Whistling Past The Graveyard

Posted on by accordingtohoyt

Humans are really bad at forecasting what is going to happen, and what the consequences of their actions will be. I don’t know if this fault is worse in humans who want to take power and force everyone to obey their grandiose plans, or if it’s simply more obvious in them because the rest of us aren’t displaying our lack of foresight for the entire universe.

I came across an article, recently, complaining that the price of commercial real estate is plunging. And they don’t know what it means, or why this could have befallen commercial real estate.

Meanwhile a lot of us are sitting here, looking at it and going “There was a significant number of jobs that could already be done outside the office. By locking people down, you forced them to do so, and proved to companies that they could do that. For most companies, having the workers working from home saves money. This is particularly true for those in overpriced, increasingly unsafe cities.

But apparently these people who think of themselves as great planners were completely blindsided by this development.

The same is true for the world class brains who were doing their usual little game of letting the ferals depreciate commercial real estate in places like NYC and Denver, only to clean it up and bring in their friends and cronies to buy the vacant places in a couple of years. And all of a sudden people — including companies — are just living for places that aren’t completely insane.

And it’s a surprise! Surprise!!!!

I wouldn’t believe it, of course, but I suspect it really is a surprise. You see, I spent ten years so far hearing publishers going so far as to rig polls (Well, Publishers’ Weekly did) and obscuring statistics to tell themselves everything is fine, and ebooks and indie publishing were a fad that was sure to disappear. For all I know they’re still telling themselves that.

Whistling past the graveyard.

Because they can’t believe that things that have always been will change. And it’s particularly hard to believe that when power is getting ripped from you.

And as it doesn’t work. It particularly doesn’t work when you keep whistling long after you passed the graveyard, and everyone can see what you’re doing.

That is the case of those lists of “best books” that try to convince us some woke tripe is the bestest thing ever, while ignoring the true masters’ of the field.

When the things they try to push as the bestest, most wonderfulest ever are not just mediocre, but stuff so ridiculous that no one — not even the woke — reads it, what they’re doing is p*ssing down our back while screaming, begging and imploring that we believe them.

And when we don’t, then they accuse us of being scared of losing our privilege. Which would be remotely plausible if we’d ever had any privilege.

That is past whistling past the graveyard and well into tantruming past the graveyard demanding we believe them, not our lying eyes.

And in the end all it does is emphasize how much they’ve lost control of the information stream and the ah… mass-industrial written (and other) entertainment.

All they have left now is whistling past the graveyard. And the whistle sounds sadder and thinner as it goes, rolling away into the night of the final loss they can no longer tell themselves won’t come.

In the end, the only people they fool are themselves.

This one is going to hurt and badly, but in the end we win, they lose.

Be not afraid.

261 thoughts on “Whistling Past The Graveyard”

  1. Can’t hear the phrase “whistling past the grave yard” without imagining someone whistling “Time is on My Side.”

    Is the gut-punch from a horror movie called Fallen.

    Iz horrifying.

  2. There’s a significant chunk of the people who run things that have never had to worry about consequences and have always failed upwards. See Commie La Whorish and the black lesbian mophead as two examples.

    It used to be that good things mostly happened despite their meddling. But now there’s been too much meddling for too long so good things can no longer happen. San Francisco losing 10% of its population and a larger proportion of its tax base in the last couple of years being an example of how you reach a tipping point and things no longer continue good. There’s a lot of that going to happen in the next few years and it’s healthy.

    2. Problem being that the people leaving Califonia for greener pasture don’t leave behind the attitudes and convictions that caused the disaster in the first place.

  3. The tune Tangerine comes to mind, but even Tangerine is more successful at nearly 50% allegedly…

    She’s got the guys in a whirl,
    But she’s only fooling one girl.
    She’s only fooling… Tangerine.

    1. When you mentioned “Tangerine,” I thought you were referring to the Flaming Lips:

      I know a girl who
      Reminds me of Cher.
      She’s always changing
      The color of her hair.
      She don’t use nothing
      that you buy at the store.
      She likes her hair to
      be real orange.

      She uses taaaaangerines…

      My kinda weirdness.

    2. The silence of the locked-down pressure relief valve – just before the boiler explodes . . .

  6. This time for SURE!

    But that trick never works!

    Even cartoon moose and squirrel are more insight than these dopes.

  7. The other tune they’re whistling is “what’s causing all those heart attacks”.

    The narrative is screaming now “ITS NOT THAT THING IT OBVIOUSLY IS!!!!”

    This particular one is going to hurt REAL bad.

    1. If it turns out, as I’ve seen claimed, that Covid vaccines also reduce fertility, that’s likely to cause equally bad reactions.

        1. I was reading a couple articles on that this morning. Not only did the miscarriage rate rise among the not-Vaxxed (discovered and ignored in the Pfizer sham trial), but there’s now strong indication that men getting the clotshot have lower sperm count and motility. Seems the reproductive organs have an abundance of the ACE sites that the spike proteins want to clobber.

          And in other news “Saint” Bill Gates just spent $1B on the Heineken beer company. He who talks of mRNA dosage in food. I can’t drink beer any more because reasons, but now I’m glad of it.

          No further comment…

          1. The technically insolvent Heineken beer company in that their current assets are less than their current liabilities

            1. No loss; Heineken hasn’t been worth a sh!t since it started being brewed in the US. And the same for Newcastle Brown Ale.

              1. And Löwenbräu (1975, started being brewed by Miller in the US; went to Labatt’s of Canada about 2000; 2014, purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev – all 3 versions were/are terrible.) ‘Progress’ is not a synonym for ‘improvement’.

                Had my first Löwenbräu at the New York World’ Fair of 1965, in the Löwenbräu Beer Garden.

                1. The brewery version of “Go Woke, Go Broke” is “Move Production To The US”. We have some really good micro brews, but I haven’t found a major one yet that isn’t either “sex in a canoe” or just really bad tasting. We seem able to do Vodka, Bourbon and Rye very well indeed, and even various wines, but beer? Nope.

                  1. The good news is the the micro brew business has made it from the few locales where they started in the 80s to the point that just about every town of any consequence has at least one. All you had to do was ask the locals.

                  2. That’s because “the beer company” (InBev) operates on the “mininum quality, maximum marketing” principle. Anything they touch turns to garbage, because their efficiency people and accountantsstrip out everything that made a product distinctive to its (often former) customers. You get McBeer with different flavoring additives.

                1. Don’t know about brown Ale, but there’s a brewery in Missoula, Montana that does good stuff according to my beloved. He’s partial to Trout Slayer and Moose Drool.
                  You can apparently only get it west of the Mississippi, alas.
                  Also, Linenkuegel is decent, he says. It’s one of his backups.

                  1. HAW! Moose Drool is available locally, and well, Leinie’s is if not local, pretty dang close. Chippewa Falls is famous for supercomputers and Leinie’s. This might not be coincidence.

