Roll Left And Die

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Years ago I wrote a post, I think at PJM — or at least I can’t find it here — about the process of “roll left and die” that magazines and book companies went through before utter collapse.

Over the years this became synonymous with Get Woke, Go Broke, but it was not actually in any way the same thing. Though sometimes, one might look like the other in end stages, which is the intention.

Confused? Don’t be. Let me describe the process of roll over and die, first in metaphor, then in a magazine.

Imagine that you have a fatal disease. It’s not a question of whether you’ll die, it’s when. And it’s not a matter of months or years, but days and weeks. Your affairs are kind of a mess. But if in your dying days, you convert, or make a profession of faith, or talk about how you’ve seen the light, or whatever your particular community values, your widow and orphans will fall in the soft and be taken care of in the best style. What do you do? Well, obviously you do the thing that will see your people to a good place when you’re gone.

Magazines — and other companies — aren’t people. Which means that they are both more and less subjected to this rule. The magazine, of itself, has no feelings of course. But the people running it are the windows and orphans, and they surely want to be taken care of.

So, a magazine that’s about to fail, no way to save itself, will often go extreme, hard all zonker left. And when it dies, the industry, which is generally left but usually more reserved (used to be more or less under cover) will go “Well, they failed, because they went left too hard too far, but what heroes of socialism” and the editor/publisher/etc. will find positions almost immediately.

This used to so reliable that from 1990 to 2010 I watched some people kill magazine after magazine, and be handed a new one (financing for a new one) to kill.

Of course the reason the magazine had died wasn’t that final spasm of socialism. It was that more enjoyment could be derived by reading mattress tags than by reading the magazine. But that last final spasm made it look to people who believed in the same fallen godling that the reason the magazine had failed was because the public wasn’t ready to accept their superior socialist wisdom. They made it look like go woke go broke, in order to cover the fact they sucked as editors and possibly money managers. And so, the survivors fell in the soft.

The strategy started failing in the nineties, because all of them were doing the roll left to die, then floating belly up waiting for rescue, but there weren’t enough people to rescue them. A lot of editors with a long kill list retired early 2ks to spend more time with the family they don’t have.

But they still try it. I still see it. I suspect half of the trad publishers are doing it now.

Because it’s an ingrained instinct by now, and because their creed doesn’t allow them to realize they’re all failing.

I never thought I would see this with “real companies” meaning not publishing or entertainment.

But I’ve started seeing it too. Companies’ stock gets wobbly and suddenly they’re doing ads with pregnant men or something. Because then when they die, they die as heroes of the revolution. (Insert disgusting commie fist.)

I’m 90% percent sure that’s what paypal has done. There were… danger signs before and there are some weird indications in their records, though it would take an expert to analyze them and I’m not that.

But the only “isn’t eating meth with a candy scoop” explanation I have for them initiating a bank run on themselves, and making themselves thoroughly untrustworthy forever is that they knew something was very wrong and likely to take them down, and did what they did to go out as heroes of the socialist revolution, or pure innocent victims of “right wing fanatics.”

Perhaps they’re afraid a changing of the guard will lead to people investigating how money was transferred for pallets of bricks in the middle of targeted streets, or paying for antifa street theater, or worse, for “vote aggregators” in 2020. If that’s what triggered it, we’re going to see a lot of crazy barreling towards us in the next month, and more if the guard does change and fraud doesn’t win.

Alternately, of course, they’re doing meth by the bucket load. Which is possible.

But since I suspect there’s at least some people there who aren’t as stoned as Jack Dorsey looks, I expect it’s Roll Left And Die.

And like the publishers in the nineties and oughts they haven’t realized that no matter how they signal, the rest of their community is also in deep trouble, and there will be no one standing by with blankets and hot chocolate, to comfort them after their fall “for the revolution.”

So, that’s going to be interesting. Even more interesting, if a bunch of the other “internet” companies follow suit. And by interesting, I mean in the sense of a Chinese curse.

It’s jut the hammer we need smashing into the economy at this time, innit?

Which…. now I think about it. Oh, h*ll. Is the Junta doing the “roll left and die” as well? Are a bunch of the western governments?

…. That’s it. I’m not going to sleep for the next year or so.

At least I’ll write a lot of books in all that time.

… They might be hallucinatory.

232 thoughts on “Roll Left And Die”

  1. Data point: I haven’t canceled my PayPal account yet (it’s on the list, never fear), but for approximately the last week I’ve been getting increasingly desperate-sounding ads from PayPal along the lines of “Buy (item I looked at) from (website I visited) with PayPal for 900 billion percent off!”. Normally I’d dismiss this as typical sleazy Internet spying behavior, but there are a LOT of them, all at once. Presumably they’ve had access to this data all along, so why now?

    If your theory is correct, this flurry of activity may be their buddies who work for client companies attempting to bail them out.

    3. Day before yesterday, PayPal announced they were moving to a fancy office building in Austin. Isn’t ‘Move to palatial new headquarters and die’ also a thing?
      ———————————
      There are forms of stupidity that businesses can’t indulge in. There are no such limitations on the stupidity of government.

      1. It’s one of Parkinson’s laws, when a company moves into posh offices, sell. It’s a sign that management is focusing on themselves, not the customer or shareholders.

      2. It is, they build a new big fancy office building, embezzle millions during the construction, decorate it with all the nice furniture and artwork, and all of the high tech toys you want, which you then take home. When the bills come due, declare bankruptcy and walk away.

      3. The US won every war for over 150 years with the military working out of everything from tents and Quonset huts to condemned buildings. Then they built the Pentagon.

        1. …and renamed the War Department. Today’s ‘Department Of Defense’ is mostly devoted to defending their cushy jobs and budgets.

          Heads should have rolled for the blunders in Afghanistan. Literally, in some cases.
          ———————————
          Negotiating with an enemy that can’t be trusted is just plain stupid.

  2. Dying so roll left most of the time.

    Once an organization is run by managers rather than owners it begins to die,

    1. There’s a lot of truth to that. Hired hand management must be watched like a hawk…especially in large corporations with significant amounts of stock being voted by proxy. That sort of thing is very vulnerable to having the hired managers being able to control enough votes to let them loot the till without hindrance.

