Everything All the Time

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

So this week is special, and I think we’re going to have an ultra special Wednesday Vignettes and Promo.

I’m so sorry, but we’re making a last ditch push to find a home in intended landing place. If we can’t…. If we can’t we’ll start search elsewhere. (Yes, Doug, Matthew, Emily I know. I might come to you sometime next weekend, though looking that far away will be special. This far away is killing me.)

This is why we didn’t have a second post yesterday, as I got sucked down the rabbit hole of “we must go down again” then making a list of prospects.

And so – that’s what’s happening. I thought I might have time to put the promo up before we hit the road, but mistakes were made, I was insufficiently caffeinated, I was never there, and besides I was led astray by evil companions.

And now I seal the laptop in the briefcase, and we hit the road.

See you on the other side. Wish us luck, and pray for us.

141 thoughts on “Everything All the Time”

  1. Nothing worse than insufficient caffenation: Don’t you know you could go blind!?!

  2. You’ll always be welcome in Texas, whichever region you choose. Seems to be quite a few Huns in the northern section, but we’re scattered throughout the state. And we all are welcoming with a hot strong cup of coffee.

    1. Hush. They’re all clever ploys to sell more bookses. Because buying said books through the free market also promotes capitalism. And reading said books in public places where people might ask you what you’re reading provides publicity. And inside said books might be subtle and faint traces of red-blooded Americanism, clothed cleverly in the trappings of good fiction.

      But of course we don’t speak of such things, because its supposed to implied. Or so I am told by people who are not deaf to hints, that is. *grin*

      1. More graceful than skipping rope.

        (Seriously, it’s fine. Most people aren’t natural born salesmen, you are operating within socially-normal parameters.)

  5. Good luck – and don’t write off Texas, entirely! The Hill Country is beautiful, small-town friendly, close to a lot of us Texas Huns. And I’m a tea drinker myself, but the Daughter Unit can provide the coffee!

    1. Concur! The near-environs of Austin and San Antonio have gotten suddenly expensive, but if you draw an arc representing a 45-minute drive time to Costco, the prices seem to drop precipitously. You have to hurry, though, before they build more Costcos and the cycle starts anew.

      Seriously, though, anywhere 25 miles to either side of U.S. 281, from Lampassas to Bulverde, you’re likely to find something decent and not *too* far from an airport. (Except for Dripping Springs–it’s overrun and posh.)

        1. As corrupt as the Austin City Council is, there is a world of difference between the blueberry in a bowl of tomato soup and the Portland Metro that ate the entire state. Trust me on that one.

          Still, there’s a reason I drew a line 25 miles east of US 281.

          1. Oh, the rest of Oregon is trying to be inedible, though they have the votes, by crook or by crookeder. We’re pretty cranky old bastiges, and Despicable Kate Brown has finally figured out she can’t run all of our lives. For the while, anyway.

            OTOH, I don’t recommend the flyover counties in Oregon as a place for those insufficiently tolerant of insufficient oxygen. ‘Sides, Winter is our best defense against the west siders and coastal Cali-f’n-ornians.

            1. Yeah, but your land use regulations are still determined at meetings of the City Club of Portland.

              1. If Democrats get their way, they will be decided by unelected activists in Washington DC.

      2. One of the ladies at the Pioneer museum in Fredericksburg said that property prices have more than doubled since 2019. Escaping Austinites and others. And the tax appraisers have gotten even worse (one young [individual] insisted that the Port-A-John a contractor had brought onto her property was a second house. Because that’s what out house means, right? So he kept insisting that there was a second residential building that she was hiding. *facepaw*]

    2. Yup. Hill Country has good people in it. Far enough from the border that you don’t get Arkansas drivers, far enough from Austin not to be infected by its weirdness, close enough to urban necessities like hospitals and the like- but not too close.

      If I ever leave Appalachia, Canyon Lake is on the list.

    3. I loved the hill country when I visited the area in early 2020. Still have a couple of unopened bottles of Texas bourbon I need to get to. However, it is a bit far for our planned migration from the purple.

    1. When Sarah hits it, it doesn’t dare to do anything. 😈

    1. DFW although large is quite friendly! We have all kinds of communities in the Metroplex. Consider Dallas and Fort Worth two ends of the spectrum. they’re quite different. There are many jobs here although we can’t promise particular jobs. Working remotely is the new trend in the IT field. Texas has more writers than you’d believe resident.

