: Babies fed soy-based formula had 13,000 to 22,000 times more isoflavones in their blood than babies fed milk-based formula
                  which is… um…. no kidding, the kids not eating plants don’t have plant stuff in their blood.
                  It was part of a study that specifically mentioned that the soy formulas were known to be safe, but MIGHT have POSSIBLE but subtle long term effects.

                  This is from someone who is suspicious about soy– when someone has to alter their stuff to sound scarier, THEY don’t think it’s worth listening to.

                  1. I’m allergic to soy milk, and so are both boys, so we never have it. We have tofu like once a year. So I’m not defending soy as soy. It’s just that honestly,I think the HORMONES have more hormonal effect.

                    1. Overwhelmingly, yes.

                      The one study I dug up about the thyroid effects was about using soy as the protein for vegetarians, in two levels of issues-with-thyroid.
                      The high level issue with thyroid vegetarian women had a possibly significant increased risk, but it’s right on the edge where you need a bigger study because it’s a fraction of the original sample.
                      Nobody else.

                    2. I have seen that the kids who drink soy milk tend to have some general physical similarities… but there are also other known vectors, and controls like “one kid is allergic to milk, he drinks soy milk, the rest drink normal milk because it’s cheaper” the kids tend to either all have the “drank soy milk as a child” look, or none of them do– which suggests the change is something besides the milk.

              2. Mao stopped Chinese reproduction and now they’re facing the largest demographic catastrophe since the Black Death. One child per family and a huge shortage of girls.

                Japan already sells more adult diapers than baby diapers and South Korea might actually be the worst demographic mix on the planet. Crazy man Kim just has to wait it out.

                Then there’s Europe. My God. I’ve been reading a or about late antiquity and the collapse in population in the West is one of the major causes of the fall. There doesn’t seem to be a plague, or at least no more plagues than usual, they just stopped having babies.

            3. Dogs and humans do not have identically optimized digestive systems.

              Cats and dogs are not good experimental subjects for arguing that vegetable matter is bad for humans.

              Like horses and cattle are not persuasive test subjects for arguing that a meat diet is bad for humans.

          3. Why do we need birth control? Why can’t people just not have sex? Or get married young , have their kids; then do all the other stuff. I don’t understand why being a single, sexually active woman in a big city is supposed to be so great. Being an office drone in a large city is supposed to be sooo much much better than being a happily married farmer or rancher.

            I don’t have any kids, and never wanted any. I also grew up in NYC. After living in the south for almost 20 years I don’t understand why some woman is supposed to be Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda, Bea Arthur (what an obnoxious person!) or one of the folks from Friends?

            Are we all supposed to be crazy like Hollywood screenwriters?

            2. I don’t understand why being a single, sexually active woman in a big city is supposed to be so great.

              Because the cads need a supply of young, attractive, and vulnerable targets who have very limited defenses to manipulation, and even then they need massive social pressure.

      3. I once heard on Ace of Spades the comment: “In a just world Paul Ehrlich would be laboring on a collective farm.” Always stuck with me.

    1. Dang. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything below about -15F here in “cold” New England (even when I worked in New Hampshire). Heck my house’s plumbing tries to seize up when we have negative single digits. You’re a better man than I Gunga Din.

      Does remind me I once had two coworkers that had transfered in from Lyons France for a year of training. In a discussion over lunch they were complaining over an unusually hot day in August (probably pushing 100 F with dew point in the 70’s, not unusual in New England August) and the discussion turned to winter weather. They had heard New England got cold. Another coworker told them we often would have a week of 0 to negative single digits in January and they should get themselves appropriate outerwear. The folks from the Mediterranean clime scoffed roundly at such things saying Lyon occasionally got down to single digits (positive). I then asked if they meant Fahrenheit or Celsius. They of course meant C and I noted that the native coworker had meant F and that our -5F was ~ -21C. They were less blase after that 🙂 .

      1. I’ve delivered newspapers in -40. Well, that was with wind chill, actual temp was still -27 or so…

          1. Winter in Texas, especially Southern Texas is warmer. Haven’t had, knock wood, a night a night cold enough for a fire yet. Have had the heat on though.