      1. Yep…The hired hands rarely have skin in the game, as in significant stock holdings, so they’re often more interested in furthering their careers than the company’s welfare…And modern management has been trained to regard the employees as an unfortunate necessity, to be dispensed with as soon as possible…

        1. The Reader notes that a long time ago in a galaxy now far far away (the early 80s to be precise) that an MBA was a useful exercise for engineers and others needing to deal with business specialties. The Reader treated it like a serious of language classes; each business specialty (accounting, finance, marketing, management, etc.) has a language that looks and sounds like English but isn’t. To make it even more fun, those different groups use the same ‘English’ words to mean different things – see the different meaning of profit in accounting, finance or marketing for example. BTW none of those meanings are the same as what an economist calls ‘profit’. It helped that back then about half the instructors were corporate executives; they brought a different perspective. Of course that was long ago in that now far away galaxy.

          1. Like the old saw about securing the building.

            Any why you really need have a good grasp of sales speak when talking to anyone authorized to send your company bills…

            1. “…the old saw about securing the building.”

              Thanks! I’d let that one slip my mind; it won’t get away again. 🙂

            2. I think you mean “clearing the building,” as defined by the following:
              1) moving crew
              2) infantry
              3) hazmat contractors
              4) barnstorming aviators
              5) …

              1. Both are a thing. 🙂

                When you ask the Army to secure a building, they bar the windows, block the exists, and set up an armed guard post.

                When you ask the Navy to secure a building, the mop the floors, empty the coffee pots and turn off the lights.

                When you ask the Marines to secure a building, they take a platoon to breach it and fortify the position against assault.

                When you ask the Air Force to secure a building, they take out a lease with an option to buy.

                2. Bonus Air Force points if you rent it from a Kennedy cousin and pay more in rent over the life of the building than if you had built it from scratch and charged it to Master Card. 8-(

          2. Lord help you if you take that Accounting Management to Government. There are rules on top of rules for that. From a programmers POV “Not an accountant. This is how the program handles it, this is where. You need to go to your county rules for what numbers to use.” Or, “What do you expect it to do, and” more important “WHY?”, then with a “Okay, will take this to the boss. Will get back to you.” Boss was a certified accountant and worked with state auditors (first CA, then CO, OR, WA, more recent Federal Tribes NW region), who were the ultimate “experts”. To make it more fun, each state and feds had different rules; and it wasn’t just different Fiscal Years. Toward the end I was short cutting with “I don’t know. That is accounting. Not programming.” I might have had a little bit of short timers attitude even before I officially gave notice. What were they going to do? Was not slacking off of work. Did have a bit of an attitude adjustment. At that I still gave out more information than the others did.

            1. The Government Accounting class was not part of the Reader’s MBA program. He learned more than he wanted to know about the subject later working for the Great Big Defense Contractor.

              1. subject later working for the Great Big Defense Contractor.

                ……………
                And dealing with government accountants.

                I learned way too much about those government accountants, to the point that I really do not trust our local county accountants (really don’t, I can’t). Especially since I know reason stated why the county Public Works is not using the software written in their county (Engineering division uses the Engineering Management, and associated required modules, but not Public Works). Reason: Changes wanted to software. To take summary records from larger payments and payroll and split them out into detail records needed for auditing purposes. When the boss mentioned that requirement, every single one of us (6, 5 in the office and one remote), burst out laughing; nervous laughing, but still. The boss wasn’t joking. Software does not work that way, ever. Given the route Public Works went, 10 years later they probably still haven’t gone live (okay over the top, but bet I’m not far off).

                In the 12 years I worked there, only saw two counties drop the system. Both on the inability to pay the annual costs. Inyo, and Douglas Oregon, counties. Douglas county at least had the “free” version available through Oregon Association of Counties (just Public Works section). Inyo was back in 18 months. They failed a federal audit, badly. They had X time to “fix the problem”. Wasn’t that the county had done something wrong. Just that they couldn’t produce the reports required. Another county, Dechutes Oregon, dodged a lawsuit regarding county road crew work VS bidding it out. They had one oops. Were not depreciating vehicles. Not that the system didn’t have this ability, they had not set it up. They had 2 weeks to fix the problem, involving 10 years worth of data, to roll in those costs into the system, and run the report on what the vehicle usage charges should be, and get the report to the judge. Took 2 hours to write up suggested method, go over it with PW county manager, including babysitting (on the phone) while he went through the first year. They were done and report in judges hands by midweek. (Bottom line, negligible cost change, proven.) Lawsuit dismissed. The other proof? Comments from state and federal auditors. Departments using the system, it was 1/2 to maybe a day or two, to do audits, VS a week or more for other departments. End users, wanted the auditors gone ASAP. This is just what I personally experienced.

        2. Hey, I have one of those!
          Mind you, I haven’t used it…it started out as ” Management of Technology,” to help me get promoted, and I graduated about five months after I retired

        3. I have one of those. Took online classes. I took the classes in between patients. I was shocked at how easy it was. I think MBAs are different, and don’t mean the same things nowadays.

      2. In a similar vein when the board made Ken Olsen retire things headed into the crapper. Not that he was perfect, he missed the PC and Workstation waves partially for the same reason IBM and Univac missed the Minicomputer wave, that is the new lines would have to some degree cannibalized the older (highly profitable) line. He also couldn’t stand something being done to “Good Enough”, sometimes hardware got reworked so many times that it ended up way late.

  3. At this rate, Elon Musk will buy PayPal back (he was one of the founders)…with pocket change.

      2. Eh, let’s see how he does with Twitter. If he proves to be a good turn-around artist then buying what’s left of PayPal on the cheap could be well worth it to him.

        Hell, if the shares are cheap enough I might buy a few and see where it takes me. I could have made some money if I’d bought Twitter stock when Musk first showed interest in owning the company.

  4. I’m going to bed.
    But I keep the modern day equivalent of a pillow sword by me. And I’ll wake up if the power is cut (CPAP shuts off), or glass breaking, or pounding on the door in the middle of the night. No honest law enforcer serves warrants in the middle of the night, so shooting anyone shouting “Police” is just fine with me.

    1. While you really need to adjust your idea of what a legit criminal is like,
      PLEASE YES SHOOT PEOPLE YELLING POLICE AND BREAKIGN IN A DOOR.

      This is a known tactic by Very Bad People to try to get advantage. If you’re not a druglord type, shoot the f’ers. If you are a drug lord typel… you are already doing so.

      1. Yeah. I’m a real drug lord type.
        81 mg baby aspirin per day.
        40 mg lisinopril tablet per day.
        1 multivitamin per day

        Oh yeah, I’m a big human sex trafficker.
        Uh, well, I can’t remember the last time, but it’s been a while 😀

        I know! I’m a (late) middle-aged, white, male, (sort of) Catholic, gun-owning, Bible-reading, GOP member. And that’s not illegal, YET.

