*First to get the update out of the way: My FIL did in fact start accellarating towards death, once Dan had said goodbye. He’s not expected to live till tonight. We’d thought he was waiting to say goodbye to his only living son, and that seems to have been it. We are coping as best we can. It is, of course, very hard on Dan.
No, it’s no peaches for me either, (Note I skipped Insty posting last night) but it’s orders of magnitude easier.
Meanwhile I either managed to catch younger son’s … whatever it is that gave him walking pneumonia (He’s recovering) or I’m suffering from emotional reaction to the turmoil of the last few days. Six of one half a dozen of the other, but I’m tired and dragging and it’s entirely possible that I won’t accomplish anything but some administrivia today. Though I slept well, a nap is on the schedule.*
If you must walk on thin ice, you might as well learn to dance!
Which mostly is the art of the writer in these our “changing times.” (I love that expression because it implies other times didn’t change. Though i do agree our times are changing in some weird ways.)
And it might very well be the art of everyone. The art of living in the present as is. (Clown car, on fire, in a dumpster, but also a time of deep technology driven changes that might even be called a singularity, though not the singularity of fevered dreams.)
I’m coming to the end of many cycles, professional and life, all the same time. Very different cycles, both in roles, and in how much they’ve lasted and the impression they’ve left in my mind and life. But a lot of them, some expected, some sudden, dead-ending this week or the next couple of weeks.
It prompted my husband, Dan, to say over breakfast “It’s starting to feel like one of those things, like Repairman Jack’s (a series by F. Paul Wilson) “the spear has no branches.”
Since this is a process over several books in which all of the main characters close relatives and those he cherishes get killed off one by one, in order to forge him into the ultimate weapon (hence spear and having no branches) I was mildly alarmed. I pointed out if someone starts killing off those I love, the close in ones, I won’t be a spear, I’ll be dead.
But he said, “No, but more like the game table is being cleared for a new play.” Which… well, this is happening to both of us, at the same time. A lot of things that took a lot of our time, attention and concentration are being removed suddenly.
I choose to believe this is so I can write. Looks skyward: note if that’s the purpose I’d best get over this cruddy condition soon.
However, for various reasons, I’ve become aware of how fast and how much writing, as a field has changed these last 10 years, and how fast everything that goes into getting that book in your hands has changed.
To analogize (I like that, because it’s easier, and I feel cruddy) it is as though you were a guy who makes craft pencils out of little fallen branches. (Never mind, roll with it.)
11 years ago, before indie came on, you worked piecemeal for a company who sold these, and put them in stores. You gathered branches of the right side, cut them to the appropriate length and polished them so no one got a splinter, then sent them to the company which then drilled a hole in it, put in a lead and place them in stores. For this they took 90% of the income, and you lumped it, because without them you couldn’t get the pencils actually to be pencils, much less place them in stores, so the public could buy them.
Worse, there were only 4 companies nationally that sold these pencils; they all had their quirks and in general if you worked with one of them no one else would buy you. They told you how many branches they wanted from you that year and the specifications. And if you pissed off the company you worked for no one else would hire you, and you’d be unemployed. There were thousands of people who wanted to do this work, after all. (Again, roll with it.)
Sure, sure, there were those loonies who made the pencils in their garage, but they had to show them off the back of their car or at local craft fairs, and few were profitable, let alone making a living. Most of the self-drilled pencils sucked, which was worse.
Then the market opened through Amazon. You could sell your pencils directly to the public. But you didn’t have the equipment to drill (and it was expensive and had a learning curb) and you couldn’t buy the lead, except in bulk, so it was easier to get a subcontractor.
Your job was the same. You cut and polished the branch, then you subcontracted people to drill and insert the lead. Some people also paid someone to put it on Amazon and other online stores.
Nowadays, there are affordable widgets that drill the hole, you can buy small packs of lead and there’s a really cheap machine that inserts it. Then you bundle it up in a pretty ribbon, and put it up for sale in minutes. (I can’t find an analogy for copyediting, which sane indies still hire out, and which are, ultimately, pretty cheap.)
I feel pretty comfortable with things as they are right now, but of course there’s already rumbles of change. Amazon is doing strange things, so we have to find ways to sidestep. (What Ringo is doing with substack is brilliant. And it opens the door to other things, like real time writing competitions.) After all 12 years ago Smashwords was a major competitor in ebooks, and now they’re a punchline.
The only thing sure is that we don’t know what comes next. And that everything can change very fast.
To a great extent this applies to everyone. The technology innovations that allow for work from home and a highly distributed team were already there at the great lockdown of 2020. But the lockdown accelerated it very fast and in ways everyone running around screaming “This is the new normal” failed to understand.
There’s a new normal, indeed, but the new normal is not what they thought they were instituting.
