Quick to the Typewriter

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Hey remember that time when the USSR policed typewriters so you couldn’t produce Samizdat fast enough?

Copiers and fax machines? Forget about it. That was the break through tech they couldn’t control anymore, and as people started sharing impressions, news and ideas — at the same time that Ronald Reagan of Blessed Memory was putting the economic screws on them by refusing to shut down our defense industry — the USSR’s empire of lies (probably more lies than anything true, ever) melted away like spun sugar in hot tea.

But the cartoon characters who think themselves the “ruling class” of the US (while being merely the inconveniences we’ll tolerate until they become intolerable) think they can shove us back to their ideal age of media and narrative control by putting up a law that only lets “licensed” journalists report the news.

For the next move, they’re going to make it so that only licensed “authors” can write fiction.

At which point you’re sitting there and wondering “Are they for real now?”

Yeah, so am I.

The problem is not that they think we’re Chinese peasants. The problem is that they think we’re imaginary Chinese peasants. You know, the ones that the PRC portrays as jumping to every order and complying without a peep.

Even the Chinese don’t do that; it’s just we don’t hear of their rebellions. And compared to Americans they have almost no resources and certainly not technological resources for rapid information dissemination.

For the Russians, typewriters, copiers, and faxes were the killing blow. We have computers and printers. And before you say anything, even Venezuela has electricity, even if intermittent.

They can go ahead and make their laws. And they will inconvenience us majorly. And, to be fair piss us off.

What they can’t do is put the toothpaste back in the tube.

Oh, they’re going to try. And it’s going to be a terrible inconvenience.

But in the end — in the end — yeah, we can lose, but not to them. Because they can’t win. And we’ll never lose completely while we’re still fighting.

To your typewriters, go!

163 thoughts on “Quick to the Typewriter”

    1. No, they’ve put a thing about only allowing licensed journalists in a defense bill. With b*tch McConnel’s endorsement of course.
      Can’t have those unlicensed people reporting news, can we?

      1. Ah, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act thing– AKA, “news wants to get paid for links to their stories.”

        Which is a wonderful censorship option!

        2. Yeah, this is a perfect example of how little they understand the internet. They think their content is gold that people will not do without. Facebook can just say no links to anyone who’s trying to enforce this as can all the other major platforms.

          Sure there will still be email, but the mass spread of stories will simply be focused on sites that don’t try to get money out of Facebook etc al.

          If anything, the major mainstream media may find out this act accelerates their irrelevance online, not stops the slide and brings in cash.

          Still was a stupid thing for a bunch of Republicans to join in getting through the Senate the day before the Georgia runoff.

        3. To find the true nature of any bill the establishment uniparty claims to be necessary to save and/or achieve some great thing, simply take the title and invert it.

          The Patriot Act? Treason.

          This excrescence? The Propaganda Entrenchment and Media Censorship Act.

          Occasionally there’s a Ron DeSantis/Florida type of thing that doesn’t fit the pattern, but it generally works like a charm.

      2. They have no idea of how easy it is to forge credentials, to hack databases, etc., do they?

        Of course, we’ll just ignore them anyway, as we do…

        2. The idea of “forging” credentials is nearly always an amusing one. Media credentials are never checked. Print an ID, slap some official looking font, a recent pic, and voila! You’re a member of the Free Press, LLC, with credentials every bit as legitimate as the big guys.

          As for the databases, depends. Some companies care about data security a little bit. Some companies are either too little to care about, or already compromised six ways from Sunday. If someone wants to find out a thing and they want it bad enough, and it’s online, they’re going to get it. Nobody really cares about data security a lot online. If they did, it would be off line.

          2. And all you will need is someone to slip your details into the database that goes with the chip in the card.

            Pro tip: most database hacks don’t have anything to do with hardware or software; they have to do with compromised insider. The ATM industry’s biggest nightmare is getting hacked with a 5 dollar hammer applied to the kneecaps of someone to extract their ATM pin.

            1. I’m not a professional security analyst, but even I know that social engineering is the easiest vector to compromise any sort of IT security. Get somebody to click on a link, con some drone on the phone into giving you information, and you’re golden. My job rams it through our heads repeatedly and likes to send us fake phishing emails about twice a month to see if we catch them.

              1. My workplace does the same thing. Mostly it’s annoying, but every once in a while it catches somebody (not me…yet…) and reminds them to pay better attention.

