I Feel The Ground Shifting A Blast From the Past From September 13 2018

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

*I was going to write a post, I was. Only I’m trying to do like three things at once, yes, mostly writing related, and kept getting pulled away. It took me 4 hours to finish the one for MGC.
So, I’m sorry, but you get a blast from the past. Rest assured I’m okay and no, not particularly doomy. Annoyed, yes. But then who isn’t? Anyway, this post is about personal strategies in this pants-on-head time. I had a similar talk with younger son this morning, so it resonates.- SAH*

I Feel The Ground Shifting A Blast From the Past From September 13 2018

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Cats are more sensitive to noise than we are.  When I was doing work with orphan kittens — most of your local shelters will take kittens any age.  Most euthanize those under 8 weeks of age, which most state laws view as being too young to adopt.  Some people like me volunteer to raise litters to 8 weeks of age, which is often 7 week stints of having infants, with all that entails.  As my health got worse, I stopped doing it, so I haven’t done it in close to ten years.  Might do it again, when some of our feline geriatrics go to their reward — one of the women in our support group said she’d been delivered a 2 week old kitten who was in shock.  Someone had transported him in a tin bucket (lined with warm towels, mind) on the handle bar of a motorcycle.  The person doing it, had found an almost-dead kitten, wanted to take him to a rescuer, and had not idea their hearing is far more acute than ours.  (The kitten survived, btw.)

Posit a kitten whose mom gave birth under some piece of industrial machinery, with all the noise and clanging.  If he doesn’t go deaf, he might adapt to a quiet life, as an adult, but he’ll probably still deal better with chaos and confusion than your average cat.

In a way I am this kitten.  Due to things too hard to relate, and besides not mine to tell, things were already semi-unpredictable before the revolution.  They hit full potato after in that I couldn’t predict what would be next.  Like…School could start 1st or October or… whenever.  One year it was January.  Our curriculum was not what my brother and father had studied, not even in vague outlines. It could change, for that matter, at any time during the year, both courses (in Portugal you don’t select them.  You get them per-school year) and what courses taught.  Your commute home could be fine, or there could be a sudden strike, and you had to walk home (if it was both bus and trains on strike.)

There was no rhythm, no pattern, no pathway to adulthood.

And then when things were stabilizing, both in the country and in my life, I moved overseas.  It took me a while to realize all my assumptions — and therefore most of my actions — about how things worked were plain wrong.  I’m sure there are some minor things I haven’t figured out yet, because they’re internalized when people are pre-verbal.

Though my new environment didn’t contain surprise strikes, or pitched street battles when you least expected them, it was completely unpredictable TO ME.  (My misreading of real estate cost us dearly in our first house.  But I came from a country where you bought a tiny home and it grew with you and you stayed there for life.)

Then we moved… well more or less every five years for the last thirty.  We stayed in last house 13 years because most of it I felt too ill to move. But then we had six moves in a year and a half (some of them partial, some kids, but still disruptions.)

I’m as “adapted” as our kind can be to disruption and chaos.  Which is still not very well.  I still feel confused and upset when I can’t predict what  the best path is, when I can’t make the “noise” and confusion stop.

Most people want tomorrow to be a little better than today, but not markedly different.  They want to raise fat babies and fat, happy grandbabies, and predict what gets them there.

They get downright testy when the path to get there keeps changing and they have no clue where to go or what to do to get to that happy outcome.

Right now our disruption is mainly technical.  “Mainly” but it soon flows out to the rest of the world.  The French Revolution and probably WWI were convulsions from the big tech change of the industrial revolution.  Because when people are unstable, things go nuts.

And we’re at the beginning of such a period.  On and on it goes, where it stops nobody knows, but hell, the last echoes will probably resound 500 years from now, particularly if things keep changing.

Which means people are getting — to coin a phrase — their cheese moved all the time: jobs, politics, expectations, ways “things have always been done” within jobs and families. The inevitable is no longer inevitable.  The impossible and unthinkable might be improbable, but they do happen.  “Things fall apart.  The center cannot hold.”

I’m not better at this than anyone else.  I dearly love security and predictability, I just think a little clearer through the mess, because I’m the kitten who grew up in the machine shop.

So — some things I know you might want to think about:

1- You’re not crazy.  You just feel that way.  Our brains are wired for the neolithic (if that.)  We don’t do well with fast changing situations.

2- Most of the anxiety you feel is not real.  Look, when you were a neolithic farmer, and a lot of things started changing, it was sure as shooting some bad invaders would raid your farm one night.  So you had to be alert and paranoid all the time.
Sure.  I don’t want you to do things like ignoring your surroundings, but I also don’t want you to die of stress.  Take a deep breath.  Yeah, it’s crazy, but you don’t believe in a deterministic future and the inevitable arrow of history.  Your world is being rocked, but not jack-hammered into the ground.  Chances are good you’ll be fine.  You got this.

3- Our friends and neighbors who believe in a deterministic future and the inevitable arrow of history?  Their world is getting jackhammered.  Worse, their ways of reacting that always served them well are doing worse than backfiring.  They’re not doing anything.  Worse, they’re used to being in power, and in having “privilege” for having “the correct opinions.”  That’s not really paying off anymore.  Even in publishing where the establishment abides, there’s less and less cheese to go around, which means the other rats are turning on you.
I’m not saying you should pity them.  Oh, heck, you should, yes, but considering what has gone on in the past, most of us aren’t that saintly.
Just understand the crazy stuff they do and say is because they lost their moorings, not because “they were always inherently bad people.”  (Though some, of course, were.  People will be people.)  They’re really really scared, and scared people do crazy stuff.