In the new normal, working from home allows for more flextime and more distributed residence. Homeschooling might suddenly have become the new normal too. There is naturally a lot less driving, if you’re working from home (Husband and I are not feeling the pinch of the high gas prices like we did in 08, because largely our drives are jaunts to the grocery store, a drive to church and a longer trip once a month or sometimes once every two months. We grumble about it, but it’s not the hair on fire thing it was 08 through 16.
I honestly don’t think most people have fully processed this. There has been a great migration, but I think it’s a fraction of what it will be.
Just like in 11 when I started publishing indie even though I felt I was coming at it very late, it was still the wild frontier, with most writers not even registering it existed. Heck, even now, only about half do. The perennial advice to someone who has a book that doesn’t fit their house, or who wants to do something different is “Go to x small press.” When in fact, you no longer need it. Great advice for 1999.
People process change far slower than things are actually changing. And those of us who went “Oh, so this means we can–” are way ahead of the curve.
Even now, companies having realized their beautiful offices are useless are trying to force the workforce back into them. And failing, as work from home has opened the work market to the entire country and in some cases the world, so forced employees escape faster than nomads forced into government housing in Africa.
The outlines of all the echoes of this massive change are only barely visible. Our institutions aren’t even vaguely prepared. Heck, they’re not aware of any of this. Look at how the idiots in charge are trying to find ways to force people to drive less that include moving to large cities. Bah. As well flow the water back into the faucet.
I can see many things coming, from perhaps clusters of decent restaurants appearing wherever little towns are close together that the work from home populace can go to one or the other at will, but I can see a ton more interest in cooking from home as well. I can see delivery services from places like Sam’s club becoming super-popular, if their customer base is more widespread. I can see services catering to homeschoolers. And I can see in the not so distant future dating sites that list your resume, because hey, if you’re both coders — or writers, or editors — having one fill in for the other, or even having someone who understands your work is a great enhancement to a marriage, and makes things far more flexible. (Yes, that sounds weird. But more or less weird than picking up someone because they dance well, or whatever?) I can see more age-integrted environments, as the young stop heading to the cities for dating opportunities and beginning jobs.
Will all of them come through? Probably not. We’re dealing with second and third and fourth order effects in a very complex environment, but some of them will. Along with a lot of others I can’t anticipate.
And the inner Libertarian would like me to remind you that the reason it all feels stressful and apocalyptic is that over the 20th century we concentrated power and regulation as much as possible in the largest possible body of government.
Since the innovations are by nature distributed, I keep seeing these institutions behave exactly like traditional publishers when indie came in. Only with guns, lawyers, and armies of rioters on the shady side.
They’re trying as crazily and desperately possible to hold onto power that is flowing or has already flowed away from their grasp. And everything they do to hold on (What DO you think the lockdowns were really for? Well, okay, to also do shady election things, but that was all part of it. Trying to force us to obey, d*mn it.) backfires and accelerates the change, because that’s the nature of great changes. You can see this after the Black Death too. But they weren’t as centralized, so the crazy stuff was mostly local.
Anyway, we’re dancing on logs floating down the river. It’s taking us where we want to go, but boy is it a balance act.
Keep dancing.
According To Hoyt 
“Mostly though, I think it gave us hope that there can always be new beginnings. Even for people like us.”
Almost everyone in that clip is dead now.
Also, did anyone notice that the tech turning off the lights was JMS himself?
When I watched that the first time, I cried real tears when the B5 was blown up. Not even the destruction of the Enterprise in STIII (which had long had a special place deep in my heart) affected me that way.
On the theme of the title:
I don’t usually much care for rogues and thieves or tales that celebrate them, but this character had style.
Skif was fun – a [eventually] lawful-good rogue.
One notes that if your skill set is rogue, and you are lawful good, adventuring is about your only choice for a livelihood.
He would never have chosen a career as an official representative and messenger of the Queen, but got recruited for it anyway. As I recall, he was assigned mostly to espionage and counter-espionage, where his roguish background proved useful.
Real life thieves tend to specialize more than D&D ones. Spy is the most plausible skill set, because going to an easier target is often impossible
One thing that is definitely happening is people are starting to question the food supply. There has been a resurgence in the humble homemaking skills and in gardening. My thought is that, while the Tube of You is a font of excellent information, what if we DO get an EMP or some other major disruption? People you can actually talk to, with knowledge, in your neighborhood, might be necessary.
To that end, in the interest of being helpful, I decided to sign up for our state extension’s Master Gardener certification classes. The idea is to make use of my hobby to help people. So far I have relearned a lot that I’d lost as a result of the major stroke I had and I hope I can retain enough knowledge to be helpful to others. It seems like a really good program and gardeners are the nicest most helpful people so it is a joy to be around them. Many of them are pretty introverted until you get going on plants. It ain’t much, but it’s something I can do that I hope can help someone who needs it.