          1. Whether it matters might very well depend on whether there’s been any turnover on the court. Apparently the new justice has been rather busy beclowning herself in the religious liberty case that the high court is hearing right now.

            1. No kidding. I was going to give her the benefit of the doubt when she was confirmed. Unfortunately, she’ just about dispelled any doubt. She’s a leftist nut case and an activist ‘judge’.

        4. Also note that the CCP, i.e. the establishment’s paymasters, will be exempt from all of this.

      3. Idiots.

        That “idea” should hit a roadblock in the persons of a Sane Supreme Court.

        But there was IIRC a stupid idea of the Glorious Obama that news organizations like the New York Times should get Federal Funds as the Press is “so important” that the Government should financially support the Press. (This was at a time when people thought the New York Times was losing money.)

        Oh, it’s Bad Enough that the News Media supports the Left but it likely could be worse if the News Media was financially support by the Government

        Of course, Obama’s idea likely would hit a roadblock named the Supreme Court (IMO even the Supreme Court of “his” time.)

        1. Like Oregon #114 which we all hope gets sunk by the court system (filed district court now).

          I hope this provision get sunk by the USSC.

          Right now opposition to adding this piece to the bill is being touted by the left as being against national defense. The idiots.

        2. I think that’s why they had the brain wave of making Facebook pay for it instead.

          Which only works if Facebook carries it at all.

          I honestly wonder if this is going to end up shifting most news reporting and distribution to non-cartel independents instead.

      4. How in the flying flapjack does “licensed journalists” have ANYTHING to do with defense spending?

        I know this phrase is the equivalent of a four-letter-word here, but I swear… there oughta be a law outright banning politicos from inserting any provisions into a bill that don’t have anything to do with the bill’s purpose. Punishable by immediate ejection from office, permanent forfeiture of all salaries, pensions, and benefits, and just because I’m feeling rather pissed-off this afternoon, mandatory tarring & feathering & placement in stocks in the town square for an indeterminate period. And maybe sell their constituents rotten fruit and vegetables to throw at them.

            1. The funny thing about Tom Clancy isn’t that he was predictive of using airliners as weapons; but that the U.S. was actually better off after the killing of the President and the entire combined U.S. Congress.

              1. I rather think of that sort of thing as obvious to anyone with the wit to pour soup out of a boot. Of course they’re corrupt. Duh. The “what are we going to do about it” has been the question for at least forty odd years now.

                The answer if you only glance at the tv every once in a while is depressing. What’s actually been going on, a bit less so. We need to do to election security what’s in the process of being done for 2A. Stick with it through the courts, win the winnable cases, all the way to the Supremes when we can.

                Well, that and all the other fires in need of putting out. This ain’t a one man job. It’ll take a lot more than one lifetime to do it, and the goblins will always be after trying to tear everything down at every chance.

                It’s not a race with a finish line. More a trust that must be maintained and defended, repaired when damaged, and improved very rarely if at all. The original principles are sound. Keep government small and contained, let the citizens prosper.

                I’d very much like to get back to that. But it won’t be easy.

                1. Even in the winning long game of the 2A, you can still go backwards in various places and times, Washington and Oregon being recent examples. It is NEVER over.

                  1. Oregon just got a stay order against #114. 12/7/2022, one day before it officially went into effect. State was volunteering holding back on the requirement to require a class by police organization for a permit to actually buy a firearm, to give law enforcement to design and staff the class.

                    1. Well, that’s a start. Not much of one though.
                      What they don’t seem to get through the glop that is allegedly their brain tissue is that even requiring classes imposes an infringement on their right to keep and bear arms. If anything, it imposes a class restriction for firearms to only be held by the rich, who can afford those classes (both in time and money), while disenfranchising those who need the protection the most, the poor and middle class. And since to the Left, to whom the poor are all people of color, that makes such a law racist. The contradictions by Leftists are mind boggling.

            1. I saw that one too. It will be interesting to see if they manage to accidentally kill the weed industry with this too.

              Maybe they should legalize and tax mine fentynal?

        2. I can’t remember what the bill was called. By the time it was voted on, “and other purposes” had been added to the title.

        4. Can we REQUIRE “licensed journalists” to have to append ‘LiJo’ or such (‘LiAr’ would be better!) to their names (on articles, etc.) so they can spotted right off as propagandists?