4- So, you, stop being scared.  Yes, there’s a possibility this all goes to buckets of blood, but I can guarantee those who see a boot stomping on a human face forever in our future are not taking in account a bazillion factors.  That type of thing works in fiction.  Reality is more complex and frankly the boots haven’t been permanently successful anywhere, even the parts with the worst record in that regard in human history.
Take a deep breath.  Half of what you’re feeling is due to perceived chaos and instability and the people for whom the chaos and instability threaten fundamental beliefs.  You’ve got this.  Most of us will be fine.

5- This is no time to run around with your head on fire. Conversely it’s no time for a nice nap either.  Roughly half the population (not all of them hard left, or even left) is out of their minds with panic.  Roughly 90% are somewhat scared. All over the civilized world and some of the semi-civilized.  Scared people do crazy things.  Be aware of your surroundings, particularly when traveling abroad, but in our fair land, too. Have a plan of escape/survival if things go strange, at all times. Just don’t obsess on it.  Having the plan will help you feel less anxious, and increase your chances of survival should things go wrong.  Think of it as the spiel on emergencies when you board a plane.  Chances are things will be fine where you are, at that time.  But there will be rough patches. To survive the rough patches, your back brain needs to know what to do.

6- Think about the specific change around you and in your field.  The way changes are trending is not always obvious — in publishing right now I swear things change every six months — but they can be guessed if you think about it.  Nothing trad pub has done so far has really surprised me (except perhaps for how long they’re taking on the way down, but I know non-fic is still profitable, and there’s parent companies and stuff.  So my surmise of how fast it would all go South has always been broad “two to ten years” say.) Some turns Indie has taken have shocked me because they’re due to Amazon changes, and I can’t anticipate those.
You don’t have to foresee ten years in the future, and thank heavens, no one needs to foresee 100 (unless you’re an immortal.) Even science fiction is less forecasting than “what would be cool” and “what would make my story more fun” and then finding a plausible way to get there.
BUT if you’re a few months ahead of the rest of your field, your town, your business, you’ll do very well.  It’s like surfing on the crest of change, without getting pulled under.

7- That’s it.  Take a deep breath.  You’ll do fine.  You got this.  Reports of our demise are greatly exaggerated.  Be not afraid.

190 thoughts on “I Feel The Ground Shifting A Blast From the Past From September 13 2018”

    1. I don’t do hope very well, but instinct is right up my alley.

      You know it. You nailed it. Punch away and punch harder than you ever thought you could. Put the force of every injustice POTUS (or anyone you love) has been forced to endure because of their….

      And I shall do the same, when needed. 🙂

      1. Say, rather, that their group personality is what feminism has become. Even though post WWII Feminism always had some factions that were batshit crazy misandrist, there used to be a substantial number of moderately sane women that balanced it. That slowly drained away as the serious inequalities were addressed and the crazies took over. Now they are largely aimless ( because most of their stated aims are drivel) and to convince themselves that they still have a Cause they magnify molehills into mountains, and have the touchiness of so many shaved monkeys.

        The same is true of most Left Causes. The Environmentalists have won many real battles ( and numerous fake ones). What they are left with is the Climate Change hoax (yes the Climate is changing. No, we didn’t do it) and a raft of ‘solutions’ that a well informed ten year old could see at a glance are idiotic. The Left ALWAYS has to move Left. They can’t ever be satisfied, because being strident fighters for (insert Cause here) is all they have that gives them worth.

        But there was a time – or rather, there were times – when most of their core Causes actually meant something real. Labor activism was necessary, once. The so-called Robber Barons were nowhere near as bad as the Left paints them, but (like the Left, now) where they were concerned with those that had less, they didn’t ask. They TOLD. And, as with the Left now, it didn’t work well. The fight for women’s rights was a real fight, once. Even into the 1970’s, though the rot had set in to Feminism by then. Treatment of Gays was an issue that needed to be addressed.

        Hell, treatment of Trans persons needed to be addressed, but by the time the Left embraced it as a Cause, the Left was already spinning so far out of control that they passed the point of reasonable so fast that you have to squint to see it in the rear view mirror.

        It’s too easy to dismiss all the Left’s Causes, past and present, as power-grabs and hysteria, because the Left NEVER stops moving the goalposts. They can’t. If they did, they would have to buckle down and admit that they aren’t Special Saviors.

        1. You want a great collection of the Leftist Prog-Soc agenda, pick up this week’s TIme Magazine and look at The Great Reset collection of articles. Make sure you take your blood pressure medicine before you read it.

        2. “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

          ― Eric Hoffer, The Temper of Our Time
          –

          1. Or, say, any human organization, not matter how well intentioned, eventually calcifies and becomes primarily concerned with preserving the organization.

            That, on top of Leftist idiocy, is primarily what’s wrong with primary education in the US.

        3. Agreed – I am one of those old-fashioned small “f” feminists, who was all about equal opportunities for education, profession and in the eyes of the law. And one of those who walked away, as the mainstream capital “F” feminists got crazier and crazier.

    3. You nailed it. Yes. Girls fight behind your back. Get physical and they’re toast. Especially when those girl bullies are entitled upper-crust twats.

      1. If and when the non-left starts punching back I’d imagine they’d do what girl bullies do, scream “no-fair” and run crying for authority. Which means bringing down the Feds on their uncooperative victims. If American military/law enforcement aren’t controlled by them/refuse to obey they’ll use their media bullhorn to paint themselves as victims of the mean old fascists to solicit international sympathy. Buy I’ll doubt they’ll get anymore that sympathy.

          1. Even those run crying when met with higher force. (Yes, well…. low class Portuguese women.) And try to claim to be ladies, set upon by ruffians, having done NOTHING to deserve it.
            But I’m not SURE you’re right. Consider in the US they only rampage where they’re safe.