Could be we will see more of this sort of thing going forward.
I’m reminded of how society goes through spasm and pain adjusting to new influences (like the invention of gin…) and eventually adapts by changing institutions, new rules of behavior… The internet has had a huge influence on everything, some of it bad some of it good, but we haven’t yet developed good rules for protecting ourselves from it. Valuing in person contacts seems like it ought to be one of them. Perhaps more cocooning, or turning to the arts more might be others. The more advanced capabilities of things like ChatGPT are going to take adjustments too…
We’re definitely living out the old Chinese curse. Interesting times indeed.
The invention of Gin, or of the Gin (as in Cotton Gin)? Though both apparently had interesting effects on their respective societies.
My sympathies on the the loss of Dan’s father. We lost my 94 year old mother a month and a half ago. It is a hard thing to go through.
Condolences on the loss of Dan’s father.
As far as we know he’s still not died, though hanging by a thread.
And no matter how hard you prepare, you’re never prepared.
God’s mercy on Dan, his dad and you.
Still … hugs,
My own father had an apparently minor medical issue early in December 2010, went into hospital for it, after it worsened, seemed to be OK after surgery … and then … somehow everything went sideways. They decided to turn off life support on the day after Christmas. I’ve always wondered if the hospital did everything to keep Dad alive until then. That very plot featured in a MASH episode.
Still, Christmas was melancholy for us, for about a decade after.
We were headed for San Diego the day after Christmas to help SIL with her two young children, whose husband & kids father was in final stages of cancer, and dying. Before we left the inlaws to drive down, mom called. Paternal grandmother had died that morning (sometime during the night, went to sleep, didn’t wake up). Bit of a shock. No warning. So instead we headed back to Eugene. Finally got down to SIL after dropping aunt off on the way south (flown up for funeral and house cleaning), on New Years Day. BIL died New Years Eve.
Even though Grandma had been going south (where great-grandchildren were) for prior few years. Christmas was never quite the same for a long time.
May our Lord Jesus Christ and His blessed Mother be there to welcome your FIL, with all the angels and saints. And may he bless you and Dan and the boys, and all of Dan’s family in this trying time. Amen.
I suspect one change is going to be pressure on parents and schools to make sure kids under, oh, say 16, don’t get smart phones that do more than call or text. The rolling disaster that is social media and social-media-aps is going to lead to backlash of some kind.
Written tests, as in hand-written, or where you have to turn in an outline with the paper (an outline that you did by hand in class) will become more common as well until we sort out how to tag work done on/by programs like ChatGPT.
Local and regional food systems will become more important. Right now there’s a big push locally for more super-efficient greenhouses and modified hydroponics for high-value produce to go with the cattle and grain (and now dairy) from the region. Things like that might appear across more of the country.
All of the student ID cards in my district have suicide help line information on the back. All of them.
Social media has already had a huge backlash, and the influence is primarily negative.
Indeed – recall that poor girl who was assaulted and beaten in the hallway of her high school? Video of the beating posted to social media by the perps … and she was later harassed over social media… and she killed herself, being so harried and shamed that a loving and considerate family couldn’t save her.
(She was a very pretty girl, too – and would have been stunningly attractive as an adult. Bet you anything that it was pure venomous jealousy on the part of the girls who beat her.)
I have read that the bullying is even worse, since it is intensified by social media. Back in the day, once you were out of school, the bullies couldn’t torment a victim. Now they can reach out and torment, 24-7.
My family is about 4 to 1 girls to boys. The girls range from 7s to 9.5s. My one cousin who was the 9.5 was so horribly treated.by her female cousins especially the high 8s and xouple of 9s that she seriously contemplated suicide in high school and was captured by a using bastard who kept her inthrall from 16 until she was 33 or 34. Yes we all tried to warn her and it obviously did not work.
Her second husband was loads better.
Had they had texting then and the rest I doubt she would have survived high school.
Even now I have to keep reining in my wife from ttying to control our kids (25 to 30) via text.
It is insidious
Please don’t say “she killed herself.” That just buys into theShE jUsT sElF-DeStRuCtEd narrative that allows the bullies to wash their hands of the consequences of their actions.
Make them own their deeds, not help them shift the blame onto the victim.
Pretty sure that back in the day, if a girl was attacked in front of adult witnesses — functionally, that’s what the video amounts to– then the people who attacked her would be in JAIL, and there’d be some tough questions going on.
In my experience the suicide help line is useless. People don’t know how it works. First, it’s a national number that redirects to a local number. Second, the “volunteers” are not always volunteers, some of the have the credentials and are sentenced to community service for some minor infraction. Third, the American Psychiatric Association has gone seriously woke and basically all the curriculum re enforces this worldview.