    2. I worked with a guy who spent a couple of years in Antarctica. The base was carved into the ice, and heating the place would weaken the ice. The temperature INSIDE was -60° F for five months in the winter.

      Life gets interesting at -60°. He told me he’d never feel cold again.

      I remember two weeks in Michigan, in February. It never got above 10° F the whole time.

  9. “I realized recently that I have a “hunger and thirst” for the truth. This might be strange for someone who writes fiction, and knows she does,”

    To quote George Bernard Shaw’s historical play, The Devil’s Disciple:

    Major Swindon: “What will history say, sir?”
    General John Burgoyne: “History, sir, will tell lies, as usual!”

    and

    “The rest of this story is pure fiction. Rest assured, you can believe every word of it.”
    –

    1. Plato said that poets were liars.

      Aristotle said they were, in fact, more philosophical than historians because they could show things in more pure form without the accidents clouding issues.

  10. Note: There are very few things that will get me instantly angry, but telling or implying that I’m a liar is one of them. And mind you, this is coming from someone who regularly gets on stage to tell scripted “lies.” (Acting. Isn’t it great?) The flip side of this is the denial-of-truth types, though those don’t flip my switch to homicidal.

    1. As one who is quite willing to never ever let the truth get in the way of a good story, outside of joke or story telling I strive to avoid lies.

      Luckily, or sensibly, I don’t consider omissions lies. Hence when she, whoever she may be, ask me; “Does this dress make me look fat?”, I can truthfully reply; “Why no honey, of course not?”, without feeling any need to add the clarification that it has nothing to do with the dress, you are fat. 😉

      1. There’s also asking the question they mean– “does this make me look fat,” as I explained to my husband, means something like “I recognize that there are trouble areas on my body and I don’t like it, does this do noteworthy damage to drawing attention to the issues in such a way that they will cause extra embarrassment to myself or those watching?”

      2. There’s a second correct answer to “Does this make my butt look big?” and it is any version of “OH, YES!” in an appreciative tone of voice.

    2. Same here. I make a point of telling the truth, even when it’s not to my advantage. Weasels who automatically assume I’m shading the truth or lying about something usually get a sharp lecture. Not that it affects them any; liars automatically assume everyone else is lying too.

      The ones who weasel-word it get extra special treatment.

  12. Sarah, please consider putting more of your material on Smashwords! I don’t trust (and don’t use) Amazon, and you _have_ to be waiting for the hammer to fall, given Big Tech’s censorship binge. Heck, put an Omnibus up there and I’ll be delighted to write you one big check!

    1. Not only no, but hell no.
      There should be none of my material on Smashwords.
      A) the owner is a bernie bro. So if it’s leftist censorship you fear, get the hell away from that site.
      B) they sell your stuff and forget to pay you. They also distribute it to dozens of places, collect from them but you don’t even know you’re there or sold there.
      c)I pulled out of smashwords when it became obvious it was a giant con. BTW there shouldn’t be anything of mine there.

        1. Me also – I kept a couple of my earlier books on Smashwords, and felt a mild bit of loyalty – but their uploading process was so … ugh, and their website is like 1990 clunky. I went over to Draft2Digital because theirs was so fresh and lively, and the process of posting books relatively painless.
          I hope never to hear that D2D is a malignant nest of woke vipers…

      3. Thank you for the warning! What about Draft2Digital? It’s evidently gathered good reviews from across the Web. Are there political or other red flags with this service? I do see that Ms. Celia Hayes appears in a comment below to like that service and hope myself that the firm isn’t indeed a “malignant nest of woke vipers.” -_-

        1. I just don’t use them. I had a couple of really bad misfires with them in terms of…. oh “Apple banned your book for being porn” (Death of a musketeer.) And decided bah.
          Also, I make more out of Kindle lending library than I did out of all the other services combined. Yes, at the cost of being exclusive, which I hate. But money is money.
          I’m looking into a way you guys can subscribe to my daily output (perhaps substack?) something that allows me to build a “high value” mailing list too, so I can put my work on it if Amazon goes crazy. But I’ll have plenty of warning. They’ll ban Glenn Reynolds well before me.
          And anyway, I suspect their monopoly is about to get shattered, one way of another.
          And though Bezos is a Woke moron, SO FAR there really hasn’t been any direct influence on the ebook business, partly because unless EXPLICITLY political books are much harder to police.
          But Smashwords went moronic way before Amazon.