      2. Which makes it perhaps a bit amusing that one of the women who I might be most worried about going after me from the front – Gina Carano – is currently being attacked by the “girl bullies”. They’ve attempted to get her removed from ‘The Mandalorian’ as a result of some fairly mild things that she’s posted on Twitter, and her subsequent refusal to bend the knee to her critics.

  2. Pingback: I Feel The Ground Shifting A Blast From the Past From September 13 2018 – It's Karl

    1. You never concede a win. Bad form.

      The victory party will need capital letters it’s going to be so spectacular.

          1. We also should make sure that there are plenty of fireworks, confetti and patriotic music. Give them a rousing chorus of Battle Hymm of the Republic among others, all original verses included.

            1. Seldom has it been more apt:

              “I have read His fiery gospel writ in rows of burnished steel.
              As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal!
              Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel”

              * contemner (plural contemners) One who contemns, who displays contempt towards another.

              1. That song is so beautiful.

                We should sing it as we all have a MAGA march down Pennsylvania Avenue. On Day 4 of The Inauguration.

                If they hadn’t tried to steal it, I’d be chill with the traditional inauguration festivities. Not any more.

                We’re going to have fireworks, balloons, Macy’s Day Parade balloons, floats, cannons, boats, children, old people, wheelchair brigades, golf cart exhibitions of skill and daring…. For days upon days.

                And we’re going to sing every damn song our ancestors gave us to give us hope in times of trouble and a place to go when our hearts are bursting.

                Operation: America The Glorious.

                1. Near? It’s close enough for the difference to be negligible. Tasty but must be drunk sparingly.

                  1. Depends on HOW good.
                    My parents have friends who own a port wine farm, and the stuff they keep “for family and friends” is ILLEGAL to sell due to too much alcoholic content.
                    It is also the sweetest, least ….. warning giving Port wine in the world. I BARELY saved husband from being pranked by dad (who is a clone of me and younger son, and therefore an eternal juvenile) with a glass of that instead of the store bought stuff.
                    Dad refuses to believe I married a man with NO head for alcohol.

                    1. Usually able to find some very good bottles in the Ironbound section of Newark. We also have a couple of Portuguese owned liquor stores in town which can get a hold of some good stuff as well.

                    2. The local liquor store — five blocks away? — has an owner who had just come back from Portugal when we moved here. I went in, kind of spinning sideways (from moving, not drinking) to look for verde, which we only drink on the weekends. He was very proud of his pitiful selection. So I gave him names, regions, things to look for…. and he did.
                      Now when I go in, he must have word to be called, because he comes from the back to show me the newest selection. 😀
                      I once confused him by buying bottom shelf AMERICAN Port, and had to explain when you’re going to submerge a whole turkey to marinade, it would be a sin and desecration. This made him happier.

                    3. Haven’t had verde in a while because drink of any sort is rather infrequent these days, but do like. Usually the wine rack has a bottle or two of port, a bottle or two of verde, and a bunch of French reds.

                2. What are good brands, or places to look? I’m curious, but the gaudiest local liquor store is in a former church and I refuse to set foot in it.

              1. My husband has enough Amerindian he’s a one-drink sleeper. As for younger son and I sharing a port bottle: Possible but inadvisable. He’s so close to being my male clone, and there’s that level of slightly tipsy where you can’t being to imagine what we’d come up to do. And do, too, because slightly autistic and insane.
                Let’s say there would be a good chance you’d hear someone had set off a fireworks display in Denver, which somehow gave an image of Polis being eaten by red, white and blue rabbits. Amusing, but a little over the top….

                1. Let’s say there would be a good chance you’d hear someone had set off a fireworks display in Denver, which somehow gave an image of Polis being eaten by red, white and blue rabbits. Amusing, but a little over the top….

                  Two bottles of port, got it.

                2. That sounds as if you’re prepped to revisit the “Gallegher” stories of Henry Kuttner. The world could well use some more of the madness that inspired Proud Robot!

                  Even if the copyright remains in effect there’s no reason to not lift recycle the basic story set-up of what a drunken genius might make.

                  https://www.prosperosisle.org/spip.php?article863
                  –

        3. Hell, I might try to find an airline style bottle of Jim Beam or Jack Daniels. I should be able to drink that much safely.

        4. Blessed Solanus Casey said that celebrating with ice cream is pleasing to Jesus and Mary.

          But it’s okay if you have no-carb frozen treats instead. Frozen almond milk is tasty, and you can use eggs and/or gelatin and make something reasonably creamy.

            1. I make low carb ice cream out of 3 cups of heavy cream, 9 tbsp of various low carb sweeteners (3 tbsp at least of xylitol because it keeps it soft) and 1 tbsp of vanilla. Sub Zero has keto ice cream but it’s yucky. Soy milk!!

            2. I will state that No Sugar Blue Bell Vanilla does actually work well with Merlot. From our trip in Spain I imagine it would be excellent with Sangria, and the Sangria would be a scosh less… bracing…. than a straight red wine would.

  4. Gah, publishing . . . Ja, I’m almost afraid to look at TradPub news to see the latest self-inflicted wound. Being insular works until it doesn’t and someone builds a bridge to let new species cross to the island. Education and teaching? I do know that at lower levels, on-line learning has proved to be a Disaster of “The Hindenburg Meets The Titanic” proportions. Not that it will stop G-Suite and Co from putting more butter on the pocketwatch in order to make it run.*

    *Lewis Carrol FTW.

    1. I believe I saw a report this morning that the Big 5 were officially becoming the Big 4: Randy Penguin was buying S&S.

      However, my blood sugar has been bouncing around like a yo-yo all day, so I wouldn’t put it past me to have hallucinated the whole thing.