Utah has the right idea for social media with their new age verification law. (Should be a similar law for porn.) If congress wasn’t a concatenation of traitors and fools, that’s what they’d have proposed instead of the Restrict Liberty act.
There’s going to be a market for dumb-phones. Voice and text only…and possibly limited to only a few numbers that have to be pre-programmed.
Sorry to hear of your father-in-law’s anticipated passing.
My mother was the same – abdominal aneurysm, but held on until the other two could get there from Denver and somewhere around Fayetteville (Tennessee). My mother-in-law held off the cancer just until her daughters could get there.
Those who love you will stare the Reaper in the eyes and say “not yet!” Makes me believe that they will do the same to St. Peter at the Gate until we catch up with them. (Must be quite a crowd loitering around there, actually…)
Living in the present is a necessity if you want to enjoy your life, and give the people around you a chance to do the same…But prepping can also be part of the fun, because there are so many things to learn and so many pieces to fit in the infinite crossword puzzle….
I am so sorry to hear that Dan’s father is gone – my condolences.
I feel a bit like a pioneer, as one of the indy writers who took full advantage early (2007-2008) on both digital printing, and of Amazon, as well as Amazon developing the Kindle reader, and basically inviting anyone with a good ripping yarn (or maybe even not that good a yarn) to come and play. And that the writer’s group that I hung out with at that time were full of outside-the-box good suggestions as to how to get your books in front of readers who might be interested. I’ve been working small festivals and events ever since.
One of the most innovative authors whom I ran across locally – had a cute little cookbook featuring all kinds of recipes for lemons. She would get a table at gun shows, and clean up! She had a little set-up, with a tablecloth that matched her blue-and-white checked cover, a bowl of fresh lemons and a plate of lemon-shortbread. All the guys who came alone to the gun show would buy a copy for their wife/girlfriend/whatever … and the ladies who did come with their fellows would buy a copy for themselves, out of gratitude that there was something in the hall that was not weapons-related.
Outside the box thinking. I’ll have a table for my books at the New Braunfels Folkfest, the middle of the month – since some of the books have to do with the German settlements in the Texas Hill country, I have a build-in audience.
He’s not, that we know, gone yet, but death is imminent.
My father also waited until all the children and grandchildren showed up, then died….And he was in a lot of pain, but stuck it out…
FIL tried. When he came home from the hospital after his second heart attack, first one had been 22 years before, doctors did not expect him to last until Thanksgiving, a little over a week away. So we switched holidays and drove over. Almost immediately I had to hit the restroom as breakfast and the drive had not agreed with the tiny passenger that we were not planning on informing about until we were sure we wouldn’t lose this one. Needless to say saying what I had was “not catching” (given problems getting pregnant and staying that way … I wish) to a retired nurse was waving a red flag, of coarse she came to the correct conclusion. After Thanksgiving FIL was not expected to make it to Christmas, then Easter, you get the message. He was determined to meet that last grandchild. Didn’t make it (by six weeks) but he tried.
My father-in-law waited until everyone who could possibly be there had come.
How he knew is a mystery because people had been coming in and out for days. But somehow he did and within minutes of the last person arriving, he was gone.
My mother died during a blizzard with only my dad and her sister at her side. I really think she wanted it that way, no muss, no fuss, no weeping, no scenes. If she could have she would have gone off like a cat, all by herself and curled up in the forest somewhere alone.
My very sincere condolences to the family. It is always a blow when the beloved family patriarch goes on to the next life.
May angels be there to greet him and all his loved ones who have gone before lead him further in and further up.
My late grandfather held off until his youngest daughter was married, and was gone within the week. To no one’s great surprise: he had survived so many injuries and illnesses, it was miraculous he lived as long as he did.
Grandmother. Grandpa had triggered Life Alert because he couldn’t get grandma to do something. Life Alert response shows up. Grandma wasn’t responding because she was passed out on the floor. This causes Life Alert to go “now what” (grandma didn’t “qualify” for Life Alert). Grandpa and Grandma both got transported to hospitals (duh!) Grandpa to Eugene, Grandma to Cottage Grove. A week later Grandpa is in Hospice in nursing home, Grandma is in same nursing home, but not Hospice. A week later grandpa dies. Two weeks after that is Grandpa’s memorial all arranged by Grandma, her way. All the way down to the memorial, and back, Grandma is coughing. Minute we get to the memorial, through the memorial, even after at mom’s house, no coughing. Grandma goes back to the nursing home. After mom leaves, Grandma has a massive heart attack, and dies. Grandma had (probably, not a medical person) been in cardiac distress the Entire Day of the memorial, based off the coughing she was doing in the car. Note, she never let nursing staff know she’d been having problems. She counted on me not knowing what was going on. She hid it from anyone who might have known or suspected. Two weeks later we had her memorial.
Puts me in mind of my own parents. My mother died of cancer…my father had a fatal heart attack an hour later.