      1. You don’t think the state has any concern about that “constitution” thing, do you? At least not when it’s telling them they can’t do something.

    2. That is good news indeed.

      Kyle Rittenhouse should be hailed as a national hero.

      Or maybe just as a regular guy doing his part to push back the darkness.

      2. Jake Gardner needs to be remembered too. There needs to be a Fight Club style chant. “His name is Jake Gardner”

      3. If we’re all living in a computer simulation, I suspicion (sic) that Mr. Kyle Rittenhouse is one of the few real people from “outside” who participate in the simulation, perhaps voluntarily as a peculiar initiation rite into an incomprehensibly strange club or perhaps involuntarily as punishment for some far future crime or other. I know I’m here to pay for my sins somehow. -_-

        I wonder just how many folks are real and how many are non-player characters that are programmed to act extraordinarily weird and irrational just to see how us real players react to the utter stupidity. O_o

    3. Ricky Schroder? There’s a name I haven’t seen in a long time. Never would have guessed he’d support someone like Rittenhouse against the Antifa rioters.

      Good for him.

      I guess the next question is – if Rittenhouse goes home -i.e. across state lines – is he violating his bail?

  15. Found a new video game that I thought might amuse some here. It’s a 2D side-scrolling game similar to “This War of Mine”. “Mr. Prepper” has the player as the titular character. At the start of the game, you’ve just been apprehended (and had your car confiscated) by the government for trying to leave your home town of Murricaville. Mr. Prepper remains undaunted, however, and hatches new plans. These plans will require him to build underground rooms beneath his house, and culminate in (after receiving plans from an unknown individual calling him or herself Minute Man) building a rocket in an underground silo.

    Complicating matters is a government agent (who looks like a cross between Half-life’s G-Man, and the Thin Men from the X-Com reboot) who periodically visits Mr. Prepper’s home looking for things that good Americans don’t need, such as crafting benches and excessive drain on the electrical meter.

    The game hasn’t been released yet, but there’s a free “Prologue” version (appears to be the early part of the fill game, with some advanced items removed) available on Steam.

  17. My entire life, I have for special reasons that would be instantly understandable were I to spell them out sought to apprehend what the fuck is true and real, notwithstanding an endless torrent of mind-butt-fucking sophistry from an entire class of leftist vermin that seem to delight in building self-contradictory, self-serving castles in the sky. This unremitting desire even led me in my early twenties into laboriously developing the fundamental elements of my own version of what Ayn Rand called “objectivism.” At least until I eventually learned remarkably late in life that Ayn Rand even existed. Her books of essays saved me a great deal of time and energy although I still haven’t bothered to read Atlas Shrugged or The Fountainhead. My own careful thoughts render the contents thereof effectively redundant. I do adore Ayn Rand’s Anthem, though! It’s an immortal love poem to freedom. ^___^

    I’m drunk again, not a desirable state of affairs. I’ll keep this short. Suffice to say that the essential reason I utterly detest Marxists and desperately want them to all in their stinking millions to shriek in unendurable agony as their bones melt from the inside out is how they aren’t merely satisfied with savagely murdering their opponents. No! That’s not remotely enough. They must also employ an infinitely ugly constellation of mind-war tactics get good folks to endlessly butt-rape their own minds for them! The Marxist filth desire above all, way down in the wormy depths of their scuttling goblin souls, to make an incomprehensible mockery of a whole life spent in pursuit of truth and light.

    They are evil. Evil. EVIL. Burn them. BURN THEM!

    1. Do not read “The Fountainhead.” It will make you want to drill holes in your head to let it back out.

      If you decide to read it anyway, just remember when it starts going all weird and squicky, it gets worse…

      1. The Fountainhead is a Gothic romance, but with more politics and architecture. And honestly, I’m not sure why guys would bother to read it.