                    1. 307 Ale, me lads, 307 Ale,
                      The finest drink that any bar has ever had for sale!
                      It’ll lay your whole damn world to waste,
                      It’ll make you fit and hale!
                      There’s nothing that you’ll ever taste
                      like 307 Ale, me lads, 307 Ale!

                2. My favorite is Oak Creek Nut Brown Ale, but I’m pretty sure it is local. They also have a really good porter, but unfortunately they don’t bottle it; it’s only available at the brewery restaurant/pub in Sedona. I’ve heard good things about Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, but I haven’t tried it. Also, I’d recommend Deschutes’ Black Butte Porter and Obsidian Stout; of course, they’re not ales, but they’re dark and very smooth.

                  I do most of my “beverage” shopping at Total Wine And More in Tempe, and from what i can see online they have stores all over the US; if there’s one near you maybe they can order in what you want.

              3. I swore off American beer after a few Bavarian business trips in ’01 & ’02. If memory serves, brew pubs were just getting started in San Jose, and neither the budget nor the time available were cooperative for many years.

                Now, I have to stay away from ethanol (and the heresies of non-alcoholic beer-like liquids) because reasons, so beer is best enjoyed as a memory. Damn, that Weissbier was good!

      2. I saw an article about that this morning. For the DAVOS elite it’s a feature, not a bug. PS – I know this blog is monitored by Glowies, but I don’t care anymore. I think we are coming to a head, Yaweh help us.

      3. That’s pretty well established..it hampers both male and female fertility, reducing sperm count significantly….We have also had a huge increase in miscarriages and stillbirths, as have other heavily vaxxed countries…

      4. Indeed – my sister and all of her family got vaxxed and boosted, mostly because they have the home care of Mom, who is bedridden now. And now my sister has a thyroid growth that they are still testing … and my twenty-something nephew and niece … I’m honestly worried about all of them. They drank the Koolaid, deeply, and they are stuck in California for at least the foreseeable future. My daughter is traveling out there in May, to show Wee Jamie to his kinfolk, and to give my sister’s family a break.
        I won’t draw an easy breath until they are back and safe at home.
        My daughter and I are agreed that Wee Jamie will not get the covid vaxx. We both caught it, he had the sniffles and a slight temperature for a day. Acquired immunity is a good thing.

        1. Thank goodness it was mild for him! Hoping for the best for your family.

          I avoided getting the vax ’cause 1) I caught it beforehand, and 2) I know enough about mRNA to look at what they were touting as a “vaccine” and go, “no. Nope. Uh-uh.” I’ve been waiting for the other ton of boots to drop on that, and I am sadly not surprised.

        2. But… the CDC said children couldn’t get SARS-COVID-19. It was right there on their web site.

          Did that unhappen, like so many of its other statements>?

    2. Oh, but didn’t you know that young people in their 20s have always had heart attacks? I’ve seen it all over the media lately. Of course, until three years ago I was assured that it only happens from heart conditions (usually undiagnosed) and drug use. Well…. I guess the “vaccines” would fall under drug use.

      1. I’m hesitant to agree, only because we also had kids that pretty much are living on diets that are hideously unhealthy and weren’t very physically active before being stuck at home for nearly two years…

        This is not to say that you couldn’t be right. I’m just hesitant to assign malice when sheer incompetence will do.

        1. Doesn’t explain the fit athletes or the fit little kids.

          They had one die just the other day, at his first sports practice. Skinny little bit, healthy. Totally normal to die from running a few drills.

          Learn CPR, people. Nobody at the practice knew it, and they thought he had just fainted. Until he was dead.

        2. Doesn’t explain the guy in his 40s in my husband’s office who suddenly has heart issues.

          No family history of it. Yearly physicals, too.

          They worked through kung flu.

          He’s not the only one in their circles, either.

        3. I recall hearing about MAYBE one a year. Perhaps one every few years. Now? It’s many per year. And it’s so recent that net/web pervasiveness is no longer an argument for “but now it’s widely reported.” No. This IS NEW. And wow, are the Spin Machines ever in overdrive!

          1. That usually shifts to professional/college sports, and the claim does broaden a bit…but it also contrasts all medical emergencies with sudden heart issues.

            Yeah, black Americans have higher heart issue rates, even in college– but not THAT much higher!

            And this is after removing the folks who had heart issue risks badly enough they just went “you know what? Not getting vaxxed.”

          2. I had a cardiology consult last year. One of his first questions was “Have you had the Covid vaccine?” When I answered “no”, he visibly relaxed and removed his mask.

        4. Tucker Carlson had a statistician on last night. He said the incidence of ‘female problems’ (women’s reproductive health issues) had increased 1,200-fold in the last two years.

          Not 1,200%. 1,200 TIMES. That’s a 120,000% increase.

          Where they were seeing 5 cases a year in 2019, now they’re seeing 6,000 cases.

          I’d call that statistically significant.

          Miscarriages and stillbirths are 57 times higher. Other reproductive health problems have increased 20 to 40 times what they used to be.

          Dying of Suddenly has increased enough to put a strain on morgues and mortuaries. Actual numbers are ‘not available’.

          But it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with forcing 170 million people to get COVID19 shots that were untested and are still not approved. They’re on ‘Emergency Use Authorization’ after more than 2 years.
          ———————————
          The government can mandate stupidity. They can’t make it not be stupid.

    3. The Andriod/Google new feed now has (as of this morning/overnight) some story that “youth” (under 35..) heart attacks are purely lifestyle related. Above 25, and sans ‘vaccine’ (not-a-vax) I might believe it. Now, about those high schoolers…

      1. Was listening to a series on YouTube called Collapse of Civilizations. He had a thing on Easter Island.

        At least according to current research, it appears that the island was a largely successful and stable farming civilization when the Europeans arrived. They were just using a rock mulch technique the explorers did not understand, so it got written off as a devastated island.

        What now appears to have destroyed Easter Island was plagues going through, wiping out potentially as much as 80% of their population. And it was that mass death that cause the systems collapse of the Easter Island civilization, not any ecological problems.

        Now, disclaimer, it does seem a bit convenient that the collapse of Easter Island always seems to line up with whatever current worry we have, so I’m not married to it, but it is striking.

        1. > What now appears to have destroyed Easter Island was plagues going through, wiping out potentially as much as 80% of their population.

          Thor Heyerdahl reported that, based on native tales and existing written records, back in the mid-1950s. But Heyerdahl isn’t much liked in academia.

      2. It’s another one of those archetypal situations. “Oh, we’ll just let these barbarians in en masse. We can control them, and they’ll handle our enemies for us!” Followed, sooner or later, by the “clever,” king/nobility that let them in getting their heads handed to them.

  9. Now me, I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

    Those aren’t shoes. Those are boots.

    Government by centipede is a hell of a way to run a civilization.

  10. I came across an article, recently, complaining that the price of commercial real estate is plunging. And they don’t know what it means, or why this could have befallen commercial real estate.

    The stupid! It Burns! IT BUURRRRNNNSSSS!!!

    2. I would like to find some commercial real estate in the downtown/main street/town square of some medium sized town within a 100 miles of where I am currently living to turn into a place to live. Open floor plan divided by dozens of bookcases.