Re: the heart coughing, Kori the Pirate on his YouTube channel exhibits this symptom a lot. It is a bit sinister when you know what it is.
I’ve heard of a man admitted to hospice, whose wife and daughter had to leave, and said goodbye, and died very shortly after.
Prayers and condolences to all of you. I remember when my Da died, I was a real mess even though I had lots of time to prepare. It’s hard, very hard.
Yes. 100%. We knew grandma & grandpa were failing. Still hard when they went. Dad had been deteriorating for two years before he finally went on home hospice for six months. Still hard. Dad has been gone 14 years last Saturday. Grandparents for 16 years.
Thoughts and prayers to you and yours of course, always remember you are not alone, a lot of us have been through this before. You will live and so will they so long as they are remembered. You and yours are after the product of his up bringing, so long as the line lives so do the ones before them. I still haven’t answered the question of how do you cry for a life well lived?
The closest I have gotten is you don’t cry for a life well lived, you celebrate it and learn from their example. .
Another great looking picture
On the “work from home” deal, my job could literally not be done without it, since my actual workspace is 40 miles away on the wrong side of two major bottlenecks. And my place of work is insanely happy to have the WFH workforce, since that means the comparatively tiny little photography studio (three photography rooms and two temporary locations during the late summer and fall) doesn’t have to find more space to deal with the increasing number of client schools—rapidly approaching three digits, I think. Especially since a lot of the help is seasonal, like me.
Much easier to find space for a computer than a computer + personal space, and I get way more bang for my buck without the transportation costs. AND since I’m also doing the mom job, I can do crazy shifts of an hour here, two hours there, oh, there’s another kid to pick up because it’s pouring rain, so finish out my shift with a staccato burst of logins. (Most of them are a single shift, but it has gotten weird sometimes.)
In short, those who jumped and adapted are doing well. Before WFH, the studio had a max client list of 20-30 schools, and that was pushing it. Now? Who knows.
and the log is on fire in random spots. very important to remember.
Since we’re 40 miles from the nearest city, the best way for us to limit driving is what we’ve been doing: Make a market run once a week, and when feasible, combine that with other errands. So medical stuff is usually on the market day.
I’m very glad the frequent trips over the Cascades for eye procedures and followups are done. When that circus started until things calmed down, I had about 17 trips in 18 months, and most needing an overnight or longer stay. Now I have my retina check (“The scans and my visual exam both look good. No deterioration, so I’ll see you next year.”) combined with one of the semiannual Costco runs.
One thing that reduces costs/hassles is a mail drop in Flyover Falls. The usual suspects can deliver and/or pick up, and that saves us the additional costs for a rural residential delivery. It’s also a bit more sure, especially with the Postal Disservice.
I’ll grab lunch in town, and will get a couple of to-go dinners from one of our regular places. $SPOUSE stays home with our hates-to-be-alone border collie, and she avoided the fun of face diapers for most of Covidiocy. (Except when I destroyed my knee and she was the sole driver.) Turns out she hates face masks more than I do…
Knew it was coming , but…
I just saw over at Ace’s blog that Trump has been indicted. The official charges are -according to the link Ace posted – unknown as of yet.
Which seems a bit odd, but…
Well, maybe…..
Apparently the original story was based on anonymous sources, and the indictment hasn’t actually been announced or unsealed.
yep.
Since the grand jury just went on hiatus for a month, it’s very fishy. And irked MomRed because she didn’t get to see the end of Jeopardy! They broke into the show with the breathless reportage.
Is Bragg required to announce an indictment the moment that the grand jury hands it down? If Bragg wanted to delay the announcement for some reason, is he able to do so? I would think that he could do so, and it’s possible that something needs to be set up first (measures for dealing with anticipated riots or “riots”, for example) before the indictment is publicly announced.
Better that than here, where I turned on the Nashville station and got school shooting coverage. (Evening news takes over early for things like that).
BTW, the national coverage is, I gather, utterly revolting.
National coverage of the Nashville shooting seems to be, “How dare the cops misgender him! Transphobic attitudes like that are the reason why trans people are facing a genocide and this innocent transman ended up dead at the school!”
Usual Democrat/leftist shenanigans announcing a month long stand down of the grand jury then springing the indictment just in time for the 5 o’clock news cycle.
I for one am delighted. The charges themselves are a ridiculous convoluted mess of legal malpractice and will never survive an honest trial. But what no one seems to realize is that by doing this they have thrown the previously sealed door protecting former presidents wide open. Imagine how without that traditional protection what a Republican administration might do to Uncle Joe and the entire Biden crime family.
Not to mention that the blithering idiots, slavering for that Trump perp walk photo op, have no idea how many votes he will gain from it in the 2024 elections.