        The movie basically runs with a political version of “Gary Cooper is dreamy,” which I feel is a legitimate thesis.

        There are some nice matte paintings in the movie, though. And the main character woman is Patricia Neal, so I guess there is something for guys to watch.

        1. Okay, that’s not fair. The basic thing is saying that, if somebody has a dream and wants to work for it, that it’s not fair to tell that person to give up his dream in favor of what somebody else likes better, or for some kind of vague “common good,” or for a parasite’s benefit. And that’s all kinds of fun to watch or read, especially if you like Frank Lloyd Wright-style architecture.

          But beyond that, we get into Ayn Rand’s personal/philosophical relationship issues, which were many. And it’s very hard to postulate a basis for a free society, even of two people, if you decide that all previous religions and philosophies and contracts and covenants were a mug’s game.

          1. Oh, yeah. Throwing out the baby with the bathwater isn’t the best move, notwithstanding the innumerable internal contradictions and unexamined assumptions behind those religions and philosophies. The premises underlying my own version of objectivism are radically different from those of dear Ms. Ayn Rand. I suspect the lady would have been startled by them even if they also depend in the end on the supremacy of reason. My own approach specifically accounts for the ultimately infinite limitations of attempting to work out a greater frame of reference than that which attempts it — namely, the “human mind” itself.

            Still, the destination is superficially much the same and for much the same reasons. Perhaps the best way to put it is that Ayn Rand’s objectivism is a stiff, starched British gentleman who isn’t above an occasional boxing match under the Marquess of Queensberry rules, and my objectivism is a sneaky little bastard in shabby clothing who looks harmless but who can punch like Bruce Lee and kick like Chuck Norris. 🙂

        2. “The movie basically runs with a political version of “Gary Cooper is dreamy,” which I feel is a legitimate thesis.”

          That made me laugh aloud, thank you. ^_^

        3. The movie basically runs with a political version of “Gary Cooper is dreamy,” which I feel is a legitimate thesis.

          High degree of legitimacy.

          1. If Gary Cooper’s dreaminess is a legitimate thesis for a movie and you have yet to see:

            City Streets (1931)
            Design for Living (1933)
            Mr. Deeds Goes To Town (1936)
            Desire (1936)
            Beau Geste (1939)
            Ball of Fire (1941)

            You’ve got some very sweet dreams due you.

            Bonus dreams:

            If I Had a Million (1932)
            North West Mounted Police (1940)

            There are, of course, many, many more.
            –

      2. From everything I’ve heard about Rand’s novels, I would hate them as novels even though I agree with most (though not 100%) of her opinions. Because, well, you know how message fiction always starts sucking as fiction when it’s more “message” than “fiction”? Yeah, it doesn’t suck any less when you agree with the message.

      3. I’m totally willing to take your word for it that a lifetime spent without once cracking the cover of a copy of The Fountainhead is a lifetime bereft of a special brand of “squickiness.” 🙂

        Ayn Rand was a genius and a brave soul, but she did have her limitations and … uh, “issues,” yes. -_-

  18. Still doing mental yo-yo tricks.

    Keep getting hope hits from Powell et al, followed by disappointment of “Maybe there IS no there, there.”

    Keep hearing about the Kraken. When does the Kraken get here? Do they need help with the Kraken? Do we need to use the drum lifter thingee on The Flying Dutchman? ‘Cause I’m willing to do a shift on the drum lifter thingee on The Flying Dutchman if it would help.

    Also having a lot more shower arguments. And a lot of them seem to end with me shouting “There are FOUR LIGHTS!”

    As I said last time, this can’t be healthy.

    1. They released the Kraken yesterday.No, they didn’t disclose DETAILS because that would be stupid. Deep breath. If there were no there, there, DJT wouldn’t be fighting.

      1. I read that Sidney Powell said lawsuits coming next week, public release of information possibly this weekend.

    2. I think that this is the kind of attitude that yesterday’s post was meant to address.

      Everyone’s nervous. There’s a lot riding on what happens over the next few weeks. But our personal ability to influence that is largely non-existant.

      So… find somethimg else to focus on. It’ll take your mind off things, and keep you more sane.