  6. This post totally strikes a chord. WHEN Trump wins, I plan on celebrating big time. Others always set off fireworks in the park at the end of our street, I’m thinking we should do the same.

    In terms of watching your field…I left academia this spring. It worked out perfectly for us. Our next move will hopefully be this spring to Texas (think good thoughts on Dec 1 for hubby’s interview!) Then we’ll figure things out from there.

      1. A nice rifle in a nice caliber. You really need one, you know. If angry tyrannosaurs storm in from the Dungeon Dimensions, you’ll be prepared!

        1. Well the question is .458 socom pistol, or .458 lott bolt action….

          Either way there is a minimum size 6.5 grendel pistol in the plan as well.

      3. I am liking the cut of your jib.

        If your hand can take it (mine are too small) a .44 magnum can give quite the satisfactory bellow and shout.

        1. My primary pistol caliber is .357sig. Only shot a revolver once, .357mag.

          I have noticed the used long barrel .460S&W at the local Scheels though…. And it is possible to get a lever-action in that caliber. Hmmmmmm *cogitation noises*

          1. Oh, help me! You’ve sparked my imagination.

            Now I’m thinking that Kimber .45 is a “must have.” And the thing is, with things like they are, one more weapon might not be a bad idea. It would be a new caliber, but hey. Diversify the portfolio.

            1. According to my gunsmith, Kimbers are overrated. But the .45 isn’t a bad round, less kick than the .40.

              Used to have a Glock 21 with several 13 round mags. Ball ammo for practice, Black Talon and HydroShock for carry.

            2. I would highly recommend NOT buying a Kimber. They have a rep for being nice lookers but not great shooters, particularly since the 1911 is a gunsmithing heavy weapon. Colt, Springfield, S&W are what I have heard for less expensive but functional and reliable 1911s.

              1. My “target” sidearm is a Springfield TRP 1911, beautiful firearm. The five inch groups at 20 yards are due to my inability and eyesight, not the firearm. Saw its’ big brother two weeks ago, in 10mm with a six inch barrel, but $1700 is a bit steep for me.

                1. Thank you for the excellent advice. I need a weapon, not something to hang on the wall.

                  1. Most of the major brand handguns these days are reliable. Find something that fits your hand, but I’d advise against the “micro” or “pocket” guns, as they tend not to be as pleasant to shoot as the compacts or full size sidearms, so you’re less likely to practice with them.

                2. My everyday 1911 was my friend’s Series 70 (gunshop owner and gunsmith) backup .45, and my backup is a Frankenpiece done by his friend, who ran the local ATF(!) field office in the city at the time. (Colt Series 70 slide, Auto Ordnance receiver. No idea on the barrel.) Both were tuned for reliability and reasonable accuracy, in that order of priority.

                  Both have been quite serviceable. The former got me through the Gunsite pistol course in [mumble] with no problems. (Modulo the empty magazine I dumped in the Donga run that found a rock on the way down.)

          2. Personally not sure I would go over 454 Casull for a pistol. They are big and powerful (and can be shot through a 460 and 454 and 460 will both shoot 45 long colts) but still chambered in a pistol I can handle. The 460, 480 and 500 pistols I have seen and handled were all too big to handle effectively offhand for me.

            Of course I say that and own a Thompson Contender pistol with a 14″ 300 Whisper bull barrel and a 16″ 357/44 Bain &Davis bull barrel. Neither of which is conducive to shooting without a rest. 🙂

          4. I had a Ruger Redhawk, a Contender Carbine barrel, and a Win 94 all in .44 Mag. The revolver was tolerable to shoot, but the long arms weren’t. (I also discovered that scoped revolvers are conceptually fine, but tough to use in practice, at least for me.) When I had to chose between saving my firearms collection and saving my budget, those were the first to get sold off.

            OTOH, some of the collection stayed, joined by others. OTOH, have I mentioned the canoe accident?

        2. Most .44 revolvers are built on “large frame” actions, with correspondingly large grips. Dan Wesson revolvers use an entirely different frame and grip section; instead of the frame bending down with a panel on each side to form the grip, the Dan Wesson uses a tang that sticks down, with a one-piece grip. They made some for small hands, and you can file, sand, or whittle a considerable amount of wood away if you want something that fits your hand even better.

          Search “dan wesson revolver exploded view” to get a look at how it works. FYI.

          1. Thank you so much.

            I think, like everything else, this relies on me to get up and actually do something. That feels harder and harder these days.

            1. A body at rest stays at rest.. Rest long enough, and it gets mighty peaceful. So best at least get out and walk the neighborhood, even if you’re not “going” anywhere.

      4. Here in PA somebody managed to push through a major loosening of the fireworks laws. The nannies have been in headless chicken mode over it ever since, but my neighbors ( bless ‘em) can be counted on for skyrockets and such for just about any occasion, and sometimes just for the hell of it.

      5. I won’t have to trot out to buy fireworks – I will just tune the TV to CNN and MSNBC (must figure out picture-i-picture function) and watch Proglodyte heads explode.
        –

    3. My little town thinks you celebrate EVERYTHING with big-ass fireworks and a parade.

      Was hoping to see ’em on the night of the 3rd, but 3rd week of January will do just as well. WHEN Trump is sworn in again.

      BTW anyone who didn’t see the PA Senate hearings earlier today.. it was glorious. Link on the PermaPage.

        1. Oh, Lordy, the 1812.

          You could honk the horn and shout every time the cannon went off. Get a line of cars doing that and you’ve got something going.

        2. Battle Hymn, for sure!!

          But I like the idea of supplemental cannon… how far do you think you could make him fly??