  14. Prayers are outbound.

    And much as I’d love to say “come to Pennsylvania!”… Filthydelphia, Pittsburgh, and those tyrant in Harrisburg are rapidly ruining the state for us Freedom-minded folks.

  15. And now for something completely different…

    Does anybody remember a horror story I read probably 40 years ago? It goes like this:

    A young man became acquainted with a rich old man, who said he had no heirs or relatives and needed somebody to inherit his fortune. They reached an agreement, spent a couple of weeks making preparations including some medical exams, which he found a bit strange. Finally they signed the last papers and had a drink to celebrate. Suddenly the young guy felt dizzy, everything went dark…

    …and woke up the next morning trapped in the old man’s decrepit body. The drink had been some sort of alchemical potion that switched them. Of course, nobody believed a word he said; “The old buzzard’s gone daft!”

    I don’t remember the title, or the author. I thought it might have been written by Edgar Allan Poe, but a check on Wikipedia didn’t turn up anything like it.

    I’m tinkering with something that might wind up in tomorrow’s Vignettes, or a future one, and identifying that story would help.

    1. Huh. I’m drawing a blank on the story, but that’s more or less the plot of the film The Skeleton Key 😀 (Which I love for being a wonderfully done scary movie just dripping with Southern Gothic atmosphere, but also hate the ending. But then, I hate most endings in horror stories.)

      1. I’ve learned to enjoy horror, but only if the good guys win. Things like The Ring, where they only stave off their own personal destruction, not so much. The evil must be destroyed and others saved, otherwise, what is the point?

          1. Or no one winning – some Stephen King comes to mind, and of course there’s Lovecraft. Surviving with your mind intact is a major win in some Lovecraft.

            1. King’s The Stand (version 1.0–never read 2.0) had the good guys winning when the Big Bad was nuked in Las Vegas.

              I read a bunch of King in the ’70s and early ’80s until I worked on an MSEE for 4 years. That sucked up all my reading ambition, and when it came back, King wasn’t in the picture. A lot of that got culled in earlier efforts. Until this last one, I had 5-6 of his books, none of which had been touched in decades.

              A quick review of the remaining showed that the only win for the good guys (Salem’s Lot) wasn’t definitive, though the vampires were on the run. Meh. I prefer the good guys to win, so those books just hit the donation box.

              Hmm, all my HP Lovecraft is long gone. They were paperback to begin with, and those books would have been 50 years old now. I can see an eBook of his short stories.

              2. The original version of The Stand book, and the first miniseries (the four part 1 first done for TV) were both quite good. The subsequent versions are basic woketastraphies.

        2. yeah, most horror has the good guys losing in some fashion. Including Skeleton Key–it’s one of the few that gets a pass in my book because it is otherwise so very, very well done. (And I do like to headcanon that she and the young man who was the male victim figured out how to either reverse the process, or somehow beat the villains at their game, even trapped in the bodies of disabled elderly people–because humans are just awesome that way.)

        3. Others saved, I mostly agree.
          The evil destroyed?
          Not so much.
          Evil exists, and will continue to exist. All successes against it are temporary.
          But temporarily staving it off remains laudable.
          And dark colors work naturally to frame and highlight the bright.

          If Superman rescues an orphan, it doesn’t matter. That’s his gig.
          If a vagrant addict puts himself at risk to save one, that’s got weight. That’s got power. And he might even indirectly save himself because of it.

          Or if you’d like to put it another way, of all the many books I read as a youth, I have a hard time coming up with a more heroic figure than the nonfictional Brother Andrew from God’s Smuggler.
          A guy and his largely bootstrapped organization smuggling Bibles behind the Iron Curtain, with nearly all Earthly Powers actively opposing his efforts, and torture and death real possibilities if caught.
          That’s not horror, only because it was real.

    2. Forgot to add the maybe-helpful bit: maybe it was a story by Sheridan leFanu or M.R. James? That plot sounds up their alley, but only if it’s Victorian era.

      1. As I recall, it was set in the late 19th or early 20th century. I’ve turned up a couple of movies with similar plots, including a Tales From The Crypt episode, but I’m looking for the original story.