      1. That’s been one of my dreams for a long time. It’s in a neck-and-neck competition with the one that involves a sizable swath of rural land where I can build a modestly sized, comfy home and shoot guns from the deck in back.

        1. Cleave to the dream! I have an author friend in Beeville, who had my daughter and I to his house for an afternoon of black powder shooting … he did have to call his next nearest neighbor, to alert him to move the cows out of that pasture … just in case any hot lead went flying farther than expected…

  11. Unsurprising that commercial real estate is crashing, if they’d been looking with honest eyes. Even before 2020 and the lockdowns where my office was near the North End and the Boston Garden was seeing LOTS of commercial space vacancies. Many coffee shops and lunch joints were hurting. Bars and restaurants did ok because of the Garden (Hockey, Basketball, and a never ending set of concerts and Disney on Ice type things). But the smart money headed for the suburbs/exurbs before 2019. Rents were getting too high, commutes (even with massively subsidized commuter rail and MBTA) were LONG and unpleasant. Our office closed for the lockdowns mid march of 2020. Our lease ran out next January and by the time we got there we realized that a software Job house didn’t really need an office anymore especially as our job mix changed. We dumped it and that huge nut got used a little for some shared space for servers and the rest gave us a safety net as work came and went. So far it after some initial issues has worked fine here almost 3 years later. I think a lot of other folks in our position are doing the same… and as we do that the little businesses we used to support are realizing that unless they’re something useful to the Garden trade they might as well be elsewhere.

  12. Basic economics should be required in high school. Heck, just requiring a week of Thomas Sowell YouTube videos would likely be a dramatic improvement.

  13. Hayek explained nearly 100 years ago why economic planning can’t work and then went on to apply the point to “social engineering” generally. I’m not a libertarian but this was one of the great achievements of modern social theory.

    The history of every socialist economy and “engineered” society ever since has been one long string of case studies of what he argued. This history has been obfuscated by the dominant Left but now and then the breakdown is too big to ignore. Even capital “s” Socialists don’t support the Soviet model any longer (without admitting it, they’ve takrn up with Mussolini instead).

    It’s frustrating to sane people that our so-called “elites” have learned nothing from this. They tweak the model now and then but the “dream” will not die however often it ends in nightmare.

    I’ve come to the conclusion that this fantasy of control won’t die because it appeals so sweetly to vanity and darker things in the human heart. It starts with the pleasure of believing that one is oh so clever and righteous; it ends with tearing the wings off of kulacks, so to speak.

    1. I’m a constitutionalist libertarian. I believe we need government — gah! — but that primacy should be given to the individual and small groups and to large groups only in dire need.

        1. Yes, but theoretically they were were internationalists, and ruled via the working class, by expropriating the property owners. Now they control and make pact with the property owners. it doesn’t work any better. The problem is the control

          1. Its more that they simply don’t care about the specific economic structure that is the facade of their global totalitarian socialism by any means necessary goal. Whether its outright government ownership, nominally private ownership that acts as an instrumentality of the state, hybrids of the two, etc., matters much less to them than the goal of achieving power over others. The term Orwell used in 1984, Oligarchical Collectivism, is the perfect description for these aspiring totalitarians.

      2. Mussolini was a socialistand worked for various socialist parties for 14 years before he created his own socialist party. Giovanni Gentile, who wrote Mussolini’s Fascist political platform, said “Fascism is a form of socialism, in fact, it is its most viable form.”

    3. the fantasy of control and the pretense of knowledge. We humans seem to have this deep need to believe that someone, somewhere is in control and knows what’s going on. I know I fight against it all the time. I know that no one knows, but I want to believe that someone knows.

      That said, one can make realistic projections about the future and what’s going on now is the logical end of a huge monetary expansion. We should have had a normal recession in 2020 but the WuFlu interrupted it. Nothing got better in the meantime and all the BS about soft landings and no landings is just the Fed jawboning. Of course, everything you see in the press is a lie. They’re just barking seals — I won’t insult prostitutes by comparing them to the press, I feel bad enough insulting performing seals.

      Please keep in mind the difference between leading, coincident, and lagging indicators and the way the government statistics are produced. The leading indicators are very clear that a recession is imminent. The Conference Board website is very helpful. The market went up a bit in January, which kept the indicators from crashing, but my bet is that’s a bull trap that will reverse (is reversing?) All things are pointing to the downturn being a doozy — ignore the BS from the banks — they’re all hedged out the wazoo because only an idiot can’t see what’s coming.

      1. “We humans seem to have this deep need to believe that someone, somewhere is in control and knows what’s going on. ”

        … provided that the “someone” is not God and has no expectations for us about how we should behave. We humans hate believing that.

        1. Let her pay the difference between my energy bills (natural gas, electricity, gasoline*) of 2018 and now, then. I doubt I will will owe the [female dog] a CENT.

          I’ll be “nice” and EXCLUDE: butane, propane, kerosene, and denatured alcohol.

          1. She’s as bad as Joe the Drooler; “Gasoline in CA was always $7 a gallon!”. Of course, he has the excuse of being senile; she’s just lying leftist (BIRM) scum.

        2. And the Ministry of Truth has announced the chocolate ration has been increased from 30 grammes to 20 grammes per week…

      3. BGE, I will quote you since I can never tell we’re my reply will end up.

        ‘We humans seem to have this deep need to believe that someone, somewhere is in control and knows what’s going on. I know I fight against it all the time. I know that no one knows, but I want to believe that someone knows.’ -BGE

        I think, as a believer in God, that, that need to believe that someone knows, is an instinctive sense of the existence of God. In my view all that follow socialism are idolaters, placing the government in the place of regard reserved only for God.

  14. Maybe in the long run we’ll win. I certainly hope so though the historical record suggests otherwise.

    Meanwhile,in the short run, in my run, can’t speak for you of course, I’m winning, I ain’t losing. My family ain’t losing, nor are my few close friends.

    I’ve mentioned the Albert Camus quote before; “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

    1. No, the historical record does NOT suggest otherwise. The brief interregnum of the 20 th century barely held and only because the free subsidized the unfree.
      Look at the real numbers, under the narrative.

      1. I pray you are right. I worry for my kids and grandkids. They are scattered and I want them close now.

        1. I also want my sons close, but that might be because I like them and their life-companions (Well, one isn’t married YET.)
          But have hope. We’re actually moving away from the centralization of the 17th through 20th centuries. And that’s for the best.

          1. Yeah. My son and daughter-in-law are moving from Taiwan to the US “for a few years.” I am utterly delighted and wish it was right now, not in the summer after he’s finished his current contract.

      2. The problem is that the the fools that think they can get more gold from killing the goose fail to realize they are committing suicide. Sure, they starve first, but it’s still gonna might [DANGED] ugly if they get close to success.

        As you say, the USA propped up so much by simply providing food.. if they screw that up… well, let’s just say I am ignoring some of the ‘best by’ dates on things… I hope am merely paranoid, rather than not paranoid enough. I’d FAR rather be an over-prepared kook than the alternatives.