            2. Since I can think of a few options offhand although need heavy reinforcing of the barrel and pretty high pressures, ask second Son for sketches. May been to use a “French shoe” though

  7. School could start 1st or October or… whenever. One year it was January.

    I guess everything old is new again. And those of this generation that make it to adulthood are going to be some of the most flexible out there.

  8. Pingback: Shifting Ground – Professor Ornery Dragon

    1. This is excellent. The left is sneering that this just pouting and sour grapes by sore losers, Saying this brings the stakes to light, this is a fight for our nation. If you’re against digging and investigation and bringing stuff to light what exactly do you have to hide?

          1. Unpossible. Everyone knows what Hispanics are like. (I have heard of a state imposing a Hispanic quota on photos in textbooks and then insisting that Hispanics with light-colored hair don’t count toward it.)

        2. Oh, I think Obama understands just fine, it’s just that he has no argument more effective than “Know your place!”

          For the record, it has been my impression that many “Hispanics” share Trump’s purported bias against Mexicans, viewing them as the English view Cockneys or, even worse, the Irish. I am not expert on the Hispanic Hierarchy but a) I know it exists and b) I know Mexicans are toward the bottom, Cubans near the top.

          But the, even when Obama tells the truth he does it to set up a lie.
          –

          1. Sigh. Exercising my privilege to revise and extend:

            But then, even when Obama tells the truth he does it to set up a lie.

            TheN, dammit. Stoopid keyboard.
            –

      2. Its completely valid to form a resistance to elected government, create riots and undermine these elected officers through positions of power. Thats what they’ve taught us in last 4 years. And one man’s terrorist is anothers freedom fighter and terror and violence is just the voice of the downtrodden according to them as well.

        Right now its men in suits in courtrooms and rallies that haven’t yet started taking over roads and beating any driver with a “love wins” bumper sticker unlike the “justified” blm violence. Ranch standoff and takeover are examples of next, still relatively nonviolent steps. There are plenty that come afterwards, especially if punitive measures begin and wipe the last remains of the masks.

        All respect to Larry, the right does have a dial for violence. It just doesn’t trip until 7 or so and goes well past 11

      1. Nyah, youse don’t want to keep a Republic; the upkeep is horrendous! Take my advice and get yourself a nice Benevolent Dictatorship, that way the kids’ll be safe and you won’t have to worry none abut rights.

        If you have your heart set on a Republic I suggest you spay or neuter it ’cause they get full of themselves when they reach adolescence.
        –

        1. “The best form of government is a well-run tyranny.” —The Old Man, in Friday

          Most tyrannies are not the least bit well-run…

          i would add that for any government to be good, you have to be free to LEAVE if you want to. No matter what pretensions and platitudes issue from the State, no matter how light your chains are today, if you can’t leave, you are a slave. Freedom is giving your ‘betters’ The Finger and walking out.
          ———————————
          Welfare is pay without work. In order to provide pay without work for some, others have to work without pay. We used to call that slavery. Now they call it socialism.

    1. “A Republic if you can keep it. We’re gonna keep it.”
      This so excellent. Really shows the public the stakes.

  11. “Most people want tomorrow to be a little better than today,”

    Oy! Goyim! Such meshuggas. I’m happy if today is no worse than yesterday.

    To life! To life! L’chai-im!
    L’chai-im, l’chai-im, to life!
    If you’ve been lucky, then Monday was No worse than Sunday
    was,
    Drink l’chai-im, to life.
    To life, l’chai-im!
    L’chai-im, l’chai-im, to life!
    One day it’s honey and raisin cake,
    Next day a stomach ache,
    Drink L’chai-im, to life!
    Our great men have written words of
    Wisdom to be used
    When hardship must be faced;
    Life obliges us with hardship
    So the words of wisdom
    shouldn’t go to waste.
    To us and our good fortune
    Be happy be healthy, long life!
    And if our good fortune never comes
    Here’s to whatever comes,
    Drink l’chaim, to life!
    –

    1. I love this!

      I got to see Tool perform the role in person, age 73. He rocked it. Absolutely amazing. Brought the house down when he came strolling out onto stage…. “A Fiddler on the roof! Sounds crazy, no?”

      1. Per Lin Manuel-Miranda, this is the “only” father-of-the-bride / Son-in-Law song in the Broadway canon.

        –

    2. And now I want to find a CD of Fiedler on the Roof with the Boston Pops.

      No, not the critic’s autobiography. Never heard of the person…

    3. When Democrats see Fiddler on the Roof, they think the ones carrying out the pogroms are the good guys.

  13. Well, that’s a two-earworm thread.

    Not sure what it says about my brain that it can play all the 1812, but hey, why not? I’ve played it a few times. (At least that’s long enough it didn’t finish before I read the Fiddler post.)

    If you do go round your governor’s mansion, please get real cannons? You can load ’em with wads, that’s traditional for the number, but still. Recorded cannons (except for the mental kind) just don’t do the 1812 justice. To really do it, you need the stage doors open or an outdoor performance and Army cadets standing by with cannons, ready to fire.

    Heck, you can probably get the local symphony, what’s left of it, on flatbed trucks or pickup beds to play live, so long as you can cover them from any water. Lockdowns are murdering the performing arts.

    (Between that and the restaurants I can almost write a conspiracy theory: too many bourgeoisie and hoi polloi enjoying elite entertainment, better lock it down, how dare they! The only gig I personally had this year was a Salvation Army fundraising kickoff, which . . . yeah, doesn’t exactly not lend credence to my proto-theory.)

    1. Well, according to the leaked information, that what was driving Despicable Kate Brown’s “2 week” Oregon shutdown. We weren’t staying home enough for her. Probably had to wait in line at a restaurant…

      1. Having seven people at Thanksgiving dinner carries more of a penalty than rioting, looting and arson in the Soviet State of Oregon. Meanwhile they want the same police who they are throwing under the bus to enforce their fascist diktats. Would love to see the police enforce those limits and haul away the very politicians issuing the decrees, since we know those politicians are going to completely ignore their own diktats.