While it sounds good in theory, Republican leaders are a bunch of cowards and losers. Despite having more than enough evidence to start impeachment proceedings on FICUS, they have done nothing.
If they don’t impeach the Wicked Witch Of The West Coast first, they’d just be going from bad to worse.
Yes. Wicked Witch of the west, way down south near Mexico, west, needs to go first and that position to be vacant, before FICUS can be impeached and convicted. (Not that there is an iceberg’s chance in H311 of either happening.)
No, she doesn’t. I know she is completely unqualified for the job, but Joe Biden needs to go. Using the excuse of not wanting Harris as President is playing right into the Deep State’s hands.
That’s the problem — the Democrat party has so many Wicked Witches there aren’t enough directions on the compass to identify them. 😛
Well, the former Democrat Speaker Of the House is who I think of “Wicked Witch Of The West”.
However if something happens NOW to Biden* and Harris, since she’s the Former Speaker Of the House, she won’t replace Biden* and Harris as President. 😉
But still Republicans don’t have the will to do what is needed. I’m seeing the same in the Texas legislature.
Wouldn’t matter, since the Dem-controlled Senate would never vote to convict without some incredibly bad (beyond the corruption that we’ve got a pretty good idea of at this time) optics regarding Biden.
Also, putting the utterly vacuous Harris in the White House likely wouldn’t change the current policies all that much. But since she’s not a decrepit man suffering from dementia, she’d probably insist on being out in front of the camera more often. That would give her more opportunities to look the fool than her current job as Vice President does. It would also screw up the Democratic election calculus for 2024. The main public complaint against Biden running again is his age. Harris doesn’t suffer from that, so it would be much more difficult for someone like Newsome to upset her in the primary. The main downside that I see is the “Historic First!” crowing that the left would engage in if she became president. On the other hand, this would also make it more difficult for someone on the left to successfully challenge her as the Dems would be too busy telling each other how amazing the first woman president was (and ignoring all of the mountains of evidence to the contrary).
Good points.
I withdraw my objections.
Although, another problem is, now embolden, when she talks to Putin & Xi. They decide to nuke DC just to get rid of the cackling (as worthless as she is, why else bother to nuke our new worthless CIC?) I like the memorial parks and museums. I mean doesn’t mean we wouldn’t send back “Thank you” on the return replies. But dang.
Ignoring mountains of contrary evidence seems to be a prerequisite for Democrats these days. Along with pretending that stupidity is wisdom, and incompetence is empowering.
———————————
It takes a LOT of education to make somebody that stupid.
It would still get all sorts of corruption out in the open, unlike the current habit of Dems just denying everything. It’s not a matter of removing Biden as it is of both exposing everything very publicly and, since the Democrats have normalized impeachment for political reasons, show that the Republicans are willing to at least stand up. Instead they are showing that they continue to be the party of cowards and losers.
NYT racing to get the news out, before it can be verified (Ave had a pic up of the start of an NYT article)?
Would be amusing if Bragg were forced to announce that there is no indictment. The NYT would have major egg on its face.
Although now a part of me wonders if this is a pressure tactic by someone to compel Bragg to indict.
It’s on all the news I have viewed.
If this is false, some folks will be in serious need of good civil attorneys.
One can hope.
I have noticed a tendency to say something like “it is being reported” on a lot of news– and when you go dig down to the bottom it’s like a report of “a now deleted tweet says.”
I have no idea if that’s what is happening here, because I haven’t taken the time to try to dig down– but it HAS been popping up in news a LOT.
K, Epoch Times has an ACTUAL STORY with SPECIFIC SORCES stated:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/court-officially-confirms-details-for-first-hearing-in-trump-criminal-case_5163521.html
The hearing will be open to members of the public and the press on a first come, first serve basis, the spokesperson said. The hearing will not be livestreamed.
The courthouse is located in lower Manhattan.
Trump has been indicted by a grand jury for reasons that are under seal. Trump is the first former president to face criminal charges in the history of the United States.
A spokesperson for the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, a Democrat, said in a statement that it is now coordinating with Trump’s attorneys his “surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s Office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment.” Bragg had been probing a payment by former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen to adult performer Stormy Daniels, who has alleged Trump had an affair with her. Trump has denied the claim. Cohen has said he spoke to the grand jury.
If people take cell phones to the hearing, it will be livestreamed. Just unofficially.
And, ‘Supreme Court indictment’? Bragg, you idiot, the Supreme Court doesn’t indict people, or conduct Stalinist show trials. The Republic is not that far gone.
Yet.
———————————
Candidate Joe Biden, August 2020: “We have assembled the most extensive, comprehensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics.”
Minutes later: “What do you mean, I wasn’t supposed to say that?”
New York Supreme Court.
The same Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan who ordered them to unseal the EXISTENCE of the indictment, since he’s the one that’s going to be hearing it.