  6. You wrote about it here, because I only read you here, and I remember reading the first post where you used the “roll left and die” metaphor. I thought it was a very apt phrase when I read it, and I have used it (with attribution) in several conversations since then. But yes, it was years ago that I read it here.

    It seems to be something inherent in Leftist/Socialist thought, similar to the “doubling-down” phenomenon that we have all seen. When a Leftist is challenged, or fails, they don’t re-think their premises but instead re-apply their core beliefs, but harder. Their beliefs are never wrong, they are wrong in not applying them or believing in them enough. (“Real Communism has never been tried!”) And so they double-down, believe harder, roll further left, and die.

    It’s very cult-like, really. But I’m not the first person to point that out.

    1. Yes, I very clearly remember that post. Would’ve been in 2014ish, when I very first started following. The Disney Duck Tales comics franchise featured prominently, as I recall.

    2. It’s a common feature of absolutist religions. “True believers will never have anything bad happen to them. Something bad happened to you? Well, obviously you weren’t a true believer.” It applies to everything from snake handling to Keynesian economics.

      1. “If you BELIEVE the White Devils’ bullets cannot hurt you!” We all know how that turns out…

      2. In the evangelical christian world this is known as the Health and Wealth Gospel. It is WAY too commonly believed and really seriously heretical and stupid to boot.

          1. It is not all evangelicals, just some. And I’ve heard Catholic priests, Liberal pastors, Episcopalian priests and Pentacostal pastors assert the same dumb thing. This is a universal problem/heresy of the Christian faith. I think to some degree it really stems from our wanting to be in control of things not the Author. It’s also falling back to a more pagan view of the world where if I do something for the gods, they will do something for me. Any christian that believes that is covering their ears and going “LALALALALALA” through large portions of scripture 🙂 (E.G. the book of Job).

      3. > “True believers will never have anything bad happen to them. Something bad happened to you? Well, obviously you weren’t a true believer.”

        Christianity has shades of this too, unfortunately (see Psalm 91). I do think Christianity has made the world a better place on balance, but there’s still stuff in there that’s just dangerously wrong.

    3. The ‘related’ links starts with one that includes, “roll hard left and die.” I suspect the inclusion (or exclusion) of ‘hard’ resulted in no match found…

  7. Trying to close PayPal. It says there’s a pending transaction that needs to be completed first despite me having my bank account and credit card from PayPal before I tried closing my PayPal account. This happening to anybody else?

      1. That’s a relief, sort of. Either their system is glitching badly from all the people quitting or their desperate to keep people from jumping ship. Regardless, it means it’s on their end and not my crappy connection or something specifically wrong with my account.

        On a related note, I was able to quit Venmo with no problem.

      2. Got another offer from them today offering a “reward, ” for using “PayPal Honey,” whatever that is.

    2. Same here, as best I can tell there’s some incoming money (note, I’ve only ever used Paypal for personal stuff, and not for a LONG time) that needs to get accepted first.

      But:
      1. I’ve already removed my bank info from my account
      2. It’s bloody 25 cents, it’s not even worth my time to deal with
      3. Being a measly 25 cents, it’s not enough for Paypal to cut me a check for it (tried, just to cost them more than the transaction amount)
      4. Ain’t no way no how I’m giving them the info necessary to “save” it in Paypal

      So my Paypal account is going to zombie along now until they go under or something.

      1. I tried to delete an account I’d not used in many years. When trying to log on, got an error saying that the email address wasn’t registered. Oh, well: must be dead.

    3. I had to go thru and inactivate every single entity that I had made a payment to as a business (not friends and family). It took several tries – I’d clear a list, back out to the home page, and go back in to the next list.

      Worth it though.

      1. Tried that: had a few recurring payments still active (even though I’d already cancelled all but one of those accounts), so I went through and inactivated them and switched the one good account over to a credit card payment. No dice. So I went through and inactivated single-time payments. Still no dice. So I went and removed all my contacts. STILL no dice.

        And I checked my transaction logs: that doesn’t show any pending payments.

        I’ll give it 24 hours to process and then try again.

        1. I just said “Delete the account”. Had an option to “delete history first”, clicked that. I mean there is ONE item on the history list, if it is kept that long (2019). Whatever. Got an email that they will notify when delete is completed. Anything happens now is on them. I have a paper trail (ish).

          1. I can’t delete, but I removed their button from the site.
            If they say I used it for fundraiser, I’ll note fundraiser was for PAST work, when the rules hadn’t changed.

          2. Pretty much the same here, except I had no pending items (hadn’t even used it in at least a couple of years). We shall see…

            1. Got an email from PayPal today saying my account has been closed. Tried to login to verify and it actually is closed. Safe!

        2. Okay, I think I figured out what’s going on. Last week, I donated to LawDog’s Get The Blog Back Up and Running effort, and I used my checking account as my payment method. Per PayPal’s helpdesk, that counts as an “eCheck” which takes 5-7 business days to clear. I’m still in that window. I’ll try cancelling next week and see if it works then.

  8. Looking at “serious” (Laughable quotes, not scare quotes) publications, many, if not most roll left, bake neath the sun, mummify, refuse to die and keep, lurching, stumbling along.

    Scientific American for example; no longer American, owned by Springer Nature group (Headquarters London and Berlin) and obviously no longer scientific. I just read an article therein about how walking, cargo bikes and planting in parking lots can save the world from global warming.

    2. …well…. planting in parking lots can help reduce the urban heat island thing that large expanses of bare asphalt cause…

      So really, preventing global warming depends on how close your weather station is to the new mini-mall.

  9. Left/Democrats in general can also be understood as fitting a bust out model.

    Busting out is where a criminal conspiracy has taken over a once legitimate organization, knows that they will eventually kill the organization, and so is doing long term bad for business stuff that lets them extract resources or wealth from the eventual rubble.

    Of course, we can kinda see that Roll Left and Die, and Busting Out may be similar.

    1. … taken over a once legitimate organization, knows that they will eventually kill the organization, and so is doing long term bad for business stuff that lets them extract resources or wealth from the eventual rubble.

      So, a VIRUS.

      2. > “So, a VIRUS.”

        Far worse, morally speaking. A virus at least has the excuse that it couldn’t have know better or chosen differently.