        1. Much thumping around, I still haven’t found it. And I don’t think it’s any of those cited here:

          http://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/identity_transfer
          sf-encyclopedia DOT com/entry/identity_exchange

          So now I’m reminded of a wonderful old film that I’ve seen, but cannot locate: Wealthy geezer dies. All his grasping relatives come to his mansion for the reading of the will, which ambiguously says that his fortune belongs to whoever can locate it. After numerous suspicious deaths, only one is left. That one decides that since the fortune is not elsewhere, it must be hidden in the geezer’s burial crypt. He crawls inside, finds himself trapped, and is regaled with a… letter? recording?? from the late geezer, informing him that he is now being punished as he richly deserves. — My brain INSISTS that the last survivor was played by Roddy McDowall, but no such film is listed in his known credits, at least that rings the bell. (So if it ain’t him, it’s someone remarkably similar.) My brain also wants the geezer to sound like Vincent Price. (Ditto.)

          It is NOT the film where everyone wears full-disguise masks, and removes them during the end credits (what’s the name of that one? I’ve seen it, and it’s famous, but I cannot keep the name in my head.)

          There, now we have LOTS of nifty stories to be unable to remember!!

          1. I remember that one! Roddy McDowall played a really nasty, greedy…nephew? A suit was delivered for the old coot, Roddy went, “Well, at least I’m going to get a good suit out of this,” and put it on.

            The suit was made out of a ‘special’ fabric that shrunk when it warmed up. The nephew died quite messily.

            Don’t remember who all else was in it, though. Or the title.

            Now you’ve gone and reminded me of the ‘Abominable Doctor Phibes’ movies.

            1. Ah, Dr. Phibes… clever bastard…

              Do you mean the masks movie? That one had all sorts of weirdness, tho I don’t remember the shrinking suit. Tho I don’t think I’ve ever seen the whole thing, just caught bits, and the end. No recollection who’s in it.

              The one that totally evades identity, tho, Roddy (or whoever it is that’s got him stuck in my head) is the last survivor of the dozen or so that start, and presumably dies in the burial crypt (when last we see him, he’s still alive, but trapped with no escape).

              It is not Ten Little Indians/And Then There Were None.

              And now I’ve gone and reminded myself of two other films I’ve seen most of but never complete… The Spy Who Came In From the Cold, and The Shout.

              Oh, and Alice to Nowhere.

              …which is not available on DVD nor via the usual low places, but a couple years ago someone had the official VHS on eBay… for $18 shipped, or best offer. You do not know what you have, lad… offered him $12, and he took it. But haven’t got around to figuring out how to copy the durn thing to digital (I do have a good VHS deck).

    3. I know the story; I read it in school (meaning it was already old in the 1960s). Brain-sludge thinks it’s from the 1800s. I’m pretty sure it was made into an Original Twilight Zone as well. Can’t get search engines to spit up anything remotely relevant. Grrrr…

        1. Three. I remember the story too. Unfortunately, body switching is enormously popular in fiction (even RAH did a novel, although it wasn’t a two way switch).

          1. He also did a short-short “Successful Operation”. I’ve got it in the Expanded Universe collection (circa 1980, “The New Worlds of RAH”. That was a two-way (apparently), written as a freebie for some fanzine at the start of his pro career.

              1. He wasn’t exactly proud of the piece, instead using it as a very good reason for a writer to learn to say No!!!!!!!.

                I don’t believe it was in the original edition of Worlds of RAH.

                2. Ah. The “New Worlds” collection – found it, and realized why I promptly forgot that RAH had anything to do with it. Which probably gave the Lieutenant some small pleasure, wherever he is currently stationed. I think that this might be the first time he used the “Lyle Monroe” pen name. (Poor schmuck, his name got attached to a lot of the stories that RAH really didn’t want to send anywhere – but needed a few fins towards that pesky mortgage.)

    4. I don’t recognize the story off the top of my head, but the plot sounds like it could be an early Lovecraft.

    6. I’ve forgotten the author (Harlan Ellison?) Called “Mr Moioichi” about a Russian ? Immigrant / fell off the boat in the 50s ? who lost his glasses, was blind without them, spoke no English and was committed to a mental hospital. When it was being closed in the 70s an emigre nurse recognized him as Russian, got him glasses, and in contact with the Russian embassy.
      He asked them about the NKVD, they told him “gone” He asked what it is called now? They said KGB.
      He said same difference, I will stay here.
      He walked out of the hospital, ran into some srteet punks who knocked off his glasses, and the because his cries of Moi Oichi wete so plaintive, killed him.
      I don’t know why I recalled that, or why I wrote it here.
      Good luck on the house search.
      John in Indy

        1. Insomnia observation of the day:

          I’m reminded of the ‘PRC is crime free’ push by the attempt by that author to push ‘USSR is crime free’.