    2. Hey, I’m aware of immense progress in the realm of AI generated things. (Documents, art, etc.) Since you mentioned it, I’ll ask. What in all the worlds are aspiring writers/authors (myself in particular) supposed to do in response to this?

      If technology is removing a particular role in the economy, one should find some way to adapt and pick a new role (is the best rule I can think of to follow). How do I do that?

      1. Nothing. AI is good on the word/paragraph level SOMETIMES, but they can’t produce a nove for love or money.
        So, do what the artists are doing with AI. Use it to give you a start, or a concept, or something. THEN use YOU to write the thing.

      2. Same as anyone else: Offer a better product than the competition.

        Have you seen the stuff that comes out of the AI generated writing?

        It’s worse than the really bad Saturday Morning cartoons– you know, the ones where it was below paint-by-numbers plots.

        It will, likely, eventually pass the level of “we can write absolute garbage, it’s just for kids” which will endanger the main stream publisher’s “we are putting out absolute garbage, add more sex, stylish violence, or Current Fad” type bad offerings, but you’re no more in danger than from this than portrait painters are in danger because I can take a photograph, run it through a computer, and get a paint-by-numbers portrait kit generated.

        If technology is removing a particular role in the economy

        THIS is the BIG “if.”
        Don’t fall for it.

        The early commies thought that mechanical farming would destroy farming — instead, it means that now we actually have enough food all year round, it’s BETTER food, and people can farm for fun.

        My guess?

        The AI writing will be most useful to you– and me!– as aspiring writers, for generating plots when we’re staring at a blank paper and going “now what do I write about?”

        A glorified version of the “make a list of the options, roll a D6,” and with the same trick that it’s just kicking your brain into motion– you don’t have to do what the die selects, it just makes you go WHY you don’t want to do whatever you chose.

        1. Don’t forget the Luddites. “Spinning and weaving machines will take all our jobs! They’re Eeevul!”

          Instead, industrial cloth production brought the cost of clothing down to where people could actually AFFORD more than one pair of pants, increasing demand a hundred-fold. I’ve posted here about $700.00 hand-woven work shirts in the past.

        3. but you’re no more in danger than from this than portrait painters are in danger because I can take a photograph, run it through a computer, and get a paint-by-numbers portrait kit generated.

          However, the portrait painter’s market for “I want a picture of this family member” is gone. To the point that we barely even remember that it ever existed in the first place.

          1. LOL. Ian. Honey.
            There are people making a living from drawing a portrait of loved ones FROM PICTURES. IT’s just gone middle class and crafty level, instead of royalty and very rich people.
            I’ve considered it and have books to learn it, but….
            HOWEVER when going through houses to buy, we found someone we OBVIOUSLY made his living from it. (Spare room was a study, and there were orders, complete with print out of photograph, and work on the easel, etc.)
            Was primary earner. House was…. just at the top of our range, in CO, which was not cheap.

            1. Interesting.

              You know, that sounds like another case of the resurgence-with-better-tools phenomena I’ve noticed across many fields and hobbies.

              1. Yep. I’m still going to learn it for gifts. Like the first pic of mom and dad together is TINY and if I make a drawing, (it’s black and white and I’m not sure I can paint it/colorize it) I can send one to each family member as a gift, and they’ll love it. So, learning is earmarked for my COPIOUS spare time.

          2. The in-store “Spend a week’s pay to get professional photographs done at BoxStore” market is also tanking, if not gone.

            Good photographers are not, and high quality hobby photographers are not; but those whose entire business depended on a temporary bottleneck are threatened.

            So… pr0n script writers are probably in trouble….

            1. Related to the movie discussion in the other thread; ultra high quality video cameras that would blow professional hollywood models of 20 years ago out of the water are now in the “expensive hobbyist” range.

              1. So is rendering and animation. It requires less time and work too. The time is in learning it. I wish I HAD the time.
                If younger son can’t find a job, he should learn it. (He IS my clone.)

                1. We do not buy profession wildlife photography because that is hubby’s hobby. We’ve started printing some of his for home. Professional wildlife photographer still can make money. Because they get the money shots from thousand more shots, taken all year, than hobbyists can in two or three weeks. That doesn’t count the ones that have trail cams out.

            2. D*mn it Fox. There goes my plan for surviving if the novels stop selling. (Ignoring she tried to write a by the numbers romance at 30 and it turned into …. an alien invasion with insects that ate every character. Because bored.)