  10. As for curious things noted … being formerly military, and having a long memory, I have been wondering for months now, where all the die-hard anti-war protests are, now that the Biden Junta seems bound and determined to provoke the Soviets into a wider war over the Ukraine. Where are all the protests out in front of military bases, and the peace signs and the ‘war is not good for children or other living things’ signs which popped up reliably when the shooting looked to be starting somewhere in the world where the US had allies. It’s all very curious. I know that a lot of the anti-war, anti-nuke groups were surreptitiously funded by the Soviet Union, but are they now? Are the checks bouncing, or do the Soviets really want the missiles to fly?

    2. Nothing new. After Obama was elected, reporting about the horrors of the war on terror went way down unless it could be pinned on the previous administration or be used to praise The Anointed One (yes, sarcasm) for “fixing the problems dumped on him by Bush”.

      See also Cindy Sheehan, who continued her protesting after 2009 but got just about zero coverage after being a celebrity to the left, finally giving up only when her resources were exhausted by medical expenses.

      1. Might work for Putin. Not for Biden. You assume elections will be suspended in the aftermath of a war. But US elections have never been suspended, even during wars. The Federal government cannot order it, because elections are run by the state. An executive order suspending them would be ignored (except – maybe – in some of the blue states. But even there? I doubt it.

        Besides, missiles flying are the last thing the Democrats should want. Right now the country is balanced nearly 50/50 red-blue in terms of population. But where are the blue strongholds? Heavily concentrated in major metropolitan areas. (Look at a presidential race broken down by county and you see what I mean. If we had even a limited nuclear exchange the vast majority of the casualties would be in these strongholds. Takeout the biggest city in each state – assume 50% casualties. That state would flip from blue to red if blue and become deeper red if red. The only exception might be California, because you might have to take out three or maybe four of its biggest cities.

        1. The current regime and their allies among the oligarch have been doing a lot of things that were never done before in the USA; don’t be surprised that they fully want the missiles to fly precisely so they can declare an “emergency” that either suspends elections or changes the way they are run to ensure Democrats win and can then use that power to pack the Supreme Court, followed by their Green Leap Forward and an “enabling act”: that turns the country into a full-fledged dictatorship. Yes, they will face resistance, and bitter resistance to this, and are so inept that their ability to carry out such a plan is highly questionable. Have no doubt however, that it is what they seek and plan however.

          2. Sounds like they are recycling the Pyrrhic victory on steroids.
            “Those who don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it, and drag along those of us who DO remember.”

        2. I’d suspect it’s more operating from the assumption that it could never happen and/or hurt them.

          Also a certain subset (and I’m not sure how big a one) is in full messianic cult/ghost dance mode and seem to assume that they’ll just come out the other end victorious no matter what they kick off.

            1. I almost bought the domain “Hillary for Speaker” to start a, well, Hillary for Speaker campaign in 2018.

              I didn’t out of laziness, but I have to wonder if I could have paid my bills fund raising for it…lots of AWFLs dedicated to Hillary who might have tossed in a few bucks.

              1. That’s… actually kind of brilliant. I need to remember that after the next general election up here and see if there is an opportunity (and a way to do it without being charged with fraud).

                1. Well, there was more to it than that…the idea was Hillary as Speaker would then get her deserved Presidency when Trump and Pence were removed. Plus, she’d get two full terms after plus what she got back from Trump after he “stole” he time (serving less than half of someone else’s term does not count as a term for the relevant amendment).

          2. I have noticed that both sides have a tendency to attempt to pass laws which benefit them NOW but would also benefit the other side if circumstances changed… If they do get these idiotic things passed, they scream blood murder when the other side uses their own brainchild against them.

            How dare they!

            All of a sudden, the thing they wanted is totally unethical.

            2. Required:

              William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

              Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

              William Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

              Sir Thomas More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!

              1. I love “Man for All Seasons” (AesopSpouse played Sir Thomas in college); I love this speech particularly.
                However, in the end, King Henry levelled enough laws that More was executed.
                The Devil does not reciprocate courtesy.

        3. No, I don’t assume that. I think they might assume that.
          The country is not even close to balanced. Fraud makes it appear so. The left KNOWS this.
          They also think Russia will hit “missile silos.” which are flyover.

          2. Russia won’t just hit the silos, though; they’ll also go after the people who can issue launch commands, and the communications relays that can transmit launch codes to the subs and silos. And most of those are located within major cities.

            Worse, they spent decades convincing the general public that every city is a target, which means that if the balloon goes up, the cities self-evacuate and/or go feral. Which sort of wrecks their current power base.

              2. Imagine a massive launch…. which almost entirely fizzles.

                How did Ringo put it? Nukes are hard to trigger.

                  1. There is a vast difference between American engineering and maintenance and the Russian version thereof.

            2. When you try to make a real life rube goldberg machine, getting it to work consistently and reliably is a pain. Each trigger or energy conversion stage is different, so you have to spend a lot of time on each stage making it consistent. And, you also have a lot of stages. If each stage is five percent unreliable, this adds up fast. If each of ten stages is statistically independent, it will fail to work 40% of the time.

              This same ‘systems’ ‘reliability’ thinking can be applied to lots of different sorts of machinery.

              For Russian launches, we are talking three subsystems at least, excepting bombers. There are one or more stages of rocket, there are the warheads, and then there is the guidance and flight control electronics.

              Russian maintenance, and how badly Putin has been running things down are part of the estimate, but are not at all the whole of it.

              If you have a machine that you can use many times, it is easy to see if it is still in operating order, you turn it on.

              But, we are talking one time use devices. The easy way to estimate reliability is make a bunch more than you need, and test samples regularly. That hasn’t been done here.

              The alternative is excellent maintenance, certain engineering philosophies, and engineers and technicians who are very interested in whether things work, and can make a stink if they don’t, and are not crippled by bureaucracy.

              So, we can make a statistical inference about how many are likely to hit.

              Is it strong enough to entirely blow off any thought about being concerned about a nuclear war? No.

              But, it is strong enough to really skeptical of whether the Russians would do much damage.

          3. Russia will hit silos only by sheer dumb luck. Their recent two day precision strike barrage in Ukraine hit … earth. Mostly civilian targets in cities. Not the “infrastructue” they claimed.

            Either they can’t hit precision, meaning they can’t target silos, or they want to hit civilians and they won’t aim at silos.

            Facing us, they have much worse options. Because also, they can’t hit the ballistic missile subs except the unloaded ones in drydock. And if they miss the bombers on the ground, they won’t stop most of those. Some of our fighters are deep strike capable, and can carry nukes.