          Thing is, organized crime is better placed than many police organizations to know about crime. Because of making money from crime, versus receiving funding for convincing people that crime is being fought.

          Criminal organizations compete against, and fight criminal organizations. This means maybe survivor bias towards at least semi-functional organizations.

          Whereas police organizations can be quite dysfunctional. Especially if dumbass politicians /want/ to make them worse.

          What the PRC and the USSR have done with obvious crime, is be more effective at controlling the appearance in certain locations, because a criminal syndicate runs the country, and has organs of state power to make sure all other criminal organizations at least pretend to be subsidiaries.

          Anyway, I don’t have a coherent summary of what I am trying to argue with this. Both the US crime situation, and the communist crime situations are messier than I make them sound.

  18. Good Luck finding the perfect location and house. Be careful on the road. Know you aren’t heading our way. I know Oregon has gone loopy, but I can’t let her go.

      1. I seem to remember a nugget in a story, a man had a terrible heart condition, which as only alleviated by living on top of a mountain. His wife had asthma, the killing kind and she couldn’t stand the altitude. They looked at each other some times through binoculars.
        I think it was Glory Road?

        1. Definitely Heinlein, but I think it was Lazarus Long in “Time Enough for Love” speaking.

          1. Yes, I believe that was something that Lazarus Long said in “Time Enough for Love”.

  19. May Himself bless and keep ye and yours on your trip and beyond. May the roads be safe, the weather kind, and the radio stations not too obnoxious. May you find what you seek, and may there be joy in the finding. Be well and look after each other. Another chapter in life awaits.

  21. I know it’s not everyone’s cup of Labrador tea but I’m still delighted that I/we moved up here to the top of the world over 55 years ago.

    I’ve traveled, enjoyed, much of the 48 contiguous states, many countries in the Ring Of Fire, the Pacific Rim, a wee bit in Europe but never found anywhere I’d rather live than right here.

    Of course we have our crazies, probably more per capita than the lower forty eight (Hey it’s the end of the road, they get here, they’re stuck here!) but with a population density of 1.3 people per square mile there’s room for them to do their thing without messing up my thing(s).

    Speaking of crazies; reason we came here, was to raise the kids in an environment like the south Florida where I grew up in the forties and fifties. I could go into a long explanation of the logic but if you think about 1.3 people per square mile I suspect you understand what I mean.

    Wishing you great luck in your home hunting, Sarah, hope you find the place that suites you as well as the top of the world suites me!

  22. Good Luck and Good Hunting, here’s praying you find something suitable. I know you aren’t headed this way, the Northeast is truly FUBAR but for New Hampshire, and they seem to be losing the battle due to the influx of folks from the other parts of New England plus NYC. Darn shame, anywhere along the Appalachians (and the White Green and Presidential ranges are kind of part of that) you could get mountain views and feel without going too much above 2500′ keeping the air pressure more suitable.
    As a severe asthmatic when I went to Yellowstone (6-8K’) I was working hard the whole time to get enough air a problem that is much less intrusive here 90-100′ above mean sea level. In the “mountains” in New Hampshire and Vermont the breathing seems to present me with little issue.

  23. I’d invite you to join us in Idaho, but this is definitely not low altitude… good luck in your mission.

  24. Have fun with your evil companions– I found that the best adventures happen that way. Good luck and Good vibes for finding a place to land. Hugs

  27. Everybody is moving to Tennessee. The kids (and grandkid) moved there in May. Did you know that Zillow has a feature called “travel times”? You put in two locations and every time you look at a house or lot it tells you how far you from those two locations. So we put in the kids new address and then Nashville International airport because we want to be less than 45 minutes from the kids and less than an hour from the airport. Aaaand there’s a very nice lot 38 minutes from the kids and less than an hour from the airport. So we bought it! 10 minutes from the town of Dickson, which has everything we need. It’s very pretty there, the taxes are way low and you can be our neighbor.