              2. In defense of by-the-numbers romance cliches (something I never thought I’d say) – has anyone here seen Jill Bearup’s ‘Fantasy Heroine’ series on YouTube? It’s awesome!

                  1. Ah. Ugh. Not so much fun. (Fade to blacks are okay. Don’t ask me to write anything more than that. If I ever do – which is doubtful – it’ll have to be after I’m married.)

          3. To echo what Sarah’s saying– my mom was gifted a “painting” that was a hobbyist photographer who took a picture of mom, ran it through one of those painting filters, and it is one of her best sellers.

            I think they went for like $50/each in the good quality framed wall art format?

            In contrast, we have two hand-paintings– again, hobbyist– we got for $35-40, in oil paint.

            After materials, the second lady isn’t making GREAT money, but she’s getting better than even a fast-food manager and 90% of what she does is NOT dealing with people. (She likes people fine, as best I can tell, but dealing with people walking by and admiring your art– priced well inside of impulse buy range– is different than most retail!)

            2. 32 years ago we had a photographer in on *Christmas day who took professional photos of the extended family, individual family units, and combinations there of. (Oldest 3 grandchildren were 4, 6, and 11 1/2, months.) The pictures were touched up electronically by the photographer, and distributed on an CD, with a printed release form (could print what we wanted in whatever form wanted). Same photographer took the senor photos of two of the babies, 16 years later. **Professional photography isn’t going away.

              (*) Photographer’s husband was a firefighter and on shift during Christmas. They planned it that way so she’d be available holiday days (not just Christmas) for exactly this type of stuff. She made good money doing it.

              (**) Sure amateurs with just digital phone cameras can get decent pictures. You can get adapter lens for different effect, including distance you can’t get with the phone. Or get adapter to attach to binoculars or spotting scopes (really wish hubby gotten the spotting scope …). But the SLR cameras with the lens options take better pictures. For most, it doesn’t matter. But for those that do? It is 100% not inexpensive.

              1. Some professional photographers have a heck of a time– because they forget what buisness they are in.

                They are not in the buisness of selling hard copies in the 1980s.

                They are in the buisness of selling visual memory aids.

                If they are one of the many who do a bait and switch and suddenly decide they are either selling printed photographs, especially at very high cost, they are going to have a very hard time surviving.

                There are a LOT of times I would have paid $50 for the official CD of Big Event photos, and instead they wanted to charge me $1.25/picture for a photo that could be printed at about snapshot quality.

                After being “ripped off” during things like Prom shoots– where the kids getting a photo would just have one of them get it, and then they’d share, because it was too expensive– my aunt and uncle realized the problem was they were selling a product, when they needed to sell a service.
                Make it easy for people to give you money.
                So, she packed her little instant-photo printer, and for five bucks you could get an instant printout of one of those large-ish wall photos (like 8×10?) and they had pens on site to get signatures on, right then; she set it up so you could get your photos, and she’d email you the download so you don’t have to pack anything around, EXPLICITLY on a per-shot charge, and the download had a “hey you want to order prints through us?” link with an option for touch-up, just $ more!

                Suddenly, when they treated customers as something besides the enemy, they were making money again!

                …you know, EXACTLY like the photographer you mention did.

          1. Yeah. Like immortality, perfect regen, etc. if it’s possible at all it’s … thousands of years in the future, if we don’t experience knowledge setbacks ever.

      2. Sooo…’indistinguishable from human writing’ is NOT good? 😛

        “We’ve got it all wrong with Artificial Intelligence. If the goal is to make computers that think like humans, we should be pursuing Artificial Stupidity!”

          1. Hey, I read Fan Fiction. (Write it, too)

            I have encountered stories by graduates (and dropouts) of the Infinite Number Of Monkeys School Of Writing. Stories where I can mostly figure out what they were trying to write — and the ones I can’t.

            Some of what I read prompted me to compose my Eight Rules For Better Writing:

            1. Spelling. Check it! Then check it again.

            2. Punctuation. Use it! Correctly! Commas don’t cost you anything.

            3. Swapped words. Spell Check won’t find them! Look for: you’re – your, who’s – whose, they’re – their – there, its – it’s, that – than – then, lose – loose, and about 40 others.