            The Russians can most easily hit coastal and near- coastal cities with ease. Dem strongholds. Does anyone rational think Vlad the Mad is going to spare the political base of the folks arming Ukrane? He knows if he hits the USA with nukes we, in response, can eradicate Russia as anything resembling a country. He can’t counter- force enough to matter, so wasting shots on silos we can empty before impact isn’t happening. He would go for the biggest Wipeout he can arrange, and that means cities as primary target.

            Their “strategic rocket forces” are Army, not Air Force. So Russian artillery doctrine is likely the core plan.

            Overwhelming concentrated saturation bombardment for maximum devastation of the key targets.

            And they still lose. One “boomer” sub had enough warheads to gut their society. The combined fleet of then is an extinction level event.

            So he won’t. Because his associates are not mad. Provided we leave them a survivable out.

            Now, what he -might- try, is using a few of those monstrous huge warheads meant to crack Cheyenne Mountain, (25mt?) and lob them high with some of their really big boosters. Result: massive EMP. Economic wipeout but no craters or fallout.

            Problem with that is those subs are essentially EMP proof, that leaves us fairly intact, and them with a bad case of bounced rubble.

            If…

            I don’t think either side wants to cross that line. The desperate wretches living near the glowing rubble are hard to tax.

            2. “so wasting shots on silos we can empty before impact”

              To mangle Captain Mancuso, USS Dallas: “Yeah, we can. Question is, will we?”

          1. I think Seawriter’s right though. I remember digging through the Constitution’s rules for this in 2020, and they’ve got a whole series of automatic mechanisms that happen on January 20st, regardless of the state of the vote and the count.

            Basically, even if the elections don’t happen at all, the current president’s term ends on 1/20/25. If they don’t have a quorum of electors (I think 2/3) it goes to, I believe, the incoming Congress, and if that doesn’t have a quorum, I think we just end up with no-one in charge until we reach a quorum of either electors or congressmen. That part will probably have to be adjudicated by the Supreme Court, but I suspect it will mean no-one is president until it gets sorted.

            And given the risk adverse nature of bureaucracies, I’d expect a lot of DC to want to sit on its thumbs while it all gets sorted too.

            Heck I’m not even sure if they could pay people during that either.

              1. I think the trick is, they aren’t the ones who need to. Because it all happens at the state level, the electors and new Congress just show up one day.

                And because it’s all in simple English, if they don’t, it’s very very easy for the average Joe to say, “but you’re not the president… Says here.”

        5. “The only exception might be California, because you might have to take out three or maybe four of its biggest cities.”

          Yes, but how would the state know they were destroyed? Parts of those cities already look like war damage.

          Maybe the Left might notice some of its more prominent members had become unusually reticent in foaming at the mouth.

          1. There’s a difference between “war damage” and “multi-square-mile glass parking lot”. Even Noisome could probably see that.

            1. Parking lot, non! Es solar panel installation!
              (just have to ban geiger counters and top off the Nuisance’ Strategic Pomade Reserve).
              More cancers? Everything in Cali causes cancer, that’s why they make those stickers.

              1. “Danger! NSPR at critically low level; only 2500 gallons left! Call French Laundry Restaurant immediately! Contact Pretty Pony if unable to obtain!”

            2. Heck, try “water reservoir busted, millions dying of dehydration”

              The Russian targeting guys are no fools, unlike the Julies.

        6. The senate and house would refuse to seat. King Biden decrees no elections, his followers don’t go to polls and get a 10:1 rep house and current congress refuses to abdicate. Feds and military back the democrats since the election postponed by decree and fraud since the hordes didn’t vote.

          1. And since there is literally nothing in the Constitution which could be twisted to support any of that, the next events would probably be…ummm…interesting.

            (I’m getting echoes from the “forbidden election” in Last Centurion…)

          2. Feds, sure. The military? Particularly the combat arms? I have a feeling it would be a race between the various services the see who could bag the FICUS first. The Marines have guys stationed in the WH, but Coasties are just nuts, so they have a shot.

            The rest have to make do with San Fran Nan et al.

      2. XI has been stoking this through nominal support for Putin; Putin has used up a lot of resources that formerly were aimed at the CCP or protected Russia’s border with the CCP. It is to Xi’s advantage (or at least he certainly thinks it is) to see both Russia and the USA to expend resources against each other, so that CCP can supplant both Russia and the USA. XI is also really wants the Democrats to remain in power because a Congress controlled by Democrats presents no check on Biden’s cronies from continuing to sell out the USA to the CCP.

        1. A major exchange between Russia and the US would likely wreck China’s oil supply chain. They would collapse within a month.

          Next time the Iranians threaten to block the Straits of Hormuz, the answer should be “go for it!”

            1. If things get bad enough in China, they may revert to warring states, mostly concerned with each other.

              I’m ok with this.

          2. Next time the Iranians threaten to block the Straits of Hormuz, the answer should be “go for it!”

            …..
            S/b: “The next time Iranians, or anyone else, threaten to block the Straits of Hormuz, the answer should be “What is stopping you? Not us. Go for it!”

            1. Yeah, but this gets the Iranians hit by the ChiComs. “Let’s you and him fight”

      3. Power over what and power how?

        Depending on the level of exchange I’d be surprised if certain state governments were functional within six months, much less the feds are a centralized whole. A dozen separate, somewhat in contact but doing their own thing federal government sure, but something consolidated?

        And that’s the better of the two nations. Putin would be lucky to not find out if anyone from the old KGB was more ruthless if pissed off than Putin is.

      1. A disturbingly large number of “progressives” seem to be programmable NPCs. If the worm turns as completely as I hope it will, I wonder how many of them will switch seamlessly from progbot to “Oh, I was always with you guys in spirit.”

          1. That’s really depressing honestly. Maybe I need to go pray until I feel better about humanity.

            2. Perhaps Psalm 118? Verses 8 and 9 speak perhaps with most clear applicability, but the other verses give a context.

    5. As normal the antiwar groups want the communists to win. In this case they wear stars and bars.

  11. The Reader believes that canceling PayPal (by deleting accounts, not the leftist way) should be a first step. The entire credit card industry can be brought to heel by a couple of months of a lot of us using cash for everything. Credit free Christmas anyone?

      1. The Reader also does not purchase anything on credit. He, and a lot of other people, use the credit card system to simplify accounting and pay the bill at the end of each month. The card companies that their cut of that cash flow. Those of us who do that need to stop. If the cash flow through their systems drops noticeably, they will feel it.