  28. They’re emptying out the cities, driving real estate prices into the ground. Be reeeal interesting to see who buys it all up. I hope they outsmart themselves, and get stuck with tons of worthless property as information-based businesses get dispersed to home shops.

      2. Seriously, I have of late been wondering who profits, with crashing real estate values in failing cities; is there some long-term thinker, or group of thinkers, snapping up urban real estate in certain locations, thinking to make a profit, in a couple of decades, when the city revives … if it does, of course.

        1. The weird thing is that what was getting built in Boston until recently was high end. Concierge at the entrance available into early evening, Rents in the 3-7k/month range. Very little of it was condos so no buying it. Gated/deeded parking under /in the buildings (anything new had to have a fair bit of parking or they wouldn’t let you build). Not sure what the occupancy rate was, but the local realtors felt they had heavily overbuilt in 2018 and 2019. And then everybody headed for the hills in 2020. Huge influx in places like Windsor VT and similar hoity toity sections with decent internet in the 2020 lockdowns. Almost all NY(C) and and environs plus Boston/Cambridge/Allston/Brighton.

        2. I don’t know about that–the Curley Strategy is a real thing that politicians do, and does not generally result in investors snapping up undervalued property (at least not on any reasonable timeline). Creating a political jurisdiction populated by large numbers of powerless people is a very successful strategy for gaining power in a federated state.

        3. In Denver there is a pattern. Crash the city, buddies buy up, rinse and repeat. But they’re not good with change and I’m betting telecommuting sucker punches them

        4. In 2008, the government did it’s best to prop up the housing market, despite the fact that there was an obvious bubble at work (note – I don’t own a home, so the thought of the market in a freefall correction wouldn’t affect me as much as it would many of you). If you’re curious who might be interested in messing with housing prices, the list of those who made off like bandits as a result of government largesse in 2008-9 might be a good place to start.

    2. I’m kind of wondering what’s going to happen to the values of a lot of these coastal apartment houses after the Miami collapse. What inspection service worth their liability insurance is going to say “everything’s fine, no repairs needed.”

      1. And what landlord with a functional brain cell, who’s not being allowed to collect rent or evict, is going to do anything besides default on the mortgage, close down the building, and walk away?

        1. Or donate it to the city, in lieu of taxes, and take the writeoff. Better than the liability. Holy moly this got scary

  29. Good Luck and Good Fortune.
    To you, someone that says a lot of what I am thinking and provides new angles to view issues.

  30. As a sort of “forlorn hope”, North Central Texas has a lot to recommend it. Good restaurants, good roads, good airports, good air conditioning…

    1. Here’s another vote for North Texas although we are about halfway from Dallas to Texarkana.

  31. Kill it, bring it back to the cave, cook it, eat it. This is hunting success and I wish you mountains of it.

    Prayers that you’ll look up one day and see Himself whispering “I’ve come for you, follow me and I’ll show you where to go.”

    1. *dry, bored tone* Oh goody. That’s going to work soooo well. He really does have the [rude word in several languages] Touch, doesn’t he? *end dry, bored tone*

      1. And Cuomo takes the lead in the crap-midas derby from the previous leader B. Obama . Given the previous leader is unlikely to come back (explicitly) to challenge the new leader this one may go down in the record books…

      2. It is not intended to “work”. It is intended as another power grab, this time with the direct intent to disarm law-abiding citizens so that they will become prey for the criminals in the left’s campaign of “forced wealth redistribution” and to prevent the populace from resisting the Democrats’ efforts to impose a single party tyrannical rule. Everything else is just window-dressing.

    2. May ahve been the longer term strategy with New York from the beginning.

  36. Guys, I think the left may have a point about comparing Trump to Hitler.

    To the right, and some moderates, Hitler was a wasteful mass murderer, a thieving lunatic who used the state to rob and control private organizations, a force for socialized medicine, and someone who saw individuals as resources to be managed by his state.

    To the left, they only thing Hitler did wrong was get in Stalin’s way. Since the left was, for all that time, planning another attempt at making a US Stalin, Trump interfering in that made him Hitler in every meaningful way for them.