            4. Capitalize ALL of the appropriate words, and ONLY the appropriate words. Use Capitalization for Emphasis — SPARINGLY.

            5. Sentences. Don’t just string a bunch of words together. You have to choose your words carefully, fit them together correctly, and ensure that they say exactly what you want them to say. A sentence should have structure. It should relate to the sentences before and after it. Your sentence must express your idea in a way the reader will understand clearly, and it should END when its task is complete!

            6. Paragraphs. When you start a new theme, for extra emphasis, or every time a different character speaks. Paragraph breaks don’t cost anything, either.

            7. Properly quote all dialogue. Missing quotes are confusing and annoying.

            8. Tenses. Don’t mix past and present tense in your exposition. Past tense usually works best in a narrative story, and most stories are narratives. Dialogue can be present or past tense, depending on what your characters are talking about.

  2. Very Off Topic, that subject line made me think “Quick to the Batcave”. [Very Big Crazy Grin]

      1. “Atomic batteries to ‘power’! Turbine to speed!”

        (Battrumpet fanfare, jet blast, and tire squeal noise)

        “Holy verbosity Batmaam! You hacked out a Novella!”

  4. They sort-of tried that when they all but barred wrongthinkers from tradpub contracts while trying to shame/dismiss indie authors as unwashed, unprofessional, poorly-written trash. So it certainly wouldn’t surprise me if they tried to make it Official Under The Law.

    1. So when the dog not only won’t eat the food, but pays for the privilege of digging the trash out of the bin, what does that say about your ability to sort the one from the other, Mr. Gatekeeper? >.>;
      I’m sure the dog will hunt precisely as cooperatively this time

    2. I bought a series of cozy mysteries for $SPOUSE. I’ll leave the perpetrator nameless, but it was “professionally” put out by a certain company known by a hypersezualized waterfowl.

      The way-too-much Woo annoyed me (Tarot cards and auras? I’ll pass) and the brand names inserted looked like product-placement gone metastatic. The final walling was when one of the suspects stopped being referred to by one name, and without warning (or reason) acquired a brand new surname. I skimmed, dumped the book and the rest of the series. Not worth it. For Ghod’s sake: USE AN EDITOR! (Other issues abound, but life is too short.)

      Protip: Beware of cat mysteries where the cat is far smarter than the protagonist.

        1. More like a genius cat (who spells out clues with Scrabble letters. Sigh) paired with a supposedly seasoned retired crime-beat reporter (from Chicago, no less) who had her IQ drop 50%* when A Certain Detective showed up. The cat was trying to tell her, but FIB and GOTV didn’t break through her hormone-soaked head, so it took her forever to get to FBI. At least she got GOVT. One thinks the cat would have solved the mystery faster without the protagonist.

          (*) It was a running gag in the book**, with the lead’s BFF mocking it. Never seemed to quit.)

          (**) As far as I got. Unfortunately Kindles prevent therapeutic walling.

          Personally, I was hoping that Detective Handsome was a black hat…

          I think Pythagoras would have outsmarted the protagonist. ‘Sides, Dyce Dare books are a fun read, not a slog.

          1. I miss the Cat Who…books. Not always satisfying, and the last one suffered from the author suddenly deciding to Change Everything! But fun.

            1. Until I ran across the surname-rename, I was considering slogging through the book, but after that, I figured it was going to be an error hunt. Nope.

              It’s pretty clear I’m the wrong demographic for the book (wrong sex), but sheesh.

              And yes, I do like books with certain cats who are quite intelligent. Petronius the Arbiter, Pixel, and Raj come to mind right away, but those characters also have brains.

  5. The Reader thinks it might be more likely that they ‘lean on’ Amazon to put the crimp on independent writers. That seems to have been their style to date. Sarah has alluded to alternate arrangements in the works; hopefully they are ready.

    1. Yep, I do think that is what they will try, first. Because the ease of printing through POD, and of distributing through Amazon, and doing ebooks were the three elements that made the indy-author boom in the first place. Of course, they’re going to try and cut us off through pressuring Amazon. I can only hope that Amazon considers their bottom line first and foremost, and not their credentials as fully-paid-up woke warriors.

      1. The Reader doesn’t deem it likely that a mere detail like lost revenue would concern Amazon if someone in the government came along and said ‘will no one rid me of these troublesome writers’. That appears to be how it worked at Twitter. He hope’s he is wrong.

        1. Don’t know if you saw the late breaking news on that.

          Apparently James Baker was deciding what documents Taibbi was getting.