          1. Deplatforming freedom seed projector businesses and imposing a unique set of tracking codes for credit card purchases for same as a start. The Reader has started making all his freedom seed related purchases with cash only.

      2. Except for minor expenses, we’ve always (well, for the past 30 or so years) used credit cards for the convenience. And since they’re paid off every month it hasn’t cost us a cent in interest. With the new ISO category that may change to reduce trackability.

  13. This just hit me, one of the major distortion factors has been we’ve been in a declining interest rate market for about 40 years according to some people I’ve read, which encourages widespread borrowing and major usage of leverage, because it becomes effectively free.

    If PayPal is extensively leveraged, I wonder if they’re thinking it makes sense to implode now, rather than get killed in the leverage unraveling?

    On the Get Woke, Go Broke, I don’t recall if I read your column or not, but I’ve been suspecting a lot of it was “our product sucks so let’s create an acceptable reason for it not selling for management.”

    One of the autopsies of the Captain Marvel movie by, I think, the Critical Drinker pointed out that, there was actually a good movie that had been shot there. It was just in their news to be edgy an avant guard, they’d put the scenes together in the worst possible order to actually tell a compelling story.

    Drop all of the artsy pretentions and simply tell the story in chronological order, and it ends up being a good popcorn movie.

    But they couldn’t stand to do that, so instead they rolled out a bunch of controversy and released it in a poor state, and used the controversy to justify why it failed, rather than fixing the editing problems.

    1. They’re not that heavily leveraged, though they did borrow through the zero interest rate period, They’re not all that profitable and they’re taking it in the neck as online spending trails off. What they are is expensive at 21 times earnings, 17 times cash flow and 3.67 times sales.

      What I’m wondering is whether their market niche is gone as Visa/Mastercard expand into the space that PayPal carved out? If so, they’re toast.

      1. Ah. I see. That makes sense. If you can just plug in a credit card processor that handles what they did, and is already part of your bank, what is the upside to having and using a PayPal account?

        And that so explains why I haven’t used mine in a really long time too.

    2. Dang. You meant that ersatz “Captain Mar-vell” schlock, not the actual Captain Marvel in red and white that goes “Shazam!”

  14. One thing I’m not yet clear on, can PayPal only take money that is currently in accounts, or are they also arguing that they can directly bill you 2.5K for each perceived infraction?

        1. I would sue within days, and look into a class action…Consumer fraud, breach of contract, etc…,.

          1. Guarantee that their “terms of service” include an arbitration agreement that also prohibits class actions against them.

            What you really need are the red state AGs like in Florida who have been fighting this stuff to pursue state criminal and civil fraud charges against PayPal.

            1. I wonder what happens to the arbitration process if a hundred thousand people hit them with claims at once. Might they end up wishing they’d been class-actionable?

              1. A certain Sad Puppies adjacent blogger and audience did this to a crowdfunding site. I haven’t kept up with the case, but there is an example.

  15. I know exactly what you mean. I’d been buying Astounding/Analog since 1963 when in the mid 2010s it acquired a new editor who took it ‘woke’ – and after less than a year I cancelled my subscription. This, after buying back issues (when I found them) back into the glory days of such as E E Smith.

    1. I am surprised you lasted that long. Within a year of 9/11 they published a story where the brilliant but compassionate person overseeing a psychological torture program involving immersive time viewing…..was the daughter of one of the 9/11 hijackers support personnel and she did all this while wearing a full burkha.
      I started reading the issues I bought in the 90s. I hadnt been able to read them….career and family time….and most of the stories were unreadable junk either not being hard science….even Weird Tales would have rejected them or they were just wrong.
      This from someone who reas the first three dangerous visions anthologies more than once trying to figure them out. One story was a psychological horror story not SF…but it was edgy and scared the straights so good times.
      The rot is old and deep….

      1. I dropped my subscription to Analog in the early 90s for the lack of interesting stories. The hard-SF that I’d enjoyed earlier was getting much harder to find.

        When the highlight only thing worth reading was Spider Robinson’s book review, it was time to reconsider a subscription. (Can’t recall; he might have dropped that role earlier…)

  16. So I saw this post when it came out and wanted to think about it and let it ‘stew’ for a bit in my mind. I noted at the time there were no comments yet made – I thought “Hey… I could be the first to comment!” However, thinking about the ideas was more valuable and as a bonus I have now the opportunity to read the thoughts of others which can complement my own musings.

    In seeing the well, panicked for a word, reaction by PayPal and the ongoing outrage by those who use/used the service is telling. The whole go left/go broke or roll left and die is interesting in that it demonstrates (in an empirical, fiscal and quantitively sound fashion) that the left or the progressives who claim to rule all and are the smartest ever don’t have a majority or even a large enough population to support their own in time of need.

    This concept of mine (or theory if you want) is that when it actually counts in a very real way in putting your money on the line or as said far better than I: “We Mutually Pledge To Each Other Our Lives, Our Fortunes, And Our Sacred Honor…” us odds and those referenced as “right wing” follow through and actually show up and support the people, ideas and ‘things’ that need supporting. The other side has done so with graft, cheating, manipulation and lies and thus have no depth or actual resources to bring to the table. I think this is why they loose and we win – sure, it will take awhile and there will be a cost but the odds are forever in our favor!

    Ok, I’ll quit now – but… what say you? Is my idea that they really are a small but loud, well connected but not really powerful segment and we will, by if nothing more than size, outlast them and reestablish a sane civilization?

    1. Someone, and I can’t quickly find the article, alas, but someone really started looking at which accounts on Tw!tter had the most political influence, on both the left and right. Those on the right had fewer followers per Tweeter, but were more numerous (read: diffuse and probably reflected population better). Those on the left turned out to be only 2-3% of Tw!tter accounts. However, those were what the media and activists picked up and used as “large percentage of the American people” opinion sources, and were the accounts that rallied other activists to pressure companies, authors, and others.

  17. *At least I’ll write a lot of books in all that time.

    … They might be hallucinatory.*

    Prophetic, more likely.

  18. Something that made me sit up and notice, and take hope. Phil Knight, founder of Nike, not known for being conservative, gave the Drazan (R) Oregon governor candidate, $1 million campaign contribution (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaign/nike-cofounder-donates-gop-oregon-gubernatorial-candidate – not the only source). Then again, Nike headquarters is downtown Portland Oregon. Plus a few thousand to Betsy (I). What Phil Knight does, do the Nike employees (I don’t know why, don’t ask), and the UofO (again IDK … oh, wait, this comes under M O N E Y … money for this, money for that, etc.)