      And carefully consider whether to watch the announcements. They’re not really meant for you, anyway. They’re meant for the undecideds.

      2. I’d like to chip in that focusing on other things has done wonders for my depression over this. There’s always chores, the million and one art projects I need to finish, and if all else fails watch something non political and funny. There’s a lot of Mystery Science Theater episodes free on YouTube.

    3. Do I want to know what a “shower argument” is? Because if I don’t want to know, I *certainly* will not ask.

      1. It’s probably the same thing I do, except I do it late at night when I should be sleeping: a long argument with imaginary people where you actually yell (or mentally yell since I don’t want to wake up my wife) the things that you don’t actually say to your co-workers’ or acquaintances’ faces because they would get offended by rational argument.

        1. I do that too. I rarely bother to employ these rhetorical skills in real life, though. Purposeful idiots like leftists can invent novel crap thousands of times faster than you can analyze, dissect, and then thoughtfully explain the errors in any one particular mind turd. They’re dealing with you in extraordinarily bad faith, and the only effective, permanent way to counter their torrents of self-serving garbage is with a well-placed hollowpoint round. Short of that, brutal concentration camps modeled after the exact same forced-labor installations they so fervently desire for normal folks. Karma can be a bitch, baby!

          1. the only effective, permanent way to counter their torrents of self-serving garbage is with a well-placed hollowpoint round.

            –
            Not recommended. The satisfaction is fleeting, the complications are immense, and ammo is getting expensive.

        1. They’re the “Trump robbed us in 2016, it is only fair we rob him i 2020.”

          Because with them it is ALWAYS just a matter of who was robbed and who benefitted.

          Or, as one Marxist philosopher succinctly phrased it, “Who, whom?”
          –

          1. They are also the “Trump is literally Hitler” and “Republicans are Nazis” crowd that things that the ends justifies the means and that, to use Chuck Schumer’s words, “nothing is off the table”. With that mindset, using fraud in order to install in office those who support Mao’s Cultural Revolution Redux is not only justified but is mandated.

    2. The problem is, even though they believe they won by fraud, virtually none of them are willing to change it.

      1. It would be interesting to see what kind of evidence got left laying about after 2008 and 2012. But it’s too late to unravel the mess the Anointed One created.

        We got scammed *twice*, back to back. The scam fell apart in 2016. And we’re not going to roll over in 2020. Or 2024. Or ever, for that matter.

      2. Some are. There’s been some complaining by high profile leftist pundits. Glenn Greenwald is pretty unhappy (and was even before the election, when he resigned from the on-line publication that he helped found because the editors there censored an article he wrote about Hunter Biden’s corruption). Matt Tlaib over at Rolling Stone was complaining about the Democratic shenanigans to attack Trump last year during the impeachment. I don’t recall whether I’ve actually seen anything from him about the vote, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s unhappy about it. That would fit with the arguments he was making last year. And there are others that I can’t recall off the top of my head.

        Note that I’m specifically ignoring things like arguments that the fraud makes blacks look corrupt (which is one argument against the fraud that we’ve seen) because that particular argument isn’t about the integrity of the election. But there are prominent leftists who are on record saying that something stinks about the vote.

        In short, there *are* some lefties that have said that this is very bad. Unfortunately, as Scott Adams (who is a lefty himself) noted on his Twitter feed, the dog that didn’t bark in this episode is the vast silence from the large number of Democratic accountants and auditors in this country regarding the vote.

        1. The left is so intent on banning speech and symbols they don’t like, I am waiting for them to start suing to remove American Flags and to ban postage stamps that depict the Flag. They have already deemed the American Flag itself to be a “symbol of racism” so the suits alleging that flying the Flag and displaying other presentations of are acts of racism under the Civil Rights Act.

          1. Shouldn’t “The plaintiffs are delusional and full of shit” be an acceptable legal defense? 😀

            2. It is — but you still have to prove it in court. Which can be time-consuming, expensive and ultimately not possible (as Mark Steyn how his case against Michael Mann is going.)

              It becomes impossible when the judge shares in the delusion.
              –

        2. Note that Lefties who have “seen the light,” as it were, are generally Lefties who’ve busted their nose running into that wall. People tend to take a different view of targeting when they realize they, too, can be targets.