        1. “The problem is that the the fools that think they can get more gold from killing the goose fail to realize they are committing suicide. ”

          The problem with that analysis is that it’s rational, grounded in the premise that “they” don’t want to die just to damage their future subjects whom they will profit from. “We hate you and want you dead” isn’t rational, but it leads to some or a lot of what we’re seeing.

        2. Volunteered at the postal workers food drive for the food bank here. We sorted the donations and discarded damaged and too expired food. If I recall canned goods were still considered good six years past expiration date.

      3. I agree Sarah there is no financial way that socialism can exist in the United States for any appreciable time. We funded and still fund socialist states, if with nothing else but giving them food when they are starving. When the US starts starving the responsible government goes down.

        Also everyone I know that supports socialism think they will be wise overseers of the stupid people, given authority by the wise leaders. They are completely oblivious to the fact that when socialism is in control it’s the meanest thug that rules, and people like them end up in dead in ditches.

  15. I can’t wait until Liberals start screaming that Liberal Policies are only destroying Liberal Cities and Liberal Organizations. They’ll demand that those Liberal ideas be exported to the suburbs and Red States, oh wait that is the whole purpose for Joe Biden and the cheating of the last election. And NPR laid off 10% of their work force. Tee hee.

    If we can last through the insanity, the next few years should be glorious.

      1. The thing about buying popcorn stocks, unlike buying gold, you can eat it if everything goes to pot.

          1. That’s why when things go to pot, the pros bring popcorn.

            And also cooking oil and various toppings.

            And a beverage.

            And maybe a good book or ten.

          2. Not totally, There are the Air Poppers (i.e. repurposed blow dryers 🙂 ) and Microwaves with paper bags (although that can be a bit tricky and skate on the edge of fire).

            1. Those work, but are decidedly non-ideal. I have an air popper I’ve removed from service and I no longer bother with ‘popcorn de magnetron’. I’ve had so much better results from putting a pot on a burner (cold) and adding a big of oil, and three or four kernels. Then heat.. when the kernels pop, remove pot from heat (leaving burner ON!) and removing popped kernels. Then add more to pot, shake to distribute evenly, let sit off-heat for about a minute. Then put on heat and let pop, occasionally shaking, until popping mostly ceases (much like microwave instructions) and then immediately pour into bowl and add additives (butter, salt, spices) as desired. Very few ‘old maids’ thus as things ‘start’ at about the same temperature. I might not have popcorn often nowadays, but if I make it myself, that’s how. And, yes, I have a significant amount in reserve.

              1. Yeah air popped is dry so you can’t really salt it without buttering it (don’t really like butter on popcorn, yes I’m weird 🙂 ). Your method sounds interesting. I have two issues with popping corn on modern (glass stove top) electric stove. The first is that rather than controlling the heat like the old calrods where you essentially were using a rheostat to control the voltage flowing to the giant ass resistor (the calrod) the units only operate at one strength, to control it it pulses them. This raises havoc with the popping cooking cycle. The other issue is that modern pans tend to have far thinner walls than thos of my youth and so don’t keep the heat as even. I suppose a cast iron pot would work, but I’m not sacrificing my 9qt Le Creuset (used for stew, pot roast, and beef bourguignon ala Ms. Childs) to the experiment as high temperature amd glazed cookware don’t mix. I’m stuck with Popcorn Ala Percy Spencer…

      2. Live near one of the Popcorn Capitols in the USA, Micro Wave popcorn does suck, but it is quick and easy. Cheesy Popcorn is the best hands down but it is hell cleaning all the orange off your keyboard and fingers. Not to mention the embarrassment if you get a scratch and later wonder how in the heck did you got orange testicles. Stick with the microwave.

        1. “Not to mention the embarrassment if you get a scratch and later wonder how in the heck did you got orange testicles.”

          TMI has a definition, and this would be it.

          1. There can never be Too Much Humor……

            PS, as a side note everyone has done it, not exactly the testicles but they have gotten cheese dust on places other than fingers and keyboards. Generally during a Mountain Dew inspired sugar rush while playing video games and eating Cheetos long into the am. Had to explain to me wife that no our fourteen year old is not using his underwear to wipe his hands, and no it wasn’t a sign he had some kink. Bad bathing habits sure, but strange indeed is a fourteen year old male not have bad bathing habits, while strung out on Mountain Dew and Cheetos.

            1. Introduce him to the idea of eating Cheetos with chopsticks.

              The snack is well-shaped for it, and it keeps the dust off your fingers.

              1. Hubby stabs this type of snack with a toothpick.

                He doesn’t hold with those foreign utensils. Why use two sticks when one sharp one will do?

      3. I actually sorta do, own popcorn shares that is. I own shares in Conagra who make Orville Redenbacher.

  16. Speaking of those “best books” lists, oh brother. I see those on places like Tor.com and they’re all from the past ten years, all written by wokists. Every single book that’s worth reading just happened to emerge from that narrow little sliver of history and political belief. Every. Single. One.

    1. One of the reasons I gave up Audible was that I wasn’t getting good recommendations (there was also the matter of not wanting to spend the money and not listening enough to justify… both could change) but instead ‘suggestions’ for Woke-ist garbage. I can be plenty miserable without having to pay for it! Well, beyond the armed robbery that is taxation. And I’d rather NOT be miserable.

            1. And if you seem happy, it makes those trying to make you miserable miserable themselves, which makes you happy/happier still. This might be of the very few good positive feedback loops.

      2. I went with Chirp instead of Audible and just buy the audiobooks I want (all on sale BTW). It was cheaper and if I decide I don’t have the extra money right now, I just don’t buy something right now. Plus, there’s always the library.

        1. I use Librivox.org for my audiobook listening pleasure. The quality of the reading can be spotty, and it took a while to get used to the way they do chapter breaks, but there are plenty of really good books in the public domain.

          1. The readers at Librivox are volunteers, so I don’t expect perfection. But some of them really need to look up some of the words before they try to fake it. The one who just slurred “asrrrgrrr” instead of “astrogator” was extremely annoying.

    2. … they’re all from the past ten years, all written by wokists.

      But of course! Everyone not woke, and/or who lived prior to ten years ago, is an insufferable double-plus ungood racist, or worse. Therefore, it follows that everything good can only ever have been produced in the past ten years, by the properly woke.

  17. “The advantages and disadvantages of remote workers”, was published in the Journal of I/O psychology in 2001. There were followups. Lots of followups. I can’t recall who did the meta-analysis, or in what journal it was published in, that’s a study where you take published and unpublished studies and combine their data sets to determine patterns, for those of you that don’t know this: they can be a lot of fun, and a bit pain at the same time.

    If you come at life as though there’s a certain degree of uncertainty, then you are less likely to be blindsided. Well, I’m blind, so I’m also used to being blindsided… bad joke is bad. People were talking about the property issue for a while now to, those that are interested in such things, and many said, I won’t call them ‘experts’, because every time I hear ‘expert’ I can’t help but think what are they pushing now, said, prices of CR are going to go up and up and up. I thought, after they talked some more about it, yeah that might be a problem.