          He’s been escorted out the door for now.

          1. The Reader saw. This week’s Twitter dump should be more interesting than what is already out. He also notes that Musk turned to folks on Substack to release it to.

      2. Woke warriors never consider the bottom line; until it’s too late. At which time, they run screaming for legislation to ban competition.

    1. It is. And Mitch the Turtle rolled over to Pelosi and Schumer and let them attach that bill to the National Defense Authorization Act despite it having nothing to do with defense. Surprisingly, the only Republican who balked was Kevin McCarthy, so he at least gets a half-point for that. Grudgingly.

      1. I must slightly disagree that he “rolled over.” Turtlemitch was always on the other side. He just campaigns in a red state. Kentucky is served poorly by its sitting senator.

    2. It’s basically textbook fascism-you are only a journalist if you have the approval of the state to be a journalist. “All within the state, nothing against the state, nothing outside the state”, as an infamous fascist from Italy proclaimed, is the guiding principle of this and most of everything else the Feds do these days.

  7. “…they’re going to make it so that only licensed “authors” can write fiction.”

    That seemed to be the case on Earth in the Freehold universe.

  8. It seems like there will be many newsletters for people that pay to receive a smiley face once a week. They of course, are paying for the digital smiley face, not the newsletter that is sent out by the ‘artist’ as a freebie.

      1. 200 MB is not a novel. It’s a series. And a big one. I’ve got nearly 150k in the zombie story that’s around 400pages… that is barely over 1MB in size, even accounting for scrivener files in the folder.

        My entire kindle library is only around 50mb in size, for example. Reference library is a bit larger I think, but there are scans in there on .pdf that bloat the thing a bit.

        1. OK I was exaggerating a wee bit. 😉

          I have something over 600 e-books on the computer and they take up just a bit over a GB of space, which would average around 160 KB per book.

  9. E-mail attachments for a donation, flash-drives “accidentally” left with people (“How could I know? All black thumb-drives look alike in a dim conference room!”), sneakernet for hard-copies . . .

    uses paw to center halo better over little horns He don’t know me very well, do he?

    1. (dry)
      Do they even know about… y’know… radio?
      (/dry)

      BBS’s work with very low baud rate. Simple to code, too. But even that’s fiction of a different sort, because you can’t stop the signal. Not any more than you can stop pirate sites.

      The very picosecond Amazon starts full on censorship is the moment a strikingly similar competing website will rise, probably out of nothing but sheer stubbornness and spite, to compete by doing the very same thing Amazon was doing the moment before. Even if it has to be done illegally.

      And encouraging the grey/black market to the point that regular people start patronizing it as a part of their daily lives is a loud warning bell that all sorts of unpleasantness is Gonna Be Happenin’ Awful Soon.

      1. The grey/black market is a thing unstoppable, in the long run. We will figure out how to do commerce, under the noses of the authorities, even if it is only barter between trusted friends.
        Somewhere I read years ago – that a huge proportion of the foodstuffs available in the old Soviet Union came from the little garden plots that citizens cultivated on their own. Little tiny garden allotments that the ordinary citizens were allowed to have, to raise fruit and vegetables for their own personal use. Which … fueled a profitable underground exchange, because those who had those plots were amazingly efficient about squeezing every atom of edible produce out of those little plots, in exchanges with friends and sub-rosa customers.

        1. The grey/black market is a thing unstoppable,…

          Let’s see, how did prohibition work? The War On Drugs? Human smuggling? Prostitution? Pornography? Underage drinking/smoking? Cuban cigars?

          I’d go on, but I don’t have all month to list the things that government has tried to prohibit and failed. Sure, they catch a few people breaking the law now and then, but the vast majority of them continue.

          They can try to ban anything they want. People will still get it. We are a country founded on sedition and treason. They think they’re gonna change that? Mwahahaha. Banning a product doesn’t ban the knowledge of the product. Are they gonna outlaw chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering?

          1. Are they gonna outlaw chemistry, physics, biology, and engineering?

            –
            Only if they believe there is any chance whatsoever they can get away with it.
            ———————————
            Boys are not girls. Girls are not boys. Those are facts. They can’t be changed by wishing really hard.

  11. I’m pretty sure that being an unregistered journalist or unapproved author will cause your social credit score app to turn yellow if not red.

    Good luck getting into a grocery store, your apartment complex, starting your car or receiving medical treatment, vitamins or prescriptions.