Correct. Different states label their courts in different ways. For some reason, the state of New York decided that it’s trial courts would go by the title of New York Supreme Court.
Why? Dunno. But California calls its general trial courts the Superior Court. So New York isn’t alone in this oddness. I suspect there are other states with similar names, as well.
Yeah, that one always made me wonder ‘Where is the Inferior Court, then? At the Inferior Courthouse?’ 😛
https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/robert-costello-michael-cohen-trump/2023/03/22/id/1113364/
“”I asked them during my grand jury proceeding to deliver the entire 321 emails because they are chronological step-by-step, day-by-day communications between Michael Cohen and myself and between myself and my partner, Jeff Citron, about Michael Cohen,” said Costello.
But by allowing just six of those emails to be seen, Costello said, “that’s less than 2%” of what had transpired. ”
Brady violations are a Democrat’s stock in trade.
Brady has to do with giving the evidence to the defense, not to the Grand Jury.
David Lang
I believe I’ve tripped over that learning curb often in my life. Forgive me for enjoying the accidental humor. Learning doesn’t always occur on the curves, and I love that image.
My condolences on your family’s loss.
My condolences to Dan and yourself on your loss. Watch each other. Both my parents died within 6 months of each other 7 years ago. It was not a surprise in either case but…my oldest and youngest siblings both separately checked into psych evaluation clinics within a couple of months of the deaths. They bot had good jobs, loving families etc…and the grief was so hard on them. So watch each other.
No I wasnt unaffected either. It made me look at choices I made….and I made different ones because of that that have caused us some problems but may have also saved my life.
So lean on your families and friends and look forward while remembering.
Sorry to hear about your FIL. Prayers for him and your family.
O/T. Trump is indicted in Manhattan, details still sealed…Plans for a surrender not announced yet….The game is on! and the FUSA is now in the rearview mirror….
Trump has already responded:
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/robert-spencer/2023/03/30/trump-speaks-out-on-indictment-the-democrats-have-done-the-unthinkable-n1683176
Meanwhile DeSantis has already declared that Florida will not cooperate with any extradition attempt based on the charges being a bogus political persecution.
Wasn’t expecting that. Figured he would just stay neutral, since Trump had poked at him.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3926943-desantis-florida-wont-cooperate-with-trump-extradition/
Then again, if there was genuine major animosity, Trump wouldn’t be a Florida resident.
And if they now team up to elect Trump, we may see a landslide for Trump in 2024 and DeSantis in 2028. I just watched an older fellow on Carlson say he had never voted in his life, but that “This is -Bullshit-” and he now is “ultra maga”. Democrat upbringing. Poor background. Really dark skin. Disastrous for democrats if even a little common. Blogenovitz of Illinois fame also was defending Trump. (Trump pardoned him)
But the dark side of this indictment leads me to question if Trump ever walks out of New York custody. It would be insane to do, but sanity seems to be less common than in a Lovecraft story. Expect the players to seek “no bail due to flight risk”, maximum security solitary “for his own protection”, judicial orders to refrain from “inciting” = politics, and/or the removal of any effective “detail” coverage by USSS.
Also, it is now fair game for other DAs to start indictments of Democrat bigwigs. And won’t that get politically froggy fast…
As for all bystanders, stay cool. Stay real cool. Because the thing they most want is some dipshit to give them an excuse. So don’t start nothing. Don’t get provoked. Be water and flow around. Don’t spazz.
And do not, not, not no no no, do not engage with glowies. No.
NYC planning to have all of its cops out in force as the Democrats stage another Reichstag Fire. NYC cops hate Bragg and the Democrats for their soft on crime agenda which has included tossing charges for violent assaults on cops. I expect the NYC police to act like Trump’s honor guard rather than a typical police escort.
The real concern is that the FBI and DOJ are going to be involved in “security”, i.e, advancing the Democratic Party agenda, even while they try to claim that they had no involvement in what Bragg was doing.
Maybe all those cops can at least reduce the random violent crime for a day?
On the other hand, I wonder how many won’t be feeling well. “I had to get a COVID test.”
DeSantis has already said that he will not extradite Trump on these ridiculous charges…the tension is building rapidly…
And this is why I have a ridiculous fever. I can’t do anything stupid.
Uuuh…are you saying you can’t do stupid things, or you can’t deal with other peoples’ stupid shit? 😛
In the case of that indictment? BOTH.
US Secret Service tends to be … stubborn. They are likely going to balk at any risk to a protectee. Things may get… tense.
I would not be shocked to hear they said “No. Do it remotely. Covid proved it works. Otherwise F off.”