    Oh, the biggest two problems for remote workers are still the two biggest problems for remote workers: enforecment of productivity and motivation, and technical problems are harder to solve. The last is working from the idea that the company has an in-office technical support system, which sometimes they don’t. Its also a little easier to catch inefficiencies in the office, if someone is paying attention, which the person that’s supposed to be paying attention may not be doing so, which is the other important disclaimer for in-office work VS remote. To rephrase, its harder to use the stick in remote work, which isn’t the best means for motivating workers, and is usually a sign that your workers are undermotivated in the first place, but if you need to use said stick, then it’ll be harder to do so, and bosses might have to get imaginative. There is plenty of literature on possible ‘imaganitive’ responses here. Despite periodic encountering of complaints to the contrary. Also, for technical problems, there are private technical response companies that can handle most needs. There’s also doing work at unusual times to handle power outs, etc.

    All of this is well documented, and described, etc, if people are willing to spend the time seeking, searching, and not yielding good reading time to something else.

    “Read a book!” The hand puppet from the Tick said.

  18. In my FB memories, I had a little mini-essay on Unintended Consequences pop up. I’d used the example of the incandescent light bulb ban, and how that caused pain for a number of people, including the poor (the jump from 60¢ to $6 for a lightbulb doesn’t seem small when you’re counting pennies), the flicker-sensitive (CFLs do, in fact, cause the same migraine issues with the sensitive that full fluorescents can), and those who applied off-label uses for the heat output (reptile terrariums and citrus growers being premium.)

    And, sigh, my comments included people who didn’t get the issue, including one friend who thought a ban on gasoline cars being manufactured would be skittles and roses. I think I got him to understand that it would be DEVASTATING to folk on the margin (he really didn’t have a clue about how or why people keep junkers running), but even so, that took a lot of responses to drum through his head.

    And that’s not even getting into the problems of electric cars. I, for one, take kids camping. Electric cars are the WORST concept for backcountry, because that’s the very definition of backcountry. No services. No electricity. Sorry, whoops, you’re stranded. We won’t even mention the multiple-charge distances required to get some of those places.

    (Why yes, I do live in California, where the governor thinks only electric would be dandy, despite the fact that our grid can’t handle the current load even if everyone lived and drove only in cities. And he didn’t get voted out this last round, arrrrrgh.)

    1. I dug out a couple old incandescent bulbs last night and compared them to a nice mantle kerosene lamp (the Aladdin) and despite the claims of the Aladdin being similar to a 60 W bulb, the 60 W was much brighter and the 25 W seemed more equivalent.

      The 25 W is interesting in its history. The 25 W tungsten is about as bright as a 60 W carbon filament, which was “the” thing at the start of The Electric Age… as it put out about 18 candlepower… the same as a gas mantle. BUT.. no gas, (or kero..) no delicate mantle, no fiddling fuels or wicks.. just -CLICK- and there is light. And electricity is cheaper than all light sources save nature (sunlight) – even for “inefficient” incandescent bulbs.

      Sure, newer bulbs can lower the power bill… but do they lower it below the increase of the bulb bill? Locally, some places sell subsidized LED bulbs now. Why? It’s cheaper to foot the bill for subsidized bulbs than to build a power station.

      My classic example is that to replace something, you need a better thing, not regulations… is the phonograph & cylinder record. Nothing illegal about them. But they were simply superseded and the market left such behind.

      1. The Reader notes that between the significant reduction in the cost of LED bulbs over the last 4 years (not counting the subsidies you noted and that the Reader took serious advantage of 4 years ago when current house was built) and the cost of electricity being artificially inflated (thanks, Brandon!) and the extended life of LED bulbs over incandescents he believes that LED lighting is now at the break even point. The Reader has about 50 ceiling recesses in his house populated with LEDs (about the same as the last house) and has replaced 4 of them in 4 years. He averaged 6 incandesents per year replacement at prior house. The reduction of times step ladder is needed to do changes is almost worth it alone.

        1. The LEDs have been good to us. CFLs not so much. Among other things, a toddler playing with a light switch can kill a CFL in a matter of days. (And we still have a bag of them in the garage awaiting a hazardous waste disposal run along with the full-length fluorescents. We really need to swap out those light fixtures for something sane.)

          1. The Reader refused to have anything to do with CFLs. He stockpiled a lot of incandescent bulbs at his previous house to avoid ever having to purchase one. Left the stockpile with the buyer of the house.

          2. I can’t speak to the flicker, but early CFLs were sort of reliable. One of the first Osrams I bought made the move with us to Oregon, and was swapped out around 2015. That means it got light usage over 25 years or so.

            CFLs hate vibration. I redid our roof when we had CFLs in the ceiling fixtures, and the thumping killed several of those bulbs. I tried one as a worklight on a metal working mill, and it died within a minute.

            Most LED bulbs are reliable, though some of the generic Home Depot sold have failed in hanging fixtures–no heat issues, the power supply section just went toes up. Eventually, all three bulbs in the overhead fan/light fixture failed, and were replaced with bulbs we got when Costco was selling subsidized LEDs. At a guess, I’ve lost a half dozen LED bulbs in a house full of LEDs (got rid of the CFLs in that 2015 period). I have 6 23W bulbs hanging from high spots in the shop/barn, but they are backup to LED worklights. When they die, I’ll put in LEDs.

            My solar power trailer lost it’s heating light bulb this morning. I have a stash, but at one time, Halogen bulbs were exempt from the incandescent ban. I need to check Home Desperate or the really good electrical supply place. I don’t want those electronics to get too cold; liquid crystal displays don’t do well when they freeze, and the damage can be permanent. I liked that Fluke multimeter, but it got quite fuzzy after the freeze.

            1. Winter for our RV was plugged into power (with batteries disconnected) with one or two rotating small floor heaters (kept cool, not warm) on the floor with all doors to pipes open. Covered both electronics and the different pipes, if not the water tanks (given where they were all located). OTOH the RV had the winter package which was double pane windows, extra insulation all around, including insulating the tanks. Had good luck with that setup.

        2. Anyone who is off-grid generating their own electricity kind of needs the LEDs for their lower power consumption.

          That they now make ones you can program to whatever light temperature you want is a bonus. You used to have to get an entirely new bulb to change the light temperature before.

          1. We adopted CFLs early, since California power was expensive, and it’s not that cheap even here. Haven’t been impressed with the reliability of the CFLs beyond the early Osrams (had one in light usage last for 25 years), and they really hate vibration. (I tried one as a worklight on a machine tool. After a minute I swore off CFLs for that purpose.) When I redid the roof, I had to replace several CFLs that couldn’t stand the thumping.

            When LEDs got affordable, we bought a lot of “40W” and “60W” bulbs from Costco at subsidized rates. I’ve also had some of the Crees from Home Depot, though of the half-dozen that have failed since around 2015, 5 or so were Crees.