    That’s the plan, anyway.
    Works great in the CCP I hear.
    We need to fight the app at all costs.

    *This message has been approved for distribution by every sane sentient being.

    1. The CCP is their model, which is why so many of the tech oligarchs have been helping the CCP develop and implement their social credit system.

      1. Many elements of it are already in place in Mainland China. There’s a huge lists of things that you simply can’t do without your smartphone… including, in many cases, leaving your apartment building.

  12. They won’t like us when we’re mad.

    Won’t be me. I’m old, crippled, unarmed, and domesticated; but they took the Bible and prayer out of schools. They shut down the Tea Party. They persecuted Trump. And they won’t stop pushing.

    God won’t have any mercy on them.

    1. Old, crippled, domesticated… Those are some of the very best reasons to be armed. (I know it’s a personal choice and you’ve explained your reasons here before, but I figured it should be said)

          1. I’m fine with life imprisonment. I mean, the whole point of the death penalty was to keep people from reoffending, and these days, folk just aren’t getting out of prison.

            Mind you, I’m not thinking that imprisonment is particularly kind. But it does hold out the hope for redemption on the part of the criminal.

            2. I mean, the whole point of the death penalty was to keep people from reoffending, and these days, folk just aren’t getting out of prison.

              What?

              I mean, besides the big COVID releases….

              For murder, fifteen percent serve less than five years. For murder, not man-slaughter of any flavor. About half of what is sentenced is served before release, on average.
              Bunch of stats in here.

              Click to access tssp18.pdf

              That’s besides the huge number of people who immediately after they are released on parole or probation– or just on a day trip– then commit a violent offense of exactly the sort they were arrested for in the first place.

              2. I meant that they’re not getting out of prison unless they’re released—but I’m often garble-typing. You don’t have prison escapees.

                1. Ah.

                  They are fairly infrequent, other than the ones where they’re on trips and walk off.

                  I still disagree, due to the deliberate attempts to subvert even the very tiny sentences they already hand out, but that does make more sense.

              1. The parole board should be charged as accessories. I MEAN IT!

                In normal times, 2% of the population commits 95% of the crime. Deal with that 2% and crime drops to a minimum. Don’t deal with them, crime spirals out of control, and another 5% or 10% join in because there are no consequences.

                In a country the size of the U.S. that’s about six and a half million hard-core criminals that must be removed from society if you want to have a society. Putting them in prison PERMANENTLY is one way. As for the other way — I say, bring back the guillotine. The French never got any complaints.
                ———————————
                John Sheridan: “If more of our so-called leaders would walk the same streets as the people who voted them in, live in the same buildings, eat the same food instead of hiding behind glass and steel and bodyguards, maybe we’d get better leadership and a little more concern for the future.”

        2. I don’t know if I could do that. I hope I never have to find out.

          I do know that I’ve got people here and now (including myself; I’m still strong, but on the downhill slide) who might need me to bring maximum force to bear on their behalf. I hope I never have to — but if I have to, I hope to do it with maximum effectiveness.

          Putting emotion aside, I’ve evaluated it in terms of risks vs. consequences. The risk of suffering grievous harm or death from criminal violence is very low; the consequences of not being able to stop it if targeted are high and permanent. So I try to be prepared to stop it, as the cost and risk of such preparedness are very low.

          Besides, shooting guns of all kinds is just about the most fun you can have with your clothes on, as far as I’m concerned, so I’d be tooled up whether it was for self-defense or not. 🙂

        3. Likewise, those who are refraining from action now likely are doing so because they understand that should that switch be flipped, they will become someone else than who they are now. TPTB really need to understand that the patience and forgiveness exhibited now will not be afforded to them if the line is crossed.

  14. The Timcast last night had a good old fashioned idea. The restaurant in Richmond that got targeted by the Virginia ABC (spoiler, guess where Ralph Northam is working?). There were police officers that had to do the dirty work. Those police officers need to be POLITELY shunned by their neighbors, their fellow congregants and other shop owners. “I’m sorry, I don’t want your business” “I’m sorry, Johnny can’t play with your kids”, “I’m sorry I can’t do small group with you but I’ll pray for your soul”. Just doing my job needs to be not an excuse.

    1. I’m… torn on that.

      On the one hand, that crap has to stop. On the other, just how willing are we for the cops to pick and choose what laws to enforce?