Aaaaaand again strikes the Baylon Bee, spot on in tone:
https://babylonbee.com/news/mike-lindell-draws-sword-cuts-off-ear-of-officer-attempting-to-arrest-trump
Aaaaaaaand, bam! Bee-ast Mode Burn:
https://babylonbee.com/news/biden-relieved-after-learning-the-president-being-indicted-for-crimes-is-just-trump
Folks, read the Babylon Bee. It just adds so much needed levity to the DOH! of life.
Condolences, Sarah.
I suspect that the days of the Big City are fading. The automobile and modern communications crippled it, misgovernment and crime have finished the Megalopolis Era.
The future is the town, I suspect. Small towns, large towns…but places where you can get OUT of town in 15 minutes or so.
Megalopolis
Morphs to
GigaSuburbia
Morphs ro
TeraTown
But what prevents the large towns from becoming cities or cities in all but name?
Size will be regulated by crowding. Folks will seek a smaller burg if a place gets too urban/dysfunctional.
Cost.
When you can set up a plant in a town 30m to 1h from a hub for a fraction of the cost of setting it up on the hub you will.
And if a lot of the workers can work remotely, you’ll probably only move in the ones who need to be on site regularly to do their job, and that will tend to reduce traffic, so they don’t have to live as close to have a reasonable commute, either.
My condolences. My parents have been gone for over 20 years. May your FIL have a peaceful passing.
As someone who’s last three jobs have all been remote, I can say that there are benefits to being in the office with your co-workers. But only if the office environment is one where you are together and can talk and overhear what’s going on (the unplanned collaboration is where you get a lot of value)
I’ve been at in-office jobs where everyone wore headphones all day long and if you had something to tell someone in the cube opposite to you, you sent them an email (or slack message). In companies like that there is no value to being in the office. But those teams were FAR less productive than the ones where we knew what each other were working on and could trivially chip in to help/educate.
One thing that remote work is NOT good at is teaching new people and integrating them into the company culture. You have to work harder to make this happen when people are remote (both as a company, as a manager, and as an employee)
Having worked at Google, I can say that with their culture, I don’t think there’s a lot of value to have people in the office. Even in the office there is very little in-person communication.
Tesla seems to have a lot more collaboration going on and discussion between designers, engineers, and production folks, so they are co-locating the engineers with the manufacturing and I think will get a lot of value from being in the office.
Never really have been in the type of office of the first. Second? Heck they don’t even have to wear headphones. Little interaction period. Working at home wouldn’t have made a bit of difference.
A lot of it depends on the kind of work you do. When I was at a particular entertainment company, there would be a lot of spontaneous conversations in the creatives department even though everyone worked in cubicles stacked high with enough stuff to rebuild the Great Wall of China. In another department at the same company, there was an open office with no walls and a free for all each day for desks. Clearly the intent was to foster that same sort of casual conversation and collaboration. It didn’t work.
Apparently private space is necessary for the collaboration to happen.
Basically, you need a private space to focus and thing hard about things and you need an area where you can bump into other people while you and they are not directly working on a task, for ideas to bounce around.
My last job there was exactly one time in 12 years where spontaneous mention to someone of what they were working on happened. And that was when I overheard a comment that they expected the new remote app to rely on cell service. Had news for them. The county they were using as a prototype does not have universal cell service. In fact even satellite coverage isn’t guarantied. Someones were not happy when the prototype failed, due to, (guessed it) lack of universal cell coverage. Oops. There was a reason why the remote shop programs did not have downloaded verification and were sneaker netted back to the computer center to be processed. Not sure what the solution was. It was being worked on when I retired.
I always wanted to ask RJ’s creative force if it had never heard of a boar spear.
Some spears DO have branches, of a sort.
Here’s hoping your old man has found some comfort in seeing his dad before the end. It’s never a fun time and stresses the heck out of everybody. Sorry if I can’t seem to say much more or anything too comforting at this moment.
I’m sorry to hear of your impending loss. You both have my sympathies.
“Let’s play Global Thermonuclear Lawfare.”
…
“Fine.”
I’m glad to hear he has been able to hold on enough to say goodbye to everyone. It is not easy, but at least there is that.
With Good Friday, and Easter coming, it can be helpful to remember that on Good Friday, the devil thought he had won. God was dead. Yet Sunday was coming. Easter. The promise of eternal Life.
God seems to allow evil to triumph. Note the seems. Will/do we know Easter is coming? Sometimes we have to suffer through Saturday.
“He’ll be back….”
some dude in Gargoyle shades
All my best, along with condolences, to you both. Sue and I, along with her one remaining brother, are the only ones left from either family of the “older generation(s)”, so I know how you’re feeling. Trust me, the pain eventually does mostly go away, although never completely. Hang in there; we’re all with you two.
What exactly happened to Smashwords?
Other than their software not catching up, they expanded to a lot of subselling and “lending” programs some of which were outright pirate and never paid. And Smashwords itself doesn’t …. account very well. Etc.
It was bought out by Draft2Digital, last.
c4c