    1. More likely, when word gets out, Nike employees will start demanding that he be removed. That’s the pattern that I’ve seen in the past when a corporate CEO publicly does things that benefit conservative politics.

      1. Oh. No. No. No. After all Phil Knight might take his money and give it to, gasp, the Beavers – Oregon State … (JIC, Very Big Grin) 😉 😉 😉

        Seriously, Phil Knight is just as likely to take his bat and ball and go home in a huff (i.e. sell them out, bow out, and let the company go under).

        Guess I’ll find out, should they bring it up, Nov 13. Mom’s 88 birthday party at younger sister’s. All of us, our spouses and most the grandchildren, and great-grands., should be there (only youngest nephew might be missing, he is away at college, and great-grand-step will be with his mom). Three of the 8 grandchildren work at Nike … Politics are suppose to be off the conversation table. It won’t be us (3), or middle sister and hubby, also have a clue, who bring it up (we will, all 5, be biting tongues, hubby’s under extreme pain of something, but we won’t start the conversation). Also elections will be done. Given how it looks how Oregon will go (baring mail by fraud) … Yes, ought to be “interesting”.

        1. I’m, very nervously, starting to be slightly hopeful. Not that I trust Drazan much, but Tina and Betsy are right fecking out. There’s also the lawsuit for voting integrity that got filed this week (I Think) and also does Gov matter when the legislature is filled with human shaped refuse?

          1. That lawsuit promises to be interesting. I was surprised to see Klamath county as one of the defendants; OTOH, I’ve heard some rumblings about curious things going on at the county commissioner level.

    2. FYI, Nike Headquarters is actually in unincorporated Washington County, near Beaverton, not in Portland or Multnomah county. Beaverton actually tried to annex Nike a few years ago and got slapped down by the OR legislature.

      Also Knight gave millions to Betsy before he gave anything to Drazen.

      1. Better Betsy and Drazen than a cent to Kotek.

        Did not know Nike is not in incorporated Portland itself (didn’t care enough to check). Do not blame Nike at all.

  19. Interesting. eBay is very Paypal-heavy because of convenience, wonder how eBayers will do when all the Paypalers are gone. Oh, well, just another financial casualty to somehow blame Trump for, I guess.

    I was unaware that Paypal can bill the $2500 forward if it’s not in your account for them to steal; that should change the nails being pounded into the coffin lid to long, large power-driven screws.

    RE: nukes; I wonder if in the desire for “something” to occur which they would consider an Opportunity to Appear Masterful any consideration has been given to the reaction of angry and fearful Americans such an event would provoke.

    1. A while back eBay started payments outside of PayPal. iirc I stopped using paypal in the run-up to the election when I noticed this was available. Part of my just killing my paypal account was trotting over to eBay and deleting the paypal method for payments. I think, back in the day, I went with paypal because it was tied to eBay.
      It still is tied in for sellers, too much, but buyers don’t really need it.

    2. Ebay no longer accepts Paypal. They have finished de-coupling in favor of their own internal system

      As for the $2500 fine; I’ve had a Paypal account for about 20 years now and mostly not had a problem that was not eventually resolved. But, years ago I had an eBay payment reversed on me when an item was lost in the mail and even though Paypal had both my bank and credit cards, they did not charge back. They just put a negative balance on my account and I had to pay them for that. So, if they fine you and you have credit cards and banks linked they still might not be able to extract funds from those. They may just mark you negative. I’d just let the account sit there and see if they want to sue.

      I’d like to hear fron an actual lawyer about this.

      1. “Ebay no longer accepts Paypal. They have finished de-coupling in favor of their own internal system”

        I did not know that; I haven’t bought anything on eBay in years because it too often seemed like buying a Rolex from some guy’s car trunk and most sellers did Paypal, which I’ve always refused to use. I’ll have to go back and poke around some. Thanks for the info.

    3. One of PayPal’s problems is they are scheduled to be off eBay, at eBay’s choice, next year. Not sure if late or early.

  20. Romans 1:18-32 seems relevant, even if you don’t believe in God. It describes GetWokeGoBroke in other terms. And it was written before Reagan was born.

    Easy to look up for those interested.

  22. I’m holding onto my Paypal account for as long as possible, because I need it for quite a few things. But…

    It’s like watching a friend destroy themselves doing something stupid and you can’t stop them. I’ve seen it happen to conventions. Creative products I love. Places I like to go. And yet, they seem to cycle right back into the same crap that got them into that hole in the first place.

    (I’ve got issues. I know it, but yet I keep trying to not fall into the same hole.)

    My only hope is that when the circular firing squad stops blowing their own brains out, we can root around in their pockets for the loose change.

    1. I’m watching the organization which runs a beloved private campground self-destructing. It hosts two outdoor events that I always look forward to going, but I’m wondering if we’ll be going next year.

      (In the meantime, I’m lining up the big comic conventions, wondering whether they’ll even happen or if I’m throwing the money down a rat hole. Hoping for the best while dreading the worst, and wishing we could Just Get It Over With because I’m so tired of the sick dread hanging in the air — especially after last night’s bad dream which featured a certain loudmouthed Austrian).

      1. Hey, Leigh, because we’re friends, if you want to — I don’t know if it’s something you do — get half a dozen Barbarellas and mail them to me, I’ll sign them and send them back if you want to take them to comic conventions?

        1. Thanks. I’ll take a look at our finances and see what’s possible (given we have a scheduled three-month break from December to March, it may be a while).

      2. I’m tired of the dread. And, the worst sorts of Karens taking over the things I love. Like, for example, the local anime convention is very anti-sex…if it isn’t yaoi. If you’re two guys banging like a screendoor without lube in a barely consensual relationship…the more the merrier!

        Local Scottish festival has closed down. Rumor has it that nobody could afford the “enhanced” protocols to handle the Crow Flu.

        Local gaming con that I liked has moved from “day-trip” distance to “overnight” distance if I want to go. And, they actually have games that I would enjoy (a lot of new games are dangerously woke).

        I’m just hoping that the parasites will die…before my hobbies do.

          1. And taking them to the river to see the rabbits gets you talked about when you do it…more than once or twice. Shotgun shells aren’t cheap these days, either.

            I don’t want dread. I want to have fun. There is already far too much pain in this world, I don’t need any extra. I won’t complain about your hobbies…too much (but, bitching about people’s hobbies in fandom is tradition at this point!). Just don’t prevent me from having fun.