    2. Modern artillery just doesn’t sound like the old black powder fieldpieces. The new howitzers have a much more controlled muzzle blast and no touchhole noise. The shock from the old guns could break windows, as Telarc discovered when they recorded 12 shots for their 1812 Overture digital-to-vinyl show piece

      1. There’s a Civil War memorial/museum in Vicksburg; you can walk the field of the Battle of Vicksburg and see pretty much what the troops saw in 1863. They also have a handful of black powder cannons they shoot occasionally; you have to check ahead to find out when the next event is.

        They also have the USS Cairo, a Union ironclad the Confederates sank in the Yazoo River 1862. The “ironclad” pictures in my school history books looked like outhouses on top of rowboats; the Cairo is a *big* sumbitch, 175 feet long and 50 feet wide. “Is” because 102 years later they raised the remains of the Cairo from the river and put them on display. When I was there it was still outdoors; they suspended the major timbers, engines, and cannon from wires and you could walk through the “ghost ship” on raised walkways. It’s indoors now; I hope it’s still displayed similarly. I was impressed by the “ghost ship” thing.

        The Vicksburg National Military Park is huge, but even if you just swoop through to see the Cairo, it’s worth the trip.

        1. The unusual-looking Monitor-class warship is indelibly linked with the word “ironclad” in the American consciousness, and the United States built considerable numbers of them in the second half of the nineteenth century. But there were other classes, even in the US Navy, and the Cairo is one of them. Monitor was about the same length as Cairo, but both ships are tiny but subsequent standards. The Fletcher-class destroyers built in World War 2 (USS Kidd – the ship used for filming in the recent movie ‘Greyhound’ – is a Fletcher-class) were about twice the length of the Cairo.

          Other navies wanted ships that could sail across the ocean (Monitor was strictly a coastal vessel), and their ironclads were essentially standard sailing ships “clad” in iron siding.

          1. The Cairo is more than half a football field long. To this inlander, that’s a pretty big vessel. I know some of them did coastal patrols, but the Cairo is basically an armored barge; it’s just a big rectangular block. And it had a crew of 250.

            For values of “inland waterways”, the Cairo was a floating fortress.

      2. Yeah, but OSHA regulations concluded the old guns posed too great a risk of hearing loss to their users and mandated changes.
        –

    4. Part of the same assumption with all the destruction of aviation both with the covidiocy and the coming green boot heel. All those smelly peasants with babies going on vacation and cluttering up our vacation spots in Paris or Australia or etc. Push costs back to requiring an entire plane of first class costs and to high class amenities. More reasons for trains, too. Just nice enough that proles won’t complain too much until the memory of cheap flights dies down and then trains will steadily become more like the city bus

  14. “Have a plan of escape/survival if things go strange

    This is 2020! How are we going to know if “things go strange”?
    –

    1. “Sir, the strangedicator is indicating .. full normal.”

      “Check the calibration on the chronoveho. And the strangedicator. At least one has to be off. We’re supposed to be in late 2020.”

  15. Anyone else notice we have not seen that “Purple America” map with red-to-blue % shading by county so far?

    Anyone want to guess what it will show?

    And why showing that map, with detailed by-county who voted which way, would Contradict The Narrative, which explains why it’s not out yet?

  16. This seems rather appropriate given that tomorrow is Thanksgiving and the current state of affairs and the lefts effort to “cancel” Thanksgiving because of their hatred of the USA

    Washington, D.C.
    October 3, 1863

    By the President of the United States of America.

    A Proclamation.

    The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.

    In testimony whereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the United States to be affixed.

    Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of October, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and of the Independence of the United States the Eighty-eighth.

    By the President: Abraham Lincoln

    William H. Seward,
    Secretary of State

    1. The onion angels have arrived to help out with the cooking.

      Yes, 2020 stinks in many ways. Yes, even nature has been cruel. But it could be worse, and we have received many blessings beyond all our deserts, too.

      Thank you, Lord. Keep helping us.

  18. Sarah, I’m sure you know where this comes from.

    “The gates of heaven are lightly locked,
    We do not guard our gold,
    Men may uproot where worlds begin,
    Or read the name of the nameless sin;
    But if he fail or if he win
    To no good man is told.

    “The men of the East may spell the stars,
    And times and triumphs mark,
    But the men signed of the cross of Christ
    Go gaily in the dark.

    “The men of the East may search the scrolls
    For sure fates and fame,
    But the men that drink the blood of God
    Go singing to their shame.

    “The wise men know what wicked things
    Are written on the sky,
    They trim sad lamps, they touch sad strings,
    Hearing the heavy purple wings,
    Where the forgotten seraph kings
    Still plot how God shall die.

    “The wise men know all evil things
    Under the twisted trees,
    Where the perverse in pleasure pine
    And men are weary of green wine
    And sick of crimson seas.

    “But you and all the kind of Christ
    Are ignorant and brave,
    And you have wars you hardly win
    And souls you hardly save.

    “I tell you naught for your comfort,
    Yea, naught for your desire,
    Save that the sky grows darker yet
    And the sea rises higher.

    “Night shall be thrice night over you,
    And heaven an iron cope.
    Do you have joy without a cause,
    Yea, faith without a hope?”

  19. Random thought. The left plans to sue gun manufacturers out of business for whatever crimes their products are used in. Can’t organizations like Black Lives Matter and Antifa (and their donors) be held liable for whatever damage they cause?