            LEDS usually use half the power of CFLs, so there’s a slight incentive to swap CFLs out. We gave away the unused bulbs and I have a few of the high wattage ones in the shop/barn. When they die, I’ll put in LEDs.

            I do need to find a 100W bulb for heat. At one time, Halogen bulbs were exempt from the incandescent ban, and I really need a bulb for heat in one application. If I strike out at Home Depot or the electrical supply house, I’ll ask the chick wranglers at the farm & ranch store. One bulb per chick-tub.

      2. In my experience over the last ten years, LED bulbs cost a lot more than incandescents, don’t last nearly as long, and when they die, they die with smoke and enough heat to melt nearby stryrofoam ceiling tiles and some plastic fixtures. I usually disassemble them to see what smoked; it has always been the (tiny) power supply.

        1. Check that you’re getting LEDs marked specifically as suitable for enclosed fixtures– that sounds like a heat problem.

          (The “suitable for enclosed fixtures” ones tend to cost more, but we haven’t had one die yet.)

    2. That is where the “fifteen minute city” comes in. It is bad to leave your assigned town! You should have to ask permission or pay!

      All those developments in China that are on the other side from the old town — they are supposed to be going to be like that, except your phone rats on you if you try to leave, and you have to eat in the government lunchroom and shop in the government general store. And all the college educated kids with no jobs will be delighted to work in the lunchroom or the general store, because otherwise you work in the factory next door. Or the factory pig farm in a highrise.

      Sigh. Somebody tries to think of something nice, and all the wokies turn it into prisons.

  19. This dovetails with a podcast I’m listening to as I read this:

    Haven’t finished it yet, but something the guest says early caught my attention.

    “I’m interested in talking to those of you who may be woke… and are open to a rational argument.” -Konstantin Krisin.

    I’m sure y’all see where I’m going with this.

    Blind spots. We all have them. Ye gods and little fishes, I learn more about the things I don’t know that I didn’t even know existed every day. Those unknown unknowns, they’re not just things we are ignorant of. They can be things we are either deliberately ignorant of, or things that have faded so much from our conscious mind that they might as well be invisible.

    I believe the latter is at least part of what afflicts the default left. They either don’t have the time for politics, or they’ve been trained to ignore certain things. Trained, not educated, because the responses can be rather Pavlovian.

    Ever seen the videos where someone, say a man from Eastern Europe, a man that was born under Socialism and lived under the boot before coming here, that man is shouted down when he tries to explain in broken English just how bad it was? Do you honestly think that every single person in that crowd is as rabidly devoted to the cult of leftism as the frothing-at-the-mouth chant leaders and agents provocateur are?

    There are, well, I hesitate to call them innocents, but say they are normies or something very like in the crowd, too. Kids of mid western parents that sent their bright young daughter or son to a “good school.” They weren’t raised like that. But here they are.

    And there might just be a tiny screaming voice inside their skull saying that it wasn’t supposed to be this way. That this anxious, nervous, frightened existence isn’t normal or sane. But what can they do? All their friends, their professors, their employers, the tiktoks they follow, the news… They all say the same thing.

    So they silence that little voice, because if they listen to it, the mob will turn on them.

    Blinders. That’s not what went on when you held your nose and voted for (spits) McCain. Or some other establishment stooge, because it was establishment slow poison or lefty fast poison and nothing in between. No, you knew what dirty business you were getting into there. And maybe you lied to yourself a little, but boy have these last few years been a wakeup call if you did.

    But it can be the questions not asked, as much as the details not seen or ignored. Very few voices were saying “things can get better. So much better you don’t even know. Really. I mean it,” in 2013. It would’ve taken a miracle. Things were bad, getting worse, and no end in sight.

    Nobody was asking themselves “if the economy somehow gets a massive shot in the arm and people are buying things again, and there’s a shortage of workers because there’s so much good paying jobs, what can I do to capitalize on that? And how can I keep the good times going?” Or damned few of them, if there were any.

    And that goes back to where we started. I’ve not been considering how to talk to those mythical creatures that are woke, but willing to listen to rational argument. Because I am not convinced they exist.

    But the ones around them? The ones that may not be woke, but act like they are? They’re real. They exist. The ones in the background, the ones that aren’t sold on the cult… but don’t know how to get out. The ones that say they’re apolitical, but still vote, they exist too.

    There’s a generation and more of people that grew up in and around wokeness, and I’m not at all certain they know what the alternatives are. OR what the end result of a decades old cultural poisoning program actually is.

    They don’t know history, because what’s taught as history is fiction. They don’t know fiction, because all the books in the school library suck. They don’t know basic logic because that’s just a tool of the patriarchy. They don’t know science because real science doesn’t agree with the cult.
    They don’t even know how to learn, because their teachers don’t want them to. And a lot of them are in adult bodies with childlike minds.

    But every human being knows how to ask a question. Even if it is only in the privacy of their own mind. If we can put the seed of doubt in their minds and get them started questioning things… The whole wokeness edifice quickly falls.

  20. There are these people who are determined to ‘bend the arc’ of history to fit their ideological belief system. They are apparently oblivious to objective reality. At the same time, things are not going well for them — I don’t think that they will simply whistle past the graveyard — I think that they will instead wreck the place on the way out!

  21. When the Ukraine scam collapses later this year, the current situation is likely to worsen rapidly, because the current American economy is based on printing money that foreigners will stick in their central banks in return for valuable resources and manufactures..The silver lining is that eventually we will return to an actually American economy in which America is largely self-sufficient….

    1. Scam?

      “We” need to save Ukraine even if we have to draft your daughters for the front line. That’s what you deserve. Ignore all those overseas bank accounts, you wouldn’t understand the basic needs of Ultra High Value Individuals that keep the world going. Keep on voting harder!

  22. On Insty, I think, you made a passing comment that Robert A. Heinlein doesn’t count as pulp, and I am afraid I must quibble.

    Now, if what you meant was that RAH didn’t write Planet Stories-style slam-bang space opera pulp, that is (mostly) correct. But he first published in Astounding, a pulp even if one that consciously was aiming more high-brow than the others, and his writing retains pulp influences to the end of his career. Now, if one truly wanted to draw a line, I would say that most of his work through the 1950s reads as pulp, and only starting with Stranger in a Strange Land does he truly start reaching for something more literary (for lack of a better word). In fact, Stranger starts off as pulpy political thriller, and only becomes something different once Mike is turned loose on Earth, somewhere around the one-quarter mark of the book.

    But look at his work in the 1950s. The Puppet Masters is not just an alien invasion thriller, but a hardboiled secret agent yarn. Double Star is an SF re-imagining of The Prisoner of Zenda, a book that predates the pulps by one year, but whose influence on the pulps is inestimable. Have Spacesuit — Will Travel is arguably RAH’s most space-opera novel, with the hero getting abducted off Earth, taken hostage on the Moon, transported to Pluto, and eventually representing all of Humanity on trial before a Galactic Court, dodging bug-eyed monsters all the way. If that’s not pulp, nothing is.

    Of course, RAH was never only pulp, he always aimed at more. But to say that he is not pulp is… fraught, in my view.