            I get so little fun these days.

  23. I think I figured out what’s going on with PayPal. Per their help center, when you send money with your bank account as the payment method, it’s sent as an eCheck, which takes 5-7 business days to clear. So if you’ve made any transactions within the last week or so using your bank account as the payment method (which I did) odds are those transactions are still technically pending even though they show as having gone through on your Activity log. Hence the “there’s a pending transaction that you need to take care of first” notifications when you try to close your account.

    Granted, I don’t know this for certain, but if I get a notification that there’s a problem with that transaction (since I removed the bank account from PayPal) by next Monday, or if it lets me cancel my account after Monday, I’ll know for sure.

    1. That must have been it, because I just tried closing my account again and it let me do so without a hitch. Just have to wait “up to 30 days” for them to delete my data as requested.

      2. There are some more photos on the other tabs, all black and white, usually foggy, very striking.
        This paragraph on Cabral’s “About” page was obviously translated into English from the original Portuguese, but it tickled my fancy because the phraseology kind of matched the subject, and this forum.
        “All his current work consist in a systematic approach to black and white photography, Architecture and Street Photography, like a way of expression, building timeless images about personal narratives connected to his past and imagination, childhood and the decay of time and space. Your photographies [AF: or writings] are always thought before, and some things and elements are left for the improvised.“

  25. On a lighter note, years ago our castle-tour guide suggested signs similar to the heading here meant ‘tap dancing required’. The one here is more like ‘Celebrate Parkour!’

  26. I have heard that PayPal does not have a bright future. Payment processing is lucrative, and some very big players (e.g. JP Morgan) are looking to cut PayPal out of the action.

    I hope so. We could nail a big raccoon skin on the wall and make others leery of messing with us.

  27. From 1989 to 2018, I was employed by Curtis Circulation Company which was the worlds largest magazine distributor. Yes, I agree with the overall premise of “Get Woke, Go Broke”. However, the rise of the Internet along with 24/7 cable TV news/sports coverage was ultimately the cause of the demise of the magazine industry. Why buy Newsweek or USN&WR for last’s weeks news when you turn on your TV to CNN? The same thing would apply any sports magazine and ESPN. The Internet did spur the “adult sophisticate” (porn) sector to establish their own websites and redirect their emphasis from print media to online content. The niche magazines were always more subscriber driven as opposed to newsstand sales. The comic book industry did commit suicide by going woke.

    2. This. No, sorry, T.H.I.S. Electronic media has been deadly to print media. After a bang-up five years starting in 1990, we watched it happen month by month after the Internet took hold in the mid-late 1990s. Tutorial articles that we would otherwise publish in our magazine could be found online for free, and the hunt was easy thanks to Alta Vista and later Google. We were heavily subscriber-driven, as you don’t see a lot of programmer magazines on the rack at Safeway. By 2000 we couldn’t afford to keep the mag going, so we folded it. A LOT of technical magazines died about that time. It wasn’t just us.

      I’m very surprised that The Atlantic and Harper’s are still fogging the mirror. The airport newsstand market must be ravenous. I read both for a long time. No more, and probably never again.

  28. Took 3 days and some painful hours with with a call center in India to get to the point where I could select “close my account”, I also selected “delete my history”. The system replied that they would consider how much of my history to delete (honestly, there wasn’t much), and they’d get back to me, probably within 30 days, with their decision..
    Paypal Delenda Est

  29. i disagree, PayPal isnt rolling left, they were already there. People who have a PayPal debit card, go ahead and use a retailer with the new retail codes and see what PayPal does…

      1. (IF we had any. Boating accident. Very sad.)

        ……
        I’d say “we all need to take boating classes”. But our boating accident happened after we had the boating safety class. Very sad.

  30. If you missed it yesterday –
    https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/10/11/ring-the-bell-2/#comment-879855
    masgramondou says:
    October 12, 2022 at 12:24 am
    I took a quick gander at Paypal’s recent finances. It claims to have a lot of free cash flow and I wonder how much of that is due to money in suspended accounts. I also note that debt just went up a lot recently – $3.0 billion of new debt in May seems odd for an allegedly healthy company

    From the latest financial report (Q2 22) –

  32. Our esteemed blogging hostess’ post for “roll hard left and die” is actually titled “Rolling in the deep”, from 2016.
    accordingtohoyt dot-com /2016/11/19/rolling-in-the-deep/

  34. Off topic. Zerohedge has an excellent summary of the Lancet report on the failure of the WuFlu response. If you like playing told you so then read it since its findings were all covered here in great detail during the disaster.

    Depressing, very depressing; also infuriating, very, very infuriating.

    I sent an annotated copy to my suburban wine mom sister.

    1. And note that I’m not anyone special or any kind of expert, and I don’t have staff to research.
      IF I could see what was happening, EVERYONE should have been able to.

      1. I’m glad you did because I did, post Diamond Princess, and it seemed we were the only ones who did.

        1. I know. Even people whose minds I respected were accusing me of being crazy and dangerous.
          My own mother, who should know government propaganda was screaming at me at our weekly phone call.
          But seriously. I’m not going to lie, I know I’m smarter than the average bear, but I’m not special in any way. WHY didn’t other people see it?

              1. We were right because we believed our own eyes and searched for evidence rather than stubbornly believing that experts exist and that those experts have our well being in mind despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Is that stubborn? It isn’t the wider path, certainly.

    2. Well, given about a decade and a half ago serious study was mad of the Spanish Flu response and best practices identified only to be thrown out the window with the Kung Flu, how would you read anything but “this was made of fail” for the 2020 response.

      That’s how I knew real public health people weren’t involved. They’d published their plan for pretty much exactly that issue, a respiratory pandemic, and it was never even mentioned, much less used.

  35. Late, as usual, but I’m updating a 600-page technical book, and still cross-eyed from yesterday’s grind. Macros? I hate macros. But I have to teach them.

    Anyway. I owned a magazine once. We didn’t roll at all. We rocked. And we still died. (It was not a natural death. I don’t write about this. Ask me next LC if you’re interested.)

    Print magazines are an endangered species. Rolling left is only one of the reasons.

    1. i wrote for an electronic music production mag that was originally published in ‘issues’ as PDF, and when they moved to a web site they still wanted to do ‘monthly issues’… ugh

  36. Pingback: “Suicide by Cop” – The Woke Corporate Deathbed Smokescreen Edition – the philo t. custis institute

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