      1. Fair point, however maybe just even the threat of being held liable and carved up by rapacious trial lawyers will spook their wealthy benefactors into withdrawing all support. Funny how these Marxist revolutionaries need billionaire corporations to help fight their proletarian uprising.

        1. You’d have to go after the benefactors specifically. And that’s quite a bit trickier than the already tricky “going after Antifa” part.

        2. If it were that easy George Soros would be rotting in prison.
          Soros gives to charities that give to other charities who give to Foundations that indirectly arrange the materiel support. The trail is too tangled & diluted to hang anybody with.

  21. The ground has felt like it’s been shifting for the last four years. I deal with it by being sicker than usual and sleeping a lot. Or maybe that is why the ground is shifting for me.

    Happy Thanksgiving and exercise your right to civil disobedience by having more than five people in your home.

  23. via Powerline-Thanksgiving Day in Pictures:

    Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
    (thought I had removed the ” on the first one)

    1. But can they prove it in court?

      Election Findings Could ‘Easily’ Overturn 3 States, Data Analyst Concludes
      WASHINGTON—The former data and strategy director for President Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign says he has found enough evidence to suggest the election results could be “easily” turned to favor the current president.

      “I have no confidence that Joe Biden is the deserved winner of this election, based on our findings,” Matt Braynard said in a Nov. 25 video. “He may have won, he may not have won. Trump may have lost, Trump may have been reelected.

      “We just can’t know because of how bad this election system has operated.”

      Braynard assembled a team just days after the election to look for inconsistencies in six contested states: Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada.

      The group initially identified 1.25 million voter issues and followed up on them through phone calls and by cross-checking data against other databases.

      The team ran several major analyses including of voters who had moved out of state but still voted in the state they had left; voters who registered to vote using a post office box number rather than a residential address as required; voters who requested a mail-in ballot and sent it in, only for it not to be counted; voters who didn’t request a mail-in ballot and didn’t receive one, but discovered a vote had been cast in their name; as well as research on people who voted more than once and on those who are listed in the death index.
      [END EXCERPT]
      –

      1. This one is interesting because it shows, based on filing of “change of address” and other data, that these people officially left the jurisdiction they later cast absentee/mail-in votes in. That’s not based on speculations about the software that counted the votes, but on actual past real-world data.

        Note that I still want to see a forensic software audit of Dominion’s program Let’s start with a copy of Dominion’s software, compile the executable that was supposedly running, then take a random selection of voting equipment from both disputed and non-disputed states. and compare the compiled code that’s on them now with the code Dominion asserts should be there.

  28. IF ONLY Somebody had SAID something, somebody the MSM might have LISTENED to! Shocking News From The World Of Science:

    Study finds 84% fewer hospitalizations for patients treated with controversial drug hydroxychloroquine
    A peer-reviewed study measuring the effectiveness of a controversial drug cocktail that includes hydroxychloroquine concluded that the treatment lowered hospitalizations and mortality rates of coronavirus patients.

    The study, set to be published in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents in December, determined that “Low-dose hydroxychloroquine combined with zinc and azithromycin was an effective therapeutic approach against COVID-19.”

    A total of 141 patients diagnosed with the coronavirus were treated with the three-drug cocktail over a period of five days and compared to a control group of 377 people who tested positive for the virus but were not given the treatment.

    The study found that “the odds of hospitalisation of treated patients was 84% less than in the untreated patients,” and only one patient died from the group being treated with the drugs compared to 13 deaths in the untreated group.

    Hydroxychloroquine became a controversial issue during the height of the coronavirus pandemic when President Trump championed the drug as an effective coronavirus treatment, which immediately drew criticism from the media and several health experts.

    Twitter censored a video over the summer showing doctors touting the effectiveness of the drug.

    Additionally, a July study conducted by the Henry Ford Health System in Michigan concluded that patients taking hydroxychloroquine were more likely to survive the coronavirus.
    –

  29. I meant to post this yesterday but didn’t to the computer, and it’s too complex for the phone. So consider this my belated Thanksgiving optimism.

    Yes, there’s a possibility this all goes to buckets of blood, but I can guarantee those who see a boot stomping on a human face forever in our future are not taking into account a bazillion factors. That type of thing works in fiction.

    Actually, it didn’t work in fiction.

    There is an appendix to 1984 doing a critical examination (as in critical thinking or literary criticism, not critical theory) of Newspeak. While there is debate on this interpretation I read it the same way I read the appendix on sources to that feminist novel whose only defender around these parts is me. It is a document from after the fall of EnSoc, probably driven by free men and women who had some Galt’s Gultch ready to take over when the communists could no longer edit the future to make the five-year plan projections match production because when there is no food matching the past projections to the reality doesn’t matter.

    Thus, while it is a “we lost” scenario, 1984 does embrace the fact they can’t win because they are not in consort with objective reality.

    If we win or lose does not matter in the long run. They will never have a sustainable win, and while a world where we lose if one of “bad luck” eventually things will revert to the mean (as I fear they are about freedom right now) and return to just normal “bad luck” instead of the engineered bad luck of communism.

    Perhaps us losing and them “winning” for a time and then failing everywhere is the only way to burn out the infection of the mind that is communism. Perhaps Rand was right, and maintaining even one free society gives the parasites enough of a host to feed and survive. Only by eliminating all hosts can they be ended forever. Only after can the march to freedom resume.

    Okay, so maybe not that hopeful, but the most I’ve been in weeks.

    1. I guess this is my version of Erik Erikson’s statement, based on Christian faith, that he’s already read the ending and knows we win eventually.

      While I agree, that win is on the timeline of God, not man, and while I have faith in His Wisdom and Power, I also believe he expects me to use my meager versions of the same to do good in the interim.