        1. It’s purely an accident of filtering if my statements here appear largely sound.

          Cause my experiences right now are a mix of pain, fear, stress, “have to do X, have not, and am therefore a horrible human”, “Ooh, kung fu wizards, neat”, and “Coool, I really like the idea of doing Y”. A bit distant from the state that I expect to produce my best and sanest work.

          Okay, sometimes desperation and a lack of internal inhibitions produce ideas I would have struggled to produce normally. Sometimes that is keeping ideas that I would discard instantly if I were thinking clearly.

          There’s a lot of incoherent pointless babbling being filtered out of what I say here, which is part of some of the silent periods.

          1. I think I speak for most … we like Bob, and welcome him as part of our community.

            And it is scary when you make so much sense — demonstrates how crazy the world is becoming!

            😉

      2. Bob hasn’t changed; it’s the world that’s gone bonkers.

        “Make it stoooooopp!!”

    2. For the modern left, that would purely be a coincidence. The modern left tends to ignore the fact that it once worshipped Uncle Joe. Hitler’s great crime nowadays is that he was a NAZI! And, as everyone knows, Nazis are those bad guys who did bad guy stuff and were supported and propped up by a bunch of big German corporations.

      1. Question is, what generation is calling the shots on the centralized messaging of the left?

        Some of the other decisions can be nailed down as made by at least one of a few people, many of them quite old. And even Obama seems to be old enough to be a Stalin worshiper.

        Plus, Anti-Fa had enough understanding of history to know that they were mad at the Nazis for beating them in the street gang fights.

    3. Actually the other thing the left can’t forgive Hitler for is failing to complete the global genocide of Jews.

  37. Good hunting, and I hope you have a large coffee thermos with you. Life goes on.

  38. If the Plan/Scam Pandemic has not taught us patience
    yet then perhaps we have not been learning like we should and need more practice.
    Be safe and healthy.

  41. It has just occurred to me that you are echoing Heinlein who also had to leave Colorado for health reasons. Unfortunately when he left California was an option which is no longer true.

  42. My brother lives just north of Bulverde. Nice place, but can still see too many neighbors from your house for my tastes. Of course I’m odd. I like to live in places where I can shoot in any direction and not worry about hitting anyone.

    2. My God – the kaiju are evolving to be CUTER! How can humanity survive when their destroyers are too adorable to even fight back against?

  44. On my mental soundtrack today:

    THE SOUND IS MADE FROM STEEL!
    BOUND FOR PRIDE AND VICTORY
    THE LAW OF RIGHT AND WRONG!

    1. And our own crap for brains legislators are slow rolling/impeding the next generation of land based missiles. Most of those went into the ground when I was in middle school and I’m 60. The Ohio class subs are getting long in the tooth, and the D5’s in them are from Carter/Reagan/Bush the Elder era. And of course who knows the states of the W80 and other warheads as there are parts of them (lithium 6 Deuteride to be specific) that probably could use some refreshing due to half lives of the components. 140 fricking silos with missiles at 10 warheads apiece (thank you Bill Clinton for letting MIRV technology go to China). Whether they build missiles for all of them or whether some of those are bait isn’t clear. Heavens to Betsy what a mess.

      1. At least we can troll people by telling them that if they are not eager to shoot their way out of the Biden regime, they are actively /wanting/ to die in nuclear fire.

        Sad to say, I can’t think of anyone who would let me say that to them, that deserves to have it said to them. Or is that a happy thought?

      2. Gatestone has more on this with regards to the CCP build up and the clear signals as to intent to take aggressive action. It appears that India and not Taiwan could be their first target.

        1. Hmmm interesting. Their existing nuclear forces are roughly on a par with India’s. With a massive growth in their forces it makes a decapitating first strike by India out of reach, and leaves china with the ability to threaten a nuclear attack. Given China’s luck against India with in conventional forces (i.e. getting their backsides whooped) it might be a strategy for a quick conventional thrust with the escalation to nuclear held as reinforcement of sorts to limit India’s ground response ? Seems like a long shot, and if that were the main focus they wouldn’t be adding the 9000+ NM DF-41, those are going to be very expensive compared to an MRBM to use against Taiwan or India.

    2. Winning nuclear wars is a thing that can be very physically possible.

      The Biden regime is most likely going to be the most favorable circumstances for some time, if the PRC feels it must carry out an exchange.

      A gas is a germ is a nuke. Leaving aside the electoral manipulation, that may mean that an exchange is no longer avoidable.