    1. OK, so how do you define “not pulp”? Because it sounds as if anything written for entertainment would, by definition, fail to qualify.

      1. I mean, “published in the pulps” is literally pulp, and I don’t see how that’s even remotely arguable. RAH began in the pulps. Res ipsa loquitur.

        “Not pulp” would be something written with little or no… “heightened adventure”, I suppose. The Rmains of the Day, books by John Irving or Paul Auster.

        1. Okay, but there is a pulp style, which you find in much earlier stuff. Heinlein consciously burst out of the pulps.
          So you know calling everything that has any story “pulp” is nonsense.

          1. That’s how I think of “pulp”; the early pulp mags such as “Amazing”, not paperback and hardback books (and now e-books) which are written to entertain, sometimes with an included “message”, but not written for the message, and which aren’t considered to be “lit’rachur” by the “intelligentsia” (who aren’t; just overeducated snobs). Much, maybe even most, of the approved “literature” is boring, pretentious and overrated.

            Yeah, how many hot buttons…

    2. What I meant by it is that he was never what the idiots mean as “pulp” — which yes existed and was fairly formulaic and one shot.
      I was …. alluding to the idea of pulp, not the real pulp.
      Damn you, little brother. I’m going to have to write a post on this, aren’t I?

  23. Ferals… Yeah, that works. But! I think they should more rightly be called Brutals. It fits their M.O. it fits the mindset.
    Besides, then when the balloon goes up, I can say:
    I was proud to be an executioner for Zardoz… !

    1. Just went to look around, and the site has been “suspended or archived”. Disturbing. Noticed 02/27/2023

        1. Yes it did. And the notice is ‘This blog has been archived or suspended in accordance with our Terms of Service.’ The Reader thinks the emphasis is on suspended.

      2. Yes. The Trust and Safety council of WordPress (also Reddit, Tumblr, MailChimp, Pinterest, Instagram, etc) – the rebranded “Tech Against Terrorism” – permanently suspended my blog which I began in 2018. I also paid WordPress one year in advance for my domain and hosting/file management/etc – and they will not refund me the balance prepaid.

        WordPress is compromised, I will be bringing Calculus of Decay onto my own server, hosted my me.

        In the meantime, understand that the faggots, the Jews, the trannies, the Skintellectual sheboona Jamalaquarius mo’s Bless’d Child are the content moderators for the Trust and Safety council..which is tied to the GIFCT/GNET/RUSI/ADL/BLM…further tied to Five Eyes Ministerial…further tied to both NATO and AUKUS…further tied to Shin Bet, Unit 8200, Microsoft, Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, Apple…further tied to AOC, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jack Pesobic, Charlie Kirk, Nick Cannon…and further tied to ESG, DEI, Agenda 2030…it goes on and on.

        I published this expose – and 90 seconds later – blog circa November 2018 – POOF/BOOM/SMOKED/GONE

        1. Please let us know when Calculus of Decay is back up. It has been one of the Reader’s weekly stops.

        2. I start to see why they banned you, and I don’t feel so bad suddenly. That is a screed of monumental stupidity.
          What in heck does who sleeps with whom or how people dress have to do with anything? the only members of that group who are a problem are the MARXISTS.
          Um… what the hell do the Jews have to do with this? The only Jewish people who are a problem are those who bought Marxism. Same as every other religion.
          This is stupid.
          Please stop that shit. You’re playing into the Marxists’ hands by going tribal.
          The opposite of racism is still racism.They’re a problem anywhere, but you’re willing to be distracted by the shiny toy of identity.
          Which means you are WITH THEM and piling on their side, by just turning them on their head, and accepting the division. THIS IS NOT THE THINKING OF A FREE MAN. This is the thinking of a Marxist slave.

          1. Okay. The TOS violation was due to my violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. My blog had a literature page with roughly 800 pdf copies of books that I own and I made available for download for free.

            Trust & Safety is the exact name in the signature line of the email I received when they informed me of why the blog was suspended.

            And my initial reply was a joke.
            Using overtly politically incorrect descriptives for people to trigger milquetoast always-online Liberals.

            And using quite an amusing motley crew of people and entities to make the conspiracy extra real for the always-online conservatives.

            Again, it was a joke. And you all are the punchline.

            My reblogging of interesting reads is (was) for me to have a place to collect stuff written by ordinary people at a later date.

            My livelihood comes from the work I do: real time, data analytics used in predictive advanced persistent threat intelligence, to intercept bad actors ransomware deployments.

            So yeah – I have a sense of humor that appeals to me…and this is the anecdotal experience I needed to have a laugh for the day.

            PS Biden is worse than Stalin and Trump is worse than Hitler. And WordPress is the gulag of the real deep fake you all have fallen for.

            1. Using overtly politically incorrect descriptives for people to trigger milquetoast always-online Liberals.

              That’s not “politically incorrect.”

              That’s “being a deliberately offensive ass and acting insane, then being shocked that people notice.”

            2. Again, it was a joke. And you are all the punchline.

              That’s the most feeble attempt at edgy-humor nihilism I’ve seen in a while. With subsequent comments overloaded with copium as nobody laughs along with the early comments.

              Go away, 4chan reject. The spoon I feed my baby with is edgier than you.

              1. What joke? What edge? It’s true:

                “4chan reject” – ooh how original. Salon? Quartz? Jacobin? Breitbart? You have a future in writing the fortunes that go in fortune cookies.

                “Copium” – congratulations jerk off for being the billionth person to use this word for the billionth time.

                You indeed ARE the fuckwitted PUNCHLINE of your own JOKE.

                  1. “Eric” washed out of advanced training.

                    (I’ve spent time on 4chan, and SomethingAwful—so have you, I think—and I’ve seen no small number of trolls with advanced training. Perhaps chan standards are lower today, but in my time there, Eric’s efforts world have been mocked into oblivion.)

                1. I met a traveller from an antique land,
                  Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
                  Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
                  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
                  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
                  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
                  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
                  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
                  And on the pedestal, these words appear:
                  My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
                  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
                  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
                  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
                  The lone and level sands stretch far away.

                4. Go away boy. I dealt with real trolls more offensive and edgy than you back when you were still happy that there was pizza for lunch in the school cafeteria and hoping that Mrs. Jensen forgot to collect the spelling homework you didn’t finish.

            5. “Who knows himself a braggart, let him fear this, for it will come to pass that every braggart shall be found an ass.”

        6. Maybe your blog was just sh*t, like every other conspiracy theory blog out there ranting about Jews and the Illuminati and the Freemasons and…

          From where I stand, I don’t see an iota of difference between you and the people you’re raving about. You might want to reconsider your thinking, because as Sarah says, this isn’t the thinking of a free man.

  25. “are just living for places that aren’t completely insane.”

    You meant “leaving”? Right?

    2. Yes. I have an accent in typing, because fingers take dictation from ears, and that’s a distinction I don’t HEAR.
      Look, I asked these zaries if I should hire a copyeditor. They told me no. They like the typos. SIGH.