  30. …aaaand, Bruce Schneier has moved from “nothing to see here, happy happy” to outright partisanship about electoral fraud.

    https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/11/undermining-democracy.html

    “When you really need to worry is when insiders go bad. And that is precisely what is happening in the wake of the 2020 presidential election. In traditional information systems, the insiders are the people who have both detailed knowledge and high level access, allowing them to bypass security measures and more effectively subvert systems. In democracy, the insiders aren’t just the officials who manage voting but also the politicians who shape what people believe about politics. For four years, Donald Trump has been trying to dismantle our shared beliefs about democracy. And now, his fellow Republicans are helping him.”

    Yep, it’s the Trumpists who hacked the election! Reeee!

    Contrast to a 2004 article, still on his web site, about just the sort of electronic voting problems that we just saw: https://www.schneier.com/essays/archives/2004/11/whats_wrong_with_ele.html though he never explained why he felt it was so important that voting systems should be computerized.

    Schneier is (now: was) one of the stud ducks of information security; he’s on the short list of people you’d hire to, say, verify the security of your voting system, or your bank fund transfers, or military information.

    No matter which way the election is called, he just lost at least half of his current and future clients. That’s a special kind of stupid.

    1. My first reaction is “what shared beliefs about democracy?”

      Second is that quite a lot of folks haven’t prepared themselves to navigate the current mess sanely. The future may see a consensus that a certain amount of forgiveness is in order for things said.

      Third, in hindsight the timeline of this exploit has some interesting implications.

      I haven’t examined the evidence my self, so will not testify that I know fraud has occurred. I’m persuaded enough that I don’t think my personally investigating is a good use of my time. I recall from allegations of fraud four exploits: 1. Voter roll insecurity. 2. Voter ID insecurity. 3. Voting machine 4. mail in.

      Desire to exploit mail in can be traced by examining talking points. This year was a new level of push. Voter roll and voter ID are long term issues, and hence have been exploited for a long time.

      If all the assertions about Dominion are true, this is both a long term, a strategic, and a relatively new exploit. Meaning, at some point, someone decided to make it happen, and worked at it diligently over time. This is something that you would accomplish by finding some security experts you could suborn, or growing some ‘security experts’. The latter is something you could do with long term access to federal funds for investment in security. You need suborned experts, so that their reputation could be used to bypass development of stringent actually secure standards for electronic voting machines.

      When was the decision made to pursue automated fraud?

      If 2000, or earlier, 2004 would have been an opportunity to use the suborned experts to pitch the machines, for first presidential exploitation in 2008.

      If Schneier in 2004 was in fact doing this, his talk in 2020 is projection, and doubling down.

      1. The ‘SmartMatic’ software Dominion and most other voting machines use was designed from the beginning to fix elections. Initially for Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, then they took their election fraud international after Chavez got sort of dead. It’s loaded with ‘features’ for changing votes and making an election come out however those in charge want it to.

        Why is it used in so many places here in the U.S.? Politicians were bribed encouraged to push for ‘modern’ computerized voting, and to put those particular systems in place. Politics as usual, in other words. Our elections have been…influenced for 25 years, only this year they had to make it blatantly obvious when Trump got far more votes than they were expecting.

        How can we ever have honest elections again? Back to paper ballots, hand counting and signed records kept at every step. Labor intensive, yes, but it spreads the job out to so many people that large-scale election fraud becomes logistically demanding. They can’t change hundreds of thousands of votes by worming just a few agents into the process.

        If there are ANY computers involved, in ANY way, they must ALL be open-source, hardware and software. Raspberry Pi, Linux and LibreOffice, or similar.
        ———————————
        People can make stupid mistakes, but only the government can force everybody to make the SAME stupid mistakes.

      2. Oh, yeah, if our ‘shared beliefs about democracy’ are that our elections are fair and honest, when they are NOT, then ‘dismantling our shared beliefs’ is not only necessary, but patriotic.

    2. Also notice that a bit farther down he declares the Republicans are doomed demographically. Right after Trump won more of the minority vote than the party has in decades.

  31. Hmmmmmmmm …

    ‘Historically strange’ spike in incomplete Nevada voter files, casinos as ‘home’
    An analysis of Nevada votes has uncovered an unprecedented jump in problem voter registrations, likely providing the Trump campaign with another avenue to challenge Joe Biden’s victory in the critical state.

    In an affidavit filed in another Republican election challenge, a “data scientist” found a huge surge of incomplete voter registrations and those giving casinos and temporary RV parks as “their home or mailing addresses” in the Third Congressional District that covers the southern third of the state and much of Clark County.

    The expert, Dorothy Morgan, said that in her initial study of the records of those who voted, there was an “historically strange” jump in voter registrations missing the sex and age of the voter, making confirmation by poll workers impossible.

    She found that in the last presidential election, there were 68 voter registrations missing the critical data. In 2020, it was 13,372.

    What’s more, 74% of the incomplete registrations took place between July and September this year.

    In her two-page affidavit, provided to Secrets, Morgan wrote, “This investigation found over 13K voters whose voter registration information revealed no sex or date of birth. Not only does this mean we cannot verify whether these voters are old enough to vote, it is also historically strange: While one does not expect voter registration information to be perfect, it is very strange that there were very, very few of these kinds of imperfect records with missing or invalid information until this year – when there are 13,372 of them.”

    Several addresses were odd too, she wrote.

    “I have also identified dozens of voters who listed as their home or mailing addresses a temporary RV park and casino,” she wrote.

    In a Thanksgiving Day interview from her Texas home, Morgan said, “it’s weird. So what I found was that there are just a lot of people who have zero birthdays, zero birth month, and then unknown sex.”
    [END EXCERPT]

    Wallabies Obserwations: I had unknown sex once; it was very unsatisfactory. I do not recommend it.
    –

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