          A Lefty who believes in the cause just might believe people can be sold on it — and realize the repercussions of forcing people into it. Besides, even a Lefty can value Truth and grasp the dangers of lying to oneself.
          –

    3. “4- Never trust something awful said about someone you already hate. Verify verify verify.”

      Polls are worth very little these days, and we should make ourselves be extra skeptical about poll results that we’d naturally want to believe.

  20. OT, but I’m feeling pitiful. Woke up with a raw throat and the drips. It’s probably a cold but there went my plans to add to the storeroom today. Bother.

    1. *sympathy*

      We got a cold from husband’s office.

      Definitely not the kung flu, they are tested insanely and most have immunity.

      Still unpleasant, because what little mobility I had is now smothered because I don’t want to be the reason some poor guy misses two weeks of work. 😦

      1. “Definitely not the kung flu…”

        Sorry. You’re not allowed to be regular sick anymore. It’s all SARS 2.0 now.

    3. But that means you can do Home Remedy Experiments! Endless fun for sopranos!

      Seriously… I highly recommend Korean or Russian-style tea with jelly or preserves in it. Honey tea is good, but I think jelly is more fun. And honestly, the Asian pear stuff is the best for throat hoarseness and such. You can even stew or bake an Asian pear and get the goodness that way. You can also just put jelly in hot water or coffee, if you don’t like tea.

      Also there’s whisky and other alcohols, which Our Masters finally admit is one of the best things for colds, as long as you don’t mix it with acetaminophen/paracetamol.

      2. My grandma’s cold remedy/dad’s “get the kids to sleep when they’re sick” recipe:

        Coffee mug
        Honey
        whiskey (theoretically scotch, was usually blended Canadian for us)
        teapot of hot water.

        pour honey in to cover bottom of mug

        Pour whiskey in to cover honey. (came to about half as much)

        pour nearly-boiling water in to dissolve both

        Drink and go to sleep.

      3. My father’s homemade cough syrup/sore throat remedy.

        1 gallon bottle of Old Grandad. Take about 6 shots out of it.
        Crush peppermint sticks and add to the bottle until it is full. Use only candy made with real oil of peppermint. Let the candy dissolve fully before using. Usual dose for us kids was 1 tablespoon.

        I may be a little off on the proportion of peppermints to alcohol. But I know we used at least one of the gallon bottles that my dad won from the checkpool at work, lol.

      1. Akshully, in some ways has been a good year for me.

        Obviously we need to assemble a market basket and… “one of the worst years in living memory, and Bob can shut up about the good bits.”

      2. I was philosophically comparing it to, say, a year of WWII or during the Civil War. Better in some respects — worse in others like knowing what to fight.

      3. Husband and I have been arguing on if it’s worse than 2016 or not.

        It’s hard to measure because of the massive amounts of sheer insanity going on.

        1. To be fair, a lot of “the worst year ever” is due to personal things intersecting with covid. It was the end of 2 years if plastering and painting and scraping to get our 150 year old Victorian ready to sell, trying to do FSBO (with horrible associated stresses I won’t go into), switching to a real estate agent, covid shutdown week before move and difficulties in closing due to move, laid off from job SAME WEEK we moved, buyer screwing with us and not closing until 4.5 months after contract.

    1. Reminds me. British tank development during WW2 didn’t really go all that well. I had to laugh when reading about the British Cromwell tank. It was contemporary with the US M4 Sherman, and on paper was roughly equivalent. But it was such a mess in real life that when the British offered it to the Soviets as part of the Lend-Lease program, the Soviets took one look at it and rejected it.

      And the Soviets were using very large numbers of M4A2 Sherman tanks at the time, so they had no problem accepting foreign tanks.

  26. I think I share your hunger and thirst for truth. When I find out someone has lied to me; the immediate follow up questions are “What else are they lying about?” and “What aren’t they lying about? It’s easier to give a stranger a chance then trust someone who has lied to you and betrayed you.

  27. Since I need to hit the rack soon, and this is a blast from the past, allow me to throw out two things of General Interest.