      Keep in mind, PRC understanding of US public opinion is probably no better than that of US politicians.

      Also, this may be intended for PRC internal consumption, or to shore up the Biden regime. We should not assume that the PRC are rational actors.

      1. BobtheRegisteredFool said
        “Winning nuclear wars is a thing that can be very physically possible”
        Depends on what your idea of winning is and who you’re fighting with. A first strike has to be VERY nearly complete, or some retaliation is coming at you. It has to go nearly perfectly. Doing it to the US is VERY hard due to the triad and the depth of our forces, Missiles can get our missiles (450 Minuteman III with up to 3 warheads apiece) and the Bomber bases (only a couple now with a limited number of B-2 and B-1, the B-52 probably wouldn’t stand a chance against China’s Air defense unless the use stand off weapons). However, unless China has something impressive up their sleeve that still leaves 7 Trident class submarines of the pacific fleet (Atlantic fleet are unlikely to have range, but could be moved). That’s 20 D5 Tridents with up to 10 warheads each and I’d bet money the retaliatory SIOP for an attack of that sort is nearly pure counter value. On top of that these are long range missiles, they’d be seen coming. China has VERY limited SSBN capacity and it likely isn’t counter force accurate so you can’t play games with a depressed trajectory shot from a sub and get real short response times (10 minutes). And I doubt that any of the 6 Chinese SSBN are in the Atlantic like they’d need to be for a decapitation strike at D.C.. If they got up in the north pacific they could go after the minuteman fields, but they only have 72 warheads for 450 targets and it is near the limit of their range. Question is have the Chinese done this calculus? Or are they hoping to hold cities hostage via nuclear threat while they try to make Taiwan and other Asian targets theirs? Or are they just having a nuclear pissing contest as they think we might not respond? on that they might be correct as the USAF and USN waste time with CRT and other nonsense.

        1. Xi might be a crazy nihilist.

          Launching on the US, while losing power domestically, might be something he would prefer compared to having more Chinese survive the end of his rule.

          Now, what I have previously outlined was saner than that.

          Xi’s regime is not sane.

          Biden’s regime is not sane.

          We do not actually know what the relationship between the regimes is, or what Xi’s security services are telling him about US capabilities.

          Anyway, my most recent conspiracy theory is about systemd. I’ve noticed that two of the developers are in Germany, so I now suspect that Red Hat is sponsoring a Merkel information operation, possibly at the behest of the PRC.

          1. Man I do not like that first one… Bob is making sense again, to reach to a long ago tyrant “Apre Moi, le deluge” (sorry couldn’t figure out how to get the accent on). Yup that’s what makes things scary two idiots with big egos interacting and one of them has the intellect of a rotten rutabaga.

            As for linux stuff in Germany that’s been there a while. A major factor on that is Denx (http://www.denx.de/en/News/WebHome) company of Wolfgang Denk one (if not the major) creator of Uboot. Wolfgang is a GPL V3 lover and nearly as ardent as Richard Stallman about open software. Don’t know his politics, but those types tend to be paranoid of ALL government of ANY sort, but stopping “badthink” might trump (so to speak) that. Systemd is slightly better than what it replaced but it can really be a nightmare to figure out…

            1. “If systemd is the solution, I want my problem back.”

              The program (program suite) is huge. It’s a festering security fail, with a sprawling attack interface connected directly to the guts of the operating system. The documentation is… no worse than any other Linux documentation, which means “abysmal.”

              Sure, some newbie “remote admin” types might find systemd simpler than the traditional array of random programs used by admins, but it’s not like there weren’t text or GUI shells that put a happy face over them. Some fo those traditional programs go back more than forty years; that’s forty years of polishing, debugging, and security audits that systemd can’t match.

              Meanwhile, as distributions adopt systemd for no sane reason they can express, everyone *else* – all of the experienced sysadmins and users – have to deal with the mess of sysadmin as the traditional tools are “deprecated” and removed… because sysadmin uber alles.

  46. I have also been househunting; I’m in the greater Cleveland area, looking for a house closer to family (some are in need of care). Very depressing, for the most part – either quite small, or in not-great locations, or fixer-uppers.
    But, a few possibles.

  47. Life in the fast lane, uh huh.

    Now I got that in my head. Yesterday it was “Goodbye yellow brick road ..”

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