  26. So, Pothole Pete finally went to East Palestine, spent half an hour dodging questions and then flew back to Washington where the FICUS is preparing to celebrate tomorrow’s anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

    I suspect staying away was the best thing that half-wit could have done for the community.

    Then a couple of pictures on the news triggered the most horrible vision imaginable: Biden and Buttigeig as Beavis and Butt-Head. AAAAAAK! Fetch the Mental Floss!

        1. Everybody knew who he was long before this latest fiasco. This is just emphasizing how impotent he is when he has to do anything other than spout hot air and pose for the camera. Yet Again.

          1. Oh, not everybody. A whole of folks didn’t care or weren’t paying attention, but now… the [FRELL]-up is so spectacular that even those folks know.

    2. I thought it was rather interesting that his “press secretary” refused to answer questions for the record (i.e., while being filmed). Even the current idiotic WH spokesdweeb doesn’t go that far.

        1. Ummm…that’s what I said; she refused to answer questions while being filmed (i.e., on camera); she even said (several times) that was the reason she wouldn’t talk. IOW, she’s a “Press Secretary” who won’t speak to the press (or anyone) for the record. And she seemed to not understand why that might be a problem.

    3. Wearing a hard hat and a safety vest, and safety glasses, no less.
      What gets me are the twitterati gushing over how, “well,” he handles questions. So calm! So level-headed! The best speaker the Administration has! He’ll show those Republicans!
      They seem completely unaware how much credibility and good will they’ve squandered. (Because they started out with some, for most people, Americans being who they are).

      2. What gets me are the twitterati gushing over how, “well,” he handles questions. So calm! So level-headed! The best speaker the Administration has! He’ll show those Republicans!

        I was going to say “Seriously!?” but then I remembered we live in Stupidest Timeline and most of the left Really Do Believe that the media literally defines reality, and so if someone just Looks Good and Sounds Good, they must actually BE good. And also that “getting them Republicans” is far, far more important than cleaning up an environmental disaster, because that’s just in flyover country, so it doesn’t matter.

        1. “Lie-awatha” Warren wasn’t available, and they defunded the police.

          Sting said ” wait, what?”

  27. Sometimes I get the feeling we are stuck in a Gilbert and Sullivan Operetta. Unfortunately the idiots in charge are not nearly so benign and they have nukes.

      1. I know of Sweeney Todd, but have never seen more than a couple excerpts from the play. Is Mr. Todd at all competent? If so that would disqualify him for the Biden administration.

        1. He’s crazy enough to be one of ’em.

          “Mister Barker…”

          “No! Not Barker. It’s Todd now. Sweeney Todd. And ‘e will ‘ave ‘is revenge.”

    2. “I am the very model of a Modern Presidentual
      I’ve information, se-ca-ret and truly most effectual
      I knew that bad dude Corn Pop and I kicked his metaphorical
      from Wilmington and Dover to… uhh… I mean, c’mon, man!

      Not a joke.”

  28. “Meanwhile a lot of us are sitting here, looking at it and going “There was a significant number of jobs that could already be done outside the office. By locking people down, you forced them to do so, and proved to companies that they could do that. For most companies, having the workers working from home saves money. This is particularly true for those in overpriced, increasingly unsafe cities.”
    It’s very interesting what’s been happening lately with Work From Home.
    As the economy has tanked, many companies that were firmly on the “Work from Home” train have reverted back to their older “Must-Be-In-The-Office” ways.
    I’m not sure what it’s all about. It’s cheaper to have employees work from home. Why would you want them back in the office when the economy is bad?
    Unless these companies are getting pressure from (or kickbacks from) the commercial real-estate companies.
    Aside from that, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

    1. It’s about managers hating to lose their pawns, for fear they’ll be judged superfluous. Most of my friends who had it demanded of them go back to the office are pretty much changing jobs. Others are trying.

    2. As the economy has tanked, many companies that were firmly on the “Work from Home” train have reverted back to their older “Must-Be-In-The-Office” ways.

      There’s three non-doing-the-work reasons I’ve heard folks I trust/seen evidence of for all office, no exceptions, in most cases involving an objective drop in productivity:
      * co-workers in office prefer it, both those who cannot distance-work (no fair!) and those who like being around other workers (apparently just having those who want to be In The Office doesn’t work for them, I have no data on why)

      Managers who manage by hanging over people in a physical location, so if folks are doing the work at home then the managing becomes different.
      Subgroup of the manager is the ones that have been getting bitten because work from home means that their instructions are written down and can be verified, such as during an investigation.
      People who do a lot of “deals” and “favors” have a hard time not leaving very obvious tracks, such as someone discovering the “I’ll handle that for you” report was not done by Dealer, but by guy in next office over, who would have done it if Dealer had informed you that’s who you go to for such reports as is his job.

        1. just means Amazon will lose the good employees.
          …..

          True. But as many are being furloughed from the big tech firms? Better have a place to land before taking that leap. (How many of us remember the DOT COM bust that were looking for work back then? Raises Hand. One of my limits was the inability to move, didn’t help.) They quit, they get no unemployment from the state. Also Amazon better not be granting any exceptions for people Amazon wants to keep …

            1. 100% Early retirements from anyone who was prudent and saved. Housing hasn’t crashed, yet. So retire, sell, and get out. Or maybe with the assurance “always work from home from now on”, they sold with wild success, even if not at the height, and got out. I’m sure another here can relate.

      3. There are also several laws involving how you can leave places like Washington. I’m not finding the article places bucket of salt but Washington and I THINK California have some pretty stiff penalties for moving the HQ out of the state (enough to make Microsoft blanch.) without some very arcane songs and dances. Minimum time cited: 5 YEARS of having an equivalent to the HQ somewhere else before being able to shift states.

        Note: I trust my source on the above, but can’t find the things HE cited (all saved on a computer that’s been dead a very long time I MIGHT have its hard drive around here… somewhere… maybe.) and it’s been long enough things might have changed. So… hence the bucket rather than just shaker of salt.

    4. The companies that are visibly doing this, which the news is now implying all companies are doing, seem to be the big campus companies. They aren’t renting. IF their campus is empty of those who can work from home 40 hours, then there is wasted real estate, that likely they can’t lease or unload. Then too these companies often have sections where work at/from home is not an option, causing resentment. Meanwhile, less news worthy small companies, are fleeing their commercial leases as they play out, moving and downsizing, maybe to safer cities, but probably safer within their current city, allowing employees to also flee areas that have become unsafe or (and?) too expensive to buy in.

    5. It makes perfect sense if you remember that a lot of managers are hyper-extrovert lizards who measure the value of the work by how many worker bees they can see doing assigned tasks while they stroll through the office.

      (note I said “assigned tasks”, I did not specify it it was actually getting anything done)

  31. Meanwhile a lot of us are sitting here, looking at it and going “There was a significant number of jobs that could already be done outside the office.

    Dynamic equilibrium. Jobs could have been done at home for some time, but the inertia in the system prevented steady change until a shock came along and the system shifted to the new state all at once.

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