    1. Viz the guest-post e-mail gremlins. Have the would-be guest poster send the post to someone Mrs. Hoyt is able to get e-mails from easily. He sends it to her. Take that, Imp of the Perverse!

    2. Among Us Discord (or other platform) Almacks. I have to learn how to use Discord or Roll20 or something similar for work. If enough Huns and Hoydens have husband- or wife-high young guns (17-27) what say you to having a get together for our eligible youth.

    (I also have a decent virtual escape room I can run, but it’s based on Harry Potter)

  28. Please help me understand how I have erred below:

    Any Republican who does not fight this to the end, at all costs, owes an apology to Lincoln.

    Nixon conceded the election that JFK stole, but a) soviets b) JFK was at least reasonably anti-communist, and was not clearly working himself up to commit mass murder.

    The combination of the riots, the gun control, the outright proposals to commit mass murder, and the determination to punish all Trump voters is concerning.

    If Trump voters are in fact a majority, then some of the people trying to get into a Biden administration are proposing to use state power to punish an actual majority of the adult population.

    Harris does not have a personal character that lays these fears to rest.

    Then consider that black and Hispanic votes for Trump increased in this cycle. What consequences can you expect to result from meekly conceding at the first opportunity without doing everything possible to cripple in every way Democrat power and influence?

    The calculation of a Republican establishment sociopath is “Haw, haw, we’ll just run in 2024 with a swamp creature.”

    As soon as they can’t give Trump an opportunity to start a civil war over it, they are going to torture and murder minority Trump supporters in blue areas. With the goal of ensuring that no minority in a blue area ever dares vote Trump or GOP ever again.

    Abandoning people to that is something I have a hard time finding just tactful words for. How is it different from abandoning the Hmong and the Republic of Vietnam? How is it better than, during WWII, having complete indifference to the fate of the many victims of the Axis? From Nanking to the Holocaust to Ethiopia.

    Okay, I woke up early from the night’s sleep, so there may be an obvious reason why these seeming parallels don’t hold. So it might not be that “2024” is the 2020 version of Chamberlain’s “Peace in our time”.

      1. Groan. People keep misquoting Chamberlain’s proud announcement of the Munich Pact on September 30, 1938: “I believe it is peace for our time.”

        The Nazis invaded Poland less than a year later.

        Yes, it’s a peeve, and it’s mine, but I wouldn’t call it a pet.

        1. History has proven appeasement never works. As to Bob’s point re JFK, JFK would have to run as a Republican today; he cut taxes and took a strong anti-commie line (can you imagine any modern Democrat confronting an enemy putting nuclear missiles in Cuba, particularly a communist one?).

          You don’t need to look at Chamberlain to see how worthless a piece of paper is. Just ask the Souix, Apache and a host of other Amerindian tribes.

          1. Well, I’m not going to say that the US Never Broke Treaties with the various Tribes, but it can be hard to “keep a treaty” when from our point of view the Tribes broke them first.

            The various Indian Tribes Were Not Nations are the US (and European countries) saw Nations.

            They were (at best) loose confederations bound only by language, customs and kinship.

            The US might sign a treaty with a group of Chiefs of a Tribe but the treaty wasn’t seen as binding by other Chiefs of that Tribe and the Chiefs who signed had no authority within the Tribe to force the other Chiefs to follow the treaty.

            So if members of that Tribe raided into American Territory, the Chiefs who signed the treaty could honestly say “We Didn’t Violate The Treaty”.

            Of course, American Officials would see the American Deaths and the evidence that It Was Members Of That Tribe Who Raided into American Territory.

            Even if the American Officials understood the problem for those Chiefs, there were still Americans being killed. So why should the US be bound to a treaty that couldn’t be kept by the people who signed the treaty?

            1. And this is all before the deliberate BS, such as letting people leave the tribe if they felt like raiding, and then rejoin when they brought back raided goods– or being protected by the treaty while getting the benefits of raiding.

              For that matter, the leaders who said they had the authority to stop raids, when they didn’t.

              Contrast with the allied Indians working with their treaty allies to hunt down and stop the raiders.

Comments are closed.