      1. You’re about 30 years late on that one, boyo. If you weren’t aware of it, the covidiocy and “Russia Russia Russia” should have been a wake up call unless your surname is Van Winkle.

      2. Also, of course, every Gestapo agent could point to a German law that justified what they did.

        1. Well, yes. That is the essential issue when it comes to this stuff. Cops are supposed to more or less turn their judgement of crime over to the legislatures, otherwise they are free agents licensed to detain and kill.

          Though IIRC the Nuremberg tribunals tried the Nazis under German law, which actually forbade most of what they were doing.

  15. Improvise, adapt, overcome. Yeah, they have no idea what they’re dealing with and how much they have and are pissing people off. If the Soviet citizens could reuse carbon paper and hand copy entire books, journals, etc., we can surely do at least that with computers and the ever-present evil dark web. And BTW, there were something like 120 history journals alone circulating in the USSR via samizdat.

  16. Okay but I already find our would be rulers intolerable and it’s lonely waiting for the rest of the country to catch up.

    2. That is the blessing of groups like this, to remind us we are not alone. Most of us are just trudging along, heads down over the work. They’re doing their damndest to make that difficult.

      To their peril.

  17. Yes Reagan did increase spending going to the MIC. Which at the time would have also driven our own economy into the dirt. It had been suffering tremendously since the end of Vietnam with inflation and large numbers in unemployment . Not to mention the oil embargo which virtually destroyed our auto industry.
    Carter did a few things in energy and autos to help motivate the country toward being competitive with the rest of the world.
    Of course Reagan then removed all those new energy programs .
    Reagan was not wrong about the USSR however. They seemingly were on the cusp of several technologies which could have harmed us.
    How did he finance our increased MIC spending.
    By dipping into the Social security trust fund .
    It did work.
    The Soviets , did fail . Yet did they really ?
    All they did was to reduce their territory , then shut down most of their own MIC.
    Everything worked out fine for quite some time with our economy. Given the deal our gov made with OPEC making the dollar king.
    Deficit spending went rampant by the MIC , created drug wars and ME false wars too.
    Here we are deja Vu all over again.
    Only weird , Reagan at least recognized the evil empire for what it was. Today’s Republicans seem to cheer the Russians on in their new expansion back to former borders.

    Like I said weird

    1. The soviets were on the brink of NOTHING. It was all smoke and mirrors.
      And today’s republicans do what?
      I’m sorry. WHAT TODAY’S REPUBLICANS do that?
      Are there any of today’s republicans in the room with us right now? Since you’re the only one who can see them.

      1. “WHAT TODAY’S REPUBLICANS do that?”

        Anyone who doesn’t beat the drum for sending as much of our military supplies and money to Ukraine as possible, readiness be damned, of course.

  18. Apparently, on New Texas, killing a politician was not malum in se, and was mallum prohibitorum only to the extent that what happened to the politician was in excess of what he deserved.

    1. Lone Star Planet.

      The underlying legal reasoning was that it was not considered murder if the victim “had it coming.”

      A practicing politician was presumed to have it coming, therefore the trial was mostly the dead pol’s friends arguing that he didn’t deserve to die.

  19. Didn’t they try this several years ago under Obama and it got shot down pretty quickly when it was pointed out that the First Amendment pretty much defines the “press” as all people.

    “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

    2. If the Second Amendment is actually about a privilege that can be licensed, selectively,

      then so is the First.

      And a bunch of presstitutes may very soon find this out, painfully.

      Josef Stolin did say “no amendment is absolute”, right Mr Presstitute? And you nodded your head in agreement, yes? No, you -applauded- and -cheered- him.

    3. If I was updating the Constitution, I’d make that ‘Congress shall take no action…’

      Nor the President, the courts, or the Regulatory State.

      Because they’re busy weaseling around the Constitution by other means.
      ———————————
      I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.

    1. Vichy Mitchy needs to be fired from the Republican leadership position and given a job more appropriate to his talents. Finger painting comes to mind.

      Maybe the paintings can be sold for $1,000,000 each and used to reduce the government’s debts? After all, if Cokehead H. Biden’s spit-paintings went for $500,000 it’s not totally unreasonable…
      ———————————
      Every hero was once
      Every villain was once
      Just a boy with a bad attitude.

      1. To be fair, he did great work on shepherding Trump’s judicial appointments through. Of course, he had a majority then.

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